Borrowing insights from the Ancient Greek ideal conceptions of a democratic civic space (demos), this article examines the applicability of this framework to four teacher educators' journey to implement social justice in their programs. It is proposed that the three constitutive dimensions of demos (freedom of speech, equality to vote and hold office, and equality against the law) could provide explanatory lenses to bottom-up collaborative projects in teacher education and beyond, through the illumination of both successes and failures.