Cornell Law School Professor Sabeel Rahman is coauthor of an important recent book, Civic Power, about the urgent need to revitalize American democracy with much closer links between government and those it's meant to serve. The only path to meaningful equity and true government "by the people" is to engage affected communities as genuine agenda-setting and decision-making partners.

Putting the traditionally disempowered at the center entails a fundamentally new approach to reform. Sabeel and I discussed some of the traditional frameworks for reform such as civility or transparency—abstractions that skate right past America's longstanding power disparities. The only real answer is a shift where affected communities go from getting the policy short shrift (for instance as neighbors to all the worst polluters) to co-governing and actual authority.

This will entail multiple shifts, including for longtime public interest advocates like your humble podcast host. One is a change of focus to a different level of government: from high-profile political debates to day-to-day administration that has more immediate impact on people. Another is for advocates to get our cues on agendas and issues from these communities. It was great to get Sabeel's extremely important and useful guidance toward more equitable and inclusive governance.

Lolo Cynthia is an African reproductive health activist, social entrepreneur, and experienced communicator. She shared some of the negative experiences that led her to focus on healthy sexuality and talked about how she gets schools to open up to the curriculum on sex and relationships that she developed.

Drawing on what she’s observed about various advocacy efforts, Lolo has clear advice to offer on the best way to develop narratives as the basis of your advocacy on. It was also interesting to hear Lolo's perspective on the dangers of having advocacy efforts coopted—particularly by political forces and leaders.

In an earlier conversation I had with Lolo, it was clear that she follows US events and politics very closely. So I asked what she does—and what she reads—to keep up with American politics. We concluded with a discussion of neurodiversity, with Lolo and I comparing notes about our ADD / ADHD brains.

Suzanne Nossel leads the US chapter of PEN, the international network of professional writers dedicated to promoting and protecting the basic right to freedom of expression. Suzanne's book on the subject is titled Dare to Speak: Defending Freedom of Speech for All. Recently she highlighted the broader global struggle between freedom and autocracy in a Foreign Affairs article on The Real Culture Wars. I asked Suzanne how we got here, how a society that had prided itself on commitment to democracy could have lost touch with those values. She pointed out all the ways the MAGA movement had prepared the battleground with relentless gaslighting.

We talked about schools, libraries, and efforts to ban books as a key battlefront in the struggle to preserve freedom. Top political strategists see the threat of book-banning as an issue that could help draw pro-democracy voters to the ballot box this November, and Suzanne shared PEN America's successes in defeating book bans. As she said, book-banners don't just keep books out of their kids hands, they block access to books for all kids. In our conversation, we discussed the particularly high stakes for gay, lesbian, and gender queer students who are often the target of harassment and abuse. (Your humble podcast host recently researched and wrote about such a battle in a local Iowa school district.)

Suzanne and I also talked about wider attempts to make school curriculum conform with ideological agendas. Digging deeper into the roots of the issue, Suzanne pointed to demographic trends and an increasingly diverse society that are motivating those resistant to change. And as Suzanne said in our conversation, the uncompromising winner-take-all political dynamic of our times has helped fuel the fire.