Remaking American democracy: Kick-Starting the Public Powers and Power-Leverage of Popular Assemblies

The Takedown of American Democracy: The depraved politics of Republican authoritarians in our era have perverted America's political culture and institutions and deserted the commonweal. Given this existential assault on the republic, professional community organizers have a unique obligation: . . . in "professing" organizing, we are called to declare ourselves worthy of the privilege and honor of faithful allegiance to a higher purpose, wholeheartedly accepting its lifetime obligations. But what purpose. . . ? The purpose for organizers in our tradition is that, regardless of our optimism or pessimism at any moment, we profess faithful allegiance to the individual and collective empowerment of the powerless. We believe it to be the most promising strategic vision to strengthen both democratic institutions and the moral-spiritual values that fully humanize those institutions. Therefore, given the present circumstances, our mission embraces strengthening American democracy by organizing to institutionally empower the demos, to potentiate a confirmed countermeasure to authoritarianism, one required for decades but thought by many of us to be unnecessary or impossible.