From economic inequality to racial injustice and political polarization, the deck seems to be stacked against rebuilding America’s social fabric.
Jenna Spinelle articles
Jenna Spinelle is the communications specialist for the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and host of the podcasts When the People Decide and Democracy Works.
How Democracies Can Win The War On Reality
Peter Pomerantsev is one of the people trying to figure out how to make the Internet more democratic and combat disinformation.
Can Pranksters Save Democracy?
Our guests this week offer a framework for effective nonviolent organizing by trapping authority figures between a rock and a hard place.
Podcast: Public Schools, Not Government Schools
Our guest this week argues that, much like democracy itself, public education is an ideal that we’ve never quite lived up to.
Podcast: Reforming Criminal Justice From The Inside Out
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner discusses the promise and peril of institutional reform and how he built a coalition of voters.
Podcast: Laboratories Of Restricting Democracy
How Republican legislators are pushing shortened mail-in voting windows, expanded voter ID requirements, and other cumbersome administrative changes.
Podcast: Danielle Allen On Achieving Democracy’s Ideals
Democracy is in crisis and the only way out of it is to double down on democratic reforms while wrestling with our complicated past.
Podcast: Citizenship In A Consumer World
“The Consumer Citizen” by Ethan Porter generated more discussion among the Democracy Works team than any book we’ve read recently. Tune in to hear why.
Podcast: Understanding – And Addressing – Domestic Terrorism
How the United States responds to these threats touches on some of democracy’s most basic tensions. We explore those tensions this week.
Podcast: Anne Applebaum On Why Democracy Is Not Inevitable
Journalist, author, and historian Anne Applebaum says that democracy is not like running water — something that we know will always be there.