For almost 250 years, white men have led the design, implementation and reform of American democracy, and, frankly, it is not working well for many of us. Women represent a slight majority of the U.S. population, and, according to the Brookings Institution, people of color will constitute a majority of the population by 2045. Isn’t it time for people of color, and particularly women of color, to take the lead in re-imagining what a truly multiracial and multicultural democracy can look like?
In 2020, I co-founded Democracy Rising. We support impacted communities who are working to transform democracy at a local level. I’ve seen firsthand how transformative it is when women of color lead reform. We can do democracy differently, and, when we do, we can reshape who participates in the political process, who runs for office and ultimately who wins elections, which in turn can lead to policies that better serve our communities.
Why focus on the local level? Because smaller communities are better positioned to experiment around reforms and initiatives, and are able to course correct more nimbly than at the state or federal level. Effective democratic reform is happening at the local level; it is where the hands-on work of re-imagining democracy is being done, and it is largely getting done by women – particularly women of color.
