https://the.ink/p/want-to-save-democracy-watch-less
Want to save democracy? Watch less #cable $news; attend more #town meetings
A conversation with Harvard #political scientist Daniel Ziblatt about how #democracies die — and how a pro-democracy movement could keep ours alive
#ANANDGIRIDHARADAS
JAN 11, 2024
..."you have to get involved with real #organizations, where people are coming together face to face. This can mean #volunteering at your local precinct office of the Democratic Party. It turns out it's a really low bar to get involved. You could very quickly become the leader of the #local precinct office. And then you notice that nobody can meet regularly because they all have kids. So you work to set up a thing where people are sharing childcare duties, and next everyone is thinking about who should be the candidate in the next election.
...
they're voting on whether or not to introduce ranked order voting. And some of the defenders of the status quo said, "Well, I understand the national symbolism of this, but what's wrong in Lexington that really needs this reform?" Which I thought was a very good question to ask. And so people tried to make the case, "Well, if you look at who's running for office, it's all the same people over and over. Maybe if we did this, we'd have different people." So, people are engaged at the local level. And they're downloading white papers from Protect Democracy, and understanding the importance of these institutional reforms, and they can then become engaged on that level too.
That's my best answer: being engaged through real organizations, whether in local electoral politics, unions, church and religious institutions, that are addressing the real concerns of people's everyday lives.
...
There are overwhelming majorities of Americans who do value these institutions and value liberal principles, and value principles of racial equality. I was looking at some survey data on whether or not you think there should be rules, restrictions on where people can live on the basis of race. In the mid-1970s, very high percentages of Americans agreed that there should be. Today, overwhelming percentages of Americans think the opposite, conservative and liberal alike."...
