“It’s impossible to have a free and healthy society without a sustainable and nurturing culture.”
- Barrett Holmes Pitner
What was Reconstruction?
Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1877, when the United States began rebuilding the South and redefining what freedom and citizenship meant. During this time, slavery was abolished, Black Americans gained citizenship and voting rights, and new laws were created to protect equality and justice. It was the nation’s first major effort to build a truly multiracial democracy.
What is The Reconstruct America Project?
The Reconstruct America Project is a movement to revive the unfinished work of Reconstruction by promoting equality, justice, and democracy for everyone in the United States. It encourages people to become “Reconstructionists” — citizens who actively work to protect voting rights, fairness under the law, and an inclusive vision of America. Its mission is simple: to help Reconstruct America again.
The Altar America Project
Across the world, countless cultures have honored their ancestors through ritual, remembrance, and art — practices that sustain community and healing across generations. In the United States, we lack a shared tradition of ancestor remembrance, and with that absence comes a loss of connection to history, identity, and collective healing. The Altar America Project seeks to change that by inviting people of every background to remember, create, and and renew together.
Each year the Altar America Project produces The Altars Festival — a celebration of cross-cultural ancestor remembrance. Through the work of the artists creating altars, the speakers, and the musicians, the goal of the festival is for the community to engage in and celebrate their own culturally relevant acts of remembrance.
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
Though many Americans have never heard the term, its effects shape every part of our society. From the transatlantic slave trade onward, the erasure of African culture became a foundation of Western civilization in the Americas — a system that broke spirits to maintain control. The Sustainable Culture Lab works to counter ethnocide by creating sustainable, life-affirming culture.
Learn more in Barrett Holmes Pitner’s book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America.
