Deepak Bhargava Calls For Rebuilding Civic Life At CGI Panel With Chelsea Clinton
By Sabrina Chugh
NEW YORK, NY — At the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting this week, Chelsea Clinton sat down with Deepak Bhargava, president of the Freedom Together Foundation, for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of civic engagement in the United States.
Bhargava, a longtime social justice leader and community organizer, has spent his career strengthening grassroots movements and advocating for marginalized communities. Born in Bangalore, India, and raised in New York City, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University before leading the Center for Community Change, where he championed immigration reform and connected local activism to national policy change. Today, he heads the Freedom Together Foundation—formerly known as the JPB Foundation—one of the largest philanthropies in the United States. Under his leadership, the foundation has sharpened its focus on democracy, equity, and movement-building.
Clinton opened the discussion by asking Bhargava about what she called the “crisis in civic life” and how technology might strengthen democratic participation. Bhargava cautioned that while technology has a role to play, the deeper challenges are cultural and communal. “I’m scared that people don’t have a sense of agency or lived democracy in their everyday lives,” he said, pointing to the decline of churches, civic associations, and unions. “People need an everyday sense of participation and meaning. They need to meet others from different backgrounds and figure out how to work together.” He noted that union membership, once at 30 percent of the workforce, has dropped to just six percent—leaving people disempowered and disconnected at work.
Looking ahead, Bhargava laid out two conditions for reviving democratic life. First, institutional leaders must be willing to “stand up and make a stand for what’s right—now, not tomorrow.” Second, the nation needs a mass democratic movement with millions of people who feel genuine agency and pathways to action. “We need to welcome people who are not already with us,” he stressed, warning against nostalgia for systems that failed many Americans.
Through the Freedom Together Foundation, Bhargava is investing in immigrant communities living in fear and isolation, and in neighborhood-level institutions that give people daily opportunities for inclusion and participation. “Civic engagement has been the best opportunity of my lifetime,” he reflected. The conversation underscored a theme running throughout this year’s CGI meeting: that repairing democracy requires not only policy changes but also the slow, patient work of rebuilding trust, community, and human connection.
