Engaged Defenders for Democracy: Courage is contagious; Consistency is key

I started volunteering for elected officials and canvassing when I was seventeen, in an effort to get a female governor elected in Arizona. My high school government teacher, Mr. Winslow, was amazing and imparted in me the fire to know that I could make a difference. My mother instilled in me the duty to volunteer. Those two values came together when I started knocking doors; the irony was that I couldn’t even vote yet. Nobody in my house voted for her, and sadly, she lost the election, but my commitment to volunteering to get the right people in office to represent me was birthed. 

Over the years I have worked for many candidates, both local and national. I have canvassed with one child on my back while the other, just three years old, was in a stroller saying, “Please vote for Obama.” Connecting to people is one of the things that energizes me, and empowering people energizes me even more. I love to tell them that we have the power to put people in office, and if we don’t like them, we elect somebody else. We lend our power to these people and can take that power away and lend it to someone else.

The Origins of ED4D

Up to and including this last presidential election, I only worked around election time. But the day after Kamala lost, I felt differently. I emailed fifteen of the folks I’d been canvassing with to say we needed to do something, and we needed to do it now—not in two or four years. I could feel a difference when canvassing for Kamala. People were disengaged, and some even responded quite negatively to me. This had not happened before. One of my friends told me I needed to get on an Indivisible call. I’d never heard of Indivisible. I found myself on a call with 8,000 others at 9 p.m. the day after Trump was elected. I was astounded that so many felt the same way I did. There’s something really powerful about feeling a part of something. We held a meeting at my house on December 8, 2024, and about thirty-five people showed up to talk about next steps. I could not believe the engagement and energy in the room. It was exciting! At this point, I still had no idea that I was going to become a community organizer. We met a few times and came up with some ideas for how to help immigrants, do voter registration, and do community service projects. 

I kept emailing people, brainstorming ways to act to prepare for what we thought would be a chaotic few years. We did a few voter registration drives and also met to talk about how to protect immigrants in case the threats of forced deportation were realized. Before I knew it, that small email chain turned into the Engaged Defenders for Democracy Substack. When trying to think about the name of this group, it was very important that we were non-partisan. We felt very strongly that we needed to be inclusive of everybody, regardless of who they voted for. (One of my favorite shirts reads, “It’s not Right versus Left, it’s Right versus Wrong.”)

We arrived at the initial name, Engaged Durhamites for Democracy (ED4D), as we all lived in Durham. Given we are far beyond Durham now, we have expanded our name to “Engaged Defenders for Democracy.” ED4D has a mission to promote engagement with empathy, positivity, kindness, and inclusion. Our main purpose is to topple this dictator. We also will be working to elect people who share our values. 

On the ED4D Substack, I write inspirational messages daily to try to keep people abreast of the news while keeping them motivated and positive. The four tenets of ED4D (for which we have separate posts) are empathy, positivity, kindness, and inclusion. I think this is why we continue to grow as our activism warriors’ actions align with these tenets. We now have 2,392 subscribers and followers, from three-fourths of the US states. (We are only missing folks from Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Vermont, and New Hampshire.) We need as many people subscribing as possible to grow the movement nationally. When talking to folks in other states, they talk about No Kings rallies but not much in between. This kind of action needs to be happening all across our country. Research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, has shown that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts—and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

There are many who are doing exactly what ED4D is doing, but we still need more. I hope folks who are reading will consider subscribing to the Substack and sharing it with your friends. I hope some of you will step up to lead demonstrations. I have heard from folks in Minnesota and Indiana that they are having demonstrations in part because they have been inspired by ED4D. Let’s do this!!!

Apart from the Substack, I still had no idea what Engaged Defenders for Democracy would actually be doing until Indivisible suggested people demonstrate outside of Tesla dealerships. Even though I had never organized a demonstration before, my friend Laura and I decided to give it a try. To be honest, I was pretty terrified. The first demonstration was on February 25, 2025. Driving up I had no idea if anybody would show up or hundreds of people would show up. I did not know whether there would be counter-demonstrators that I’d have to manage. As I arrived 30 minutes before the demonstration, there were already 20 people there with signs. I joined the crowd, not even telling people I had organized the demonstration because that didn’t matter. What mattered was that people were there. I spread the word and told them that we were going to do it again the following week. (I did surveys to learn how people were finding out about the demonstration. I am a psychologist, so of course I wanted data to understand people’s motivations and patterns.)  

Two weeks after the Tesla protest, we started a weekly demonstration on a bridge, every Tuesday without missing a week. “Consistency is key” is one of our mantras. 

When people see you out there week after week, in the heat, rain, and cold, they might have the courage to join, which leads to another of our mantras, “Courage is contagious.” When folks see how much fun our demonstrations are and that they can be safe, they want to do them too. We have more than 300 people attending around 20 demonstrations weekly and at least 100 people who have stepped up in some way to keep this going. It is absolutely amazing to see how much these demonstrations have helped people feel connected, motivated, and positive. As the demonstrations have spread, more and more leaders have stepped up, wanting to host their own. We just added two new weekly demonstrations the first week of January 2026! We have gone from our relatively blue bubble in Durham, North Carolina, to much redder areas, trying to spread the word about our movement, and motivating people to join us and to resist. We are now demonstrating in Durham, Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Apex, Siler City, Fuquay-Varina, Pittsboro, and Wilson. 

We realize that demonstrating has a lot of benefits. First, it helps those who are attending to be surrounded by positive people who feel the way they do. This is much better than sitting at home feeling sad about the state of our country. Demonstrating also helps those who are unable to protest, as they can drive by and honk their horn, wave and give us a thumbs up to show their support. They feel solidarity with us and become part of our movement. It also helps those who might be questioning what’s happening think a little harder—as there are so many people involved.

In addition to our weekly demonstrations, we have helped organize mass mobilizations in Durham. At our last No Kings in October 2025, we organized with the unions.  About 7,000 people attended, and Reverend William Barber spoke. It was amazing! We also have organized two Human Chains, several “Signs of Fascism” demonstrations, and have coordinated bridge brigades where we are on more than twenty bridges simultaneously. We have held these coordinate bridge brigades with activism warriors in ten other states (approximately 200 to 500 ED4D activism warriors participate monthly with 1,574 total  participating!). We have coordinated three demonstrations at airports with fourteen other states to boycott Avelo Airlines, who has contracted with ICE. Our most recent event was “Cultivating Courage by Covering Corners,” where fifty-one activism warriors were on nineteen corners simultaneously in areas different from our weekly demonstration locations to increase the visibility of this movement and to encourage others to join us. Courage is contagious!

The Psychology of ED4D

I didn’t realize, until a few months in, that the skillset I use at work is so relevant for community organizing. I’m a social psychologist and teach clinicians evidence-based communication techniques to help patients feel heard and understood. I also design interventions to help people change their behavior, like quitting smoking or getting more exercise. Many of these skills involve empathy, putting yourself in the shoes of others rather than judging. I had folks at demonstrations sharetheir frustrations with not knowing how to talk to people about this movement. That spurred me to focus some of our ED4D posts on how to have these discussions. I’ve learned that there are many different topics to cover as we try to grow this movement, and a lot of it is based in psychology.

Many people say that they read our posts every day, and it is the thing that keeps them going. I’m very deliberate in my style and that I talk about our demonstrations and celebrate the many people who are acting. I also make sure I include a few things that are going well because our brains are wired to notice and remember the negative more than the positive. I try to flex our positive muscle to keep us motivated rather than distracted and overwhelmed

The Future of ED4D

An absolutely tremendous positive is how much people have stepped up. People send me things that help me stay informed and inspire new posts. They come week after week to demonstrations and start their own. They spread the word to others trying to grow this movement, even when it’s really uncomfortable. Many of these people have never demonstrated in their life, and here they are coming week after week and trying to get others to come. 

One of our tenets is that people need to take a “staggered breath as the rest of us sing in the democracy choir.” Many will continue singing while others take their staggered breath. We all need to take breaks sometimes because we know this is a marathon, not a sprint. We  also know that once Trump is out of office, our work is not done. The wrecking ball he took to the White House is symbolic of the wrecking ball he took to our democracy. Our democracy has been damaged, and we will need to rebuild it and also be vigilant about further attacks on our democracy. We cannot return to business as usual, to a system that leaves people behind while enriching the oligarchs and corporations; we need people who will truly represent us. We the people have power!

One thing we’ve made abundantly clear is that this fight is mostly about the very wealthy getting wealthier at the expense of almost everybody else in this country. We need to unite so many people in this country who share the same values to regain the wealth and distribute it more fairly. Many see Trump as the great divider—I see him as the great uniter, as he is uniting folks who used to fight each other to team up to fight for our democracy and rights for all, including fair housing, fair wages, healthcare for all, food for the hungry, and a stop to our neighbors being snatched off the street akin to the days of the Gestapo. This cannot happen in this country and will not happen on our watch!

I’m not sure when I will stop being a community organizer. It is completely enriching to connect with so many wonderful people whose motivation I seem to spark and who definitely spark me right back. I know there are other organizations around the country who are doing exactly what ED4D is doing. In January, all of the leaders in the Triangle and Triad area will meet to talk about coordinating our efforts. There are so many of us fighting the same fight. It’s inspiring. I believe that through this work, we will regain our democracy and rebuild our country and come out of this as a stronger and less divided nation. We need a government that is of the people and for the people. I hope more will join the cause and subscribe to the ED4D Substack and share it with their friends.