Democracy

The Citizen’s Republic: Power From the People

Our guest author Erica McPheeters works with the Human Rights Campaign as a consultant and social advocate, focusing on equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and community empowerment.

The Great Rejection

Almost two hundred fifty years ago, the original American colonies decided to pursue the right to freedom. Before freedom came the king. This decision has not only changed the trajectory of human governance, but has influenced every aspect of American ideals for almost two hundred fifty years. By denying the proposed divine right of kings and embracing one of the most important concepts of the United States: democracy. This decision embedded certain principles into the legacy of this country. Power derives from the people and cannot be substituted with birthright or conquests. The United States’ shift from a monarchy to a democracy redesigned the future of the entire world while creating a new reality between the government and citizens.

At the inception of our democracy, colonists were not only displeased with a monarchy government, but }"
they were concerned with addressing the greater system that subjected individual citizens to a lack of rights, privileges, and freedoms. Absolute power implies the exclusive role of leaders in making decisions for the masses. Where there is a king, there are only subjects, not citizens. When the thirteen colonies declared independence, it represented the reclamation of all freedoms that humans deserve. They broke away from a deep-rooted history of accepting the inevitable rulership of kings. The Founders of the United States saw something greater for the future of this country. They pictured a republic where power can be held accountable. In this democracy, power is the responsibility of us all. It is now the responsibility of Americans to preserve and protect the democracy the Founders and colonists curated for us. 

The Path from Subjects to Citizens

The transformation from colonial subjects to democratic citizens was a relentless fight. Through decades of struggle, compromise, and refinement, the United States was able to form and assert our guiding values— life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These democratic ideals forged through historic events included the Boston Tea Party, the Continental Congress, and the fierce revisions of the Constitution. In these critical moments, Americans consistently chose self-governance over a king.

However, democracy requires more than the absence of a king. The framers of the Constitution understood this well and formulated institutional safeguards against the concentration of power. The checks and balances, branches of government, and federalism system creates a division between any individual or group from gaining control of this democracy. In fact, the Bill of Rights aims to ensure these safeguards by protecting individual freedoms from the reach of the government, despite political pressure or opinion.

The Vital Importance of Academic Freedom in Education and Democracy

Speech by Randi Weingarten, President AFT and ASI before the CAUT and Education International Academic Freedom Conference 2025: Knowledge and Power: The International Struggle for Academic Freedom, February 8, 2025, Calgary, Alberta

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you about academic freedom and democracy at a moment when both are imperiled throughout much of the world. I have worn a few hats in my working life—lawyer, high school civics teacher and now, union president. But I am not steeped in the academic world the way you are. You are not going to get from me erudite ruminations about the academy. What you’ll get from me is my thinking on what we need to do to make sure that your academic work is protected. 

The Tales Are Phantasms, But the Victims Are Real: The Trumpian Crucible in Springfield, Ohio

Our guest author is Leo Casey, Special Assistant to the President of the AFT, and Executive Director Emeritus of the Albert Shanker Institute.

In January 1952, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed the well-known American stage and film director Elia Kazan to testify behind closed doors. There he told the Committee about his own participation in the Communist Party, but declined to name others. In April, he was called back for public hearings. Caving in to threats from HUAC and pressure from the Hollywood studios, Kazan named eight individuals who, with him, had been part of a Communist Party cell in the Group Theatre during the1930s.

Lives were shattered by Kazan’s testimony. The eight named individuals were themselves called before HUAC. The actor J. Edward Bromberg defiantly refused the committee’s demand to name names, but the stress of the ordeal took a terrible toll: he would die young of a heart attack in a matter of months. Others of the eight who resisted HUAC, such as Morris Carnovsky and Phoebe Brand, would never work in film again. Only those who would join Kazan in naming names, such as Clifford Odets and Lewis Leverett, would be able to avoid the Hollywood blacklist and save their film careers.

Angered in equal measures by HUAC’s star chamber and by Kazan informing on one-time friends and comrades, the distinguished American playwright Arthur Miller decided that it was time to mount a forceful public critique of the McCarthyism that lay behind the HUAC hearings. But rather than comment directly on the events of his day, Miller would take the unusual approach of using the late 17^th century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts as his subject matter.

“e pluribus unum” Now is the Time for Educators to Build a New Foundation for Excellence in History and Civics Education

Our guest author is Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Board Member of the Shanker Institute.

Once again, on this Constitution Day, we find ourselves in a nation under stress– with a polarized electoral landscape and high levels of disconnection from our constitutional democracy among young people who see our political system as not responsive to the challenges of our times–school shootings, climate change, stalled social mobility. The classroom cannot alone change these dynamics, but it can help.

Yet teaching American history and civics is particularly challenging right now, precisely because of that polarized landscape. As educators, how do we share our nation’s story and help students develop the skills to consider other people’s perspectives so that today’s students are civically engaged and can work together to sustain our constitutional democracy in the future?

UK Election: A Lesson for the U.S.

Our guest author is Stan Litow, professor, Columbia University; vice president emeritus, IBM's Global Corporate Citizenship Program; president emeritus, IBM International Foundation and a member of the Albert Shanker Institute Board of Directors.

What a month of news! While July is ending with a renewed concern about political violence and a different presidential match-up than the one it started with, before July ends, I’d like to bring us back to a lesson across the Atlantic I’d like to make sure we learn.

Looking back, for many the joy of this year's July 4th celebration was muted, largely because of a continued controversy after the U.S. Presidential debate.  July 4th in the UK saw game-changing election results, where the newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his party achieved an unprecedented victory. In his victory speech Prime Minister Starmer sincerely sought to unite and not divide his nation, moving his party more toward the center, praising his predecessor and making it clear he intended to bring the nation together by ending divisive rhetoric and seeking agreement behind an agenda that would benefit not some, but all, and supporting the vital role public service and government action can play. Sounds like the sentiments embedded in the U.S. Constitution.

A Nation’s ‘Teachable Moment’: What We Need to Learn from Trump’s Trials and Reactions

Educators treasure something we call “teachable moments”—those occasions when a high-profile event captures our students’ attention, interest and imagination. As experienced and accomplished classroom teachers of civics, social studies and English language arts, the three of us would look forward to such moments, as they provided unique opportunities to engage students in in-depth learning on important subjects.

The May 31 criminal conviction of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, is certainly a “teachable moment,” and not only for students, but for all Americans. It is the first time in our history that an individual who held the highest elected office in our republic has been found guilty of committing a felony—not once, but 34 times, and by a jury of his peers.

What should educators teach students about this trial and conviction? What should Americans conclude about these events?

From Invisibility to Solidarity: An AAPI experience

Our guest author for AAPI Heritage Month is Jessica Tang, President of the Boston Teachers Union, an AFT vice president, co-chair of the AFT Asian American and Pacific Islander Task Force, and a Shanker Institute Board Member. This blog first appeared on AFTvoices.org on May 1, 2023.

While I have called Boston home for over two decades, I actually was born in Ohio and grew up in several states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana and New Jersey. What each of these states had in common throughout my years of attending school was that not once did I have an AAPI teacher. Nor did I ever learn about Asian American or Pacific Islander history.

Like so many AAPI students, I grew up feeling not too sure where I belonged — whether it was embarrassment as a child when I was told my home-cooked lunches “smelled” and “looked weird,” or when during a social studies lesson about an Asian country other students would look at me as if I were supposed to know all the answers. I had never been to Asia and certainly did not know about the dozens of countries with disparate cultures, languages and customs.

It wasn’t until college and later that I truly started to learn more about the Asian American diaspora — those who, like me, had families that immigrated to the United States and shared common experiences. Only then did I realize that I was not totally alone.

Who Will Stand Up for Public Education?

Our guest author is Karin Chenoweth the founder of Democracy and Education an organization dedicated to providing information and support to school board candidates who are standing up to the extremist threat

With all the attention on federal and state campaigns in November 2022, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that right-wing extremists had set their sights on winning school board elections.

School board elections tend to be an afterthought among both voters and those most involved in electoral politics. Civic-minded community members running without party affiliation—sometimes without opposition—traditionally have made for rather staid elections. Voters walking determinedly into the polls fully informed about presidential and congressional races can be stopped in their tracks with the question, “Do you know who you’re voting for school board?” They often haven’t thought about it.

And yet, with more than 88,000 school board members in more than 13,000 school districts, there are more elected school board members than any other category of elected official. Often intimately involved in their communities while working many hours for little or no pay, school board members are in many ways the face of small-d democracy in their communities.

Education for Democracy

From 2005, Unionism and Democracy, sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute in cooperation with the AFT International Affairs Department (edited). Given the fight for democracy today—given the assault on universal suffrage, on workers’ rights, on a free media, and an independent judiciary—it is worth revisiting this piece.

Within the AFT’s motto—“Education for Democracy, Democracy in Education”—are several important ideas. One is that the common good is served by the creation, through a public education system, of an informed and knowledgeable citizenry. That is why post-colonial Americans first agreed to pay for the education of other people’s children. Second is the idea that, beyond the democratic content of such an education, the public school system—as a common place for educating all children equally—transmits and promotes a democratic sensibility and culture. And third is the idea that if education is for democracy, then education system should be democratic itself and that free teachers unions can play a unique role promoting democracy, not only in the classroom but in the workplace. Teachers and other educational employees should, therefore, be fully empowered through the unions of their choice and that they control.

Democracy Threatened

Guest author J. Brian Atwood, former National Democratic Institute President and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator, discusses how education is the key to preserving democratic values in an era of conspiracy theories and polarized political combat in the Philippines, the United States, and around the world.

The election of Ferdinand Marcos’s son "BongBong” in the Philippines and the revelations of the January 6 Committee in the United States, were the focus of a recent panel at the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington DC.

I was joined by two dynamic union leaders, President Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Annie Geron, General Secretary of the Philippines Public Services Labor Independent Confederation, in a discussion of democracy’s challenges and a call to action to preserve democratic institutions in both countries.

Labor unions were in the forefront of the wave of democratic change in the 1980s and 90s; they continue to see their mission as defending human and democratic rights, not only for their own members, but for society as a whole. Unions played a central role in that era in the battle to overthrow communism and autocratic governments.