The fate of our Democracy is on the ballot this fall. The crucial test is whether a Constitutional coalition of Democrats, independents and Liz Cheney Republicans can stop the Trump attempt to win major offices and take control of running future elections in battleground states. The media treats the 2022 campaign as a rerun of the traditional Red […]
Washington – The flood tide is still rising, but already the Mega-Money tsunami of Election 2020 is going into the record books as the most expensive election in American history with the biggest flow of dark money ever funneled anonymously to candidates – $750 million, up from a minuscule $5 million a decade ago. With […]
WASHINGTON – Do you sometimes feel as if our democracy is coming apart at the seams? Gridlock, hate speech, dark money, negative ads, political parties at each others throats instead of working together for our common good? It’s almost enough to make you give up on American democracy. But please,don’t go there. Because I know […]
by Hedrick Smith What struck me when I began reporting on grassroots citizen reform movements in states as varied as Florida, Connecticut, and South Dakota was how creative and ingenious political amateurs were in generating ideas for reform and how gutsy and resourceful they were in mobilizing millions of voters to adopt state-level reforms […]
by Hedrick Smith It’s been a couple of weeks since our film, THE DEMOCRACY REBELLION, began airing on PBS stations across the country, and the response to these stories of grassroots political reforms has been fantastic! “Your brilliant program is the only bright spot in my day. I actually watched it on my cellphone in […]
Washington – Except for the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, our national media is so mesmerized and monopolized by the political war zone in Washington that you’d think nothing important ever happens in the rest of the country (except perhaps natural disasters). Unfortunately, that means the major media have largely missed one of the […]
WASHINGTON – The news flow has been pretty rough in the closing weeks of 2019 – the harsh conflict over impeachment, threats from North Korea and the persistent challenge of China, the dangers of fresh Russian interference in the 2020 elections, relentless partisan warfare. But there’s another story about American Democracy that gets little play […]
Washington – The 2018 elections may be a mixed bag for Democrats and Republicans but this has been a boom year for grass roots political reformers, whose jackpot was the powerful WethePeople backlash in seven states against partisan gerrymandering. Citizen rebellions in five states – Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Colorado and Utah – forced referendums and […]
Washington – When it comes to the influence of political money on our election campaigns, you know the bad news, but you probably don’t know the good news – or even that there is good news. The bad news is that billionaires and corporations are pouring tons of money into our elections to buy influence […]
Washington – If like most Americans you’re angry that our democracy feels broken, that elections are being corrupted by billionaire and corporate money, and that politicians are rigging elections through gerrymandering, we’ve got good news for you. Grass Roots America is staging a political comeback. Citizen rebellions against the politicians and the power brokers are […]
Hedrick Smith, who conceived this website and is its principal writer and architect, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning documentary producer for PBS and PBS FRONTLINE. more »
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