OCCUPY! An Unfinished Uprising

Thursday, August 17th, 2023 David Pepper is a lawyer, writer, political activist, and former elected official. He served as the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party between 2015 and 2021. He's the author of several books, including the excellent how-to guide: Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American. We discuss how every one of us can use our personal footprint to lift democracy. The...

Thursday, August 10th, 2023 Skye Perryman is the President and CEO of Democracy Forward, an organization that uses the law to build collective power and advance a bold, vibrant democracy. We discuss successful legal action to protect and advance the rights of all Americans. A culmination of factors have come together to create a moment in which there are serious existential questions about what ty...

Thursday, August 3rd, 2023 Norman Chen is the CEO of the Asian American Foundation or TAAF. We discuss racism against Asians and the pursuit of belonging through philanthropy, civic engagement, and education. Deep misconceptions about Asian Americans persist. Narrative change is key for people to see Asian Americans as really being Americans. Only about 1.5% of schools offer a formal Asian America...

Thursday, July 27th, 2023 Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran are co-authors of The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy. Education is our greatest democracy-building endeavor. We discuss rebuilding trust in public education and marshaling the public will to do something great together. The democratic act is in the spark of everyday interactions with our community, such as in...

Thursday, July 20th, 2023 Jenice Fountain is the Executive Director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization in Birmingham that serves Alabama, Mississippi, and the deep south. We discuss what the actual lived experience is in Alabama, a year after the Dobbs decision. Since the Dobbs decision, pregnancies are less safe in states where abortion is prohibited. Exceptions to prot...

Thursday, July 13th, 2023 Layla Law-Gisiko serves on Manhattan's Community Board 5 at the very center of New York City. She currently chairs the land use committee, which makes recommendations on the community's built real estate environments. We discuss her community advocacy, the land use issues the Community Board considers, and the future of New York's Penn Station. The community board's power...

Thursday, July 6th, 2023 We're sharing an episode from fellow Democracy Group podcast, Democracy Decoded, a show that examines our government and discusses innovative ideas that could lead to a stronger, more transparent, accountable, and inclusive democracy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many states took steps to make voting safer and more accessible, but afterward, we saw a backlash with some st...

Thursday, June 29th, 2023 Dr. Richard Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens. We discuss how we, as citizens, can fulfill our role in the social contract. The United States is a country founded on an idea about equality, about opportunity, and about freedom. Rights alone will not guarantee the smooth functio...

Thursday, June 22nd, 2023 Anna Chu is the executive director of We The Action, an organization that connects volunteer lawyers with nonprofits that require legal assistance. We discuss how lawyers play a unique and critical role in strengthening American democracy. A strong democracy relies on everyone having the ability to have their voices heard at every level of the government, but in the US th...

Thursday, June 15th, 2023 Frank Guridy is the Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University and the Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies. We discuss social movements in the past, present, and future. Social movements consist of mass participation from outside of established political st...

Thursday, June 8th, 2023 David Priess is the Director of Intelligence at Bedrock Learning and has served at the CIA as an intelligence officer, a manager, and a daily intelligence briefer during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. We discuss how the issues of waging war and negotiating peace affect our everyday lives. The intelligence function is about discovering the truth in ord...

Thursday, June 1st, 2023 Beto O'Rourke is a fourth-generation Texan, the former US Representative of Texas's 16th Congressional district, the Democratic Party's nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2018, and the Democratic nominee for the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election. He is also the author of We've Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible. We discuss the outsized i...

Thursday, May 25th, 2023 Representative Anna Eskamani serves on behalf of Florida's 42nd district of Orange County in the state House of Representatives. We discuss her victories at the ballot box and her work to represent her constituents. Her campaign slogan is "Working for you. Fighting for us." When serving in the minority of the Florida state legislature, you only pass legislation by working...

Thursday, May 18th, 2023 Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones are co-authors of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms. Chris is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and the New York Times's chief data scientist and Matt is a professor of history at Columbia. Together, they taught a course called "Data: Past, Present, and Future,"...

Thursday, May 11th, 2023 Judge Victoria Pratt was Chief Judge in Newark Municipal Court in New Jersey and the author of The Power of Dignity. She is currently the Executive Director of Odyssey Impact, an interfaith non-profit driving social change through innovative storytelling and media. We discuss procedural justice, municipal court reform, and increasing the public's trust in the justice syste...

Thursday, May 4th, 2023 Craig Aaron is the Co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action. We discuss the civic information bill in New Jersey and the promise of centering civic information in the media. A vibrant multiracial democracy requires civic information media, which delivers the information that helps us live better lives in our communities. Journalism or civic media are a public good, and th...

Thursday, April 27th, 2023 Jeff Sharlet is a journalist, best-selling author, and longtime observer and investigator of the Christian right. His latest book is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. We discuss America's democratic bankruptcy, the martyrdom of Ashli Babbit, and the rightward shift of the mainstream. The notion of civil war was a fringe idea, but in recent years it has become m...

Thursday, April 20th, 2023 Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward are the co-authors of Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why our Future Depends on It. We discuss the importance of winning rural races in America. When Chloe ran for office in rural Maine, she knocked on over 20,000 doors and discovered that constituents feel a lack of representation in their daily lives. Democrats real...

Thursday, April 13th, 2023 Anat Shenker-Osorio is a renowned communications researcher and campaign advisor, the host of Words to Win By, and the Principal of ASO Communications. We discuss how to empower voters, the impact of repetition, and the importance of being clear on what you stand for. All candidates should repeatedly state what they stand for because repetition is an essential ingredient...

Thursday, April 6th, 2023 We're sharing an episode of Drilled, a true-crime podcast about climate change, hosted and reported by award-winning investigative journalist Amy Westervelt. Four years ago, the Drilled podcast asked a question that changed how people thought about climate stories: What if we stopped acting like the climate crisis was inevitable and instead treated it like it truly is… th...

Thursday, March 30th, 2023 Alana Sivin is the New York State Director of Criminal Justice Reform at FWD.us. We discuss the history of bail reform legislation, the subsequent roadblocks, and the truth behind the efficacy of this policy. Bail reform was passed to end a system of wealth-based detention of people who have not been convicted of a crime. Many of them are Black and brown. Verified public...

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 Joanna Schwartz is a professor of law at UCLA, where she teaches civil procedure and courses on police accountability. Her new book is Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable . We discuss the multiple levels of protection for police offers and how local and state laws can break us out of the qualified immunity maze. There is a broad systemic problem with holding poli...

Thursday, March 16th, 2023 Laphonza Butler is President of Emily's List, an organization that aims to help elect pro-choice democratic women to office. We're inspired by the organization's motto to "reject apathy and the status quo. Repeat daily." We discuss how women bring the challenges and dreams of their community to the policymaking table. Running for office is perhaps the ultimate form of ci...

Thursday, March 9th, 2023 Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are co-authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School and co-hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard? We discuss the ideology behind the unmaking of public education and the dangers of losing one of our most prized public goods. One of the original visions of public educat...

Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 Daniel Squadron is the co-founder and Executive Director of The States Project and also a former New York State senator. We discuss what it takes to win legislative majorities in state houses and why this is the essential ingredient to making change. State legislatures are the most important force in this country. When parties win legislative majorities, they can govern e...