Remembering 9/11 and Fostering a New Era of Citizen Leadership

by Nathaniel Whittemore

categories: Government and Social Entrepreneurship, history, Middle East, Society

Published September 11, 2009 @ 10:43AM PT

Eight years ago today two jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. A collective hush fell over America as we watched the towers crumble and fall, taking with it our imagination of invulnerability and heralding a new and very different 21st century.

Reflecting on the irony of humanity's dual capacity to create and destroy, early 20th century critic Walter Benjamin wrote "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." The years after September 11th, 2001 have showed us that the reverse is also true.

Because while the stories we hear usually focus on terrorism, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a seething world at odds with America, the first decade of the 21st century has demonstrated how in a new, networked era, people are not willing to just let the world happen, quietly ceding the authority to change things to governments and businesses with means.

Instead, we've seen an explosion of creative citizen participation. In the US, volunteerism and studying abroad are on the rise and have set off the spirits of a generation who refuse to sit around patiently waiting for their turn for leadership. Around the world, creative social entrepreneurship is driving change as people - even the poorest of the poor - use their talents, relationships and other resources to drive change.

I've been blessed with opportunities to see many aspects of this new citizen leadership. One of the most important and underreported is the incredible swell of activity around peace and dialogue in the Middle East. While news continues to focus on the violence, the story of the Middle East is far more about a longing for peace, the need for infrastructure, mobility, and security, and the growth of a generation committed to a better future.

The story is expansive. In Israel and Palestine, average citizens organize for peace with more regularity than most would think looking at Western media. Organizations like Just Vision are dedicated to telling those stories. What's more, there are many organizations like PeaceWorks that are trying to build the economic infrastructure to accelerate an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Larger groups like RAND are thinking systemically about how to build the actual infrastructure for peace with projects like the ARC. Jeff Skoll's new Urgent Threats Fund is explicitly focused on leveraging all solutions - including those of social entrepreneurs - to build peace in the Middle East.

But the story of citizen engagement is not just at the epicenter of that one conflict. For while some would try to convince us that Americans are engaged in an us vs. them, clash of civilizations conflict with the broader Arab and Muslim world, the reality is wildly different. Groups like the Interfaith Youth Core are enabling broader communication between young people from wildly different faith backgrounds to form bonds that will extend into the future as they assume positions of prominence and leadership in the world.

And around the Arab world, young people are - just like young people in America - harnessing their friends, family and other resources to design entrepreneurial projects for social change. We've had the good fortune at Northwestern University to bring a number of those students - working on issues as diverse as health access, community development, and communications infrastructure - to our annual Global Engagement Summit.

But for as exciting as this new era of citizen leadership may be, serious barriers remain. War, violence, and the perception of impassable barrier of religion, faith and custom far too often remain the norm. The question becomes how do we, as average citizens, accelerate our engagement to make a difference. There are a few paths:

1. Use the platforms that we have to support the work of individual leaders for change in issues of interfaith communication and Middle East peace and development.

2. Find ways to assemble our voices and advocate for greater government engagement with real, long-term peace building, including enabling opportunities for greater economic development and opportunity.

3. Tell a different story. Tell the story of people who try to build up the world rather than destroy it. There are far more of them in every culture, every faith, every nationality, but their work is more subtle and requires us to take a more active interest in sharing their stories as far and as widely as we can.

(Photo: Sunrise over Mt. Sinai by Jesper Särnesjö)