How citizens (not politicians) are building the future | Jon Alexander

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. When we think about the health of a democracy, we usually look up to politicians, to institutions, to people in charge.
Citizen strategist Jon Alexander wants us to look somewhere else entirely, at ourselves. He's spent a decade traveling the world in search of democracy's next chapter, and he keeps finding it in the same unlikely place, among ordinary people faced with crisis, choosing to organize and build something together.

**Jon Alexander** (0:41)
It's not politicians who are leading us there, it's the people, it's citizens coming together and building the future, creating the space for the politics to move into.

**Elise Hu** (0:53)
In this talk, Jon shares what he has learned from communities that turn wildfire, lockdown, and disaster into new ways of caring for each other, from Melbourne to California and beyond. And he makes the case for a fundamental shift in how we think about our own role.

**Jon Alexander** (1:08)
Democracy is not something we have, it's something we have to build.

**Elise Hu** (1:13)
Jon argues that in dark and uncertain times, we tend to fall into one of two roles, keeping our heads down or looking out for ourselves. But there's a third option, and it starts with something as simple as a walk around your own neighborhood. That's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Jon Alexander** (1:42)
Let's get the obvious out of the way first, shall we? Yes, I'm British.
And yes, I'm here talking to Americans about democracy on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from Britain.
I'm very tempted to chuck my talk out of the window and break into King George from the Hamilton. You'll be back.
But I'm not here to call you back. I'm here to call all of us forward, because I've spent the last 10 years gathering stories from around the world of the future of democracy, for my book Citizens, and for the podcast I co-host, How to Save Democracy. And what I've found are a couple of things. The first is that there is a bold, bright, beautiful future of democracy just wanting to take hold. It's emerging everywhere, in institutions that are open and participatory, and in politicians who are desperate to put the power of citizens ahead of their own power. But what I want to focus on today is not so much that destination as the journey to get there. Because what I've seen all over the world is that it's actually not institutions that are changing for us. It's not politicians who are leading us there. It's the people. It's citizens coming together and building the future, creating the space for the politics to move into. Because the line I want to leave you with at the end of all of this, democracy is not something we have. It's something we have to build. Now, my favorite story of this new democracy comes from Melbourne in Australia, and it starts at the end of 2020 In the context of COVID lockdowns and black summer bushfires raging across Victoria and clogging the city with smoke, Melburnians were confined to quarters for weeks on end. In that context, a few citizens started to gather online. They were motivated by the understanding that the existing power structures just weren't capable of responding to these challenges, and if they didn't want this to be the pattern of the summers for the rest of their lives, they were going to have to lean in and do something about it. Soon, those few citizens were joined by a few more, and then tens, and eventually hundreds of people were attending these calls. They invited authors and experts from around the world to inform them as they tried to create a vision for the future of the city that they wanted to hold. They got to this point where they were saying, we believe we can create a resilient, regenerative, beautiful city in a way that can be a template for others to follow. They built an organization called Regen Melbourne to act as a catalyst for citizen activity, and they aligned their work around three earth-shot goals. The first was to make the river birrering, swimmable for its entire course. The second, to localize the city's food system so that every one of its neighborhoods would be a nourished neighborhood. And the third was to foster a sense of community on every one of the city's 300,000 streets, partly because if these situations were to repeat themselves, then that's what would be needed, but more because joy.