Could Millennials Move Beyond Red vs. Blue?

Just two nights ago–the evening of the 26th–I had the great pleasure of attending a panel with some extraordinary fellow Millennial-types. We were at the New York City Civic Hall, at an event co-sponsored by New America and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. I wanted to share a bit of it with you.

It’s extraordinarily rare that I find myself surrounded by people that I really think truly get it about the political system. Grey-hair rock-star Mark Gerzon assembled this panel of transpartisan or antipartisan folks who all have different approaches to fixing the busted political system in the United States. The video is embedded below, but here are the amazing folks I got to talk with:

• Laquan Austion (@LaquanAustion): CEO, Action for America
• Courtlyn Carpenter: Co-Founder, BridgeUSA
• Jacob Davis: Captain (ret. vet.), US Army
• Steven Olikara (@StevenOlikara): Co-Founder and President, Millennial Action Project

In the talk, you’ll learn more about each of these awesome folks and what great initiatives they have.

But you’ll also learn how we reached a few important positions. Here’s the very short summary:

1. Millennials seem more prone to care about “what works” than what is righteous.
2. Millennials will get involved in politics when they have confidence that they can make an impact that way–they care deeply about greater impact of their work and jealously guard their time. (If they think something is a waste of their time, they won’t bother at all.)
3. Millennials have a capacity to have civil discussions–despite deep disagreement–that older generations don’t.
4. The entrepreneurial/engineering mindset of many over-educated Millennials puts them in a great position to carry forward a Civic “Silicon Valley” mindset for governments of various levels.

These 4 positions we came to aren’t in-stone conclusions, and we’d love to get your thoughts. If they’re true, they reveal some significant risks about willingness to be the vanguard of a long, slow, unforgiving slog towards new trust and better dialogue–whether citizen or legislator.

What do you think are the places that Millennials might change the game? Where might we be a greater risk than what we’re replacing?

–Erik