Populism, democracy, education and freedom: Creating a world without walls

This chapter reflects on the work of including all voices to create an effective public rather than an empty, phantom-like public where people’s assent to the decisions and policies of elites is manufactured. Hazarding a broad description, an effective public would be one that results from the continual mobilisation of the creative intelligences of all to debate, decide and act in ways that are inclusive of all views. Populism, one way or another, depends on constructing political frontiers between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. Much earlier, and in ironic contrast to Temelkuran, Gene Sharpe first wrote his guideline for activists in 1993 called From Dictatorship to Democracy. Each interaction in everyday life can be reflected upon and reread for its insights, hints and clues as to what developed inclusion and what led to exclusion in order to generate places where all, without exception, are participants in building democratic infrastructures without walls.