Event Livestream Gathers Civic-Minded Americans
In libraries throughout the country, people gathered to watch a livestream of speakers from the main stage at TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures. Pew sponsored the livestream to help everyday Americans engage with the day’s conversations. There were 77 participating libraries in states from California to Maine; some libraries also added programming of their own, such as panel conversations. Many attendees noted feeling inspired by the speakers onstage, and perhaps, too, to engage anew in support of democracy.
In Nebraska, Resolve for Engagement and Action
As they watched a livestream of the event from a university campus in suburban Omaha, a few dozen Nebraskans participated as if they were there in Philadelphia for TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures.
When the hosts onstage at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts asked the live audience to make noise if they were worried about the state of democracy, the Nebraskans obliged from afar.
Moments later, they faced another call-and-response probe: “Who believes, despite everything, that democracy is worth fighting for?” This time, the crowd watching at Bellevue University clapped a little louder.
Thus was the mood in the suburb of Nebraska’s largest city, where, after listening to hours of TED talks that contemplated the future of America’s democracy on scales big and small, attendees confessed that they had arrived to watch the livestream with some degree of anxiety about the state of the country and were walking out carrying at least an ounce more hope than they had arrived with.
When the hosts in Philadelphia asked the crowd—and viewers throughout the country—to turn to the nearest stranger and sum up their feelings on America’s democracy in a single word, Kim Corum, a 54-year-old office manager from Omaha, offered: “Anxious.”
“There’s such a far gap between our politics,” she said, describing the widening chasm between the fringes of the political left and right that she has had to navigate with coworkers and even in her own marriage. “There’s no middle ground.”
Before Corum took in the TED Democracy talks, she had stopped watching the news and taken steps to reduce the amount of it that appeared on her social media feeds, she said. But after she heard from speakers who challenged listeners to interact with their neighbors and with democracy in its most local forms, Corum said she felt compelled to reengage.
“I do worry that we are going in the wrong direction,” she said. “But I’m very hopeful that enough people will not allow it. I know I need to do more to be a part of the solution, instead of sitting back.”
Scott Pinkerton, an associate professor of chemistry, offered a similar diagnosis of American democracy.
“We talk a lot about rights, but we tend to kind of forget to talk about responsibilities,” Pinkerton said. “The responsibility to be engaged, the responsibility to know your neighbors—and know about them, in a good way.”
He said the country had entered what he called “an age of orthodoxy,” with camps on the political left and right deeply entrenched in their views. Indeed, 8 in 10 U.S. adults say that Republican and Democratic voters can no longer agree on basic facts, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey that yielded almost identical results as a similar survey in 2016, when Pew first put that question to Americans.
For Pinkerton, engagement is both the disease and the cure for a polarized nation.
“Being willing to talk to people, being willing to engage with people, being willing to … have the intellectual humility to know that you may not be right, I think is really important to me,” he said.
Lilia Franciscony, a 76-year-old Omahan, said she is typically a positive person, but lately, she had come to dread the nightly news and the feeling that came with it: The norms of the country she immigrated to 40 years ago from Venezuela were slipping away, and there was little she could do.
She tuned into the livestream in search of hope, she said.
“One thing I feel a little better about: We are not lost,” she said. “There are things that we can do, that we can believe.”
—Andrew Wegley reported from Nebraska
In Michigan—Small Attendance, Big Takeaways
On June 13, Karen Flynn, 70, sat at the Bedford Branch Library in Temperance, Michigan, to watch the livestream of TED Democracy: Founding Futures. She was the only attendee. She was there because she was hopeful for a path forward from what she referred to as the “eroding of our democracy.” Flynn said she was especially interested in the third session of the day, entitled “Forging Ahead.”
“I am particularly interested probably in the final session where there are some ideas or some suggestions for paths forward that are productive,” she said. Before the livestream started, Flynn said she was “frustrated” and “worried,” especially because of her experience and involvement with local politics.
“I’m also very involved in local politics, which I think is a microcosm of what’s going on, you know, statewide and nationally,” she said. After the first session, Flynn said she was feeling encouraged. She said that the speakers had her thinking about the number of people who pay attention to politics only during national elections.
“There’s so much to pay attention to, and I think sometimes that keeps people from paying attention at all, but we have to find ways to pay more attention and to do the maintenance,” she said.
Flynn also took notes because she was not just there to learn, but also to bring her new knowledge back to her Bedford Indivisible group, which is a nonpartisan group advocating for democracy.
Community librarian Jodi Russ, 59, said that Flynn being the only attendee at the event wasn’t a surprise, especially given that it was a Saturday in June.
Russ said that she had hoped more people would have come to start the conversation about how to bring their community back together, but that just wasn’t the case.
“I feel much the same as Karen does that things have eroded in our community, in our country, to such a point that we need to figure out how we can get back to what we once had,” Russ said. “How can we be a community again? How can we care about each other?”
The Bedford Branch Library, located at the southeast corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula about 11 miles from Toledo, Ohio, was one of two libraries in the state showing the livestream. The other, Glen Lake Community Library, was 300 miles away in Empire, in the lower peninsula’s northwest corner.
David Diller, 63, the Glen Lake library director, said the surrounding community has become increasingly involved in politics in the past several years, so he anticipated an event like TED Democracy: Founding Futures would be popular.
“People in this area are politically active,” he said. “... It feels like there’s a growing interest in really wanting to be informed, to have an informed opinion about what’s happening politically.”
However, he also said that the event’s competition was the Lake Michigan beach, which is located less than a mile from the library. On June 13, the weather was sunny and 75 degrees, and the beach won.
Diller said that there were 12 attendees at the event and that it was well received, although attendance was less than what he expected. “Those that attended I think really enjoyed it and found it to be a pretty positive message,” he said.
Aside from the attendees enjoying the program, Diller said he also got some ideas for resources for the library, such as books or other media created by the speakers.
–Sophia Lada reported from Michigan
In Washington, Interest and Involvement
It’s fitting that the TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures livestream happened on a day of early voting for Washington, D.C.’s primary election. As people were casting ballots on the library’s ground floor, several people mentioned the critical service that libraries provide in support of democracy.
“I think libraries play a huge role in democracy in making sure that people are informed and have access to resources that they need,” said Tamerra Gay, a young mother pushing her son’s stroller through the Martin Luther King Jr. library in Washington, D.C. “You can get a passport at the library; you can vote at the library; they have children’s programming.”
The MLK library is a striking five-story newly renovated building in the heart of the city that displays a bust of the civil rights icon in its entryway; it has educational exhibits on every floor, as well as a range of artwork.
The livestream was being shown on a large flat-screen TV in a corner of the building’s fourth floor, where a handful of people had gathered. When TED Democracy co-hosts Scott Shigeoka and Kelly Stoetzel opened the event by asking the audience in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center to shout out a word they think describes democracy today, the library’s event coordinator asked D.C. attendees to do the same. Their responses—“uncertain,” “messy,” “disparity,” “focused,” “struggling”—echoed around the room.
As Pew Research Center President Michael Dimock, the day’s opening speaker, took the stage, the library space fell silent as people listened intently. Dimock talked about U.S. democracy being “the spark that ignited the world, and inspired democratic conversations around the world.”
Carla Reed, who wore a t-shirt that read “Vote for Your Daughter,” said she came to watch the livestream because “democracy matters to me.”
Reed is a member of the Washington Urban League board for civic engagement and had been recently working as a poll worker and encouraging members of the community to get out and vote. She believes it’s important to engage in conversations with people who might think differently—and also, that democracy doesn’t just naturally happen. She quoted activist and politician John Lewis, who said, “Democracy is action.”
“I think that’s where we are now,” Reed said. “We’re having to show up for what democracy could look like, and what it means for us today.” She emphasized that people must get actively involved.
About 12 miles away at the Wheaton Library in the Maryland suburbs, Mahadine Nouradine, a 22-year-old college student whose family emigrated from Chad about a decade ago, was watching the livestream with a smile on his face. He was especially moved by a speaker who stressed the need to get everyone involved in the conversation.
“When he said the U.S. is a country where people want to feel like they’re included, too, but don’t feel like it’s possible— I’m the kind of person he was talking about,” Nouradine said. He stressed that for some people, feeling welcome is the most important factor in getting involved.
Wheaton Library combines books and reading rooms with community gathering and exercise spaces including ping-pong tables, basketball courts, a weight room, a senior center, and dance studios—it’s the only such space in Montgomery County. Betty Smith, a retiree and D.C. local, teaches senior movement classes there. She said the words from speaker Laura Smythe, during the event’s final session, resonated strongly with her.
“Sharing information in the digital social media age has gotten kind of like a knee-jerk thing,” said Smith. “She has a sensitive spot for me when she said don’t send things that you haven’t read fully.”
Smith was also interested to learn that some countries are not allowing children under 16 to be on social media, and that Finland teaches media literacy courses in their schools. “We have to learn from countries like that,” she said.
As someone who attended Howard University in the 1960s, a time of great upheaval, Smith said that she understood that nothing is given. She thinks we need to find a way to repair our political system and bolster our democracy.
“You can’t take it for granted,” said Smith. “We’re very fortunate here, but at the same time we’ve gotten a little complacent. We’re not passing on the same traditions the next generation needs.”
—Demetra Aposporos reported from Washington
In Louisiana, Enthusiasm for Change
Inside a community room of the Tangipahoa Parish Library in Amite, Louisiana, Sarah McKay listened intently as speakers projected onto a large screen shared ideas and posed challenging questions about the future of American democracy. Beside her, two short rows of red chairs remained empty. But from the moment McKay learned from a library flyer about the livestream of TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures, she wanted to attend to feed her interest in laws and governance that was sparked by a high school teacher.
“As a whole, we could do better,” McKay said about the country’s evolving democratic system. “Not trying to poke fingers, but it feels like people just don’t care or think that their vote doesn’t matter.”
McKay, a 31-year-old production manager in the cafeteria of a local school, last voted just one month earlier, on May 16, when Louisiana voters cast ballots in a primary election and on five proposed state constitutional amendments.
Amite, a town of about 4,000 residents, serves as the parish seat of Tangipahoa Parish, a southeastern Louisiana parish of more than 140,000 people spread throughout small towns, farmland, and the regional hub of Hammond. It lies about an hour north of New Orleans. The library system also livestreamed the event in Hammond and Loranger, where 11 and five patrons attended, respectively, on the sunny Saturday.
The library in Amite occupies a modern building with high ceilings and large windows that make the space bright. In the community room, a bee motif and the words, “a happy place to bee,” decorate one wall. The space sits by the front door; most visitors entering or exiting the library encountered the room’s open doors, glanced at the sign explaining the event, and then slid past.
Michael Dimock, president of Pew Research Center, opened the livestream session, imploring listeners to talk to one another more because democracy depends on sharing ideas, even if they are hard. “Basic trust in our neighbors has shrunk,” he said, just as another library patron looked in from the doorway before wandering to the stacks.
McKay agreed, noting that “in a democracy, we should come together, put our differences aside, and understand each other. No one does that anymore.”
Before speakers took the stage in Philadelphia, presenter Kelly Stoetzel asked the audience to share words that they thought described the current state of democracy. “Hope,” “fear,” “progress,” rang out from the audience on the screen. “Outrage,” another said, and McKay said, “Outrage, yes! I feel outrage, and that’s why I want to become a senator, to represent regular people.” She would like to see the country lower the age of eligibility for public office, such as in the U.S. Senate, which stands at 30 years old, and for U.S. president, at 35. “The country needs more young minds that want change,” she said.
Spenser Robinson, the adult services coordinator of the Tangipahoa Parish Library, helped bring the TED Democracy event to the three parish libraries. He welcomed the opportunity because he sees the role of libraries evolving and believes that having public forums is an important part of the change. “Libraries are safe spaces to share ideas,” he said.
Robinson was surprised by the relatively low turnout for the event, but he said, “You can only present the information; you can’t make them come.”
–Kerri Westenberg reported from Louisiana
