Democracy Forum – Meet the Authors of “On Courage”
Wed, July 29 at 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Silicon Valley DSA has endorsed the fourth installment of the Democracy Forum organized by our allies Indivisible Palo Alto + on Wednesday July 29 from 12-1:30 PM. The event takes place at the First Presbyterian Church and is a “brown bag” bring your own lunch format.
Register for the event here: https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/991799/
Event description from the organizers:
About this event
On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear is a new book that’s made for this moment—and a book written for all of us who are trying to defend democracy in these perilous, promising times.
“INVALUABLE. A CLASSIC OF OUR TIME. Everybody should read it,” says Rachel Maddow of MS-NOW. The book’s publisher calls On Courage “a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian—based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.”
Join us for a special DEMOCRACY FORUM appearance by Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer, the authors of On Courage. Anguin and Fields-Meyer will be in conversation with David Waksberg, a local Indivisible leader and a former human rights activist.
Julia is a Palo Alto native who, along with her co-author, Ami, has agreed to make time during her national book tour to meet with Indivisible members and friends from across the Peninsula.
The event takes place at lunchtime, so attendees are encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch. Snacks and drinks will be provided. The facility will open 11:30 AM, so please arrive early to enjoy your lunch with other attendees.
Angwin and Fields-Meyer will sign copies of their book, and the book will be available for purchase at the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From the publisher’s description of On Courage:
The United States is only the latest country to face a leader who wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, disappears people off the street, and undermines free and fair elections. Today nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarianism, the highest rate since the late 1970s.
But even under repressive conditions, each of us holds the power to help defeat autocrats. Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?,” veteran reporter Julia Angwin and political strategist Ami Fields-Meyer give us a captivating—and profoundly hopeful—guide to courage in an age of fear.
Meet a student from Hong Kong who risked everything for democracy. A mom in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas who broke with the political movement that raised her. Cairo twentysomethings who staged a gutsy stunt to help bring down a dictator. A mild-mannered immigrant fighting to save a landmark U.S. civil rights law. People throughout the United States and across five continents who faced serious risks for dissenting in their workplace, their community, or their country. On Courage is the story of how they did it anyway—and how you can do it, too.
Blending rich, previously untold narratives with history, spirituality, and movement research, Angwin and Fields-Meyer deliver a highly accessible book full of practical lessons—an inspiring resource for anyone, anywhere, who feel the walls of history closing in on them. On Courage is a roadmap to political courage and a powerful case for how taking personal risks can help save the free world.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julia Angwin is an award-winning investigative journalist, a bestselling author, a New York Times contributing Opinion writer, and founding director of the Independent Media + Audience Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She is the founder of two nonprofit newsrooms—Proof News and The Markup – that investigate the impacts of technology. She is a winner and two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance (Times Books, 2014) and Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (Random House, March 2009).
Ami Fields-Meyer is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and a former senior policy advisor at the White House, where he led U.S. policy initiatives related to civil rights, consumer protection, and technology policy. He has served as a strategist to national civil rights organizations, political candidates, and high-profile public officials from Los Angeles City Hall to the West Wing. Fields-Meyer’s writing on issues of democracy and public policy has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. A former speechwriter, he is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
SPONSORING PARTNERS
- Blue Turn Indivisible
- Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice
- Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America
ABOUT DEMOCRACY FORUM
This special author event is the fourth presentation of Democracy Forum, a series of action-oriented events hosted by Indivisible Palo Alto Plus. Democracy Forum aims to provide a “deep dive” educational experience that will equip participants with the knowledge, skills, and tools that they need to preserve and strengthen the American democratic experiment.
