Notes from TED Democracy Philadelphia: Why democracy is worth fighting for
Posted by: maggyhenert July 16, 2026 at 12:00 pm EDT
On June 13, 2026, more than 1,500 people gathered in Philadelphia to celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States at TED Democracy Philadelphia: Founding Futures. Democracy may have weathered some hard years recently — with rising partisan tension, fraying institutional trust and declining civic participation, as Pew Research Center president Michael Dimock noted in his TED Talk from the event — but on that day, people had a reason to believe in this aspirational system of government.