A report on legal battles against Trump’s authoritarianism

The fighting spirit of Jim McGarvey, legendary AFT Montana public employee leader, burned bright at his namesake 11th Public Employees breakfast, featuring progressive legal light Skye Perryman.

Perryman is president and co-founder of Democracy Forward, a national nonpartisan organization that has won scores of lawsuits reining in the authoritarian overreach of the Trump administration-and has partnered with the AFT in significant legal victories against the administration.

Emphasizing that the Trump administration is the culmination of years of a systematic campaign against democracy in the United States (and a global rise in autocracies), Perryman called the courts "a major guardrail" against sweeping authoritarianism.

Why have government employees been such a target of authoritarian regimes? Because, she says, "History shows us that movements that want to curtail democracy target public employees and the civilian public employee workforce." The goal is to unravel quality of government services-and thus public trust in and support for democratic government.

Responding to a question from AFT-Maryland's Todd Reynolds, Perryman affirmed that privatization of public services is central to this coordinated attack: "There's such a link. You can look across the globe." On the bright side: Support for privatizing government functions is flagging as Americans begin to see the damage done by the loss of civil service expertise. "We're in the middle of the summer and people can't eat vegetables, you can't breathe the air," she said

Still, Perryman sees reason for hope: The success of the legal fightback in which "the president is losing 70 to 80 percent of the time." Massive protest. Her belief that "there will be accountability in this election cycle." And the sheer, unprecedented number of Americans who've called and emailed her to ask what they can do in this moment. That hunger inspired her new book, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom & Reimagine Democracy, a how-to guide for readers to take action in their own communities.

AFT President Randi Weingarten observed that Perryman has been a key ally in confronting Trump's "lawfare."

Perryman returned the compliment, noting that, "At Democracy Forward, AFT was one of our first partners. … Thank you for always being there."

[Christina Bartolomeo/Photo credit: Alexandra Palombo]