Amanda Litman fills me with hope. I hope they are working on an intravenous version of her, but for now there is now this video.
Amanda has figured out a very specific way to try to put America on a different path from this descent into authoritarianism: helping people run for office, through her terrific organization Run for Something.
But in our conversation today, she was full of ideas of other kinds as well; and I began to understand something more fundamental and big-picture about her approach.
While so many political actors these days emphasize the fight against Trump and Trumpism, Amanda is talking and thinking about a politics of ties. The key to saving the country and defeating the dystopians and realizing true multiracial democracy, in her telling, will flow from rebuilding the habit of association that Alexis de Tocqueville noticed in America nearly 200 years ago, a spirit lost.
Amanda has a vision for how we get it back. And what is so powerful about that message is that it has an immediate role for everyone. Yes, it’s true, you can’t personally end the government shutdown. But if Amanda is right about what has gone wrong in America beneath the surface, there is a whole list of things you can do right now, things many of us are probably not doing, things that would help bend the arc.
So many of you have been asking for marching orders since November, and we hear you. We’ve tried to be guides. This may be the most helpful post in that vein yet.
Go forth!
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