This is what democracy looks like Anthony D. Romero

Silicon Valley
is obsessed with disruption,

but these days, the biggest disruptor
didn’t come out of Silicon Valley.

It came out of steel towns in Ohio,

rural communities in Pennsylvania,

the Panhandle in Florida.

And this last US presidential election

was the mother of all disruptions.

Once again, politics is personal.

Millions of Americans
became activists overnight,

pouring into the streets in record numbers

in record time.

(Laughter)

The election has done
to family holiday dinners

what Uber has done
to New York City’s taxi system.

Couples have broken up
and marriages disrupted.

And the election
is doing to my private life

what Amazon is doing to shopping malls.

These days, the ACLU
is on the front lines 24/7,

and even if I manage to sneak away
for a couple of miles on the treadmill,

any cardio benefit I get
is instantly obliterated

when I read another presidential tweet
on the headline scroll.

Even my secret pleasure

of studying the Italian painters

have been infected by politics.

Now, I study, even stalk, the old masters.

This is my desk,

with a postcard exhibition

of some famous and obscure paintings

mostly from the Italian Renaissance.

Now, art used to provide me
with a necessary break

from the hurly-burly of politics

in my daily work at the ACLU,

but not anymore.

I was at the Women’s March
in San Francisco

the day after inauguration,

and the crowd was chanting,
“This is what democracy looks like.”

“This is what democracy looks like.”

And there I was holding my sign
and my umbrella in the rain,

and I flashed on an old painting

that first captivated me many years ago.

I struggled to remember
the different pieces

of an actual painting

of good and bad government.

It was almost like the old master
was taunting me.

You want to know
what democracy looks like?

Go back and look at my frescoes.

And so I did.

In 1339, Ambrogio Lorenzetti
finished a monumental commission

in the governing council chamber
of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico.

It’s a painting that speaks to us,
even screams to us, today.

“Art is a lie that makes us
realize truth,”

Pablo Picasso once said.

And as we search for the truth
about government,

we should keep Ambrogio’s work,

not a lie but an allegory,
in our collective mind’s eye.

During Lorenzetti’s time,

the political legitimacy
of Italian city-states

was often on very shaky ground.

Siena was a republic,

but there had been enormous unrest

in the two decades
leading up to the commission.

Siena’s political leaders,
who would literally govern

under the eyes
of these allegorical figures,

were Lorenzetti’s intended audience.

He was cataloging the obligations

of the governing to the governed.

Now, you can spend years
studying these frescoes.

Some scholars have.

I’m hardly an art historian,

but I am passionate about art,

and a work this massive can overwhelm me.

So first, I focus on the big stuff.

This is the allegory of good government.

The majestic figure here in the middle

is dressed in Siena’s colors

and he personifies the republic itself.

Lorenzetti labels him “Commune,”

and he’s basically telling the Sienese

that they, and not a king or a tyrant,
must rule themselves.

Now, surrounding Commune are his advisors.

Justice is enthroned.

She’s looking up at the figure of wisdom,

who actually supports
her scales of justice.

Concord, or Harmony,

holds a string that comes
off the scales of justice

that binds her to the citizens,

making them all
compatriots in the republic.

And finally we see Peace.

She looks chilled out,

like she’s listening to Bob Marley.

When good government rules,

Peace doesn’t break a sweat.

Now, these are big images and big ideas,

but I really love the small stuff.

Along another wall,

Lorenzetti illustrates
the effects of good government

on the real and everyday lives
of ordinary people

with a series of delicious little details.

In the countryside,
the hills are landscaped and farmed.

Crops are being sown,
hoed, reaped, milled, plowed,

all in one picture.

Crops and livestock
are being brought to market.

In the city, builders raise a tower.

People attend a law lecture,
a TED Talk of the 14th century.

(Laughter)

Schoolchildren play.

Tradesmen thrive.

Dancers larger than life dance with joy.

And watching over the republic
is the winged figure Security,

whose banner reads,

“Everyone shall go forth
freely without fear.”

Now, what’s amazing
about these images from 800 years ago

is that they’re familiar to us today.

We see what democracy looks like.

We experience the effects
of good government in our lives,

just as Lorenzetti did in his life.

But it is the allegory of bad government

that has been haunting me
since November 9.

It’s badly damaged,

but it reads like today’s newspapers.

And ruling over bad government
is not the Commune

but the Tyrant.

He has horns, tusks, crossed eyes,

braided hair.

He obviously spends
a lot of time on that hair.

(Laughter)

Justice now lies helpless at his feet,

shackled.

Her scales have been severed.

Justice is the key antagonist
to the Tyrant,

and she’s been taken out.

Now, surrounding the Tyrant,

Lorenzetti illustrates
the vices that animate bad government.

Avarice is the old woman
clutching the strongbox

and a fisherman’s hook

to pull in her fortune.

Vainglory carries a mirror,

and Lorenzetti warns us
against narcissistic leaders

who are guided
by their own ego and vanity.

On the Tyrant’s right is Cruelty.

Treason, half lamb, half scorpion,

lulls us into a false sense of security

and then poisons a republic.

Fraud, with the flighty wings of a bat.

On the Tyrant’s left, you see Division.

She’s dressed in Siena’s colors.

“Si” and “No” are painted on her body.

She uses a carpenter’s saw
to chop her body in half.

And Fury wields the weapons of the mob,

the stone and knife.

In the remainder of the fresco,
Lorenzetti shows us

the inevitable effects of bad government.

The civic ideals celebrated
elsewhere in this room have failed us,

and we see it.

The once beautiful city
has fallen to pieces,

the countryside barren,

the farms abandoned.

Many are in flames.

And in the sky above
is not the winged figure Security,

but that of Fear, whose banner reads:

“None shall pass along this road

without fear of death.”

Now, the final image,
the most important one, really,

is one that Lorenzetti did not paint.

It is of the viewer.

Today, the audience
for Lorenzetti’s frescoes

is not the governing but the governed,

the individual who stands
in front of his allegories

and walks away with insight,

who heeds a call to action.

Lorenzetti warns us
that we must recognize the shadows

of Avarice, Fraud, Division, even Tyranny

when they float
across our political landscape,

especially when those shadows are cast

by political leaders loudly claiming
to be the voice of good government

and promising to make America great again.

And we must act.

Democracy must not be a spectator sport.

The right to protest,
the right to assemble freely,

the right to petition one’s government,

these are not just rights.

In the face of Avarice,
Fraud and Division,

these are obligations.

We have to disrupt –

(Applause)

We have to disrupt our lives

so that we can disrupt

the amoral accretion of power

by those who would betray our values.

We and we the people

must raise justice up

and must bring peace to our nation

and must come together in concord,

and we have a choice.

We could either paint ourselves

into the worst nightmare
of Lorenzetti’s bad government,

or we can stay in the streets,

disruptive, messy, loud.

That is what democracy looks like.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson: First of all, wow.

Obviously, many people passionately –

you spoke to many people
passionately here.

I’m sure there are other people here

who’d say, look, Trump was elected
by 63 million people.

He’s far from perfect,

but he’s trying to do
what he was elected to do.

Shouldn’t you give him a chance?

Anthony Romero:
I think we have to recognize

the legitimacy of him as president

versus the legitimacy of his policies.

And when so many of the policies
are contrary to fundamental values,

that we’re all equal under the law,

that we’re not judged by the color
of our skin or the religion we worship,

we have to contest those values

even as we recognize and honor the fact

that our democracy rendered us a president
who is championing those values.

CA: And the ACLU isn’t just
this force on the left, right?

You’re making other arguments as well.

AR: Well, you know,

very often we piss
everyone off at one point.

That’s what we do.

And we recently were taking stands

for why Ann Coulter needs
to be able to speak at Berkeley,

and why Milo has free speech rights.

And we even wrote a blog

that almost burnt the house down
among some of our members,

unfortunately,
when we talked about the fact

that even Donald Trump
has free speech rights as president,

and an effort to hold him accountable

for incitement of violence
at his marches or his rallies

is unconstitutional and un-American.

And when you put that statement out there

to a very frothy base

that always is very excited for you
to fight Donald Trump,

and then you have a new one saying,
“Wait, these rights are for everybody,

even the president that we don’t like.”

And that’s our job.

(Applause)

CA: Anthony, you spoke
to so many of us so powerfully.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

(Applause)