After a heroic effort to maintain the integrity of our election system over the past year, Wednesday’s inauguration marks a key turning point, one that requires philanthropy’s continued focus on the health of our democracy.
Despite the relief many people in the nonprofit world feel as the democratic transfer of power take place, we must stay keenly aware of the deep damage and trauma wrought by the illiberal, authoritarian politics of the outgoing administration to our democratic institutions and to the American people. The Capitol insurrection two weeks ago will forever mar our history and will always be a reminder of just how close we came to losing our republic.
We owe a tremendous debt to the countless community organizers, public servants, lawyers, journalists, and citizens who gave us this chance to do better and to the philanthropic donors who have helped advance their work. But we most also recognize how much more support nonprofit advocacy, journalism, watchdog groups, public-interest law organizations, and civil-rights and civil liberties groups will need as we work our way back from a democracy weakened by disinformation, rising white nationalism, and a breakdown in many of the institutions that hold up our republic.
Exhausted and scarred by this collective experience, many Americans — especially those now grappling with their own complicity — will be tempted to quickly turn the page. Our failure to achieve an orderly, peaceful transfer of power should leave no doubt of the danger of such a temptation.
That’s why foundations and nonprofits must play leading roles in encouraging our nation to undertake a deep reckoning for what has occurred. We must not seek to return to what we were. We must commit to a reimagined democracy that is more equitable, open, and just.
History demonstrates that without accountability and fundamental changes in the systems that enable authoritarianism, threats to democracy can roar back bigger and stronger than before. True healing cannot occur without a wholehearted reckoning.
This process begins with the Senate impeachment trial but must continue through investigations and appropriate remedies for the many transgressions of the Trump era. The process also must extend beyond the president to include the others who enabled and supported his worst impulses.
Investigative journalists, many of them from nonprofit newsrooms, have done a tremendous job throughout the past four years to shine a light on this administration’s abuses, while nonprofit government transparency and oversight watchdogs built significant infrastructure to defend the rule of law. Both of these pillars of civil society will be crucial in the work ahead and will need continued philanthropic support to meet the call of history. Accountability must extend to the social media and right-wing media platforms that amplified disinformation and conspiracy theories and emboldened a new era of white supremacy.
Through lawsuits and regulation waged by civil-liberties groups and other nonprofit legal groups, there must be consequences for damaging, irresponsible claims made to distract, mislead, and profit — especially the “big lie” of a stolen election that has produced immeasurable harm to our political system. Radically remaking our media ecosystem such that it is more resilient to efforts to propagate misinformation will also demand philanthropy’s leadership and financial support.
Accountability is only part of the road ahead. It must go hand in glove with a new era of legislative and regulatory changes that ensure we never again find ourselves in similar circumstances.
Not since Watergate has our nation faced such a significant opportunity — or, indeed, an imperative — to remake our system of government. The next few years will be a make-or-break moment that will shape how the American people regard their democracy. Our government must demonstrate itself capable of reinvention, able to meet the challenges of the moment, and responsive to the needs of the public at this fragile time.
Through a revamping of federal voting rights and ethics laws, approval of new limits on executive power, and other measures to make our democracy more functional, participatory, and equitable, we can rebuild trust in government and stymie the disaffection that becomes a breeding ground for authoritarian sympathies. Fortunately, proposals to achieve this goal have already been developed by nonprofit advocacy groups and are ready for adoption.
But an agenda to strengthen our democracy cannot stop at mere corrections to today’s system.
We must recognize and take seriously that white supremacy is at the heart of this democratic crisis. People of color have paid a disproportionate cost for the abuses of the Trump era. The racist violence we have seen in past years has finally opened our nation’s eyes to the reality that many of the systems of our democracy enable the systematic exclusion of people of color from full and equal participation.
Now is the time to begin the work of bold transformation to unrig the system and dismantle the mechanisms in our democracy that are built atop a racist power structure. In the accountability and reform work ahead, philanthropic funding and leadership must put at the center the experiences and voices of people of color and commit to ensuring that the democracy that is reborn makes its primary mission equity and justice.
We must not forget that it was not a foregone conclusion — even just weeks ago — that our democracy would withstand the attacks upon it.
The journey out of our democratic crisis will be long and hard, but we must not leave this work half-finished. We must not become complacent with a return to the politics of four years ago. As soon as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in, the real work begins. Philanthropy and the nonprofits we support will be central in the fight for a more open and just democracy.
