Last weekend I was honored to be invited to speak at an online “emergency town hall” sponsored by Writers for Democratic Action and Books & Books in Miami. You can check out those remarks here.

The topic of the town hall was the ongoing autocratic emergency in America and potential responses to it, a subject I’ve been fixed upon for several years, pre-dating Trump’s re-election, as detailed in Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm.

Writers for Democratic Action is an activist group of—you guessed it—writers, formed in August 2020 to oppose Donald Trump’s administration and to promote the cause of—you guessed it again—democracy during this exceptionally fraught time in American history. Founded as Writers Against Trump by Paul Auster, Peter Balakian, James Carroll, Carolyn Forché, Todd Gitlin, Siri Hustvedt, and Askold Melnyczuk, it is a volunteer organization with a membership of over 3000. Its activities range from get-out-the-vote efforts, to the fight against book banning, to educational webinars with folks like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), authors such as Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and Javier Zamora, and writers and scholars from as far afield as Ukraine and Turkey. (I was privileged to be the guest at one of WDA’s “Democracy Book Clubs” last summer.) Last July 19—the day before Trump accepted the Republican nomination—WDA also sponsored simultaneous readings of its homage to Sinclair Lewis, titled “It Can’t Happen Here—Again,” at 91 locations in 71 cities in 24 states.

I was flattered to be invited to the town hall by James Carroll, who was also my interlocutor at the Democracy Book Club last year. The other speakers were former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky; Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of The American Prospect; Nancy Rosenblum, professor of politics and government at Harvard; and Gene Nichol, professor of law at UNC, as well as a vigorous conversation in an open forum. The full recording of the event is here.

If you or your friends or colleagues are interested in having me come talk, please DM me. In this fraught moment for America, solidarity with each other and the frank exchange of ideas are essential.