The only way that I know to really have the work that we’re doing rooted in communities is to have a connection with communities, making sure that not only are we talking with those who help bring a voice to the voiceless, as Dr. King would have said–which includes nonprofits and advocacy organizations–but it’s also making sure that the people who populate [the Commerce Department] represent the broad diversity of our country.
Don Graves, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce. 2022 U-M Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium event: “This is America: Building a more equitable economy,” January 17, 2022.
We have decided as a nation not to keep raising the minimum wage and decided as a nation to make smaller and smaller, relatively speaking, investments in public post-high school education. That’s how families just get ground up today, no matter how hard they work.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “Inequality,” February 11, 2022.
The thing we should be afraid of is something we haven’t thought of yet, frankly, because what led to January 6th and a lot of the other undemocratic things that we’ve seen happen, was the collective failure of imagination. Rather than continuing to plug all the holes in the wall after the floods come through, we need to be looking forward to things that haven’t already happened, things we haven’t thought of yet, things we haven’t imagined yet. Someone is imagining them, and those are the warnings we need to take seriously.
Molly Ball, TIME political correspondent. “Democracy: What it takes,” as part of the 2022 series, Democracy in Crisis: Views from the Press, March 9, 2022.
The trends of polarization started long before President Trump arrived. The angst that people feel because of the changing culture and the disruption of economic policies that left a lot of people behind started way before him. Solving those things, I think, would get us out of this issue where we’re constantly talking about the 2020 election, which by all accounts was a fair election.
Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida. “American democracy: The path forward,” March 24, 2022.
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