American democracy's violent disruption
01/11/21 • 32 min
Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and what it says about the condition of American democracy. They also discuss whether it's possible to learn from this moment and what guideposts they'll be looking for to determine whether all the talk about protecting and restoring democracy we've heard since the attack will translate into action.
This episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021.
Additional Information
Statement from Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on January 6, 2021 attack
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Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, and Candis Watts Smith reflect on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and what it says about the condition of American democracy. They also discuss whether it's possible to learn from this moment and what guideposts they'll be looking for to determine whether all the talk about protecting and restoring democracy we've heard since the attack will translate into action.
This episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021.
Additional Information
Statement from Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on January 6, 2021 attack
Related Episodes
Andrew Sullivan on democracy's double-edged sword
Previous Episode
What neoliberalism left behind [rebroadcast]
Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neoliberal worldview among political, business, and intellectual leaders led to the populism we’re seeing throughout the world today. But is it mutually exclusive to democracy? Not necessarily.
Brown joins us this week to help make sense of what neoliberalism is, and where things stand today. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy of her book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, which will be released in July. It’s a follow up to her 2015 book, Undoing the Demos, and you’ll hear her talk about how her thinking has changed since then.
Brown is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches political theory.
Additional Information
Wendy’s books: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, Undoing the Demos
Next Episode
Extreme maps, extreme politics
Despite ongoing threats of violence, the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and in 2021, that means redistricting. States will draw new electoral maps this year using data from the 2020 Census.
Our guest this week has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering. He's also covered the groups of citizens across the country who pushed back against them to win some major reforms that will make the process look different now than it did in 2010.
David Daley is a journalist and author of Unrigged: How Citizens are Battling Back to Save Democracy. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, and New York magazine. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, the former editor of Salon, and lives in Massachusetts.
Additional Information
Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy
Fair Districts PA on judicial gerrymandering
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