Tag: democracy
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Protest in Trump’s America
(and what’s missing from the pro-democracy movement) This week, Arman Azedi and I published a research brief about civic participation and protest in America. In the piece, we analyze data that were collected from over 23,000 Americans in spring 2026 as part of the Democracy for All project. The dataset is a treasure trove of…
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Building Power in the Polycrisis
Two years ago this week, I presented my TED Talk at TED Countdown: Overcoming Dilemmas in the Green Transition in Brussels. Acknowledging the challenges of the green transition, along with the broader obstacles to achieving the 1.5 degree goal set in the Paris Agreement, the event was designed to help “tip the balance in this…
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Assessing Democracy in America before the Midterms
I had the opportunity to review the third report from the Democracy for All Project before it was released this week. The project is a collaboration between the Charles F. Kettering Foundation and Gallup and involves an annual survey of more than 23,000 American adults to understand civic life and Democracy in America. The results…
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Can the 2026 Election Save Our Democracy?
It is 80 days until the 2026 midterm elections take place across the US. There’s been a lot of discussion about what the progressive wins against moderates around the country mean for America and the Democratic Party. I expect even more speculation and coverage as the general election approaches and the Democratic Party decides whether…
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America at 250: This is NOT What Democracy Looks Like!
As our country celebrates its 250th anniversary, we are living through a particularly fraught period of US history with attacks on democratic participation and freedom of speech coming from inside the federal government. Across the country, the effects of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, which weakened protections in the Voting Rights Act, gave the executive…
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Persistence vs Burnout
It’s been 18 months since Donald Trump started his second term in the White House. Since then, his Administration has limited our civil liberties, cut our social services, targeted immigrants, and attacked scientific integrity and the scientific process. Americans have responded with unprecedented levels of protest. In fact, there were three times as many protests in the early months…
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Are We Expecting Too Much of No Kings 3?
Obsessing over magic numbers won’t save us; we have to save ourselves. Next weekend–on March 28th–the third No Kings Day will take place across the US. Organizers have been sharing this amazing map of the more-than-3000 planned events that have been scheduled for the day (the image below is from their website on 3/19). Like…
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What We Learned Studying the #NoKings Day Across the US
One of the challenges of studying protest in this era of distributed activism is that it’s extremely difficult to get a decent sample of who is participating across sites. When my team surveys at a large-scale protest event, like the Women’s March in Washington, DC in January 2017, we are only able to generalize our…
