Has the term “democracy” lost all meaning? I can’t be the only leftist who is skeptical of its political usage, given that it has been instrumentalized to justify genocides, wars, colonialism, and imperialism the world over. Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams’ new book, Remaking Democracy: How We Make the World We Want, made me rethink my skepticism entirely. Danielle Chynoweth is a local-to-national leader in the media justice and housing rights movements, and a teacher of social change at the University of Illinois and the School for Designing a Society. Elizabeth Adams, Ph.D., is a composer, teacher, and caregiver who has worked at the intersection of art, education, and organizing for more than twenty years.
Common Notions
Remaking Democracy provides a practical toolkit for people interested in social change, and effectively dispels all myths when it comes to the misuse of the term “democracy.” Instead, it harnesses the core of what democracy means in practice, and outlines a path forward for how we can build a future of democratic participation the world over.
Chynoweth and Adams make the topic of democracy accessible and practical, leaving organizers with a guidebook of tangible actions. Within the context of democratic institutions and norms faltering around the world, Chynoweth and Adams tackle the root causes of rising fascism worldwide and empower readers to transform themselves into politically astute organizers. Through taking us on a journey of the community efforts which make up the history of democratic struggle, we can situate ourselves as part of this lineage, with the knowledge that we are standing upon the shoulders of giants to build the democratic societies that we all deserve.
I recently spoke with the co-authors about contradictions, history of movements, liberation, and the role of art in social change. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was the impetus for you to write this book now?
Adams: Like planting a tree, the best time was twenty years ago, and the next best time is now. We committed to writing this book in the spring of 2017, in the wake of the 2016 election. Since then, the capitalist state—especially, but not only, under Trump—has compounded its concentration of wealth and power with staggering corruption.
We find ourselves at a moment of rising fascism and rising seas, which are linked through the contradiction between capitalism, which requires the exploitation of the many by the few, and democracy, which promises equality for all. Fascism is when corporate and state actors collude to concentrate their wealth and preserve their power at the expense of their constituents under the threat of violence.
The undoing of fascism is participation. Participation builds power, and power builds participation. This book is a guidebook to designing readers’ increasing participation in the domain of their choice. This book does not offer answers to the question of what to do––it equips the reader to do their own analysis, develop their own strategy, and design their own actions in community with others toward their collective desires, so they can figure out what to do at this moment, and repeatedly, at any given moment.
Q: What is the most common misconception about democracy?
Adams: That it refers to merely an electoral system; that it is a thing, rather than an ideal and rather than a quality that can be measured across a spectrum. Democracy is when we participate in the decisions that affect our lives. I participate when four conditions are met: I have access to the accurate information I need; I have input into the decisions that affect me; I can see the consequences of my input; and I have the opportunity to change my mind and give further input.
Democracy is in every domain—it’s not just political. It can be in your workplace, your church, your community. It’s a spectrum. The book is an offer to practice democracy in all domains.
Democracy as a term has been co-opted. We’ve been allowed to call ourselves democracy when our government is doing extremely undemocratic things. The answer is not to abandon democracy but to insist on it.
Chynoweth: I have a significant concern about the withdrawal from the democratic project in the face of its capture, by neoliberals and conservatives alike, to serve the interests of imperialists and capitalists, as such a withdrawal is part of the dynamics of fascism. We speak about the “when-ness” of democracy because it is a condition.
Q: Can you speak to desire as liberation?
Adams: Neurologically, when we are in trauma response, our brains cannot access our creative and associative capacities––the very ones we need to solve the complex problems we are facing. It feels liberatory to imagine in detail the world we long for.
The more specific we can get in our desires, the more our brains start to figure out how we can get from here to there. We need our desires well formulated in order to judge whether the way we are formulating the problem points to a set of solutions we want.
Q: What is the role of the arts in the process of remaking democracy?
Adams: It is not optional or window dressing—it is absolutely necessary at every step. We need it to tell our stories, to hear and see each other. We need it to formulate our problems; we need creative projects . . . . You need this space to solve these complex social problems.
Politics eats law for lunch and art and culture eats politics for lunch. Top down social change has often backfired because the cultural change was not there to provide it. We need a coordination of tactics and the cultural tactics are required to create the cultural systems we need to survive and thrive.
Chynoweth: The role of arts and social change is fundamental to this book—to understand contradiction and . . . to show where vulnerabilities are in systems where small people can make a big impact. The book is a practice of dialectics, which isn’t new at all.
I worked on [the] Illinois Human Rights Act, and then on gay marriage using creative social interventions to think about ways of playfully amplifying contradictions. In 2005 in Champaign County, I was involved in staging an action performance in front of the county courthouse, which involved a lesbian couple who had been together for thirty years, who owned property, had taken care of parents together and yet were unable to get their marriage license. And then there was a heterosexual couple who had just met outside, who went inside and asked for a marriage license, and then took wedding photos even though they didn’t even know each other’s names. But, regardless, they got the marriage license because they paid the money.
This was such a perfect artistic way of showing inconsistencies in simply requesting a marriage license for heterosexual versus LGBTQ+ couples. It is an example of how you can artistically and visually articulate a contradiction in a system in a way that raises the visibility of the contradiction.
Adams: My advice is that people can practice pressing on contradictions anywhere you go. It’s important for people to understand that not every gesture needs to be large and impactful like you would see in Hollywood, but that many of our first experiments should not be, because we could be wrong. It’s important that we practice. We need to practice democracy to build that muscle. It’s not a commodity we’re producing; it’s an ability that we are developing also, so it’s important that we practice it over and over in families, communities, in coalition, where there are more and more differences and stories, and we are expanding in an organic way.