Why Politics? - Asking what's next

What’s next? I can’t say how many times I heard that question in the months before I was due to leave the Marine Corps, but as the date of my End of Active Service approached, it’s all I could think about.

What was next?

There were the obvious choices. Like many of the Marines I served with who had jobs lined up as first responders, there was no shortage of folks back home eager to help me land a spot in a local police or fire department.

There was, of course, my GI Bill benefits. Having earned an honorable discharge after five years of active duty service, I could likely finish an undergrad program as a full-time student, maybe even earn a graduate degree.   

So, after a few personal and professional detours, I eventually settled on pursuing my education. While I was convinced that at 23 years old, I might have already done the most meaningful work I would ever do, in college I found that immersing myself in a community of like-minded individuals helped reinvigorate my sense of purpose. And in doing so, I recommitted myself to the notion of service.

Now on the cusp of earning my degree, I again had to ask myself that same question: What’s next?

I considered a host of possibilities. Social work. Civil service. Public administration. One thing that never crossed my mind? Politics.

The world of politics had always seemed to me an institution that was far removed from my day-to-day life—an interest or a pastime that I could choose to care about or not. To me, politics occupied the same realm as professional baseball. And, much like my sometimes-irrational devotion to the fate of the New York Mets, the outcome of elections was something that I could decide mattered, but if I didn’t want it to, had no real impact on my life.

Luckily, my work with veterans taught me another important lesson: beyond the discipline and standards, or the duty and sacrifice, what makes military service so meaningful to me is that it’s grounded in an underlying commitment to others – a pledge to stand up and fight for someone, and something, other than oneself.

That, I would learn, is what politics is supposed to be. Instead it’s become a culture war rife with partisan battles and ideological skirmishes— a zero-sum conflict where the only thing that matters is maintaining power.

That’s why I’ve never been prouder to work for an organization like New Politics. We recognize that at its core, politics is service.

Politics is men and women from diverse backgrounds with divergent life experiences, all uniting around shared values and shared objectives. It’s about having the courage to take on the biggest and most pressing issues facing our communities and shrinking the change required to solve them.

Politics is ordinary citizens demanding both excellence and accountability from their leaders. And, if and when those demands are disregarded, it’s answering the call to lead themselves. It’s about having the integrity of purpose to commit to causes that don’t affect you directly; to elevating the voices of the underserved and the underrepresented.

Politics matters whether we choose to engage with it or not. What lies ahead—for our friends and families, for our communities and our country—is wholly dependent on the degree to which each and every one of us is willing to make it matter.

So, what’s next?

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