A new year & a new way forward

For my family, like many of us, the New Year is a time for reflection on the past 12 months and intention setting for the next 12. My reflections on last year have been more complicated than in years past, largely due to the incredible amount of suffering we’re collectively experiencing.

It feels unusually dark right now and what I keep hearing from folks, over and over again, is that many of us are struggling to even pay attention to what’s happening in the world because of the heartbreak. We turn on the news and are overwhelmed by the grief and collective suffering – dying babies, mass shootings, a rise in Antisemitism and Islamophobia, and the potential for another Trump presidency. And so it’s hard to engage, not to mention trying to muster the energy to do activism work. In some ways it feels like we’ve never been more divided. And that’s true even in the Democratic party. 

I’ve been working in policy change for the past decade, and with the state legislature for more than half that time and even within the Democratic caucus in the Capitol building, things have never felt quite like they do right now. And I think part of what feels the most disheartening, and arguably dangerous, about the polarization we’re currently experiencing is that we’re less and less able to hold two opposing truths at the same time. Our heels are dug in. And yet, that ability, to hold and nurture contradiction, is exactly what makes good policy. And it’s what gives us, as Parker J Palmer has coined, a politics that is worthy of the human spirit. It’s what gives us meaningful, authentic and present moments of connection with one another. It’s what helps us love and care for our neighbors, even if we don’t agree with them about everything (or anything!)

From early 2020 to April of this year, I ran a policy and advocacy organization that had two main bodies of work. We ran a leadership development program for young adults (18-34 year olds) furthest from power, privilege and economic opportunity. In addition to professional development, resume and cover letter development, teaching them how to use their voices for change, and mentoring, we invested a huge

amount of time into listening deeply to their stories and helping them identify the places in their lives where our systems failed them. And then, the second body of work was developing and passing state policies to address the very issues that we identified from their lives. So they were using their lived experience to pass policies that make their lives and the lives of their communities better. When I started this job, I’d already been working for years in mostly progressive policy change work, and I had early life trauma that led to PTSD, homelessness, substance use issues, and firsthand experience with a lot of the failures and equity issues in our systems. And because of this, I was already using the lens of systems change for all the work I was doing and had I’d previously done.

When I started this job however, I had the pleasure of building my team from the ground up, and I hired folks who had all gone through our leadership program. And let me tell you what, these young adults are magic. They’re competent, hardworking, thoughtful and powerful humans that have incredible lived experiences that give them the ability to see from unique perspectives. And these amazing humans walked with me as we articulated our organization’s (and my personal) North Star of equity — the lens that all of our work had to go through. And our main tactic of reaching that was to build intentional and vulnerable community.

In those three years, we supported the passage of over 50 bills. Some of those bills, we organized testimony, gave interviews, wrote op-eds, and lobbied members. And some of them, the idea came straight from the young adult and we worked with the drafter to write the policy, counted votes and lobbied members, ran the advocacy and organizing, wrote amendments, did the communications, and worked the bill all the way through both chambers to signing from the Governor.

And these weren’t just little bills. We fought HARD. We worked on the bill that protected the right to an abortion in Colorado, we fought to create access to mental health resources, increase access and affordability of healthcare, fund workforce pathways and higher education, support our public schools and teachers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, literally the list goes on and on. And it was because we intentionally built community that we had the collective energy to keep pushing for progress, even when things felt hard and hopeless.

The 50 bills I just bragged about were the ones that passed, but we also worked on plenty that didn’t. And when we had failures and losses, we had each other to lean on and to borrow energy and hope from, to keep us moving forward. I am so so proud of that work we did, and that the policies we ran have improved the lives of millions of people in Colorado. 

And, in the last year of running this campaign, my perspective is widening a little bit. I’ve been given an incredible honor in the last couple decades of mentoring close to 100 young folks, many of whom have trusted me with their life stories. And every time I hear someone’s story, I’m deeply changed. Historically, that change has resulted in me fighting harder. Pushing harder. Doing bigger policy work to try to help change our systems so everyone gets to thrive. And realistically, that’s not going to change. But I’ve been running this campaign while seeing corporate executives and their lobbyists pile on support for one of my opponents. And so I have this incredible anxiety because we all know that money often wins elections (though I’m working on a bill idea to change this!). And at exactly the same time and in the same place in my body, I have an incredible energy and excitement about the future. Many of you know that this is a safe Democratic seat, so whoever wins will likely have eight years to serve in the House. This means I could have eight years of a legislative career to build a strategy in partnership with y’all, with community, about how to make government work better for us, and I have about 100 ideas in a spreadsheet for the bills that will do that. And so I have these two opposing feelings, of hope and of anxiety in the same place. And as I’ve been sitting with these experiences, I've been reminded that it’s not enough to fight for the right side but that I have to fight the right way too. Because winning is not all that matters. How we win matters. And that is part of what is so heartbreaking about the moment we’re in. Each side of every issue is so focused on being right and winning, that we forget each other's humanity. And so although equity remains my North Star and community building will still be my primary tactic toward that end, what needs to hold and nurture them both is a softness, a curiosity, a patience, a willingness to be right here in vulnerability with our shared humanity and let that be the foundation of the policy work I do for the next decade. 

Now don’t get me wrong. You can count on me to fight like hell to give my daughter — that little human who is my entire universe, the one who holds my heart in her tiny body — a world worth inheriting. I’m going to keep passing policies to keep our kids safe from gun violence, to protect the future against climate change, to create a health system that puts the person in the center and resources them so everyone gets the opportunity to thrive, that funds our public schools and pays our teachers as the professionals they are. I’m going to keep doing the work that I’ve been doing for many years as your next State Representative. 

And at exactly the same time, I’m going to fight like hell to keep my heart and my mind open. To build bridges where we have division. To actively look for connection rather than difference. To seek out our shared humanity. To facilitate hard conversations that folks are avoiding. And maybe naively, to bring love into politics.

And I hope you’ll join me.

Because this isn’t work that’s meant to be done alone. 

So when it feels like it’s just too much. And our hearts are too broken. And we want to check out. I hope we can join hands, and lend each other energy to keep going.

Because my baby needs us.

All of our babies need us.

The world needs us.

And I need you. 

Happy New Year. Let’s make the world better, together.