2025 Weekend Conference - STRUGGLING TO STAND: Leadership, Authority, and Power as Democracy Dies

All over the world, democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism. Two-thirds of the existing nations have in recent years experienced backward slides in their levels of democracy. Nearly 40% of the global population now lives under authoritarian rule. Political rights and civil liberties are being eroded. “The rejection of pluralism—the peaceful coexistence of people with different political ideas, religions, or ethnic identities—by authoritarian leaders and armed groups is producing repression, violence, and a steep decline in overall freedom” (Freedom House 2024). Violent conflict driven by authoritarian aggression is causing death and destruction and is imperiling the human right to self-determination.

The challenge to democracy is also within us. How often do we find our own thoughts and behavior taking on an authoritarian cast as we grapple with our urges to dismiss, silence, and erase those whom we dislike, who disturb us, and who seem so different than us? How often at such times do we find democracy, peaceful coexistence, and pluralistic inclusion dimming as guiding lights despite being among our most often espoused values and ideals?

Amid these challenges to democracy, and in the face of what may be its death throes, the responsibility and challenge of leadership remains, a challenge that requires us to speak with authenticity and courage to what we see, hear, think, and feel. This ‘conference’, offered as a resource in taking up the challenge of leadership, will be an experiential learning event conducted in the Group Relations tradition. As such, it will not feature experts delivering slide presentations to relatively passive learners. Instead, it will be an opportunity to grapple with its title theme in the context of a temporary organization that participants and staff will co-create.  Within that organization, we will explore together our here-and-now experience of engaging with each other across various roles within a living system. Focused primarily at the level of the group, we will pay attention to what is happening at both the conscious and unconscious levels, and to how the title theme manifests among us. We will explore our very human needs, wishes and fears, both rational and irrational, in ways that connect these to the challenges to democracy that confront us, including those inside us. We will not work with the theme “out there,” but rather “in here” within the groups we form during the event. This intense experiential learning will help us grow our understanding and expand our options for action, enabling us to work more effectively amid the struggles that we face. We invite you to join us on this journey.

mak wemuk, JD

Conference Director