30 Under 30 Civic Leaders
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 10:04PM Many thanks to Spalshlife for recently naming me to its "30 under 30 civic leaders" list. I'm in good company with many great colleagues who I have been lucky to get to know since coming to DC a few years ago. You can read the list here.
Splashlife is a realtively new organization. Their mission is to "connect every one of the 75 million members of our generation with one another, and with the tools and resources we need to realize our best and biggest dreams."
The survey they had us fill out was rather lengthy, and heavily edited down (which makes sense). But I've posted my compelte answers after the jump, as I some considerable time thinking about it!
1. What cause are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate about improving the way our democracy works. As Stanford University professor Larry Diamond says, "If you don’t get governance right, it is very hard to get anything else right that government needs to deal with."
I’m interested in how we can leverage today’s technology to foster a more responsive government, competitive electoral system and engaged public. I recently gave a talk at TEDxGeorgetown on this subject.
2. What part of American politics are you most proud of?
There's not much to be proud of these days in politics between hyper-partisanship in government and incivility in our public discourse. But when I take a step back, I can't help but to marvel at and be proud of how the radical notion of democratic self-government conceived over 230 years ago remains intact and able to serve a diverse country of over 300 million people.
The recent political protests in across northern Africa and the Middle East suggest how we shouldn’t take our political system and the ideals that underpin it for granted. People like me often decry how dysfunctional our government is, but it is our government. At the end of the day, we, the people, still have the ability to change it. We should never forget that.
3. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Besides being ten years older than I am now, I really have no idea.
4. If you could revise one part of the Constitution, what would it be and why?
As someone whose dream is to see a modern Article V constitutional convention, this is a tough question; there are many things that ought to be revisited. I recently read a compelling essay even challenging the age requirement for federal office.
Thomas Jefferson wrote about the need for every generation to reevaluate the constitution and shape it for their own time. We have not done so since the original constitutional convention, outside of the extraordinarily difficult amendment process. In Jefferson’s words, that’s like “[requiring] a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy.”
However, if I had to pick a single change, I would add a requirement for a balanced federal budget. Jefferson’s notion that the earth belongs to living and not the dead, which was the basis for his argument of periodically revisiting the constitution, is the same reason why one generation should be able to pass its debts to another. After all, the young people today who are inheriting over $14+ trillion in debt had no say in choosing either the leaders or the policies that are responsible for it.
5. What three characteristics should a successful leader have and why?
Humility. Being humble does not mean being shy or passive. To me, it means being self-aware, doubting one’s own infallibility and pursuing a goal without regard to who gets the credit.
Empathy. Successful leaders are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes to understand their perspectives. This often requires some kind of shared experience. A friend who owns a large bus company often joins his workers in washing and sweeping the buses. He can’t imagine leading the company any other way.
Vision. Leaders are able to manage people and organizations. Successful leaders push the envelope and take people where they otherwise could not get on their own. That takes vision – to see a goal, to map a path to it and articulate this in such a way that drives the entire organization, from bottom to top.
6. What personal experiences compelled you to become involved in civic leadership?
I think I first became civically aware in second grade through my student council. It was the first time I felt ownership of something larger than myself and the first time I was empowered to help make decisions. I can see a connection between choosing the theme for spirit week in my elementary school and my work today. Ownership and empowerment, in my view, are the two key ingredients to civic engagement.
What has compelled me to focus most of my time and energy to civic-minded endeavors is not only state of affairs in our country today but an overwhelming feeling that the folks in charge are stuck in an old and unworkable model of creating change.
7. If you could meet one political figure, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Benjamin Franklin (a fellow Pennsylvanian), without a doubt. I find Franklin to be the most fascinating character in American history. Just take a read of his bio on Wikipedia: “a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.” A jack-of-all-trades, Franklin was the ultimate civic leader, innovator and entrepreneur.
He had an insatiable curiosity about life and a deep commitment to the common good. Not only was he naturally gifted, but he also committed himself to living virtuously through incredible self-discipline and self-improvement. I find his thirteen virtues to be a great guide to living life.
My favorite quote comes from Franklin: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” He was always putting his time to good use, and we all benefited from it. I think we could use another Benjamin Franklin today.
8. How would you advise a young person who’s interested in becoming more involved in politics?
I wouldn't encourage any young person to become involved in politics, per se. Politics is a means to an end, not an end in itself. I would encourage young people to find a cause they are passionate about and figure out the most effective way to make a contribution. If that leads to political involvement, like working on a campaign or running for office, that’s great. But I think people too often want to get involved in politics without a clear idea why.
9. What challenges do you face trying to engage your constituents?
In trying to engage young people in various causes, I find the biggest challenge is to get and keep their attention. We are overwhelmed by information, competing requests for our time and opportunities to escape from both by thumbing through our phones or browsing the web.
While I am an evangelist for how connective technology can reinvigorate civic life, we would be silly not to acknowledge how the Twitterization of society often renders us unable to focus and take action in a sustained and meaningful way. I believe there is some truth to the whole argument around slacktivism. That just means we have to be more thoughtful in the way we try to engage young people, in ways that are congruent to how our generation functions.
10. What are you most looking forward to in the 2012 presidential election?
2012 will make 2008 looks like the Friendster of online presidential politics. It will be year when the Internet is transformed from a tool that the two parties use to control our political process, to a tool that can be leveraged by the people to circumvent the duopoly altogether.
An organization called Americans Elect plans to hold the first-ever online convention in June 2012 to nominate a third ticket for president and vice-president and place this ticket on the ballot in all 50 states. Every registered voter in the country can be a delegate to the convention. It will give Americans a greater voice and another choice in 2012, and deliver a desperately needed jolt to our broken political system. That’s what I’m most looking forward to.
11. What’s your favorite line from a historical political speech and why?
My favorite quote is from Theodore Roosevelt. In a speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic” delivered in Paris, Roosevelt famously said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
Civic leadership requires being “in the arena”. There will always be naysayers and cynics who would rather criticize someone else’s efforts than contribute their own to solving a problem, but Roosevelt reminds us that progress and history is made by those who get their hands dirty. I find this to be relevant in the modern day, when it seems like everyone is a critic – from Twitter to television. We would be well served to recognize that talk is cheap, and it takes real leaders doing real work to make a difference in our world.
12. Name three accomplishments in your civic pursuits that you’re most proud of and why.
1. I’m most proud of the fact that I have voted in every election since I registered to vote. Voting is the most basic responsibility of citizenship. And being a citizen, as the saying goes, is the highest office in the land.
2. After hearing and learning a lot about e-democracy, I spearheaded a project in my school district called School Board 2.0 in 2009. Our team live-streamed board meetings online in our rural community and facilitated web-based discussions. It was a concrete example not only of the potential of new technology in our democratic process, but also of how young people can lead the way.
3. Just last week, I bumped into my student body president at Georgetown University. We discussed the disappointing state of the debt ceiling negotiations, and we decided to do something about it – by writing a letter to our leaders and getting other student body presidents to sign on to it.
Within 10 days our team recruited 120+ student body presidents from 40 states representing nearly 2 million students to sign on our letter to Washington. We released our letter at the National Press Club with 10 student body presidents from schools across the country. We launched a social media campaign that engaged over 3,000 people. We received national media attention from CNN, NPR and the Washington Post. And on the 10th day after we thought of the idea, our message was received and personally acknowledged by the President of the United States.
I have never been a part of something that was able to accomplish so much, so quickly. It taught me that effective civic leadership is about sparking fires. Those 120 student body presidents were just as frustrated and ready to get involved as we were – we simply created a way for them to act on it. And the rest took care of itself.
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