Ari Berman, an award-winning journalist and book author who grew up in Fairfield, is one of dozens of authors who will be speaking during the 16th annual Iowa City Book Festival, October 13-20. Berman will be discussing his most recent book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It on Saturday, October 19, at the Iowa City Public Library.
Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. A frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR, he promises to be an engaging and informative speaker, offering constructive suggestions for political activism.
According to Berman, Minority Rule “is really about the flaws in American democracy, both past and present, and also what you can do about it. It links the democratic crisis that’s happening today to the history of how we ended up with this democratic system that is not actually that democratic.”
He will discuss this political history as it relates to the 2024 election, and talk about why the upcoming election is so important. By bringing out the larger context, Berman will help people “to understand that Trump is certainly an accelerant to the democratic crisis we’re facing, but he’s also a product of a broken political system.”
As an Iowa native who now lives in New York State, Berman feels he brings a unique perspective. He’s excited to be coming back to Iowa to talk about the upcoming election. “The Midwest is obviously essential for the election, so I think it’s going to be a timely talk.” Despite current perspectives that Iowa is now a deep red state, Berman says “Iowa has always had a populist tradition,” and he doesn’t feel it’s as red as people think. “There are competitive races for Congress, and some important initiatives as pushback to things like abortion bans, so I think it’s still more competitive than people are thinking.”
Berman recognizes that a lot of people are anxious about the election. “They want to know more about it,” he explains. “They want to know why we’re in this situation we’re in, how we got here, and what to do about it.” Berman will answer those questions. “I can talk about the history of how we got to this point,” he says. “I can talk about why this moment in history is so important, and I can talk about what everyday people can do to try to fight back against what seems like a broken democratic system.” He encourages people to become involved at the local level, as well as voting in the national elections. He says who’s in the legislature, who’s the governor, and who the judges really matter.
He adds that according to polls, Kamala Harris is down only four points in Iowa. “I think it would be a huge upset if she won [in Iowa].”
Berman became interested in political history and democratic advocacy as a journalism student at Northwestern University. “My freshman year was the 2000 election in Florida. My sophomore year was 9/11, my junior year was the war in Iraq,” he explains. “These things made me more aware of politics and what was going on in the world, and so I wanted to cover that.”
As a political journalist, he started covering voting rights issues after the 2010 election, and noticed a bunch of key swing states flipped from blue to red. “It seemed like a big issue to me. It suddenly felt like Republicans, instead of trying to change their policies, were trying to change the composition of the electorate. So that’s how I started covering the issue.” He adds that “the whole issue of voting rights really accelerated during Trump’s presidency,” which became especially evident when Trump tried to overturn the election. Berman says he wrote “Minority Rule because I wanted people to understand that this is not an isolated phenomenon. Trump is part of a 230-year history of trying to strip democracy in the U.S., and there’s this ongoing fight between democratic and anti-democratic forces that dates all the way back to the founding of the country that has really reached a fever pitch today.”
Berman also stresses the importance of local efforts for change. “I find that people are often very preoccupied by the six or seven swing states that are going to decide the presidential election—and that’s obviously incredibly important—but there’s a lot people can do in their own backyards. That’s where you can ultimately make the biggest difference.” He adds, “I’m really encouraging people to organize and work locally. There’s always something that matters, whether it’s a city council race, or a mayoral race, or a congressional race. It just so happens that Iowa has some really important congressional races that people can work on. These races could decide who controls Congress. And that really matters, because presidents can’t do things alone. If Harris wins, to get things done, she’s going to need a Democratic Congress. And if Trump wins, a Democratic Congress is going to be one of the only firewalls against his authoritarian agenda. I think in Iowa, there’s a lot people can do.”
Berman’s other books are Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction), and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. He’s won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Magazine Journalism and an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. He lives in New Paltz, New York.
Other Saturday events at the Iowa City Public Library will focus on social and political issues. Amanda Jones will be talking about book banning at 10 a.m., Josh Cowen will be discussing school vouchers at 11:30 a.m., and Berman will examine the use of the courts and gerrymandering in shifting political fortunes at 2:30 p.m.
See the complete list of events at Iowa City Book Festival.