American Friends Service Committee reposted this
A short clip from my interview on why cutting USAID makes us less safe. The decisions made in the past 30 days erase decades of global progress through international diplomacy, humanitarian and foreign aid, and multilateral coalition building, making us less safe. Instead of seriously studying ways to improve government efficiency, the new administration is engaged in a slash-and-burn craze that will cost far more than imagined to our global standing. Meanwhile, the world's richest man, our unelected oligarch, gleefully cuts aid to the world's poorest children, ends employment overnight for thousands of staff including so many talented, hardworking, and committed Americans, and ends our commitments in the most irresponsible way imaginable. Our government representatives are calling allies dictators and aligning with far-right parties at the Munich Security Conference. Others are silent or way too tepid in the face of autocratic orders, unconstitutional acts, unimaginable data breaches, and the politicization of civil service. I've worked in authoritarian countries for decades and know that the creep of autocracy looks different from what most imagine in action. Authoritarianism happens when leaders use legal processes in illegal ways to consolidate power and when leaders gut civil society and replace experts with loyalists. When courts are taken over or ignored, when the press and freedom of speech are restricted, and when rights are revoked. Authoritarians can be stopped when people organize, when democratic institutions are protected and bolstered, when people are engaged, and interrupt and challenge anti-democratic moves. Authoritarianism thrives in fear, anger, and darkness and shrivels in joy, in collective action, in power, perverserance, and courage.