Ken Powley has the calm air of someone in tune with nature, which makes sense considering his five decades spent as a whitewater guide and outfitter in eastern Pennsylvania.
However, these days, he’s navigating perhaps the trickiest waters of his career: America’s seemingly growing and dangerous political divide.
Powley is CEO and co-founder of Team Democracy, a nonprofit organization designed to counter the toxic effect partisanship has on the Republic.
Among Ken’s team of cohorts on this noble quest is a former director of the CIA, who Ken’s come to know very well in recent years (more on him below – we don’t want to spoil it for you).
So what does a lifelong river man bring to the table of an organization trying to preserve American Democracy?
Why, the river, of course.
Powley and his team are partnering with whitewater rafting outfitters from coast to coast to lead a series of whitewater rafting expeditions on some of the most extraordinary whitewater rivers in America, putting folks from opposite sides of the political aisle in the same boat.
Those paddling with their polar opposites include elected officials, some from Postindustrial America. [Later this summer, Postindustrial will participate in one of these adventures.]
Below, Powley explains how R.A.F.T. (Reuniting America by Fostering Trust) came to be and what they hope to accomplish by piling people with different faiths, different politics, and different ideological perspectives into the same boats, forcing them to paddle in the same direction.
Postindustrial: How is it that a longtime river rafting guide is teamed up with a former CIA director to help save American Democracy?
Ken Powley: Life takes funny turns sometimes. A chance kickball match on the Washington Mall, sometime in the late 1980s, pitted the son of the CIA Director on one team against the daughter of a whitewater rafting outfitter on the other. Post-game festivities at the local tavern led to a lively discussion about the books that both of these voracious readers had consumed over the course of their short lives. One thing led to another, and my wife and I now share grandchildren with CIA Director [Michael] Hayden and his family.
Hayden and I come from opposite worlds in so many ways:
- I'm the poster child for “that guy” who has always taken our freedoms and our democracy for granted and who doesn't pay a moment's attention to politics, foreign affairs, social causes, or anything outside the realm of running the family's whitewater rafting business – something that's eaten up 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, for nearly five decades.
- Quite the opposite, General Hayden has always been immersed up to his eyeballs in the nastiest, scariest, most existential threats to our country from every corner of the globe.
We are an unlikely pair, for sure. But when my partner (Chris Newlon) and I founded Team Democracy in the aftermath of January 6, my very first call was to General Hayden. He listened; he understood Team Democracy's mission and goals, and he quickly signed on as Team Democracy's Board Chairman. Within a few weeks, he had assembled Generals Hertling, McChrystal, Lute, and Clapper to help produce a compelling video in support of Team Democracy's efforts to get candidates and elected officials in the 2022 midterms to commit themselves – by signing the Safe and Fair Elections Pledge – to these three essential cornerstones of American democracy:
- Elections that are secure and free of fraud
- Elections that are accessible to all eligible voters
- The peaceful transfer of power, no matter who wins
It was a pretty low bar, but with the lessons of January 6 and the reluctance of so many in power to denounce violence as an acceptable means of reversing election results, we believed that candidates who wanted to be elected to office have a responsibility to support and defend our lawful electoral processes.
Postindustrial: In your estimation, what is the greatest threat to American Democracy we face?
Ken Powley: While each of the five Generals took his turn in front of the Team Democracy camera, I had a chance to speak with each of them off-camera. General Hayden shared this story with me:
We, in the military and in the intelligence agencies, deal with the most serious foreign threats to our country and to our democracy all the time. We have a playbook for how to confront North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, ISIS. None of the playbooks is perfect, but we know what our options are and what our capabilities are. And we have a level of confidence that we can mitigate these threats – not perfectly, but reasonably.
With what's happening inside our country right now, we have no playbook. We have no official role. We have no solutions. Given the deepening polarization in America over the past ten years, if you were to ask me, “General, when in your career did you lose the most sleep at night?” I would tell you, “Last night. Tonight. Tomorrow night.”
That's it in a nutshell. We are drifting apart. No, not “drifting.” We are racing apart, into our own corners, into our own competing tribes. This is the most existential threat to America – not only because it makes us incapable of applying common sense solutions to everyday problems but because our internal friction and dysfunction embolden our enemies around the world. America's polarization is Europe's problem (aka Ukraine, where Russia is emboldened). It is Asia's problem (aka Taiwan, where China is emboldened). It is, one could argue, the greatest threat to democracy not just here at home but around the globe.
Postindustrial: Of all the “save democracy” initiatives we’ve encountered, yours is the only one we know of that comes with an adrenaline rush. What do you hope to achieve by putting people with opposing political views in the same boat?
Ken Powley: To be clear, rafting trips will not change the world. But let's look at some important numbers. Recent polling suggests that 87% of Americans are exhausted and frustrated by America's deepening political divisiveness, and 79% of us say that given the opportunity, we would willingly participate in reducing social division in America. In other words, we are apparently much LESS divided than social and traditional media lead us to think we are.
In the 2022 midterm elections (one of the most toxic election cycles in recent American history), two opposing candidates for the Governorship of Utah (Spencer Cox and Chris Peterson) decided to buck the trend and make a joint campaign ad that was both thoughtful and respectful. They stood together in front of the camera, 6 feet apart, one in a red tie and the other in blue, and they explained to the viewers that they disagreed on just about every imaginable issue: guns, abortion, immigration, taxes, health care – you name it. But then came the big surprise: they looked into the camera and promised every voter that they respected one another, they respected our lawful electoral processes, they would abide by the certified results of the election, and no matter who won, they would work together for the good of all Utahans.
The ad went viral all across the country. It was the subject of local evening news stories here in my home state of Pennsylvania, night after night – not because we and others who were thousands of miles away cared deeply about who became the next governor of Utah, but because the message was so poignant and so pitch perfect.
Americans yearn for this messaging. And the media yearns for it because their viewers do. R.A.F.T. for America will give voice and visibility to the idea that, as Americans, we are all in the same boat together, and regardless of our differences, we will always do better by pulling together than by pulling apart. Rafting trips by themselves won't change the world. But the massive media messaging that will spin off of these events in the form of social media posts, short videos, TV programs like Eye on America, and a documentary film by award-winning filmmaker Kristi Kendall – these will serve as powerful counter-programming to the divisive rhetoric that too-often floods the airwaves. They will give hope to so many of us who continue to believe in America's greatness and who can be inspired to rekindle our healthy civic engagement in ways that help elevate and secure the very kind of improved governance we will again soon have the opportunity to choose for ourselves, through a lawful electoral process.
In a country so evenly divided, if we can move the needle even slightly in the direction of collaboration and healthy dialogue, we will have made the kind of change that can take root and grow for our kids and theirs.
Related Stories: Please, don’t take democracy for granted, VOICES: How worried should we be about America’s democracy?
