ICSC-2024-Annual-Report-Final

Lessons Learned from 25 Years of Resistance and Remembrance

If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress *

Dialogue in a Divided Country: Innovative Approaches to Combating Polarization in the United States In order for democratic societies to flourish, there must be spaces for dialogue, places for communities to gather to find common solutions to their greatest challenges in a dignified and respectful way. Unfortunately, in the United States and many other countries, societies are so polarized that finding any “common ground” feels impossible. Indeed national polls reveal that Americans today feel not only more divided from the “other party,” but deep antipathy towards the people in that party. In 2022, polling by Pew found that 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats felt that people in the other party were “more close-minded, dishonest, and immoral than other Americans.” That’s up from 47% and 35% respectively from polls taken just six years before in 2016.

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With well over 100 Sites of Conscience, North America is home to the largest number of ICSC members. These include sites in every region, rural and urban. This image comes from ICSC member the Levine Museum of the New South , which is based in Charlotte, NC and is an interactive history museum that provides an inclusive and comprehensive interpretation of post-Civil War southern society. Their recent exhibit, States of Incarceration , delved into the history of incarceration by focusing on human stories from over 30 different local communities across the United States.

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