Defend Democracy: Reading and Resistance

Welcome to Defend Democracy: Reading and Resistance, a new pro-democracy grassroots group!

Our purpose is to peacefully defend democracy and resist the rise of autocracy through a book club that doubles as a resistance group. Through reading and discussion, we learn how democracy works, what it means in our own lives, what is happening in the world today (democratic backsliding), how and why democratic backsliding can happen, and what peaceful actions we can take to defend democracy.

So what is DEMOCRACY?
Democracy is a political system — and a way of living together — that spreads power among more people, giving more of us our voices in the decisions that shape our lives.

What is AUTOCRACY?
Autocracy is the opposite: a system that concentrates power among fewer people, silencing most voices and excluding most of us from having a say.

What is DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING?
Democratic backsliding is when a democracy weakens and begins to move toward autocracy, when power shared among many starts to consolidate among fewer.

Sometimes this happens suddenly — people wake up in the morning in a democracy and by the time they go to sleep that night, they are already in an autocracy. Examples include Chile in 1973 and Egypt in 2013, when democratically elected governments were overthrown by the military all at once in a coup. These events offer dramatic changes to those experiencing them and dramatic images to those watching.

But when Hungary’s ruling party rewrote the constitution in 2012 to weaken checks on its own power and limit judicial independence, there were no huge crowds shouting in the streets — just quiet, bureaucratic changes that shifted power step by step.

These gradual changes, where democratic institutions erode piece by piece, are easier to miss. But the result is the same: most people lose their voice. Recognizing what weakens democracy is the first step toward defending it.