Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Millennial Action Project's Rising Star Award winners

Aaron Pilkington (left) and Jeremy Gray won the the Millennial Action Project's Rising Star Awards.

Millennial Action Project'

As 2022 draws to a close, The Fulcrum has invited leaders of democracy reform organizations to share their hopes and plans for the coming year. This is the ninth in the series.

Zaidane is the president and CEO of the Millennial Action Project.

Empathy and humility are underrated attributes of great political leaders. In this era of historic polarization, different political tribes reward leaders for different reasons. What traits do we celebrate? Who are we spotlighting? How does this recognition influence the society we’re creating?

As a nation, our social contract has frayed. Trust is broken. We need a path to civic renewal. That path requires empathy for people not like us, and it will be charted by leaders, both in and out of office, who have the humility to understand they need their opponents to heal the divide. This is the type of leadership worth celebrating.

I have good news: there are people, even elected officials, who are working all throughout the country on mending divisions. Gen Z’ers and millennials in particular are dissatisfied with the divisive politics of our parents’ generation. They understand trust and relationships power good governance. Through my work with young state lawmakers, I see firsthand how the most productive and effective leaders are the ones willing to get to know their political opponents. They invest time in establishing trust with the other side so that they can work together to pass policies with real impact. And it works.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter


At the Millennial Action Project, we created the Rising Star Awards to celebrate incredible young state lawmakers who are bridging divides in their legislatures. Our fifth annual ceremony, held just last week, put a spotlight on remarkable leaders who can serve as the model for creating relationships and restoring trust in the political arena.

Aaron Pilkington was elected to the Arkansas House at 27 years old. He quickly rose in the leadership of his party, eventually chairing the committee charged with electing more Republicans to the Legislature. Even as a partisan whose job it was to score electoral victories for his own party, Pilkington forged creative policy alliances across the aisle. He met Democratic Rep. Jamie Scott through the Arkansas Future Caucus, and together they wrote legislation that would provide health screenings and prohibit solitary confinement for those who are pregnant while incarcerated. The effort passed with bipartisan support. This momentum created a runway for their next collaboration — legislation funding food pantries to tackle food scarcity on Arkansas campuses. Pilkington is an excellent example of how someone can stay true to their political beliefs while still working with the other side to get results.

Last week, the Millennial Action Project named Pilkington a 2022 Rising Star Award recipient for his work to transcend polarization. In his acceptance speech, he talked about his fellow young policymakers and how important it is to put resources toward civic renewal: “We’re better than where we were 50 years ago, and we’re going to be in a better place 50 years from today because of the young people in this room.The future depends on the success of these efforts that support leaders who may differ in ideology but work hard to find common ground to solve the issues that impact us all.”

Now entering his sixth year in the legislature, Rep. Aaron Pilkington remains committed to working with newly elected young legislators from both sides of the aisle. He’s training a new generation of leaders who govern better than their predecessors.

Rep. Jeremy Gray also received the 2022 Rising Star Award for his bipartisan leadership. In Alabama, a supermajority state controlled by Republicans, the Democratic Gray has to work with the other side to get anything done. But there’s a deeper motivation to his crosspartisan efforts as well. As an advocate for mental health and wellness, Gray is looking to make sustainable changes to the way his state supports these vital aspects of his constituents’ overall health.

In order to pass legislation that survives the long haul, he knows he needs buy-in from the other side. That requires building deep relationships with his colleagues in the state House to understand who shares his commitment to these goals and whom he can work alongside to move legislation past the finish line. Gray partners with his young Republican counterparts to help pass impactful policy, including legislation that lifted the 28-year ban on yoga in Alabama’s K-12 schools. He was recently nominated by Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, to serve on the Alabama Statewide Health Coordinating Council and Innovate Alabama, where he can work on health and wellness issues at a systemic level.

He is a model for how young leaders refuse to succumb to the temptation of political gridlock that characterized a previous generation of politicians.

The Rising Star awardees are just two examples of a trend we see throughout the country. Each of these crosspartisan wins build on top of one another. It makes the next win that much more possible. We’re creating a healthy civic flywheel between young people and the young elected leaders working on their behalf. As we show more cases of young elected leaders achieving tangible results for the next generation, we can inspire more young people to participate in the civic ecosystem. This leads to diversifying the electorate, strengthening the incentives for legislators to pursue good governance and reinforcing the bonds between the next generation of civic participants.

Celebrating stories of collaborative governance matters. And the trust and relationships being forged throughout the political system — both within legislatures and between elected officials and their constituents — is the groundwork we need for civic renewal. Change isn’t just coming, it’s here. Let’s take a moment to celebrate that change and the empathy and humility that makes change possible. And let’s share the good news with others, so we can continue making that civic flywheel spin.

Read More

Religious elite can follow their source of moral guidance

An open book at a community gathering.

Canva

Religious elite can follow their source of moral guidance

In some societies, there is no distinction between religious elites and political elites. In others, there is a strong wall between them. Either way, they tend to have direct access to huge swaths of the populace and influence with them. This is an irresistible target for the proto-tyrant to court or nullify.

In many cases, the shrewd proto-tyrant will pose as befriending the major religious sect or, at least, dissemble that they mean it no harm. It is extremely enticing for the leaders of these sects to give the proto-tyrant public support or, at least, studiously refrain from criticizing their regime. There is apparently much to be gained or, at least, much less to lose in terms of their temporal power and ability to continue serving their faithful.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bullies and the World Order

March 30, 2014: A sign made up of a photo composite of Vladimir Putin and Hitler looms over protesters who have gathered in the main square in Vienna to protest Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Getty Images, Benstevens

Bullies and the World Order

We’ve all heard the saying: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” We know the truth of this: we have lived it, and watch in horror as it plays out now, as it has throughout history.

February is a banner month for Vladimir Putin and his regime, marking the anniversaries of three grim and illegal maneuvers led by the Russian President.

Keep ReadingShow less
Loyalty, Democracy, and the Future of American Politics

Vice President-elect JD Vance and President-elect Donald Trump arrive at the 60th inaugural ceremony where Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president on January 20, 2025, in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Loyalty, Democracy, and the Future of American Politics

The place of loyalty in this country’s political system has been at the forefront of political conversations since the November election returned Donald Trump to the Oval Office. Loyalty has long been seen as what the president values most in his relationship with others.

In his 2024 presidential campaign Trump did not try to hide any of that. “We love loyalty in life,” he said. “Don’t you think? Loyalty?”

Keep ReadingShow less
Two Minutes . . .

For This and Future Generations

Sunset over cracked soil in the desert. Global warming concept

Getty Images//Anton Petrus

Two Minutes . . . For This and Future Generations

I want to offer you a different lens through which to better understand the climatological and environmental crises that we—indeed all of humanity—are facing. I would like you to view these crises through the long lens of our planet’s geologic and evolutionary history.

From the beginning of our planet’s formation, some 4.6 billion years ago, to the present there have been five major extinction events which destroyed anywhere from70% (during the Devonian Period) to 95% (at the end of the Permian Period) of all living things on earth. These extinctions were natural events: caused by some combination of rapid and dramatic changes in climate, combined with significant changes in the composition of environments on land or in the ocean brought on by plate tectonics, volcanic activity, climate change (including the super cooling or super heating of earth), decreases in oxygen levels in the deep ocean, changes in atmospheric chemistry (acid rain), changes in oceanic chemistry and circulation, and in at least one instance, a cosmological event—the massive asteroid strike inChicxulub, near what is now the Yucatan peninsula.

Keep ReadingShow less