Tag: International

THE VISTA: August 2023

As summer ends and we kick off the academic year here in the US, Horizons continues to grapple with the inherent tensions of different approaches taken within the broad ecosystem of social change. One clear fault line lies along a time horizons of gradual versus radical change. This is especially evident in the conversations unfolding about the linkages between capitalism and democracy. For example, this recent podcast with the Secretary-General of International IDEA and the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times was a fascinating discussion on needed reforms included in a new book about the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Whereas other conversations are unfolding about: radical new ways that humans might govern themselves that are less technocratic; totally new ways of envisioning our economic systems; and, how we might redefine concepts of security and perceptions of insecurity.

Another fault line is how we grapple with the ways that progressives should bridge across difference within social movements, while also appreciating what it will take to achieve a multi-racial, inclusive democracy in the US; and, the cultural and political change that can be achieved over time by movements like Black Lives Matter that is turning 10 this year.

We bring up these tensions not to seek definitive solutions, but rather to acknowledge that there are many entry points to this work, and what’s important is to be in conversation with each other, while looking for signals of the change we want to see in the world. This is why the practice of sensemaking is so important to the Horizons’ team, both internally and together with colleagues. We plan to share more of our own sensemaking practices externally, such as this short video amongst some of the Horizons team discussing the recent “Alabama brawl” and implications for how we think about incorporating a racial justice lens into our pro-democracy organizing.

Appreciation and respect to all our wonderful partners who engage in all this sensemaking with us! Enjoy these additional resources we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to this month:

READING:

When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, From Ancient Athens to the Present Day

Edited by Archon Fung, David Moss, & Odd Arne Westad

Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and The Tobin Project recently released this free online compendium analyzing the factors that make democracy resilient or fragile. “The volume’s collaborators…explore eleven episodes of democratic breakdown, ranging from ancient Athens to Weimar Germany to present-day Turkey, Russia, and Venezuela. Strikingly, in every case, various forms of democratic erosion long preceded the final democratic breakdown. Although no single causal factor emerges as decisive… some important commonalities (including extreme political polarization, explicitly anti-democratic political actors, and significant political violence) stand out across the cases. Moreover, the notion of democratic culture, while admittedly difficult to define and even more difficult to measure, may play a role in all of them.”

Down the Rabbit Hole: Demystifying QAnon Narratives and Networks

This is Signals

Reframe, alongside the Women’s March and Political Research Associates embarked on an 18-month journey “to unravel the connections between QAnon and Q-adjacent networks, their values, narratives, and the disinformation that surrounds it all. In an era where misinformation and conspiracy theories thrive, it’s imperative to understand the terrain so we can organize our communities to be better equipped to fight for a democratic future rooted in justice, equity, and liberation. By critically examining the values, messages, and narratives that emerge from these networks, we hope to encourage a nuanced understanding of their impact on our communities and shifting societal expectations of governance and democracy as a whole.”

15 College Presidents Unite to Advance Civic Preparedness Across the Country

by Rajiv Vinnakota, The Institute for Citizens & Scholars

A new consortium recently launched, the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, made up of 15 college presidents with diverse perspectives across the political spectrum, but who agree that civic preparedness is essential to the academic experience and campus life. The consortium is also spearheading the Campus Call for Free Expression, a project to promote free expression on individual campuses, such as presidential speeches, training sessions, guest speakers, courses, and artistic endeavors. “The Campus Call embraces different viewpoints, focusing on upholding and advancing the principles of free expression and critical inquiry that are crucial in preparing young people to become empowered citizens.”

Populism Thrives Because People Are Mad, and Also Because They’re Sad

by Charles Lane, Washington Post Opinion

This article summarizes a recent study of social scientists: “Does Anger Drive Populism?” – answering in the affirmative, but with a major caveat. “Anger alone cannot account for recent US vote shifts in favor of populist candidates (of both the left and right). Rather, the trends reflect a wider mix of negative emotions such as sadness, stress, and worry… It’s a portrait of populism as an expression of dismay and disenchantment, not just resentment.”

WATCHING:

Next Frontiers – Unlocking Resources in This Time of Crisis and Possibility

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the UK has uploaded all the videos from their second annual conference, Next Frontiers. We would especially recommend the recording of this short presentation by Vanessa Andreotti discussing her new book Hospicing Modernity, where she explores four socially sanctioned forms of denial that our world is changing irrevocably. She describes the change using a metaphor of the House that Modernity Built and extols the need to go beyond reform because “more modernity is not an option, given the violence required to keep modernity in place.”

Belonging Design Principles with Ashley Gallegos

Othering & Belonging Institute

Check out this short, fun video with Ashley Gallegos, Belonging Coordinator at the Othering & Belonging Institute as she introduces their newly released Belonging Design Principles. “This distinct belonging framework includes a set of principles and practices that can root out structural inequality and exclusion of all kinds while helping us turn toward, rather than against, each other. Beyond a call for inclusion into pre-existing structures built to serve only some of us, belonging asks each of us to commit to co-creating new structures built for everyone.

Check My Ads with Claire Atkin

Fission’s DWeb Social

You can watch this short presentation about the AdTech watchdog Check My Ads Institute who are seeking to cut disinformation off at the source, acknowledging that bigotry and hate are fueled and funded around the world by the digital advertising industry. Co-founder, Claire Atkin recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review highlighting the proactive role businesses can play in protecting against democratic decline: Are Your Ads Funding Disinformation? “Propaganda thrives on money, ads, and data. Ad revenue helps propagandists multiply their efforts across networks of content across the web. Data enables propagandists to develop detailed user profiles that help them target people who are susceptible to lies and bigotry. Finally, the ads themselves — particularly those from blue-chip advertisers — lend signals of legitimacy to visitors to disinformation websites.”

LISTENING TO:

What the World Will Become

Podcast Series from The Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative

Check out all the podcasts in Season One in this series about humans from around the world who are dedicating their lives to building a more free and just world. We especially recommend Episode 6, The Making of a Democratic Community in an Authoritarian Landscape with Isabella Picón from Labo Ciudadano in Venezuela. The title of the series comes from abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities.”

Leveraging Networks for Democracy with the Leadership Now Project

Podcast from System Catalysts

Daniella Ballou-Aares, the CEO of the Leadership Now Project and her colleague, Anoop Prakash, the Wisconsin Chapter Lead, discuss the formation of a group of concerned businesses to launch the Leadership Now Project and the power of leveraging networks to protect and renew democracy in the US. The actions that businesses collectively took in Wisconsin during the 2020 election cycle, on a bipartisan basis offer a particularly important example of the proactive role the business community can and should play to uphold democratic norms and values.

Building Bridges Amid Division: Understanding America’s Conflict Dynamics

Peace: We Build It! Podcast from the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP)

In this podcast AfP Executive Director Liz Hume “discusses identity-based grievances, polarization, and social cohesion in the US. While conflict is inevitable, violent conflict is not, but it takes correct analysis of conflict drivers, resources, political will at all levels, and everyday people and communities working to prevent conflict and build sustainable peace. Liz welcomes three experts from across the political spectrum to discuss peacebuilding and conflict in the US” including Peter Coleman from Columbia University, Lisa Sharon Haper from Freedom.us, and Charles Lieske from Mediation West in Nebraska.

FOR FUN

A Strategic Analysis of Barbie: The Ideological Hegemony and Failed Revolution of Barbieland

by Lawrence Freedman, The New Statesman

“I want to be a part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that is made.” Barbie

This emeritus professor of war studies at Kings College writes, “all accounts of relationships between characters resembling humans raise issues of power and strategy, and Barbie is no exception. After all, to want to be part of “the people making meaning” could be a strategist’s creed.” So, Prof. Freedman delves into a wide-ranging strategic analysis of the movie Barbie. Spoiler alert – this article “may make little sense even if you have watched the movie but will make none at all if you have not and may contain sufficient information to spoil it if you intend to.”

THE VISTA: July 2023

The summer lull is in full swing in the US as July comes to a close, while we grapple with rising temperatures and guard our energies for the 2024 electoral cycle. We’re all going to need that energy, as we are faced with polls that describe the rising acceptance of political violence, and that “gut-level hatred” is consuming our political lives. Horizons is committed to continuing to work with those who are actively trying to prevent violence and acts of hate being fueled by a clear political agenda. And we find inspiration and hope from the myriad organizing efforts throughout the country.  

The global nature of the authoritarian threat continues to animate our work. Check out, Chief Organizer Maria Stephan’s article in Ha’aretz about pro-democracy protests in Israel and the relationship between Israeli democracy and Palestinian self-determination. Also, registration is now open for the next Othering & Belonging Conference, taking place in Berlin in October. Please join Horizons and others as we reflect on global strategies for countering the far-right and bolstering democracy. 

As you go into August, we hope you find a space for deep rest, and reflect on the role that conflict transformation and listening skills play in all our relational organizing. There are several resources to help, such as this summer survival kit of conflict hacks from Amanda Ripley; and, this summer reading list and overview of the listening arts. If you haven’t checked out our friend Brett Davidson’s writings on how deep narrative work also requires deep listening, don’t miss his recent missive on the meanings of listening.  

It’s an exciting month for Horizons as we welcome a new member of the team, Jarvis Williams who just joined us as Director for Applied Research. Read more about Jarvis and hear directly from him why he agrees with the power of listening for transforming relations and building deep partnerships. Welcome Jarvis!  We also have openings for Research Assistants to work with Jarvis and the team, as we partner with the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University on research related to the pillars of support for authoritarianism and democracy. Please help us forward the announcement to any students you know who may be interested.  

We hope you enjoy the additional resources we’ve been reading, watching and listening to this month: 

READING 

Doing the Work While Doing The Work 

by Samhita Mukhopadhyay, The Nation 

“How can social justice organizations prioritize mental health issues while finding ways for their staff and members to stay in solidarity with each other? As we work to undo the legacies of racism and oppression, we are often facing a history of unresolved trauma—our own, and the histories of those we work with… Incorporating trauma-informed perspectives and general mental health awareness has sprouted up in many different places in an effort to counter narratives that we should ignore or override these feelings… But connecting the dots between social justice work and trauma history doesn’t automatically confer the necessary tools to deal with it.” This article is full of wisdom and resources from many leaders showing that prioritizing mental health while also finding ways to remain in solidarity with each other are not necessarily in opposition. 

Is Tennessee a Democracy? 

by Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic 

Anne Applebaum explores the current context in Tennessee from her perspective of reporting on the decade-long democratic decline and rise of one-party rule in Poland and Hungary. “…the cascade of tiny legal and procedural changes designed to create an unlevel playing field, the ruling party’s inexplicable sense of grievance, the displaced moderates with nowhere to go—this [does] seem familiar from other places. So [is] the sense that institutional politics has become performative, somehow separated from real life…Today, Tennessee is a model of one-party rule… Nor will the situation be easy to change, because gerrymandering is something of a blood sport in the state… [And] Getting people to vote is not so easy, either, because Tennessee has some of the nation’s most restrictive voting laws.”  

Why We Shouldn’t Give Up on Organized Religion 

by Tish Harrison Warren, New York Times Opinion 

Check out this interview with Eboo Patel, an American Muslim and founder and president of Interfaith America, a nonprofit that aims to promote cooperation across religious differences. Patel discusses his latest book, “We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy” and speaks about religious identity, diversity and institutions in America.  

More than Red and Blue: Political Parties and American Democracy 

The American Political Science Association (APSA) & Protect Democracy 

APSA and Protect Democracy partnered to support the APSA Presidential Task Force on Political Parties to synthesize decades of research on political parties and what they do in democracies. Key insights include: (1) the current campaign environment, from campaign finance regulations to changes in media, have made it harder for political parties to fulfill their roles; (2) American political parties are easy to join, opening them to new voices and interests but also leaving them vulnerable to capture by those with authoritarian objectives; (3) Racial realignment between the major parties has been growing for decades, changing the way the parties see the political landscape and their incentives for action; and (4) political parties are vital to modern democracy and reform efforts should take their essential roles seriously. 

WATCHING: 

Can We Transform Our Politics? 

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, Braver Angels Convention 

Governor Cox is well known for the public service announcement with his rival candidate, Democratic candidate Chris Peterson during the 2020 race for governor. Research has shown that watching the “One Nation” ad reduced viewers support for undemocratic practices, such as forgoing democratic principles for partisan gain or using violence against members of another party. Check out Governor Cox’s keynote address at the recent Braver Angels Convention in Gettysburg.  

Why Did “Woke” Go from Black to Bad? 

The Legal Defense Fund 

To some, the word “woke” is now a derisive stand-in for diversity, inclusion, empathy and Blackness. When legislators pass a law to “stop woke” in light of the word’s true history as well as its commonly understood meaning, what are they really saying? Check out this recent article by Keecee DeVenny on American Redefined, How Language is Weaponized. “Make no mistake, the linking of discussions of systemic oppression, race, gender expression, and sexual orientation with “anti-American” sentiments is intentional. It’s an attempt to redefine and reclassify who gets to call themselves American, regardless of their relationship to the country.” 

The Resurgence of the ‘Oldest Hatred’: The Effort to Combat Antisemitism 

Aspen Ideas Festival 

“Antisemitic incidents are on the rise in the United States, leaving Jewish communities feeling vulnerable — a sentiment both new and sadly familiar. Among the responses is the first ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, released by the White House, advocating a whole-of-society approach because all of us are affected by hate and it takes all of us to fight it.” Moderated by Katie Couric, this Aspen Ideas Festival panel features Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Eric Ward from Race Forward and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall from Harvard’s Belfer Center. 

LISTENING TO:  

Advancing Just, Multiracial Democracy with john a. powell 

Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast 

“On this episode, Julie Nelson, Senior Vice President of Programs at Race Forward and john a. powell, Director, Othering and Belonging Institute, come together in a conversation inspired by the recent essay they co-authored, “Advancing Just, Multiracial Democracy.”  They explore the role local municipalities can play in not only defending against “democratic backsliding,” but also in expanding the very nature of democracy, which is critical with the global rise of authoritarianism and nationalism. Julie and john’s work rests on the idea that local governments are uniquely situated to turn grim situations built on “othering” into a global movement grounded in racial justice and belonging.”  

Are ESG Investors Actually Helping the Environment? 

Freakonomics Podcast 

Economist Kelly Shue argues that ESG investing gives more money to firms that are already green while depriving polluting firms of financing that they need to get greener. But she offers a solution, which is to take an engagement strategy with corporations and build power from the inside for change. As the debate about ESG continues to rage, we found this a nuanced conversation in line with our approach to the business pillar within a pro-democracy movement that requires both strategic engagement and pressure tactics. 

Making Reparations a Reality: Blazing a Trail to Racial Repair with Trevor Smith 

Let’s Hear It Podcast! 

Check out this thought-provoking episode with Trevor Smith, the Director of Narrative Change at Liberation Ventures. Trevor is a writer, researcher, and editor of the newsletter – Reparations Daily (ish). During the interview Trevor discusses the growing movement calling for reparations as a catalyst for true racial repair. He invites reflection on how we can all work toward a new narrative of reparations, and how we can create a democracy that is inclusive, empathetic, and centered on principles of justice. 

FOR FUN 

This is Real! Premiere Performance at the 22CI Conference: Forging a People Powered Democracy 

The 22CI conference came to a close earlier this month with a joyful performance of a brand new song crafted during one of the sessions, “Developing a Collective Poetic Voice to Address Authoritarianism Thru Songwriting,” under the direction of Jane Sapp, a musician and cultural worker at Let’s Make a Better World and Cindy Cohen, Emerita of Brandeis University and former Director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts. Special thanks to the members of the “This is Real Ensemble” – Destiny Williams, Jeralyn Cave, Penny Rosenwasser, and Molly O’Connor. You guys rocked it.  

THE VISTA: May 2023

During the month of May, many important resources have been released on both the rise of authoritarianism and on global polarization. Horizons appreciates the opportunity to learn from across regional contexts and supports deep understanding of how the authoritarian playbook is used to fuel divisions and toxic othering. In “America Needs a Cross-National Approach to Counter Authoritarianism” Yordanos Eyoel provides an overview of the newly released report, “Defending and Strengthening Diverse Democracies” that offers lessons from Brazil, India, South Africa, and the United States. The Institute For Integrated Transitions also published as a part of their global polarization program: First Principles: The Need for Greater Consensus on the Fundamentals of Polarisation. Aditi Juneja makes The Case for Expanding the Landscape of Democracy Work; and People’s Action Institute highlights the need for an organizing revival, in their recent report: The Antidote to Authoritarianism.

Horizons Chief Organizer, Maria Stephan, published a comprehensive piece this month on how the global authoritarian playbook is being executed in Florida and lessons for the pro-democracy movement. A special thanks to all the front-line movement leaders in Florida who contributed to this analysis and who continue such important organizing work under such difficult circumstances.

As we kick off the summer in the US with LGBTQI+ Pride month in June, we recommend the new resources provided by Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protections on Protecting Pride Events from Armed Extremist Activity. Our hope is that we continue to care for each other and find new ways of being and doing across our many difference.

Enjoy some of the other resources that the Horizons’ team has been reading, watching and listening to:

READING

Why Voters Who Value Democracy Participate in Democratic Backsliding

by Alia Braley and Gabriel Lenz, Nature Human Behavior

“Around the world, citizens are voting away the democracies they claim to cherish.” This article summarizes research that shows this behaviour is driven in part by the belief that our opponents will undermine democracy first. The study finds that US partisans are willing to subvert democratic norms to the extent that they believe opposing partisans are willing to do the same. When partisans were exposed to the fact that their opponents are more committed to democratic norms than they thought – they became more committed to upholding democratic norms themselves and less willing to vote for candidates who break these norms. “These findings suggest that aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy and that we can foster democratic stability by informing partisans about the other side’s commitment to democracy.”

How King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ parallels the Tennessee Three

by Kristen Thomason, Baptist News Global

One of the Tennessee Three, Rep. Justin Jones tweeted: “There comes a time when you have to do something out of the ordinary. We occupied the House floor today after repeatedly being silenced from talking about the crisis of mass shootings. We could not go about business as usual as thousands were protesting outside demanding action.” This article connects this action to the reasoning of Martin Luther King Jr. 60 years ago as explained in his famous letter from a Birmingham Jail that sometimes actions out of the ordinary are necessary. “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.”

Being Human > Being Right

by Thomas Coombes

“Does your approach to social justice depend on showing people that they are wrong (and, therefore, that you are right)?” Our friend The Hope Guy has written a wonderful summary of the insights from four recent books to challenge this all-too-common approach to “being right” and lays out three helpful steps: (1) Recognize when our certainty makes us bad communicators; (2) To change minds, listen; and (3) Make the conversation (not its subject) the story.

WATCHING

The Growing Threat of Christian Nationalism

“What is Christian nationalism and how does it threaten our democracy? Investigative reporter Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, Eric K. Ward, executive vice president at Race Forward, and Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, communications director at  Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and a member of BJC’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign discuss the rise of Christian nationalism, its intersection with antisemitism, racism, and extremism, and why we should be paying attention.” (This is the second program in a four-part series on Exploring Hate.)

A Brief but Spectacular Take on Finding Hope in a Difficult World

PBS Newshour

Simran Jeet Singh is executive director for the Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program and author of “The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life.” Singh shares his Brief But Spectacular take on how by focusing on the positive aspects of our multi-religious, racial and ethnic world, society can disrupt bias and build empathy.

The Abortion Talks

This documentary film by Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins follows the crimes and trial of John Salvi—and the story of six women, all of them leaders in the pro-life and pro-choice movements, who sought to ensure that it would never happen again. To coincide with the film’s impact campaign, Picture Motion has launched a Screening Tour, providing access to the film and an accompanying Discussion & Action Guide at a sliding fee scale. If you are interested in hosting a film screening, you can contact Picture Motion here.

Imagination Infrastructure

ICYMI, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently released all the video recordings from their convening “A Time Between Worlds” where a series of inspiring speakers from around the world discussed aspects of imagination infrastructure. Olivia Oldham summarizes various concepts of imagination as a way “of seeing, sensing, thinking, dreaming” that creates the conditions for material interventions in, and political sensibilities of the world. Imagination is thus a transformative practice, which has the capacity to cultivate and foster alternatives to social, political, cultural and economic conditions; it is a prerequisite for changing the world for the better.”

LISTENING TO

“Polarization” Is Not the Problem. It Obscures the Problem – with Shannon McGregor

Is this Democracy Podcast

In this interview McGregor discusses her recent article, A Review and Provocation: On Polarization and Platforms and reflects on: “Why do scholars, politicians, journalists, and pundits cling to the idea of “polarization”? [Her] answer lies in the fact that the empirical, normative, and historical inadequacy is not a bug, but a feature of the polarization narrative – it is precisely the fact that is obscures rather than illuminates the actual problem that makes it attractive. The “polarization” concept is useful if you want to lament major problems in American politics, but either don’t see or simply can’t bring yourself to address the fact that the major threat to American democracy is a radicalizing Right, is the threat of rightwing authoritarian minority rule. In this way the concept even provides a rhetoric of rapprochement since it does not require agreement as to what is actually ailing America, only that “polarization” is to the detriment of all.”

A Slow Civil War? Jeff Sharlet

Future Hindsight Podcast

Jeff Sharlet discusses his latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, reflecting on the democratic decline in the US, and the role of myths and martyrdom within fascist narratives. “On the Far Right, everything is heightened―love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood. Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.”

Hungary: Learning useful lessons from your enemies

Strength & Solidarity Podcast

“The election in 2010, of Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban and his Fidesz party triggered a lurch to the right and authoritarian rule. It brought legal restriction, bureaucratic harassment and public vilification to the country’s civil society and human rights community. Official hostility made it difficult for [non-profits] to survive and made individual rights workers’ lives hell. It would not have been surprising if the net outcome of such targeting were a weakened human rights movement and a profound loss of confidence. And yet, says Stefánia Kapronczay, co-director of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, that is not what has happened. Instead, finding themselves blocked from their former work of advocacy and litigation, human rights workers pivoted to a model of grass roots activism that puts citizens’ needs and their values about rights and justice at the heart of movement-building. It is work they had not been doing enough of, she argues, and it is making the constituency for human rights stronger.”

How the News Media Shortchanges Nonviolent Resistance

War Stories Peace Stories Podcast

“The right to peaceful protest is considered fundamental in democracies around the world.  Nonviolent protest movements, like the Gandhian movement for independence in India or The Civil Rights Movement in the United States, are celebrated in history books. Yet if you go looking for coverage of nonviolent protest in the news media, most of the time you’ll come up short. In this interview, Horizons’ Chief Organizer, Maria J. Stephan widens the lens on nonviolent resistance and offers tips for how journalists could apply that lens to tell more complete and captivating stories.

INTERESTING TWEETS

FOR FUN

Astronaut shares the profound ‘big lie’ he realized after seeing the Earth from space

by Tod Perry Upworthy

“Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the “overview effect.” This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.…In a compelling interview with Big Think, astronaut, author and humanitarian Ron Garan explains how if more of us developed this planetary perspective we could fix much of what ails humanity and the planet.”

THE PILLARS PROJECT: Labor Unions and Professional Associations

Why should labor unions and professional associations care about authoritarianism?

American democracy is in a moment of crisis. Long-standing trends and practices that undermined agreement on the rules of the political game have been weaponized by a segment of our political class that seeks to undermine constitutional rights and freedoms, exclude minority groups from power, and suppress opposition through disinformation and violence.

Democratic backsliding in the United States is a particular threat to labor and professional organizations. The research is clear: democracy is good for labor. Democracies not only provide more robust protections for freedom of association, they pay higher wages! Rollbacks in democracyhave led to significant attacks on both labor rights and the autonomy of professional organizations in India, Hungary, and elsewhere. Would-be authoritarians undermine the autonomy of outside organizations to centralize control over all the major organs of society.

Both labor and professional groups have played critical roles in advancing and protecting democracy in the past, and many continue to do so today. When labor and professional groups join social movements pushing for democratic change, they tend to have much higher rates of success and long-term sustainability. Professional disciplines such as the law have particularly important relationships to the state of American democracy. Yet there is a strong need in the current moment of democratic crisis for disparate efforts to protect and advance democracy to be levelled up and conducted collaboratively with the broader pro-democracy ecosystem.

How can Labor and Professional Groups Support Democracy?

  • Labor and professional groups can be influential persuaders for democracy, when it is clear that they are speaking for the interests of their members and not seeking political power. For example, in Tunisia lawyers’ associations played a powerful role in advocating for the rule of law during the Ben Ali dictatorship, and later used the respect and symbolic power of their black robes on the front lines of 2011 “Arab Spring” uprising to lend legitimacy to those protests and help facilitate a democratic transition.
  • Labor and professional groups bring formidable organizing skills and networks to the pro-democracy ecosystem. For example, the civil rights movement in Winston-Salem, North Carolina had foundered, struggling to attract participants and effectively organize the Black community until tobacco industry unions (led by Black workers) organized membership drives for the NAACP, began building dense local networks among the Black working class through activities centered on the local union hall, and organized citizenship classes, political rallies, and mass meetings on civil and voting rights issues.
  • Labor and professional groups can often provide crucial resources for frontline activists struggling to advance democracy, from professional know-how to specialized access to political elites. During the 2017 protests against Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” thousands of lawyers descended on airports to provide pro bono legal counsel to immigrants caught by the ban. Conversation and connection between organizers and professional groups can help better catalog what resources are needed in the moment, and help streamline effective coordinated action.
  • In moments of democratic crisis, labor and professional groups are critical sources of organized non-cooperation, from organizing sectoral or general strikes to refusing to participate in legal proceedings or unjust professional standards. Research shows that the capacity for such widespread non-cooperation is crucial to counter an authoritarian breakthrough. For instance, widespread strikes organized by labor unions in cooperation with pro-democracy activists have been crucial in pushing back against democratic backsliding across many countries including Sri Lanka, India, Fiji, and South Korea.

The Horizons Project’s Work

  • Research and Analysis: As part of its larger pillars of support project, Horizons is examining how labor and professional organizations have helped protect democracy in the US and other countries during democratic backsliding, and the most effective ways to do so. We will be working with labor and professional groups to share the results of this research, providing practical tools and ideas to help shift priorities and collective action to pro-actively protect democracy from the current authoritarian threat. Horizons will be producing short, action-focused publications and, together with partners, hold a series of salons on Labor and Democracy.
  • Relationship-Building: Research shows that protecting and restoring American democracy will require united effort across a wide range of sectors. Horizons is building connective tissue between labor and professional groups and other key nodes in the pro-democracy ecosystem to strategize how efforts at protecting democracy can be most effectively coordinated both at the state level and nationally. We plan to organize both formal events and informal conversations between labor and professional organizations, grassroots organizers, and others in the pro-democracy space to help build the foundations for united action to protect democracy as we move towards the 2024 election and beyond.

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

THE PILLARS PROJECT: The Faith Community

Why should faith communities care about authoritarianism?

A flourishing democracy is one of the strongest protections for the free exercise of religion. From the persecution of Christians and ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in mainland China to the suppression of the Baha’i faith in Iran to the targeting of religious minorities in the backsliding democracy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, the pattern from around the world is clear: when democracy breaks down, people of faith suffer.

The connections between faith and freedom are even more important at a time when some American politicians are appropriating religion to advocate for an exclusive “Christian nationalism” that uses government to impose their ideology on others. The examples of dozens of countries that have put the supremacy of one religion at the center of their politics shows the devastating consequences of this approach: heightened deadly conflict, increased political corruption as political leaders adopt the mantle of religion to pursue their personal agendas, and often a decline in the vibrancy of religious life. Indeed, the close affiliation of a political ideology with certain brands of Christianity is the primary reason for the stunning growth over the last three decades in Americans abandoning identification with religion.

Yet the answer to the appropriation of religion by an authoritarian faction in the United States is not to depoliticize religion. Indeed, history shows that when people of faith withdraw from the social issues of the day their withdrawal reinforces existing systems of injustice.

Instead, faith communities have a critical role to play in revitalizing our democracy and countering toxic polarization. Communities of faith have always been a bedrock of American democracy. Following one’s conscience in defiance of established state churches motivated the pilgrims and many of the other early immigrants to North America. Faith was at the center of almost all the great American social movements; from the Abolitionist movement against slavery in the 1800s to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As the great writer of Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville put it: “in America the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom…[are] intimately united.”

So what does this role look like for faith communities in America today? The specifics will look different depending on faith communities’ positioning in the rich tapestry of American religious life. But the history of religious engagement in struggles for democracy in America and around the world suggests a few common effective strategies.

How can Faith Communities Support Democracy?

  • Communities of faith often come with unique positions of moral influence that make them powerful persuaders for democracy. Such acts of persuasion are most effective when they are clearly linked to faith community’s spiritual mandates, and when they directly address the spiritual and moral claims of those undermining democracy. For instance, in Malawi in the 1990s a pastoral letter by Catholic bishops condemning restrictions on political freedoms was pivotal in leading to the restoration of democracy. The letter linked human rights and freedom to the Catholic Church’s spiritual mission and undermined the moral authority that dictatorial president Hastings Banda claimed as a church elder. Religious women like Quaker Minister Lucretia Mott leveraged their faith and gender as powerful advocates for the abolition of slavery in the 1800s. More recently, after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, numerous faith leaders, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, issued statements calling on their members to “honor democratic institutions and processes.”
  • Persuasion is important but may have a limited impact unless it’s backed up by courageous acts of noncooperation, where religious leaders, institutions, or communities refuse to continue normal patterns of behavior in response to egregious violations of democratic principles or human rights. There is a long and storied tradition of non-cooperation and civil disobedience across many faith traditions, from the earliest history of Christianity to modern debates on civil disobedience in Islam. For example, during the People Power movement in the Philippines, courageous Catholic nuns who knelt before tanks while praying the rosary were crucial in preventing a violent crackdown and ensuring the movement’s success.
  • Faith communities can engage in bridgebuilding and mediation, drawing on their positions of respect in the communities where they live and work to connect parties across difference. Democratic breakdown is fueled by hyper-partisan polarization. Faith communities provide one of the strongest and most resilient forums for overcoming that polarization. Effective engagement typically looks more like shared effort towards common goals, rather than dialogue for dialogue’s sake, and requires outreach beyond sympathetic audiences. In Liberia, Muslim and Christian women ended their country’s civil war by forming the “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace” that brought women together across long-standing divides and pressured their government and rebel groups to do the same.
  • Faith communities are often one of the best-placed organizations for providing material support for pro-democracy mobilization. Community organizing networks rely on the physical infrastructure, interpersonal networks, and practical resources that churches, temples, mosques, and other religious institutions provide. This approach was most famously and effectively used in the American civil rights movement, when Black churches formed the backbone for almost every major civil rights campaign. Similarly, evangelical churches in East Germany in the 1980s provided one of the few free spaces for organizing against the country’s Communist dictatorship, playing a pivotal role in the nonviolent resistance campaign that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
  • Faith communities often provide great symbolic power to unify across difference, build momentum to push for change, and remain resilient in the face of challenges. From the freedom songs of the civil rights movement to the Muslims and Christians joined in prayer during the Arab Spring in Egypt to the courageous activists of the Polish Solidarity movement against Communism celebrating Mass on the frontlines of their campaign for freedom, religious faith is one of the most powerful animating forces in the struggle for justice and democracy.

The Horizons Project’s Work

The Horizons Project recognizes the importance of the faith community as a force for democracy and is engaging with diverse faith leaders and coalitions to establish a common framework to understand and combat the authoritarian threat; and strategically link faith-based organizations with the pro-democracy civil society ecosystem. We are reaching out to or partnering with organizations such as the One America Movement, the Kairos Center, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, the Ignatian Solidarity Network, NETWORK, Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Mormon Women for Ethical Governance, Pax Christi, and the National Council of Churches.

  • Research and Analysis: As part of its larger pillars of support project, Horizons is examining how faith communities have protected democracy both in the US and other countries during democratic backsliding, and the most effective ways for faith communities to do so. We will be working with faith communities to share the results of this research, providing practical tools and ideas to help shift priorities and collective action to pro-actively protect democracy from the current authoritarian threat. Horizons will be producing short, action-focused publications and, together with partners, hold one or more salons on Faith and Democracy.
  • Relationship-Building: Research shows that protecting and restoring American democracy will require united effort across a wide range of sectors. Horizons is building connective tissue between faith communities and other key nodes in the pro-democracy ecosystem to strategize how efforts at protecting democracy can be most effectively coordinated both at the state level and nationally. We plan to organize both formal events and informal conversations between faith leaders, grassroots organizers, and others in the pro-democracy space to help build the foundations for united action to protect democracy as we move towards the 2024 election and beyond.

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

Exploring Narrative Practices for Broad-based Movements in Contexts of Democratic Decline

This piece was originally published on March 1, 2023 on OpenGlobalRights by Chief Network Weaver Julia Roig and James Savage.

Versión en Español

The rise in authoritarianism and democratic decline around the world is well-documented, and yet the analysis of why this is happening and prioritizing what to do about it is not as clear cut. The ways that social movements incorporate diversity and create space for reflection together—including narrative practices—are therefore more important than ever, so that movement actors model the democratic values they are advocating and can find common cause with potential allies who may have different approaches or priorities.

Anti-democratic forces rely on fueling deeply divided societies with a diet of dangerous othering of whatever racial, ethnic, gendered, or religious “out-group” should be blamed for society’s ills. Operating within these divisive contexts, pro-democracy, rights-based actors often struggle with fragmentation among and between movements and potential allies.

The Narrative Engagement Across Difference Project (NEAD) was designed by a consortium of organizers, academics, and philanthropists to take a deep look at narrative practices from a multidisciplinary lens and to reflect on how we can better unlock more effective collective action within diverse, broad-based movements.

The NEAD team starts from a broad understanding of “narrative” as a process of making meaning, acknowledging that humans understand themselves and the world around them through stories (characters, plot lines, and values). There is a burgeoning interest in narrative studies and practice within the field of social change and movement-building. Many narrative practitioners and funders are using creative means to build narrative infrastructure and power, especially for those whose voices have been traditionally marginalized or “othered,” and yet we continue to experience fragmentation and toxic othering within many of our movement ecologies where civic space is closing.

To ground NEAD’s future exploration in existing research, the team recently released the findings of a broad literature review. The report categorizes three areas of narrative practice that support collaboration between groups coming together with the aim of reducing systems of authoritarianism and strengthening democratic values:

1. Legitimacy—how narratives regulate and determine the nature of interactions between people (i.e., how we position ourselves and others as legitimate, worthy, good, or bad);

2. Power—the dynamics of relations and decision-making in the narrative landscape (i.e., how and where control is exerted or privilege experienced to deem what is acceptable, normal, or transgressive); and

3. Complexity—the capacity of any narrative to evolve and change (i.e., when and how the elaboration of nuanced, multifaceted descriptions of people, events, and values produce multiple, complex, and evolving stories and meaning-making).

The research offers several provocations—or cautionary tales—with implications for common narrative practices within social movements that are worth highlighting and wrestling with.

First, should we seek a “shared narrative”?In coalitional work, we often assume that if we share a narrative of the social change we seek, then we will have shared attitudes and we can share work and collective action (e.g., “Immigrants are welcome here”). But endeavoring to negotiate a shared narrative, while common practice for strategic communications goals to reach a broader audience with consistent framing and messaging choices, could impede our ability to bring different perspectives into pro-democracy movements.

Seeking a shared narrative as a starting point for convening allies that then drives collective action also runs the risk of developing overly simplified narratives among those who already think alike and who can become “stuck in their story” without the benefit of being pushed to see beyond their own blind spots. Instead, complexifying narratives can be a movement-building tool, allowing both people and stories of lived experience to have layers, nuance, with multiple identities and contexts that can be woven together.

Second, delegitimizing “others” often backfires and gives fuel to harmful narratives. When people feel heard, they open themselves to reflection, consider alternatives to their own perspectives, and better engage in ways that build trust and deepen relationships. Narratives that delegitimize and promote othering intentionally or not shut down this aperture: for example, “Beware of letting the Trump-a-saurus Rex animals out of the zoo, or they will wreak havoc on our democracy.” Determining when our narrative strategies are undermining our overall movement goals of a pluralistic society in the long term is a crucial reflective practice.

When movements feed into an “us-versus-them” zeitgeist, we give fuel to the authoritarian playbook that thrives on the tactics of divide and rule. This lesson applies to legitimizing across all types of difference (ideological, generational, racial, religious; both within our groups and between groups) not as a call for everyone to just “get along” but to commit to a reflective practice of engaging diverse actors and their lived experience to broaden movement participation, while unmasking the systems of discrimination and oppression that sow division and harm.

Third, there are consequences of activating negative emotions as motivators. In the short term, negative emotions like anger and outrage are proven motivators for movement participation, especially within repressive environments and in the context of online engagement. The trade-offs demonstrated by the NEAD report indicate that using anger to mobilize can often result in a simplified narrative landscape of bad actors and/or righteous anger that sets up a contestation of dominant narratives lacking in complexity. Simple narratives that emphasize the need for security are a common tactic used by authoritarian regimes. While there are situations when moral clarity in a simplified message is needed—for instance, “Police brutality and murder of civilians is wrong and must stop”—the call for movement participation that recognizes justified anger and grieving, while also complexifying the nature of systemic injustices can help to diversify movement participation. In the long term, the report findings posit that simple narratives that rely on activating negative emotions can forestall needed conversations and broader support for critical reflections among potential allies.

This is just a taste of the rich findings within the literature review. The initial multi-disciplinary scoping effort was intended to offer practitioners and funders fodder for reflection on the narrative practices within movements to build stronger collective power to tackle authoritarianism and nurture democratic and civic space. The NEAD team is committed to joining efforts with learning partners within the pro-democracy, pro-rights ecosystem to continue reflecting on and experimenting with these narrative practices in different contexts.

Julia Roig is the Chief Network Weaver at The Horizons Project, which bridges peacebuilding, democracy, and social justice communities in the US and globally. Twitter @jroig_horizons

James Savage is the Program Director for the Enabling Environment for Human Rights Defenders Program at the Fund for Global Human Rights. His work focuses on civic space issues, including narrative-building. Twitter: @jamesmsavage

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Multiple Lanes to Multiracial Democracy

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

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

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.

THE VISTA: November 2022

At the time of writing our November newsletter, the results of all the US mid-term elections are still unknown. One clear win for democracy was that most of the local Secretary of State and Gubernatorial candidates who were “2020 election deniers” were unsuccessful in their bids for office. As we celebrate the wins of the many pro-democracy candidates and the tireless community organizers around the country, Horizons has been reflecting on Daniel Stid’s recent blog “…the conflation of democracy with politics is one of the biggest challenges to sustaining it. Democracy is so much larger than politics… we have to do a better job demarcating when we’re talking about what, otherwise we can create an idea or expectation that democracy is only working when we get the political wins we want, or that everything we don’t agree with is inherently anti-democratic”.

We still have a lot of work to do on the democracy agenda in the US and globally, and there are many resources and thought leaders offering a path forward. The Brennan Center for Justice provided a thoughtful analysis of How Voter Suppression Legislation is Tied to Race.

Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks from the Harvard Kennedy School recently released a seminal report (commissioned by Social and Economic Justice Leaders Project) Pro-Democracy Organizing against Autocracy in the United States: A Strategic Assessment & Recommendations, that proposes nonviolent resistance strategies, support systems to protect communities at-risk, and infrastructure needed for effective pro-democracy organizing. Others are asking In a Fast-Changing Political Landscape, How is The Democracy Alliance Evolving? And, also offering observations that Philanthropy Needs New Strategies to Save American Democracy.

Jill Vialet from the Center for Social Sector Leadership describes a new form of Democracy Entrepreneurship and highlights the importance of bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to the work of democratic reform. Part of this new mindset is how we talk about democracy, and in his recent opinion piece, How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in It, Carlos Lozada reflects on how the rhetoric we use can “move public discourse beyond extreme, intransigent postures of either kind, with the hope that in the process our debates will become more ‘democracy friendly’”.

At Horizons, we are committed to helping build a renewed global democracy movement, and the recent article by Rachel Kleinfeld, A Helsinki Moment for a New Democracy Strategy discusses lessons from the democracy community’s last paradigm shift to provide a lens for seeing what we need next; and, how countries need to work together on shared challenges. Finally, we hope you’ll tune in to the recent podcast interview with Horizons’ Co-Lead and Chief Organizer, Maria Stephan on the Difficult Conversations Podcast where she discusses the US’s long history of authoritarian tendencies, exactly how those tendencies are manifesting today, and how the tools and strategies of nonviolent action can be used to effectively counter them.

As we prepare for the Thanksgiving holidays in the US, we are grateful for all the inspiring work and important ideas reflected in what we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to:

READING

The Pillars of Support Project

By The Horizons Project

Horizons recently launched a new initiative to compile research and make recommendations for engaging different pillars within society that are positioned to incentivize pro-democracy behavior or continue to prop up an authoritarian system. There are many excellent organizations working within these pillars, such as faith communities, the private sector, organized labor, and veterans’ groups to name just a few.

The Role of In-Group Moderates in Faith Communities

by The One America Movement (OAM)

When OAM describes the role of in-group moderates, they “aren’t talking about being politically or socially moderate, compromising your values, or changing who you are. Being an in-group moderate means that you are willing to speak out when members of your community (your friends, your family, your coworkers, your congregation, your political party) behave in a way that contradicts your values. This act of speaking up can look like pulling someone you love aside to explain to them how concerned you are about their words or actions”.

The Importance of Corporate Political Responsibility

by Andrew Winston, Elizabeth Doty, and Thomas Lyon, MIT Sloan Management Review

Corporate Political Responsibility (CPR) is a broader take on old-school corporate social responsibility, or CSR. CPR focuses on how business influences four key systems: the rules of the game (markets, laws, and regulations), civic institutions and representation (for instance, protecting democracy), civil society and public discourse, and natural systems and societal shared resources. The article includes a helpful table on “Putting Corporate Political Responsibility Into Action”.

Could Veterans Put Us on a Path Toward Bringing Respect and Civility Back to Politics?

by Dan Vallone, Stars and Stripes

As we celebrated Veterans Day November 11th, this special edition of Stars and Stripes highlighted the research of More In Common that found that 86% of Americans say they trust veterans to do what is right for America and 76% say veterans are role models for good citizenship. “This trust and respect holds true for Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, and speaks to the distinct potential veterans have to bring Americans together across our political divide”.

WATCHING

Perspectives from Neuroscience: Visualizing the Wonders of the Brain

by Dr. Richard J. Davidson; The Wellbeing Summit for Social Change

The Wellbeing Project held a Summit for Social Change in June 2022 that brought together global social, governmental, arts, and business leaders to advance individual and collective wellbeing for those working on the front lines of social change. You can watch all the videos of the presentations and check out the practical tools and arts installations presented at the Summit here. This session on the neuroscience of wellbeing was one of our favorites.

Signals in the Noise

by Reframe

Check out this great Tik Tok explanatory video on how wellness and fitness influencers create pathways to misinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories. (And while you’re there, check out their other super videos on misinformation and other narrative change topics)!

Building and Sustaining Resilience Amid Rising Political Violence

by Western States Center (WSC)

WSC hosted a series of conversations, Looking Forward by Looking Back, to learn from those who have waged a long-term struggle against authoritarianism to reflect on the choices we will make to protect inclusive democracy in the US. If you missed this inspiring webinar sharing important lessons from the experience in South Africa, we highly recommend taking time to watch the recording; you can download the presentation slides here.

LISTENING TO

These Political Scientists Surveyed 500,000 Voters. Here Are Their Unnerving Conclusions

The Ezra Klein Show podcast

John Sides and Lynn Vavreck — political scientists at Vanderbilt and U.C.L.A., respectively — discuss the findings of their new book, The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy. In this podcast, they make an interesting argument that our politics aren’t just polarized, but calcified, describing the process and implications of this calcification.

Complexity & Genius

The Deep Dive podcast with Philip McKenzie

Systems-level change is hard. In this podcast, Jennifer Garvey Berger discusses her new book Unlock Your Complexity Genius which explores how we think about and process complexity and how we leverage that thinking to understand ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Ripples of Hate

StoryCorps podcast

In 2012, StoryCorps broadcast a conversation with a young woman involved in the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, a Black man in Portland, Oregon. A decade later, they revisited it to look at the ripples of racist violence, and a few people who fought to stop it.

How to Depolarize Deeply Divided Societies

The Conversation Weekly podcast

Jennifer McCoy, a political scientist at Georgia State University, is studying cases of depolarization from around the world over the past century. Her research is identifying a couple of fundamental conditions of countries which have successfully depolarized (and sustained it.) Robert Talisse, a political philosopher at Vanderbilt University, describes a different phenomenon that he calls belief polarization. Talisse doesn’t believe polarization can ever be eliminated – only managed. And he has a couple of suggestions for how.

INTERESTING TWEETS

FOR FUN

Fine Acts teamed up with the Democracy & Belonging Forum, an initiative of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley – to produce a collection of powerful visual artworks on the topic of Bridging & Belonging. They “commissioned 40 amazing artists to work on the topic, through the prism of solutions and hope. All works are now published under an open license on thegreats.co, their platform for free social impact art, so that anyone – including educators, activists and nonprofits globally – can use them in their work”.

The Pillars of Support Project

Click here for the Pillars of Support Project Page
While many have recognized the rising crisis of American authoritarianism, making sense of the complexity of the authoritarian system is a challenge. Is the true problem misinformation fueled by social media? Or the inflexibility of our political institutions to respond to changes in demographics and technology? Is it about the normalization of political violence? The return to prominence and troubling mainstreaming of racist white nationalist ideologies? Or perhaps a lack of institutions of deliberative democracy? Maybe the real problem is the longstanding trend of rising economic inequality? Or is it all of the above?

The complexity of the problem has hampered efforts to coordinate action against authoritarianism. Yet such coordination is crucial. Research shows that the most effective social movements involve broad, diverse coalitions that are united around a shared strategy of success. And a central element of any strategy is a clear understanding of the system that the strategy seeks to address.

One powerful approach that can help make sense of this complexity is the “pillars of support” framework. The pillars framework can be summarized in a simple image: a roof held up by several pillars. The roof represents a political system’s leaders, while the pillars represent the key organizations or institutions that give those leaders the resources and legitimacy they need to exercise power. The model rests on two insights: power in any social or political system is something that flows up from below, and this flow almost always takes place through specific institutions. If we can identify those institutions and the resources they provide to the authoritarian system, then we can understand how power operates in that system and be better equipped to change it.

Horizons is currently conducting a set of research projects to explore and better understand the pillars of support for authoritarianism in the US, and what insights historical cases in the US and around the world can give us on how to change the incentives of key pillars to disrupt authoritarianism and incentivize pro-democracy behavior. Based on conversations with partners, we are focusing on four pillars: business, faith communities, civic/professional groups (including organized labor), and veterans’ groups. Key research questions include:

  • What are specific examples of how these key pillars have employed moral, cultural, social, economic/financial, and political levers to push back against democratic backsliding in semi-autocratic contexts in the US and globally?
  • Which groups and organizations constitute the key network nodes within each pillar in the US today?
  • What lessons from domestic and international cases could inform current pro-democracy organizing in the US?
  • How might these lessons inform best practices and specific tools that cross-partisan organizers can use in their work to push back against the authoritarian playbook across the US at the national level? At the state level? At the community level?
  • What are the barriers to operationalizing these best practices and tools and which groups, networks, individuals, etc. are best placed to overcome them?

To answer these questions, we are currently conducting two large-scale research projects. The first is collecting data on recent periods of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism. While scholars of nonviolent action have categorized hundreds of tactics for activists to employ, there is a lack of mapping the tactics that are uniquely applicable to engage specific societal pillars. So, for each period we examine two sets of questions: first, if a movement to protect democracy existed during this time, how did the movement seek to incentivize pillars to push back against authoritarianism, and how successful were such efforts? Second, we examine and systematically categorize any actions by pillars to push back against democratic backsliding and their outcomes. This enables us to identify the most effective levers that pillars have available to them to reverse authoritarianism and restore democracy.

When completed, this research project will provide systematic evidence of global trends both in what has been most effective in swaying pillars away from authoritarianism, and the most effective ways in which pro-democracy allies within these pillars have used their unique position of leverage to disrupt democratic backsliding. We will also harvest a wide range of vignettes that can provide inspiration for organizers and actors within the relevant pillars in the US.

Our second research project is developing a process to conduct comprehensive mapping of the pillars of support for authoritarianism in the US, focused on our four pillars of particular interest (business, faith, civic/professional, and veterans’ groups). The most acute democratic backsliding is taking place within certain states, and levels of authoritarianism vary widely from state to state. Recognizing this fact, we are piloting a process of mapping pillars of support for authoritarian systems at the state level, conducting an initial mapping in the state of Georgia over the course of 2023. Our goal is to offer both the results of the Georgia pillars analysis and the mapping process itself as a resource for pro-democracy organizers to replicate in other states. Ultimately these efforts would be linked in a larger national-level map.

No single framework can fully capture the complexity of the authoritarian system, but through carefully analyzing the key resources that sustain authoritarianism and the pillars of support through which those resources flow pro-democracy organizers can more strategically go on the offense to build key relationships and counter authoritarianism to advance a more just, inclusive democracy.

Click here to learn more about the project and our findings!

Building A United Front

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.