A new type of movement

Rohan MenonFounder & Chairman

I started the Democracy Network a few months after the events of January 6th, 2021. After seeing what transpired on that day, I didn't feel comfortable just sitting on the sidelines anymore. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do something to join the fight for our democracy.

As a first-generation American, seeing how fragile the system was, seeing how close it came to being entirely unwound, and seeing how many places in our long and complex certification process lent themselves to exploitation really hammered home something for me. I came to understand that democracy was not just some God-given gift, or some inherent part of America's national destiny. It was the product of hard work and constant efforts to preserve it.

I knew after January 6th that I wanted to do something to help preserve America's democracy for future generations. And, even more importantly, I wanted to follow the arc of history and leave it even better off than we'd received it.

The Beginning

Initially, I started the Democracy Network as a Substack page. My initial take on advocacy in this area consisted of informing people. I launched a Twitter account to go along with the Substack and help push out some of the early articles.

A lot of my early writings focused on things that were happening across the country affecting voting rights. If laws were under consideration that would make it more difficult to vote, I would write about it. If efforts were being made to roll back voter protections, I would write about it. And if redistricting was being done in a suspect manner, I would write about it.

My goal in writing about these topics was to bring attention to them. Whatever my following or readership was, I felt passionately that by tracking these developments, documenting them, and pushing them out to people across the country, I was at least helping to put some focus on the issue of backsliding. This, I believed, in and of itself would help the problem somewhat. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so the saying goes.

I also felt that this kind of information distribution would also serve as a call to action. By eliminating the barriers that exist with respect to information access and synthesizing the biggest threats to democracy in one place, I envisioned that this would lead others to engage in more direct advocacy.

I anticipated that by informing, I would encourage people to write to their representatives, join protests, etc. In other words, my original vision for the Democracy Network was a highly decentralized network of advocates united by information.

Under that model, the Democracy Network experienced rapid growth. First, the Twitter account experienced quick growth as I joined active pro-democracy communities on Twitter and pushed my early articles out through that medium. The Substack soon followed and eventually overtook the Twitter, dwarfing its following. At that point, I pivoted exclusively to focusing on the Substack.

But something about that work stopped feeling satisfying. As purely an informer, I no longer felt confident that the work I was doing was generating any results. Without being directly involved in the advocacy side of this all, I started to wonder if the work was having any impact. I knew I had a following, but I didn’t know if I was making a difference.

I decided it was time to switch directions.

The New Path

When I started the process of reconceptualizing the Democracy Network, there was one core principle that animated my thinking: I didn’t want to deal in money-based advocacy. I didn’t want to run some large PAC that ran ads and used campaign contributions to buy access with lawmakers.

But I still wanted to engage in meaningful, impactful advocacy. So I set out thinking about alternatives—ways to be taken seriously by officeholders without having to deal in fundraising and money.

What I ultimately settled on was based on a simple concept: the reason lawmakers care about election spending (and reward it with access) is because they want to get reelected, which depends on reaching as many people as possible. The power behind these large PACs was never the money they had, but the power that money had to reach voters.

In politics, the most important thing is reaching people. I decided that my approach to direct advocacy was going to focus on building strength in numbers.

I knew that building this type of movement didn’t depend on active engagement throughout the Network, it didn’t depend on being able to organize sit-ins or protests, it depended exclusively and entirely on being able to recruit more members. It depended on growth. Our pitch to officeholders wasn’t going to be “hear us out, we plan to spend millions on this election” or “hear us out, or we’re going to make a lot of noise,” our pitch was going to be “hear us out, because there’s a lot of us.”

To start this membership-growing process, I began by leveraging the existing Substack membership. I urged subscribers to register as members on the Democracy Network website and encourage their family and friends to join as well. And unlike many other organizations, I opted not to require donations or any other commitments to become a member. The strength of the Democracy Network was to be in our members, not them doing any specific thing.

Thanks in part to this strategy of designing low-involvement membership, the Democracy Network has been able to grow massively over the past two years.

What We Do Now

The Democracy Network now serves as a direct advocate and watchdog. We request meetings with officeholders and press them on voting rights issues. We advocate for redistricting reform, against voter suppression, and to preserve institutions of direct democracy (like the ballot initiative process).

What makes the Democracy Network unique is that we also engage in data-based advocacy. When new members sign up, we collect information about congressional district, age, political affiliation, important issues, etc. What this enables us to do is tailor our messaging to specific officeholders. We can identify the specific number of our members that are their constituents. We can identify the topics that matter to them. All of this helps us be heard.

Long story short, we've found strength in numbers.

212,000+

Members

States Represented

Advocacy Meetings

Core Issues

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