A lifelong project to preserve democracy  

For Paula Hodges, volunteering to help organize No Kings 3 extends a decades-old commitment - one that she expects to continue long after the March 28 event. The 41-year-old Providence resident works as a nonprofit strategist and fundraiser, and she’s deploying those skills to raise money and boost engagement in preserving democracy.

“I’ve been doing this work for 25 years and my career has been defined by backsliding of democratic institutions nationally,” she says.

But she keeps at it “because democratic institutions are too important to let slip out of our fingers.”

Hodges especially sees hope for Rhode Island: “We can be a laboratory for progressive ideals and innovation … and that’s how we are going to outshine and out-organize authoritarianism.”

As a No Kings 3 volunteer, Hodges says she’s “working to change the political conditions in RI by professionalizing the political movement space with funds and staffing.”

She hopes the March 28 event will keep the movement “in the forefront of people‘s minds” and encourage more to become engaged and stay involved.

That will require overcoming apathy, a big challenge because so many people “don’t think anything will change or they think we’re fine as a blue trifecta state.”

But she’s encouraged to see that “people are stepping up.”

The challenge ahead will be getting folks to understand that the struggle “will not end with the next election,” she says. “This is our life’s work.”