An interview with Maria J. Stephan, co-director of the Horizons Project, and V Fixmer-Oraiz, county supervisor of Johnson County, Iowa. I interviewed the two after a particularly moving panel today at #NCDD2023 in Atlanta.

I have the privilege of serving on the board of NCDD, which is a network of dialogue and civic practitioners. At this, the first in-person NCDD conference in 5 years, a persistent topic of conversation was how the field might address authoritarianism, what its responsibilities are, and what challenges it faces. My organization, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, was one of the sponsors of the event. This topic — countering authoritarianism — is one of the pillars of our new strategic direction as we move into these next crucial years.

I enjoyed this conversation with two important figures immensely. Stephan is a global expert on resistance movements and authoritarianism. Fixmer-Oraiz is the first trans, queer, biracial elected county supervisor in Iowa. Together, in this brief 15 minute interview, they provide an overview of the context in which authoritarian exists, the playbook of leaders who promote it — and what it looks like on the ground, in local communities.

Two excerpts:

Maria J. Stephan: When we’re thinking about authoritarianism, what we’re talking about is a system whereby power and control is concentrated into a small number of hands, and constitutional checks on that power and control are limited or severed. We know there are some common attributes of the authoritarian playbook because the thing to realize is that authoritarianism doesn’t just occur overnight. There’s not one night you wake up and there’s authoritarian takeover. It happens gradually, slowly, often legally, and it’s like democracy dying by a thousand cuts.

V Fixmer-Oraiz: Many of these [anti-trans] laws passed and youth took to the streets, I, as a local elected official, was with them marching, helping uplift their voices, their concerns, I was writing op eds, I was really trying to amplify what really feels like being a frog in a pot, because all of these thousand cuts, you’re feeling it, and there were other local LGBTQ leaders that were feeling it, but we weren’t seeing other allies or Iowans that were making any change because it didn’t impact them. . . . My family was coming and watching me speak at a lot of these events, trying to uplift these voices. And one night my wife and I were talking and she said, “What should I do if you are . . . there’s an active shooter, do I take care of the children or do I take care of you?” And so I say that because I think people talk about authoritarianism, a death by a thousand cuts, but for us, it’s real.

Many thanks to Jeff Prudhomme for the on-the fly camera work.

I am thinking about doing more of these kinds of brief interviews — please let me know if you would like to see more.