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WRITERS RESIST!
Our Mission at IL-WDA
Our Mission at IL-WDA
We stand for democratic values and freedom for all human beings. We believe:
All human beings should be free from coercion and control
Facts matter, and the good-faith search for truth should never be impeded
All human beings deserve education and access to books and free reading
Our shared rights to speak, write, read, and protest together and in public should be protected
Disability rights and disability justice are essential for society and public health
The disabled and chronically ill contribute to culture and society and that accessibility and accommodations are necessary to provide human dignity and further their contributions
Immigrants and refugees should be safe, free from detention, and experience fair and equitable proceedings
Immigrants and refugees should be supported in communities, and should be able to find permanency in the US
Trans people have the right to autonomy, care, and choice about their bodies and lives
Joy sustains activism. Joy refuses fear. Joy is an act of defiance
Small actions against fascism are heroic. Tiny moves made by many can make big change
Resistance looks different for different people. There is no one “right” way
History
History
WDA formed as Writers Against Trump in August 2020 to build a coalition in opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency and re-election campaign. The organization began as a small group of poets, fiction writers, and journalists—Paul Auster, Peter Balakian, James Carroll, Carolyn Forché, Todd Gitlin, Siri Hustvedt, and Askold Melnyczuk—who believed the administration to be uniquely dangerous to our present and future society. With Joe Biden’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2020, the name to Writers for Democratic Action. WDA is an organization of writers worldwide with a membership of more than 3,000. We urge all of you to join us. You can visit the “Join Us” page on our national website.
We are a volunteer organization devoted to working for democracy, especially in the U.S. where our democracy is under attack in the wake of political violence, an attempted coup d’état by a former President (now indicted and charged for national security violations and election interference, and currently the undisputed leader of the Republican Party), virulent conspiracy theory campaigns, and assaults on the rights of immigrants, women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and others.
We at WDA believe in literature as a bedrock of democratic culture, and literary language as a force of humanistic inquiry and cultural cohesion. Writers For Democratic Action has generated getting out the vote campaigns during Fall 2020 and 2022, and is now devoted to resisting the current administration in 2025. We are also focused on fighting the new wave of book banning as we witness it in places like Florida and Texas among other states; we work at connecting citizens to their bookstores and libraries; and we host educational webinars each month that focus on national and international issues as they pertain to democracy here and around the world. Some of our recent webinars have included conversations with Congressman Jamie Raskin, writers such as Margaret Atwood, Ada Limón, and Javier Zamora, and contemporary poets from Ukraine, and writers and scholars from Turkey.
We continue to use the platform that we and our members have built to advocate for justice and equality in the U.S. and across the globe.
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