Transcript
Representative Yassamin Ansari (0:00)
Foreign.
Narrator/Announcer (0:08)
Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.
Stacey Abrams (0:11)
I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.
Narrator/Announcer (0:14)
Today we will be joined by a member of Congress, Arizona Representative Yassin Ansari. In the battle to restore our democracy, calling on our elected leaders is a
Stacey Abrams (0:26)
vital and necessary step, which we refer
Narrator/Announcer (0:30)
to as Step eight, and it's one
Stacey Abrams (0:31)
that we'll discuss in our conversation.
Narrator/Announcer (0:34)
But as we saw in Hungary a week ago, the elected officials are only one part of the strategy for saving our futures. At the end of the day, it's the work of the people that matters most. Since the beginning of Assembly Required, we've talked about how to build the nation we deserve.
Representative Yassamin Ansari (0:53)
That's why I started.
Narrator/Announcer (0:55)
And since the backsliding began in earnest
Stacey Abrams (0:57)
on January 20, 2025, most of us
Narrator/Announcer (1:01)
have been trying our best to defend ourselves.
Stacey Abrams (1:04)
How?
Narrator/Announcer (1:05)
By staying informed. By talking with people we trust. By organizing our neighbors. Because every action matters in the fight against authoritarianism. The quiet truth is that some circumstances
Stacey Abrams (1:18)
require more of us.
Narrator/Announcer (1:20)
More courage, more direct action, more imagination. When the regime is counting on our silence, we must deny it compliance. When they demand that we mind our own business, that's when we must refuse to look away. And when it counts, we must disrupt. You see, disruption is about refusing to let power go unchecked. Authoritarian regimes around the world rely on disinformation, fear, or quiet acceptance. That's what they need in order to function. Disrupting means interrupting what's harmful and making it visible for others. I've spent the past few months in very deep conversations with remarkable ordinary people here in the US and this past week, I spent time in Austria at the Salzburg Democracy Resilience Conference. They convened freedom fighters from around the globe to talk tactics, swap ideas, and remind us that what we face can be defeated. Regardless of the language they speak, the story is always the same. The powerful needed them to let it go, to ignore the harms. And so they got loud. One young woman from Bolivia engaged firefighters to spread the word and defy the powerful when the Amazon was on fire. Another young man was part of the overthrow in Nepal and now is working on technology to keep other gen zers connected as they build their new government. In Hungary, farmers had spent years demonstrating after Orban instituted land grabbing, which is the transfer of land from family farmers who cultivated the land themselves to the Orban regime's wealthy supporters.
