Last Fall we hosted a fascinating conversation with Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award, about the decades-long campaign the well-financed radical right has conducted to subvert our democracy. On May 19th of this year MacLean was interviewed by Don Shelby and Sam Grant, Executive Director of MN350. Rep Emma Greenman also participated. Professor MacLean traces the roots of this radical attack on our shared values to  the racist reaction against Brown v. Board of Education–and even before to John C. Calhoun, “Marxist of the Master Class.” Published in 2017, the book now looks prescient; to its readers, the attack on our 2020 election and the assault on the capitol in D.C. was shocking, but should not have been completely surprising. In her interview with Don Shelby, as before, MacLean combined her dire warning about the perils of our fragile democracy with an engagingly upbeat demeanor. Like previous Happy Warrior politicians, she calls for collective action of the sort that ended slavery in the 19th century and led to the New Deal in the 20th.  Participatory democracy is the antidote to personal despondency as well as economic depression.

Sponsor: Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers.

So-sponsored by Citizens for Global Solutions Minnesota, Indivisible MN03, Plymouth Area Indivisible, Minnesota Peace Project, MN Move to Amend, Spotlight Team, Women Against Military Madness, and, of course Clean Elections Minnesota.