The US has become a deeply polarized nation. One idea to overcome this is to pay people to disagree. Originally Published in Common Dreams, August 15, 2026. People talking around a picnic table in San Francisco. (Photo by Chiara Coetzee) America is a polarized nation. Recent polls find that nearly half of us consider members of the opposing party to be “downright evil.” Perhaps this helps explain why more and more of us are choosing to live in towns and cities that match our political leanings—a phenomenon known as “the Big Sort.” Adding to this split is a media landscape where we choose news outlets that confirm our views, and the feeds we scroll offer up more of the same. The result is an American public increasingly sealed off from opposing views. Think about it: When was the last time you had a political conversation where you disagreed with someone? And more importantly, how did it go? You most likely found it stressful rather than informative. I believe this is because we have lost a core American skill: the ability to disagree well. Not the faceless, angry kind we do online, but the kind that happens when people who disagree come together with the intention to understand one another and compromise. Our country was built on this. A summer of argument produced our Constitution. Four more years of it produced the Bill of Rights. This tradition endured in the form of New England town meetings and union halls. We’ve let this tradition lapse, and it’s costing us. So here’s a simple idea to point us back in the right direction: We should pay people to disagree. This isn’t as strange as it sounds. Organizations like Braver Angels have already built a framework for this, borrowing techniques from family conflict resolution and applying them to a country in conflict. I (Natasha, 21) have seen it work firsthand. In high school, one of my classes partnered with a school in Louisiana to run a Red-Blue Workshop—several weeks of facilitated dialogue between my liberal classmates and our conservative counterparts. As is usual in this program, we became fast friends, comfortable talking through the very topics that were supposed to divide us. We learned what successful dialogue looks like. We learned that the goal isn’t to change the other person’s mind or to completely humiliate them, as is often modeled online (open YouTube, click one political video, and you’ll be recommended hundreds more with titles like “liberal DESTROYS conservative” or vice versa). Instead, the goal is to explore each other’s lived experiences and backgrounds to form a deeper understanding of what our peers believe and why. We left the program with more empathy for one another. We were no longer competitors trying to “win” and prove our side was right, but fellow citizens united by the shared goal of bettering our country. Now imagine this at scale: a national program teaching Americans how to have effective civil dialogue and demonstrating that the villainous way the other side is depicted online is largely untrue. Who’s to say what would come of this? Maybe we would realize that over 80% of us favor stock trading bans for members of Congress. Or that over 70% of us favor term limits for Supreme Court justices. Maybe we would realize that much of the anger we are taught online is convenient for people in power. Maybe we would conclude that our power lies in looking past the differences we are sold and uniting to fight for issues that matter to us. Paying people to participate in such a program isn’t completely unheard of either. AmeriCorps has paid Americans for civic work for decades. New York recently paid its residents to shovel snow after this winter’s blizzards. No one regarded either policy as a handout. The work was viewed as an investment in what a functioning city or country needs. Structured dialogue between political opposites belongs on that list of vital infrastructure. This would likely begin as a pilot program in a few cities, but national experiments abroad prove that such dialogue is scalable. And it would be a bargain! We are already paying a high price for polarization. The most obvious cost is to the health of our democracy. But there’s a literal price tag too. When our government can’t compromise, it shuts down: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in 2025, a single government shutdown cost the economy between $7 billion and $14 billion. Polarization affects the private sector, too. Research on private companies found that more polarized states see meaningfully less business investment overall. Investing in civic infrastructure would pay dividends. And the money is there. If $37 billion of our tax dollars can fund an aimless war in the Middle East, then surely a fraction of that can be used to repair our democracy at home. America’s problem is not that Americans disagree. It’s that we’ve stopped seeing people who disagree with us as fellow citizens with different ideas about what’s best for the country and started seeing them as enemies to be vanquished. Of course, paying Americans to sit down together won’t fix this problem overnight. But it’s a start. With it, we can begin the slow work of democratic reconciliation. Doing so will remind us that disagreeing with one another never hurts our country. It is forgetting how to disagree well that does.

Two major reports released this year tell a grim story: Global freedom continues to decline and the US has lost its longstanding classification a liberal democracy. But hope lies in the data. Originally Published in Common Dreams, May 17, 2026. Protesters hold signs as they participate in a “No Kings” protest in Manhattan on March 28, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) The US score on the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index declined by 24% in only one year, while its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.“ The US joins nearly a quarter of the world’s nations undergoing democratic backsliding, and is on its way to joining the three-quarters of the world population, some 6 billion people, who live in autocracies. If President Donald Trump’s first term “laid the foundation”, according to the report, the second term has seen the backslide quicken. The bad news is now measurable. V-dem rates the US as an elected democracy, losing its higher position as a liberal democracy. V-dem points to a breakdown of liberal characteristics including freedom of expression, respect for civil liberties, and well-functioning checks and balances, especially those between the executive branch and the judiciary. Freedom House reports a similar dramatic decline. As does the Democracy Meter. Such a democratic crash is typically associated with coup d’etats. According to V-Dem we are back to the lowest level of democracy since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, establishing the US as a democracy that enfranchised, at least in law, all citizens. Trump did not create our democratic weaknesses, but he is exploiting them. Power has been unevenly coalescing in the presidency since at least Andrew Jackson’s administration. Democrats have done little to roll back the executive overreach that marked George W. Bush’s post 9/11 War on Terror or Barack Obama’s drone strikes. Even former President Joe Biden could not help but overuse executive orders to overcome congressional gridlock. These precedents emboldened Trump. If the imperial presidency has previously been restricted to despotic rule abroad, it is now directed to the US’ own citizens and subjects. Trump is the domestic return of the imperial boomerang, establishing what political theorist Nikhil Pal Singh calls a “Homeland Empire.” The 2026 midterm elections are more than a referendum on Trump. They are a test of whether American democracy can repair itself. We were warned. This most recent executive power grab was foreshadowed by the Project 2025 Heritage Foundation plan to enact “unitary executive theory.” By 2026, according to Project 2025 Tracker, half of the 320 objectives have been met. We have entered what former Republican adviser Gregg Nunziata calls “the age of American Caesarism.” Still, buried within V-dem’s report are two important lessons of hope. The first lesson is that demand for democracy, as both a norm and practice, remains strong. Democracy remains powerful as an ideal, which is why even autocrats rarely reject elections outright and often rely on the appearance of democratic forms to confer legitimacy. Trump may troll liberals by cosplaying a king, selling 2028 merch, or even quipping in relation to the midterms that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.“ But Trump still requires elections to be viewed as legitimate—even within the Republican Party. Uncertainty in elections can never fully be removed while democracy remains the norm. The second lesson is that the first election after a democratic slide is a pivotal moment to reverse the trend. This means the 2026 midterm elections are more than a referendum on Trump. They are a test of whether American democracy can repair itself. Elections remain dangerous to autocrats precisely because they cannot fully control what voters will do. Nevertheless, autocrats still attempt to tilt the playing field in their favor. To consolidate their grip on power, autocrats engage in what Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way call “competitive authoritarianism.” Opposition remains legal and elections are still contested. But authoritarians weaponize the executive and judicial machinery of the state to make opposition costly. Taking a page out of the authoritarian playbook, Trump has worked to discipline institutions that might constrain him. He has filled the administrative state with party sycophants, hollowed out government agencies, and targeted media and universities. He wields violent rhetoric to delegitimize opposition, both antifa bogymen and centrist liberals, and pardons those who illegally act in the administration’s interests, encouraging others to act with impunity. The list goes on. The point is to intimidate civil society and silence dissent. Historian Timothy Snyder calls this “anticipatory obedience.” The danger, however, is that Trump is not alone. His impulses have become intertwined with party strategy. Voting rights are the clearest example of this unified threat. Trump’s SAVE Act has stalled in the Senate, but the Roberts Court has arrived with the cavalry to fulfill the Republican party’s long-awaited agenda. The recent Callais v Louisiana has already revealed itself to be a cudgel in Black voting districts. In a perverse acceptance that racism no longer exists, the ruling has green-lit a gerrymander race to the bottom. Trump is a political bully. He seeks to whittle us down with near constant reminders that he has the power and we do not. Broadly, this thumb-on-his nose strategy underpins his social media message. This is its only message: Power begets power. Trump is relying on us to accept defeat that has not yet occurred. But power is not the same as inevitability. Despite the increasingly stacked odds, the upcoming midterm elections are a pivotal moment to repudiate autocracy. Justice Elena Kagan, in her stinging dissent in the Callais v Louisiana decision, reminds us that the Voting Rights Act “was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers” and “[brought] this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.” Rights were born in struggle. They can be lost in despondency. We must remind ourselves that democratic institutions are not self-executing: We are the guardrails. What I call a “living democracy” builds on the uncertainty and hope that lies within the heart of the democratic project. The late political theorist Sheldin Wolin named this hopefulness “fugitive democracy,“ something fleeting that must be continually renewed. As Wolin writes, ”The possibility of renewal draws on a simple fact: that ordinary individuals are capable of creating new cultural patterns of commonality at any moment.“ It is up to us to rebuild hope in our political communities and in such numbers that we can defeat the electoral odds stacked against us.

In 2026, the federal government is telling us how men should be men, with devastating effects on our health and planet. Originally Published in Common Dreams , March 17, 2025. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) In January 2026, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr . announced the Food and Drug Administration’s new inverted food pyramid to replace the Michelle Obama’s “myplate” visualization. There is some good in the change: promoting whole foods and minimizing processed foods, as I noted in My “Beef” with Bobby. But the science ends here as RFK instead relies on bro- science. Taking his cue from the “manosphere” and MAHA wellness influencers, he emphasizes animal proteins over plant proteins. More on that in a moment. Just one month after releasing the new food pyramid, RFK released a workout video with Kid Rock where the pair eat steaks, pump iron, and then drink raw milk in a hot tub together. It’s difficult to watch, but even more difficult to describe. Comedian Stephen Colbert called it “senior softcore that feels like dropping acid.” RFK has long sought to prove his manliness. He has admitted to taking testosterone, while insisting, unconvincingly, that he’s not on steroids. The administration more broadly seems to have an obsessive and desperate need to demonstrate its masculine prowess. In fact, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warrior mentality may have contributed to the US attacks on Iran. It has certainly contributed to his callous dismissal of human casualties. Both meanwhile defer to President Donald Trump’s allegedly off-the charts levels of testosterone. These food policies and performative workouts might appear unrelated. But, a closer connection exists between beef, masculinity, and the American nation, one that has, in fact, twined since the country’s earliest days. RFK’s effort to Make American Healthy Again is mere revival of a longstanding American narrative. For all its chest-thumping certainty, this administration’s relationship to masculinity looks less like confidence than anxiety, much like the frontier myth itself. The idea that meat is manly can be traced to the cultural founding of the nation on the actual frontier. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the struggle to conquer the wilderness had fostered American virtues of independence, self-reliance, and democracy . Proving your manly virtue on the frontier made immigrants into American men as America became a virtuous nation. Declaring the closing of the frontier, Jackson lamented America’s ability to grow and innovate. Men would wither without the opportunity to test their mettle as the nation expanded. Beef was central to imperial expansion on the frontier. Ranching not only justified the expropriation American Indian land, but beef products supplied to the US Army made expansion possible. By slaughtering to the brink of extinction the 50 million bison that roamed the Great Plains, they settled the “Indian question.” Historian Joshua Specht calls cattle “mobile colonizers.” Culturally, ranchers and cowboys justified the violence against American Indians in the interests of civilization. Central to this myth was the frontier man, bringing civilization to the feminized “vanishing Indian,” a curious paradox, to be sure, where Native Americans could be at once docile and violent. Today we are left with an embarrassing historical echo. Protein as the final frontier of fitness influencers ironically returns us to the actual frontier in American history. Now we can see why RFK’s two provocations in the culture war of 2026 are related. Food has always been gendered and tied to nothing less than the ideals of the nation and what it means to be an American. Today we see the same gendering of meat wrapped up with big business. Only un-American soy boys refuse to eat meat. Meat advertisements often demonstrate the masculinity of meat consumption by displaying oversexualized women cooking meat, implying that both women and animals are to be dominated and consumed by men. There is of course no evidence that soy intake affects male hormones , or that meat consumption is required for elite athletic performance. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose character once said, “ You hit like a vegetarian,“ has more recently called for cutting back on meat, noting that it isn’t necessary for athletes and harms the planet. James Cameron’s documentary The Game Changers challenges the myth that animal protein is needed for physical strength and elite athletic performance. Cameron follows tennis stars, Olympians, and even the ultimate fighter James Wilks to see how plant protein permeates their diets. But the myth lives on, perpetrated by RFK’s shirtless workouts and emphasis on eating meat. And because the old adage ”follow the money“ seems to be guiding light for this administration, it should come as no surprise that the meat industry is also a major donor. Still, the science on red meat consumption and its effects on our planet and health are clear. Red meat consumption reduces life expectancy by increasing risks of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. Cattle also consume much of the world’s arable land, leading to deforestation and increased greenhouse gas emissions . While beans and legumes make it into the dietary guidelines, they are entirely absent from the pyramid. Despite the eagerness of the administration, Kid Rock, and MAHA followers to heed RFK’s food and exercise advice, many of these same figures recoiled when Michelle Obama tried to move toward nutrient-dense fruit and vegetables in school lunches. Republicans accused her of trying to impose a “nanny-state,” and bristled at her impudent attempt to shape what Americans choose to eat. Again, gender is at work in our food policies. Despite claiming to restore “scientific integrity” and “common sense,” RFK ignores the government’s own “Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee,” which consistently advocated plant-based sources of protein, especially beans and lentils while reducing the intake of red meat. The committee even suggested moving the “Beans, Peas, and Lentils Subgroup from the Vegetables Food Group to the Protein Foods Group.” Cultural tropes can be hard to break, but it is time for a new generation of athletes and influencers to confront the wellness-to-fascism pipeline. Our secretary of health should not be making policy decisions on the basis of pseudoscience for the sake of winning a culture war. Nor should his leadership parrot “manosphere” talking points that openly embrace a hostility toward women and decry the feminization of Western society. This is nothing short of what one nutritionist called a “vibes-based policy disaster.” For all its chest-thumping certainty, this administration’s relationship to masculinity looks less like confidence than anxiety, much like the frontier myth itself. Still, these performances should not require the rest of us to pay with our health and our planet for their fragile egos.

If we want to make progress on either front, we need to understand just how deeply our climate and democracy crises are connected. Originally Published in Common Dreams , Jan 10, 2025. Climate activists hold signs outside U.S. billionaire Bill Ackman’s Manhattan residence during “Bye Bye Billionaires Block Party” protest on Earth Day in New York, U.S. on April 22, 2025. (Photo: Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images) Right now, Americans are rightly alarmed by profound assaults on our democracy . Less in the limelight, but of critical importance, is the substantial backsliding and ongoing procrastination on the climate crisis . While the broader anti-democracy movement and stalling climate policy are both being driven by a highly destructive Trump Administration , too little attention has been devoted to exploring their common roots. Indeed, these issues may seem, at the surface, to be unrelated, or so vast that they require their own solutions. However, if we want to make progress on either front, we need to understand just how deeply our climate and democracy crises are connected. They not only share roots but also feed into each other. One of the most impactful threads tying these crises together is the misuse of corporate-led lobbying, Super PAC donations, and dark money groups. The biggest aggressor here is the fossil fuel industry . In 2022, companies including Exxon Mobil and Shell spent $124.4 million on lobbying. In 2023, the Congressional Leadership Fund , a Republican super PAC, received nearly $1 million from oil and gas companies. Plus, organizations like Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) and other political advocacy groups are funded largely by dark money and corporations. RAGA, for example, received nearly $6 million in donations from gas and oil companies from 2020-2024. Likewise on the individual level, Kelcy Warren --whose company is behind the Dakota Access Pipeline--donated around $18 million across Trump’s three campaigns. CEO of one the country’s largest oil companies, Timothy Dunn shelled out $5 million to Trump-backed super PACS in 2024. All this private influence overpowers the will of American voters. Over half of us want a shift to clean energy, with even young Republicans supporting investing in clean energy and funding states to address the climate crisis. Despite this clear consensus, little progress has been made because of our campaign finance laws. Disinformation is another powerful shared root of our climate and democracy crises. It threatens our democracy: Fake news stories have had real political consequences in our elections. In 2024, for example, we saw how destructive narratives surrounding undocumented immigrants eating pets and receiving hurricane relief funds had real sway on voters. When it comes to the climate crisis, the same issues persist. A meta-study conducted by the International Panel on the Information Environment found that corporations, conservative politicians, and even national governments have contributed to rampant climate misinformation. It’s not news that Trump is a key contributor here, having “called climate science ‘a giant hoax’ and ‘bullshit.’” And, too, it’s well documented that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil have for decades deliberately “led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.” Election and climate disinformation feed off of our declining trust in each other and institutions that serve the common good. A 2025 Partnership for Public Service survey found that only a third of Americans trust the federal government, for example. We can see the cycle of disinformation and distrust play out among climate change skeptics. A Pew Research Center survey found that many feel apprehensive when faced with “alarmist” facts about the climate. Participants feel suspicious that climate change advocates have a secret agenda—a problem fueled by a lack of trust and disinformation which only further perpetuates the issue. But here’s the kicker: This dynamic has opened the door for fossil fuel companies to control narratives about the climate crisis. Absent fact-checking tools and coupled with the unregulated rise of generative AI , mis/dis-information will continue to circulate online with significant impact on how people vote and understand of key issues including the climate crisis. Addressing these deep issues—from money in politics to waning trust—takes work. But he stakes are high and the harm to communities are real, so we must tackle these roots. It comes as no surprise that climate chaos disproportionately impacts marginalized communities including people of color, low-income communities, children, the elderly, and those who reside in coastal communities. An uneven distribution of resources needed to prepare for climate disasters and recover from them is also a key part of the problem. It’s no coincidence that the populations most impacted by the climate crisis are the same communities that have been systemically disenfranchised in our democracy. Take the disenfranchisement of Black voters: laws preventing felons from voting are one of many tactics used to stifle the Black vote. Note our prison population is notably disproportionately Black due to decades of discriminatory mass incarceration practices including over policing. This systemic exclusion means that citizens—particularly the most impacted—are denied a voice on the very issues that most harm them. Clearly the playing field is deeply uneven: Corporate powers wreak havoc on our communities all while undermining the democratic process through campaign financing and misinformation. Meanwhile, as Trump violently deploys ICE agents to wreak havoc in Minneapolis and beyond, he pillages the woods next door (note Congress’s revocation of a 20-year mining moratorium in Minnesota’s boundary waters this January). There’s no denying that climate chaos and democracy are deeply interrelated. The task at hand is substantial, but by digging to these shared roots, we can form the broad coalitions and solidaristic networks of cross-issue advocates that we need to build a more just and democratic world for all.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from Mr. Mamdani’s campaign is this: Hope grounded in possibility is the fuel for democracy. Originally Published in Common Dreams , Nov 8th, 2025. (Photo Credit Bingjiefu Hu/Creative Common) Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory on Tuesday is a bright light in this otherwise terrifying political time, and the messages propelling his political ascendance offer many lessons. One particularly is music to our ears—indeed, it’s a song we’ve long been singing. We’ll let the words from his acceptance speech speak for themselves: Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. And, while we cast our ballots alone, we choose hope together: hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. Right on! Mr. Mamdani’s message is both powerful and incisive. To launch his campaign to become mayor of our largest city required hope—and great courage. A long-shot candidate—a 34-year-old South Asian Muslim and democratic socialist assemblyman—he is a departure from mayoral convention. Nevertheless, he, and a dedicated team of volunteers, took the plunge, pouring heart and soul into one of the most impressive grassroots campaigns. Mr. Mamdani’s candidacy was an act of hope—rooted not only in a belief in the necessity of his ideas and capacity to govern but also of hope that the political landscape would embrace a leader like him. And that hope turned into victory—justifying itself. Adamantly and consistently, he worked to convince voters that a better New York is achievable—that hope need not be an abstract and ephemeral feeling but rooted in actual political possibility. Doing so, Mr. Mamdani championed the concerns New Yorkers—but, really, most Americans—feel acutely: our affordability crisis in housing, food, and healthcare ; the burden of wages failing to keep up with cost of living; the immense struggle required just to survive. At every step of his campaign, he addressed these deep structural problems with real, innovative policy solutions. He didn’t ask voters to find hope from his politicking. Rather, he offered real grounds for belief. We have long said that hope is power. Mr. Mamdani’s political success is evidence of this truth. So perhaps the most important takeaway from Mr. Mamdani’s campaign is this: Hope grounded in possibility is the fuel for democracy . We find this a particularly powerful line from Mr. Mamdani’s acceptance speech: “We won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.” This sentiment is, indeed, the crux of hope’s power. When we believe, the door to action opens. We become agents capable of making real the changes we so desperately. As Mr. Mamdani says, politics is not done to us, but what we do. This spirit is contagious and key to fighting back successfully against the Trump administration’s fascist policies and reversing widespread democratic backsliding. We must challenge ourselves to hope! Why not run for office with a bold, hope-infused platform? Volunteer for a candidate we believe in? And cast our votes for a different and better future? Organizations including Run for Something empower us to step up and consider ourselves as changemakers, and several other national groups such as Common Cause and Indivisible provide clear paths for citizen action. Who knows what may come from taking the next hopeful step in your community, whether its electoral or any other form of advocacy. Remember hope is not for “wimps.” It requires courage to do what we thought we could not do. The root of the word courage is the French word for heart, “coeur.” So, when you step up and feel yours pounding, don’t doubt. It’s just your heart cheering you on! Leading with hope, we can build the engaged and just “living democracy” we want and know is essential. We can become proud of our country again.

New data about global food consumption confirms what we know: our meat based diets are our downfall. Originally Published in Common Dreams , Oct 15th, 2025. Earlier this month, the Eat-Lancet commission released new data about global food consumption. Its findings are sobering but not at all surprising. The report highlights the extreme destruction driven by our meat-based diets, emphasizing not only the threats to our health but the many environmental harms. We learn that our food systems are responsible for about a third of global green house gas emissions, with livestock alone contributing 12-19 percent. No surprise that “the diets of the richest 30% of the global population contribute to more than 70% of the environmental pressures from food systems.” The report also estimates that shifting our global eating patterns to follow its guidelines would prevent 15 million deaths per year— almost 30 percent of global death . Lest we forget that in 2015 the World Health Organization declared processed meat a carcinogen and red meat a likely carcinogen. Eat-Lancet’s findings, while shocking, are not new. They are the same song I’ve been singing since I wrote Diet for a Small Planet in 1971. Chart b y Vox Of course, consumption goes hand in hand with production, and I find it just as necessary to highlight that side of things. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data confirms suspicion : our production is misaligned with diets that benefit both us and the planet. Note the many parallels between these two charts. Chart by Econofact Meat remains the chief culprit. In an excellent article about Eat-Lancet’s report, Vox’s Kenny Torrella reminds readers of the strong industry-led backlash to the commission’s 2019 report. Since then, meat producers have lobbied and campaigned tirelessly to shift climate discussions way from our plates even as data about meat’s sizable impact compounds. Public appetite has shifted accordingly, with meat sales reaching a record high over $100 Billion in 2024. We know what a healthy diet looks like--one rich in vegetables, legumes, seeds, and nuts. It will take a massive effort to get us there and thankfully Eat-Lancet offers many solutions--from using taxes and subsidies to shift dietary incentives, to school lunch programs, to reforms aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency at all levels of the food chain. There are so many clear steps we can take. The report also highlights another key fact: Without “secure social foundations” all of this is moot. It speaks to the fact that the challenges we face from today’s food system are symptomatic of larger social imbalances. Consider the meat industry’s strong lobbying campaign: Such coordinated effort is only possible in a highly concentrated market. Over three-quarters of the global beef market is controlled by just four corporations. In pork, three firms account for two-thirds. Such profound power shared among so few hands is the story of today’s economy. We need more reports like Eat-Lancet’s that both affirm the stakes of industry’s powerful hold and strongly assert that another way is possible. There are many doing this vital work from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food to Sentient Media. As we shift what’s on our plates, let’s uplift them, too.

Making it easier for young people to vote is a great way to increase participation, making our democracy live up to its ideals. Originally Published in Common Dreams , Aug 26th, 2025. (Photo Credit Garry Knight/Creative Commons) With democracy under attack in the US, a worldwide movement to lower the voting age is growing. This July, the United Kingdom announced it would lower the voting age from 18 to 16 in general elections. When the bill passes, the UK will join Brazil, Austria, Cuba, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Ecuador as nations which already allow 16-year-olds to vote. In others, including Greece and Indonesia, the voting age is 17. While there is no clear partisan advantage in lowering the voting age, collective benefits abound—including a more engaged democracy judged by civic engagement and political attitudes . Voting habits are established early, and support in the classroom can make a big difference. But, when the voting age is 18, fewer voters are in school during their first election. Depending on the election cycle, many will not have the opportunity to vote in a national election until they are 21. Thus, many first-time voters lack vital resources and thus face higher barriers to entry. The case is true in the United States . Nearly a third of unregistered voters between 18-29 say they were simply too busy to go through the registration process. As political scientist Joshua Tucker explains , “If you vote when you’re young in the first three elections, [for which you are eligible] that’s likely to predict you continue voting.” If you don’t, “you’re less likely to vote for the rest of your life,” and “even one failure lowers the chance of voting later.” So, the stakes are high and opportunity during the early years can have lifelong impacts. Nations lowering voting age have experienced an increase youth activism . Argentina, for example, lowered voting age in 2012. Then in 2015 , years before the surge of the # MeToo movement, the Ni Una Menos (Not one less) movement in Argentina began. Through mass protests and strikes, it aimed to combat and bring awareness to gender-based violence. Another youth-led action—the Marea Verde (Green Wave) Movement—pushed to legalize abortion and significantly influenced development and passage of a 2020 national Argentine law that did just that. Here, too, young Americans have stepped up for a stronger democracy, even helping to spark two of the most influential Supreme Court cases. In 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns, a student in a segregated school in Prince Edward County, Virginia, took action. Her school held over twice as many students as was legally permissible, used second-hand supplies, and lacked adequate bathrooms or heating. So, Johns led her peers in a school assembly and ultimately organized a student-body strike. With the support of the NAACP, her courageous efforts turned into one of the five legal cases of Brown v. the Board of Education that declared public school segregation illegal. About a decade and a half later, five students in Des Moines, Iowa came together to protest the Vietnam War , each wearing an armband to school. For this they were suspended, but they fought back. Their fight eventually made its way to the Supreme Court and what would become Tinker v. Des Moines defining public-school students’ First Amendment rights. In a more recent example of the power of student activism, a survivor from the Parkland shooting, high school junior Cameron Kasky, organized the March for Our Lives protests in 2018. In a fight for gun control , they would become one of the largest in US history, with a million participants—mostly students—taking the streets to fight for gun control. These formidable young people offer inspiring evidence that an early understanding of civics, along with the experience of political empowerment, can ripple out to make history. These stories underscore our responsibility to bring these principles and opportunities to all young Americans, not only with better civics education but also by lowering the voting age, and thereby affirming their voices matter. As data from the most recent election confirm, states with the least restrictive voting had the highest turnout among young voters, while the opposite was true in the more restrictive states. Thankfully, we are making progress: In a third of US states , 17-year-olds can now vote in primaries if they turn 18 before the general election. Even more exciting are the dozen cities where 16-year-olds can now vote, either in school-board elections or all local elections. The facts are clear. Making it easier for young people to vote is a great way to increase participation, making our democracy live up to its ideals. Here 16- and 17-year-olds drive, pay taxes, work unrestricted hours; yet they cannot exercise the fundamental, democratic right to vote. Let us step up to join our peer nations and change that now.

We must explicitly name the culprits that are creating an environment rife with both climate catastrophe and conditions hostile to children and families—corporate power and concentrated wealth. Originally Published in Common Dreams , July 25th, 2025. (Photo Credit Rose Shpernik/Creative Commons) Mounting concern over declining birth rates , the devastation of the climate crisis , and a rising conservative pronatalist movement have led to a renewed focus on population. People across the political spectrum express show up on both sides of the debate, whether about the economic challenges of an aging population, our planet’s destruction (and its very real human toll), or pushing a regressive agenda. Late last month, The New York Times published “Depopulation is Coming, Don’t Expect it to Solve Our Problems.” I read it eagerly. Economists Michael Geruso and Dean Spears do make important points. They write: “Confronting climate change requires that billions of people live differently. It does not require that billions of future people never live.” Here, here! And, in making their argument against depopulation, they also share a vision for the future where systemic barriers driving birth rates down, like the high duress placed on mothers, are no longer so prominent. Those are great points, but they don’t tell the whole story and we need to be honest about the real crisis. These questions bring me back to the beginning of my life’s work. The authors reference Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), which argued that, if the population kept growing, humanity would implode from famine or disease due to a lack of resources . It came out when I was a young woman and took the world by storm. I wondered, “Is this true?” The resulting research led me to write my first book, Diet for a Small Planet (1971), which proved that our growing population was not the problem. Instead, concerns over scarcity—at least in the realm of food—pointed to a larger culprit: Concentrated corporate power and extreme economic inequality which together promoted meat-centered diets. In a moment when population is again in the limelight and meat-based diets are increasingly valorized, I want to return to the argument I made then. It feels more important than ever. About three-quarters of the world’s agricultural land is devoted to livestock that provide only about 11% of our calories. And just four corporations—JBS, Tyson Foods, and Cargill, and National Beef— control over three-quarters of the global beef market. In pork, three firms account for two-thirds. We can see concentrated power still hard at work here. Meat is the most in efficient way to feed ourselves. Here’s the key point: Meat production is not only wasteful, it’s incredibly destructive. For one, it furthers destruction of carbon-absorbing rainforests while adding cattle-emitting methane—a particularly intense greenhouse gas. According to one report , “Cows pack such a punch that, if they were a nation, ‘cow country’ would rank as the world’s sixth worst greenhouse gas emitter.” And, tragically, cattle farming alone is responsible for 41% of tropical deforestation . These mega-corporations—with their substantial hold on the meat market—have no real reason to slow or stop their production; instead, they profit, while we bear the brunt of the destruction. Let’s return to the question of population. We know that the meat industry—as one of the big drivers of our climate crisis—is a huge part of creating scarcity-based depopulation rhetoric. At the same time, we know that depopulation is no longer an idea simply made mainstream by Ehrlich et al., but a reality driven by declining birth rates. The decline in birth rates is a phenomenon across the West, but the U.S. has a distinct landscape. In a 40-country comparison, we come in 38th— third worst —for childcare affordability. For single parents in the United States , a gargantuan 32% of income is spent on childcare. According to The Guardian , in Massachusetts , infant care costs almost $27,000 per year on average--“21% more than the average rent, and 83% more than in-state tuition at a public college.” While the cost of childcare is mind-boggling, it’s not a stand-alone issue: We are in a full-blown cost of living crisis. The U.S.’ median income is just over $80,000 a year, yet to live comfortably in Mississippi—the U.S.'s most affordable state--a family of four would need to make around $190,000 in 2025. All of this in a nation where the richest 1% of Americans make 139 times as much as the bottom 20%. When we discuss population, we must take care to clearly identify the constellation of social and economic factors at play. This means explicitly naming the culprits that are creating an environment rife with both climate catastrophe and conditions hostile to children and families—corporate power and concentrated wealth. We face neither a crisis of scarcity nor a crisis of population. Rather, we face a crisis of capitalism . The solution is a democratic economy with rules against monopoly and an adequate safety net that provides the resources we all need to thrive

By Frances Moore Lappé, May 22, 2023 Only with democracy —specifically a living democracy— can we transform our wasteful, destructive food system to ensure everyone’s fair access to healthy, ecologically grown food. "What if we reconceive good eating as not just 'plant-based,' but 'planet-healing'?" asks Lappé. (Photo: harvesturbanfarms.com) Originally Published on Common Dreams , May 22 , 2023 Republished on LA Progressive , May 22, 2023 Planetarian. What’s that?” I am eager to explain. In the late sixties, as I struggled to find my path, Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb had just exploded, admonishing humanity for overpopulating the Earth and creating food scarcity. Soon, several friends even pledged never to have kids. So, I had to know: Was Ehrlich right? I dug in at U.C. Berkeley’s agricultural library with my dad’s slide rule in hand, asking: Is it true that we’re running out of food? No. Emphatically no, I soon learned. We did then—and do now—produce enough food for all. Yet decade after decade we turn abundance into scarcity for too many: Today, 1.3 billion people —1 in 6 of us—lack consistent access to the calories we need. And safe and healthy diets? They’re out of reach for almost 40 percent of humanity, and the crisis is predicted to worsen. Why? Simply put, our world’s gross power inequities—political and economic—are the root cause. As the richest 1 percent control about half the world’s wealth, food policies serve elite interests, not commonsense or our planet’s health. When our dietary habits incorporate environmental, justice, and health awareness as well as animal welfare, might we be "planetarians"? One result? Staggering inefficiency. Humans directly eat only about half the calories we produce. And the other half? While some become biofuel, in the U.S. we devote three-fourths of agricultural land to livestock production. And, of every 100 feed calories that cows eat, we get only three calories back in that burger or steak on our plate. With dairy cows, we get less than half the calories they’re fed. The big picture? Worldwide, almost 80 percent of our agricultural land produces livestock that give us only 18 percent of our calories. Other costs include vast environmental harms: Producing animal foods generates greenhouse gas emissions 10 to 60 times greater than producing plant-based foods. Plus, 60 percent of biodiversity loss worldwide is caused by livestock. Moreover, livestock grazing is responsible for almost 40 percent of global deforestation , worsening the climate and biodiversity crises. Natural historian David Attenborough warns us we are facing the 6th great species extinction , which requires a dietary shift toward plant food. Plus, “industrialized livestock” generate 85 percent of soil erosion, also a major threat. Next, water. Our heating climate diminishes fresh water supplies; yet to produce just one pound of beef we use 1,800 gallons of water . Globally, “animal agriculture” accounts for nearly a fifth of all freshwater use. Here in the U.S. cattle farming uses more than half the water drawn from the Colorado River, for example, even as area’s current water crisis already threatens many farms and puts dozens of fish species at risk. Meat-centered diets also directly damage our health: In 2015, the WHO declared red meat a probable carcinogen and processed meat a carcinogen . In sharp contrast, plant-centered diets have been shown to lower body weight, boost the immune system, and decrease cancer risk, coronary heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes. So, no surprise: A plant-centered diet is associated with “ lower risk of all-cause mortality ” in U.S. adults. It makes no sense. Why would we humans—supposedly the brightest species—actively shrink our food supply? Why? Because the deeper scarcity we’ve failed to address is that of democracy. On political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House—confounded by Eleanor Roosevelt—ranks us way behind nations we think of as peers. The U.S. comes in 59th between Panama and Samoa. Yet, only with democracy can we transform our wasteful, destructive food system to ensure everyone’s fair access to healthy, ecologically grown food. Thus, much of my life energies have gone toward what I call “living democracy” in which we each have both economic and political power. So, how does shifting my diet serve democracy? In nourishing ourselves we make multiple choices daily. That alone gives food special power. With each choice I know I am sending signals back through the food chain for sane, fair use of our Earth. Suddenly, my every bite has delicious purpose. As a vegetarian, I’ve loved knowing I was protecting animals and avoiding massive waste. But now I wonder whether “vegetarian” captures the full impact of such food choices. So, what if we reconceive good eating as not just “plant-based,” but “planet-healing”? When our dietary habits incorporate environmental, justice, and health awareness as well as animal welfare, might we be "planetarians"? I believe that with every step aligning our lives with our deepest truths, we become more convincing to ourselves and thus to others—and more likely to take our next step and the next…with ever greater courage. And that’s exactly what our planet needs now more than ever. So, “planetarian” feels great.

In focusing on Trump’s shocking amorality we risk sliding over a painful truth we must embrace to create the democracy we need and want: His rise is a symptom . Originally Published in Common Dreams , July 8th, 2025. Americans are waking up to President Donald Trump’s assaults on our democracy. In just four years, his documented lies have topped 30,000. He has also broken laws, including his attempts to dismantle  government agencies, his blatant conflicts of interest  with Elon Musk , and his disregarding courts  on a number of fronts. We honor those courageously stepping up to hold Trump accountable—from Indivisible  to Common Cause  to Democracy Forward , and many more citizen-organizing efforts. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images But our appropriate outrage might hide a danger—that in focusing on Trump’s shocking amorality we could slide over a painful truth we must embrace to create the democracy we need and want: His rise is a symptom. Donald Trump was able to triumph because of deep dysfunction long built into our governing structures. While we must resist his actions and work to limit the immediate damage, we must also commit to fighting for an even more democratic future, free of our current limitations. Simply put, some features of our democracy are baked-in   barriers to one-person-one-vote. The Senate , to name one. Wyoming , with a population of just over half a million has the same number of Senate seats as California , home to nearly 40 million. In other words, a voter in Wyoming has almost 68 times greater representation than a voter in much more densely populated California. Our fight can’t merely be against Trump but in pursuit of a positive vision of an America where each of us counts, and we work together building the world we want. And the challenges don’t stop there. Gerrymandering of electoral districts—the redrawing of district lines to favor the party in power—creates unrepresentative legislatures. As a result, one report found Republicans had an advantage of about 16 House seats in 2024’s congressional election. And then, there’s voter suppression as well as the hugely corrupting role of money in politics and the limits of our two-party system . Despite being unfit, Trump rose to power in large measure because our antidemocratic rules have led to deep dissatisfaction with government that he was able to tap. Indeed, it’s been nearly four decades since 60% of us expressed satisfaction with “the way democracy was working.” Since then, approval has tumbled steeply. By early 2023, just 28% of U.S. adults expressed satisfaction with how our democracy is working. And by early 2025 well more than half of Americans—61 percent— remained dissatisfied.   And Americans’ view of our standing in the world? Despite deep doubts about our democracy, interestingly, over half of us still see our country as one of the world’s greatest . One in five even place the us at the top, and only 27% acknowledge there are better democracies. Hmm. Self-perception can be self-deception: In global comparisons we rate shockingly low. Each year, Freedom House, founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, ranks nations by the quality of their political rights and civil liberties—a reasonable measure of democracy. Sadly, the U.S. ranks 57th worldwide, and not even in the ballpark of nations we imagine to be our peers. Almost all European Union nations rank in the top 25. Really? That bad? Yes. So, how do we explain the disconnect? And how might we use this bad news for good? Domestically, we know that there are deep roots to dissatisfaction with our democracy. But it’s not just the structural features named above: At the same time, our extreme economic inequality—deeper than more than 100 nations —means economic stress for most Americans, even as we hold onto the myth that we’re a middle-class country. Still, the myth of American exceptionalism blinds us. Instead, let us heed this truth: Be it a rocky marriage or a sprained ankle, healing starts when we get honest with ourselves—when we stop averting our eyes, making excuses, or just hoping one day it will all go away. Today, as our democracy is diminishing before our eyes; let’s drop these dangerous escapes and choose constructive action. The good news in our sad scores is proof of possibility—hard evidence that we can do better as we learn lessons from the leading democracies. So, let our dissatisfaction fuel determination and bold action. Our fight can’t merely be against Trump but in pursuit of a positive vision of an America where each of us counts, and we work together building the world we want. Democracy is not a dull duty but a thrilling vision and empowering action.

by Frances Moore Lappé, Jan 25, 2024 How can we hope to empower ourselves when we are shackled by the false promises of deregulated capital and exploited by Wall Street greed? (Photo Credit: Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández/ Unsplash) Originally Published  on Common Dreams , Jan 25, 2024 Republished   on  LA Progressive , Jan 26, 2024 The headline of this column makes a big claim, but I’ll go even further. Free-market mythology denies us not only political and economic freedom, but psychological liberty as well. In his 1980 inaugural address, Ronald Reagan declared : “Government is not the solution to our problem: government is the problem.” Soon, in the Reagan White House, neckties sporting an image of 18th century philosopher Adam Smith —oft touted as the founding father of free market ideology—became all the rage. Reagan’s message was clear: Lower taxes, minimize government regulation, cut social programs, and the outcome will be a strong economy with more jobs. With less government intrusion in our lives, we’ll all be free to do better. Unfortunately, Smith’s insights were oversimplified to the point of distortion. His 1776 The Wealth of Nations was used to justify the premise that a society works best when we each act solely in our self-interest. What’s virtually never noted is Smith’s judgment that “subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible…in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.” Free-market mythology prepares the ground for polarization, often at the expense of those already struggling to stay afloat. Contrary to the view that acting for self is only “natural,” Smith noted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that it is the “ precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbor . ” And today studies confirm that humans enjoy giving more than receiving. Yet, blind allegiance to a myth that puts innate selfishness at our center still undergirds the almost sacred notion that unimpeded-market competition is not only superior, but natural. For believers in the free-market myth, public involvement in the market is a grievous sin. The consequences are harsh. For one, we are made to doubt the essential, positive role of democratic governance in enabling and protecting widespread economic prosperity, as well as in achieving many essential public goods—from healthcare and education to environmental protection. Market mythology ignores the fact that all markets have rules, even if unwritten. In a capitalist market like ours, what is the unspoken “rule”? It’s simple: The more you have, the more you accrue. The pursuit of wealth thus becomes not merely a means to an end, but the end—the sole aim justifying personal enrichment at the expense of others. The result is wealth inequality in the United States that does not comport with our self-image as a beacon of fairness. Of 200 countries ranked from the most extreme wealth inequality, we come in 28th from the worst, between Peru and El Salvador. Here, the top 1 percent control about a third of household wealth, the bottom 50 percent—over 165 million Americans—control a meager 2.5 percent . Moreover, such a market ensures tightening corporate power, undermining the very competition touted as a prime goal. Between 1985 and 2017, yearly corporate mergers jumped almost sevenfold. So today the top five healthcare companies enjoy 99.4 percent of market revenue. Three companies control over 94 percent of carbonated soft drinks. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo alone account for 69 percent of the retail market. The harms from such concentrated wealth show up in citizens unable to afford decent housing as well as in deprivation of essential public goods. No surprise, therefore, that in both access and outcomes, our healthcare ranks last among “high-income countries.” Sadly, market mythology also leads to self-blame. Once swallowing the myth that—regardless of circumstance, anyone in America can make it if they work hard—self-doubt and shame become unavoidable. And that’s a big problem for any society. Shame is among the most painful of human emotions, which we often fight by seeking others to blame. Maybe it’s immigrants who will take our jobs. Maybe it’s those liberals who want to reward the lazy. In any case, free-market mythology prepares the ground for polarization, often at the expense of those already struggling to stay afloat. Thus, to build a strong democratic culture, let us challenge the pernicious mythology of a “free market” purporting fairness but thwarting opportunity. How? We can start by facing the sad truth that the United States ranks 60th among the world’s nations in political rights and civil liberties, between Panama and Samoa, according to Freedom House—co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. And, as we have in the past, we can create rules that break up monopoly power and strengthen the labor movement. We can expand social services to right the shortcomings of the “free market” and bring us closer to the standards of our peer nations. Once debunking disempowering free-market myths, we are free to embrace our empowering, widely shared values—those putting human and environmental wellbeing first.

by Frances Moore Lappé, May 9, 2024 What happened to the middle class in the United States? The rich ate it. (Photo Credit: Giorgio Trovato/Unsplash) Originally Published on Common Dreams , May 09, 2024 Almost 90 percent of us think of ourselves as being “middle class,” but we’re way off. In 1970, 62 percent of Americans did qualify; but by 2021, our shrinking middle class was down to 42 percent . By 2022, the value of our minimum wage has fallen by 40 percent since the late 60s. And our poverty rate? Today, at 12.4 percent, it’s the highest among almost all 38 OECD nations . Only the newest member, Costa Rica, suffers a higher poverty rate. So, how did our view of ourselves become so distorted? We were once indeed primarily middle class because we had stepped up to tackle poverty. In the late 1950s, our official poverty rate was about 22 percent, but Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty cut that rate in half, hitting a low of 11 percent in 1973. Then Reaganism struck, and by 1983 poverty had spread to nearly 15 percent . And now? While our official rate is indeed lower, it is still high and misses millions struggling to meet essential needs. Our path to this sad outcome began in the 1980s. Reversing the War on Poverty, Reagan began dismantling welfare protections while slashing taxes on the ultrarich. Capturing the tenor of the time, in the 1987 film “Wall Street”, Gordon Gekko declared “ greed is good .” Reaganomics paved the way for today’s shocking inequality. In 1978, the top 0.1 percent held roughly 7 percent of wealth. By 2018, this tiny group enjoyed about 18 percent. Most shocking: By 2019, America’s three richest families held more wealth than the bottom half of us. Hardly a middle-class nation, today’s concentration of wealth ought to make a Russian oligarch blush. Out of 178 countries the CIA ranks by income inequality, the U.S. lands between Micronesia and Morocco—at 56th. No industrial democracy is near us. The closest—New Zealand—is 31 places less extreme, at 86th. An additional injustice? While workers’ share of national wealth has been shrinking, their productivity has soared. Between 1979 and 2017, worker productivity grew by 70 percent, while hourly compensation rose by a meager 11 percent. And who benefited? As earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by just over a fifth, the wealth of the top 0.1 percent grew by 343 percent. That's 17 times more! Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that in 2019 the bottom half of us held only 2 percent of the nation’s wealth. Moreover, while American workers had to take on more hours to boost their relatively stagnant earnings and as healthcare and housing costs climbed, the wealthy increased their gains and used it to further warp our nation’s democratic institutions: By funding candidates and hiring lobbyists to ensure their interests were heard at the expense of ours. From 1998 to 2023 alone, dollars spent paying Washington lobbyists grew almost three-fold, from $1.5 billion to $4.1 billion. Thus, when our rules are set to bring the highest return to those with the most, a market economy not only selectively rewards the already wealthy; it undercuts democracy. The pain of Reaganomics should have taught us one clear lesson. A market economy can only work for the common good within rules set democratically—free from private control—to ensure opportunity for all. The beginning of these rules would be basics such as an enforced, livable minimum wage, as well as strong and enforced anti-trust laws. Such steps could move us toward a market serving the most basic freedom of all—the freedom to thrive.