OUR PARTNERS

Our Partnership:

• We co-publish articles of interest to both publications.

Free Black Thought

We are a small group of scholars, technologists, parents, and above all American citizens determined to amplify vital black voices that are rarely heard on mainstream platforms.

As citizens, we pursue no political agenda other than a commitment to free speech, civil rights, and a conviction that a pluralistic society committed to liberal democracy is nourished by the entire spectrum of black thinking on matters of politics, society, and culture.

As parents, we are troubled that our children, black and non-black alike, are coming of age at a time when K-12 schools and elite institutions such as academia, major media companies, and corporations appear committed to enforcing narrow and tendentious standards of black racial authenticity in thought and behavior. We hope our efforts inspire our children to see their blackness as a space not of constrained identity but of endless possibility.

As scholars and technologists, some of us currently serve in organizations that might look unkindly upon our efforts to celebrate black diversity. We regret that some of us must therefore for the time being remain anonymous.

Our Partnership:

• RQ operates in 2024 with support from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund

Philadelphia Cultural Fund

Each year, PCF provides operating support to Philadelphia-based arts and culture organizations. These grants are made from an allocation to PCF from the City budget. The grants support organizations dedicated to the creation, education, preservation, exhibition, and presentation of a variety of arts and culture disciplines.

• The Mercatus Center’s Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program helped support Root Quarterly financially early in its inception

• The Mercatus Center offers business and fundraising planning assistance to Root Quarterly

• The Mercatus Center networks Root Quarterly staff and associates into its intellectual community

Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program //
Mercatus Center at George Mason University

In recent years, authoritarianism, identitarianism, socialism, nativism, and a host of other populist movements have been on the rise in our nation and around the world. Whether on the right or the left, these manifestations of illiberalism make it difficult to exchange ideas and coexist with our fellow citizens across deep ideological divides—and we are the poorer for it. To defend the freedom of expression, tolerance, and mutual forbearance that are essential to a free, open, peaceful, and thriving society, the Mercatus Center launched its Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange.

The program is reengaging the ideas at the root of a liberal society and inspiring a fresh generation of thinkers and doers. For, as F. A. Hayek put it, “If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.”

Our mission is to foster a deeper understanding of pluralism and its role as a core attribute of a liberal society through research and communication; the practice of civil discourse and mutual forbearance; and the development and dissemination of tools for audiences across philosophical divides to model pluralism.

Grantees can found here.

Our Partnership:

• We co-publish articles of interest to both publications.

• Subscribers to the Philadelphia Citizen receive a free copy of Root Quarterly when they join as a member. Members can also get a 15% discount on the first year of subscriptions to Root Quarterly.

• The Philadelphia Citizen gives speakers for its event series and yearly “Ideas We Should Steal” festival copies of Root Quarterly.

• The Philadelphia Citizen and Root Quarterly engage one another and our audiences through event partnerships

The Philadelphia Citizen

We want to partner with you in something audacious: reigniting citizenship in its very birthplace.

Just consider:

• 21 percent of registered voters showed up to vote in the 2021 primary

• 8.1 percent of Philadelphians describe themselves as active in their neighborhoods (31st of the top 50 cities)

• 28 percent of city residents still don’t have access to broadband Internet (among the worst in the nation)

And yet 60 percent of city residents describe Philadelphia as a “great place to live.”

What do these statistics mean? That all the great stuff happening in Philadelphia—the restaurant scene, the influx of millennials and immigrants, the vibrant arts community—has happened despite having one hand tied behind our back.

That local democracy is broken, in the city where it was born. That the principles first penned 239 years ago in a basement room at 7th and Market, identifying our most fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, while self-evident, are not self-renewing.

The Philadelphia Citizen, a nonprofit, non-partisan media organization has a dual mission: to provide deeply reported journalism that emphasizes solutions that can move our region forward, and to actively reignite citizenship in and around Philadelphia.

We seek to identify our innovators, call out those who stand in the way of progress and shine a light on the next generation of Philly leadership—all while giving Philadelphians the interactive tools they need to become more involved, engaged citizens.

Philadelphia doesn’t just need another news organization. It needs journalism that focuses on solutions that, together, we can help bring to fruition. It needs a movement of citizens who refuse to outsource leadership to a political class long characterized by an insidious transactional culture.