Why a U-M professor signed a 'Statement of Concern' warning about the death of U.S. democracy

(Detroit Metro Times) To some, the events of Jan. 6 — when thousands of Pro-Trump, “stop the steal” protestors stormed the United States Capitol building as Congress convened to certify the results of the 2020 elections — might have felt like a kind of last hoorah of Trumpism; the bursting of an illiberal bubble that began inflating during Trump’s meteoric rise in the 2016 election, his eventual victory, and subsequent four-year term in office.

Many questions as to what exactly transpired on Jan. 6, remain unanswered. It has since come out that there was a fair share of participants representing Michigan that day, some of whom came away with political aspirations of their own. Efforts to establish an independent commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6 were recently defeated in the U.S. Senate, after Senate Republicans, wielding the filibuster, withheld the votes needed to bring the bill up for debate. And though Democrats say they’re still interested in finding a way to proceed with an investigation, they still have not presented a clear path as to how they plan to move forward.

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The continuation of these threats to American democracy was the subject of a “Statement of Concern” signed by more than 100 academics Tuesday, published by New America, an organization of academics, policy experts, and public intellectuals whose goal is to provide a “civic platform that connects a research institute, technology lab, solutions network, media hub, and public forum.”

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Among the academics who signed Tuesday’s letter was University of Michigan Professor of Political Science Dan Slater, who says he cosigned the statement because he believes American democracy has entered “uncharted territory.”

“Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, there's been this series of efforts at the state level especially, to roll back voting rights and to put more restrictions on street protests,” Slater tells Metro Times. “Every day you watch the ticker tape and see if there are, you know, steps in the right direction or steps in the wrong direction, and certainly, there have been a lot of moves made to take the content out of American democracy, especially in recent months, so it's really hitting what I would consider a political emergency at this point.” ............(more)

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