• REPRESENTATION - Voting puts in place people who should represent people's needs and requests. But that's only one pillar.


• PARTICIPATION - Active and consistent participation is needed to keep our representatives from becoming unethical. That may require participating within the system such as lobbying for issues -- or it may require participation outside of the system, such as Dr. King's use of direct action.


• EDUCATION - Democracy doesn't matter if people don't know about the issues. An open media and public schools are just the start. Everyone needs to keep educating themselves to understand what is going on in the world and in their backyard.

To this extent, Democracy Guard trains and prepares young people in becoming active citizens and contributors to civil society.

Democracy also requires strength, valor, commitment and discipline.

• Strength to stand up and nonviolently protect when people's rights are being trampled or challenge unjust systems.
• Valor to be courageous enough to do it even against what look like impossible odds.
• Commitment to do it for all people, no matter their skin color, gender, or creed (and that's just a starting point).
• Discpline to put it all together.

Democracy Guard puts those together in a community to develop those attributes.