People are asking a reasonable question of their government: Why is it so hard to make life more affordable, protect our freedoms, and hold powerful people accountable?
They see the cost of housing, health care, and groceries pressing on their families. They see wealthy interests with extraordinary access to the people making decisions. And they see elected officials promise change that never arrives.
That frustration is often described as a loss of faith in democracy. I hear something else in it: a demand for a democracy that works.
Donald Trump has exposed the weaknesses of our institutions with unusual force. But those weaknesses did not begin with him, and they will not disappear when he leaves office. A politics of rebuilding cannot mean a return to “normal” if normal left so many people unheard and so many urgent problems unresolved.
We need to change the political system so that the public’s demands can become governing action.
That is why United for Democracy is entering a new chapter, expanding beyond our original focus on the Supreme Court to help build a national campaign for political reform. Working with partners across issues and states, we aim to build public demand, align around a shared narrative, center Black leadership in the fight for reform, and make reform a priority in the next governing window.
Why government struggles to deliver
The cost of living is an immediate problem. Families cannot wait for affordable housing, lower health care costs, or wages that keep up with their bills. They need leaders who will address those pressures directly.
But anyone serious about delivering results also has to ask what stands in the way.
Sometimes the obstacle is the influence of wealthy interests that benefit from the status quo. Sometimes it is a governing rule that allows a small number of people to stop action that is supported by far more. Sometimes it is a failure of representation: communities affected by a decision have too little power over who makes it. Often, these problems reinforce one another.
The result is familiar even to people who have never followed a debate about the filibuster or the Supreme Court. An issue becomes urgent. People organize and demand action. Elected leaders say they agree. Then change stalls, gets weakened, or never reaches a vote. The public is left with another hollow explanation for why government could not do what it promised.
We should be honest about that cycle. Good policies matter. So do leaders committed to passing them. But if the political system repeatedly prevents public demands from becoming law, we cannot treat the system itself as a side issue.
The rules governing political power shape whether government can lower costs, raise wages, keep communities safe, respond to new technologies, and protect people’s rights and freedoms. They determine who is represented, who can be heard, who can block action, and whether public officials can be held accountable when they fail to act or abuse their power.
People do not need to be experts in proposed political reforms to recognize the underlying problem. They can see when their government is unable or unwilling to respond to them. Changing the political system will face some of the same resistance that has blocked progress on the issues people care about. That is why our task is to turn their recognition into a shared demand strong enough to overcome it.
Why this moment calls for more than repair
Much of the current conversation about democracy focuses, understandably, on defending institutions from abuse. That work is essential. We need a government bound by law, elections whose results are respected, and public officials who understand that their authority belongs to the people.
We also need to ask a harder question: Were those institutions working well enough for the people they were meant to serve before this crisis?
For Black Americans, we know the answer from experience. We fought to gain the vote, to have our votes count equally, and to elect leaders who answer to us. We have also watched each advance met with new efforts to weaken our power. When our votes are restricted or our communities are divided to dilute our voice, the harm reaches beyond an election. It shapes who is heard when decisions are made about our schools, our health, our economic future, and our freedoms. We did not need Donald Trump to show us that a political system can leave people subject to decisions they had too little power to shape.
We can see that struggle in the maps being drawn right now. In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted a central protection of the Voting Rights Act, making it far harder for Black voters to challenge congressional maps that dilute their power. The ruling struck down the map that had allowed Black voters in Louisiana to elect Cleo Fields from a second majority-Black district. The state redrew his district, and he is no longer seeking reelection to Congress. In Alabama, lawmakers redrew the district that elected Shomari Figures, weakening Black voters’ ability to elect a candidate of their choice. These are hard-won gains in representation being put at risk.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC—a city whose residents are majority people of color—nearly 700,000 people still have no voting representation in Congress: no senator and no vote on legislation in the House. Yet ending that exclusion has still not become a priority across the broader democracy movement.
Exclusion has never been only about who can cast a ballot. Race and wealth have long shaped whose concerns are treated as urgent, whose interests are protected, and who has the power to influence a decision. Communities have fought for basic protections that enjoy broad support but remain out of reach, while wealthy interests gain access and ordinary families live with the consequences.
We cannot answer this moment by restoring a system that worked for some and shut others out. We have to build a democracy that keeps expanding its promise: one in which all of us have a meaningful voice, our freedoms are protected, and our government can deliver for the people it serves.
That is an ambitious undertaking. It should be. The United States has changed its political institutions before when people organized to insist that the country live up to its promises. Those changes were contested. They took time and sustained work. They happened because people built enough power to make reform a national priority.
We can do that again.
What we are building
United for Democracy began in 2023 by bringing organizations together to show how the Supreme Court’s decisions shape people’s lives. Our coalition grew to more than 140 organizations across labor, civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate, education, gun violence prevention, economic justice, and democracy reform. Those organizations bring the voices, relationships, and organizing strength of the people they serve.
When the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted voting rights protections this spring, UFD coordinated the response across our coalition within hours, launching a petition demanding a plan from Congress. In a single week, more than 118,000 people signed it, and our national mobilization call drew nearly 300,000 views.
That work gave us a clear view of a problem shared across movements. People may be fighting for different outcomes, but they often run into the same barriers: rules that limit representation, institutions that resist accountability, and a political system that makes it too easy to block what they need. It also showed us what becomes possible when people connect their struggles and act together.
Our goal now is to build the national campaign infrastructure needed to turn political reform into governing action. That means working with organizations and the communities behind them, as well as activists, state and local leaders, elected officials, storytellers, and people in the media who can help bring this case into the public conversation. We will connect national and state efforts, develop a narrative grounded in people’s lives, and channel the energy already building across the country into coordinated action.
UFD’s role is to bring people into a shared strategy, help them contribute where they are strongest, and sustain the effort through the next governing opportunity. The campaign must be broad enough to reach beyond those already engaged in democracy debates and strong enough to make reform a priority for leaders with the power to act.
There is no shortage of serious ideas about how to make our democracy more representative, accountable, and capable of governing. What has been missing is an effort that can carry those ideas into communities and the national conversation, building support over time. Reform cannot live only in policy papers or emerge only in moments of crisis. It has to become something people understand, ask for, and expect their leaders to pursue.
Building a demand that cannot be set aside
Frederick Douglass wrote, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Recognizing that the system is failing people is a beginning. Changing it requires organizing that recognition into a demand those in power cannot set aside.
That means speaking to people about the problems they are already trying to solve. A campaign for reform must show how political power affects whether government can lower costs, protect freedoms, and respond when communities call for action.
It also means building beyond Washington. People are already organizing in their communities around the problems they want government to solve. Local leaders, activists, and organizations know whom their neighbors trust and what it will take to bring them into this effort. UFD will help connect that work across states and to a national campaign, so people can see their local demands become part of a larger push for change.
Together, we can build public support, secure clear commitments from leaders, and develop a credible reform agenda with the partners who will help carry it forward.
Our work begins now. In 2027, we will deepen partnerships, develop and launch the campaign, and bring the case for reform to more communities. Heading into 2028, we want the ability of government to deliver for people to be part of the national conversation. When the next opportunity to govern arrives, we want leaders to face a clear public demand and a movement prepared to help turn it into action.
What we choose to build
In 2026, the nation marks 250 years since its founding. An anniversary asks us to reckon with our history. It should also invite a decision about what we are willing to make it.
The people who expanded our democracy did not assume its promises would fulfill themselves. They saw the distance between those promises and the lives people were actually living. Then they organized to close it.
We face our own version of that responsibility. Millions of people want a government that takes their concerns seriously and has the capacity to act. Their frustration is real. So is the possibility within it.
Our job is to bring people together around a demand that cannot be ignored: a government accountable to the people and capable of delivering for them.
That is the future United for Democracy is organizing toward. We hope you will build it with us.
