The following remarks were prepared by Chris Crawford for, “2024 Election Postmortem Panel Discussions, hosted by The Center for Philosophy of Religion at The University of Notre Dame, on December 7th. The topic of this discussion was, “Strategy Session: Planning, Partnerships, and Practical Steps for the Next Four Years”. Crawford is a policy strategist at Protect Democracy. 

I want to start by thanking so many people in this room who poured enormous efforts into ensuring a free and fair election this year. After the 2020 election, it was not a foregone conclusion that we would have one. Many of us are reeling from the result of the election, but many people here deserve our thanks. So I do want to start by saying thank you.

My organization, Protect Democracy, is a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on preventing the United States from sliding into a more authoritarian form of government.

We believe that to do this, you have to be able to bring together a broad coalition of people who might have major disagreements on politics and policy but who are willing to come together to prioritize the defense of democracy.

I know it’s hard to build that type of coalition because I’m Catholic! Catholics are really bad at putting aside disagreements on anything…

While I am a person of faith, Protect Democracy actually is not a religious organization. But we are here because we know that we have never been able to build such a coalition in this country without the leadership of faith communities. And we know that this is not a one-year or a four-year project; it is a generational one. And it is going to take all of us.

This is a time for each of us to discern what we must keep doing, and what must be left behind to make room for new approaches.

I’d like to suggest a few paths forward based on Protect Democracy’s “Authoritarian Playbook” report, which includes both a framework for understanding authoritarianism and a framework for defeating it.

One of the reasons I like this framework is that I don’t think we should use terms like “authoritarian” lightly or as a partisan weapon. Bad policy isn’t necessarily authoritarian policy.

I have voted for presidential nominees from both political parties. Last month I voted for three separate parties at different places on my ballot. But no matter who we each voted for, we all need to be clear about the risks of an incoming president.

From pardoning people who have conducted crimes on his behalf to scapegoating vulnerable communities to attempting to overturn the will of the people in free and fair elections and promising retribution on his political enemies, there can be little question that Donald Trump has at least promised to govern in an authoritarian fashion.

We should take him at his word and risk overpreparing, rather than under-prepare and risk disaster.

Here are some of the tactics that I propose:

Protect our elections. It is likely that we will see efforts nationwide to make it harder to vote—and to even make it harder to register voters and organize pro-election activities. We should continue to stop these attempts wherever we can–with as broad a political coalition as possible.

Don’t obey in advance (or when asked!): Timothy Snyder writes, “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

We have a recent example of how to avoid this temptation:

When the state of Texas targeted a network of Catholic charities on the Southern border, first through records requests and then direct attempts to shut them down, those charities refused to comply. Legal aid organizations rushed to their defense. The local Catholic bishop stood up. Hundreds of religious leaders and nonprofit leaders mobilized to stand with them.

The courts blocked the state actions, and this movement sent a message: rather than “don’t mess with Texas,” they told Texas, “don’t mess with us.”

The alternative path is one in which vulnerable people would have been left without care and a charitable network crumbled under the weight of state pressure. The message to future targets would have been clear.

We must continue to build this muscle, and to build a broad coalition so that no one is left standing alone.

Speak in new ways and to new audiences

In my time in prayer, reflection, and writing after-action reports since the election, I’ve had to face some hard truths about the way I’ve been doing my work with faith communities. I want to share them with you and to give you space to consider them in your own work.

If we are going to broaden the pro-democracy coalition, we have to be able to speak more clearly and speak to new audiences. My own work was often too insular; I did not do enough of the hard work to reach new audiences in new ways. I assumed others were taking the information and running with it.

In particular, we too often use language and frameworks that are not connecting with people. Despite constant efforts to work with partners across the political spectrum, I’ve sometimes found myself discussing religious Americans with whom I disagree as though they are subjects in a study or pawns on a political chess board. If we’re being honest, I do not think I am alone.

We need to meet people where they are. We need to talk in ways that connect with them. We should write for audiences beyond our usual reach and paywalls, and go on podcasts and television shows and contend for our ideas alongside people who may detest them. We need to show people that we care about them and their concerns.

We should create fewer frameworks that are focused on how we are right and righteous—and focus more on finding new friends and new allies, even ones with whom we have disagreements.

And we should reject the false narrative that says that taking on this work somehow requires surrendering our values or catering to injustice.

Do not give up hope. The final strategy is perhaps the one that folks in this room are in the best position to lead: Do not give up hope. A key tactic of the authoritarian playbook is to break the will of the opposition.

We, as Americans of various faith traditions, are the heirs to a shared tradition of maintaining hope. In our darkest hours, Americans have turned to faithful leaders to shine a light.

Instead of belaboring the point, I’ll close with one woman’s story.

In the days since the election, I have found myself returning time and again to the words and actions of Fannie Lou Hamer. Many of you already know her story. She was a sharecropper from Mississippi, a poor Black woman. She loved Jesus.

During the 1960s, Mrs. Hamer challenged the local Democratic Party in Mississippi that was run on white power; she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She fought against Jim Crow voting laws.

As a result of her work registering voters, Mrs. Hamer was kicked off of the property on which she lived. She was the victim of brutal, state-sanctioned violence and assassination attempts.

She did not give up hope. She shined a light.

Mrs. Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention was so moving that President Lyndon Johnson held an impromptu press conference at the White House just to try to take the cameras off of her. That move backfired. Mrs. Hamer was not going to be stopped. And a year later, that same president signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

I will think of Mrs. Hamer as I try to hold onto hope in the days ahead.

I will picture her sitting at the DNC, purse resting on the table as she spoke to a national audience about all she had suffered and asked, “Is this America?”

I’ll remember her determination to keep fighting and to rework our institutions.

I’ll remind myself of her declaration that even if they shot her, she would fall five feet four inches forward.

In a time and place of immense darkness, her light would not be extinguished.

She would go before crowd after crowd and sing those old words, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

May we all shine a light at this moment and share that light with others.