With diminishing trust in politics, communities are reaching across divides to find a common purpose – to get things done in other ways
Marc Stears is congenial as he lays out some of the critical threats to liberal democracy in the 21st century. “Normal people have had enough,” he says, and our politicians are complacent. “It’s a gigantic mistake, because the more distrust grows, the more dangerous it becomes.”
The director of Sydney University’s Social Policy Lab is taking time out during a weeklong meeting of activists, researchers and community leaders from around the world to discuss how to affect change. The group gathers in a week where yet another multibillion-dollar company admits to large-scale underpayment of workers, as numerous Australians face a potentially blistering summer unsure of how they’ll afford to pay their energy bills, people from Hong Kong to Latin America take to their streets against their regimes, and against a backdrop of record low trust not only in politicians in Australia but in democracy itself.
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