We are a good and compassionate country. There is a wellspring of decency in this country that can be tapped. It’s up to us to go do it.

And I see it happening all over the country, in rural North Carolina, in upstate New York, in parts of this country you wouldn’t expect that neighbors are coming to rally with each other and for each other.

That kind of grassroots outreach is something that the civil society sector in this country has historically done, we can return to those roots.

And I think that’s going to mean a little bit of a culture change for us, which I think we can do, instead of just being focused on expertise, making the case, research reports, we’re going to have to be in neighborhoods, in rural communities, listening to people, not just ...

So I think one of the challenges for our sector, for charitable organizations, for philanthropy, is we are going to need to create the on-ramps for millions of people to come in to revitalize our democracy.

The last thing I’d say is we should not be trying to go back to a system that was not working for most people in this society. We need to go forward. The academic literature says 70% of the time when we have autocratic breakthroughs, there’s a U-turn. We come ...

We do know how to do this. You think about organizing people who are being harmed, whether it’s scientists, students, veterans, people of faith. So many people are in the crosshairs here, they can be engaged on those everyday issues to make them better, to create a pathway to somewhere ...

Two, we need a mass democratic movement in this country. Institutions by themselves are not going to save us. So millions of people are going to have to find agency and find a pathway to take action. And we know the formula for that. We’ve been through this before in ...

And I want to point out that there are positive examples here. Last week, over 800 charities came together and unequivocally denounced political violence in this country and also condemned the use of political violence to attack our basic fundamental constitutional freedoms and rights of free speech and association. We ...

But if all of us make that choice, we’re done for. And our democracy is done for.

And I say this not glibly. I say this as the leader of an institution that feels all the cross pressures. There’s every incentive to put your head down and to try to not be the one that is targeted.

First of all, we need the leaders of major institutions in society, universities, charities, businesses, media companies, journalists. We need these law firms, we need these institutions to actually stand up and take a stand for what’s right. And we need them to do it now, not tomorrow. We’re running ...

So here’s the lesson, I think, from our own history of democratic crises and from around the world. There are two ingredients that have to come together, and I think we don’t have a ton of time, in order for the small-D democratic revival to take place.

The simplest thing that I ask the question of people is, do you feel free to state your opinion, even if it’s unpopular or critical of those in power? And in more and more audiences I’m in, people say, no, I’m afraid. Everyday people say it, powerful people say it.

If we’re looking at any other country, we would say we have had an autocratic breakthrough and we are now in a process of autocratic consolidation.

And, you know, we are code red on democracy right now. Every indicator is pointing in the wrong direction.

Yeah. We need in the United States a massive, small-D democratic revival.

Out of this crucible of crisis, we can rebuild a civil society in this country that can undergird a much healthier and stronger democracy than what we had before.

In a way, this is the biggest organizing opportunity of my lifetime. Whether it’s veterans experiencing the pain of cuts in the VA, or parents experiencing the pain of cuts in the education system, or the family and friends and co-workers and co-parishioners of immigrants who are living in fear ...

And I think one of the bright spots of this moment for me is that out of this crisis we’re in, I think we are beginning to see an upsurge in participation and civic engagement.

So at the Freedom Together Foundation, we’ve made a generational commitment to invest in rebuilding that kind of social organizational infrastructure to give people a tangible experience of what it’s like to negotiate, to take action, to set an agenda with your neighbors.

So democracy can’t just be an experience we have every two years or four years. As important as voting is, it has to be an experience we have every day in our lives.

So the consequence is that most people go to work and they have an experience of having authoritarianism every day, having very little power on the job.

I’d also point to the dramatic decline in the labor movement throughout the world. In the United States, we’ve gone from 35% of people, workers, being part of a union, down to 6%.

That atomization is a huge part of the crises of loneliness, of isolation, of despair, that I think is driving our small-D democratic crisis.

Church participation, community organizations and civic organizations, places where you might meet people who come from a different background than you, who come from a different neighborhood, who don’t have the same political views, and you have to figure out how to kind of interact and work together.

And as I see it, in the United States, we’ve had a titanic erosion of the kinds of civic organizations that give people that everyday sense of participation and meaning.

And I’ve been focused on the kind of in real life part of that problem more than the tech side of that problem.

Well, thanks for the question. And I think what I’d reflect is that democracy as a political system is losing legitimacy and is imperiled in part because people do not have a sense of agency and a lived experience of democracy in their everyday lives.