Community Is as Important to the Fight for Democracy as Everything Else

A week co-conspiring with fellow gender and democracy advocates and absorbing words and wisdom from inspirational leaders reinforced that we need each other.

Originally published in The Contrarian.

It has been a hell of a week for gridlock in my hometown, New York City, as global leaders convene for the 80th United Nations General Assembly—where on Monday, President Donald Trump delivered an hour-long rant calling climate change a hoax and claiming to have personally ended seven wars in his first seven months in office.

We shouldn’t be ashamed to say we don’t know [how] this all this is going to play out, but we know what side we’re on.

It wasn’t all grievance and gloom. Monday also marked the 30th anniversary of the historic United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where 189 nations adopted an ambitious “Platform for Action” to acknowledge and advance women’s rights. It was there that future Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton famously pronounced, “Women’s rights are human rights.”

For more about the anniversary, read this extraordinary report, released this week and co-authored by Contrarian contributor Jennifer Klein, “Beijing+30: A Roadmap for Women’s Rights for the Next 30 Years.” It details the myriad ways regression on women’s freedom is also an early sign of weakened democracy and outlines critical priorities to advance women’s rights in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, Clinton appeared in midtown yesterday and today, together with President Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea Clinton, as the Clinton Global Initiative kicked off its 20th-anniversary gathering. Hundreds of leading thinkers and doers from around the world came together for a wholly interactive gathering, packed with cross-sector working groups, public pledges by advocates to commit to social action, and reports for prior commitments.

This year’s CGI agenda—aptly entitled “What’s Next?”—focused on eight essential topics: climate, democracy and human rights, economy, education, health, humanitarian response, innovative finance and truth and information.

It is always the women who have the audacity to offer a different reality.

Add in the start of the Days of Awe (a.k.a. the Jewish High Holidays) on Monday evening, and all I can say is both my beloved city and I have been in reflective, contemplative, logistical overdrive.

I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to attend and be in community at all three—and so have spent the last few days shuffling through security sensors (yes, even at synagogue, sign of the times), co-conspiring with fellow gender and democracy advocates, and absorbing words and wisdom from many, many inspirational leaders.

Truth be told, it has all left me a little dizzy, awaiting an inevitable punchline. (“A rabbi, a former U.S. president and the woman who ran against and warned us all about the current U.S. president walk into a bar.…”) And so, I thought it would be a fun exercise to catalogue the toplines I took from the week, in no particular order, and invite you to guess who delivered which (answers at the very end).

1. “When you’re experiencing a breakdown, there might just be a breakthrough on the other side.”
2. “Once we take three-dimensional people and turn them into two-dimensional cartoons, it’s hard to come back from that. And it’s bad for all of us.”
3. “Autocracy thrives on fear, when what people really crave is leaders who offer hope and possibility. Strongmen want us to be paralyzed by fear so they can solve it with order. Inevitably, it is women who will disrupt that plan. It is always the women who have the audacity to offer a different reality.”
4. “The old world is dying. The new world is not yet born. Now is the era of monsters. Do not go forth with fear.”
5. “The theme of the meeting is ‘What’s next?” ? The truth is … [we] don’t know. And we should be grateful for that. We shouldn’t be ashamed to say we don’t know [how] this all this is going to play out, but we know what side we’re on…. If we hold our heads high, keep our eyes and ears open, and deal with others with an outstretched hand and not a clenched fist, we’ve got a chance to keep hope alive.”
6. “It’s decisions, not conditions, that determine our fate and future.”
7. “Hope is the oxygen needed to shake up the system, and humility is fundamental to acknowledging our complicity in global democratic backsliding.”
8. “As resources diminish or are redirected, the political will to embed gender perspectives into policymaking succumbs to the same retrenchment—even though both are key to achieving inclusive growth, peace and security, and sustainable development.”
9. “The power of peoplehood, the importance of presence, and the sanctity of debate are essential to any healthy community, a strong democracy. Keep showing up for each other. Keep listening to each other, even—and especially—when you disagree. Remember that you are part of something larger than yourself.”
10. “Who by fire, who by water … who in the sunshine, who in the night time … who by high ordeal, who by common trial.”

Keep showing up for each other. … Remember that you are part of something larger than yourself.

That is a whole lot of food for thought over 72 hours. Hearing it in person—whether offered from a bimah, delivered from the stage or shared in a breakout session—reminds me of how much our democracy needs us to get out from behind our screens and be in real-life community. Hence, I write this column simultaneously exhausted and invigorated.

I hope you find some nugget in these quips that carries you forward. We have much work ahead, and we need each other. L’shana tovah.

Answers

1. Voting rights advocate
2. President Bill Clinton
3. Women’s rights advocate
4. Global democracy advocate
5. President Bill Clinton
6. Gov. Gavin Newsom
7. Former state department employee
8. Foreign Policy magazine’s UNGA Her Power Forum
9. Rabbi
10. Leonard Cohen