It is Saturday, May 31st, I'm Ali Valshi, and this morning, more and more Americans are asking the critical question, what can I do to defend democracy in America?

That question marks a shift away from the comforting illusion that the courts, politicians, or institutions will save America's democracy on their own.

They won't.

Institutions have failed us repeatedly.

As we've learned, what we thought of as guardrails are merely suggestions, reliant on goodwill, decency, and the honor system.

Real political change in America doesn't come from the top. It never

has. It comes from the bottom. Ordinary people resisting in big and small ways. That's the legacy of the

civil rights movement. The political scientist Gene Sharp, nicknamed the dictator slayer,

wrote something of a playbook for resisting authoritarian regimes. He didn't invent these

strategies. He observed them. For decades,

Sharp studied how ordinary people challenged brutal regimes around the world, and what he found

was simple yet powerful. All rulers, even the most oppressive, rely on the cooperation of the

people. Through fear, apathy, consent, they maintain power.

But when people withdraw that cooperation, regimes can and do fall.

And now in the face of creeping authoritarianism here at home, Gene Sharp's ideas aren't just for dissidents overseas.

There are a roadmap for Americans confronting Trump's authoritarian movement.

As the New York Times column, as Nicholas Christoph recently pointed out,

Democrats may have miscalculated how to answer their message in lofty appeals to democratic values.

The Democrats' message last year resolved in part around earnest appeals to democratic values,

but one of the lessons from anti-authoritarian movements around the world is that such abstract arguments aren't terribly effective. End quote. Instead, Christoph argued that we should

look to Sharp's playbook to the real-world tactics of previous resistance movements. History shows

that the courage to stand up to authority and hold power to account has helped to sustain democracies

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