Is there a way for money to actually help make America more democratic, rather than more corrupt? Join me tonight for my conversation with Yale Law School Professor John Witt, author of The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. Witt chronicles how a millionaire named Charles Garland teamed up with the founder of the ACLU, Roger Baldwin, to create The American Fund for Public Service, to help jumpstart democracy through grassroots organizations. “The premise of the fund,” Witt writes, summarizing Garland’s philosophy, “was that the basic features of American society — from its ideas and norms, to its laws and most powerful organizations — were not fixed in place, not inevitable or unchangeable.” American democracy just needed to be reimagined. The fund would go on to fuel some of the major transformations in the last century, from the New Deal to the campaign for racial equality that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education.
I can’t wait to talk about what lessons we can use from that time in history — which, like our current moment, was one that grappled with polarization, propaganda, income inequality, anti-immigrant sentiment, and rapid technological change — to shore up our democracy once again. I hope you will join us! This talk will be recorded and posted for paid subscribers tomorrow.
Please join at the following Zoom link at 7:30 p.m. EST:
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