At the close of the conference, Sharon L. Davies talked with the participants about “bending the moral arc,” something that Martin Luther King Jr. would speak about often.

“It took us a long time to get to the point where we could fairly call ourselves a democracy. Many scholars put that in the middle of the 20th century, when we finally passed important civil rights legislation; we had important decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court; and we gave to citizens—all citizens—of the United States formal rights,” said Davies.

“But now the signs that cause us to be in this room to begin with and be concerned about the state of our democracy tell us that we aren’t there yet. And there is room—in fact, an urgency—for this current generation of democratic leadership to get us the rest of the way there, to be alert to signs of creeping authoritarianism. . . . That’s where we are today and why the Kettering Foundation is so thrilled to fill a room with people like this, who are concerned about our democracy and determined to help preserve it.”

Watch the full conference → https://www.kettering.org/blogs/kettering-foundation-hosts-first-emerging-issues-conference