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Webinar Rewind: Diversity in the democracy reform movement

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Diversity in the Democracy Reform Movement
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The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumJul 21, 2020
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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As protests sweep the country in response to continued police violence against Black people, many democracy reform leaders say that achieving racial justice and fixing our broken political system are two sides of the same coin. Amendments to the Constitution have been rooted in protecting the rights of citizens and making the system more accessible to those who had been excluded, including Black and Native Americans and women. Democracy reform has, from its inception, been about bringing about allowing all Americans to have a viable voice in our government.

The Fulcrum convened reform leaders to talk about the importance of leaning into the diversity of the movement and how the foundations of democracy reform are built on social justice and civil rights.

The Fulcrum's audience development editor, Tristiaña Hinton, moderated a discussion with:
• Gilda Daniels, litigation director at the Advancement Project
• Jacqueline De Léon, staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund
• Khalid Pitts, executive vice president of policy and programs, FairVote


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Social Security faces automatic cuts in 2032 and Medicare in 2033. New polling suggests that gives Democrats a powerful election issue. Here’s the case.

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Will the Debt Crisis Engineered by Republicans Succeed in Cutting Social Security and Medicare?

Overview

The Republican Party’s long game to reduce administrative state entitlement spending centers on creating a debt crisis to provide an excuse for limiting such spending. It may soon pay off. That strategy involved a quarter-century of engineered tax cuts responsible for the stunning rise in sovereign U.S. debt, threatening an eventual economic crisis.

Social Security benefits are projected under current law to be automatically cut in 2032. And Medicare benefits are projected to be automatically cut in 2033. Congressional Republicans intend for those automatic cuts to occur, opposing new taxes to prevent cuts. And they are using the ballooning national debt as an excuse to also oppose new general revenue spending to prevent benefit cuts.

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​Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner at the White House.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.

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When Leaders Disagree, Ceremony Plays an Important Role

When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on 24 September, the U.S. welcomed him with an elaborate display of ceremony. The Army Herald Trumpets sounded a fanfare, the Chinese and American national anthems were played, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed. A military review was followed by a flyover involving a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets, according to the White House. It was an extraordinary production for two countries that still disagree on some of the most important issues in international politics.

Talks between President Donald Trump and Xi touched on trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. The visit was marked by warm words and some signs of cooperation, but it did not erase the fundamental competition between the United States and China. So why was all this ceremony staged? It is tempting to dismiss political pomp as mere window dressing: an expensive historical relic surrounding the serious business taking place behind closed doors. As a music historian, however, I think this misunderstands what ceremony does. Ceremony can become particularly valuable when words alone are not enough.

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Americans Voting in an Election

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Despite the consistent determinations that US elections are secure across the country and there is virtually no evidence of non-citizens voting, in reports released as recently as September 2026; President Trump has doubled down on his claims that voter fraud is a major problem in America and on October 20th, he announced a new $25 Million Fraud Whistleblower program to be administered by the Department of Justice.

This announcement achieves a variety of the president’s goals: (i) It intentionally perpetuates the misinformation, that voter fraud is a serious problem in the United States; (ii) it undermines the trust in the voting systems, as well as in the states administering the elections; (iii) it fosters distrust amongst neighbors, who are more likely to suspect people of color and report them for a reward. This has the concomitant benefit of (iv) intimidating people who are in fear of going to the polls and (v) It gives the illusion that the federal government is prepared to give away more free money (along with the Tariff rebate checks, the Trump Accounts, the DOGE dividend, the direct payments for healthcare and the $5,000 for supporting GOP midterm candidates.)

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Political Polarization and Extremism

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Both Parties Have Forgotten How to Lose: It’s Time for Guardrails

On November 3 Americans vote in the midterm elections, and the most important question may be whether the losers accept the result. A Pew survey this summer found that just 55 percent of Americans are confident the midterms will be run fairly and accurately, down from 64 percent in 2022. The partisan detail is more revealing. Since 2024, Republican confidence has risen and Democratic confidence has fallen from 77 percent to 58 percent. Trust in the referee now depends on who holds power.

Democracy rests on a kind of sportsmanship agreement. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it well: man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but his inclination to injustice makes it necessary. B. R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of India’s constitution, called democracy a method of bringing revolutionary change without bloodshed. Both understood that the system works only if the losing side agrees to try again next time instead of burning down the field. Americans in both parties are forgetting how to do that.

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