Remarks to the ‘Writers for Democratic Action’ Town Hall

Some stuff I said to some people last week.

Last weekend I was honored to be invited to speak at an online “emergency town hall” sponsored by Writers for Democratic Action and Books & Books in Miami. You can check out those remarks here.

The topic of the town hall was the ongoing autocratic emergency in America and potential responses to it, a subject I’ve been fixed upon for several years, pre-dating Trump’s re-election, as detailed in Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm.

Writers for Democratic Action is an activist group of — you guessed it — writers, formed in August 2020 to oppose Donald Trump’s administration and to promote the cause of — you guessed it again — democracy during this exceptionally fraught time in American history. Founded as Writers Against Trump by Paul Auster, Peter Balakian, James Carroll, Carolyn Forché, Todd Gitlin, Siri Hustvedt, and Askold Melnyczuk, it is a volunteer organization with a membership of over 3000. Its activities range from get-out-the-vote efforts, to the fight against book banning, to educational webinars with folks like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), authors such as Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and Javier Zamora, and writers and scholars from as far afield as Ukraine and Turkey. (I was privileged to be the guest at one of WDA’s “Democracy…