David Orr (editor) - Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People

Advance Praise for Democracy Unchained

This courageous book is a timely treatment of our crisis of democracy! The variety of powerful voices and cogency of analytical viewpoints are badly needed in these grim neo-fascist times!

Cornel West, Harvard University

Where do we go from here? In Democracy Unchained some of the countrys best minds tackle this most urgent of questions. The result is a must-read for anyone interested inor worried aboutthe future of our Republic.

Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer, The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Sixth Extinction

This collection of essays by preeminent Americans from a wide array of backgrounds and professions, edited by David W. Orr, Andrew Gumbel, Bakari Kitwana, and William S. Becker, may someday be recognized as the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Federalist Papers. Certainly the times are no less perilous than when Hamilton, Madison, and Jay set their pens to paper.

Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle and Our Wild Calling

Democracy Unchained is an extraordinary compilation of essays on the parlous state of democracy in our country. Irrespective of whether you may disagree with some essays, every voting citizen should make the effort to read them all as they will stimulate serious thinking and make us better stewards of our democracy.

Theodore Roosevelt IV, managing director and chairman, Barclays Clean Tech Initiative

The looming climate catastrophe requires that we disenthrall ourselves from the constructs and assumptions of the past. Democracy Unchained presents an urgent opportunity to think anew, and to engage Americans from every part of America.

Tim Wirth, former U.S. senator from Colorado; president emeritus, United Nations Foundation

Democracy Unchained, in both spirit and substance, represents a revolutionary collection of voices and ideas imbued with the kind of hard-headed hope of which the country is in desperate need. Weve grumbled amongst ourselves and wrung our hands long enough in the face of these issues, and now here comes an array of disparate and visionary thinkers ready to address the uncomfortable truths inherent in our flawed America.

Eliza Griswold, writer, Pulitzer Prize winner

Brilliant, provocative, and timely. These superb essays invite us to reimagine and revitalize democratic institutions and practices. The invitation has never been more urgent or more persuasively articulated.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, co-director, Forum on Religion and Ecology

The five-alarm fire that is our democracy in the present moment is a conflagration of our own making, but also one that we alone can put out. This book is a warning, a jolt to the system, but also a way out.

Tim Egan, The New York Times

Whatever your greatest public worryfrom the climate emergency to extreme inequalitynone can be resolved without democracy. So, heres your tool for getting to the root solution. Lets dig deep together.

Frances Moore Lapp

Democracy Unchained

HOW TO REBUILD GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE

Edited by
David W. Orr,
Andrew Gumbel,
Bakari Kitwana,
and William S. Becker

To John Powers

The Master doesnt talk, he acts.

When his work is done,

The people say, Amazing:

We did it, all by ourselves!

Lao Tzu

CONTENTS

David W. Orr

Yascha Mounk

K. Sabeel Rahman

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Andrew Gumbel

Chisun Lee

Jeremi Suri

Stephen Skowronek

Steven C. Rockefeller

Eric Freyfogle

Michael Eric Dyson

Maria Hinojosa

Andra Gillespie and Nadia E. Brown

Rashad Robinson

Judy Braus

Dawn Johnsen

David Hickton

Robert Kuttner

Sasha Polakow-Suransky

Bill McKibben

Denise G. Fairchild

Jessica Tuchman Mathews

William S. Becker

Nick Rathod

Amy Hanauer

Jaqueline Salit and Thom Reilly

Stephen B. Heintz

Dan Moulthrop

Mayor Ras Baraka

Michael M. Crow, William B. Dabars, and Derrick M. Anderson

Timothy Beatley

Mindy Lubber

Mary Christina Wood

Ganesh Sitaraman

FOREWORD

Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People

L ike a house with a leaking roof, sagging floors, broken windows, and a crumbling foundation, American democracy is suffering from decades of disrepair. The challenge of reforming and updating democratic institutions would be difficult enough in normal times, but we do not live in normal times. The pace of change is faster than ever, the problems bigger, the corruption deeper, the risks more global, the time to prevent the worst that could happen is short, and the consequences of further delay beyond reckoning.

The election of 2016 exposed how vulnerable our democracy has become to social and economic divisions, foreign influence, and brazen demagoguery. We have stumbled into a post-truth worlda house of mirrors in a circus of the bizarre. Porn stars and illicit payments, corruption and emoluments, WikiLeaks and fake news, Barr v. Mueller, the alt-right and white supremacists, an unstable and impulsive president with his base, coal versus solar, an avalanche of mendacity, Russians in the shadows. Up is down, black is white, in is out, truth is fake. Democracy is always at risk to deceit and to those who refuse to abide by the rules and procedures necessary for civil civic discourse. Absent a decent regard for truth and respect for the law, however, democracy dies, and with it the last best hope of earth.

The conversations that led to this book began at a three-day conference on The State of American Democracy at Oberlin College in November 2017. We intended to clarify the historic and institutional origins of the election of 2016 and the growing risk that we are coming unmoored from our history and our highest values. Conservative writer David Frum puts it this way: We are living through the most dangerous challenge to

Democracy is a wager that its citizens have the stamina and wisdom to maintain a government of, by, and for the people. In the words of Harvard University political scientist Michael Sandel: The hope of our time rests with those who can summon the conviction and restraint to make sense of our condition and repair the civic life on which democracy depends. In that spirit, we are committed to repairing and strengthening democracy and believe it to be a requisite for meeting large challenges ahead including that of a rapidly changing climate.

The title is adapted from Nancy MacLeans book Democracy in Chains. We intend this both as an extension of Professor MacLeans brilliant historical analysis and as a statement of our belief that democracy has yet to achieve its full potential. From early conversations in the Athenian agora to the present, its advance has been intermittent and incomplete. The chains to be broken are those of racism, oligarchy, exclusion, militarization, ignorance, complacency, and the lack of imagination about how to rebuild our politics and government for all the people.