We know, we know. It’s (almost) Giving Tuesday. Your inbox is surging with asks for your hard-earned dollars, including from a bunch of media outlets. Well, screw Giving Tuesday.
We humbly ask you to consider giving to Democracy Monday.
If we can raise $10,000 from all of you, we can unlock another $10,000 match from patriotic Philadelphians who believe — as we do — in the importance of citizenship.
We just got done with an election that turned out all of 31 percent of registered voters in Philadelphia, and we live in a time when autocracy and illiberalism are ascendant. Never has the brilliant ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr been more prophetic: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
But if The Citizen stands for anything, it’s the principle that democracy is more verb than noun. It’s something you do. And the answer to shoring up endangered American values like pluralism and civic participation is … all of us.
That’s what we do here at The Citizen, in our writing, our podcasts, our thought-leadership events and our nonpartisan activism: We use storytelling to summon us to collective action. Before deleting this latest plea in your inbox, rethink the ask: Don’t contribute to The Citizen. Invest in what all of us can do together.
That will allow The Citizen to do more deep dives into solutions to gun violence, more tales of everyday crusaders who walk among us, more reports from the frontlines of democracy, and more events that feature the most old-fashioned kind of social networking — the actual coming together of stakeholders in common pursuit of problem-solving. In exchange, we’ll send you our brand new Good Citizen Deck of Playing Cards — each containing an actionable step you can take to make your city better, complete with a QR code linking to our in-depth Do Something guides.
That’s it, that’s our pitch.
No one is coming to save us. So take back your city. Be a citizen.
Donate more than $100 and receive The Citizen’s first Do Something Card Deck shipping out January 2024. (Make sure to enter your mailing address, if different from your billing.)
