Democracy is Not an Appointment in November

When I was a young mother, I taught evening English classes at a small rural school in Eastern Ontario. Most of my students were francophone farmers. Among them was a Serbian couple who had arrived in Canada with two young children after fleeing the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. I will call them Dragan and Jelena.

Dragan had managed a company in his former life. One Friday afternoon, as tensions mounted around them, his employees asked him a simple question.

“Do we come in on Monday?”

“Of course we come in,” he told them.

He believed the government would find a solution. He believed rational people would prevent the worst from happening. He believed ordinary life would continue because ordinary life had always continued.

By Sunday night, he could hear bombs falling in the distance. He put his wife and children into the car and fled. Tanks entered their town the next day.

I remember that story as he told it to me more than thirty years ago. I do not repeat it because I believe every political crisis ends in war. Most do not. I repeat it because it reveals something deeply human: we are remarkably skilled at believing Monday will arrive exactly as it always has.

We wait for institutions to correct themselves. We wait for responsible people to take control. We wait for the next election. We wait because acknowledging the danger would require something of us.

Over the past few days, Americans have been responding to my essay We Are Waiting for Americans to Say No. Some told me, quite angrily, that they are already resisting. They are writing letters, supporting court challenges, organizing locally and preparing to vote. They are also afraid. They fear losing their jobs. They fear being attacked at demonstrations. They fear immigration agents, surveillance and violence in their streets. One man asked why Canadians do not understand that Americans are trying to say no with as little bloodshed as possible. Others described watching legal challenges move slowly while fear and despair continued to grow.

I do understand.

Fear is not cowardice. No one sitting safely outside the United States should casually tell another person to risk arrest, violence or the security of a family. But fear cannot become the entire plan, because fear isolates people. It persuades each person that everyone else is silent, resistance is futile and safety lies in keeping one’s head down.

The opposite of fear is not fearlessness. It is solidarity.

An isolated person can be intimidated. A connected community is harder to silence. That does not mean everyone must march, publish under a legal name or become a public figure. People with precarious immigration status, vulnerable family members or insecure employment should not carry the greatest burden. Those with secure citizenship, protected employment, wealth, public platforms or institutional authority have a greater obligation to carry some of the risk.

Some readers have reminded me that responsibility does not rest equally on everyone. An ordinary citizen may be frightened, isolated or struggling simply to support a family. An elected representative has sought public power and sworn an oath to use it responsibly. Congress has oversight powers. Governors have platforms. Legislators can investigate, challenge, vote, organize and speak. A carefully worded objection offered once is not the same as sustained resistance. We should support citizens as they find their courage, but we should expect much more from the people who asked to lead them.

But almost everyone can contribute something.

When federal immigration enforcement surged in Minnesota, residents did more than protest. Neighbours built rapid-response networks. Churches, schools and community organizations delivered food and other necessities. Businesses closed in solidarity. Lawyers and public officials challenged federal actions. People found ways to observe, document, shelter, feed and accompany one another.

This did not make the danger disappear. It did something equally important: it made fear communal rather than solitary.

Community is not merely a comforting addition to resistance. It is part of the infrastructure. If you live in a place where nearly everyone around you supports what is happening, find one trustworthy person. Join a professional association, union, faith community, reading circle or responsible online group. Build relationships before the moment of crisis. Courage becomes safer when people know who will answer the telephone.

We must also protect our attention.

Political spectacle arrives every day. One shocking statement replaces another before we have understood what materially changed. Whether every provocation is deliberately designed as a distraction or simply functions that way, the result is the same: citizens become exhausted by the performance while quieter administrative work continues.

Project 2025 was created not merely as a collection of conservative ideas, but as a preparation effort involving policy, personnel and training for a future administration. One independent tracker estimated that by February 2026, the administration had initiated or completed 53 percent of the domestic administrative actions the tracker mapped to that agenda. The exact percentage depends upon how each action is defined, but the larger point is clear. While the public follows the spectacle, a prepared governing program can move through agencies one decision at a time.

Doomscrolling feels like vigilance, but it can leave us simultaneously informed and immobilized. Protecting your attention is part of protecting your agency. Ask: What actually changed today? What was merely said? What requires a response? What can I safely ignore? Where can my effort have an effect?

Then close the screen.

Eat properly. Sleep. Walk. Write in a journal. Make art. Listen to music. Share a meal. Laugh with people you love. Throughout history, people enduring oppression have used music, faith, storytelling and community to preserve hope and interior freedom. Joy is not evidence that we have stopped caring. It reminds us what we are trying to protect.

Self-care does not replace civic action. It sustains the person who must continue acting.

The rhythm might be simple: pay attention, choose what matters, act with others, step away, restore yourself and return.

Public action matters too. Write about what you know. Support independent journalists and writers. Join an established organization. Help vulnerable neighbours. Contact representatives. Contribute to legal defence. Participate in a focused boycott with a clear target and demand. March if you can do so safely, but remember that a march displays numbers while a movement converts numbers into power. The work after everyone goes home matters most: legal support, mutual aid, voter protection, economic pressure and a plan for what happens next.

Democratic coalitions must also extend beyond the people who already agree on everything. Democrats will need independents, former Trump voters and moderate Republicans who still believe in lawful elections, due process, a free press and the principle that no leader is above the law. Those people cannot be greeted with humiliation at the door.

That does not mean excusing what has happened. Reconciliation without truth is denial. It means leaving people a route out of destructive political belonging and offering a stronger belonging in its place.

I am not giving up on the American public. I have friends there. I read the words of Americans who are frightened, furious and trying to determine what they can do. I believe them about the danger. I will not shame them for being afraid.

But fear cannot become the entire plan.

“We are waiting for November” is not a complete democratic strategy. Elections matter enormously, but democracy is not an appointment citizens keep once every two or four years. It is a daily practice built through speech, association, law, courage, care, economic choices and the refusal to allow cruelty and dishonesty to become normal.

You do not need to prove your courage by standing alone in front of armed agents. Find other people. Protect your capacity to think. Choose the work you can safely do and keep doing it. Go outward and act. Come home and restore yourself. Then return.

Dragan believed Monday would come because Mondays always had. Most of us would have believed the same thing.

The lesson is not to live in panic. It is to act before panic becomes the only option.

History will not only ask how this period ended. It will ask who we became while it was happening.