About SCL
The Sustainable Culture Lab is a cultural think tank that transcends the conventions of traditional think tanks because our work does not focus exclusively on creating policy and legislation.
Instead we believe that sustainable change and progress must first speak to people at a cultural level instead of primarily through policy, politics and economics.
As a result, much of our work focuses on cultivating the shared language and practices that are needed to create the sustainable and nurturing culture.
Once this foundation has been laid we can then create the policies and legislation that can transform American society for the better.
Culture precedes policy.
Our Mission
As a Black-led, cultural think tank, SCL advocates for social equality and champions the ideals of American Reconstruction (1865-1877) that worked to transform the United States into an authentic democracy following the abolition of slavery.
True American democracy was born during Reconstruction.
SCL’s mission is to continue the values, philosophy, and culture of Reconstruction, so that we can sustain, expand, and reconstruct freedom and democracy in America.
“Freedom is other people,”
-Barrett Holmes Pitner, the Founder of the Sustainable Culture Lab
Meet Our Founder
Barrett Holmes Pitner
Founder, Executive Director
Pitner is a philosopher, author, educator, and journalist, and his philosophical vision shapes SCL.
In 2021, he published the celebrated book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America, which was named by NPR as one of the top books of the year. In his book, Pitner describes how ethnocide—the destruction of a people’s culture while keeping the people—has shaped American life since the transatlantic slave trade. The destruction of African culture while keeping African people was a foundational component of the slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas.
Through his work, research, and advocacy, Pitner has devoted himself to combating ethnocide by developing and cultivating the sustainable and nurturing culture that our society needs.
SCL exists as a laboratory for creating this cultural change.