Resource Roundup

Poster for What Is Democracy, a 2018 film by Astra Taylor.

Our Hold the Line Maryland members recommend the following resources:
1. Here is another Georgia runoff election phone bank. For more about how you can help in Georgia, see the 3.5% blog post from November 12.

2. The newsletter, Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson: Richardson explains, “Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes. To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here. That’s where this newsletter comes in. […] This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American. These were the same questions a famous observer [Hector St. John de Crevecoeur] asked in a book of letters [Letters from an American Farmer], published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War.”

3. Astra Taylor’s 2018 film, What is Democracy? Watch the trailer here. “Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey spans millennia and continents: from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its racist past and the growing gap between rich and poor. Featuring a diverse cast—including celebrated theorists, trauma surgeons, activists, factory workers, asylum seekers, and former prime ministers—this urgent film connects the past and the present, the emotional and the intellectual, the personal and the political, in order to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.”