About Us

Who We Are

The project’s principals were Coro Fellows in Public Affairs after college and have stayed in touch in the years since. Coro is a unique experiential program that teaches individuals gravitating toward politics, civic life, and public affairs the importance of working with people from diverse agendas, backgrounds, and different political views. Immersed in real world politics and policy, Fellows emerge from the experience with an appreciation for the importance of dialogue, compromise, and working with people who see the world through a variety of lenses. The program is steeped in bipartisanship.

Saving Democracy is a collaborative effort rooted in our Coro training. It began out of concern that our nation’s democratic norms are quickly eroding. Things that would have been unimaginable even five years ago have increasingly become accepted. We call this initiative Saving Democracy because our democracy is indeed in danger and there is an urgency to take fact-based information directly to those who hold the balance of our democracy in their hands. We are targeting key congressional swing districts in Southern California, but the Saving Democracy program can be followed well beyond the Golden State.

Here is a Coro-type training exercise: It’s early in the 21st century and technological innovation has disrupted basic communication among people. As a result, U.S. democratic norms and guardrails are under siege from disinformation and the traditional news media is widely distrusted. A free and fair presidential election is challenged and the loser refuses to concede. Three years later, approximately forty percent of Americans have doubts about the legitimacy of the person sitting in the Oval Office. Many Americans openly worry that the nation is slipping into autocracy. And no one is coming to save us. What would you do? What actions can individual citizens take to preserve and defend democracy from an attack within the nation’s borders?

As we began a conversation, what emerged was an idea to go deep into local communities to discover what is happening at the grassroots. We decided the best way to defend democracy is to speak to neighbors and people in our own communities about how our liberties and freedoms depend on constitutional democracy. We listen to people at the doorway and the kitchen table. We also speak to local civic and business groups about the precious gifts that democratic society bestows on all of us as individuals. We tell our fellow citizens that democracy is rare in human history and once gone difficult to reclaim.

We believe that American politics is healthy when the broad civic middle of the American electorate exercises its voice and cast ballots. This stands in contrast to efforts by both political parties to energize and mobilize their base voters. Mobilizing the base is fine, but if we want American democracy both to survive and to work, we also must engage voters who are not super partisans.

Using community-building techniques (talking to civic groups, engaging neighbors), we can reach the civic middle – moderate voters who traditionally have provided the ballast for America’s political life – as well as disaffected and Gen-Z voters frustrated with the messy nature of democracy and turned off by the angry tone of Washington D.C. and cable news. These three groups constitute the core persuadable voters in today’s polarized electorate. Troubled by our nation’s deep political divide and the violence unleashed on Jan. 6, they will participate in elections, but only if given a reason.

A grass-roots pro-democracy effort focused on education and civic engagement is an essential strategy if we are to successfully turn back the authoritarian, anti-democratic tide that now endangers the very foundations of national life. Saving Democracy aims to activate the patriotic, pro-democracy sentiment dwelling just below the surface and restore our political guardrails.

Our nation finds itself at a crossroads: Stay true to our democratic ideals… or spiral into a political abyss filled with danger? At its core, the United States has stood for – and must continue to stand for – freedom from tyranny.