David Pepper spoke to the SDDC on March 12
Great gathering last Wednesday — our South of Dayton Democratic Club heard an inspiring address by David Pepper, author of six books and the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. About 150 were in attendance.
Last year, in anticipation of the 2024 election, Pepper wrote a book entitled, “2025: Don’t Let This Happen America.” Here is the Amazon blurb:
“Amid the 2024 election, Donald Trump and Project 2025 have laid out detailed plans if Trump returns to power. They include everything from weaponizing the Department of Justice, to banning abortion access and IVF, to undermining public schools. 2025 imagines how these specific plans, if put into effect, would upend everyday American lives and the country as a whole. Let’s keep these stories fiction, America. Defeat Trump to ensure they don’t come true.”
We are living a nightmare where what we feared would come true, in fact, is coming true. Pepper exhorts all those who care about democracy to rise up and take action NOW. He warns, “What we do NOW will determine not just the next four years, but the next 40 years.”
Pepper fears that, unless we soon reverse course, Trumpism will become normalized. Children will grow up thinking it normal for all cabinet members to be billionaires, normal for authoritarian control, normal for elected officials to talk and act like Donald Trump.
Trump’s history reveals to us his character and motives. He wants more and more power and it seems likely that, eventually, he will push our republic into a constitutional crisis. If there is chaos in the streets, then Trump will get to use his military to quash resistance. I fear we are headed for a lot of ugliness. Pepper says that “the biggest mistake is to underestimate the threat,” and cites an author, whose name I could not hear, writing about a time in Germany when resistance was still possible. The message is: we have only a short time before it is too late. Pepper didn’t directly make the comparison, but I looked it up. This is from the Atlantic:
After the Great Depression hit, suddenly the Nazi Party became a major contender for power. Yet, you had Americans meeting Hitler and saying, “This guy is a clown. He’s like a caricature of himself.” And a lot of them went through this whole litany about how even if Hitler got into a position of power, other German politicians would somehow be able to control him. A lot of German politicians believed this themselves.
Not long ago, to mention Hitler would have meant you had gone too far and were probably losing the argument — but now, what more of us are realizing is that we’ve only just begun to see how deep Trump can sink. We know he is structuring the government to be obedient to him like no other president before him has ever attempted.
The transformation of the Republican Party into the Trump Party is shocking. Trump, with Musk’s millions, has the Republican congress under his thumb. I always thought our senator, John Husted, was the best of the Republicans. I first met him years ago when he was campaigning on my street in Kettering for the Ohio House. Maybe I am misjudging him, but it seems to me that it is not in Husted’s character to agree with every hurtful action perpetrated by Trump. It is sad that Husted is condoning the destruction of the National Institutes of Health, the undermining of great universities like Ohio State, and the dismantling of public schools — and condoning many other outrageous actions hurting Ohioans. Sad that he will not raise his voice — and be the voice for the big majority of Ohioans who disagree with these actions. Marino is impossible, but I’d like to think it possible that, in time, we can have hope that John Husted’s decency and self-respect will overcome his political ambitions.
Husted, appointed to replace JD Vance, must stand for election in 2026. We need to let Ohio voters know how their senator is failing to protect the interests of Ohioans. David Pepper says that loud and organized public protest is essential because, otherwise, without protest, the message is that nobody is much bothered by Trump’s outrageous authoritarian actions.
RESOLUTE is Pepper’s new favorite word — steadfast, unyielding, determined. He emphasizes that the battle for democracy is not new, that throughout American history there always have been strong forces working against the formation of a government of the people. Billionaires have reason to fear a democracy where the majority rules. They know they will pay dearly in a fair tax system — one that generates the revenue needed to balance the budget and to provide economic justice for all citizens.
The battle between the anti-democracy forces and the for-democracy forces never stops. The problem is that the anti-democracy forces are steadfast, but the for-democracy forces are unreliable. Pepper cites the rise of Jim Crow in the south as the result of a failure of the freedom movement to be resolute. He says, like never before, those who care about democracy must resolve to persist over the long haul.
Pepper’s book, Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call From Behind the Lines spells out how, by winning the state legislatures, Republicans have forced minority rule on Americans. He says the Democratic Party’s big mistake in the past has been to not vigorously contest every state Assembly election. He emphasizes that Democrats must make it their goal to organize every precinct in Ohio. In a Daily Kos article, An interview with David Pepper, ‘Laboratories of Autocracy’ author, about the GOP war on democracy, Pepper explains how, in Ohio, a broken democracy brought more and more corruption:
In Ohio, our statehouse has been named and our state politics have been named the most corrupt in the country … they’re legislating, like we’re Alabama or Mississippi. This downward spiral of poor outcomes and corruption —and this lack of democracy, in the end, these those go together. So I try and use Ohio, this story in Ohio, I think it’s a case study.
Without democracy, all these things are almost inevitable. You have corruption that comes with a statehouse where people don’t feel like they can ever lose — terrible public outcomes because there’s no longer any incentive to deliver good public outcomes, but the necessity to keep rigging it all … you have to keep democracy from reappearing or you’ll lose your offices. So it’s this system that sort of is self-reinforcing in a downward direction, and it’s accelerating here, and it’s accelerating in the same way elsewhere.
Pepper says that we want to believe that the arc of history bends towards greater justice, but the truth is, it bends in whatever direction it is being pushed the hardest. His hero is John Lewis and Pepper points out that the victories for civil rights were not inevitable but came about because individuals, like Lewis, were resolute and pushed, pushed, and pushed even to the point where they knew they were risking their lives.
During the Q&A, there was good discussion. That looks like Dennis Leiberman in the background. Carol Holm is asking the question
The key part of the address last night, for me, was Pepper’s account of his discussions with citizens in Robertson County, Kentucky — the county with the least population in the state. This county voted 65% for Trump but voted 80% against a Trumpian initiative for school vouchers. It says a lot about Pepper, and his resolve, that, in order to understand the thinking of the rank-and-file citizens who produced these election results, he drove his truck to Robertson County and struck up conversations with random individuals.
Pepper’s friendly exchanges revealed that the defeat of the voucher initiative was a victory for non-partisanship. The defeat happened because there was a non-partisan coalition of citizens who are happy with their public schools, happy with the public school teachers. A non-partisan effort united the voters.
All of us, sometimes, have a moment when we see the light and start to think differently. It’s possible, after the Robertson County experience, Pepper had such a moment and realized that partisan efforts can only go so far and that it is only through non-partisan citizen unity that our democracy can be saved. Probably, this truth has long been obvious to him. Pepper has the background and insight needed to write a book telling what progressive Democrats can do to build citizen unity — he is well placed to lead Democrats in a non-partisan “for-democracy” movement. I hope he will take this suggestion under consideration.
Our SDDC President, Rose Lounsbury, was highly praised by Pepper for her great OHD-36 campaign last year. He urged her to keep working to be elected to the Ohio House.
After the meeting, on my way out, I spoke with a young man dressed in suit and tie. I told him, so far as I could tell, he had been the only young person in attendance. I guessed his age at 20 and he said 19. We estimated the median age that evening at about age 55, and we agreed that there are hundreds and thousands of youth who are ready and who want to be meaningfully engaged. The older generation must come up with a plan.
It’s great that Pepper is focused on the State Assembly elections, but the only way we can push back against Trump is by pushing out his Republican minions in the US House of Representatives. This district, OH-10, is the most competitive and the least gerrymandered of any of the ten districts in Ohio controlled by Republicans. Pepper, I believe, would have had a stronger presentation if he had challenged us to develop a plan to flip OH-10 — a plan of such credibility that Democrats throughout Ohio will want to support.
What would it look like if Democrats in Montgomery, Greene, and Clark Counties came together in solidarity and gave their best effort to defeat Mike Turner? We need a plan and what I believe should be the basis for designing a plan is this reality: A Democrat cannot win OH-10 on the partisan battlefield. We must pick where we will fight and we need a battlefield where on one side are those who are for democracy, and, on the other side, are those who are against democracy. If we can engage Turner on this battlefield, we’ll have many citizens joining the “for-democracy” side who would have never, ever, in any universe, have joined the “for the Democratic Party” side.
My thought is that our best chance of retiring Mike Turner is not through a fiery partisan campaign but through a thoughtful non-partisan campaign that emphasizes unity and builds grassroots, non-partisan, civic communities. I’m trying to envision how a youth-led “for-unity” and “for-democracy” movement could begin, and what a system of 21st century participatory democracy in OH-10 might look like that this movement will build. Yes, that’s quite a lot to try to envision, but the actualization of such a movement and the establishment of such a system, I believe, are doable goals. I believe accomplishing these “for-democracy” goals should be the focus of the Democratic Party.
I love the quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Maybe it will take ten years to fully realize, but we need to have a beautiful dream to inspire and motivate, especially the youth, a dream better than a chicken in every pot or medicare for all. I believe we need to advance the dream of a system of 21st century participatory democracy that empowers the rank-and-file, and builds and sustains a government of and for the people.
In a more perfect world — the world we should seek to build — our Democratic candidate for OH-10 would emerge from his or her service and leadership in an extensive and connected non-partisan civic community that at present does not exist. We should dare ourselves to do the hard work needed to build the “Beloved Community” that John Lewis, in his last letter, urged us to build. I keep remembering the wonderful words at the close of MLK’s famous speech:
And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything! I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord![1]
It was a good meeting — there was a large convivial group, an inspiring / thoughtful speaker, and there were cookies too. This is a great club. We were challenged to not wait, but, to rise up and take action. I am encouraged to believe that the SDDC is RESOLUTE — determined to do just that.
I acquired DaytonOS in 2007 and I’ve been amazingly consistent. This is what I wrote in my first post — The Ascending Issue In Our Democracy Is Democracy Itself
I would like to think that the grassroots, ordinary citizens, will demand more of their political parties, and will reward at the voting booth the political party that most thoroughly empowers citizens to meaningfully participate in their own democracy. The idea of democracy, itself, I believe, will increasingly drive our politics, and increasingly the idea of democracy will be the benchmark used for evaluating the actions and the merit of political parties.
This is my longest post, ever. Thanks for reading.
See: To Push Back Against Trump, The Democratic Party Must Be Transformed Into A “For-Democracy” Organization. Posted on January 24, 2025
