Astra Taylor Wants to Fix the Constitution
By design, the Constitution is a barrier to true democracy. But the leftist writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor thinks that we shouldn’t abandon it entirely.
Protesters carry a banner representing the preamble to the US Constitution in Downtown Los Angeles during a “No Kings Day” demonstration against Donald Trump on June 14, 2025. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)
Democracy is a major preoccupation of left-wing writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor. She is the director of the 2018 documentary What Is Democracy? as well as author of the 2019 book Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss it When It’s Gone. Jacobin’s Lauren Fadiman sat down with Taylor to discuss the US Constitution — both the barriers it has imposed to majoritarian rule and its untapped liberatory potential.
Lauren Fadiman
What brought you specifically to democracy as a subject? As you mention in your book Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, there are other topics that people on the Left tend to be more preoccupied with.
Astra Taylor
The spark for that project was my experience with Occupy Wall Street and at various protests over the years. One of the most common chants is the call and response “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.” And in my head, every time I heard that chant, I would go, Is this what democracy looks like? You know, what the f-ck is democracy? Is it an uprising? There was a tendency on the Left to associate democracy with spontaneous moments of people en masse in the street. And then, of course, there’s a liberal tradition that equates democracy with various democratic procedures, including free elections, as well as the rule of law and open markets.
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