Democracy Threatened
Guest author J. Brian Atwood, former National Democratic Institute President and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator, discusses how education is the key to preserving democratic values in an era of conspiracy theories and polarized political combat in the Philippines, the United States, and around the world.
The election of Ferdinand Marcos’s son "BongBong” in the Philippines and the revelations of the January 6 Committee in the United States, were the focus of a recent panel at the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington DC.
I was joined by two dynamic union leaders, President Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Annie Geron, General Secretary of the Philippines Public Services Labor Independent Confederation, in a discussion of democracy’s challenges and a call to action to preserve democratic institutions in both countries.
Labor unions were in the forefront of the wave of democratic change in the 1980s and 90s; they continue to see their mission as defending human and democratic rights, not only for their own members, but for society as a whole. Unions played a central role in that era in the battle to overthrow communism and autocratic governments.