Democracy Bootcamp
Supported by Stiftung Mercator and Stiftung Mercator Schweiz
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Liechtenstein-Saal
Breakout
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in englischer SprachePractitioners share their expertise and experiences on how to strengthen democracy on- and offline.
14:00-14:45 How to Act Up against Online Disinformation and Extremism (Julia Ebner)
15:00-15:45 How to Create ‘Democracy Hacks’ (Che Wagner, Daniel Graf)
16:00-16:45 How to Manage a Pro-democracy Campaign (Lydia Toth)
17:00-17:45 How (and why) to Avoid the ‘Tyranny of the Annoying’ in Social Movements (Zack Exley)
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Julia EBNER
Research Fellow, ISD - Institute for Strategic Dialogue, London
| Julia Ebner is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and author of the bestselling book "The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism". She leads ISD’s research on cumulative extremism and coordinates the Online Civil Courage Initiative in cooperation with Facebook Germany. Julia spent two years working for the world’s first counter-extremism organisation, Quilliam, where she carried out research projects on terrorism prevention for the European Commission and the Kofi Annan Foundation and gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on far-right extremism. In her role as the coordinator of the pan-European network Families Against Terrorism and Extremism (FATE), she led radicalization-prevention projects across Europe and North Africa. On the basis of her research, Julia advises parliamentary working groups, frontline workers and tech firms; speaks at international conferences; and delivers workshops in schools and universities. She regularly writes for The Guardian and The Independent and gives interviews in English, German and French on the BBC, CNN, ZDF, ARD, France24, Al Jazeera, LBC and others. |
Zack EXLEY
Political and Technological Consultant; Founder, New Consensus, New York
| Zack Exley is the co-founder of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, campaigns to elect young new leaders from outside of politics to Congress. One of their successful candidates was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Zack also founded New Consensus, a non-partisan think tank that develops policy and research to fuel the big dreams of a new generation of leaders. In 2016, Zack served as a senior adviser on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and was an architect of the campaign's national volunteer-driven "distributed" campaign. Zack was an early pioneer in online political organizing and communications with MoveOn.org and the Howard Dean and John Kerry presidential campaigns. He started out as a union organizer in the U.S. South and Midwest. With Becky Bond, Zack co-authored the book Rules for Revolutionaries, How Big Organizing can Change Everything, to capture lessons from distributed organizing on the Bernie campaign. Recently, as a Harvard Shorenstein Fellow, Zack published a paper on the power of the Alt-Right on YouTube, "The Anatomy of the Worldview of an Alt-Right YouTuber." |
Daniel GRAF
Founder, WeCollect; Co-Founder, PublicBeta; Co-Founder, Campaign Bootcamp Switzerland, Basel
| 2003-2006 | Managing Director, Green Party Zurich |
| 2006-2008 | Head of Communications, comedia |
| 2008-2012 | Spokesperson, Amnesty International |
| since 2012 | Campaign and Strategy Consultant |
| since 2015 | Founder, WeCollect |
Lydia TOTH
Executive Director, Operation Libero, Bern
| Lydia Toth is the Executive Director of Operation Libero, a political movement which is campaigning for a cosmopolitan and progressive Switzerland. After the first successes of Operation Libero, she co-built their main office in Zurich which she is leading since September 2018. In her role Lydia is responsible for management as well as fundraising and administration: making sure that the limited resources are used to their fullest. |
Che WAGNER
Co-Founder, PublicBeta, Basel
| Che Wagner is a policy researcher, political entrepreneur and a passionate team-, community- and crowd-builder around meaningful ideas. With PublicBeta, Che co-develops the new ‘Foundation for Direct Democracy’ for the crowd-based platform WeCollect and helps incubate new political projects for Switzerland. As a project leader at civicLab Geneva, he currently also works for the innovation of structures and services within the public sector. He served as director of the campaign for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Switzerland 2016. He studied History and Social Science in Basel/Switzerland and continued at the University of Zurich with the MA program 'History of Economics'. He is currently researching at 'European Global Studies' at the European Institute in Basel. His research areas include European law, economic/social policy and new forms of politics. |
