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The relationship between citizens and government is changing. The first 10 days of Donald Trumps presidency has been a reminder that citizens thirst to have a voice in their democracy spans the nations cultural, partisan, and ideological divides. In his inaugural address, Trump thundered, We are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people. The past two weekends have seen millions demonstrate in Womens Marches and large crowds gather at airports and in downtowns to voice their discontent over Trumps draconian executive order regarding immigration and refugee policies.

Beneath the acrimony, everyone seems to agree that citizens need a greater voice in our democracy. But both sides face a common challenge: Neither the marchers nor the president they detest have articulated a coherent set of mechanisms to translate their passionate rhetoric into concrete initiatives, programs, or policies that actually empower citizens.

How do we bring citizens into democracy? Americans were accustomed to a longstanding model: institutions and their leaders as the stalwart of democracy. Not even a week into Trumps presidency, many folks are left wide-eyed with the realization that our civic institutions are not going to work without consistent citizen pressure and activism to protect them. At a time when citizens faith in institutions and democracy is at all-time lows; we each need to be vigilant and actively engaged.

Civic engagement is not just for creating better policies but also for reinvigorating democratic practice this is an underlying condition of our current political dysfunction. There are tools from our democratic arsenal to support this new relationship between Americans and their government. Regardless of how we proceed, this is going to take work, and there isnt a panacea. The new dynamic between the government and citizens is not going to fix itself. It is not going to be fixed by a new policy or a new government official. There is now no choice but to engage in a multigenerational project to reinvigorate American democracy.

First, individual citizens can hold power to account by bringing new and relevant facts into the public light. People can serve as watchdogs, activists for truth, and monitors of governance. Individual people can serve as more credible truth tellers than other parts of society that are viewed as beholden to special interests or lobbying. From photographing police violence to tracking public documents online (e.g., through the Freedom of Information Act) to ensuring that elected officials maintain their campaign promises, individuals can become purveyors of truth and put pressure on institutions and elected officials.

Take, for example, Indias Mumbai Votes, where information crowdsourced by students and activists on elected officials is viewed as credible and reliable information, often in contrast to biased paid news. In an environment of declining institutional trust, there is a vacuum of facts. Individual people empowered with a smartphone or even a microphone can be the purveyors of truth and can leverage that information to hold government accountable.

Second, citizens can revitalize the power of diverse community-based organizations. For a long time, these organizations weaved the vibrant fabric of America civic and communal life. Alexis de Tocquevilles writings about early American life included the potency of civic associations for strengthening democracy. One component of these organizations was the ability for people to come together across different ideologies and beliefs.

Today these organizations are no longer as vital, diverse, or powerful as they once were, and American democracy has suffered as a result. There has been much scholarship on the decline of civic associations in the United States. Now is the moment to reengage with civil society organizations not just passively donate every year. Instead, actively participant in local chapters of a national group or a neighborhood association.

Civic organizations are not a monolith. There are some that are filled with people who share the same preconceived views, while others may have less homogeneous ideology. Given the changing relationship between citizens and government, now is the critical moment to form nontraditional alliances and more deeply engage with people with dissenting viewpoints. The goal is to strengthen critical civil society institutions, not just to feel reaffirmed. Building tolerance for peaceful dissent and disagreement toward shared democratic goods, which transcend any one person, is a critical building block for reinventing the relationship between citizens and the state.

Finally, across our 3,007 counties there are participatory options and new partnerships between government and the people to work collaboratively as co-producers of public goods. For example, Central Falls, Rhode Island, which is Rhode Islands only majority-Hispanic community, was the first city in Rhode Island to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The city government decided to try something new to engage the community around a shared project.

It partnered with Citizinvestor, a crowdfunding and civic engagement site that is similar to Kickstarter for governments, to launch a civic crowdfunding campaign, one of the first in the United States. Local residents were active participants in every part of the process: identifying the area for fundraising; pledging their own dollars; and collaborating. Examples like this are occurring across the country where citizens are empowered not merely in a consultative or advisory role, but are given a real role in public decision-making.

Another process gaining momentum across the country is participatory budgeting, a World Bank best practice in democratic reform to give residents a portion of public money to decide how to allocate. Last year, community residents allocated more than $60 million across the United States through discretionary funds of local officials, since the process started in 2009 with $1 million in discretionary funds in a Chicago ward. Perhaps we can learn from instructive international examples in Brazil or in Paris, where 100 million per year is allocated through the process.

Strengthening the relationship between citizens and their government requires tireless energy, vigilance, and creativity. By design this requires new experiments. Charlotte, North Carolina, won a Knight Cities Challenge for a project called Crown TownHall, which offers direct one-on-one opportunities for local public city officials to have an in-person conversation with a member of the community. This requires time on behalf of both citizens and their public officials. Deepened relationships can develop even with just a 10-minute conversation.

It is going to take unprecedented work to rebuild the civic fabric and reignite the civic associations that have been the hallmark of America. Many of us feel fired up, angry, or worried about the direction of our country. The way to move forward begins with sustained civic activity, one conversation at a time.

This post is part of Polyarchy, an independent blog produced by the political reform program at New America, a Washington think tank devoted to developing new ideas and new voices. See more Polyarchy posts here.

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For democracy to survive, it requires civic engagement - Vox

Opposition to Donald Trumps Cabinet nominations mounted on Capitol Hill and across the country Tuesday, as Senate Democrats boycotted two scheduled committee votes and dozens of people were arrested at a series of protests nationwide. Led by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee stalled the confirmations of treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin and health and human services secretary nominee Tom Price by refusing to attend the committee meeting. Under committee rules, if no Democrats attend the hearing, the committee cant vote. The lawmakers accused Mnuchin and Price of lying to the committees during their nomination hearings. Amid the Democratic boycott, protesters staged a sit-in to block the entrance to the office of Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as a protest against Tom Prices nomination. At least 47 people were arrested. Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee also delayed a vote on the confirmation of Jeff Sessions for attorney general Tuesday by making extended speeches. This is California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: "Instead, he has been the fiercest, most dedicated and most loyal promoter in Congress of the Trump agenda and has played a critical role in the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy to undergird the implementation of that agenda. With this in mind, I must vote no."

Jeff Sessionss confirmation has faced a series of protests over his opposition to the Voting Rights Act and his history of making racist comments. On Monday, about 10 members of the NAACP, including President Cornell William Brooks, were arrested at a sit-in at Sessionss office in Mobile, Alabama. It was the second NAACP sit-in against Sessionss confirmation. On Tuesday, retired Army Colonel Ann Wright disrupted the Senate Judiciary Committee in protest of Sessions.

Ann Wright: "No to racism! No to the ban on refugees! Wait! Oh, wait! Oh! Oww! Ill go out, but you dont need to drag me. Ive got a hip replacement. Im 70 years old, and I can make it out on my own. But no to racism! No to hate! No to Jeff Sessions! No to the ban on refugees!"

More protests against Jeff Sessions and Trumps other Cabinet nominations erupted Tuesday. In New York City, thousands of protesters gathered outside the home of Senator Chuck Schumer, calling on him to oppose Trumps Cabinet picks. In a separate protest also in New York City, 11 protesters, including Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, were arrested blocking traffic outside Trump Tower to oppose the nominations. In Chicago, at least seven protesters were arrested after hundreds staged a sit-in at the Federal Building to demand Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth vote against billionaire Betsy DeVos for education secretary, which they did. Nevertheless, DeVos was among three of Trumps Cabinet picks who were approved by Senate committees Tuesday. The Senate education committee voted 12-11 to approve DeVos in a straight party vote, even though The Washington Post reports DeVos appears to have plagiarized parts of her written answers submitted to the Senate committee. Also on Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 16-7 to approve former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as energy secretary and voted 16-6 to approve Montana Congressmember Ryan Zinke to head the Interior Department. DeVos, Perry and Zinke will now all face full Senate votes on their confirmation. The full Senate also voted Tuesday to confirm Elaine Chao to become transportation secretary.

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Lawmakers Push Anti-Protest Laws as Mass Resistance to Trump Sweeps U.S. - Democracy Now!

Clive McFarlane Telegram & Gazette Staff @CliveMcFarlane

In these slippery, Trump-stirred times of trouble and turmoil, I search frantically to find sure footing because through the mist of our Muslim neighbors' tears, I see clearly what's in store for them if we who care for our democracy should stumble and fall.

And to the north I see worshipers at a Quebec mosque being slaughtered - six killed and 19 injured. Authorities say they were shot down by a man with extremists views, a man who claims to be an avid supporter of our president, a president who on the eve of this killing spree had targeted Muslims in a travel ban to this country.

To the south, I see a Texas mosque gutted by fire, and from all across the country come stories of girls wearing hijabs being harassed, Muslim women being threatened by knife-wielding harassers and Muslim shopkeepers being peppered with anti-Muslim slurs.

And in the wake of these atrocities, I hear a clear and comforting voice rise above the din to say:

"The people who commit these acts mean to test our resolve and weaken our values. We will not close our minds. We will open our hearts."

It is the voice of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and not that of our president, who is constitutionally obligated to preserve the greatest democracy in the world, but who instead, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, used the Canadian tragedy to buckle down on his travel ban.

"Its a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nations safety and security, he told us at his daily briefing on Monday.

And I wait to hear the voice of dissent from leaders of influential Muslim-majority countries, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but silence prevails, and not unexpectedly because both have long manipulated extremism within their borders to further their own self-interests, the same self-interest mirrored by Mr. Trump when he declined to include in his Muslim ban those countries in which his business interests raise towers in benediction to his ego.

Oh, how disappointing it was to see at Monday's press conference an Indian-American reporter groveling at the president's feet.

This Indian-American reporter, whose roots sprout from a country deemed the largest democracy in the world and which is home to the world's second largest Muslim population, had not a single word to say about the president's travel ban.

He seemed to be more mindful of Mr. Trump's sizable business interest in India, business interests described by NPR as being "more than anywhere else outside North America."

So this Indian-American reporter noted how the president of India, Narendra Modi, has spoken to President Trump three times since Mr. Trump's "victory to make America great again."

"Both leaders, I understand, are on the same boat, because both are thinking the same," he said, before adding, "India is waiting to welcome President Trump."

And I realize now how vulnerable, like a dinghy caught in a raging ocean storm, this little democracy of ours is; and I can see clearly that the sure footing I seek lies not on a common ground girdled by self-interest, like those who protest only when their individual self-interests are at stake.

The sure footing I seek lies on the common ground staked out by "we the people," people like former acting U.S. attorney general Sally Yates, whom Mr. Trump fired for refusing to defend his travel ban, people like civil rights lawyers, people like many in the diverse groups pushing back against Mr. Trump, people who are guided not by self-interest but by the interest of our democracy and of our humanity.

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Clive McFarlane: Democracy on shaky ground - Worcester Telegram

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The rise of antiestablishment parties in Poland, France, Germany is identified as a major danger to Europe in the report published Tuesday, which is entitled Freedom in the World 2017.

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Freedom House says populism is a threat to global democracy, claiming that xenophobia and religious intolerance go against the fundamental values of democracy.

Angela Merkels call for a ban on the full face veil towards the end of last year was also highlighted as cause for concern in the report, which says the German Chancellors remarks seemed to pander to to anti-Muslim sentiment.

Europe can no longer be taken for granted as a bastion of democratic stability due to Russian interference and the migrant crisis according to the report, which accuses Russia of meddling in European elections by pushing populist and nationalist parties and spreading fake news and propaganda.

Another sign that global democracy is in distress, the report says, is that a number of countries held referendums in 2016. Deriding the votes as a radical reduction to majority rule, it complains that direct votes circumvent the structures and safeguards of democracy.

Asserting that democracy is more than just elections, Freedom House outlines a truly democratic system as one which hasa free press, independent courts, legal protections for minorities, a robust opposition, and unfettered civil society groups.

During the 2014 European Parliament election campaign, civil society groups received $6 million (4.77 million) in funding from Hungarian financier Soross Open Society Foundations.

The democratic election of populist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe is also identified in the paper as a threat to democracy.

The election of, and subsequent governing by Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, and Fidesz in Hungary, arebranded a menace in the report, and cited as examples of counter-democratic transitions.

Along with attacking the two countries governments for having repudiated liberal values, Freedom House claims that in providing economic benefits to its core constituents referring to how the party has generous welfare policies PiS is using the economic power of the state for party political ends.

Co-author of the report, Arch Puddington, wrote: We see leaders and nations pursuing their own narrow interests without meaningful constraints or regard for the shared benefits of global peace and freedom.

These trends are starting to undo the international order of the past quarter-century and have undermined respect for fundamental freedoms and democracy, he said.

Open Society Foundations frequently partners with Freedom House, and the Hungarian billionaires grant-making network was revealed to be a financial backer of the American NGO in documents published by DCLeaks.

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Soros-Linked NGO: Support for Right Wing Parties in Europe 'Threatens Democracy' - Breitbart News

The United States is no longer a full democracy, according to the highly regarded Economist Intelligence Unit, which each year compiles a Democracy Index, providing "a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.

The U.S., a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a flawed democracy, as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined, explains the introduction to the freshly released Democracy Index.

That would be a troubling announcement in any week.

But coming in the first week of the presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has claimed that election systems are rigged, who lies about supposed voter fraud, and who attacks the media outlets who call him out for those lies, the announcement is all the more unsettling.

For those of us who have for many years worried about the vulnerable state of democracy in America, the news is even more troubling because the Democracy Index analysis reminds us that this is about a lot more than Donald Trump.

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the U.S. This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr. Trump as U.S. president in November 2016, explains the analysis. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr. Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which U.S. voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The U.S. has been teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.

To be ranked as a full democracy, a country must maintain an 8.00 rating based on five measures: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. The U.S. rating was 8.05 last year. It is now 7.98; and index ranking for the U.S. has fallen to No. 21 just behind Japan, just ahead of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The United States is not ranked with the worlds authoritarian states. But the U.S. is no longer ranked in the full democracy category with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And it is ranked well below social democracies such as Norway (No. 1 on the 2016 Democracy Index), Iceland (No. 2) and Sweden (No. 3).

For small-d democrats who are worried about Trump and Trumpism, the latest Democracy Index provides vital perspective. The new president is a bad player. He disrespects and disregards democratic values, encourages distrust of democratic infrastructure, and expresses disdain for the essential source of information in a democracy: a free and skeptical and questioning press that is willing to speak truth to power.

But even before Trump entered the presidential race, the crisis was real, and it was metastasizing.

Robert W. McChesney and I made this point in our 2013 book "Dollarocracy" and our 2016 book "People Get Ready" (both Nation Books). We used the Democracy Index and other measures to warn that the infrastructure of democracy was being undermined by a combination of big-money politics, lobbying abuses that tip the balance of power to corporate interests, underfunded and dysfunctional media, assaults on labor rights, the gutting of voting rights, and the manipulation of election systems by partisans.

Undermining the infrastructure of democracy necessarily undermines confidence in democracy which we suggested would create a crisis for the United States, a country that already has embarrassingly low levels of voter participation when compared with fully functional democracies. The 2016 Democracy Index provides a fresh measure of that crisis, noting:

The decline in the U.S. democracy score reflects an erosion of confidence in government and public institutions over many years. According to the Pew Research Center, public trust in government has been on a steady downward trend since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election by exploiting this trust deficit and tapping into Americans anger and frustration with the functioning of their democratic institutions and representatives. He positioned himself as the insurgent candidate, a political outsider taking on a rigged system who would drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. However, his candidacy was not the cause of the deterioration in trust but rather a consequence of it.

Its fair to quibble with that last line; at the very least, Trumps rhetoric reinforces and extends the deterioration in faith in democracy. And there should be no doubt that Trumps presidency will make things worse just five days into his term, he was promising a major inquiry into voter fraud, which even Republicans acknowledge is almost nonexistent. But Trumps political rise is a symptom rather than the cause of a broader democracy crisis.

These realities call for a multitiered response to Trump and Trumpism.

It begins with resistance to the most dangerous of Trumps policies and proposals, and with the requirement of solidarity with those who are most threatened by those policies and proposals. But it also can and must address the democracy crisis.

It is more necessary than ever to embrace movements to get big money out of politics and restore ethics to government, to defend voting rights and make it easier to cast ballots, and to reform our media and sustain a truly free press. Groups such as Common Cause and Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and Move to Amend, FairVote and Free Press are working in these areas. They have track records of success, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and they recognize the importance of state and local initiatives.

The resistance to Trump begins with opposition to immediate threats to civil rights and civil liberties, and to the dismantling of safety-net policies, programs and protections. But it must also address the threat posed by an ongoing decay of democracy, which has as its consequence the empowerment of a Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism.

John Nichols, associate editor of The Capital Times, is a co-founder, with Robert W. McChesney, of the media reform network Free Press.jnichols@madison.comand @NicholsUprising

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John Nichols: Once a 'full democracy,' the US now a 'flawed democracy' - Madison.com