Truman President and CEO Michael Breen Gives the State of the Organization at TruCon18

Text below, video here.

Whatever we face in the months and years to come, we can face it knowing that what we have created together will endure, because our shared values and convictions are enduring, because the truths we stand for are enduring, but above all, because the relationships we have forged and the trust we have built with one another is enduring.

We have members of almost every class in Truman’s history here today, including one of our co-founders. The growth and strength of this community is a testament to the long, difficult, enduring work of so many. Whether this is your first TruCon or your tenth, your dedication to our shared vision, and especially to one another, is the heart and soul of this place. Given the stakes at this moment, I was very tempted to start this speech with Nick Fury’s soliloquy from the Avengers: “There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people…” And in more than one sense, that feels appropriate. I’m standing in a room full of people I consider heroes*, in a time when heroes are exactly what our country needs. But I got stuck on the word ‘group,’ because that’s not really how we describe Truman. My favorite word for summing all of this up has always been ‘community.’

We use the word ‘community’ with purpose. A ‘network,’ especially in Washington, sounds like a bunch of people trying to step on each other’s’ heads to get somewhere. An ‘organization’ sounds like too loose an association, devoid of the values and the passion that characterize our best collaborative work and our worst endless listserv scraps. No other word captures what we’re about and how we should aspire to treat each other better than community, because like all communities there is a social contract built into Truman, and I think it goes something like this: Come to us with your commitment to our values and vision but with your own ideas about how best to get there, contribute some money and time and hard-won knowledge and perspective, agree to abide by our standards, and in exchange be part of a supportive community that is about increasing your individual and collective agency.

That social contract is being tested now, and the energy and direction and initiative in many of our chapters across the country is truly inspiring to see.

Chicago organized an incredible day of events with Truman’s own Mayor Pete in South Bend, and went the extra mile to include Michigan and Colorado — two chapters that have coming roaring back with a vengeance and are gathering steam.

TruRural was in South Bend, too, and they deserve all of our thanks for identifying a truly critical need, taking the initiative, and stepping up to fill the gap — helping take Truman back to some of earliest roots as a voice for our values in places where few other voices can be heard.

North Carolina has been on the front lines of the climate and energy fight, making inroads for Operation Free.

Boston is becoming a real player in state and local politics.

New York is pioneering an inclusive approach to strategic planning and prioritization that’s sophisticated enough to design the next Mars rover.

Seattle has been an innovative leader in national security at the local level, including some very creative hands-on approaches, and was the driving force behind their city’s Women’s March.

LA is enjoying an exciting resurgence, delivering some terrific programming and building meaningful partnerships with elected leaders and members of the Truman Board.

San Diego put on another highly successful and meaningful Memorial Day Rose Drop, and then DC took it bi-coastal.

Atlanta is building partnerships with progressive organizations like WAND, and is close to running the state legislature.

In Ohio, every Truman member running this cycle won their primary last month.

San Francisco is taking exciting new steps to knit together a widespread chapter, welcome back members who’ve wandered away, and establish a Truman beachhead in Sacramento.

In Florida, even as a few scattered but stalwart Truman members battle escaped pet pythons grown to mythic size in our southern jungles, they’ve somehow found time to come together and start developing a strategy.

Philly has been backing up some heroic Truman candidates, and in general owning their role as ground zero for 2018 and 2020.

And mighty Texas hosted our national leaders retreat and is now leading on refugees, leading on climate, supporting two incredible Truman candidates for Congress, helping develop and field our Defending Democracy training and toolkit, and putting foot to ass in every other conceivable way.

I’ve had the chance to talk with many of you over the last few weeks, as we’ve discussed Truman’s strategic plan for the next three critically important years. The level of ownership that you all feel for this place — the deep thought and care you put into where we should go from here and how best to serve our values — is sustaining and deeply humbling to me, and all of us on the staff.

Our Chapter and Expert Group leaders in particular step up to lead despite busy schedules and demanding professional careers. We owe them our thanks. So all Truman leaders past and present, please stand up.

And current leaders, please stay standing. I’d ask everyone else to take a look around the room Remember who these people are, remember the leaders who can’t be here with us today, and remember to take every opportunity to get their backs, in every way that you can.

I say this not just because it’s the right thing to do in this moment, but because it matters as Truman continues to grow. How we build our community now — when our true strength and worth are sure to be tested like never before — is critical to our future. So I want to address two points with regard to that right here up front. First our commitment to pluralism. We make a point of stating time and again that diversity is critical to national security. It is one of the central convictions that unite this membership: As a nation, pluralism is not a weakness to be mitigated but a great and fundamental strength. But in a society both permeated and bound by structural racism, sexism, and other systemic obstacles, equality of opportunity is not enough. We have to take real action.

That’s one reason why we chose to elevate an exceptionally qualified slate of national security and political speakers throughout this conference who all happen to be women. We decided to put our money where our mouth was on the idea that representation is important not just in political organizing, but in the national security field too. This weekend was a proof point for any who doubted, as so many implicitly do, that prioritizing representation means sacrificing quality. And it was, hopefully, a gentle reminder for most of us that sometimes, the right thing to do is to embrace that central Change Agent value of humility, give up your seat at the table, sit back, and listen — and that’s not only okay, but a valuable opportunity to learn.

Pluralism is about more than gender parity, though. Last year, I stood on this stage and admitted that I had never been in a room of national security leaders, looked around the table, and seen only people who didn’t look like me. I don’t think that was a shocking admission for anyone to hear from a straight white guy. But the point is that we all agreed that we don’t want Truman to look like one of those rooms. Those rooms are stagnant and outdated. They miss perspectives and fall prey to massive blind spots. And they produce empirically poorer results.

Truman isn’t one of those rooms, but we’ve got a long way to go. We need the best and the brightest from all walks of life. We need people with different backgrounds and skill sets who aren’t used to working with or talking to one another. And we need to be constantly challenging ourselves to do better, reckoning with the past mistakes of individuals and groups. The only way we’re going to do that is by consciously, deliberately making the change that we need.

To that end, we are once again asking you to help us grow our ranks by “finding your five.” Tell us about five terrific leaders who you think should be a part of our community. Our selection process is rigorous, and 100% of the decisions about who gets in are made by members — that isn’t changing. But the success of our community relies on having a great pool of applicants every year, and we need your help to make that happen. In particular this year, we’re asking you to make sure that at least one or two of your five are from communities outside of Washington DC, and represent as diverse a set of perspectives and backgrounds as possible. Leaders who have genuine followership in communities across our country. Please don’t make the easy mistake of recommending yourself, and think carefully about what perspectives and communities should be better represented in Truman. Help us build the right kind of room.

TruDiversity is leading the way on this with tremendous skill and dedication, but it’s going to take all of us. How can you help? Glad you asked. By taking out your phone right now, opening the TruCon App, and selecting Find Your Five on the home page.

The other thing that is important to talk about is the undeniable challenge to maintaining our spirit of true community as we increase our ranks. While meeting that challenge is, in a way, a responsibility of the whole community, I want you to know that HQ is acutely aware of it — as many of you know, this issue is the centerpiece of our strategic plan. To that end, one thing I’m excited to announce is the creation of a Member Advisory Board, a concrete and transparent means to weave the community into the governing structure of the organization.

The Member Advisory Board will provide meaningful oversight and guidance to Truman’s leadership and Board on issues like the member code of conduct, our recruitment and selections process for new members, chapter-level fundraising, and other areas that significantly impact the member experience. In the coming weeks, we’ll be asking you to nominate fellow members to serve on a committee that will develop recommendations for our Board of Directors on the precise size, scope, composition, and bylaws of the Member Advisory Board. This is critically important work, so a truly diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives must be represented on the committee. Once the Board adopts a set of recommendations from the committee, we will select members of the Member Advisory Board itself using the process the committee has developed. The purpose of all of this is to give the membership — to give all of you — even more ownership in what it is that we do here, and where it all goes from here.

So all of this — the communal bond that defines us, our efforts to show rather than tell how much we care about pluralism in our space, and the idea of members more formally integrating into the governing structure of the organization — are fundamental expressions of who we are as a community.

So, too, is service. It defines us. And in many ways, there has never been a more difficult or important moment to serve. Our friends who are now in government, in or out of uniform, are standing watch in a truly difficult and uncertain hour. They are giving voice to our values in often worse than thankless circumstances, and seeking to do good against the tide. Far too often, the price they pay has been exhaustion, isolation, and too often baseless public attacks. But they have gone on day after day, and in so doing, they have placed our country and the safety and security of all of our families above themselves. All of us are grateful for that, and we will long remember it. I won’t ask you to stand, but I do ask everyone to join me in thanking you.

For all of us, whether this year finds you in the private sector or the pentagon, service is not what we do but who we are. This community was forged in the aftermath of 9/11, in the belief that America is strongest when we stand with our allies to lead, support, and defend a growing global community of free people and just societies. So many of us entered public service in order to advance a liberal internationalist vision of American leadership in the world, grounded in progressive values. In our lifetimes, from Iraq to America First, that vision has been embattled and threatened in various ways, at home and abroad. This torch we carry has never needed stronger and more committed champions than it does today. We do not and cannot shy away from that responsibility.

We all know the stakes. Every issue any one of us cares about is on the line right now. In the midst of the largest refugee crisis since World War Two, the United States is accepting the fewest refugees in the history of the program. As emissions continue to increase, we’re going backward on climate. As threats to democracy around the world multiply and alliances are strained, trust in the United States is plummeting almost everywhere. We’ve abandoned or crippled some of our own greatest diplomatic achievements. Adversaries like Russia, North Korea, and Iran are successfully challenging the United States in global grey zones and on our own social media platforms. Critical institutions of government have been gutted through a combination of malice and neglect. I could go on, and on, but all of us know the score. We’re living it together every day.

But even given all of that, in a sense the most urgent task of this moment, of this year, is to restore our constitutional system of checks and balances to working order. The founders anticipated many threats to our democracy, but one they perhaps dismissed too easily was the possibility that one political party would subvert the balance of power between the three coequal branches of government by controlling and coordinating them to the detriment of the country. We are perilously close to that dangerous state of affairs today. Congressional oversite over the administration has been absent at best; at worst, it has been deliberately warped in order to undermine the independent function of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Senior leaders in Congress have consistently refused to acknowledge or take bipartisan action against attacks by foreign intelligence agencies on our bedrock democratic processes, let alone take steps to demand that we defend ourselves. That, friends, is clearly a threat to national security. And national security is what this organization is all about.

We always want a ‘national security election’ in which to prove our mettle, right? Well, 2018 is it. The upcoming midterm election must be seen and addressed as more than a struggle between political parties for control, or even a national referendum on critically important policies — as if that weren’t enough. It is a referendum on whether the American Constitution will function as the Founder’s intended.

Make no mistake: This is not politics as usual. In a very real sense, we are playing for the Republic. And if we lose, we are not guaranteed a rematch.

We are already in this fight, led by a record 55 Truman members who have stepped forward and put their names on the ballot. That is a choice we should always celebrate, but in this moment I think it rises to the level of heroism. If you are or have been a candidate this cycle, or if you’re working on a campaign in any capacity, please stand and be recognized.

Civic participation has always been a responsibility of living in a democracy. But this year, I personally believe that all of us who can have a duty to step forward and participate in the political process. And there is more than enough work to go around. Truman is the critical hub for issues and messaging on all things national security in 2018. We need your help to deliver.

If you are running for office, connect with Mackenzie Cannon and the member-led Campaign Advisory Group. If you know good people who are running who can use our content, send them to Graham West. If you want to go on TV or write an op-ed, talk to Jalina Porter or Shannon Bugos. If you want to be certified to train, and earn the right to wear our newest lapel bling, apply with Anthony Robinson. If you want to help us update our issue briefings or be on call to provide policy expertise, contact Mackenzie Cannon or Kate Guy. If you can’t keep all these names straight, no worries — neither can I sometimes. Just contact anyone on staff and we’ll make sure you get plugged in to the effort.

If you want to meet and support candidates or organize Get Out The Vote efforts, do it legally — by working with and through your Chapter leaders. If your day job is in the public sector, keep your nose clean; if it is in the private sector, push your employer and your partners to do good this cycle. And when you come upon great candidates and campaigns and tools, share them with one another enthusiastically. Pick someone you think is a hero and a champion that we need and help them win! Spare the time and the money and the emotional investment that you can this cycle, through Truman and in every other way that appeals to you, because it’s finally time to turn the tide.

Of course, elections are about who gets to govern, and winning them isn’t of very much value unless we’re prepared for the difficult task that follows. This community is about leadership, and that means articulating the future we’re working to create, not just the future we hope to avoid. We have a responsibility to put forward our own positive vision for America’s role in the world after this administration. And unlike “America First,” that vision must be grounded in more than tired bromides, false promises, and fact-proof ideology.

It’s time to recommit ourselves to an approach to policy and politics based on the honest application of reason in the light of objective facts. When the idea of truth itself is under siege, and we see those who lie shamelessly benefiting from those lies, there is a temptation to conclude that honesty is a sucker’s game. But succumbing to that temptation would mean the death of the very values that each one of us is in the arena to serve: A willing return to a pre-enlightenment past of tribalism, conspiracy, superstition, learned helplessness, the passion of the mob, and ultimately, despotism. There is no political prize that is worth surrendering reason.

But let’s not choose between taking the high road and winning. Let’s do both. In fact, let’s lead the effort to do both. Honest leadership is exactly what we need in this fractious hour. It is possible to pull the many strands of the progressive movement and the national security community into a big but coherent tent, with a broadly shared vision for America’s path forward in the world after this administration. That will not come easily or automatically. We will not agree on everything. But it IS possible — and Truman is perfectly positioned to lead and shape that effort.

That work has already begun, here at this conference and in smaller gatherings, but it will begin in earnest in the coming weeks. We’re going to be inviting all of you, from every corner of the country and every perspective, to participate in a community-wide process to expand and invigorate the foreign policy and national security discussion leading up to 2020. We’ll be creating opportunities to showcase our community’s ideas and talent, in DC and across the country, and to generate solutions for our most critical global challenges that leaders, experts, and the broader progressive movement can coalesce around, embrace, and feel good about fighting for.

A lot of that work will be done by, with, and through our Expert Groups, but there will be opportunities for all of you to meaningfully contribute individually as well. I’ll say up front that if this becomes nothing more than a series of back-room conversations in DC, we will have failed. A truly inclusive process is critical to our success, not only because we’ll produce better content that way, but because in order for these ideas to be politically meaningful enough to be more than words on a page, they need to genuinely represent the values and beliefs of a broad group of Americans.

Look for details on specific events and discussions in the coming days and months, but broadly speaking, we’re going to be undertaking this work in three phases. First, learning from experience is a central responsibility of leadership. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand that we take a look back at the Obama administration’s foreign policy and clearly identify what we think worked, what didn’t, and where important opportunities were missed. Second, we’ve got to do a rigorous gap analysis that looks at where the current administration is taking us, internationally and in terms of how our own government is functioning, and the health of our own democracy. And third, we’ll look at how to move forward in 2021, if we earn that chance. How we will repair the damage, yes, but also how we will seize opportunities for renewal.

None of us would ever wish to see critical institutions like the EPA and the State Department reduced to their current state. That is a tragedy, pure and simple. But it would be a tremendous missed opportunity to simply rebuild those institutions back up again exactly as they were before, without seizing the chance to update and renew them for a new century. Good government is in need of a renaissance, and the Truman community is well-positioned to help lead that. Those of you who are now in the private sector have an especially critical role to play, bringing new thinking, tools, and expertise into the conversation.

So there is much good, hard work ahead of us as we take up the responsibility to defend our values at the ballot box this year, and to more clearly define together how we hope to translate those values into public policy in years to come, should we earn that opportunity.

But there is so very much about what we stand for that is crystal clear. And we will stand firm on that ground.

Even as America’s politics has changed drastically, even as partisan lines have shifted, even as long consensus has collapsed into bitter debate, what we know to be true remains constant. Truman is a pragmatic organization, but our worldview and our values are not flexible. There are truths that we all know, truths that have brought us together, that must be spoken loudly in this moment.

We know that in the continuing contest between democracy and various forms of authoritarianism, America must build and leverage every tool of our national power, including diplomacy, defense, development, and a continuing commitment to democracy.

We know that we must enter the world from a position of strength, prepared to take risks and make sacrifices to defend what we are building — but that the frustrations of diplomacy are almost always preferable to the certain agony of the battlefield.

We know that many of the greatest threats we face are global problems that cannot possibly be solved by any single nation, and that the opportunities of the 21st century will all be lost to us if we place our faith in walls instead of the advancement of our common understanding.

We know that the continuing struggle to build an American democracy for ourselves worthy of our promise, and to help give every other human being on earth the opportunity to do the same on their own terms, are inextricably intertwined, and spring from the same moral source.

We know that the greatness of America is that we welcome women and men of every race and creed, from every shore, to stand up and help build a nation worthy of its promise.

We know that the strength of America is that if you do face us on the battlefield, you face the best and bravest sons and daughters of every corner of the earth, of every creed, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Because we know that out of many, we are one.

And we know, also, that there is an undeniable darkness alongside the equally transcendent light at the heart of the American story. Opposite forces pull at every one of us, in every moment. This is nothing new. For when we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that we are among the inheritors and stewards of a nation that has produced some of history’s most horrific moments along with some of its most sublime.

We are the Trail of Tears, and we are the Code Talkers on Tarawa.

We are the Middle Passage and we are Gettysburg and we are Selma.

We sent the refugees of the St Louis to their deaths, and then we liberated Buchenwald.

To acknowledge this truth is not to denigrate our country. It is to acknowledge that each of us, in every generation, ultimately faces a choice about which vision for America we will serve. It is to acknowledge that no progress is inevitable, that inherited greatness is a dangerous lie and true greatness is not easily earned, and above all, it is to acknowledge that every one of us is responsible for our actions and the impact they will have. Make no mistake — the choice not to act, the choice to stand idle, carries as much moral weight and real-world consequence as any other.

Because history is not some mysterious force that acts upon nations. It is nothing more than a continual process of cause and effect, of action following choice and consequence following action, over and over again with each passing day. With apologies to great men and women who have asserted the contrary, history has no arc of its own, toward either justice or its opposite. It has no arc unless we ourselves choose to bend it through relentless, constant action.

We must choose to act. To make use of that agency that is at the heart of Truman’s social contract, that has been so bountifully bestowed on each of us, and amplified immeasurably by our coming together as a community.

And that means we’ve got to reject every callow voice that would shame us from the public square — voices that are too often utterly shameless themselves in their disregard for the truth and their selective application of virtue.

We will not be ashamed to stand up and say what is true. Shame in speaking the truth is the first step toward a world where truth itself has died, and with it the bedrock of reasoned discourse, the rule of law, and any possibility of true democracy.

There is no shame in meeting the responsibilities of citizenship. There is no shame in defending our bedrock institutions, in defending a civil service of educated and qualified professionals, in defending a Department of Justice and an intelligence community that serves our nation and not our politics, in defending a policy process based on evidence and honest inquiry, in defending the integrity of our courts and the freedom of the press, or in defending the human rights and civil rights and basic humanity of our fellow citizens and human beings, regardless of their circumstances.

There is no shame in calling a lie, a lie. There is no shame in calling bigotry, bigotry. There is no shame in standing firm for what we believe and what we know to be true in the face of power, even when others call that partisanship, or call us unpatriotic.

Everyone in this room is a patriot, beyond question. Everyone in this room loves this country and cherishes its possibility enough to have served in so many ways, at home and abroad. Many of you have placed your lives on the line. Many of you have lost friends and shed blood. So let others question our policy ideas, our underlying assumptions, and even the worldview we share. That is good and healthy. But let no one question our patriotism, or seek to shame us by claiming that virtue for themselves alone.

Look around this room today. Remember this moment, in the weeks and months to come. Remember that you refuse, right here and now, to be ashamed. Remember that you are rightly honored by this company you keep.

There is only honor in our working and fighting together for the values and the truths we know to be self-evident. For our friends and our families. For what is good in the American idea. For what is good in our countrymen.

There is only virtue in embracing our responsibility to help renew this great republic. Renewal of the institutions we’ve loved and served, renewal of the liberal internationalist idea for a new century, renewal of our democracy and the rule of law, renewal of our commitment to policy and leadership based on truth and reason, renewal of our belief in ourselves as Americans and a future for our nation and the world that is built from the truest steel of our national character, shaped by the better angels of our nature, and resonant to the clearest notes of our collective possibility.

Let us remember who we are: a community forged in the aftermath of 9/11, through nearly two decades of war and turmoil. A community dedicated to truth and defined by hope. A community that has become a family through the shared experience of service: the carrying forward of a torch we did not light, but that we steadfastly refuse to see extinguished on our watch.

This is not our first fight together. But it may just be the one that defines us, forever.

What light we carry cannot be taken from us. It burns in the deepest redoubts of our hearts, where it can never be assailed or overcome. So what will we do with it? In every one of these quickly-passing days that can seem at once so ordinary and so laden with fierce urgency, when so much of our collective future is being decided, by those who choose to act, and by those who choose to stand by, we are writing our generation’s legacy. What will it be?

Let us choose once again to be worthy inheritors of this torch we carry together. Let us choose to reach out and bend the arc of history, to play an active role in writing the story our children will tell theirs about who we were, about whether our love was greater than our fear, and about what we chose to leave them. To embrace that charge with every inner resource of hope and will and brilliance, with faith and joy, with truth proudly on our lips, and with our shared fellowship to sustain us.

In other words, friends, let’s get back to work.

Michael Breen is the president and CEO of Truman National Security Project and a former U.S. Army officer.