K. Sabeel Rahman and Hollie Russon Gilman's new book, Civic Power, calls for a broader approach to democratic reform, offering a critical framework and concrete suggestions to support those reforms that meaningfully redistribute power to citizens.
"I think Greta has been able to speak truth to power in a way that has resonated with a lot of young people who are frustrated, who have lived their whole lives seeing inaction on climate change."
In 2016, a report from the progressive think tank Demosfound that most campaign dollars in local elections were coming from contributors who are white, male and high-income.
By enacting SB 7066, the Florida legislature has created two classes of returning citizens: those who can afford to reclaim their voting rights, and those who cannot.
Today’s Supreme Court decision that federal courts have no ability to check extreme partisan gerrymandering is a stunning blow to our democracy. This decision represents an abdication of judicial responsibility to protect against constitutional violations.
While Demos celebrates the legislation’s strong mandate on emissions reductions, the governor’s exclusion of community investment mandates and labor standards prolongs the fight for climate justice in New York and nationwide.
Women of color are generally underrepresented as campaign donors even though they vote at high rates, according to research by progressive think tank Demos.
The counter to this neoliberal vision involves, then, a more thorough moral critique—and a more transformative policy agenda—that tackles the underlying forces of corporate power, market inequities, structural racism, and anti-democratic political institutions. That progressives are finally talking in these expansive terms represents a potentially transformative inflection point in American politics.
Demos strongly supports the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) that will protect and strengthen climate-impacted Latinx communities by reducing climate pollution and targeting clean energy investment based on principles of equity and racial justice.
If we want to pass climate policies that could actually help reverse the climate crisis, then we also need to fix our democratic system that gives too much power to wealthy donors and big polluters.
The marquee bill, which features improvements to voting, campaign finance, and ethics laws, addresses the deep political, racial, and economic inequalities that plague our democracy.