I have the privilege of working closely with the president and CEO of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, Sharon L. Davies. In office since April 2022, she has shown herself to be a force of nature.

As moderator of our recent Emerging Issues Conference in Washington, DC, I sat with her to ask her a few questions to wrap up the proceedings. These were not planned remarks, just her observations on what she had heard.

Then I asked her a question that I had not intended, but that popped into my head: “Is there room for a pro-inclusive democracy movement?”

Her answer — extemporaneous — was a remarkable, tight exploration of the stakes we currently face in the United States, and ended with new insights on the familiar quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. about the “moral arc” of the universe bending toward justice.

“I think about that today and wonder why we would believe that the arc of a moral universe bends towards justice. I think it’s more accurate to say that it gets bent, it is bent by people who are attentive to the struggle. . . . I think that’s what we have to be thinking about today, each and every one of us, as citizens, is: What can we do to be a part of bending that arc towards justice?”

Enjoy: