*By Research Assistant Sivahn Sapirstein and Director for Race and Democracy Jarvis Williams.
As 2024 continues, all eyes are on the Presidential election. Many Americans are focused on the colossal task of ensuring our democracy can survive another crucial election without descending into violence. Yet, as we become increasingly focused on such a pivotal election, it is also important to remember that defending democracy neither starts nor ends at the ballot box. In fact, defending democracy is a far more expansive project. Louis Brandeis, former Supreme Court justice, once proclaimed that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen. Pro-democracy organizers agree with these words, and it is their constant practice to put these words into action.
It would be an understatement to say that practicing democracy is easy. American history is littered with testimonies reminding us that it is not. Like all worthy enterprises, defending democracy is fraught with challenges and sheer disappointments. Pro-democracy organizers would do well to spend some time considering this history. In the face of our current democratic crisis, and its more visible authoritarian manifestations, pro-democracy organizers would benefit from recognizing the manifold ways Americans have compromised democracy in the past. This knowledge would help pro-democracy organizers identify the current threats to democracy more clearly and expand their imaginations about the possibilities of democratic engagement. In this moment, establishing racial justice as the foundation for all pro-democracy work, seeing what multiracial visions emerge from that foundation, and crafting strategies that embed that learning into every aspect of our pro-democracy playbook is the challenging work that must be done.
Protecting and expanding access to voting is one of the most prominent strategies for defending democracy being modeled across pro-democracy organizations. Many organizations develop grassroot networks and work tirelessly encouraging citizens to participate in the electoral process. The New Georgia Project and ProGeorgia are two such organizations which have been particularly effective in registering and mobilizing new constituencies. These organizations see voter registration and mobilization as a key step towards a multiracial democracy. Other organizations such as America Votes, Common Cause, and Movement Voter Project, alongside think tanks and policy groups such as States United Democracy Center, Brennan Center for Justice, or Protect Democracy, are all equally engaged (amongst a host of other activities) in defending democracy by exposing efforts to undermine elections and advancing new mechanisms to safeguard election systems.
While appreciating the importance of all these efforts, the authoritarian threat confronting the nation requires that pro-democracy organizations embrace a more expansive display of democratic agency. To be sure, many pro-democracy organizations are aware that democratic participation exists beyond the ballot box; some are also engaged with civic education programs or policy campaigns around gerrymandering, while others are bridging voter registration campaigns with issue specific organizing such as reproductive rights and raising the minimum wage. These are all critical elements of expanding the playbook for democratic defense beyond participation in electoral politics. Nonetheless, the nature of the authoritarian threat requires that we go even further.
A more expansive defense of American democracy begins with the understanding that the seeds of our current democratic crisis can be found in our past. Our current threat emerged by exploiting unresolved narratives of white supremacy and its unspoken acceptance of systemic racism. Ta-Nehisi Coates drew a link between these unresolved narratives and their capacity to produce electoral success. After Trump’s election in 2016, Ta-Nehisi made this observation, “it is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.” Other writers do not see these unresolved narratives as causative but merely correlative. In their view, seeing Trump as merely a mirror is the most constructive way to understand our current democratic dilemma.
The overarching point is that one presidential election should not be viewed as the source of our current democratic crisis. It is critical for pro-democracy organizations to see this moment in relationship to our larger history of tolerating anti-democratic laws and norms based on race. This history shows the emergence and maintenance of “authoritarian enclaves” up until 1968. Following 1968, a revised framework for excluding groups from accessing democratic rights, opportunities, and resources emerged. The new framework mobilized social prejudices and sought to legitimize them in our institutional practices. Of critical significance was the decision in Terry v Ohio that made stop and frisk constitutional (something people today are demonstrating violates the 4th amendment). The ongoing refusal to practice democracy with integrity in America is what Weaver and Prowse have labeled as “racial authoritarianism.” Constantly engaging American history is critical for understanding the true nature of our current threats and resisting their cancerous effects in our current moment.
As it stands, the conversations and organizing around democracy and racial justice remain largely distinct. One way to bridge these spaces is by advocating for the acknowledgement of racism as a critical “animating factor” within our current democratic crisis and integrating that awareness into existing pro-democracy spaces. Another way to bolster the pro-democracy efforts is by seeing what themes racial authoritarianism and racial justice can illuminate within the American democracy conversation. Through this approach, several new categories emerge under the banner of pro-democracy organizing work in America: confronting structures of policing and mass surveillance, reforming the justice system, and addressing economic inequality (specifically access to housing). For each category, there are passionate organizations advancing what could be considered a more expansive democratic defense strategy. Yet, these defense strategies remain mostly outside the traditional framework of pro-democracy work.
The absence of policing, mass surveillance, and criminal justice reform from most discourses on defending democracy is particularly glaring. While the relationship between policing and democracy in America may not seem apparent at first glance, it is worth noting that, when analyzing other countries, we typically assume a relationship between policing practices and structures of authoritarianism. Why not probe that relationship in the US? For example, in the spirit of defending American democracy, we should interrogate police militarization, the proliferation of SWAT teams and their disproportionately high use in Black neighborhoods, how racial profiling deepens a distinct experience of citizenship, and the worrying trends in police education which deepen the divide between police and the communities they are supposed to protect. Campaign Zero and Southern Center for Human Rights are two organizations working to develop clear steps for advancing community safety and strengthening accountability and fairness – key concepts in our fight against authoritarianism. Civilian review boards – though often stymied by politicians and police – can serve as a foundational concept for future initiatives demanding the democratization of police departments and their relationships to local communities.
The other component is mass surveillance, and specifically the increasing practice of data sharing between major companies and the police, which poses a threat to our freedom of movement. Project South is one organization working on addressing the way mass surveillance erodes democratic norms through their report on state surveillance of Muslim communities. Reform Georgia, Southern Center for Human Rights, and Justice Reform Partnership are just a few of the organizations working on criminal justice reform issues such as private probation, cash bail, decriminalizing poverty, and, more broadly, ending mass incarceration. Even though voting isn’t the whole story of democratic defense, it is useful to highlight that each of these issues is intimately related to the question of who can physically participate in our democratic system.
Addressing economic inequality must become more squarely situated within pro-democracy discourse. Linking economic inequality to rising authoritarianism is not itself a novel idea; one common narrative explaining the rising support for a more authoritarian type of leadership amongst Americans is the dramatic and persistent level of economic inequality. From another angle, research on democratic participation has found empirical evidence showing that socio-economic status is the clearest indicator for a person’s level of democratic engagement (the poorer the individual the less likely they are to participate in a variety of democratic activities). Adding to the conversation the stark reality of the racial wealth gap in America, itself a legacy of racial authoritarianism, enables us to see why economic justice must be a key component of our pro-democracy organizing. Partnership for Southern Equity incorporates housing and economic justice as central pillars of their racial justice work. Atlanta Civic Circle also incorporates both housing rights and democracy within its strategic playbook. While addressing economic inequality may seem beyond the scope of pro-democracy organizing given the urgency of the upcoming election, our defense of democracy must be both audacious and expansive.
Admittedly, defending democracy is challenging work. And when you include the impact of policing and mass surveillance, the criminal justice system, and economic inequality in the assessment of our democracy a more disconcerting picture appears. Nevertheless, defenders of democracy must confront this picture with calm resolve. They must be assured that we can resist the authoritarian trends compromising our democratic aspirations. And it must never be forgotten that civil resistance works. In truth, we have an expansive democratic playbook bequeathed to us by social movements both within the US and around the world. Therefore, we must resolve to weave together all the strategies of democratic defense and unapologetically engage in pro-democracy work grounded in an unwavering commitment to racial justice.