Despair is NOT an Option
Additional Resources
Serious threats to democracy
The good news
The importance of taking action
Great newsletters and podcasts
Serious threats to democracy
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Larry Diamond’s interview with Ruth Ben Ghiat in Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.
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Video The Ten Tactics of Fascism, Jason Stanley
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A Trump Dictatorship is Increasingly Likely by Robert Kagan.
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Video explaining structural problems in our democracy (the Senate filibuster, the electoral college, no term limits on Supreme Court justices, no right to vote) in a new book by Levitsky and Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority which follows their earlier book How Democracy Dies.
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I Hacked an Election. So Can the Russians. An under 5 minutes New York Times video with Alex Halderman showing how he could hack a voting machine.
The good news
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The economy has always performed better under democrats. See also other materials by Simon Rosenberg at his website.
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Video by Rosenberg on “Under Democrats Things Get Better”.
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Video by Fareed Zakaria on America’s remarkable economic and global strength.
The importance of taking action
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Educating for American Democracy - The EAD initiative is a call to action to invest in strengthening history and civic learning to counteract the widespread loss of confidence in our very form of government and civic order. We need high school curriculums on civics because we now have a widespread loss of confidence in our very form of government and a citizenry who are poorly prepared to understand, appreciate and use it or even uphold civic order. The roadmap calls for curricula but also for all hands on deck support within not just schools but communities.
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Saving Democracy, book by David Pepper. It explains why involving ones’ total network (our “Footprint”) is critical to saving democracy. Find out how to use your footprint here. Then explore other parts of his website.
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Video, David Pepper on his book.