Democracy Talk 

Out of sight of most of us, millions of Americans are satisfying their deep needs for connection with each other and expanding their capacities for effectiveness in the larger world. They are showing us how democracy can become more than a set of unapproachable, distant institutions—how it can become the rewarding way of life I call Living Democracy.

And none too soon!

The indignities and misery of economic insecurity and deepening poverty, the devastation of our ecological home, and the assault on our basic freedoms are of such magnitude that the emerging, more powerful practice of democracy may be our last, best hope.

Chapter One, “The Frame,” challenges prevailing wisdom about the core crisis facing our nation. Chapter Two, “The Long Arc,” reminds us of competing currents in our culture’s history that have taken us to democracy’s edge and points to underrecognized common ground on which we can now walk to move that edge forward. Chapter Three, “Power Is Not a Four-Letter Word,” invites us to discard long-held, stifling assumptions about power, self-interest, and public life and to embrace liberating alternatives that are already proving effective.