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The Respect for Democracy Desk exposes and opposes U.S. interference in sovereign affairs and advocates for popular participatory democracy at home.

Liberal democracy is a sham. Elections are reduced to bidding contests for nominations and inorganic voting processes controlled by gerrymanderers, electoral colleges, backroom deal, media manipulations and other forms of suppression. The idea that communities might choose their own representatives free from the distortions of big corporations is denounced as radical, utopian and utterly out of step with the “democracy” so often uplifted by the elite that control it. But liberal democracy is the governing principle of global capitalism and western hegemony. The machinery of liberal democracy and electoral interference in the global south is pervasive. The U.S. and European governments have entire institutions, both public and quasi-private, devoted to “soft” interference. When that doesn’t work, they employ all kinds of tactics from espionage up to outright war.

There are alternative democracies to the liberal kind. Popular participatory democracies are founded on community engagement and protagonism that involves people in cooperative debate and decision-making from the most basic units of society to national decision-making. This kind of governments starts in workplaces, barrios, youth centers and various collectives that involve the highest level of grassroots leadership and accountable representation. This is the kind of democracy we advocate for in the U.S. and the kind of democracy we’re dedicated to defending internationally from U.S. interference.