Citizenship is a community act. Democracy gets its power from the people.

The shrinking of people participating in that process over time has landed us in a more polarized space.

This is How to Be a Citizen from Pantsypolitics.

Over four episodes we talk about how to vote, how to debate, how to think about our relationship to our government and our communities.

Join us as we think about what America and 2020 should be and what we should be to America.

Hi everyone, this is Elise, Managing Director of Pantsypolitics.

Before we jump into this next episode of How to Be a Citizen Series, I wanted to tell you about some of the exciting content we'll be sharing on our Instagram.

We've asked some dear friends of the podcast to share what being a citizen means to them.

You can find their beautiful words and share what being a citizen means to you over at Pantsypolitics on Instagram.

While you're there, of course, make sure to subscribe so you never miss Sarah's Morning News Briefs or any of the other regular content that we're sharing there.

Hello everyone, welcome to our series How to Be a Citizen.

We are so excited to be gathered around the podcast table and engaging on these deep questions about what the United States is to us, what is the United States, which is what we tackled on Tuesday's episode.

What is our government, how is it set up, how do we engage with it as citizens, and what we really wanted to tackle in this episode is, okay, if that's what the United States is to us, then what are we to the United States?

We wanted to get a little more philosophical on the questions of citizenship and our duties to our community into the government as citizens.

Beth, you wrote an Instagram post over the July 4th holiday in which you described a new way you're thinking about citizenship that really struck a nerve and I thought was particularly beautiful and a good jumping off point to this conversation.

Yeah, as I was thinking about July 4th this year and all of its complexity, it really occurred to me that I'm trying to think about citizenship more like I think about motherhood.

And so I posted a picture of my young daughter, Jane, when she was three years old and a total mess on July 4th, she's holding in the picture a sparkler with a little cup on the end to protect her from the sparkler.

And she just looks, she looks a mess. I said that her shoes didn't match her dress and her hair was tangled and she'd had too much sugar and too few vegetables.

Like Jane in this picture, I think America is holding more than it really feels up to handle and I do think America is tired and confused and a mess right now.

And with both, I feel so much love for that mess and an interest in approaching my work as a citizen like my work as a mother. So on Instagram, I said, being a citizen is just like the work of being a mother.

It takes everything you have. It asks you to be kinder, more patient, more generous, more thoughtful than you feel like being.

I'd ask you to have the answers even as you're working out the questions for yourself. It's never complete. It requires clarity about right wrong and the in between.

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