Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
In 2026 America needs a Declaration of Independents, one that will mark the 250th anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Yes, our great country, mired in deep conflicts, entrenched polarization in Washington, and pathetic hostility needs to turn to individuals and groups which are driven by an independent frame of mind to rescue us.
In the last Gallup poll 41 percent of Americans identified as independents. The independent frame of mind that is so sorely needed should not in itself reflect a particular ideological point of view. Thus it should not be a centrist point of view which reflects a middle ground between the Democrats and Republicans. Nor should it be a radical centrist point of view which reflects a unique synthesis of both parties or some standpoint that transcends them but still preserves core ideas from both. What is needed instead is a burst of independent candidates and organizations that stand for points of view that differ from the two mainstream parties. There might be six independent points of view, including libertarian, green, moderate centrist and radical centrist.
Ideally the independent candidates for office would win races and reduce the power of the two major parties. The upshot would be that Democrats and Republicans would face challenges from many independent perspectives, and they would lose many of the races. Attacked from so many points of view, they would not be able to withstand the onslaught.
This is ideally how things would evolve. The goal would not be to ruin one or both parties. Instead, it would be to put both parties in check and compel both parties to work with the independents in their district or state or nationally to reach tripartisan solutions to problems. Indeed, it is time to jettison the goal of achieving bipartisan solutions because it rests on the controversial assumption that there are only two legitimate points of view to be reconciled. This is not the case in the United Kingdom, France, Germany or Israel. We must strive to make it not the case in the United States.
The challenge will be to cultivate and celebrate an attitude of independence that motivates enough citizens to vote for the independent candidates without blasting the two major parties. For what is needed is not a war against the Democrats and Republicans but an honest departure from them. The reason this strategy might work over a five to ten year time period is that there would be no consistent target for Democrats and Republicans to bring down. There would only be a temperament to criticize, and it would be hard to criticize a temperament that revolved around freedom of thought and disappointment with rigidity, hostility, and dysfunction.
The attitude that would be targeted would revolve around what used to unite us -- a love of independence. The Declaration of Independents we need will rally around the value of independence that grounded our country 250 years ago. Whether the issue is the environment, guns, immigration, family policy, foreign policy or racial relations, we need a third force in American politics that will shift the focus from the boxing ring fight between the Democrats and Republicans to a challenge to both parties from multiple ideological points of view.
In the United States, what we need now is not so much multiple parties but multiple independent perspectives. Parties are organizational machines and are very useful for the Democrats and Republicans, especially for raising money. A frontal attack from another party is not likely to succeed. We need the same ingenuity which defeated the British in the Revolutionary War -- attack the enemy from a range of places at once using guerilla tactics. Head-on warfare would have failed against the stronger British armed forces.
Likewise today. You can't go after the Democrats and Republicans head-on. Instead, individual races need candidates with an independent temperament which stands in different ideological places. Together, however, these independent voices will gather steam and leverage the momentum of other independent candidates and groups. Gradually, the independent temperament will strengthen, until it becomes a third force in American politics.
Structural changes will be needed in the electoral system, including ranked choice voting and open primaries. But independent candidates and voters and moderates from both parties need a broader strategy to move forward. Although there need not be and should not be one orchestrating organization, a set of organizations, individual candidates and the media, traditional and social, can create the revolution.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
