DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

The idea for American Creed grew out of conversations with two Stanford University professors: Condoleezza Rice, a political scientist and former Secretary of State, and David M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian who explores what defines America’s national character. As America’s social fabric continued to fray, we set out to find young people responding to challenges in local communities. We followed the stories of these young adults over a two year period, and then we brought them together for dialogues that worked as a kind of focus group — testing what Dr. Martin Luther King called a “promissory note:” freedom, fairness, opportunity…  

Together with this cohort of "extraordinary, ordinary" young adults, recruited in collaboration with a wide range of nonpartisan organizations, we explored questions at the forefront of today's debates: how to provide access to education and economic opportunity; how to unify a divided country; how to strengthen our democracy in a time of grave uncertainty.

We believe the stories in American Creed: Citizen Power — filmed in all kinds of beautiful communities from Alaska to Appalachia  — offer hope that shared ideals will prove more powerful than the forces that divide us.