Small Acts of Courage
Taking practical action to make democracy work better for all
Ali Velshi is an enterprising, award-winning journalist, who many have called a rare kind of “journalist’s journalist” for his deep skills getting beyond cable news’ hot takes, hourly headlines and partisan-leaning, ‘he said-she said’ debates to deliver a more fair, factual and deeper understanding of current events —the kind that doesn’t simply tell people what’s wrong in the world, but can help them hear what works and see what is possible—and what is needed from all of us to better navigate today’s choppy waters.
As the chief correspondent for MSNBC and the anchor of his own weekend show and the stand-alone podcast, The Velshi Banned Book Club, Velshi is known for his immersive on-the-ground reporting and his interactive discussions with small groups, which form part of his ongoing series, Velshi Across America. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN.
Born in Nairobi and raised in Toronto and now an American citizen, Velshi brings a global and cultural perspective to his work based on a deep and passionate appreciation of cultural differences and local contexts.
I caught up with him Friday at a private talk for students, alums and faculty at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was sharing his thoughts on the recent national wave of student protests and also taking questions from students about his new book, Small Acts of Courage: a Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy.
“It’s not too late to breathe new life into our nation’s democracy by exhibiting small acts of courage,” he told students, questioning him about recent on-campus debates over whether democracy is the best alternative for a changing world. “By advocating for social justice as a living, breathing experience—as a way of life more than an ideology—we don’t just live here, we then become citizens whose responsibility it then becomes to make democracy—not yet finished—a more perfect union.”
“Democracy isn’t something that simply exists,” Velshi added. “It’s something that takes constant care and nurturing.”
I invited him afterwards to have a quick conversation with Bradley and I in our podcast studio—and what follows are some short, edited excerpts of our conversation with him yesterday. Our full interview with Velshi will be featured in its entirety on our first season podcast, launching soon as a series on resilience.
MARCIA: Our country, so obviously, feels deeply divided over so many things, including democracy, itself. Your new book, Small Acts of Courage, is getting good bipartisan reviews as a fresh take on what ails us. But what can small acts really accomplish?
ALI: You don’t have to boil the ocean. You don’t have to solve all of the problems out there that are making you feel overwhelmed. Just the act of solving something small in your vicinity—like attending a school board meeting, or supporting a public library or making it easier for people to vote— can play an outsized role in the fixing of democracy. You may not see the fruits of everything you’re trying to deal with right away, but if you’re planting that seed, a tree will grow.
… ‘Small acts of courage’ refers to the idea that you can do the things that are in front of you to make things more just and free for everyone. Even my family, while they wished for an end to apartheid while living in South Africa, their efforts were actually focused on small injustices that were going on, locally, all around them.
… And when you look at some of the amazing people in this country, the United States, who are doing things—like the two lawmakers in Tennessee who were censured from the state legislature a year or so ago for their effort to do something to make school children safer from gun violence—they were not trying to fix all injustices at the same time. They were aiming for specific things, and were in action and these things are now getting fixed. And people like that, ordinary people in action, can take those victories and go on and do bigger things and more important things, and then these people can become your Gandhis and your Martin Luther Kings or your Nelson Mandelas or your Presidents of the United States.
MARCIA: Your book also is as much about the journey of your family as it is about immigration and our nation’s struggle to achieve a more perfect union as a more inclusive democracy.
ALI: More than a century ago, my great grandfather sent my grandfather —then seven years old—away from India to live at Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi’s ashram in South Africa, which changed my family’s trajectory forever. From childhood, he was imbued with a deep commitment to social justice with an ethos of public service and a belief in absolute equality among all people—ideals my parents carried forward as they escaped apartheid, then emigrated to Kenya, and then ultimately to Canada. I was born in Kenya and raised in Toronto, and now l am an American citizen who lives in New York.
When my parents lived in South Africa, only about 5 or 6 percent of the population had the right to vote. Democracy was fantastic for those who had the right to vote. There was a real democracy if you were white in apartheid South Africa. But everyone else didn’t have that right and so that’s how we have to look at things now. While there are those among us who do not enjoy the same rights we have – the same access to voting, the same access to marrying whom you want, the same access to making reproductive decisions, then none of us have these rights, right? It can’t just be democracy for most of us and democracy for some of us, it’s got to be democracy for all of us. That’s a battle I grew up understanding was crucial —and weirdly, I didn’t expect this, but 54 years after my parents arrived in North America, we’re still actually fighting for an inclusive democracy. I didn’t expect we’d be in the same arena today.
BRADLEY: Being someone who believes in democracy, it must drive you crazy when people on the right and on the left are either deriding democracy in some way or are outright attacking it. What do you say to these folks?
ALI: I say that is a privilege felt by people who have never had to struggle with not having a democracy. To not like democracy, to not subscribe to politics, to distrust all politicians is intellectually lazy. Sure, there are lots of things that go on in politics that are very unsatisfying. There are a lot of politicians who give you cause to dislike politicians. And there are silly associations people make between democracy and some system they don’t like or understand – be that capitalism or socialism. People make all sorts of associations that don’t make sense. My view, though, is that whether or not they make sense, do something about it rather than complain about it. And understand that democracy is a construct, within which we are pluralists. … We may not share a faith. We may not share an ethnicity. We may not share a background. We may not share economic status. And yet? We can share dinner. Or lunch. Or a conversation. Democracy makes that possible. And despite our differences, we all accept that school shootings are bad. Homicide is bad. The affects of climate change are bad. And so on. So we must accept, as partisans of democracy, that the erosion of democracy is also bad.
MARCIA: I’m working on a short-form documentary on the evolution of democracy, and one of the interviews in it is with Judge Raymond Dearie, of the Brooklyn federal court. He was appointed to the bench decades ago by President Ronald Reagan and still presides occasionally over naturalization ceremonies held at the courthouse for new citizens. In my interview with him, he said “immigrants are the fuel of our democracy” because “democracy gives them the freedom to make a better world for themselves and others.” Why do you think some people today might not agree?
ALI: I’m glad you asked that question because immigration has been put into the wrong narrative in today’s debates. Immigration issues are a fight for an inclusive democracy. …Throughout American history, immigrants have frequently gotten a bad rap. They won’t be able to adjust. They don’t speak the language. They drive wages down – and it’s all been debunked. Today is proof. We have a lower than 4% unemployment rate and wages are going up at a higher rate than inflation. So if all of these immigrants are driving wages down, then why would those things be happening? And the trope about immigrants committing more crime? Migrants don’t commit more crime than native born Americans, and for a really good reason. For the rest of us, these crimes would be misdemeanors. But for them? It would mean getting kicked out of the country. The disincentive to commit crime if you’re an immigrant is very, very high.
BRADLEY: What do you tell that young person who is stepping into the electorate for the first time, or some older adults who are staunchly held in their views of the world how to come together, how to bridge some of these divides with small actions?
ALI: …Developing empathy for people who disagree with you is becoming harder, but we must do it. …In conversations with people who don’t agree with you, turn your personal alarms off. Just turn them off. Let them finish their entire sentence without you getting crazy about the way they said something, or the pronoun they didn’t use. It may upset you a great deal, but just turn your alarm off long enough, and then talk to them. And empathize with them and actually repeat back to them what they said they fear or what they said they don’t like. Tell them that you listened to them and then walk away from the conversation if that’s all you can stomach. Or maybe say let’s continue this later, but let’s have a meal together. There are ways to do this. We don’t have to end up as a polarized society.
MARCIA: As we ask all of our podcast guests, what, then, is your New Rule for us as a nation?
ALI: The new rule is that democracy is not free. The new rule is that citizenship is not about your set of rights that you think you have. It is also a series of obligations in which you need to engage. You have work to do in the preservation of democracy.
…I describe our democracy today as being somewhat like a cactus. You can’ t put it in the closet and forget about it. It needs a little love. It needs a little care and a little moisture every now and then. And if we step up to that role, and democracy survives (which I ultimately believe it will), then you get to tell your grandchildren about it when they ask you what you were doing back in 2024, when it looked like America and the world were coming apart.
I would absolutely hate to have to tell them that things, instead, got worse— because we didn’t step up, or because we weren’t really paying attention.
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