Amid election deniers and political polarization, it's easy to overlook the times when democracy is actually working. We do that this week in a hopeful conversation about resident-centered government. Elected officials and administrative staff like city planners often have the best intentions when it comes to development and redevelopment, but political and professional incentives push them to pursue projects that lure in outsiders rather than serving people who live in their communities.
Our guest this week is Michelle Wilde Anderson, a professor of property, local government, and environmental justice at Stanford Law School and the author of The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America. The book tells the stories of revitalization efforts in Stockton, California, Josephine, Oregon, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Detroit, Michigan. In each instance, residents organized to fix small problems that turned into large-scale change. It's a model that anyone can replicate and our democracy will be stronger for it.
The Fight to Save the Town by Michelle Wilde Anderson
Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again
Will AI destroy democracy?
The 2019 version of Democracy in America
What neoliberalism left behind
Demagogues are more common than you think
What does the Mueller report mean for democracy?
School segregation then and now
What Serial taught Sarah Koenig about criminal justice — recorded live at Penn State
Is it time to revive civility?
E.J. Dionne on empathy and democracy
No Jargon: Who controls the states?
The ongoing struggle for civil rights
Immigration, refugees, and the politics of displacement
A playbook for organizing in turbulent times
Jonathan Haidt on the psychology of democracy
Future Hindsight: Ian Bremmer on the failure of globalism
Brexit and the UK’s identity crisis
Brazil’s tenuous relationship with democracy
Yellow vests and the “grand debate” in France
Viktor Orbán’s “velvet repression” in Hungary
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