It was about this time of year in 1997 that I moved across the country and took my first job in the sector broadly known as “civil society.”
Since then, I have grown in my career. I have developed a profile. By dint of sheer survival and longevity, I have accumulated seniority.
For most of that time, I have worked in the field of democracy. It is a broad field, yet in its way a narrow one. It consists, for the most part — though not exclusively — of people who have devoted themselves to learning about and improving the structures that enable self-governance.
I have been comfortable in that field for decades.
Now, democracy in the United States faces a new threat, and so does the field. For many of us, it is hard to know what to do. Our training runs toward bridging divides, toward creating collective solutions to shared problems.
A malevolent force is now actively undermining and pulling down our democratic structures, and that training feels insufficient to the new task.
This malevolent force has set about creating new facts on the ground that will permit autocracy. It has also energized an exclusionary, racist, retrograde stream of American culture. A segment of our population is actively working to build a white Christian theocracy.
In my professional realm, where I carry some personal influence, my profile is one of institutionalism and centrism. Recently, I have begun speaking up in ways that those who have known me for years may find surprising. This includes blog posts about being a dissident and regular videos chronicling our slide into autocracy.
I am much more angular. Why?
Part of the answer is an awakening. As Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have targeted people of color, gay people, trans people, immigrants, and more, I have come closer to the personal stories of the people being targeted. I have learned how excruciating these times are for people I know and work alongside. For years, I thought of democracy as neutral toward equity — a set of structures that would serve everyone, so long as we maintained them well. I now see questions of equity and inclusion as central. A democracy that excludes some of its people is not a democracy at all. And so I see the race away from the gains of the civil rights era as fundamentally antidemocratic – as much so as the current administration’s overt attacks on journalism, civil society, and governance itself.
I am also convinced that people like me — specifically those with a similar professional profile — must speak up now and act more than ever.
What do I mean by people like me? In my case: senior, male, White, holding some positional authority and a measure of influence. I do not fool myself that I have great sway. But through the years, I have collected little bits of political, social, and professional capital.
It is my obligation, and the obligation of those similarly situated, to spend that capital in every way I can imagine, with as much energy as I can muster — to join the coalition of those working to hold back autocracy, and to hold back our shameful rush toward a white Christian nationalist society.
What might happen if more people like me speak up and act? It gives permission. Others who are similarly situated are watching. Many of them see what I see. They may hold back because the risks are real — to their institutions, their funding, their standing — and because the ingrained reflex of balance is so strong. I do not blame them. But when a colleague, someone with a similar profile, speaks plainly and remains standing, the calculation may change. It may become easier for the next person to say, too, what they see, and then to act.
That is what I am hoping for. I cannot move the country. Perhaps I can help move people like me.
For what, after all, am I saving my accumulated capital? If it remains unspent at a moment like this, it is wasted.
I intend to spend mine.
Brad Rourke is the Kettering Foundation's chief external affairs officer and director of DC operations. This piece was originally published on his personal blog. The opinions contained are his individual views and do not represent those of the Kettering Foundation.
