Join us on Sundays at 7:00 a.m. for new episodes of The Detour. Listen live at 99.1 FM in the heart of Portland, or online anywhere at PRP.fm.

This episode of The Detour explores democracy, especially how we can participate in governing ourselves as well as some of the challenges to doing so. We talk with people working on voting rights and democratic process about what democracy means to them: Desmond Meade, of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, who led the effort to end disenfranchisement of people with past felony convictions in Florida; Danielle Allen, a political ethicist and author of Talking to Strangers, Our Declaration, and Cuz; and Jesse Beason, president and CEO of the Northwest Health Foundation.

You can learn more about Desmond Meade’s work at the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and in his book Let My People Vote.

Danielle Allen is director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and author of several books, including The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000), Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown vs. the Board of Education (2004), Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014), and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017).

Jesse Beason is president and CEO of Northwest Health Foundation. He serves on the boards of Proteus Action League, Oregon Futures Lab, and Oregon Public Broadcasting, and is a graduate of Neighborhood Partnerships’ Future Leaders Initiative, and fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Our host, Adam Davis, is executive director of Oregon Humanities.

To listen to the full episode and view a transcript, visit the Oregon Humanities website.

Alexandra Powell Bugden
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