Renewing American Democracy
American democracy and American society are in crisis. On the backend of decades of growing inequality and steady loss of faith in the effectiveness of democratic institutions, America in 2020 is simultaneously undergoing an unprecedented public health crisis, facing a long overdue racial reckoning that has sparked the most sustained period of large-scale protest in a half century, and reaping the full consequences of having a chief executive determined to undermine democratic norms and perhaps dismantle democratic institutions themselves.
The presidency of Donald J. Trump—and the deep threat to democracy it represents--is a symptom, not a cause, of a deeper decay. The increasingly dire condition of democratic institutions and practices in the United States reflect problems and long-standing trends deeper and more extensive than our current moment.
Yet that decay—driven to a considerable extent quite deliberately by both plutocratic interests and white nativism—is countered by an increasing number of Americans, especially the young, who both clearly recognize the contradiction between America’s stated promises and its actual history and present-day reality, and are demanding change.
Those demands in effect pose this question: how can we become the America that never was, but should be?
Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy: Can We Make American Democracy Work? takes up that question in-depth. The volume editors forward community wealth building as a needed paradigm for translating the demands of protest into sustained policy change and progress towards a more equitable society, starting from the community level up but involving all layers of our democracy. Community wealth building combines front-end democratic participation and establishment of bold, shared equity goals with a relentless focus on impacting the material and resource base of American communities, using every policy tool at our disposal.
Our diverse groups of contributors represent a variety of both academic disciplines and substantive concerns: with racial injustice, with economic structure, with voting rights, with institutional accountability, and with the actual process of community-driven change.
We offer this book not as another election year analysis but as the beginning of a road map for democratic renewal for the next generation. Community wealth building is not a quick fix or a policy gimmick, but a strategy for the long haul.
This blog will be updated periodically to address ongoing events related to our book’s themes. We also invite you to regularly check the “news” section of our site for links to the latest work by our outstanding team of contributors. It is our hope that this site and blog will evolve into a useful resource for all Americans engaged in the urgent work of renewing our democracy.
