We should be able to care about building height and about authoritarian drift at the same time. Instead, our public rhetoric treats apartments over a Safeway as *the* nightmare, while the genuinely frightening stuff gets normalized as background noise.

Check out the article here:
👉 www.nationalcivicleague.org/ncr-article/...

A movement that builds bridges of trust, not walls of fear.

A movement that treats every act of service as an act of democratic defense.

Democracy doesn’t defend itself through fear or punishment, it defends and strengthens itself through connection, belonging, and a shared sense of purpose.

FDR launched the Civilian Conservation Corps under the New Deal. Kennedy launched the Peace Corps as part of his New Frontier. America needs a new endeavor for democracy — a national commitment to service and civic purpose equal to the scale of the threats we face.

Cuts to these programs don’t just hurt communities — they weaken the country’s democratic defenses at large.

If we want to restore civic trust, fight disinformation, and resist the current authoritarian drift, we need a new movement.

So when we talk about the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, we shouldn’t see them as “nice-to-haves.”

We should see them as the immune system of our democracy.

Each volunteer is an antibody against apathy, cynicism, and hate.

This is critical national security infrastructure, and we need to build more.