Blog 6 - Democracy

Michael Hsu

7/21/19

Blog Entry #6

This past Thursday, Democracy Initiative hosted a Democracy Champions Training event for interns in the DC area. We mostly reached out to our partner organizations, but we also reached out to those that we are not currently partnering. We’ve been organizing this for about a month now, and at a time where our democracy is being challenged right now, it seemed right that we had a training event like this for our current and future leaders.

There were folks that came from many different organizations, such as Greenpeace, Common Cause, and NAACP, and came from many different schools around the country. We had various speakers speak at our event, including our Democracy Initiative Executive Director and Common Cause’s Executive Director. Our training was facilitated by a few folks from the Democracy Initiative and the Executive Director of Common Cause Maryland. They led important discussions and activities on various topics that we went over.

One of the most important discussions and activities that we went over was how to talk to people regarding democracy issues. Often times, one of the biggest mistakes that we all can make is that we don’t meet where people are at. For example, a local resident might not have thought about voting because they don’t believe that voting has brought about real change. Someone else might be dealing with health issues that forces them to pay huge sums of money out of pocket. Because of this, they haven’t thought about how issues such as healthcare connect with the democracy issues.

We also talked about power dynamics. We talked about the folks that have enormous power over our political and economic system, and how everyday people can generate the power that we have from within ourselves. Change never takes place from those in government or other powerful positions. Change starts with everyday people demanding that change takes place. I’m reminded by a quote by Frederick Douglass where he said, “Power concedes nothing without demand.” It is just as relevant of a quote back in the era of slavery as it is now with the various issues of our time.