In Conversation with Writer Edward Williams | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Sep 11, 2026 7:30 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Sep 11, 2026 7:30 pm
450K
A fireside chat with writer Edward Williams on his Nation essay declaring American democracy dead — and what it will take to build it back.
Earlier this month, attorney and writer Edward H. Williams published American Democracy Has Been Killed in The Nation — a searing argument that the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act this summer was the final blow to a democratic experiment already in freefall. Drawing on the split-decision elections of 2000 and 2016, the retreat from Mobile v. Bolden through Callais, and a lifetime spent watching rights "negotiated out of sight," Williams makes the case that we are no longer living in a democracy in any meaningful sense — and that pretending otherwise is its own kind of danger.
Join us for an intimate fireside conversation with Williams as he unpacks the essay: the legal history behind it, the personal story that runs beneath it, and why he insists that naming this collapse honestly is the necessary first step toward "reconstruction" rather than an act of despair.
We'll talk about what got us here, what comes next, and what it means to hold onto honest hope — the kind built without illusions — at a moment like this one.
This conversation is for anyone who:
Come with questions. There will be time for audience Q&A.
Edward H. Williams is the founder of E.H. Williams II Law & Strategy PLLC, a civil rights and constitutional litigation firm, and former co-director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Howard University School of Law.
