The Rise of An Anti-Democracy Agenda

State legislatures across the country have passed a series of laws reducing voting rights, labor rights, and reversing campaign finance regulations over the past few years. Each of these has seemed like a separate moves. Recent research, however, shows that, taken together, these laws seem to defy many American democratic values.

In Democracy at Crossroads: How the One Percent is Silencing Our Voices, a recent report published by the Democracy Initiative Education Fund, voting expert Tova Wang shows that efforts across the states to limit the right to organize, the right to vote, and to let money continue to dominate state politics are not isolated incidents. Journalist Zachary Roth, in his new book, The Great Supression, tells a similar story of a cohesive effort that moved quickly across many states to undo progress on voting and campaign funding. To address these challenges requires an equally cohesive response, not one divided across issues.

Please join New America's Mark Schmitt  and EveryVoice’s Nick Nyhart for a conversation with Tova Wang, Zachary Roth, Marcia Johnson-Blanco, and Anna Burger about the steadily increasing concentration of American political power —and about how labor, civil rights, voting rights, environmental, good government, and other like-minded organizations with diverse memberships are building a response that can strengthen and broaden American democracy.

Follow the conversation online using #DemocracyAtCrossroads and by following @PolReformNA.

Participants:

Tova Wang
Former Director of Democracy Programs, Communications Workers of America and Senior Democracy Fellow, Demos
Project Director, Democracy At Crossroads: How the One Percent is Silencing Our Voices
@tovawang

Zachary Roth
National Reporter, MSNBC Digital
Author, The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy
@zackroth

Anna Burger
Former Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU
@AnnaBurger1

Marcia Johnson-Blanco
Co-Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law
@mfjblanco