5 - Pete Davis on Deepening Democracy

Today’s guest is Pete Davis. Pete wears many hats. I first came across his work as the host of the podcast for the Current Affairs magazine and we met at a live taping of a show in DC. But I also came across Pete through the commencement speech he gave at Harvard last year in which he implores the audience to ignore the siren song of “keeping your options open” and instead commit your life to a worthy cause. This speech’s topic and metaphor- infinitely browsing Netflix- struck a chord with our generation and a version of the speech shared by Goalcast racked up 27M views on Facebook. In no small irony, the mentions of Catholic radical Dorothy Day and unheard prisoners were left out of the success-bro Goalcast version- calls for actually committing to social justice are less popular than calls to commit to “something”. 

While at Harvard Law, Pete wrote a book called Our Bicentennial Crisis, which called for reforms to the school’s culture and policies with the goal of getting the majority of harvard law students pursuing public interest law. If you’re at all interested in how the legal profession fails to meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of the country, Our Bicentennial Crisis is an excellent summary of the problem in addition to being a source of good ideas for solutions. Pete is now one of the founders of the Democratic Alternative, a national infrastructure to develop and promote policies that deepen democracy. 

We cover Pete’s many projects and whether you can be a leftist and an entrepreneur, institutionalists and insurrectionaries, how Chapo Trap House radicalized me, escaping "the David Brooks gaze", communicating the ideas of the left in many political languages, building up expertise to get the confidence to challenge those in power, how to get more out of reading the news, the importance of making political movements welcoming, and using concrete policies to bring people into the left.

Show notes: 

Pete’s book Our Bicentennial Crisis: A Call to Action for Harvard Law School’s Public Interest Mission

Pete’s graduation speech

Article “Why is the Center for American Progress Betraying the Left?”

The Democratic Alternative starter pack for public banking