“It’s impossible to have a free and healthy society without a sustainable and nurturing culture.”

- Barrett Holmes Pitner

The Reconstruct America Project

In order to protect our democracy, the American people need to champion, continue, and expand the ideals and values of Reconstruction.

We need to Reconstruct America Again.

We need to become Reconstructionists.

Reconstruction birthed America’s multi-racial and equitable democracy.

Reconstruction, the era after the Civil War from 1865 to 1877, is arguably the most misunderstood era in American history, yet it is also the most important era in American history. The Declaration of Independence birthed the creation of the United States, but Reconstruction birthed American democracy as we know it.

Reconstruction abolished slavery, redefined the meaning of American citizenship by extending it to the formerly enslaved, and expanded voting rights beyond being the exclusive domain of white men. Reconstruction also created the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and civil rights in the United States.

Reconstruction guaranteed that all American residents received equal protection under the law, due process, and the full protection of the Bill of Rights.

Join the movement. Become a part of the Reconstruct America Project (RAP) and help us Reconstruct America Again.

Join the Movement

Reconstructing Freedom

At the Sustainable Culture Lab, we believe that there are two iterations of freedom that everyone must understand so that we can build a sustainable, nurturing and free society. We call these iterations of freedom, Freedom From and Freedom With.

Unfortunately, when most people think of freedom, they think of Freedom From, which is the desire to be free from oppression, and not Freedom With, which is the practice of being free with other people.

Freedom From can help people obtain their freedom, but Freedom With helps people keep, protect, and expand their freedoms.

In the video below, Barrett Holmes Pitner explains how Freedom With can help sustain and nurture families and friendships.

In Barrett Holmes Pitner’s speech, he describes how Freedom From can eventually destroy our freedoms, and how Freedom With is essential for sustaining our freedoms and our democracy.

You can watch the full 20-minute video of his speech about Freedom With and Freedom From on The Reconstructionist

Ethnocide - the destruction of a people’s culture while keeping the people

Most Americans have never heard the word “ethnocide” but it still shapes all of our lives.

Since the transatlantic slave trade, the destruction of African culture while preserving the living bodies of African people has been a bedrock of western civilization in the Americas. Cultural destruction existed as a means for oppressing people en masse. Ethnocidal oppression, or cultural destruction, can break a people’s spirit, and the theory argues that spiritless people are less likely to rebel against their oppressors.

Ethnocide became foundational to western civilization in Americas because Europeans believed that destroying the culture of the other was a profitable enterprise that could be a cornerstone of the societies they aspired to build in the Americas.

Ethnocide has influenced American society, politics, and government, and continues to divide the American people, cause violence, generate instability, and leave many of us feeling hopeless and spiritless.