Category: Articles

*This article was written by Chief Network Weaver Julia Roig and was first published on Alliance Magazine.

As the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day on 16 January, it is a moment to look back on the ways a broad-based, pro-democracy movement came together to push for civil rights and racial justice. Looking ahead to 2023, the need to galvanize such a large-scale, diverse movement is as crucial as ever.

The alarming rates of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism around the world are well documented. Philanthropists can find inspiration from the diversity of entry points for the many actors involved in the US civil rights movement and play their part to help break down the often siloed and fragmented pro-democracy efforts of today.

‘Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer,’ 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Stride Towards Freedom

This quote from Dr King, taken from his book about the Montgomery bus boycott, extols the need for multiple entry points for movement participation with various, complementary approaches and roles. Such a systems approach to countering authoritarianism and fighting for democracy requires a systemic view of where funding can have the most leverage within the very complex pro-democracy movement ecologies that continue to evolve around the world. Studies show that movements are most successful when there is a wide diversity of societal participation. While different country contexts vary, funders have several ways they can support the process of broadening and coalescing pro-democracy movements:

• Fund mapping efforts to help different actors see themselves as a part of the larger movement. Many funders engage in mapping efforts, along geographic or technical lines – but these are often intended for internal use and/or to illuminate who is doing what to ‘pick winners’ for grant-making. Ecosystem mapping is critical, however, for the broader purpose of helping the multitude of activists and organizations to engage in joint planning and to determine complementary efforts, a process of continual updating and reflection. Funders can support gathering different mappers together to avoid redundancies, aggregate complex information, make sense of different analyses and theories of change and ensure this information is open and accessible to all actors as a convening, sense-making, and relationship-building tool.
• Strengthen collective action muscles. Funders are used to supporting coalitions or networks that come together for specific policy goals, electoral gains, or identity-based human (civil) rights campaigns. This is important work, but these siloed efforts do not necessarily add up to the level of mobilization needed to respond to . Whether it’s across issues, identities, ideologies, or expertise, many groups are not used to working together proactively towards higher-level shared goals because of competition for resources, a lack of a shared analysis, a myopic focus on their ‘lane’ or simply because of lack of awareness of others’ work. Funders can make a big difference in supporting the connective tissue between organizations, coalitions, and networks, bridging those working at multiple levels, with different constituencies and perspectives as a part of a united front to protect democracy. Strengthening the collective action muscles to respond with urgency also includes the slow work of relationship-building, creating spaces to plan together, sharing resources, and collaborating on targeted activities across these lines of difference.
• Support training, coaching, and facilitation infrastructure. At the time of the civil rights movement, great effort was placed on building up the skills for nonviolent action, civil resistance, and strategic partnering. Recent research shows that of all the kinds of external support for movements, sustainable access to training and learning opportunities is the most impactful. There is an urgent need to scale up training, coaching and facilitation capabilities and offerings within and amongst movement actors. Especially those skills that will support diversifying and broadening participation in democracy movements: conflict resolution skills, working with complexity and systems thinking, nonviolent discipline, and the multitude of civil resistance tactics that will allow movements to go on offence and respond creatively to the ever-evolving authoritarian playbook. Supporting better networking of seasoned trainers and coaches to share and update their resources and frameworks; aggregating and disseminating available training programs throughout the ecosystem, cross-fertilizing participation amongst different network nodes to build relationships with training programs and offering peer mentoring opportunities across regions globally will all make a huge difference.
• Provide both general operating funds and quick response funds to spur collaboration. One common obstacle to collaboration across different network nodes within the pro-democracy ecosystem is a scarcity mindset, and the fact that participating in these movement spaces is time-consuming and often seen as taking away needed human resources and focus from an organization’s primary mission. General operating support allows groups and movements to have the breathing space to go on the offence together and not always be in reactive mode. Funders can also offer quick access to funding for diverse actors to travel to attend coalition events, to support convenings amongst groups, to bring together researchers with practitioners to share analysis and to fund key devised narrative campaigns and other experiments amongst different network nodes.

In 2023, let us celebrate Dr King and one of the greatest pro-democracy movements in history by having a bold vision for democratic renewal that incorporates the numerous ‘roads’ to justice. The pro-democracy ecosystem needs philanthropy to use its influence and strategic investments to bring together the many actors working on separate but interrelated efforts (such as violence prevention, strategic litigation and legislation, electoral politics, grassroots mobilization of different constituencies, research and analysis, campaigning, and cultural change efforts, etc.) These critical connections will be key to realizing the next greatest pro-democracy movements to come.

*This article was written by Chief Organizer Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Waging Nonviolence.

King understood that no single approach would be sufficient to combat the interconnected evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism.

On the heels of the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 assault on U.S. democracy and an eerily similar attack in Brazil, we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., who helped lead the greatest pro-democracy movement in U.S. history, otherwise known as the civil rights movement. He understood that no single approach would be sufficient to combat the interconnected evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism.

“Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer,” he wrote in “Stride Towards Freedom,” his book about the Montgomery bus boycott, one of the best organized and most successful campaigns of the civil rights movement.

King believed in the power of listening and dialogue to humanize, educate, persuade and build alliances across differences. At the same time, he understood that only by shifting power dynamics and raising the costs of violent extremism and institutional racism — through petitions, boycotts, walk-outs, sit-ins, strikes and countless other forms of protest and noncooperation — would harmful practices come to an end. Working for change within institutions like courts and legislatures required mobilizing pressure and changing incentives from outside those institutions.

Multiple approaches were necessary to educate people about the injustices of Jim Crow segregation, to raise the social, political and economic costs of maintaining the status quo, and to build the broad-based coalitions needed to change laws and policies. At the time, King’s embrace of boycotts, strikes and other forms of nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation policies in the South was criticized by white clergy and others, who insisted that he reject confrontational tactics in favor of dialogue. For King, both approaches were necessary. As he wrote in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

King’s strategic insights remain relevant today. Whereas Jim Crow was a single-party authoritarian system anchored in the Democratic Party and bolstered by churches, courts, media, the Ku Klux Klan and other institutions, today’s authoritarian ecosystem has evolved. Now the Republican Party has been captured by an extremist faction that embraces lies, conspiracies and violence — culminating in a violent attempt to overthrow the government. That party now holds the reins of power in 27 states (covering 53 percent of the population) and one body of Congress.

Meanwhile, Evangelical and Catholic churches and leaders have provided moral and material scaffolding for MAGA extremism; corporations and financiers have funded it; media outlets have amplified lies and conspiracies; and veterans’ groups infiltrated by white nationalists have filled the ranks of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon. Dismantling this interconnected web of support for authoritarianism in the U.S., in turn, requires a systemic response involving many diverse actors employing different strategies and approaches.

There is no time for despair. Today, like earlier, multiple approaches are needed to combat racism and white nationalism and to build a multiracial democracy grounded in love and justice. Those approaches include dialogue and direct action, inside and outside strategies, working within and across groups and movements to build alignment around the rejection of conspiracies, political violence and election subversion — and around a reimagining of U.S. democracy grounded in abundance, courage and universal flourishing.

Many organizations across the country are experimenting with different approaches to bringing various constituencies into a pro-democracy movement — not based on party identity but grounded in a shared willingness to build stronger communities free from violence and extremism. There are plenty of onramps to pro-democracy work if we are open enough to welcome in a broad cross-section of actors.

People’s Action, Showing Up for Racial Justice, United Vision for Idaho, the Rural Digital Youth Resiliency Project, and RuralOrganizing.org are pioneering ways to organize across race and class, particularly in rural areas. The One America Movement, Sojourners, NETWORK, and the Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and Faith for Black Lives are leading engagement strategies with Christian communities. The Secure Families Initiative and the Mission Continues are doing important work with veterans, while the Western States Center is conducting critical analysis and organizing to counter white supremacist violence. Leadership Now, Civic Alliance and local organizations like the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy are galvanizing the business community around democratic norms and practices.

Alongside this important engagement work, other groups are turning to the courts and other forms of pressure to raise the costs of anti-democratic behaviors. Groups like Protect Democracy and the Brennan Center, for example, have helped prepare hundreds of legal cases to hold individuals responsible for spreading dangerous conspiracies and violence accountable in the courts.

Making political violence and anti-democratic behaviors backfire requires building the capacities to go on the offense with our movements, something this paper helpfully describes. Finding the levers of influence to make it more costly for politicians and other actors to engage in anti-democratic behaviors takes solid analyses of where their social, political, spiritual and financial support comes from. And, in turn, linking that analysis to campaigns that target those sources of power with tactics of pressure and engagement.

During the civil rights movement, the Montgomery bus boycott and the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins were excellent examples of campaigns that linked economic analysis (of revenue streams for white-owned businesses upholding segregation) to campaigns that relied on tactics of non-cooperation. Both campaigns involved significant training and preparation, including (how to respond to anticipated violence and harassment) and building parallel institutions like Black-run car pools. (The Nashville segment of the documentary film “A Force More Powerful” highlights some of this preparation.) During the campaigns, intense negotiations were happening between civil rights leaders, politicians and business owners until shifting power dynamics made negotiated agreements possible.

During King’s time there was an acknowledgement of how difficult this work is and how much investment in relationships, skills-building and planning was required to dismantle a Jim Crow authoritarian system built on racism and violence. Important victories like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were the result of multi-faceted strategies that involved diverse actors doing many different things. The significance of intra-movement trainings to building the size and effectiveness of the civil rights movement, which were led by Rev. James Lawson, C.T. Vivian, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette and others, cannot be overstated.

Today, the challenges are no less significant or complex. While the Jan. 6 insurrection may have failed in the short term, and some election deniers may have been defeated during the midterms, U.S. democracy continues to face deep existential threats. Everyone has a role to play in stopping the slide into political violence and extremism, and in strengthening democratic culture and institutions.

There is a lane for everyone: Those skilled in educating the public about the risks we face (such as the creators of this new graphic novel about Jan. 6); those who are engaging courageous conservatives (like Country First and Millions of Conversations); those conducting important analyses (like the Bridging Divides Initiative and Political Research Associates); those experimenting with different forms of dialogue (like Urban Rural Action and the Village Square); those who are organizing within and between communities and movements (like the Poor People’s Campaign, the Women’s March, the Social & Economic Justice Leaders Project and the 22nd Century Initiative); those who are leading trainings in organizing, nonviolence and conflict resolution (like Training for Change, 350.org, Beautiful Trouble, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Pace e Bene, East Point Peace Academy and Nonviolent Peaceforce); and groups that are leading local and national experiments in racial justice and healing as part of the national Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Movement.

Strengthening our collective muscle to both resist the interconnected injustices that King described and to build a democracy grounded in love and justice requires being able to “see” one another, with our different skills, relationships and levers, as core elements of a shared pro-democracy ecosystem — in the U.S. and globally. That takes recognizing that resurgent authoritarianism, misogyny and white nationalism have deep transnational roots and can only be transformed through global solidarity. May we continue to embrace King’s powerful advice that we pursue multiple, connected lanes in order to achieve racial justice and multiracial democracy.

Recent polls have revealed that “threats to democracy” are a top priority for many of us living in the United States. On the one hand, this is good news. Acknowledging the dangerous path we are on will hopefully galvanize more people to get involved in our shared civic life. The bad news is that Americans have wildly divergent understandings of where the threats to democracy are coming from, who is responsible and the solutions needed.

Democracy has become a partisan issue, more and more politicized in today’s toxically polarized environment. While it is a foundational ideal and the system of government on which our country was supposedly based, the loud cries to “protect democracy” are increasingly divisive and seen as weaponized for political gain.

For example, Biden gave a prime-time “democracy in crisis” speech that has received critiques for being overly divisive. By squarely naming the “MAGA faction” as the biggest threat to democracy, the argument is that the president missed the opportunity to separate the specific anti-democratic behaviors of political leaders (and the systemic actors that support them) from the broad mix of everyday citizens who may have voted for former President Donald Trump. They may be left wondering where they fit in the democratic future Biden says he wants to build.

MAGA Republican politicians on the other hand have made very clear who does not belong in their vision of America by enflaming racial grievances and stoking fear of LGBTQ populations to dangerous effect.

As we celebrate the International Day of Democracy on Sept. 15, how can we better establish a shared national project to uphold and reshape our democracy that rises above any one political party? How do we mobilize citizens as partisans for democracy? Inviting our fellow Americans to sit on the same side of the table — confronting together this shared problem of democratic decline — will require all of us to re-evaluate the ways we define our most pressing priorities; who and how we engage across differences; and, what we demand from our elected leaders and institutions. Below are seven considerations for how we may come together as partisans for democracy.

1. Look beyond electoral politics. As the mid-term elections are fast approaching, many Democrats are gripped with mobilizing and expanding their base, and some Republicans are organizing to ensure that “anti-democratic” candidates within their party are not voted into office. This is crucial work because elections do indeed have consequences; however, partisanship for democracy cannot mean that only liberals or progressives will win elections.

As scholars of democracy from around the world have long shown, a pluralistic, inclusive democracy requires more than one functioning political party. We need leaders on both sides of the aisle who are committed to accountability and decision-making processes that are fair and transparent, allowing for ideological diversity and debate. Democracy entails much more than elections or voting, even as those essential institutions are currently being attacked and dismantled in many states.

How we engage in our electoral politics right now with a long-term vision of a healthy democracy that allows for ideological diversity is just as important as the outcome of any one election. The Republican party must be reformed from the inside. So, the way that current MAGA supporters are called into that work is key. We need all Americans to see themselves in a shared future where our system of government works for all, and everyone is free to advocate for the issues and policies they care about most.

2. Define “anti-democratic” behavior beyond partisan identities. “Democracy” is seen as an amorphous concept for many Americans distinct from their daily realities — and yet, “saving democracy” is also being deployed as a rallying cry by each political party and their donors and media ecosystems. Our partisan identities increasingly supersede other identities, hardened by those actively stoking division and fear of our fellow Americans. If we feel truly threatened (both in perception or reality) by our political opponents, how can we co-create a pluralistic and inclusive future where all people thrive?

Partisans for democracy therefore must take extra care not to further entrench political identities, instead naming the specific anti-democratic behaviors and systems that have dangerous consequences for our nation. We can do this without blanket statements and toxic othering of whole groups of people.

For example, all the Republican lawyers, judges, staffers and long-time partisan operatives who decided to testify publicly before the House Jan. 6 committee, spoke to their personal experiences of when they felt democratic norms and laws were being crossed. In addition, many Democrats in Congress vehemently opposed the campaign arm of the DNCC for financing ads in support of more extremist Republicans in recent state primaries in order to run against less favorable opponents in the upcoming mid-terms.

3. Bridge the understanding of “anti-democratic” behavior to mobilize against it. The majority of Americans think of themselves as good people, or are dealing with trauma and the impact of isolation and lack of belonging. Bridging work is necessary to find that sense of belonging to each other again, with the goal of mobilizing to co-create the country we want for our future. There is an urgent need, therefore, to jointly define what we all consider anti-democratic behavior that we must then agree to apply across the board to all our leaders no matter their political affiliation, distinguishing democratic norm-breaking from policy solutions.

The words we use matter and can trigger political identities and backlash, and we often get stuck in a loop of what-aboutism and both-sideism in our quest to find “common ground.” However, partisanship for democracy calls us to find ways to have hard conversations that address real threats we jointly face: Political violence and intimidation have no place in a democracy and those spurring violence with their rhetoric should not hold political office. No one is above the rule of law, and we must hold our leaders accountable if laws are broken or changed to rig the system.

All citizens should have easy access to voting and have their votes counted. Citizens have a right to organize, to freedom of speech and to all other internationally recognized human rights. All of us should expect our government leaders to focus on solving real problems that respond to our urgent needs as a society, instead of distracting us with cultural wedge issues and stoking fear and grievance.

Amplification of the “big lie” narrative that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was necessary to defend democracy are a clear and present danger to the country. Being a partisan for democracy calls all of us to find ways to speak truth, to jointly take courageous stands; and yet, do so in ways that calls in the biggest number of our fellow Americans to join in this urgent endeavor.

4. Calling out toxic othering. Partisanship for democracy will require all of us to refrain from dehumanizing language, and we must actively call out our colleagues and political leaders who fuel toxic “othering” if we are going to rebuild our democracy. The MAGA faction within the Republican party has been successful in stoking fears with great message discipline, using labels for their political opponents like “communists,” “groomers,” “terrorists” or “Antifa.” The constant reinforcement within MAGA echo-chambers of the great replacement conspiracy theory furthers racial resentment. Democratic leaders have also engaged in toxic othering language and tactics, such as equating a vote for Trump with being a racist or homophobe.

5. Now is not the time for neutrality. There are too many overlapping existential crises facing humanity for our democratic system of government to fail us; and in fact, these crises should and could be a force for bringing us together. The United States has a long history of movements coming together to face hard challenges and we can do it again. To find common cause with our fellow Americans, however, does not require being “neutral” as we bridge across divides, when core values and injustices are at stake. Rather, we must stand united against those specific anti-democratic behaviors and unjust systems.

Calls for “bringing down the heat” in society does a disservice to the seriousness of the threats we face. It also  misses an opportunity to use this moment of high societal conflict to propel us forward, which George Lakey describes as “good polarization.” Yet, our mobilizing tactics and organizing strategies must always center the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings if we want to achieve long-term societal healing.

6. Partisanship for democracy versus bipartisanship. Many pro-democracy efforts prioritize bringing representatives of the two political parties together to form bipartisan alliances to address specific reforms. The Our Common Purpose Report released by the American Academy for Arts and Sciences for example includes 31 recommendations that were carefully crafted with bipartisan input, many of which take a long-term view towards renewing a culture of citizenship and institutional responsiveness and accountability. All of this work is necessary and worthy of attention.

And yet, to maintain their bipartisan inclusivity, many of these coalitions often shy away from some of the most divisive and difficult issues, such as confronting the “big lie,” the outrageous independent state legislature theory, or engaging with racial truth, healing and transformation processes. In particular, we cannot achieve democratic renewal in the United States without addressing the historic and current nature of systemic racial injustice. Just because this has become such an effective wedge issue for many within the MAGA faction doesn’t mean that partisans for democracy shouldn’t be courageous and insist that we attach our national conversation about race to the conversation about democracy. This is an opportunity, as Heather McGhee has so eloquently written in “The Sum of Us,” to address the ways that systemic racism hurts everyone in the country.

7. A cross-ideological democracy movement is both necessary and possible. Many on the progressive left have treated “saving democracy” as a solely left-wing issue. Yet, there are many conservatives organizing pro-democracy efforts that need to be better linked to progressive democracy movements. Robert Kagan has called for a “national unity coalition,” Christine Todd Whitman is advocating for a “common sense coalition,” and Rep. Adam Kinzinger is building a “country first” movement. Multi-sector platforms are establishing concrete targets to measure progress, such as the Partnership for American Democracy. Additionally, there are many issue-area coalitions like Issue One, focused on protecting poll workers, and grassroots organizing platforms such as People’s Action (and many, many others.)

Whatever this broad democracy movement is called, a unified front must come together that cuts across partisan, ideological, race, class, geographic and other divisions. Many segments of society are feeling the immediate threats of our democratic decline in different ways; and, pro-democracy initiatives are coming to this work from various vantage points, focusing on either short-term or long-term priorities to bring about societal change.

All of the work is essential and potentially reinforcing, and yet coming (and staying) together as a front won’t be easy. Building the connective tissue between and amongst these different democracy efforts, centering the problem not so much on our polarization but our fragmentation will help in achieving a renewed and mobilized group of partisans for democracy.

This story was produced as part of the Democracy Day journalism collaborative, a nationwide effort to shine a light on the threats and opportunities facing American democracy. Read more at usdemocracyday.org.

*This article was written by former Director of Applied Research Jonathan Pinckney.

The scope of the challenges of democracy in the United States are vast. For a movement to protect and expand American democracy to succeed, it is crucial that that movement be broad and united, including people from across America’s diverse identities and from all points along the political spectrum. Participation and diversity are key advantages for movement success. Yet building such a united front comes with numerous challenges. Scholars of social movements have long recognized that coalition-building, particularly across major ideological or identity differences, can be near-impossible to achieve without favorable conditions and significant work. In particular, when groups come from different identities, or have different understandings of the core issues at stake, building a sustainable coalition is difficult.

So how can a broad-based pro-democracy movement be forged in this moment of democratic crisis? When have coalitions in the past and in other countries facing moments of democratic crisis been able to unite across differences? While many factors vary across cases, research points to two particularly key factors.

People Unite When They Share an Understanding of the Problem

One of the central challenges of forging a pro-democracy coalition comes with the gradual, step-by-step process of 21st century democratic backsliding. While democracy in the 20th century tended to collapse all at once with tanks in the streets, democracy in the 21st century tends to fall apart piecemeal, as opponents of democracy slowly whittle away at its foundations. This is a particular problem for forging a united pro-democracy front because research shows that groups and organizations are motivated to collaborate across partisan or ideological boundaries when they feel a shared sense of threat. The first crucial step in building a united front is thus to bring people into a shared understanding that the situation presents a crisis that can only be met through combining efforts.

Some researchers have found that to build this shared understanding frequently requires lengthy processes of what sociologists call “frame alignment,” where different interpretations of the situation are gradually, frequently through lengthy discussion, brought into congruence. For example, pro-democracy movements in Africa have focused on how protecting democracy also has implications for fighting corruption, an issue that appeals to many different social groups.

One of the most effective ways to promote this shared sense of urgency and threat is by focusing on an upcoming event that captures the processes of democratic backsliding and around which different groups can build a shared understanding. One of the most common of these events are elections. Their regularity and importance for shaping the political future both make them ideal factors around which to frame mobilization, particularly if a major change in democracy is on the ballot. For instance, across Africa, elections where an incumbent president was seeking to change constitutional rules and run for a third term have been the spark for major alliances uniting previously competing civil society and political opposition groups.

People Unite When They Share Social Ties

Even when many kinds of people and organizations feel a sense of threat, a united front is not inevitable. The people and organizations feeling that sense of threat also need to have social ties through which trusting relationships of cooperation can emerge. The denser and more sustained the connections between key nodes in the movement network are, the likelier the formation of a broad united front.

Because of this, bridge-builders play a critical role in building united fronts. While a situation of crisis can motivate previously competing organizations to work together, pre-existing social ties make that collaboration much more likely. Bridge-building activities build relationships of trust that can help overcome challenges to effective coalition formation, such as differing ideologies or backgrounds, or competition over resources and media attention.

United Fronts Face Challenges Later On

But creating a united front is only an initial step. Maintaining that united front requires significant organizational, rhetorical, and relational work. Without this work, these coalitions frequently fall apart, with disastrous consequences for long-term democracy. For instance, political and civic organizations in Ukraine were able to unite to fight election fraud in the 2004 “Orange Revolution,” but competition over political power and the personality of leadership figures led to this coalition collapsing and significant democratic backsliding.

Power imbalances between members of a united front are one particular challenge. Given that the process of uniting will require groups to compromise and come to agreement on their shared goals, groups that feel at a power disadvantage relative to others are likely to feel particularly vulnerable and be hesitant to give up their preferred policies and processes for the sake of the larger front. More powerful groups are in danger of dominating the agenda and driving others out.

Alliances between activists on the streets and more established social or political institutions come with particular difficulties. Activists invested in sparking change may have little patience for quiet, behind-the-scenes processes of dispute resolution. Political, business, or religious leaders may see protest or other confrontational tactics favored by activists as disruptive or harmful to resolving political challenges.

Bringing It All Together

So, how can the pro-democracy movement unite across difference, and stay united over the long-term? The research shows, first and foremost, that this will not be easy. But leaders in the movement can help forge a united front first through building a shared understanding and feeling of threat that requires collaboration across difference, and through building dense networks of social ties that can build trust and foster communication.

To stay united will require maintaining those relationships of trust through regular communication, recognition of power imbalances and differing perspectives, and willingness to compromise and adapt for the sake of maintaining the coalition.

*This article was written by former Director of Applied Research Jonathan Pinckney.

Any movement that seeks to stand up against powerful opposition and advocate on important political issues must be prepared for a violent reaction. Eighty-six percent of major nonviolent movements around the world have faced significant violent government repression. And other forms of resistance to movements, such as disorganized violence or harassment by movement opponents, are so common that social scientists call it a “law” that movements will experience them.

But there are ways that movements can handle violence to their advantage. Through skillful rhetorical and practical strategies, they can cause the violence directed at them to backfire. Violence, rather than suppressing the movement it targets, can end up strengthening it. For instance, during the civil rights movement, attempts by the Selma police to violently disperse civil rights marchers backfired when dramatic pictures and footage of dogs and water hoses being turned on peaceful protesters sparked widespread outrage.

Why does violence backfire?

Violence backfires when news of violence is widely disseminated and the violence is framed as unjust, illegitimate, and possible to do something about. When these messages are clearly communicated and accepted, it can become psychologically costly for previously passive observers to simply stand by and ignore the violence. People sympathetic to the movement who have previously not participated in it can become emboldened to participate, and it can even change the perspectives of former opponents to be more sympathetic to the movement.

All these aspects (wide dissemination, framing as unjust, and framing as possible to do something about) are critical. If violence is perceived as regrettable but justly and legitimately carried out, then those learning about it will not be motivated to attempt to do anything about the perpetrators. If violence is perceived as unjust, but impossible to change, then audiences are more likely to be motivated to simply shrug their shoulders and accept it as inevitable. For instance, the rising frequency of mass shootings in the United States and lack of meaningful policy responses have sparked widespread apathy among most Americans.

What situations make it less likely that violence will backfire?

Structural racism and engrained patterns of prejudice make violence less likely to backfire. In an online experiment, simply showing a picture of Black protesters made American survey respondents more likely to describe a protest as violent and say that police should stop it. However, survey respondents disapproved much more vigorously of actual physical violence. People from marginalized groups face additional challenges when it comes to sparking backfire. Yet through maintaining nonviolent discipline they can maximize their chances of doing so. Highly polarized environments also make backfire more challenging, as partisans may be more likely to simply perceive their opponents’ actions as violent, no matter what they do.

A media environment suffused in misinformation and disinformation also presents a significant challenge to sparking backfire. For example, in 2020, data clearly shows that the Black Lives Matter movement was overwhelmingly peaceful, even more peaceful than the civil rights movement of the 1960s, despite facing significant violence from police forces and movement opponents. Yet polarized media discourses that spread misleading or inaccurate information about high levels of violence in BLM protests undermined support for the protests and reduced the backfire of violence directed towards them.

What can movements do to increase the potential for violence to backfire?

The standard toolkit to prevent violence from backfiring involves five key steps: cover-up, devaluation, reinterpretation, official channels, and intimidation/bribery. Perpetrators of violence seek first to prevent information about the event from emerging, then to devalue the targets of violence, then to reinterpret the facts to make them seem less damaging, then often to diffuse and redirect popular anger through time-consuming official channels, and finally, when all else fails, to intimidate or buy off those who might spread information about the violence. In a polarized environment, reinterpreting the facts is often the centerpiece of this toolkit. For instance, media and political figures on the far Right have sought to downplay the violence of the January 6^th attack on the Capitol or claim that the attack was a “false flag” operation conducted by government agents or the far Left.

Enhancing backfire involves denying opponents these five strategies: clearly communicating information about violence, validating the target of violence, interpreting the situation as unjust, refusing to let official channels sap legitimate outrage, and insulating against intimidation and bribery. These struggles over communication and interpretation can be deeply challenging and are best taken advantage of when they have been extensively planned and prepared for in advance. As scholar and activist George Lakey put it: “it is not repression that destroys a movement, it is repression plus lack of preparation.” Researchers have studied many avenues that can heighten the “paradox of repression” and increase the chances of backfire. While the specifics vary widely across cases, a few consistent patterns stand out.

Build Institutions and Trusted Networks: Movements that have strategized about how to respond to violence, and put in place structures to respond to it, are much more likely to successfully spark backfire. One study found that backfire was much more likely when movements had previously invested in external and internal institution-building, particularly in institutions that facilitated “communication channels and tactical adaptability.” Movements that had built strong networks throughout social groups were able to draw on those networks to mobilize in response to that event, and to mobilize participants to engage in follow-up tactics that could show their opposition to the violence while putting them at reduced risk of violence themselves.

Get the Word Out: One of the key things that organized institutional structures can do is ensure that violence is clearly communicated and that attempts to cover up violence fail. Social media has made government cover-ups more difficult, leading to protests spreading more rapidly once they’ve been initiated. Yet social media has also exacerbated misinformation and disinformation, reducing people’s trust in publicly communicated information. Building relationships of trust across partisan and identity lines before a violent event occurs may make it easier to diffuse information about violence when it occurs. Movements should strategize each step in the communication chain, from the original source of information about violence, to the ways in which it is transmitted, to how different audiences receive and react to it.

Maintain Nonviolent Discipline: By adopting and sticking to nonviolent tactics, even in the face of violence, activists can highlight the injustice and illegitimacy of violence towards them, preventing attempts by their opponents to devalue the targets of violence, for example by reinterpreting state violence as necessary law enforcement. A growing series of studies show over and over again that even modest levels of physical violence significantly reduces support for that movement. Movements can improve nonviolent discipline through training, choosing more dispersed tactics that reduce the chances of direct physical confrontation.

Focus on Overcoming Fear and Apathy: Backfire is a product of society’s interpretation of a violent event, not directly of the event itself. One part of shaping this interpretation is through highlighting violence’s injustice. A second is not allowing the violence to lead to paralyzing fear and apathy. In Zimbabwe, the Women of Zimbabwe Arise movement achieved this through building a culture where they “turned arrests into a celebration of successful resistance…beatings, arrests, and detentions became a badge of honor.” Leaders walked at the front of protests that were likely to face police brutality, and thousands courted arrest when a single protester was arrested.

While the situation in the United States differs from Zimbabwe, and the movement for democracy faces a variety of different forms of violence, from online harassment to threats from heavily armed conspiracy theorists the same underlying principle holds reinterpreting violence as a badge of honor and sign of the impact of resistance can keep core members of the movement motivated and defang the power of the violence turned against them. Violence towards the movement should never be accepted as just or inevitable, but neither should it be treated as something so horrific that it paralyzes a movement with fear. Instead, movements can empower their members to accept violence as a sign that their work is touching on critical and impactful issues and is even more important to continue.

*This article was written by Chief Organizer Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Just Security.

The January 6th hearings have exposed a fundamental truth about authoritarianism: that it ultimately depends on the consent and acquiescence of individuals. The failure of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election wasn’t inevitable. There was nothing ironclad about the U.S. Constitution, courts, legislatures (including Congress), or electoral bodies to prevent Trump from remaining in power if enough people had gone along with his scheme. Instead, it took Republican officials, senior Trump advisors, conservative lawmakers, media personalities, and others — combined with significant grassroots pressure — to prevent an orchestrated subversion of the American people’s freedom to choose their leaders.

It’s a powerful lesson to remember on this weekend’s July 4^th U.S. Independence Day holiday.

Trump’s attempted power grab was hardly unique. The authoritarian playbook that he and his enablers are following is recognizable to anyone who has studied democratic backsliding in other countries, such as Hungary, Poland, Brazil, or India, where democratically-elected leaders have eviscerated democratic norms and institutions to remain in power. Authoritarianism 101 essentially is: reward loyalists, punish enemies, keep people divided, and manipulate democratic institutions like elections to do your bidding — and as a result, remain in power at all costs.

Thankfully, however, the Achilles heel of any would-be authoritarian is that the organizations and institutions that provide authoritarians with social, economic, and political power, such as government institutions, security forces, unions, businesses, and religious institutions, are made up of people — individuals whose fealty to the autocrat cannot be guaranteed. When individuals in these pillars ignore or defy anti-democratic orders, whether out of a sense of duty, self-interest, fear of prosecution, or some combination of these, the authoritarian’s grip on power is undone.

Acts of Defiance

The January 6th hearings have showcased acts of defiance by Republicans, including stalwart Trump supporters. Attorney General William Barr called Trump’s claims of fraud “bullshit” and later resigned. Conservative judge Michael Luttig advised Vice President Mike Pence that going along with Trump’s conspiracy would be illegal and Pence refused to capitulate. Brad Raffensberger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, rejected demands to “find the votes.” Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt called Arizona for Biden. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, drawing on his Mormon faith and remembering the oath he swore to the Constitution, refused to yield to Trump’s pressure. The powerful testimony this week by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whose role as an assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows gave her an inside view of Trump’s intimate involvement in inciting the violence, has been called a “game changer.”

Meanwhile, individuals unused to the public spotlight such as Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss paid a steep price for doing their jobs, including racist death threats. Their testimonies, as well as that of Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards, highlighted the immense suffering wrought by ruthless authoritarianism against principled people – and why it must be defeated in America and around the world.

While these stories of individual heroism should be lauded, the fate of America’s free and fair elections should not rest on a few key individuals. And in many ways, it did not. Barr, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, while taking some laudable actions at the time, took other questionable steps, and Rosen and Donoghue failed to disclose the scope of what they knew during the second House impeachment trial of the former president for “incitement of insurrection” after the January 6^th attack on the Capitol.

But to the extent that they resisted Trump’s entreaties in late 2020 and early 2021 to undermine the legitimate election of his opponent, they did so in a context of mass popular mobilization around a “Count Every Vote” campaign led by grassroots movements, bipartisan democracy coalitions, unions, businesses, professional associations, civil servants, and ordinary Americans, including many who participated in virtual workshops about how coups happened in other countries and how to prevent them at home. Grassroots groups organized joyful get-out-the-vote rallies and lauded election workers, businesses and democracy groups issued public statements and organized social media campaigns calling for all votes to be counted and for the results to be determined by voters (not by politicians), and unions began to prepare for labor strikes in the event of attempted election subversion.

That mobilization, in helping prevent Trump from overturning the 2020 election, was a remarkable success for U.S. democracy. Just as the Civil Rights movement made the United States a democracy, the 2020 mobilization helped ensure that it remained a democracy – albeit a fragile one. But this success should not be taken for granted at a time when the consensus view among democracy scholars is that the authoritarian threat in the United States has metastasized, with states becoming laboratories of democratic backsliding and amid escalating political violence targeting election officials and minority groups. Some credible scholars have warned that the United States has already begun to resemble a fascist state.

Ground Being Paved Even Now For More

The January 6^th attack was not a moment – it’s an ongoing conspiracy that has been built over years and continues today. It includes media propaganda outlets (Fox News, OAN, Breitbart), federal and state legislators who embraced birtherism and then the Big Lie, Evangelical churches anchored in partisan politics and white Christian nationalism, and paramilitary groups actively or tacitly endorsed by far-right politicians. In many ways, the ground is being paved now for Trump or other Republicans to overturn a future election, which, together with the elevated risks political violence, poses the most serious threat to American democracy in decades.

However, none of these pillars are monolithic, as the hearings have demonstrated. They are made up of individuals whose loyalties can shift for ethical, normative, identity-based, and/or material reasons. When they do, it can fundamentally alter the course of events. We’ve seen that in other parts of the world, such as when the powerful Makati Business Club took the side of democracy during the 1983 people power movement in the Philippines, or when Catholic priests, nuns, and laity used sermons, marches, vigils, and sit-ins to defy authoritarianism in Chile, Poland, and the Philippines.

The most powerful bulwark against authoritarianism in America is an organized citizenry capable of mobilizing people around a vision of national greatness that fundamentally rejects authoritarian norms and practices and commits to building a democracy where everyone belongs. Nurturing a broad-based patriotic front or movement that welcomes individuals whose views may have shifted because of the January 6th hearings, and who no longer wish to actively or passively support the kind of authoritarian faction that has highjacked the current GOP, should be the focus of democracy groups and movements across the country. Building a big tent will take courageous dialogue and norm-shifting within more conservative-leaning groups (eg. churches, businesses, veterans’ groups) and between democracy and civic freedom groups that span the political and ideological spectrum.

It will take a combination of collective stubbornness (non-cooperation with authoritarian norms and practices) and collective healing, such as that envisioned by the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation movement, which is supporting local and national reckonings about the legacy and costs of racism in our democracy and how to dismantle it together, to stop the dangerous slide towards authoritarianism and to set America on the path it needs to take to genuinely flourish.

*This article was written by Chief Organizer Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Waging Nonviolence.

As courageous Ukrainians and Russian antiwar protesters resist Putin’s brutal war, we can do far more to support pro-democracy activists and movements.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war — which has brought terrible humanitarian suffering, as war inevitably always does — have given the world a moment of profound moral clarity. We are witnessing the consequences of a delusional authoritarian and his enablers, doing what authoritarianism does best: trample on human rights and human dignity, allowing the few to cling to power at the expense of the many. Meanwhile, courageous resistance by Ukrainians and Russian antiwar protesters has shown us the alternative, and what it means for David to battle Goliath on the world stage.

At a time when global democracy watchdog Freedom House has documented a 16-year decline in democratic freedoms in the United States and around the world, and civil resistance scholars have identified a significant decline in the overall effectiveness of nonviolent campaigns globally, we need to step up our game. Now, more than ever, is the time for a doubling down on democratic solidarity around the world.

Watching Putin violently seek to reconstitute czarist Russia has brought me back to the summer of 2002, when I was living in St. Petersburg and working with a chapter of the Soldiers’ Mothers organization — a human rights group with affiliates across the country. Their work focuses on abuses committed by and against members of the Russian military. I was there right after the second Chechen war, and my work involved translating reports about the war crimes committed by Russian forces in Chechnya from French into English. Another part involved visiting Russian military hospitals and barracks, and meeting with young Russian conscripts who had been brutally hazed by fellow soldiers and their commanding officers. Young Russians were frequently lied to, forcibly conscripted and then sent into war zones to become cannon fodder.

The same scorched earth policy that Putin used in Chechnya — when he ordered his military to reduce Grozny to rubble — is the one he used in Syria while backing Bashar al-Assad, as Russian aircraft targeted hospitals and schools, leveling Aleppo and other cities to the ground. It is hardly surprising that Putin has turned to similar brutal tactics in Ukraine. Authoritarianism and violent barbarity are inextricably linked.

Yet, the Ukrainian people are taking an incredibly brave stand, including through the use of civil resistance tactics like blockades, changing road signs, boycotting Russian products, satire and viral memes, and fraternization with Russian soldiers. All of this could prove decisive in ending Russian aggression and paving the way for a future Ukraine-Russia reconciliation. If or when the Russian invasion consolidates into the occupation of Ukrainian cities, towns and villages (as it has in places like Kherson), organized mass noncooperation and civilian-based defense could be a particularly powerful form of resistance. Such efforts involve civilian populations engaging in collective stubbornness and denying the moral and material resources the occupiers need to wield power. Civilian-based defense is so well-respected that it has been integrated into the national defense strategy of Lithuania and is an integral part of Baltic civil defense strategies.

All those years ago in St. Petersburg, I was amazed by the courage and resilience of the Russian women. I had studied how Russian and Chechen women marched onto the battlefield in 1995 during the first Chechen war to demand an end to the fighting and the return of their sons. It is hardly surprising that research has found that women’s active participation in nonviolent resistance campaigns is a key driver of their success. Today, as we watch tens of thousands of Russian citizens, including women and mothers, taking to the streets to protest Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine — filling up prisons and detention centers in over 900 cities and villages across the country — I have no doubt that this is the way that Russians will achieve freedom and democracy in their country.

I don’t come at this from a position of triumphalism about America, NATO or the West. I know that U.S. militarism and my government’s backing of authoritarian regimes and occupying powers globally has brought untold suffering to peoples around the world. I have seen how exploitative capitalist practices and a clamoring for fossil fuels have contributed to a consolidation of autocratic kleptocracy and ecological devastation. I have observed the colossal, tragic waste of human and material resources that was the “global war on terror” and how it set back the cause of democracy by at least a decade.

As a civil resistance scholar, I have documented how popular movements against U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes in places like South Africa, Chile, the Philippines and Egypt ultimately forced the U.S. to join the right side of history and defeated tyranny. It was while serving in the U.S. State Department at our embassy in Kabul, with mortars flying over the embassy compound and duck-and-cover sirens confining me to my hootch, that I wrote “Why Civil Resistance Works” with Erica Chenoweth.

These experiences drove home for me the moral and strategic imperative of divesting from authoritarianism, violence and militarism — and doubling down on investments in nonviolence and democracy-building from the bottom up. There are many ways that outside actors can support pro-democracy activists and movements: by providing them with flexible funding and timely training, by coordinating diplomatic and economic pressure on authoritarians and their enablers, by turning democratic embassies in authoritarians’ countries into freedom houses, by sanctioning rights-abusing militaries (rather than training them to target their own people), or by supporting artists, independent journalists and those fighting corruption in their countries.

Today, one of the most important things governments and international civil society can do to push back against Putin’s violent authoritarianism is to establish coordination “hubs” to provide timely and coordinated non-lethal support to civil resisters inside Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. They can invite civil resistance scholars into those planning efforts to offer insights and share best practices. Here are other concrete asks being made by Ukrainian civil society groups.

Democracy abroad and democracy at home are inextricably linked. In the United States, as James Baldwin aptly reflected, democracy remains an aspiration that has yet to be realized. We have yet to fully reckon with our history of slavery and institutionalized racism, and the creation of a caste system that has centered whiteness since our country’s founding. Nazi Germany took inspiration from the system of racial apartheid in the U.S., and Jim Crow consolidated single-party authoritarian rule. Donald Trump’s brazen attacks on democratic norms and institutions, and the insurrectionary attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were stark reminders of the violent, authoritarian streak in American history that has periodically rooted itself in both the Democratic and the Republican parties. The embrace of Putin’s authoritarianism by Trump, his key advisors and Fox News anchors — who have toed the Kremlin’s line while attacking Ukrainian President Zelenksy — highlights the interconnectedness of authoritarianism at home and abroad, as well as the need to fight it on both fronts.

Meanwhile, we know that the story of America is the story of movements. The civil rights movement, perhaps the greatest pro-democracy movement in our country’s history, made us a full democracy for the first time in our history. The movement that came together to prevent an autocrat and his supporters from successfully overturning the 2020 election required massive organization and mobilization. Today, authoritarianism in America has metastasized, with states serving as laboratories for democratic backsliding. Countless laws have passed to restrict the right to vote, to curtail and in some cases criminalize protest and free speech (including the banning of books), and to enable partisan legislatures and election administrators to overturn the results of future elections that their party does not win. This would be the end of democracy in America as we know it.

All of this raises the urgency of redoubling efforts to counter authoritarianism and build just and inclusive democracies at home and abroad. Imagine what would happen if democratic governments and civil societies around the world decided to make the extinction of autocracy the guiding principle of foreign (and domestic) policy over the next 15-20 years. Imagine if all the nonviolent tools in our global collective imagination were deployed to end the soul-sucking scourge of authoritarianism and to reimagine democratic societies as spaces for universal belonging and human flourishing. What if a “right to assist” nonviolent pro-democracy actors — grounded in international human rights law — replaced the “responsibility to protect” as the guiding principle for a new global order?

Now is the time to build bridges of solidarity between pro-democracy activists in the United States and those in other countries, fighting for democratic rights and freedoms — from Ukraine and Russia to China, Brazil, Turkey, Uganda and elsewhere. Of course, every context is unique, and democratic backsliding looks different in different places. Still, we know that the core elements of the authoritarian playbook are shockingly similar in countries around the world, and that the skills and strategies necessary to defeat authoritarianism and build democracies that work for everyone are time-tested and capable of improvement.

Now is the time to take inspiration from the people of Ukraine — and from courageous activists and peacebuilders in the U.S. and around the world — by massively investing human and material capital in a global democracy infrastructure so that people can become agents of their own destiny.

*This article was written by Chief Organizer Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Just Security.

As Americans prepare to celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, it is crucial to recognize the gravity of the threats still facing U.S. democracy, even after Donald Trump left the presidential stage. And it is more vital – and possible — than ever to mobilize a powerful movement in response.

That means, first and foremost, to find ways of talking about the threat that transcend partisan narratives, which limit the national conversation and shrink the collective imagination about how to respond together. Second, we Americans have to intensify community and national dialogue efforts with the aim of dismantling walls that prevent people from humanizing each other and recognizing that the fight for democracy is a shared struggle – and that confronting the legacy of slavery and white supremacy is an integral part of that struggle. Third, grassroots pressure must be sustained – including, when necessary, through organized non-cooperation and civil disobedience — to defend against attacks on fundamental democratic practices like free and fair elections. Americans have done it before and can do it again.

Starting with the declaration of independence from British rule, to the struggles to abolish slavery and win universal suffrage, to the Civil Rights movement, the people have flexed the muscle of democracy to expand meaningful participation and inclusion. In 2016, with Trump’s election, the United States confronted the prospect of losing its democracy altogether. Now, six months after the Jan. 6 insurrectionary attack on the Capitol, more than 100 democracy scholars have warned that U.S. democracy remains in grave danger. Citing state-level restrictions on voting rights and efforts to politicize election administration, they argue the foundations of American democracy are cracking, risking future violence and chaos, and they propose steps to prevent a downward spiral.

While Americans like to think that their democracy is exceptional, bolstered by a powerful Constitution and a set of institutional checks and balances that can serve as bulwarks against democratic breakdowns, the past few years, punctuated by the Jan. 6 attack, revealed how fragile it really is. This is the story playing out around the world, in places like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, India, the Philippines, Venezuela, or Brazil. Those dramatic cases of backsliding did not occur as a result of a revolution or a military coup. Rather, as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the authors of “How Democracies Die,” remind us, “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”

The electoral road to democratic breakdown, these authors note, is often dangerously deceptive and imperceptible to most people. It happens when democratically elected leaders, supported by politicians and others outside of government, subvert democratic norms and gradually eviscerate the substance of democracy. They use “legal” means that are approved by legislatures and accepted in the courts, and their efforts are often portrayed as being necessary to combat corruption, or to reform electoral processes. With the veneer of legality, elected autocrats and their backers have weaponized democratic institutions and changed the rules of the game to ensure they remain in power.

This is, essentially, how democracy died in the American South during the post-Reconstruction period in the 1870s, when “reform” measures (like poll taxes and literacy tests) were imposed by post-Confederate state governments to disenfranchise Black Americans. The result was nearly a century of institutionalized white supremacy and single-party (Democratic party) rule, and a lingering and pernicious ignorance of the role white people played in ending reconstruction.

As much as we like to focus on the authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump, it is important to recognize that his actions were supported by enablers within his administration, within Congress, and within civil society. It is equally important to recognize that it took a broad-based coalition, including progressive organizers, civil servants, Republican and Democratic state and local election officials, military leaders, religious groups, and the business community, to forestall this subversion of democracy.

Devastatingly Effective Disinformation

Still, the United States came alarmingly close to the brink, as the violent Jan. 6 attempt to overturn the result of the election made clear. The #StopTheSteal campaign is, by one account, “the most audacious disinformation campaign ever attempted against Americans by any actor, foreign or domestic.” It has been devastatingly effective. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans continue to believe that the election was stolen, and almost half of independents think the election was rigged or are unsure. These dynamics help explain why the Fund for Peace’s Fragile State Index 2021 found that “the country which saw the largest year-on-year worsening in their total score [is] the United States.”

Yale historian Timothy D. Snyder recently laid out a chilling scenario: that key U.S. states adopt voter suppression laws now and the Republican Party recaptures control of the U.S. House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. Then in the 2024 presidential election, even if a Democratic Party candidate wins the popular vote and the electoral college with a few states, several key states challenge the count and overturn the results. Snyder continues: “The House and Senate accept that altered count.  The losing candidate becomes the president.  We no longer have `democratically elected government.’ And people are angry.”

So, with such a plausible scenario looming, how can Americans once again rise to the challenge of upholding the country’s democracy, especially coming out of a pandemic that has devastated so many, particularly the poor and communities of color?

First, we need to find ways to talk about the situation that break out of the traditional script of Republicans vs. Democrats. Stories and narratives need to make clear that this is not a struggle between red and blue America; this is a struggle between an anti-democratic faction in the country and a movement for an inclusive, multiethnic democracy.

We need to reflect together on what democracy means for us in today’s age, and the values that underpin our conviction to both a system of government and to each other as citizens. Our new democracy narratives need to convey urgency, transcend partisan formulations, and invite the maximum number of people to join the movement. This was critically important during the 1930s, when a national conversation about democracy played a significant role in challenging the rise of fascism in the United States and globally. Artists, entertainers, scholars, journalists, unions, and others spearheaded television series, town halls, lectures, and other fora to debate and discuss various topics on democracy.

Social science research shows that people tend to consume stories that affirm their social identities and disengage from stories that challenge them. Individuals and groups hold certain values and narratives to be sacred, or non-negotiable, and will perceive attacks on those values (both real and perceived) to be attacks on their identities. The choices we make in communicating about democracy therefore can either further entrench opposing identities and non-negotiable sacred values or can open up discussions for further understanding and a commitment to joint action.

Pro-democracy narratives need to embrace nuance and accept that human beings are complex and capable of change. This will take organizers, analysts, communications experts, peacebuilders, and creatives being willing to cross ideological, demographic, and political divides. As Levitsky and Ziblatt noted, “Coalitions of the likeminded are important, but they are not enough to defend democracy. The most effective coalitions are those that bring together groups with dissimilar — even opposing — views on many issues. They are built not among friends but among adversaries.”

Important, research-backed progressive efforts are underway to develop democracy narratives, including the Race Class Narrative Action project. These initiatives must be complemented and expanded by efforts that intentionally engage conservatives and others from across the political and ideological spectrum. Our Common Purpose, a report drafted last year by the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, offered a blueprint for reimagining 21st century American democracy. The new, trans-partisan Partnership for American Democracy could be one such platform for developing and disseminating inclusive democracy narratives. Embedding narrative competency for restorative movements and creating spaces for shared democracy narratives is one of the main lines of work of the Horizons Project (on which I’m advising).

Second and relatedly, there should be an expansion of national and community-level dialogue efforts to challenge the social media-amped toxic polarization that is eroding U.S. democracy. While debate, argument, and fact-finding have their place, there is also a need for nonjudgmental spaces where people can come together and listen to each other with openness and curiosity. This work is not for everyone, and meeting with people does not mean endorsing their views. The purpose of this work is not to find the middle ground between opposing sides, but to find common ground anchored in shared values and shared humanity.

There are hundreds of dialogue and bridge-building efforts taking place across the country, including those led by networks including the Listen First Project, the Bridge Alliance, and the TRUST Network. Organizations like Search for Common Ground, Urban Rural Action, Braver Angels, and Hand Across the Hills are experimenting with different dialogue models designed to bring people together across difference. Organizations like Over Zero are working with local communities to recognize and prevent cycles of identity-related violence.

Counterintuitive Effects

However, not all initiatives to bring people together across divisions have had a positive impact, and some have been harmful. A growing body of research on intergroup contact has found that in some cases, increased contact with members of the other side actually increased prejudice, anxiety, and avoidance. In still other cases, interaction with the other side undermined the willingness of historically marginalized groups to challenge social injustice. The evidence suggests that dialogue efforts should ensure participants have equal status and share a common goal, and that the contact is endorsed by communal authorities. Bringing people together in ways that do not emphasize their partisan identities holds particular promise at a time when people are exhausted with politics.

One particular dialogue tool used to advance social change, deep canvassing, could play a helpful role in bolstering popular support for basic democratic norms, like free and fair elections. Deep canvassing focuses on non-judgmentally asking people about their views on particular issues and includes follow-up questions that emphasize personal stories and experiences – of both the voter and the canvasser. A growing body of research has documented the effectiveness of deep canvassing in generating increased support for LGBTQ+ non-discriminatory laws and more humane immigration policies.

Developing a democracy-oriented deep canvassing script could involve the active participation of thoughtful Americans from across the ideological and political spectrum. It’s powerful to imagine a diverse, inter-generational group of organizers and volunteers going door to door together to talk with fellow Americans about what it would take to build a truly inclusive, multi-ethnic democracy that works for all Americans.

While dialogue is a critical element of social change, so too is mobilization and direct action. From the mass refusal by the colonists to pay taxes to British overlords, to the creation of the underground railroad for ushering enslaved Black people to freedom, to the bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins aimed at defunding Jim Crow, to worker strikes demanding fair pay and safe working conditions, to sit-ins and “die-ins” to demand urgent action on climate change, people power has motored American democracy. Last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police were the largest and most persistent demonstrations in U.S. history – and they were overwhelmingly nonviolent.

Nonviolent direct action of all sorts is necessary to push back against racist, anti-democratic behavior and to shift power in favor of organizations and institutions that defend democracy. The very purpose of nonviolent direct action, as Dr. Martin Luther King wrote so eloquently in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, is to raise the urgency of issues, shift power, and to make meaningful dialogue and negotiation possible.

During the 2020 election, Americans organized “joy to the polls” campaigns filled with music and dance to encourage people to vote in the midst of a deadly pandemic. They organized rallies and vigils to demand that everyone’s vote be counted and to recognize election officials for doing their part to defend democracy. At critical moments, leaders from entertainment and business issued statements affirming the results of the election and calling for a peaceful transfer of power. After the Jan. 6 attack, military leaders reminded those in uniform that their oath was foremost to the Constitution – not to any particular political leader. The success of this peaceful pro-democracy movement was probably one of the most consequential victories in U.S. history.

Grassroots Action

Today, direct action will likely be necessary to prevent state-level attempts to restrict voting and to politicize the election administration and certification process, particularly given Senate Republicans’ vote against federal voting rights protection. Progressive groups like Indivisible are organizing grassroots actions and campaigns to defend voting rights. Moral leaders and grassroots organizers from For All, Faith for Black Lives, Until Freedom, and others are pledging to join or help organize nonviolent direct action this summer across the country to suspend the congressional filibuster, which has historically been a tool to defend segregation and block civil rights legislation.

The challenge and opportunity now is to find common cause with key groups, including within the business community, veterans’ groups, and faith-based groups (including Catholic and Christian Evangelical groups), who are committed to multi-ethnic democracy and are willing to take action to defend it. Historically, large, diverse movements that innovate tactically, maintain organizational resilience and nonviolent discipline in the face of violence and disinformation, and that prompt defections from key pillars have been most effective at advancing change in the United States and around the world. Maximizing and diversifying participation in a new movement for democracy is key, since it expands pressure points that will be critical in the lead-up to the 2022 and 2024 elections.

This is truly an all-hands-on-deck moment for U.S. democracy – and that will go a long way to setting the pace for democracy around the world. Now is the time for progressives, conservatives, and everyone in between to come together to defend the very basic foundations of America’s republican, constitutional system of democratic governance. The United States needs a national democracy narrative that liberates the populace from the red vs. blue stranglehold that is blocking a positive vision of freedom and democracy. It needs a vision that invites the maximum number of people into a shared movement for democracy. Americans must invest in dialogue spaces that embrace shared humanity and encourage multi-racial democratic solidarity. Direct action at all levels can raise the urgency of this moment and generate moral, political, and economic pressure to preserve the great American democratic experiment.

*This article was written by co-Leads Julia Roig and Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Just Security.

As the United States celebrated Martin Luther King Day this January, Americans also confronted the reality of the recently failed attempt to pass voting rights legislation and the ongoing dysfunction of the national-level political system. With this defeat, many political analysts, academics, and organizers feel a growing sense of existential dread that the country is at a tipping point of democratic decline, including an alarming pushback against the struggle for racial justice. International IDEA’s recent report on the Global State of Democracy classified the United States as a backsliding democracy for the first time in its history. Yet, many other Americans feel the threat to democracy is being overblown, taking comfort that “our institutions will protect us,” as they did when President Joe Biden was sworn in a year ago despite a violent uprising to prevent the certification of the election results.

Institutions are made up of people, however, who are influenced and held accountable by citizens and peers. In fact, there was significant organizing and coordination between different groups during the presidency of Donald Trump and around the 2020 election, when it had become clear that he posed a clear and present danger to U.S. democracy and was actively seeking to stay in power by whatever means necessary. That mobilization generated the largest voter turnout in U.S. history and an organized, cross-partisan campaign to ensure that all votes were counted, that voters decided the outcome, and that there was a democratic transition.

Today, a similar organizing effort is needed to confront a threat that has mutated and is in many ways more challenging than what Americans faced in 2020.

Yet even with the many painful commemorations of January 6^th, polls show that democracy is not top of mind for most Americans. When asked to rank their five biggest priorities for national leaders, only 6 percent of those polled mentioned democracy – instead voicing concerns for their health, finances, and overall sense of security. Those who are inspired to organize to protect democracy, have radically different views of the problem, with a large swath of the country still believing “the big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. The country has become dangerously numb to all types of violence, but especially political violence, as many Americans report that violence would be justified to protect against the “evils” of their political adversaries.

Time to Face the Authoritarian Threat, and Organize Accordingly 

With all these competing priorities and different perspectives of the seriousness of the threat, what is most needed in this moment are the skills and infrastructure capable of organizing across these many schisms to find common cause. This is in a sense, a peacebuilding approach to combatting authoritarianism: deploying savvy facilitation to convene groups and sectors to identify and act on shared goals; and, using a systems lens to determine the most strategic interventions to break down the burgeoning authoritarian ecosystem and build up the democratic bulwark in response. What would this look like in practice?

First, leaders of the many networks, coalitions, and communities that are already organizing around various social and political issues across the ideological spectrum should be brought together in cross-partisan settings with democracy experts to reflect on the true nature of the threat.

While Trump gets most of the attention because of his continual drumbeat about the “stolen election,” the slide towards authoritarianism does not unfold because of just one individual. Authoritarianism is a system comprised of different pillars of support, including governmental institutions (legislatures, courts), media outlets, religious organizations, businesses, security and paramilitary groups, financial backers, and cultural associations, etc. that provide authoritarians (and other powerholders) with the social, political, economic, coercive, and other means to stay in power.

A key feature of post-Cold War authoritarianism, as described by Ziblatt and Levitsky in “How Democracies Die,” is that democratic erosion happens subtly, gradually, and often “legally,” as democratically elected officials use legal and institutional means to subvert the very processes and institutions that brought them to power. This is happening at the state level, where GOP-controlled states have become laboratories of democratic backsliding. In Georgia, for example, the Republican-controlled legislature has given itself more control over the State Election Board and the ability to suspend county election officials.

But the larger and more diverse the movement is that comes together to counteract these forces, the more likely it is to succeed. In fact, research shows that the most successful democracy movements that have been able to stem the tide of authoritarianism in their countries have always included a coalition of Left and Center Right actors and networks.

The cross-partisan nature of mobilizing against authoritarianism, therefore, is crucial and yet particularly fraught given the levels of chronic, toxic polarization the country faces. There is an urgent need to support movement-building techniques that bring together unlikely bedfellows and allow for a diversity of different approaches to achieve a shared goal of upholding democracy.

Breaking Down Siloes and Embracing Tensions

Authoritarianism, like any oppressive system, thrives on divisions and disorientation. It is fueled by a rhetoric of us versus them and fortified by the creation of walls between people who might otherwise align and organize. One response to this phenomena in the United States has been the explosion of depolarization initiatives, operating under a theory of change that citizens need to listen to each other more, communicate across difference, and “bring down the temperature” so people can have civil debate and come together “across the aisle.” These are important efforts; and yet are often in direct tension with social and racial justice groups that are focused on addressing past and present harms targeting minority and other vulnerable groups and shifting power dynamics. Still other coalitions have formed as bipartisan platforms for strengthening democratic institutions, tackling election reform, gerrymandering, and advocating for needed legislation. These many efforts in the United States are unfolding in their siloes, and are approaching polarization, justice, and democracy from their different vantage points.

Polarization, in fact, may be a good thing. Sociologist George Lakey likens polarization to a blacksmith’s forge that heats up society, making it malleable to change. In some highly polarized contexts, like Germany and Italy during the 1930s, extreme polarization led to Nazism and fascism, and allowed for violent dehumanization and toxic othering. There were pockets of resistance in both places, but no broad-based coalitions materialized that could have provided a bulwark to extremism. A contrast is the United States in the highly polarized contexts of the 1930s and the 1960s, when polarization paved the way to the New Deal and a massive expansion of civil rights. Of course, polarization also paved the way to the Civil War in the 1860s, but that only illustrates that polarization is neutral – what matters to the outcome is how people organize, and the strategies and tactics they use to wield power together to channel the forces driving change.

Likewise, the existence of tensions within and between groups is not necessarily a bad thing – healthy tensions can lead to innovation and expanded opportunities. They can help balance the need to project urgency with the imperative of building relationships. Bill Moyer and George Lakey describe four main types of movement actors – radicals, reformers, organizers, and service providers. It is common for there to be tensions between radicals and reformers, between those working on the inside and those on the outside, and between those who focus more on dialogue and more on direct action. The challenge is how to navigate these tensions.

Part of the answer is to identify and support systems-level organizers who have access to and credibility with both radicals and reformers, and who can help establish lines of communication, build relationships, and identify common cause.  Building broad-based movements takes organizers and facilitators capable of convening network leaders, helping groups understand the complementarity of approaches, and supporting learning across spaces. Breaking down these siloes and building connective tissue is what it will take to puncture the “divide and conquer” strategy of the authoritarian playbook. 

Sustained Cross-Cause, Multi-Sectoral Movement Building as Antidote

There was a recognized threat to democracy before, during, and after the 2020 election, and the recognition was shared by many diverse groups who came together to organize at that time. Now that the threat has morphed and dispersed, the ability to sustain a cross-cause, multi-sectoral movement is a little more difficult, but no less urgent. There are notably few spaces where conservatives are being brought into strategic conversation with progressive and left-leaning groups (and vice versa) about how to respond to current threats to democracy, and even fewer that bring grassroots and national groups into the same conversation. Key networks like the Partnership for American Democracy, the TRUST Network, and the Bridge Alliance could facilitate such strategic planning and coordination.

Convening leaders from conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity with more progressive social justice networks and democracy groups, like Indivisible, could yield unexpected results. Base organizers like the Industrial Areas Foundation, People’s Action, and Faith in Action have the infrastructure and relationships to be able to reach core constituencies on democracy issues, particularly locally. The Race-Class Narrative is an empirically-backed messaging and organizing framework for mobilizing the progressive base, persuading the conflicted, and challenging opponents’ worldview by fusing economic prosperity for all directly to racial justice.

Although building coalitions across groups is important, equally important is work within groups that can address toxic and anti-democratic behaviors, like acting on the belief that the 2020 election was stolen. After all, social psychology research highlights the fact that people are more likely to change their behaviors when they see other members of their in-groups change their behavior.

The private sector, religious communities and veterans’ organizations will all be key actors in this multi-sectoral democracy movement, requiring strategic outreach and relationship-building between actors who may not often collaborate on other issues. But reaching a shared understanding of the democratic threat as a higher-order shared goal will require concerted organizing. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, business coalitions such as the Civic Alliance came out strongly in support of voting rights and took actions to help their employees exercise the right to vote. Influential coalitions like the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers issued statements acknowledging the election results and calling for a peaceful transition of power. These same groups could use various levers to hold candidates, officials, and themselves accountable to basic democratic norms in the current context: all eligible voters should be able to vote, election administration and certification should be nonpartisan, and the outcome of elections should be determined by voters.

Religious groups are another key group that could be activated in defense of democracy, such as the important role played by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Civil Rights movement. Coordinated direct action between African American and white evangelicals would be a powerful driver of change in the future, and there is great potential in collaborations between groups like Faith for Black Lives, Interfaith Action, American Awakening, Matthew 5:9, Sojourners, and Catholic networks like the Ignatian Solidarity Network.  Veterans groups are an especially important voice to speak out against the infiltration of extremists elements within the military and security sectors; several organizations such as the Black Veterans Project, the Black Veteran Empowerment Council, and the Veterans Organizing Institute provide needed vehicles for cross-ideological relationships and collaboration.

The key to successful movement building to protect American democracy in this moment will be to identify what leverage these different communities have to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize and (nonviolently) punish bad behavior. And success requires all these different groups – progressive and conservative alike – to be able to see themselves as a part of a larger ecosystem capable of collective action against authoritarianism. The power of civil resistance comes through organized non-cooperation – denying the authoritarian system the human and material resources it needs to wield power and undermine democracy. When a significant number of people within these key pillars coordinate and plan together to stop providing support – workers go on strike, consumers organize boycotts, students stage walkouts, businesses stop supporting political candidates and media outlets that spread dangerous conspiracies, bureaucrats ignore or disobey unconstitutional and unlawful orders, etc. – authoritarians lose their power.

Organized broad-based movements and non-cooperation were key to ending apartheid in South Africa, dismantling communist tyranny in Central and Eastern Europe, ending Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and dismantling Jim Crow. Americans can find inspiration in those moments in history and from other country contexts to remember that it is possible for citizens to organize for freedom, justice, equality, and democratic values – and to succeed.

There are challenges to achieving this kind of broad democracy movement in a country as large and diverse as the United States. The country is deeply divided. It has not adequately confronted the historical legacy of slavery and racial hierarchy. What is unhelpful is succumbing to a sense of fatalism, to believing that civil war or falling into the authoritarian abyss is inevitable — “the other big lie.” The most important peacebuilding approach and mindset required of all Americans right now is one of conviction, hope, and mutual respect, to know that change is possible when people find common purpose and take action together.

*This article was written by Chief Organizer Maria J. Stephan and was first published on Just Security.

President Joe Biden’s early reversals of Trump policies have included at least three that were the direct or indirect result of grassroots movements. The administration froze the extraction of oil and gas from federal lands, ended US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and launched an initiative to advance racial equity in the federal government. The youth-led Sunrise Movement, which made climate change a central issue of the 2020 election, is largely responsible for the first victory. Relentless grassroots pressure ended U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s disastrous offensive in Yemen. The Black Lives Matter movement forced national action on systemic racism at all levels.

Broad-based civic movements provide the energy, dynamism, and power-shifting ability necessary to address the world’s interconnected social, political, and economic crises, including climate change, staggering inequality, structural racism, and resurgent authoritarianism linked to white nationalism. Given the inextricable linkages between domestic and foreign policy, the ability of movements to bridge these domains is critical to addressing these challenges.

These kinds of powerful movements operating in the United States have human rights and human dignity at their core and bring together domestic and foreign policy. They are critical to developing and implementing effective solutions at home and abroad. And practical steps can enhance collaboration between domestic movements and the U.S. foreign policy community, building on previous efforts to bridge domestic and foreign policy.

Why Movements Matter 

For centuries, grassroots movements have driven social, political, and economic changes in the United States and globally. From abolishing slavery and ending apartheid, to winning women’s suffrage and worker protections, to resisting dictatorship, movements have achieved impressive successes while contributing to more democratic and inclusive societies. Rooted in communities and driven by volunteers, movements are fluid entities made up of diverse actors including youth groups, faith-based organizations, professional associations, neighborhood committees, trade and labor unions, NGOs, and artist groups. Movements have change-oriented goals and use extra-institutional tactics like vigils, marches, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and sit-ins, often in combination with courts and legislative actions, to raise the urgency of issues, disrupt the status quo, and shift incentives and power dynamics.

There has been a dramatic rise across the globe in the number of protests and movements focused on resisting authoritarianism (Hong Kong, Belarus, and Uganda); challenging corruption (Iraq, Lebanon, and Chile); and advancing religious freedoms (India), among other causes. The Black-led protests in the United States following George Floyd’s murder, which the Crowd Counting Consortium called the broadest in U.S. history, forced a national and global reckoning on racism and police brutality. The COVID pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed vulnerable and marginalized communities, exposed structural injustices and spawned protests demanding government accountability. Not all protests have focused on public health – there have been anti-mask protests as well in the U.S. and across world. 

Movements and U.S. Foreign Policy

Movements in the United States focused on issues including climate, labor rights, immigration, anti-poverty, and racial justice link domestic and foreign policy in their analyses, platforms, and coalitions. However, for institutional, budgetary, and other reasons, contact between these movements and the foreign policy community (particularly in the executive branch) has been limited. Exceptions to this include antiwar and labor movements, which have targeted defense and international trade agencies in the U.S. government.

The walls separating domestic movements and foreign policy should be dismantled by policymakers and civil society for three key reasons.

First, the intersectional approach that movements like Black Lives Matter, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Sunrise Movement, and feminist anti-war movements apply to their organizing efforts strengthens the analysis of issues like inequality, racism, and climate change by highlighting the linkages among them. For example, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) policy platform connects systemic racism and police brutality at home to aggressive militarism, police and security force training, and the marketing of violent technologies abroad. The M4BL platform calls for the demilitarization of police forces and offers a plan for reinvesting war-making funds in domestic infrastructure and community well-being.

The Poor People’s Campaign, a faith-based U.S. anti-poverty movement, focuses on the five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and the war economy, and the false narrative of religious nationalism. Drawing inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the movement connects U.S. militarism abroad to violence and poverty at home. Its 2020 Jubilee platform prioritizes “provid[ing] for the common defense” and lays out a plan for defunding militarism and reinvesting in communities. The movement has facilitated connections between U.S. labor groups, like the Service Employees International Union, and the proposed U.S.-European Union Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to push for worker rights and fair trade.

A feminist peace initiative established in 2019 by Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, a group of 60 U.S.-based grassroots organizing groups comprised of working and poor people; Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing for peace on the Korean peninsula; and MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, highlights how militarized approaches to security through weapons sales, militarized policing, and mass incarceration have contributed to violence and insecurity domestically and internationally. It calls for a reorientation of foreign policy around an intersectional, movements-focused framework. These movements and others, including the Women’s March and #MeToo, the DREAMers, and the LGBTQ and transgender movements, focus on those most adversely impacted by violence and inequality at home and abroad, including indigenous populations, Black and brown communities, and women.

A growing veterans’ movement, which includes traditional organizations like the Vietnam Veterans of America and newer groups like VoteVets, Secure Families Initiative, and Common Defense, works on both foreign and domestic policy. Common Defense focuses not only on traditional veteran issues but also larger society issues like health care, the minimum wage, and anti-poverty. These groups, which are starting to organize military families for alternatives to war and militarism, could play a significant role in changing the public conversation about national security priorities.

A second reason to remove the wall separating domestic movements and foreign policy is that engaging with grassroots movements would democratize U.S. foreign policy. That would bring motivated and mobilized constituencies into the foreign policy arena and make cross-national connections.

While technical expertise is critical to effective policymaking, the concentration of foreign policy expertise and decision-making in a relatively small number of hands inside the Beltway has disconnected foreign policy from mainstream America. The best way to address this disconnect is to diversify the foreign policy and national security communities to make them more reflective of the country, something groups like Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security and the Diversity in National Security Network are doing effectively. An additional and crucial approach is to engage with those movements that represent broad and diverse constituencies across the country.

Democratizing U.S. foreign policy through movement engagement would make it more inclusive of the interests and needs of domestic constituencies. At the same time, such actions would connect foreign policy to the kind of grassroots pressure needed to reduce reliance on military solutions and invest in alternatives. Movements led by youth and women are particularly adept at building diverse alliances and challenging the status quo.

A prime example is the Sunrise movement, a multiracial youth-led environmental movement with over 400 hubs across the United States that was established in 2017 to stop climate change and create a green economy. The movement, with tactics such as sit-ins at congressional offices and acts of civil disobedience, has driven the Green New Deal, which aims to shift American society to 100 percent clean and renewable energy over the next 10 years. Sunrise has combined skillful direct action, backed by extensive training, with successful campaigns to turn out the youth vote for political candidates who endorse the Green New Deal. The result has been a number of prominent electoral victories and a greater public understanding of the urgency of climate action.

Other youth movements have combined mass action with institutional politics to advance key policies. The DREAMers youth movement has built a broad, nationwide coalition to protect the rights of undocumented youth, fundamentally shifting the immigration debate. Dissenters, a youth-led anti-war group led by people of color, has mobilized hundreds of young people through local chapters to oppose war with Iran, linking the uprisings against policy brutality to the struggle against global militarism.

Feminist and women’s-led movements have a long history of resisting war and militarism, including the famously audacious campaign undertaken by Liberian women to end a civil war in 2003 that featured blockades and a sex strike. More recently, women marched across the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea to demand a negotiated peace to end that war. CODEPINK, a women-led grassroots organization in the United States working to end war and militarism, uses similar audacious tactics. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013 by a small group of Black women fed up with systematic police killings and centuries of entrenched racism in the United States.

The resolve of these movements and their ability to mobilize people across divisions and national borders make them a significant foreign policy asset – even if they do not feature prominently in foreign policy discussions. Their organizing prowess could strengthen efforts to increase U.S. foreign assistance in public health, women’s development, indigenous and LGBTQ+ groups, support for violence prevention initiatives, and greater investment in renewables.

Meanwhile, the cross-national nature of feminist, youth, environmental, anti-corruption, and racial justice movements is an added strength. The transnational solidarity around the Black Lives Matter movement, which included a campaign organized by U.S.-based BLM activists targeting the Nigerian government after its violent crackdown on activists protesting police brutality, is a case in point. The global environmental movement that includes the Sunrise movement, and which made Greta Thunberg a household name after her sit-in outside the Swedish parliament, has focused priorities and coordinated global mass actions.

The third reason why building bridges with movements is critical for foreign policy is that it could help close the hypocrisy gap between the values the United States professes overseas and the realities at home. As Travis Adkins and Judd Devermont of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote, the failure to acknowledge and confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the United States has weakened claims to defend human rights and fundamental freedoms abroad. It was difficult for American diplomats to condemn apartheid in South Africa while Jim Crow was deeply entrenched in the United States. Similarly, it is hard for the United States to credibly criticize human rights abuses in places like Myanmar, China, and Russia in light of the systematic state-sanctioned killings of unarmed Black men and women in the US and militarized police responses to protestors.

Movements force honesty and self-improvement at home, which in turn enhances credibility and leverage abroad. The Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s, which exposed profound injustices at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for global influence, ended legally-sanctioned racial discrimination in the United States and bolstered U.S. moral authority abroad. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement, which has brought together an unprecedented number of Americans from different generations, genders, races, and ideologies, has forced a conversation about police reform and systemic racism, while inspiring global solidarity actions.

At a time when foreign aid and development are coming under criticism for their role in perpetuating racist and neo-colonial policies and practices, listening to the experiences of individuals fighting to end poverty and advance racial and economic equity in the United States could deepen diplomats’ and foreign aid practitioners’ understanding of those issues. Those focused on human rights and democracy would do well to learn how movements in the United States, led by people of color, are countering anti-democratic policies and practices, the challenges they face, and how they are learning from activists and movements challenging authoritarianism abroad. 

Getting Practical 

Building meaningful relationships between domestic movements and the foreign policy community will take time, patience, prioritization, and commitment. While there are already strong connections between movement leaders and progressive members of Congress, notably through the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which recently introduced the 2021 People’s Agenda, developing links to the executive branch may take more effort. The National Security Council (NSC) and the White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC), along with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), could start by acknowledging the powerful role of movements at home and abroad and commit to a listening tour. They might tap the experience and expertise of their younger staff, who are undoubtedly clued into these movements and familiar with their work.

The NSC or the DPC could help coordinate federal government engagement with movements and include both domestic and foreign policy officials. It may be a propitious time for such engagements given National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s depth of experience on domestic policy and DPC leader Susan Rice’s background in foreign affairs.  For example, meetings with the Poor People’s Campaign could include representatives from the State Department and USAID, in addition to the Department of Health and Human Services and other relevant domestic agencies. Meetings with M4BL activists or leaders of the Feminist Peace Initiative could involve a similar mix of State, USAID, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and other agencies as appropriate. The purpose of these meetings would be to build relationships, exchange ideas, surface tensions, and discuss potential alignment around shared priorities.

Trusted intermediaries in civil society, including think tanks, academic institutions, faith-based groups, human rights and peacebuilding networks could host movement-centered roundtables and other convenings whose goal is to build relationships between movement leaders and policymakers and align strategies on shared goals in various issue areas. They could include domestic movement priorities in their outreach and advocacy strategies, something that the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobbying group, and Win Without War already do. While think tanks like the Quincy Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies have highlighted movements in U.S. foreign policy, and CSIS hosts a webinar series on Race and Diplomacy, more think tanks, foundations, and the NGO community could follow suit.

In its 2019 report, “Reimagining U.S. Security Spending for the 21st Century and Beyond,” Win Without War recommends four priorities: halting the spread of global authoritarianism, combating the climate crisis, reducing mass inequality, and repudiating militarism. These priorities could inform a series of roundtables or other meetings involving movement leaders and the FP community. The Poor People’s Campaign, whose People’s Agenda emphasizes the close interlinkages between domestic and foreign policy issues, could serve as a key conduit for these convenings. The movement roundtables that formed after the 2016 election, including Fight Back Table, the Social and Economic Justice leaders project, and The Frontline, which unites M4BL, United We Dream, and the Working Families Party, are other key interlocutors.

There are existing models of effective coalition building between foreign and domestic policy groups that could inform this process. One is the partnership that has developed in recent years between foreign policy experts and U.S. officials and civil society for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global plan adopted in 2015 to end extreme poverty, reduce inequality, and protect the planet by 2030. In Pittsburgh, in an effort led by the mayor, different constituencies and stakeholders including city workers and Carnegie Mellon University have mobilized around the SDG framework and committed to achieving goals set out in the SDGs, notably those related to green jobs.

Another example is the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an alliance between governments and civil society organizations launched in 2011 to strengthen transparent and accountable governance. There are now 78 OGP national members, a growing number of local governments, and thousands of civil society organizations that come together to co-create OGP action plans focused on reinvigorating democracy. U.S. civil groups have prioritized combating corruption, protecting civil rights and electoral integrity, and tackling disinformation in the fourth OGP national plan. The linkage between open governance and racial justice opens new avenues for OGP engagement with domestic movements in the United States.

The Biden-Harris administration could use platforms like the SDGs and OGP, along with other high-level initiatives, to highlight the work of movements and build bridges between the domestic and foreign policy communities. One such opportunity is the Summit for Democracy that the administration has committed to hosting and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken said would likely occur by the end of this year. The summit, which will seek to address democracy challenges at home and internationally, could put movements fighting corruption, authoritarianism, and inequality in the United States and abroad at its center. Prioritizing engagement with activists and movement leaders in the lead-up to, during, and following the summit would signal humility and a recognition of their importance in advancing democracy.

Exchange and fellowship programs could be used to build and strengthen relationships between movements and the foreign policy community. Existing exchange programs that send diplomats and Foreign Service officers to work with state and local government offices could be expanded to include “postings” with social movement organizations. The State Department and USAID could consider hosting “activists-in-residence” to build bridges between domestic movements and offices focused on human rights and democracy overseas. Think tanks, NGOs, and philanthropies could establish fellowships for movement leaders and federal government leaders dedicated to forging these relationships.

Others have recommended creating venues where foreign policy professionals could talk openly with American and overseas audiences about their experiences with racism. Establishing and institutionalizing these fora, and inviting movement leaders to participate in them, would generate honesty while building trust and relationships between the domestic and foreign policy communities. At the same time, there is always a risk that such interactions between movements and policymakers could lead to exploitation of the former by the latter. Movement leaders should establish clear ground rules for policy engagement, guard their political independence, and use their best judgement about whether and how to engage with policymakers.

Anticipating Challenges 

The perspectives, approaches, and tactics used by activists and movements may differ from what government officials are used to. Unlike government bureaucracies and traditional NGOs, grassroots movements are fluid, non-hierarchical, and decentralized by design. For this reason, inclusivity and flexibility on issues of rank are particularly important. Some of the most impressive activists and organizers are local youth leaders who will be at first unknown to most policymakers and NGO leaders.

While movements include policy experts and those skilled in advocacy and negotiation, they also feature activists who have no qualms about engaging in civil disobedience or being arrested for challenging government policies. They would likely be very sensitive to attempts to coopt or water down their goals and strategies. While some activists may not wish to engage with government officials for ideological or other reasons, others will see engagement as core to their inside-outside strategy. Policymakers should avoid “choosing favorites” and prioritize the agendas of movement leaders. They should be aware that U.S. movement leaders, who have experienced many hardships and traumas over the past few years, may have immediate priorities that take precedence over engagement with the foreign policy community.

Public and private funding pose further challenges to bridge-building. Philanthropic funding, for example, is usually divided between domestic and international programming. There are some noteworthy exceptions, including efforts by the Colombe Foundation, Arca Foundation, Compton Foundation, and Ploughshares to bridge these arenas. The campaign to right-size the Pentagon budget, which brought together the National Taxpayers’ Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Win Without War, and the Coalition on Human Needs, is a good example of philanthropic funding that incentivized domestic-international collaboration. The Colombe Foundation has actively connected M4BL with anti-war groups.

Furthermore, the amount of private funding to groups focused on peace and security (about 1 percent of total foundation giving) is miniscule compared to the amount of funding in the social- and environmental-justice ecosystem. This disequilibrium poses a challenge to effective collaboration between groups focused on social justice and those focused on peacebuilding and anti-militarism.

The federal budgeting process creates further barriers. The 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), which created a decade-long budget cap and a firewall between domestic and defense funding and which requires that any increase in domestic spending has to be matched by increases in defense spending, discouraged honest conversations about budget priorities and resulted in an explosion of post-9/11 defense spending. The expiration of the BCA this year creates an opportunity to revisit budget priorities and could prompt collaboration and alignment between domestic and foreign policy groups. Movements will be key to making this happen.

Conclusion 

Movements are natural bridges between domestic and foreign policy. They bring fresh ideas, critical perspectives, and the ability to mobilize diverse coalitions over interrelated issues. Movement participation could democratize U.S. foreign policy while strengthening domestic constituencies for foreign assistance programs and priorities – because they would be seen as improving communities and priorities at home. These partnerships could build momentum for focusing U.S. foreign and national security priorities and budgets on human security.

Tensions and disagreements between movements and the foreign policy community are inevitable and healthy. While intermediary organizations such as universities, NGOs, think tanks, and foundations can help facilitate relationship-building and problem-solving, it may not be possible or even desirable for movements and policymakers to reach unified positions on key issues. Still, their interaction could pave the way to dynamic new coalitions, and create a sense of urgency about the interconnected crises faced jointly by the United States and the world. Ultimately, they could build the power necessary to transform these crises and build a more just and peaceful world.