Good morning,

As we live into the expanded vision of The JPB Foundation, our growing team is focused on the threats to democracy in the United States. As I wrote previously, the struggle to defend and expand multiracial democracy is the defining challenge of our times. Philanthropy has a crucial role to play. 

The JPB team has already moved tens of millions of dollars to support partners undertaking 2024 civic engagement and democracy defense work. At the same time, we have begun developing a longer-term strategy for our pro-democracy work. 

Because good strategy requires an accurate analysis of how we arrived at the current moment, our team has been working to better understand the underlying drivers of our democracy crisis. There is a global turn toward authoritarianism, and much of what we’re experiencing has a reach that extends beyond our borders. We need to understand both global and domestic factors as we chart our course. 

Here are some of the causes that have risen to the top in our analysis: 

First, we live in a moment when neoliberalism, the dominant approach to the economy in most of the world over the past 50 years, has lost its legitimacy among broad swaths of the public. In 1998, 68 percent of Americans thought the system was fair; by 2019, only 29 percent did. On the left and the right, this has created an opening for an alternative. While progressives have offered innovative alternative policies and achieved important policy victories, authoritarians have delivered a compelling “big story” that has won hearts as well as minds. As sociologist Michèle Lamont puts it in her new book Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World, “Those who feel tricked by a flimsy social contract may give up on the concept of shared citizenship and just ‘do their own thing’ – living at the margins of, or in opposition to, mainstream society.” 

We are living in the cultural wreckage of neoliberalism, which has created fertile ground for authoritarian movements. Neoliberal policies have been buttressed by a mass culture of ultra-individualism. The result has been declining community connections, increased rates of addiction, loneliness, and time pressure, and internalized shame for many people at having failed to “make it” in a culture that blames the victim. This is not just bad for the well-being of people and their communities. Widespread misery seeks a channel for expression and redress, which authoritarians are ready to provide. 

Second, in an environment of profound isolation and alienation, the rise of poorly regulated, profit-driven social media has also facilitated mis- and dis-information, the creation of cult-like online communities, and recruitment to authoritarian movements, for example through misogynistic discourse on gaming platforms. The profit-driven platforms that have dominated the past two decades have accelerated division, polarization, and conspiratorial thinking. 

Third, across our country, we have seen a disturbing decline of civil society institutions that in the past created countervailing power and bridged differences, including churches, community groups, and unions (who were deliberately dismantled as part of the neoliberal project). Democracy depends on a vibrant civil society that offers people an avenue for engagement and makes cooperation and constructive conflict possible. 

Finally, rapid demographic change due to immigration and lower white birth rates and changes in gender roles have fostered anxiety among large swaths of the population. The U.S. is a new and fragile democracy, and it is therefore no surprise that these demographic and cultural shifts have been seized upon by authoritarians, who have weaponized them with appeals to racialized and gendered grievance. 

With this analysis of the causes of our current predicament in mind, what can we do about it? We certainly don’t have all the answers yet, but here are some of the areas that we’re exploring. 

As I laid out last month, we know that the pro-democracy coalition must reach into new constituencies to build a “bigger we.” Our side is simply not big enough to fend off the authoritarians who traffic in division and hatred. Grassroots groups and workers’ organizations must grow exponentially, as must our partnerships with faith institutions and other groups that may not seem like natural allies. We must do so in our real-life relationships and connections, as well as in online spaces that have come to dominate modern life. The breadth of our tent must grow – and fast. Democracy can’t only be repaired at the voting booth or through policy. While short-term responses focused on voting and defending the rights of vulnerable populations are important, they are not sufficient. We must also nourish the roots of democracy in civil society. 

We are also exploring structural democracy reforms needed to unrig the system and make the system work for everyone, especially everyday people whose voices remain stifled and under-represented. Too many of our federal and state systems, policies, and procedures smother the voices of the people, and too many leaders encourage – or quietly accept – those limitations on the people’s authority. Authoritarian elected officials are making ballot access more difficult and ignoring popular referenda. Our system is set up so that a few people can impede the will of overwhelming majorities with procedural vetoes. We must not only undo these measures but also build democratic structures that are more representative, especially of people of color and marginalized groups. Work at the federal level remains important, but building power at the state level is increasingly essential.

The pro-democracy coalition must also increase our movement’s readiness for this era, when authoritarianism is at our door. That means cultivating new leadership skills, relearning old methods of organizing relevant to an era of increased repression and violence, reducing movement conflict, and sharpening strategic practice in the sector. This work will take time, but it must start now. 

These ideas are not exhaustive, but are some of our key areas of exploration as we consider the project of defending and expanding democracy in the coming decade. While the moment is daunting, we at The JPB Foundation are excited to work with our partners in philanthropy and in the field to sharpen our ideas and beat back the authoritarian threat. 

As we do that, we’re taking immediate steps to continue to bring in field expertise to deepen our strategy across these dimensions. Rakim Brooks, outgoing President of JPB grantee Alliance for Justice, will be our new Senior Vice President of Risk and Legal Strategies, providing crucial legal savvy to the Foundation and helping us think through the support we can offer to the field. 

We have also created fellowships to deepen collaboration between the Foundation and movement leaders to access their strategic insight and wisdom. This will include both Senior Fellows who are fully embedded with our program team to help shape our strategies and Visiting Senior Fellows who are doing work with us for a shorter period of time while continuing to lead their organizations. Lisa Abbott, our new Senior Fellow with the Community and Worker Power Program, brings decades of experience building real state power in challenging geographies with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. Mariana Ruiz Firmat, our new Senior Fellow for Movement Infrastructure and Explorations and outgoing Executive Director of the Kairos Fellowship, brings decades of organizing experience and path-breaking work to combat the rise of misinformation targeting marginalized communities. Finally, Darlene Nipper, our new Visiting Senior Fellow for Movement Infrastructure and Explorations, brings more than 25 years of experience in leadership and advocacy. Darlene is the current CEO of Rockwood Leadership Institute, which she joined as a trainer, and where she has been developing and executing field-leading training programs for over a decade.

We are proud, and lucky, to welcome these tremendous leaders into The JPB Foundation as we develop our strategies for protecting democracy. 

We are all called to be resilient and hopeful leaders in a time when the news cycle brings images and stories from the U.S. and around the world that rouse intense feelings of dread, fear, and grief. It’s understandable that many of us go to great lengths to avoid feeling these emotions, seeking distraction or tuning out. But it may be that the path to meaningful change is to turn towards what is difficult, supported by the community, with an ethic of care. 

I’ve sat with painful loss in recent months and found grief to be a superb teacher (though I often wish I could skip class). I’ve reflected too on movements I’ve been part of and studied and how they have worked with unimaginable levels of grief. The movement against AIDS, for example, changed the course of a pandemic through a combination of skillful advocacy, culture change, and creative direct action. But the mass protest phase of the movement did not emerge until six long years after the first AIDS cases were reported. The intervening years were defined by the courage of thousands of brave LGBTQ+ people who faced their grief, created organizations to educate the community and care for the sick and dying, and built a broad constituency for change in every sector of society in the face of governmental and public indifference. This often less dramatic work of care and outreach was the necessary prerequisite and complement to demonstrations and mediagenic actions. 

Historic examples of community resilience like the response to the AIDS crisis are a source of inspiration for how to move forward in dark times today. For many of us, developments at home and abroad are a source of intense grief. The brilliant activist and writer Malkia Devich-Cyril wrote a profound piece on this theme, “Grief Belongs in Social Movements. Can We Embrace It?” They write about the process of working with loss: “Sitting with discomfort is always first, followed by connection and inspiration – but at the end of the day, we need action to metabolize grief and transform our material and cultural conditions. Metabolized grief can power deep and lasting change infused with profound joy, while unmetabolized grief becomes an almost insurmountable barrier to it.” 

We can successfully defend and advance multiracial democracy in the U.S. As Devich-Cyril points out, grief at the state of the world can be a source of power. We are most likely to succeed if we turn and face the challenges we face with honesty, curiosity, and compassion. 

With gratitude, 

Deepak Bhargava 

Career Opportunities at JPB 

All positions can be found here. 

Vice President, People and Culture 

Program Officer – Democracy, Gender and Racial Justice 

Senior Program Officer – Movement Infrastructure and Explorations 

Recommended Reading 

Malika Devich-Cyril, “Grief Belongs in Social Movements. Can We Embrace It?” In These Times 

Patrick Gaspard, American politicians forget: disruption and disorder are the point of protests, The Guardian 

Crystal Hayling, “Community Organizing and Our Precious Sense of Hope,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy 

Sarah Jones, “The Union Leader Who Changed How We Think About Work,” New York Magazine

Michèle Lamont, Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World 

Ian Marcus Corbin and Chris Murphy, “The Left Needs a Spiritual Renaissance. So Does America,” The Daily Beast 

Tara McGuinness, “An Economy with Ethics,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 

Ben Wilkins, “Organizing the South: We Look Back to Move Ahead,” Convergence 

Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism