Imagine Who We Can Be – Mobilized
“Democracy is not just a static collection of rules and practices. It is an unfinished project in motion, a constant work in progress. And we must never forget that democracy is the political system in service of human freedom.” Those words by Jamie Raskin, who has served as the Representative of the 8th Congressional District in Maryland since 2017, begin to define mobilization.
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Jimmy Kimmel that “this is one of those moments when we are not going to see change in Washington unless more of us have said enough.” Another example of mobilization.
Adam Bonica, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, has studied the rise of authoritarians in the 21st century. Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters to an American on Mary 27, 2025 describe what Bonica has discovered. Attacks first begin against the judiciary. “When the courts rule against the leader, the leader and his loyalists attack judges as biased and dangerous.” (An action we see almost daily in our country)
Bonica cites this pattern of authoritarians from 2009 to 2021, beginning with Berlusconi in Italy, Erdogan in Turkey, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Duterte in the Philippines, and Bolsonaro in Brazil. They all railed against the judiciaries in their country, and they won. In each of these cases the authoritarians “successfully destroyed judicial independence because civil society failed to unite in time.”
Bonica describes how something very different happened in Israel in 2023. “When Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition tried to destroy judicial independence, people from all parts of society took to the streets. A broad, nonpartisan group came together to defend democracy and resist authoritarianism.”
“The key difference in these scenarios was whether people mobilized!”
Millions of Americans are mobilizing every day in every state!
As we saw on No Kings Day, June 14, more than 11 million Americans mobilized to create the largest demonstration in American history!
Imagine what is possible if even more of us are brave enough to mobilize!
I want to leave you with the last lines in the Tony Award Nominated play, “Good Night and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney as the courageous journalist Edward R. Morrow.
“There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. It is the fight for the very soul of this Republic. So, the question is not what power unchecked can do. We have seen that answer. No. The question is,
What are you prepared to do?”
