Fest Takeaways

Check out more highlights from our 2021 Ideas We Should Steal Festival

We heard from several incredible problem-solvers at our annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival:

We learned about how one city is staving off climate change with an innovative electric car share program.

One speaker who actually brokered peace between L.A.’s Bloods and Crips shared how he’s having success in his town fighting gun violence through peaceful intervention.

We got insight into how empathy and the courage to face often uncomfortable truths can help us repair democracy and stamp out racial discrimination.

And we were inspired to borrow all this knowledge to help bring meaningful change to Philadelphia.

Here, some of the highlights from the two-day Festival.

If you missed it, be sure to join our upcoming events all year long, and to stay tuned for details about next year’s Festival, which, believe it or not, we’re already hard at work planning.

Connect WITH OUR SOCIAL ACTION TEAM


Do Your Part

Ways YOU can make Philly better this year

Sometimes, it’s the smallest thing that makes a difference: Sweeping up your neighbor’s sidewalk, planting flowers, driving more cautiously on crowded streets. These are all little—but important in their own right—ways to in some way better your neighborhood.

The bigger things—feeding the hungry, holding electeds to account, becoming a block captain—can affect even bigger change in your city, something much-needed after the last two years. Are you ready? Can 2022 be the year when you make even more of a difference to the city we share?

Here, some ideas to make this the most engaged year yet.

Get out the Vote

It's up to us to make sure our leadership is up to snuff.

There are several important races coming up in the 2022 election, including PA senator. And before long, we’ll be electing another mayor. Want to make sure we make the right decision? Voting—and helping to get out the vote—is our best bet.

First and foremost, make sure you’re ready to vote in the upcoming election. Our guide to voting in Pennsylvania lays is a one-stop shop for all your voting needs, including how to register and verify your registration, how to request absentee and mail-in ballots, and how to find your polling place.

After that, the next best thing you can do is to make sure EVERYONE ELSE votes. Check out our guide on how to start a voter registration drive for 12 steps to running a safe, legal and effective sign up in Philadelphia.

Watch

Mayors Michael Nutter and Kasim Reed

The fiery ex-mayors shared important lessons for successfully leading American cities at our annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival. For starters: You have to take care of the basics.

Watch

Mayors Michael Nutter and Kasim Reed

The fiery ex-mayors shared important lessons for successfully leading American cities at our annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival. For starters: You have to take care of the basics.

Jan. 20, 2022

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What does it take to successfully lead a big American city into a prosperous and livable future? For one thing, you need to lead—through strong actions that deliver on the basics, keep residents safe and bring everyone along to make the big changes cities need to thrive.

These are among the lessons we learned at December’s fourth annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival presented by Comcast NBCUniversal from former Philly mayor Michael Nutter and former Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, politicians with long histories of getting done what needs doing in their respective cities.

“If you take care of the consequential things in people’s lives, the public will come with you and you can do the things you actually run for office for,” Reed said, in a conversation moderated by Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt. “Folks elect politicians to win for them. The underlying data is really, really good; what people want right now is decisive action from mayors.”

“Folks elect politicians to win for them. The underlying data is really, really good; what people want right now is decisive action from mayors.”

You also need services, for example, that address the deep emotional toll of violence in cities. “Washing down a sidewalk does not take away a trauma,” Nutter said. There are children, families, and communities affected by violence in our streets. Murder and violence, they agreed, make citizens believe less and less that a city is theirs; thriving cities, and their economies, flourish on the tail of safety. As Reed put it: “You have to shape the public will and make people believe again.”

That is not partisan; it is not even, really, politics. It is serving the people who elected leaders in the first place. Or as Nutter succinctly put it, with a nod to the title of the panel: “There is no conservative or progressive way to fix a pothole. You just need to fix the fucking pothole.”

For more mayoral wisdom—and more fiery talk from Nutter—see the video below:

The Ideas We Should Steal Festival was made possible by our sponsors. See who they are here.

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