This is a call to leaders—to take up your power, exercise your values, and courageously build a future where all can thrive:

On July 4, 2022, we wrote an open letter to all who believe in democracy, cautioning that over the coming weeks, months, and years, we must not be deterred by efforts to take us backward, instead harnessing the headwinds as fuel to create the nation of our dreams. 

Today, as threats to our collective future grow more urgent and pronounced, we must exercise our power boldly and unapologetically to disrupt what is and to make possible what is yet to be. Not only to protect our history but to shape our future. We the People must become the founders of a nation yet to be realized.

To do so, we must all adopt a founder’s stance—the guide and North Star for the future of our nation. A founder’s stance is essential to transforming the United States into a country where all people can flourish—where everyone can thrive in all dimensions, free from oppression, exploitation, and scapegoating. Every generation has the opportunity to become founders of a nation yet to be realized, knowing our work will be imperfect, and still accepting the invitation to work each day to perfect our democracy. Making this evolutionary leap demands that we treat this future not as a distant aspiration but a reality within our power to create.

To embody a founder’s stance, we must leverage: 

• Foresight to see beyond the known, and the courage to act on behalf of all people to shape our nation’s future.
• Radical imagination to expand the bounds of our creativity to envision what has never been done and breathe life into the fullest promise of the Constitution: liberty and justice for all.
• Audacity to set your vision as bold as the future it seeks, trusting in both our individual and collective power to achieve it.
• Humility to prioritize the power of the whole over the power of one, building with the belief that collective thriving is our most necessary pursuit.
• Love for all to do no harm to people or planet, see the inherent dignity and humanity in every person, and to work in service of their thriving.
• Self-renewal to reflect, learn, and release what no longer serves—so we can take decisive action to design a just and flourishing society.

When we embody a founder’s stance, we chart the course for what comes next. Do not feel stuck or disempowered, even at a time in our nation’s history when the blows to our vision for the future may land more sharply. The arc of transformation is long and fraught. And just as those who came before us dared to claim freedoms deemed impossible, we, too, must root ourselves in courage and rise—unshaken, unwavering—into the power that is ours to carry forward.

The time is now. It is our turn. We are ready. We hold the power to build the future of our dreams, for this generation and the next.

Join us in the next founding of this nation—one that truly works for all.

In Solidarity,

Michael McAfee
CEO, PolicyLink

Ashleigh Gardere
President, PolicyLink

(Download the letter, as it appeared in the print edition of the New York Times on July 4, 2025)