Our system is rigged in favor of the wealthy. These elites use their wealth to purchase political power and buy off politicians who will keep enacting policies that overwhelmingly benefit them and keep the rest of us from fully participating in our democracy. Sowing division is their main strategy for holding onto power.

It’s easy to feel downtrodden as every aspect of our broken system is laid bare. As the country reels from the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rights of millions of Americans hang in the balance, it feels more and more like the system is stacked against us.

I’ve been working to overhaul our broken system for decades. I know firsthand how hard the struggle for true justice and equality is. Others led that struggle long before I came along, as I’ve done what I can to link up with others and take up the baton of Martin Luther King, Jr. and those who started a Poor People’s Campaign to unite poor and working class Americans and demand bold policies that lift everyone out of poverty. At every turn, our movement for a moral revival has faced intense backlash from those in power.

But we can’t become cynics — we will not give up. My faith tradition tells me, “We are not of those who shrink back unto destruction…” Across the country, everyday people have secured structural democracy reforms that have led to major wins that move our country forward.

Take a look at Seattle. In 2015, the city adopted an innovative small-donor system for funding its local campaigns. The city gave four $25 “democracy vouchers” to every registered voter that could be donated to candidates who pledge to only accept cash donations under $250, among other stipulations. The program faced its first major test in 2019, when Amazon poured $1.5 million into city council races to defeat progressive candidates and boost corporatist ones. The result? Of the six elections where Amazon and publicly-financed progressives went head-to-head, only one of Amazon’s candidates won. And the use of the vouchers increased the number of non-voucher small dollar donations and boosted grassroots participation. When big money doesn’t dominate our political system, the people can actually have their voices heard.

Now let’s go across the country, to Missouri. In 2018, a grassroots coalition secured two major ballot victories: Clean Missouri, a ballot initiative that limited campaign contributions, in addition to other democracy reforms; and Proposition B, which raised the minimum wage. The same coalition behind the 2018 measures came together again and won Medicaid expansion for 230,000 Missourians by a resounding six-point margin. Black women dominated in races across the state, often facing down opposition bankrolled by an old guard political establishment. Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter organizer at the forefront of the 2014 Ferguson Uprising, made history by winning a seat held by the same family for 50 years. Kim Gardner, St. Louis’s first Black female circuit attorney, won reelection despite vicious opposition from conservatives and police unions. These victories show game-changing shifts in Missouri, with a burgeoning political coalition that is building a system that works for everyday Missourians instead of just the state’s wealthy elites.

Democracy reforms have also led to major policy wins in Connecticut. In 2008, the state enacted small donor public financing into law. In addition to diversifying the legislature, allowing more people to run for office, and boosting candidates’ interactions with voters, Connecticut’s public financing system opened the gates for bold legislation that helps working people thrive. In 2012, Connecticut became the first state to require companies to provide paid sick leave for their employees, and in 2020, the state adopted a two-stage minimum wage increase — two policies that are notoriously opposed by big-money donors.

In North Carolina, when extremists in the state legislature passed a monster voter suppression bill after the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision gutted the pre-clearance protections from the Voting Rights Act, the Forward Together Moral Mondays movement challenged the law in the courts and marched in the streets to raise awareness about voter suppression. We not only won the case, with a federal court finding that the politicians who wrote the law had targeted African-Americans with “almost surgical precision.” We also made clear to the people of North Carolina that the governor who signed the law was not serving the people. In 2016, he became the first incumbent Republican governor in North Carolina history to be sent home by the people after his first term.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about the state of our democracy. Some states are restricting voting access, dark money is flooding some political campaigns, and some politicians governing for their wealthy donors at the expense of everyone else. But we can build on the momentum of grassroots victories, and let these activists inspire us to get bold reforms enacted on the federal level. We have the potential to mobilize an historic turnout in this election, giving tens of millions of poor and low wealth eligible voters hope that their participation in this election could lead to real, transformative change.

2020 has awakened the country to the full breadth of the injustices that have plagued us for centuries, and pushed us to the point where transformational change is the only path forward. This is just the beginning: together, we can unrig the system and create a true democracy, the likes of which America has not yet seen.