You Don’t Win Democracy Like You Win a Campaign. You Sustain It Like You Cultivate a Forest.

You may feel exhausted. That's what authoritarians want. But here's what we can do.

Huron-Manistee National Forests in Michigan | Susan J. Demas

By Trygve Olson

Everywhere I go right now, I hear the same thing:

“I’m exhausted.”

People who care about democracy — whether they’re knocking on doors, running for local office, organizing in their communities, or just paying attention — feel like they’re in a permanent crisis loop.

And in some ways, they’re right.
The stakes in 2025 are real. The threats are immediate. The damage is visible.

But here’s the truth I’ve learned from two decades of working with pro-democracy movements in some of the hardest places in the world:

Democracy-building isn’t regime change.
It’s a long-term investment in a better world.

Urgency Is Necessary. But It’s Not Enough.

In Belarus, Burma, Zimbabwe, Georgia, and Venezuela, urgency was always there.
People were imprisoned, silenced, exiled.
Elections were stolen.
Journalists were attacked.
Protesters disappeared.

But the movements that survived — and eventually made progress — understood something critical:

If you only know how to fight in crisis, you won’t know how to lead in stability.

And stability is the point.

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The Forest, Not the Fire

Democracy isn’t something you seize and then store on a shelf.
It’s something you tend — like a forest.

• You plant the seeds knowing you might never sit in the shade.

• You water and protect the saplings even when storms keep coming.

• You prepare for the next generation to take over the work.

It’s slow.
It’s unglamorous.
It’s the opposite of what our political media environment trains us for.

But it’s the only way this works.

The Authoritarians Play Long, Too

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen pro-democracy forces make — abroad and at home — is thinking authoritarians only live in the now.

They don’t.

• Putin has been building his control for 25 years.

• Orbán rewrote the rules of Hungarian politics over more than a decade.

• In the U.S., the anti-democracy movement has been methodically capturing courts, state legislatures, and cultural institutions for half a century.

If we’re only playing for the next election, we’re losing by design.

How to Think in Generations

The question isn’t just how do we win now?
It’s also how do we make sure what we win survives?

That means investing in:

• Institutions that outlast any leader or movement

• Civic education that inoculates against fear and disinformation

• Local leadership that’s accountable to their communities, not just to national party politics

• Norms that make democratic backsliding socially and politically costly

In other words — we need to be building the forest even as we fight the fires.

Why This Matters in 2025

If you’re feeling burnt out, here’s what I want you to remember:

We’re not just fighting for the outcome of one election cycle.
We’re building a political culture that has to endure long after any one of us is gone.

In 10 years, people will be living in the country we’re shaping right now.
In 50 years, their children will.

And they won’t ask how frantic were you in 2025?
They’ll ask what did you plant that’s still standing?

Three Things You Can Do Today

1. Build something that lasts.
Join or support an organization that will still matter after the election — local media, civic education programs, community organizing networks.

2. Mentor someone younger.
Share your skills, your mistakes, and your perspective. That’s how leadership transfers between generations.

3. Protect an institution.
School boards, libraries, courts, local election offices — they’re all part of the forest. They need defenders now.

Final Thought

When I worked overseas, I used to tell activists:

“The day you win is not the day your work ends. It’s the day your real work begins.”

The same is true here.
The same is true now.

Because democracy is never just defended.
It’s cultivated.

And the only way to grow something strong enough to survive the storms — is to think in generations, not news cycles.

Trygve Olson is a strategist, pro-democracy fighter and a founding Lincoln Project advisor. He writes the Searching for Hope Substack. Read the original column here.