Democracy & Civil Rights

The Challenge

American democracy is under sustained pressure. The erosion of democratic norms, the politicization of government agencies, and the systematic weakening of civil rights protections have accelerated in recent years, creating conditions that threaten the foundational principles of equal protection and due process.

One of the most alarming developments has been the weaponization of government power against individual citizens. Passport revocation and denial have emerged as tools of political coercion, used to restrict the movement of people who challenge government authority or belong to disfavored groups. When the state can strip a citizen of their ability to travel freely—without meaningful due process—it has acquired a power that is fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance.

Attacks on voting rights continue to intensify across the country. Voter suppression tactics—restrictive ID laws, polling place closures, purges of voter rolls, and gerrymandering—disproportionately affect communities of color, low-income voters, and young people. Research from the Brennan Center for Justice has documented how states have enacted hundreds of restrictive voting laws in recent years, with a sharp acceleration following the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. These are not isolated policy choices; they form a coordinated strategy to shrink the electorate and insulate incumbents from accountability. The cumulative effect is a democracy that responds less to the will of the people and more to the preferences of those already in power.

The surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation across dozens of states is not separate from this democratic erosion—it is a component of it. Bills targeting transgender people, restricting drag performances, and banning books function as wedge issues designed to consolidate political power by manufacturing moral panics. When legislatures spend their sessions stripping rights from small, vulnerable populations rather than addressing constituents' material needs, it reveals a governing model built on division rather than democratic responsiveness.

Civil rights protections that took decades to build are being dismantled through executive action, regulatory rollback, and judicial reinterpretation. The agencies charged with enforcing anti-discrimination law have been defunded and deprioritized, leaving vulnerable communities without recourse when their rights are violated.

Why This Matters

I understand democratic erosion not as an abstraction but as a lived reality. My passport was revoked in what can only be described as a politically motivated act, forcing me into exile from my own country for two years. During that period, I was stranded in Sweden, unable to return home, while receiving over 12,000 hate messages from people who celebrated the government's action against me. The UN Human Rights Council ultimately had to intervene on behalf of a U.S. citizen—a surreal circumstance that underscores just how far the degradation of democratic norms has progressed when international bodies must step in to defend an American's basic rights.

My experience is not an isolated case. It is part of a broader pattern in which government power is wielded against individuals and communities who dissent, organize, or simply exist in ways that the state finds inconvenient. When a government can exile its own citizens, it has crossed a line that separates democracy from authoritarianism.

The erosion of democratic institutions affects everyone, but it does not affect everyone equally. Marginalized communities—transgender people, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities—are consistently the first targets when civil rights protections weaken. The playbook is predictable: dehumanize a group, strip their legal protections, and use their persecution to normalize the expansion of state power that will eventually be turned on broader populations.

Protecting democracy is not a partisan issue. It is the precondition for every other policy goal. Without functional democratic institutions, free elections, and enforceable civil rights, no progress on any front is secure.

What I've Done

My work on democracy and civil rights has intensified in response to the current crisis:

• Co-chairing No Hate in Washington State, a coalition dedicated to defending civil liberties and democratic institutions at the state level, which successfully organized to defeat anti-LGBTQ ballot measures that sought to roll back existing protections
• Building cross-movement coalitions that unite organizations working on immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive freedom, and religious liberty around shared democratic principles
• Engaging in institutional advocacy to strengthen the independence and capacity of agencies charged with civil rights enforcement
• Using my own experience with passport revocation and exile to draw public attention to the government's expanding use of coercive power against individuals
• Working with international human rights organizations, including engaging with United Nations mechanisms, to hold the U.S. accountable to its obligations under international law

Where We Go From Here

Protecting democratic institutions requires both defense and renewal. In the immediate term, we must resist the further erosion of civil rights protections, defend the independence of the judiciary and law enforcement, and ensure that elections remain free and accessible to all eligible voters. An independent judiciary is the last line of defense when legislatures and executives overstep their authority; when courts are captured by partisan interests, no constitutional guarantee is safe. Defending the right to vote—and ensuring that vote carries equal weight regardless of where a person lives or what they look like—is the most fundamental act of democratic preservation available to us.

Voter engagement is essential. The communities most affected by democratic erosion are often the same communities that face the greatest barriers to political participation. Removing those barriers—through automatic voter registration, expanded early voting, restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, and robust protection against voter intimidation—is both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity.

Civil rights legislation must be strengthened, not weakened. The Equality Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and other federal protections deserve passage not as partisan priorities but as affirmations of the constitutional promise of equal protection under law.

Finally, we must build the kind of broad, resilient coalitions that can withstand sustained political pressure. The LGBTQ rights movement, the racial justice movement, the immigrant rights movement, and the reproductive freedom movement all share a common dependency on functioning democratic institutions. Coalition building between these movements is not merely strategic—it reflects the reality that the same authoritarian impulses threatening one community will inevitably reach the others. The defense of democracy cannot be left to any single organization or movement. It requires the sustained engagement of every community that depends on democratic institutions for its safety, its rights, and its future.