This Fourth of July, we finally celebrated the nation’s 250th birthday. Don’t miss all the great insights and resources from Race Forward’s DemocracyIs: campaign that “brings together organizers, advocates, artists, civil servants, philanthropic partners, and storytellers to imagine and build a democracy that’s truly of, by, and for the people.” You can also read Nicole Carty’s important piece, America at 250: Harnessing the Anniversary for a National Reckoning.
The World Cup wrapped this month (congrats to Spain!), and while the U.S. celebrated a renewed spirit of welcome and belonging — as captured in this article by Jose Richard Aviles at the Othering & Belonging Institute — we have also been experiencing the pain and outrage of ICE’s rising terror and detention around the country. The murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo galvanized a massive show of resistance, including the defiant reaction of the people in Houston.
As Eric Ward rightly points out in this piece, the Latest ICE Surge Is Political Violence; and we would recommend that you consult the HOPE resources available on how to make political violence backfire – including this self-guided online course. You can also find inspiration in this beautiful site: Murmurations, a civic storytelling and public art project where each “bird” carries the story of a person’s response to ICE raids in Los Angeles.
This month, the administration has been ramping up its propaganda to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections, and there has been widespread condemnation of the President’s removal of the commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission as a direct attack on the independence of our nation’s election infrastructure. Many organizations continue to put out helpful resources to get involved. Check out Democracy2025’s (a project of Democracy Forward) Voting Toolkit: How Can I Protect the Elections? We also recommend their report, The People’s Guide to Voting Rights. And finally, don’t miss this powerful article by Aisha Goss, CEO of the Center for Cultural Power, on the importance of cultural organizing for democracy defense.
From our close partners, we want to congratulate the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic for their successful Justice in Motion Tour where “sitting and retired judges across party lines took to a bus – courting classrooms and town squares across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan – to argue the courts must be independent and trusted.” And make sure to listen to this podcast interview with Audrey Roofeh on the Power Station Podcast on the vital role of small business owners in our elections as community anchors and civic narrators.
In July, Chief Organizer Maria Stephan published How Catholics have defended free elections—and why they must do so again; Maria and Senior Researcher Adam Fefer published How Defending Free Speech Can Unite Unlikely Allies; and Adam and Horizons’ Fellow Sivahn Sapirstein published Minneapolis Showed the Efficacy of Civil Resistance. American Jews Have Done This Before. Democracy Fellow Jarvis Williams also published an important piece on The Authoritarianism We Have Not Yet Confronted. And finally, you can listen to two podcast interviews with Chief Network Weaver Julia Roig: with the Football Heritage podcast discussing the No ICE in the Cup campaign, and with the Dearly Beloved (Un)Pod on weaving stories and joy.
Enjoy these additional resources we’re reading, watching, and listening to this month.
READING
Holding Two Truths
by Kazu Haga
“When we are presented with two different perspectives, we have a tendency to try to reconcile it in a binary way (either your truth OR my truth is correct) or as a zero sum (your truth is 40% true, and my truth is 60% true). But truth is complex and does not have to neatly add up to 100%. My truth can be 100% true, and your truth can also be 100% true… Clinging to the ultimate truth that all lives matter without recognizing the truth that Black lives are being oppressed every single day denies the experiences of Black folks every single day. It denies the truth of the relative realm. Those of us who spend much of our time in communities dedicated to spiritual practice are in constant danger of losing sight of the relative truth, leading to spiritual bypassing – uses of spiritual truths to deny, suppress and bypass the injustices that exist in the concrete world.”
When the Heat Is On
by Scot Nakagawa
“Traditional coalitions aggregate organizations around shared interest and shared position. Under low pressure, shared interest holds. Under high pressure – when the question is no longer whether you agree with a position statement but whether you will stand publicly beside a community being targeted – shared interest is frequently not enough…The springs-to-river framework names the kind of infrastructure the field actually needs. The river is the broad, coordinated movement of mass mobilizations, noncooperation campaigns, and cross-sector coalitions at scale. The springs are the community-rooted, trust-based organizing units that feed the river. A coalition brings organizations together. A spring brings people together. That distinction matters enormously when the heat is on. Springs are built on authentic relationships – people who have done real work together, shared genuine risk, navigated conflict and survived it. The cost of defection from a spring isn’t organizational. It’s personal….This means resisting one of the most familiar temptations of crisis: the urge to centralize for efficiency. Centralization feels like decisiveness. It is also what makes the whole network susceptible to a single targeted disruption. Coordination is communication, shared frameworks, and aligned timing. Centralization is hierarchical authority and operational dependency. You want the first and not the second.”
Shame Won’t Save Us From the Autocrats
by Ami Fields-Meyer, The Bulwark
Don’t miss the new book by Ami Fields-Meyer with his coauthor, Julia Angwin, On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear. This article summarizes some important learnings about the role of shame in how people shift their support from autocratic regimes. You can also follow their series on Instagram that describes concisely each lesson; or listen to the authors discuss the book on this podcast. “Granting people the space to shift their political behavior without shame is all the more important under authoritarianism. What [the dissidents] we interviewed describe is essential not only for the sake of personal redemption, but also because a politics that seeks, facilitates, and embraces personal evolution is one that’s serious about movement growth and bringing about material change in people’s lives: better wages, housing that people can afford, rights that the government actually defends. And a true, multiracial democracy.”
WATCHING
Keeping ICE Out of the World Cup with Paola Mendoza
NYCLU (ACLU of NY) Podcast
“What happens after July 19th, which is when the World Cup ends? Do we go back to how we were on June 10th and allow the federal government and the fear of ICE to take away who we are? Or does the country rally around immigrants? Does the country rally around the positivity, the beauty, the necessity of what it is to be an immigrant in this country and say, ‘No, back off. This is who we are. This is who we want to be’…. How are we going to narrate this history in 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now? I think about the 1932, ’33 Olympics in Germany. Obviously, the Nazis were rising in Germany, and what that meant, and how Hitler used that to his benefit, and how that story is connected to, obviously, World War II and what Hitler did. And I think about here in this moment in time, I want the story to be that Donald Trump tried to do that…and we, people—not just in the United States because it’s also all the people that came from various parts of the world—said, ‘No. No. This moment in time is going to be remembered how the people fought back with openness, togetherness, kindness, love, joy, the opposite of what the administration was trying to push down our throats.’”
Cohort Conversation: Rima Meroueh & Nikko Viquiera
Proteus Fund
“How can we talk about solidarity in ways that will advance it across movements and between communities? Two leaders in the Solidarity Collaborative’s first cohort – both of whom are working on projects focused on shaping solidarity narratives – had a lot to say on this topic. Rima Meroueh currently heads the National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC), an institution of Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services (ACCESS), and Nikko Viquiera is Deputy Senior Vice President of Programs at Race Forward, a national organization that works to dismantle structural racism by building collective community power and transforming institutions.” You can watch other conversations amongst cohort members on the Proteus Fund YouTube channel here.
Rashad Robinson on Holding Power Accountable
The Don Lemon Show
“Don Lemon sits down with author and civil rights leader Rashad Robinson to discuss the state of the nation, the growing challenges facing American democracy, and why this moment demands courage, not complacency. From building real power to holding those in positions of authority accountable, Robinson shares why standing up, organizing, and leading has never been more important.” You can check out Rashad’s new book From Presence to Power here.
LISTENING TO
Beyond Collective Impact: What It Really Takes to Change a System
Work for Humans Podcast
“Many of the problems we care most about cannot be solved by a single organization. That insight helped John Kania develop Collective Impact, a framework for bringing people together around shared goals. But over time, Kania noticed that coordination alone was not enough. Even when groups made progress, the deeper patterns of the system often remained unchanged. In this episode, John discusses the evolution of systems change thinking and why lasting change requires more than alignment, strategy, and good intentions.”
Hahrie Han of Johns Hopkins University on What Moves People to Act Together
Art of Association Podcast
Hahrie Han joins host Daniel Stid to talk about her research on belonging, civic action, and transformational community organizing. “Hahrie [reflects] on the story behind her latest book, Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church. Through years of embedded research among participants in an evangelical megachurch’s racial justice initiative, Hahrie gained deeper insight into the principles of transformational civic life – both for communities and for the individuals invested in the work. Hahrie and Daniel also consider how artificial intelligence might advance research on civic initiatives. They conclude by discussing some interlocutors upon whom Hahrie draws to challenge her assumptions.”
Reclaiming Religious Freedom in an Authoritarian Moment
(En)Gendering Authoritarianism Podcast
“In this interview, Reverend Laura Randall and Heather Vickery of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee describe their work with the Pink Haven Coalition — a network helping trans and gender expansive people relocate from legislatively hostile states to safer ones. Drawing on UUSC’s origins aiding people from Nazi-occupied Europe, they reflect on mutual aid, faith-rooted resistance, and what sustainable coalition building actually requires.”
FOR FUN
The Lessons of the Game Apply to Democracy Too
by Lara Brown, The Fulcrum
Enjoy this timely article after we all experienced the “collective effervescence” of the World Cup over the summer. The lessons equally apply to the game of basketball. “Sports are [one] of the last spaces where Americans promote team rivalries and vigorous competition, even while they expect all involved to play fair and accept outcomes—an official’s call, a game’s final score, and a season’s worth of results. We fully understand that good sportsmanship makes every sport better, providing a roadmap for democratic renewal.”
