During a recent panel discussion on the future of democracy, a community member stood up to tell a story of repeatedly asking her daughter, who had recently turned eighteen, if she was voting in the upcoming election. Each time, her daughter seemingly brushed it off, rolling her eyes, shrugging her shoulders, or just looking at her phone. So much so, that it was making her mom anxious, but determined to ask again. This time, her daughter broke down crying and said, “Of course, I’m voting, Mom. That was never a question. There’s so much on the line, that I’m just scared.” She talked about growing up in a world that seemingly has a threat at every corner from school shootings to climate change. Suddenly this mom realized that what she had seen as disinterest was actually an anxiety that matched her own.  

Throughout this same panel discussion, the crowd talked about how much polarization was hurting our democracy, but one participant took the mic to describe an even bigger threat he saw: the disinterested majority. This is the number of Americans growing increasingly disinterested or feeling plain “meh” about politics, and a sense of apathy that any one person can make a difference. If this number of folks who are fed up with our current way of working stays the same or continues to grow, we’re in trouble. But in a turn of events, this disinterested majority could be our greatest asset in combatting polarization, because these folks all have one huge thing in common: they don’t believe our democracy is working, and they’re not entirely wrong either. The Brookings Institution has been researching democratic decline for a while. While the Brookings looks at what happens in our democratic structures (elections, executive branch), we also need to look at how to turn the tide in our culture of democracy to activate the disinterested majority.  

Here are three strategies we can use when interacting with folks who are turning away from civic engagement. 

Switching from “They” to “We” 

The first strategy invites a mindset shift. People often talk about issues with democracy or government as things outside of themselves, which makes said issues something that someone else is both responsible for and needs to fix. If we’re to realize a dream of democracy that says this is a government for and by the people, we need to recognize that we are democracy and we are our government.  

Let’s think of this another way. One of the questions we ask one another often when arriving somewhere is, “How was the traffic?” This makes it sound like traffic is something that exists outside us, that we’re not participating in or contributing to the problem of heavy traffic. The reality is that you’re not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic. Traffic wouldn’t exist without each of our individual actions. In a similar move, we can move to use language that helps us to recognize that we are democracy and we’re impacting its success or failure by choosing not to participate (kind of like public transit).