That uncertainty puts enormous pressure on schools. People aren’t just asking what children should learn. They’re asking what young people will need to survive—economically, socially, emotionally, and civically—in a world that feels like it keeps changing faster than institutions can keep up.

So this month, we asked Americans a series of forced-choice questions about what K-12 schools should prioritize. What emerged was not a simple preference for career preparation or civic education, individual growth or collective responsibility. Instead, Americans seem to want schools to do something much harder: prepare young people to navigate instability without losing their capacity to shape the world around them.

Schools and the Future

When Americans are forced to choose what schools should prioritize most, the results reveal both broad consensus and deep tension about what young people need from education today:

Challenge vs. stability. When forced to choose between preparing young people to challenge and improve society or maintaining order and stability, Americans overwhelmingly favored improvement. Eight in ten (80%) said schools should prepare young people to challenge and improve society, while just 16% prioritized stability.

Jobs vs. community participation. At the same time, Americans remain highly pragmatic about economic survival. More than two-thirds (68%) said schools should prioritize practical skills for jobs and careers over preparing students to be active participants in their communities (28%).

Individual values vs. shared values. The data also suggests Americans are deeply conflicted about values themselves. A slight majority (56%) said schools should encourage students to form their own values, while 38% preferred teaching a common set of shared values.

Personal success vs. community contribution. When asked whether schools should prioritize helping students achieve personal success or teaching them to contribute to their communities, Americans leaned toward personal success (55%), though community contribution remained strong (41%).

Political engagement vs. neutrality. Finally, Americans were more divided on whether schools should stay neutral on social and political issues or actively help students engage with them. A narrow majority (54%) supported schools helping students engage with social and political issues, while 39% preferred neutrality. But this question has the largest partisan split of the five: 69% of Democrats want engagement, while 50% of Republicans prefer neutrality.

Taken together, the five tradeoffs reveal a shared civic aspiration. Americans want schools to prepare young people to improve the world around them, but agreement begins to break down when it comes to how that should happen. While there is broad support for helping students challenge and improve society, there is far less consensus around the civic capacities, shared values, and political engagement that might make that possible.

Gen Z’s Tradeoffs

The clearest generational divide in the data emerged around what schools are for in the first place. Younger Americans are not asking schools to simply educate students. They are asking schools to function as a kind of civic and emotional infrastructure: a place where young people can develop their own values, learn how to engage with difficult social and political realities, and still build practical skills for an uncertain future.

The sharpest generational divide is on values. Nationally, 56% of Americans say schools should encourage individuals to form their own values rather than teach a common set of shared ones. Among Gen Z, that number jumps to 66%. Among adults aged 61 or older, it falls to 49%. And within Gen Z, the youngest cohort (those 18 to 23) lands at 69%.

That could read as individualism, and in one sense it is. But pair it with this: Gen Z is also more likely than any other generation to want schools to actively help students engage with social and political issues. Sixty percent of 18-to-30-year-olds want that engagement, compared to 53% of 31-to-45-year-olds and 52% of those 61 and older.

So the Gen Z picture isn’t disengagement or apathy. It’s something more specific: Let me form my own values, and help me learn how to engage with the world aligned with my beliefs.

There’s one more place where Gen Z differs slightly from older Americans. On the jobs versus community participation question—where the national number is 68% jobs, 28% community—Gen Z shifts to 64% jobs, 33% community. Older generations skew even harder toward job skills: 73% of those 61 and older chose career preparation. Gen Z is the group most willing to say that preparing students to be active community participants is part of what schools should do.

What does this add up to? Gen Z has a distinct civic orientation that doesn’t fit cleanly into older frameworks of either engagement or disengagement. They want schools to help them engage with political and social reality. They want to form their own values in the process. And they’re somewhat more willing than older generations to say that becoming an active community participant is itself a legitimate goal of education and not just a nice-to-have after career prep is done.

Final Thoughts

What struck me most about these findings is that Americans are not simply debating education policy. They are debating what kind of future feels possible for young people and what schools are responsible for preparing them to navigate.

At the same time, the data suggests Americans still see schools as one of the few institutions capable of shaping something larger than individual achievement. Even amid disagreement, there remains a shared hope that schools can help young people build lives that are not only economically secure but also meaningful, connected, and engaged with the world around them. Gen Z’s responses, in particular, suggest a generation looking not for answers handed down, but for the tools to participate, question, and define their own place in society.

The questions underneath these findings are ultimately much bigger than education itself:

• What should schools prepare young people for in a world changing this quickly?

• What values, if any, still feel shared enough to teach collectively?

• Can schools realistically prepare students for both economic survival and democratic participation?

Schools have become a container for much larger anxieties about instability, belonging, trust, economic survival, and whether democracy itself still feels cohesive. And Gen Z sits at the center of many of those fears.

Class adjourned.

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This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby, sat down with Spencer Overton, Law Professor at George Washington University Law School, for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Slaby: Thanks so much for joining today and taking the time to talk to us about your work, especially at this incredibly complex moment around the idea of political power and enfranchisement in this country. Can you tell me a bit more about how you came to focus on race and democracy?

Spencer Overton: I initially came to democracy work through concerns about money and politics. Early in my career, I was focused on campaign finance and the ways concentrated wealth distorted democratic accountability. Some of that was about the unequal distribution of resources in terms of race, but it was broadly an issue of fairness.

In the aftermath of Bush v. Gore in 2000, it really became impossible to ignore how rules about voting itself, voter identification laws, felony disenfranchisement, and purges were shaping who had political power in America. That led to my book Stealing Democracy, which examined how politicians manipulate electoral rules to maintain power. What struck me over time is that these tactics were rarely isolated. Redistricting, access to the ballot—all these different mechanisms served the same objective, basically deciding in advance whose voices will matter politically.

In about 2014, I stepped away for about five years and ran a Black think tank. We focused on economic issues, but I came back to the issue of politicians manipulating electoral rules to maintain power through a technological lens around 2019. Between 2019 and now, a lot of my work has focused on democracy and technology.

Michael Slaby: You’ve talked about the expressions of political power in the context of the Callais decision and the undermining of section two of the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act was really about ensuring that communities that had been actively oppressed and denied political rights could actually build and exercise political power and ultimately access institutional power in the form of representation in our government. I think we lose sight of the role that drawing maps played in ensuring communities had power.

We’re in a world now where, apparently, redistricting is becoming more common, and I don’t expect that to be a political tool that anybody is willing to set down readily. If we’re constantly remapping, the relationship between political power and place is challenged, complicated, or even distorted.

Spencer Overton: When I started my book Stealing Democracy, the first chapter dealt with democratic gerrymandering in California. I wanted to say the broader issue is politicians manipulating rules to predetermine outcomes here, and that’s a fundamental issue. When race becomes intertwined with these systems, the harms are especially durable because they can lock communities out of meaningful political power for generations. We think about the best political systems being ones where different factions can form, but they can also reshape, and they can create new coalitions in the future to respond to new problems. But when things are fixed because of racial polarization, that’s an issue. I think that’s a problem here that is unique.

We’re seeing all of these different cases coming together—the Callais decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, the Brnovich case, and Rucho putting a green light on partisan gerrymandering. And as a result, we’re in a fundamentally different place. But the fact that we’re in this different place can hopefully open us up to some completely different systems that transcend our existing systems.

Michael Slaby: I think the Callais decision is rooted in a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Voting Rights Act. It was not just enfranchisement, but actually empowerment, literally the ability to exercise political and sustain institutional power for communities. But because that was not clear in the legislation, it’s easy to say things like colorblindness and wave away the injustice and inequity of failing to share power more effectively with communities. What emerging innovations do you see that may allow us to re-engage this question of sharing power?

Spencer Overton: A representative democracy means that people who share interests and experiences can translate their political participation into meaningful representation and meaningful governing power. In our current system of winner-take-all elections, large portions of the electorate routinely end up with no representation that reflects their views. Gerrymandering intensifies that problem, and as a result, there are millions of people who feel like their ballot doesn’t count.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve become increasingly interested in proportional representation. Under proportional systems, groups receive representation roughly proportional to their share of the vote. If a group makes up 30% of the votes and they vote cohesively, they should be able to elect roughly 30% of the legislative body. It helps communities of color secure representation without requiring race-conscious district lines, which are viewed skeptically after Callais, but it’s not just about race. It can improve ideological diversity when we think about a place like Massachusetts, which is about a third Republican, but has no Republican congressional members. The reverse is true in Tennessee, particularly after the recent gerrymander there.

Michael Slaby: At the time of recording this, in the last forty-eight hours, there have been other maps challenged—Alabama and South Carolina, for example. The idea that maps are no longer stable representations of our political landscape is becoming a destabilizing fact for people.

Spencer Overton: I think about how we can develop a system where voters choose the groupings and the outcomes rather than politicians. I also think that people do not have the same confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court that they once did. Instead of a system that’s based on judicial intervention, we need to set up systems where voters select the groups—and then those groups might change from election to election. And then obviously, we’ve got some other issues like money in politics, which is significant. And then there’s our system of primaries, where basically 8% of the population selects 82% of the U.S. House, because of a combination of gerrymandering and low turnout primaries. And the Senate just has so much power in terms of its confirmation power, and it doesn’t reflect the diversity of our country. There are many different structural issues that we have to acknowledge and address.

Michael Slaby: Naming that there is a multiplicity of challenges is important. I think there are moments when we think about democracy reform and innovation, and we get precious about a particular answer, rather than recognizing the multiplicity of solutions that might exist. There are many different dysfunctions. It’s not one dysfunction. So we probably need more than one answer.

Spencer Overton: I think that’s right. There’s not just one silver bullet here that’s going to solve everything. This is a complex system, and there are a variety of things we’ve got to deal with.

Michael Slaby: I’m curious about how you see reform also as an engine of rebuilding trust. That at some level, democracy is a system of faith, and if we don’t believe that our power is being shared, if we don’t believe that our agency has value, we’re not likely to use it, and then we’re unlikely to participate. And then we’re unlikely to trust it, and then the results become questionable. Today, the rule of law is under pressure because we don’t feel like there are any stable or consistent rules. Where do you see opportunities to address this?

Spencer Overton: I think the first step is recognizing that much of the distrust is rational. Americans are responding to real structural problems, such as gerrymandering and politicians who are insulated from accountability. We talked about the Senate. We talked about the Supreme Court. Obviously, campaign spending creates some understandable perceptions that wealthy interests dominate here. So, rebuilding trust cannot rely exclusively on messaging, right? It really requires substantive institutional reform. We talked about how to manage gerrymandering with things like proportional representation. Concerning our Senate piece, that’s really complex because some interpretations of Article V suggest that the U.S. Constitution cannot be amended to base the voting power of U.S. Senators on population, but there could be some intermediate steps, like DC statehood, that give more influence to historically underrepresented communities. And there are some other things that one could possibly do, like Supreme Court ethics reform, shadow docket reform, and obviously campaign finance reform. A lot of the distrust comes when people feel like their participation doesn’t matter.

The book The Turnout Gap by Bernard Fraga proposes that a lot of the racial gaps in participation aren’t due to socioeconomic issues, but due to gerrymandering and people feeling like their vote doesn’t really make a difference. Feeling like you’re making a difference is important. I also think that sometimes reformers ignore deep-seated cultural issues. People feel cultural anxiety. The country is changing from a demographic standpoint, and that creates tension because people are not necessarily ready to share power or feel a threat to their status. How do we recognize that and address it as opposed to simply calling it racist or simply pretending that it doesn’t exist? How do we acknowledge that and make a space that’s respected for people and figure out a way for some of those folks to have trust in a very diverse democracy here?

Michael Slaby: I think at times a failure of imagination keeps allied groups around democracy reform and the voting rights space from cooperating and co-organizing to build collective power. But when we look at younger people, I feel a sense of hope that new justice movements or new reforms might be possible.

Spencer Overton: I’m excited about the fact that younger reformers, and I think younger generations generally, are not just focused on the status quo. Many young people want something that is truly transformative rather than simply kind of nibbling around the edges. The fact that people don’t want to just rely on what has existed before, and are open to and willing to do some different things, gives me hope.

One of the things that concerns me is the evolution of technology and its role in terms of expression, speech, the economy, displacement in terms of jobs, and our ability to govern. I don’t know that we’re going to be able to effectively allow government to ensure that technology works for human beings if we don’t get our democratic institutions right. I don’t know that the government can effectively, for example, regulate technology in light of our current campaign finance rules, gerrymandering, and some of the other incentives. I really feel like we’ve got to get these basic democracy issues together to collectively confront some of these larger challenges of our time.

Michael Slaby: We never proactively laid out what we wanted social media tools to make possible for the community, for engagement, for civic life. I think we’re similarly missing an opportunity to talk about what we want from AI and talking about them too much as a set of things that are happening to us with an inevitability that implies we have no agency. We need to create a powerful public conversation to get what we want explicitly from tools that are meant to elevate humanity and elevate the way society thinks and functions, to create bridges and creativity that don’t exist, but our current systems don’t lend themselves to that type of activity.

Spencer Overton: I think that the first challenge that we have there is that so often we’re reactive in terms of here’s what the problems are, as opposed to proactively describing a vision. Many different people are going to have different visions, but that’s part of the work in terms of having that conversation and working through it. If you haven’t been talking about it and you haven’t kind of worked it through, you’re not going to be able to advance a new vision in the finite window that we have to implement that change.

I think that it is important to have those conversations now and not feel vulnerable, “like it’s inevitable, the machines are definitely going to take over,” or the opposite, right? Like the abundance culture of it’s all just going to get better because AI is great and is going to save us. Recognizing that we have agency both in terms of the technologies as well as laws, and that we have to exercise that agency and figure out what it is that we really want.

Michael Slaby: Do you see places where you would guide people to using that agency, either in that conversation or in the voting rights conversation right now?

Spencer Overton: I have gotten a lot out of looking overseas. For example, in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement allowed almost warring factions, in terms of the British settlers who are largely Protestant and the native Irish who are largely Catholic, to have an agreement, to share power and work together using proportional representation there. These are tools that have allowed people to share power and make decisions together in times of cultural conflict.

Michael Slaby: I appreciate that focus on looking to relationship and community and the ability to share power in ways that feel just and creative as the driver—not cleverness. In democracy reform conversations, sometimes there are moments where we lose contact with a moral and ethical orientation toward healthy, vibrant relationships and community. And I think to our detriment, because we come off as technocratic and clever in a way that is misleading for what’s really at stake.

Spencer Overton: Some people would say, “let’s just be colorblind,” or “let’s tone it down” in terms of concerns about justice and policing, because we see the backlash that comes from it, so we just all need to be in the middle, and that’s the solution to making everything better.

My concern with that is that it doesn’t account for the pluralism of who we are as a country. I think that some marginalized folks experience that sentiment as similar to the mandated assimilation that we saw in terms of Indian boarding schools, or Black women having to straighten their hair to keep their job, or schoolchildren being prohibited from speaking Spanish at recess. It feeds into a kind of conquest. I think we should reject that and recognize some of the value of pluralism is that we can all share power, and we all can win.

Michael Slaby: More diverse groups are more creative. More diverse groups are more adaptive and adaptable. We flatten the engine of creativity in society if we choose safety or similarity, or assimilation instead of real integration. It’s an incredible missed opportunity in addition to being unjust. On another note, what’s giving you hope for the future right now?

Spencer Overton: I am a law professor, and it’s so neat to work with young minds and their excitement about the future. Younger folks give me hope. History also gives me hope. Many of the periods we now romanticize were experienced at that time as moments of profound crisis. When we think about Bloody Sunday and Selma, many people thought American democracy was and would be fundamentally broken. But that period produced the Voting Rights Act. Watergate exposed serious corruption and abuse of power, but it also generated major campaign finance and ethics reform. Democratic progress in the United States often emerges from periods of intense conflict and institutional failure. And for me, the question is, when the window opens up after this crisis, will we be prepared to kind of usher in a new and better system where different groups are able to share power, and we can move forward?

Michael Slaby: We have to confront and take care of people who are under threat, but we also have to be prepared for the moment when change is possible. We have to do both.

Spencer Overton: We have an opportunity, and we can’t lose hope. We can’t get pessimistic about each other. The founders were not perfect, and there were a lot of flaws. But what we have inherited in terms of a superpower of a nation—there’s so much good we can do in the world if we really focus right now in terms of getting these systems right so that we can share power. Don’t get discouraged. Go out and vote. Be engaged. All those things are really critical at this moment. The future of the nation, and I would say that the future of the world, hangs in the balance in terms of our engagement around democracy issues over the course of the next decade.

About Spencer Overton
Spencer Overton is a tenured professor and the founder and faculty director of the Multiracial Democracy Project at GW Law School. The Project is currently working on proportional representation and other alternatives to our current electoral system as a strategy to preserve representation for communities of color in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Spencer is the author of the book Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression and numerous law review articles on democracy, race, and technology. He has also worked on race and democracy issues as a senior policy official in the Obama Administration and as president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies—America’s Black think tank.

About Michael Slaby
Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012 where he oversaw all technology and analytics and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.

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Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

It’s a useful way to understand not just what people need or want, but what they feel they’re missing. Across more than 6,500 respondents, the answers at $10K were almost uniformly categorized as “necessities”—responses like “Pay off loans,” “get my teeth fixed,” or “A car and groceries.” What’s surprising is that even at $100K, the dominant responses remain practical rather than extravagant. People start to think a bit bigger, but the first instinct is still stability, security, and catching up on basic needs.

In the above chart, we display the single best label for each person’s open-ended response. Respondents who mentioned multiple uses for the money (for example, paying bills while also taking a vacation or helping family) were grouped into the mixed category.

A Stable Foundation

But people’s answers were often much richer (no pun intended) than a single category could capture. Many respondents described layered priorities in the same necessities response: paying bills or loans, repairing a car, or putting a little money into savings.

So while the previous chart shows the single best label for each response, the next analysis allows for multi-label classification, capturing all of the themes embedded in what people shared. When viewed this way, a striking pattern emerges: across gender, race, party, education, and income, between 85–89% of Americans said they would spend at least some portion of a hypothetical financial windfall on a core life necessity.

The largest share pointed to paying down debt: credit cards, student loans, mortgages (42% at $10K; 40% at $100K). Others focused on paying utility bills (13% at $10K; 8% at $100K). A third group mentioned maintenance and upkeep: fixing or replacing a broken vehicle (11% at $10K; 14% at $100K), or repairing something in the home (7% at $10K; 8% at $100K).

This is not aspirational—it’s stabilizing. Even the differences between Americans at different levels of financial security are narrower than might be expected. With $10,000, those who are not at all financially comfortable overwhelmingly mention necessities (94%, compared to 9% discretionary). But even among the most comfortable, 78% still prioritize necessities, compared to 16% who would use the money for something discretionary. The pattern is the same at $100,000: the share using the money for necessities goes from 90% among the least comfortable Americans to 77% among the most comfortable.

If necessity versus discretion is one axis, there’s another that matters just as much: time horizon. Some necessities are about right now: a bill that’s overdue, a car that won’t start, a roof that’s leaking. Others stretch years or decades into the future: retirement savings, college tuition, home ownership.

At $10,000, a majority of the least financially comfortable Americans (59%) focus on immediate needs, compared to just 16% of the most comfortable. In contrast, the prevalence of long-term thinking increases from just 5% among the least comfortable to 24% among the most comfortable. The same pattern appears at $100,000. The focus on immediate needs declines from 40% to 10% at the highest comfort level, while long-horizon thinking expands from 14% to 36%.

Building Toward the Future

The single largest shift in Americans’ thinking when imagining the jump from a $10,000 to a $100,000 windfall is the desire for owning a home. At $10,000, just 3% of Americans say they would use the money to help buy a home. At $100,000, that number rises to 16%—more than a fivefold increase. The increase in home-buying responses is greatest among those with the least financial comfort: from 6% at $10,000 to 23% at $100,000. Among those who are already comfortable, mentions of homeownership rise from 3% to 10%. The further someone is from homeownership today, the more powerfully they reach for it when it feels even remotely attainable.

But homeownership is only part of a broader pattern. When Americans imagine having some financial breathing room, they are most often describing investment: in stability, in opportunity, and in the future they want to build. Many mention putting money into savings vehicles like CDs, retirement accounts, or high-yield savings. Others take a more active approach: more than a hundred respondents explicitly say they would start a business.

That same instinct extends outward. Giving increases as the windfall grows: 6% of respondents mention donating or helping others at $10,000, rising to 10% at $100,000. The recipients are often close to home—churches, children, parents, neighbors. But many also point to broader needs: dozens explicitly mention helping people experiencing homelessness. Some responses are deeply personal. One person describes housing a homeless brother. Two others talk about helping house their own children.

An extra $100,000 doesn’t guarantee a home, a business, or long-term security. But for many, it at least makes those things imaginable and once that hypothetical door opens, people move from patching what’s broken to imagining what could be built.

Final Thoughts

We asked this question to understand what people might want with fewer constraints. What we heard back wasn’t extravagance. It was steadiness. Yes, people want vacations. Yes, they want to treat themselves. But that isn’t the center of the dream. The dream is closer to home: opportunity, growth, and a sense of safety and security.

And that raises a different set of questions, not about what people want, but about what makes that possible:

• Why does something as fundamental as homeownership still sit just out of reach for so many and what would it take to change that?

• How much untapped potential—entrepreneurial, civic, relational—is sitting dormant simply because people don’t have the margin to act on it?

• And what would our communities look like if more people had not just enough to get by, but enough to look ahead?

Because for most Americans, the dream isn’t more. It’s finally having enough to exist comfortably or move forward with more confidence.

Just stable enough to build from.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

It shows up in arguments about redistricting and campaign finance. In debates over lobbying, insider trading, and political donations. In reaction to local decisions—zoning changes, school board fights, contracts awarded behind closed doors. It’s used to describe everything from clear ethical violations to outcomes people simply don’t agree with.

The word carries weight. But it’s also doing a lot of work. Because when people think everything can be deemed corruption, it raises a more basic question: what do people actually mean when they use the word?

What emerges is a clearer picture of how people are interpreting power and fairness—what feels compromised, what feels functional, and how they’re deciding whether the system is working at all.

Seeing Corruption

Corruption shows up in headlines and political debates, but it also takes shape through the specific examples people carry with them—the stories they hear, the patterns they notice, the moments that confirm a broader suspicion about how the government works.

When we asked what people had seen or heard recently that made them think, “this is what government corruption looks like,” the responses were varied but often concrete: abuse of political power (11%), foreign wars (10%), or simply “everything” feeling corrupt (8%), alongside concerns about economic issues like inflation (7%), welfare fraud (6%), the Epstein files (6%), partisan blame toward Democrats (5%), abuse of enforcement power (5%), and election or voting issues (2%) or media retaliation (2%). A significant share explicitly mention Trump (26%).

These perceptions are widespread. A majority of people say corruption is very common (67%), with more describing it as somewhat common (27%). But views differ on where it shows up most. Some point to national politics (35%), where stakes and visibility are highest, while others see it as distributed across all levels of government (48%), though few believe it concentrates at the local government (only 3%).

What stands out is how people define the harm. It’s not just about illegal behavior, but about a sense that the system is not working as intended—whether that’s abuse of power (32%), leaders putting their own interests ahead of the public (28%), misuse of funds (15%), or influence from donors (11%). And when asked who is most likely to be involved, responsibility doesn’t fall in just one place. People point to elected officials (28%), political parties (22%), wealthy actors (17%), and corporations (9%)—suggesting that corruption is understood as something systemic, not isolated.

For many, concern about corruption isn’t abstract. A majority (51%) say it strongly influences their views today (another 34% say it has some influence), reinforcing skepticism and shaping expectations about what is possible. This concern also feels widely shared: 51% believe others are just as concerned about government corruption as they are.

When Government Works

At the same time, people aren’t only noticing what’s broken. Alongside concerns about corruption in government are moments—albeit less frequent—where the government appears to function as it should.

When we asked what people had seen or experienced that made them think government can work, many struggled to point to anything concrete: 43% said they had no example, with another 6% unsure.

Among those who did, the examples were often practical or situational—hypothetical reforms or ideas about how government could work (10%), local community efforts (9%), or positive views of the current administration (8%). Others pointed to accountability and transparency (7%), effective government services and responses (6%), or past administrations (5%).

But these moments are less consistently visible. While some people say they notice examples of government working regularly (7% say daily and 12% say weekly), many describe them as occasional (29% monthly) or rare (52%). That imbalance matters because what people see most often tends to shape what they believe is typical.

When we asked the most important signal that the government is working well, the answers were distributed: responsiveness to the public (24%), accountability (20%), adherence to rules (18%), transparency (17%), and fairness (13%). These aren’t abstract ideals—they’re observable behaviors people use to evaluate whether institutions are functioning as they should.

Final Thoughts

What emerges is not just distrust, but imbalance. People are more consistently exposed to signals of what’s going wrong than to signals of what’s working—even if both are present.

When we asked what would make the biggest difference in increasing trust, the answers again focused on conditions: clearer communication, stronger accountability, and visible consequences for wrongdoing. In other words, trust isn’t just about outcomes—it’s about whether people can see how decisions are made and believe the system is operating fairly.

So we’re left with a set of questions that go beyond identifying problems:

• What would it take for examples of government working to be as visible as examples of failure?

• How do you build trust in a system people believe is vulnerable to misuse?

• And what signals—consistently delivered—would actually change how people see the government over time?

There’s also a deeper civic implication in these findings. Trust in government shapes whether people believe participation actually matters. When institutions are seen as corrupt or unaccountable, civic engagement can start to feel less meaningful and less capable of creating change. For some people, that distrust fuels activism or protest. But for others, it leads to something else: disengagement, cynicism, or the sense that individual action won’t make a difference. In that sense, visibility matters not only for trust, but for democracy itself. People need to believe institutions can respond, improve, and remain accountable for participation to feel worthwhile.

Proof over promises.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Americans are noticing. A recent Pew survey found that nearly seven-in-ten Americans are worried about higher gas prices tied to the Iran conflict. But what’s particularly striking is how differently Americans across the political divide are responding to the sudden, sharp increases in gas prices nationwide.

Murmuration has been tracking public satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) with gas prices over time, and the data reveals two things happening simultaneously: rising dissatisfaction across the country, and stark partisan differences in how Americans make sense of the same, shared economic reality.

About More Than Gas

The chart above shows Americans’ level of dissatisfaction with gas prices starting in 2023. Overall, dissatisfaction now sits at 76% with just 6% of Americans saying they are satisfied with current prices. The start of the Iran conflict caused an immediate spike in dissatisfaction among all political groups, followed by continued, more gradual increases. Democrats report the highest dissatisfaction levels at 87%, followed by independents at 79%.

Republicans tell a more complicated story. In 2025, Republican dissatisfaction with gas prices fell dramatically when President Trump returned to office, despite relatively modest changes in actual prices. Since February, Republican dissatisfaction has returned to earlier levels, now reaching 60%.

The gap between Democrats, Independents, and Republicans is revealing.

The data suggest Americans are not simply reacting to prices themselves. They are also reacting through political identity, media narratives, and beliefs about who or what is responsible. For some Americans, rising prices appear to register first as a political interpretation before becoming an economic judgment.

And yet, material conditions still seem to matter. Even among Republicans, dissatisfaction still increased substantially alongside the latest price spike. The result is a public that is polarized in interpretation, but still responsive to real-world economic strain.

Final Thoughts

These findings matter because gas prices occupy a unique psychological space in American life. While most economic indicators are abstract—inflation is complicated, GDP is distant, interest rates can be invisible until they hit your mortgage—increases in gas prices are felt immediately.

People see them every morning on giant signs at the corner of their street. They become a running calculation in family budgets. They shape commute decisions, vacation plans, grocery costs, and perceptions of whether the country feels stable or unstable.

There are many ways to interpret this moment, but one question continues to sit at the center of it:

Voters may disagree about the causes. They may blame different leaders or policies. But the emotional reaction is remarkably similar: rising fuel costs make people feel anxious, constrained, and pessimistic about the future.

Filling Up, Feeling Down

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

But most of us aren’t forming our views of “the country” in the abstract. We’re forming them through accumulation and algorithms…through what we see, the content we engage with, and what we assume about everyone else.

So this week, we stepped away from the big narratives and asked something more grounded: what are people actually seeing in their day-to-day lives? What moments make them feel like people are capable of goodness? How often are they showing up for others themselves? And what do they believe everyone else is doing?

Because if our sense of each other is built in small moments, that’s where we need to look to understand what’s really holding and what isn’t.

Experiencing Goodness

Even in a moment where broader narratives emphasize division and distrust, most people are still moving through life filled with everyday interactions where they regularly encounter others in unscripted ways. Many of these settings aren’t designed to produce connection or generosity, but they often do.

When we asked what they had seen recently that made them think, “people are actually pretty good,” the answers were often ordinary and close to home: someone returning a lost wallet, a neighbor checking in during a storm, a stranger stepping in to help carry groceries. But, the most common response was simply kindness to strangers (29%) followed by a more general sense of everyday positivity (20%).

These moments aren’t rare, but they aren’t always noticed, either. Some people say they see them often (33% say a few times a week), others say almost daily (19%), while another third describe them as occasional (32% say a few times a month). And where they happen matters. Most of these encounters take place in familiar spaces—neighborhoods (19%), public spaces (29%), or online (16%)—places where people cross paths without expectation.

What’s striking is the weight these moments carry. Eight-in-ten Americans say moments of “goodness” influence how they see others (30% a lot, 50% some). Even brief interactions can shift how people see others, softening assumptions and interrupting more negative narratives.

One of the clearest divides isn’t just in what people do but in what they notice. People who feel connected to their communities are dramatically more likely to say they regularly see moments of goodness, while those with weaker community ties are far more likely to say they rarely see them or can’t think of any at all. The gap here is staggering, with differences of 30 points or more between groups. Financial comfort plays a role, but it’s smaller. What stands out is how strongly a sense of community shapes not just experience, but perception itself.

Being the Goodness

If the first part of the story is about what people see, the second is about what they do. Because alongside these observed moments of kindness is a quieter, more personal question: how often are people showing up for others in their own lives?

We started by asking what defines a “good neighbor,” and the answers pointed to something simple but consistent: showing up, being considerate, and offering help without being asked. Not grand gestures—just a baseline of care that makes shared life feel possible.

Next, we asked people to reflect on their own behavior; most described helping others with some regularity (34% said daily, and another 31% said a few times a week). The majority of support flows through close ties (66%)—family, friends, and people within immediate networks like neighbors and classmates—rather than strangers (21%). That doesn’t mean broader generosity isn’t happening, but it suggests that much of what holds communities together is rooted in repeated, familiar interactions rather than isolated acts. Yet, as we showed above, kindness toward strangers is the most common example people point to when they think of examples of people showing goodness. Helping strangers may be more visible, more interpretable, and more likely to shape how we see people beyond our own circles.

When we ask people to compare their own behavior to others, another gap emerges. Many believe they are helping more often than those around them (29%)—that while they are showing up, others are doing so less frequently. This perception gap matters. Because even if people are consistently supporting those around them, believing that others aren’t doing the same can erode trust and obscure just how much quiet, everyday effort is already happening.

Final Thoughts

If everyday life feels disconnected, people don’t necessarily point to a lack of kindness—they point to a lack of consistency, visibility, and shared expectation. When we asked what would make life feel more supportive or connected, the answers were practical: more kindness and courtesy (23%), more spaces to interact (15%), and more helping / giving (11%). The most surprising was the 8% of folks who unprompted said using less technology or social media.

So we’re left with lingering questions we’re continuing to explore:

• How can we build community so that our perceptions of kindness grow?

• What could close the perception gap between what people do and what they believe others are doing?

• Is there something about small acts of kindness toward strangers that are uniquely contagious?

The answers may not be dramatic. They may look a lot like the moments people are already describing—just more visible, more frequent, and more evenly shared.

Every neighbor was once a stranger.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby, sat down with William J. Barber II, President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and Founding Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Slaby: Welcome and thank you for taking some time to speak with us today. To start us off, could you introduce yourself and explain how Repairers of the Breach came to be?

Bishop William J. Barber, II: We founded Repairs of the Breach, a national organization that trains moral leaders and builds social justice movements, in 2015 after eight years of mobilizing in North Carolina and building a model of state-based mobilizing. We said there needed to be a form of movement that learned from the First and Second Reconstructions in this country. A Third Reconstruction needed to be deeply state-based; rooted in our deepest moral, constitutional, and religious values; not left or right, not conservative or liberal, not Republican or Democratic, but focused on the issues. Out of that need, Moral Monday happened, one of the most successful historic gatherings, where, for over two years, people went into the state house every Monday and challenged extremism. We founded Repairers of the Breach to be a teaching organization to train people in “moral fusion organizing”, what we call moral analysis, moral articulation, moral agenda building, and moral action, and to do it from the state up. We developed 14 guidelines for moral fusion organizing and started training across the country.

What we were calling for was a national moral revival, saying something is off that we can’t get people to move past partisanship to focus on things like healthcare, for example. Repairers of the Breach says, you can’t address these interlocking injustices—systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism—without an intersectional moral fusion movement. And it must be from the bottom up–moral leaders, impacted people, and activists. We are an organization that’s not trying to build loyalty to Repairers of the Breach. We’re trying to build loyalty to our deepest moral and religious values. That’s what Repairs of the Breach is about, building that moral commitment.

Michael Slaby: The term “repairs of the breach” comes from Isaiah 58:12 in the Bible, a story about people who restore a community after destruction. The idea that our public civic life is founded on moral commitments to each other is something that often sounds religious or spiritual and is often led by people of faith, but Repairers of the Breach is a moral movement, not a religious one. What is it about faith that continues to act as a catalyst for justice and progress in civic life, especially given the declining participation in traditional religious institutions?

Bishop William J. Barber, II: The greater the pain, the greater the people recognize there’s a sickness. For instance, if you think that Trump is the issue—one person—that is a weak analysis. Part of what’s happening is that authoritarians and neo-fascist movements have been allowed to rise because the door has been left open for them to come in. We didn’t close the door by fixing the issues in America, like poverty, for instance. So what happens is they go to places and say to people, “We love you,” but really it’s not love; it’s a form of spiritual religious malpractice when they try to use religion as a tool of hurt and harm, and not for addressing the issues people are facing.

In my class at Yale, I bring in a Bible that has every passage about how to treat strangers and the vulnerable. I say to the students, do not address public theology where morality becomes a tack on. What is it that you stand for, no matter who’s in office? What is it that you stand for, no matter what party is leading? When Jesus did his first sermon, he said, “I’ve come to bring good news to the poor, those who’ve been made poor by economic policy. Every nation will be judged by, “When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me?” There has to be a movement that uses its voice to say to the nation, “This is sin,” but also gives a vision for the future. What you have to do is give people a vision. Prophetic imagination must precede prophetic moral implementation.

Michael Slaby: I think that to get past the grievance and the shared pain and diagnosis, and into the world of solution, we need to talk about the necessity for using moral clarity as a way to co-organize with “a world full of allies” who might not always share the same priorities. Can you talk a little about your “moral fusion” organizing model and why you believe it’s essential to build power at the local and state levels rather than at the national level to achieve lasting change?

Bishop William J. Barber, II: What we often hear is “elect me because of what I’m against.” And for us, the question is, “What are you for?” That doesn’t mean you ignore the grievance. You simply don’t allow the grievance to have the last word. Because if you do that, then you end up giving power to those who are creating the pain, because you’re refusing to organize those people who are being hurt. The people who are being hurt and the impacted, connected with moral advocates, are more than those who are doing the hurt. For instance, there’s not a state in this country where poor and low-wage people don’t represent between 36%-42% of the electorate. And there’s not a state in this country where if you mobilize 20% of those poor and low-wage people, whose number one reason for not voting is nobody talks to us, you won’t see new political possibilities.

In conversations across the country, I have realized authoritarianism is deeply afraid of three things. It is afraid of truth-telling movements because telling the truth is the most powerful first thing you can do in a season of lies. The second thing authoritarians fear is people and movements that believe there’s something greater than the authoritarian. They freak out about that! The last thing they fear is movements that start from the bottom. So when a movement decides we’re gonna go after the root, and we’re gonna organize the pain, we recognize that the only way is to organize from the bottom. Dr. King said in his 1965 “Our God Is Marching On!” speech at the Alabama State Capitol, following the Selma-to-Montgomery march, that the greatest fear of the greedy oligarchy in this nation is for the masses of Negroes and the masses of poor whites and others to come together and form a voting bloc that can fundamentally shift the economic architecture of the nation. So if we are all black in the dark, we need to be smart enough to unite for the light. And that’s what we have to do right now, build a movement that this country cannot do without.

Michael Slaby: In February, Repairers of the Breach organized a “Moral March from Wilson to Raleigh” and a “Mass People’s Assembly” to draw attention to opposition to the new congressional map passed by the North Carolina General Assembly, which Repairers of the Breach say unfairly redrew the 1st Congressional District, taking away the voting power of Black, Latino, and poor and low-wage people. How does this effort fit into the broader history of justice marches in the South, and why is it essential to bring people together to create highly visible moments of collective power today?

Bishop William J. Barber, II: President Trump called North Carolina and told the MAGA state legislature, I want the First Congressional District. It’s a district created by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, predominantly minority Black. So we went and had meetings. At the first meeting, we had about 500 people show up, and they didn’t say, let’s go after Trump or let’s go after Johnson. They said let’s connect. Let’s show that when you attack voting rights, you’re also attacking healthcare. That people don’t just want this district for benign reasons. They want the district because they want the power to continue to inflict pain.

So, Repairers of the Breach organized a Wilson to Raleigh march this past February. The people said, let’s do it right now, in the middle of winter. We walked 51 miles in four days. When we started that morning, there were 278 people. By the time we got to Raleigh, it was thousands. And they didn’t just come for the rally, or to voice their opposition to Trump—I don’t think anybody mentioned his name at the rally. What we were talking about is what we love, what we embrace.

Michael Slaby: That leads me into my next question. What is giving you hope for the future right now?

Bishop William J. Barber, II: This past Sunday, I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, for a justice revival event, and the place was packed. It’s Black, it’s White, it’s Brown. And it’s not just people who came to hear me speak. It was people saying, “Let’s organize! How can we build an agenda?” When I talk to young folk or when I’m teaching my classes, I always share Jürgen Moltmann’s “Theology of Hope,” and I’ll paraphrase him here. He says that whenever people of deep moral conviction see something that is wrong and decide that they can no longer accept it and they put their hands to the work of changing it, that’s where hope begins. Love, truth, and justice have a power that has won before, and that is greater than extremism and authoritarianism. But you have to be willing to do the work to cause that movement to rise.

Michael Slaby: That invitation to love and be in community and not to focus on the grievance feels so refreshing right now. People keep talking about how the world feels like it’s on fire, and that feels like water.

Bishop William J. Barber, II: You know, since we did the “Love Forward Mass People’s Assembly Moral March Mobilization,” we’ve been getting calls from all over from people wanting us to come to help them. And when that happens, Repairers of the Breach doesn’t say, “Barber is the one; let him come in and lead.” Dr. King didn’t believe in that kind of leadership. What we need is to give people the tools to build from the state up. Transformation happened from Raleigh, Greensboro, Montgomery, Jackson, and up. It doesn’t happen from D.C., right?

Every week, I go back and listen to the agenda of the 1963 March on Washington because popular history acted as though all that happened there was Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. But there was an agenda–an agenda that’s yet to be realized. That’s why I say we haven’t finished the second Reconstruction. Each Reconstruction was killed or murdered or maligned, but it’s still there. The possibilities are there.

I’d like to leave you with one last thing. During COVID, when so many had lost so much, one family in our movement lost 12 members. I said, “Lord, why these people? I’m not more special than them. Why is it that they’re dying?” And one night it came to me that that’s always the wrong question. Why are you still here? Why are you still alive? Nobody can answer that question. The question that you must answer is, what are you still here for? And it dawned on me that if COVID didn’t teach us anything else, it showed those of us who are yet living that the only way we honor those we lost is to remember that breath is too precious to waste on lies, injustice, hate, meanness, and inequality. And if I have breath–whether it’s six seconds, six minutes, six hours, six days, six weeks, or 60 years–I should commit myself to using my breath to breathe the life of love and justice and mercy into the world. Don’t worry about why you’re here. You’ll never be able to answer that question. But as long as you are here, there’s work to do. And that’s what you set yourself to do with every breath you take.

About William J. Barber II
Bishop William J. Barber II is a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He serves as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.

About Michael Slaby
Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012 where he oversaw all technology and analytics and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.

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Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

This month, Murmuration partnered with Voto Latino to field a national survey of 6,559 Americans focused on the experience of living inside this economy. We asked how people are managing, what they’re cutting back on, and how they’re thinking about their financial futures.

We started with a simple question: what is the biggest problem in your life right now?

For almost half (48%) of Americans, the answer is money. But that burden isn’t evenly distributed. It’s even higher among young adults (55%), those in their prime working years (53%), women (53%), and Hispanic or Latino respondents (52%).

The Cost of Daily Life

To understand how that pressure shows up in people’s lives, it helps to start with the basics.

When we asked people to describe their current level of financial comfort, a majority—56%—said they are not comfortable. That includes people who are struggling to cover basic expenses, as well as those who can technically pay their bills but feel like money is always tight. Only 11% describe themselves as very comfortable, with no major financial concerns. In other words, most Americans are living right on the edge.

For many, an unexpected expense of even $500 would pose a serious challenge. More than half of Americans (52%) have no immediate way to pay. Some would take on credit card debt (16%), borrow from family or friends (10%), or need to sell possessions to raise funds (8%). Fully 18% of Americans say their household would not be able to cover a $500 emergency at all.

Why is money so tight? Over the past year, 50% of Americans point to the cost of food and groceries as one of the top three expenses putting strain on their household budget. Utilities follow at 40%, then rent or mortgage at 37%, and gas or transportation at 32%. These aren’t frivolous, discretionary expenses. They are the necessities and fixed costs of everyday life.

Overall, 62% of Americans say it has become harder to afford everyday expenses compared to just a few years ago (32% much harder, 30% somewhat harder). And for many, the distress caused by rising costs isn’t occasional—it’s constant. Roughly 7 in 10 Americans experience financial worry on a regular basis.

From Adjustment to Triage

When expenses go up, people adjust. They make tradeoffs. What emerges from these choices is not just a set of isolated behaviors, but a hierarchy of sacrifice.

The response to rising gas prices, in particular, offers a window into how people’s lives have been forced to change. Almost half of Americans (48%) say they’ve cut back on driving or travel because of gas prices. But the impact doesn’t stop at fewer trips: 34% say they are spending less on other essentials to make up for what they are paying for gas, and 15% have changed their work or commute habits entirely.

More broadly, people are making significant, life-altering decisions for financial reasons alone. Things that should be high priorities, that characterize our basic quality of life and ability to live stress- and worry-free, are falling by the wayside. Things like cutting time with friends and family, delaying paying bills, postponing medical care, or even skipping meals and reducing food spending.

The data suggests that people start by cutting what feels optional: dinners out, gatherings, small moments of leisure. But as pressure builds, those tradeoffs move inward. Food budgets shrink. Medical care gets delayed. Bills are pushed. What begins as adjustment becomes constraint, and then something closer to triage. These are not one-time decisions. They are ongoing calculations about what can be postponed, reduced, or given up entirely.

Same Problem, Different Blame

Americans hold multiple, overlapping theories for why the cost of living has become more expensive over the past five to ten years. They assign responsibility broadly across both the private sector and government. But Democrats and Republicans tell very different narratives about what (and who) is to blame:

While Democrats see corporate greed and trade policy as having the biggest impact, Republicans are more likely to blame the COVID-19 pandemic, energy costs, and the effects of immigration for the rising cost of living.

One thing that people do broadly agree on is that the president, Congress, and other elected officials can impact families’ ability to afford everyday expenses. Nearly two-thirds (62%) say that political leaders have a lot of influence on the economy; another 26% say they have at least some influence. Only 9% believe that elected officials have little to no power over basic affordability.

Yet there is a noticeable lack of optimism about where things are headed. Only 36% of Americans believe their financial situation will improve over the next few years. More than one in five (21%) expect things to get worse, and 38% say they’re simply unsure. For many, the future feels less like a trajectory and more like a question mark.

That same sense of strain extends to the bigger milestones that have long defined the American dream. When we asked whether buying a home, raising a family, and retiring comfortably felt realistic, 31% said these goals are mostly out of reach. Another 34% said they’re possible, but difficult to achieve. Just 25% said these goals feel fully within reach.

Relief, Not Reinvention

There’s actually a surprising amount of agreement on steps that Americans believe would make things better. There is strong support for policies that directly reduce or stabilize the core costs of living—particularly housing and utilities:

Housing, in particular, stands out as the area of strongest agreement—not just overall, but across political lines. Property tax relief is rated as “very helpful” by 62% of Trump voters and 48% of Harris voters. Limits on rent increases are seen as helpful by 59% of Trump voters and 90% of Harris voters. First-time homebuyer support is viewed as helpful by 72% of Trump voters and 85% of Harris voters. In a landscape where consensus is often hard to find, housing affordability emerges as one of the clearest areas of overlap.

There is also meaningful support for policies that address income and debt more directly. About 68% say increasing the minimum wage would be helpful, and 64% say the same about student debt relief. These solutions operate on the other side of the equation—either increasing what people earn or reducing what they owe—but they point to the same underlying imbalance.

Final Thoughts

The story this data tells is not just about money. It’s about the conditions under which people are living their lives and how those conditions are forcing people to change in response to accumulating economic pressure.

For decades, there has been an implicit promise at the center of American life: that if you work hard, you can get ahead. But for many, that promise no longer feels true. Today, 69% of Americans say that even “people who work hard struggle to get ahead financially”.

At the same time, people are not confused about what would actually make a difference. When asked what would help most, 28% point to lowering the cost of everyday essentials like food, gas, and utilities, while 18% say wages that keep up with the cost of living would matter most, followed by housing costs and taxes (11%), healthcare (9%), and debt (9%). They are a set of clear, immediate pressures that shape daily decision-making.

And those decisions are increasingly defined by tradeoffs. When nearly half the country is cutting back on time with family and friends, even connection itself starts to become a luxury. The slow erosion of gathering, celebration, and everyday togetherness doesn’t show up in economic indicators, but it reshapes how people experience their lives, their communities, and their sense of belonging.

These are some of the questions that follow:

• How should institutions respond to a population where financial insecurity is the norm rather than the exception?

• What happens to a society when people can no longer afford to show up for each other, not just economically, but socially and emotionally?

• How does a life organized around constant tradeoffs change what people expect from the future?

What this data makes clear is that the financial strain Americans are living with is a structural reality, built up over years and felt in grocery aisles, doctor’s offices, and kitchen tables across every region of the country.

Hard choices, not inevitable ones.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Voto Latino is a civic advocacy organization dedicated to educating and empowering the next generation of Latino voters while working to build a more inclusive and representative democracy. votolatino.org

This is not a story about apathy. It is a story about drift—the slow, uneven way that political awareness fades when people are stretched thin, when institutions feel distant, and when the news cycle feels both relentless and disconnected from daily life. Understanding that drift matters right now, because local elections are where it shows up first.

Declining Awareness, Rising Doubt

Since May 2025, Civic Pulse has been tracking local political awareness, personal impact on local issues, and local government effectiveness across nearly 150,000 Americans. The results are worth sitting with.

Political awareness has declined steadily. A year ago, the net share of Americans who felt politically aware and informed was around 70%. Recently, it has been closer to 60%. That is not a collapse, but it is a meaningful erosion, and it has moved in one direction. Over time, people are expressing lower confidence in how informed they feel—reflecting changing engagement patterns, evolving information environments, and the possibility that national narratives are crowding out attention to local issues.

Perceptions of local government effectiveness have fallen even more sharply and crossed into net negative territory. A year ago, Americans tended to view their local governments positively by a 10-point margin. That confidence fell over the summer, and since September 2025, a greater share of Americans consistently say their local government is not effective than say it is effective.

When a national measure of local effectiveness declines this suddenly, it reflects something broad and widely felt: a general sense that institutions aren’t working, which trickles down from federal politics and colors how people see everything, including the city council and the school board. The risk in that conflation is real. Turning out for a primary—even a quiet, low-turnout one—can shape who leads a school district, a county commission, or a city hall for years.

And yet, over the same time period, Americans’ perceptions of their own capacity for personal impact have risen. On net, 25 to 30% more Americans feel they can make a personal difference in their communities. People are volunteering. They are donating. They are showing up to events, signing petitions, organizing neighbors, contacting officials. The community infrastructure—the personal, relational kind—has not dissipated even as the institutional confidence around it has fallen.

Final Thoughts

Political interest and local government confidence do not usually recover on their own. They recover when something pulls people back in—a candidate who feels like one of them, a ballot measure that hits close to home, a neighbor who says “this matters, help.”

Our upcoming nationwide elections will be decided, in many cases, by small margins in places national media will not cover. The people most likely to make a difference in those races are the same ones whose political awareness is slipping—not because they stopped caring, but because the information environment has made it harder to know what to pay attention to, and the issues that should feel local have started to feel abstract.

The data don’t answer what comes next. But they do raise some questions:

• What would it take for the people who still believe in their own personal impact to see local elections as the most direct expression of that belief?

• How do communities keep the personal and relational infrastructure alive when government confidence continues to erode?

• And what do we lose—in representation, in accountability, in the basic mechanics of democracy—if many voters are uninformed or unaware of the political forces shaping elections?

The trends on that chart are not inevitable. But they do not reverse themselves.

What slips still shapes us.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

This conversation came into focus recently at a gathering in Los Angeles, where we celebrated Murmuration’s Founder and CEO Emma Bloomberg being named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year. That room felt like a mirror for something we see in the data over and over: leadership in America is often local and personal: people stepping up to provide care, organize their communities, or lend a hand. And the women doing it frequently carry a heavier burden than anyone acknowledges.

We took a closer look by fielding a national survey of 7,287 adults, specifically focused on women’s leadership in communities across the country.

Here’s what we found.

Who Holds it Together

When we asked Americans who shows up, keeps things running, and looks out for people in their community, most saw men and women sharing these responsibilities. But one in five said mostly women, compared to only about one in ten who said mostly men.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. Women and men don’t see this the same way. Among women, 25% said mostly women, and only 7% said mostly men. Among men, 14% said mostly women, and 15% said mostly men. Among women under 35, the perception is even stronger: three in ten say it is mostly women doing this work.

Nearly as many Americans see leaders in their community as informal – people in their own neighborhoods (36%) – as they see as formal leaders like elected officials or administrators (39%). And when we asked an open-ended question—who specifically holds your community together?—the answers deepened this. People named their informal anchors: the individuals and groups that they saw taking action in their everyday lives: “The mothers in the community are what seems to be holding everything together.” “Women because they are more nurturing.“ “Women, specifically black women.“

Americans are not limiting their understanding of leadership to titles. They recognize the everyday forms of authority that come from trust, proximity, and reliability.

The Cost of Showing Up

Most agree that taking on responsibilities in their communities is a source of personal fulfillment. Among those who are actively helping others or working on solving problems, 70% find the work more fulfilling than draining (20%). In fact, 39% of women and 36% of men say they want to be even more involved in their community than they currently are.

But here the similarities end. A majority (64%) of Americans agree that “when women step into leadership, they face more criticism or pushback than men.“ The gender breakdown is stark: 70% of women agree (33% strongly) vs. 58% of men (19% strongly). Among women 18-34, fully 45% strongly agree—nearly double the rate of women 65+ (23%). Even across party lines, there’s majority agreement: 78% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and 53% of Republicans all agree that women face more scrutiny in leadership. These are majorities across the board.

At the same time, burnout is widespread—and it isn’t evenly distributed. Over the past year, 35% of women said they felt extremely or very burnt out, compared to 27% of men. That 8-point gap compounds at younger ages: among women 18–34, 44% fall in the high-burnout zone. Almost one in four young women say they have felt extremely burned out.

The data offers suggestions for why. Americans who are more involved in their communities are also more likely to be busier with family responsibilities at home. The work compounds. 42% of women are currently caring for children under 18, aging parents, or both—compared to 39% of men. Those caring for both generations are among the most civically active people in the country. They are more likely to volunteer, attend community events, sign petitions, and show up to town halls than those without caregiving responsibilities. These are people simultaneously sustaining households, sustaining communities, and sustaining everyone else.

“The everyday parents that take responsibility for their children, family and neighbors”– 57, Female, Republican, Clark, NV

The weight shows up again when you ask why women aren’t doing more. Feeling spread too thin is the top reason—peaking at 32% among women 35–49, and at 25% among women 18–34. But underneath that, something else surfaces: 22% of young women say they aren’t more involved because they simply don’t know where to start, which is 7 points higher than the national rate.

Women are seen as central to keeping communities running—and many are, in both formal and informal ways—while also managing caregiving demands, financial pressure, and some of the highest burnout rates in the country.

Traits of Community Leaders

We asked what people truly want and expect from leaders in their community. What characteristics matter most to them? The top answer, selected by more than half of Americans, was honesty and trustworthiness. The second was listening and understanding.

When broken down by gender, women prioritize listening and understanding at 42%, compared to 36% for men. Women select “showing care and compassion“ at 27%, men at 21%. Men are more likely to prioritize expertise and competence (21% vs. women’s 15%). But at the very top, the two groups converge: 53% of women and 50% of men chose honest and trustworthy.

What Americans say they want from community leadership—across gender, across party, across age—is, at its core, a feeling of confidence in those around them to treat them with honesty and respect, to hear their voices and concerns, and to keep their commitments to one another. It’s the kind of leadership that looks a lot like what women are already doing in neighborhoods and school boards and community organizations every day.

Final Thoughts

Women’s leadership is not a future aspiration. It is a present force shaping communities from the ground up, especially at a moment when the country feels fragile, frustrated, and uncertain.

And there is a gap between that reality and how we respond to it. Women are doing more of the work, facing more scrutiny when they step up, and burning out at higher rates—and yet they remain the most hopeful and the most hungry to do more. That combination is somewhere between remarkable and concerning.

So we are left with a set of hard but constructive questions.

• What does it take to change the scrutiny people face when they lead?

• How do we close the gap between women who want to be more involved and the on-ramps that would actually get them there?

• What does it say that the qualities Americans most want in a leader are ones women are already demonstrating in communities every day?

The question now is not whether women are leading. It is whether we are fully seeing, and fully supporting, the leadership that is already here.

Turns out it’s women. And sure, maybe coffee too.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that strengthens community-driven change at the local level. By equipping local organizations with powerful data, technology, and insights, Murmuration helps them amplify community voices, build collective power, and drive solutions that reflect the lived realities of the people they serve. murmuration.org

Introducing…

25 young kids, with sticky fingers, strong opinions, and absolutely no interest in pretending things are fine if they are not.

The results were surprisingly coherent. Also, kinda funny. And, at times, a little devastating in the way only a five-year-old can be when they look you dead in the eye and say something like, “[If I were in charge] I would say you can’t have any candy. And no TV.”

Let’s begin.

The Diagnosis

Kids do not have a theory of polarization. They do not know what a filibuster is. Most have never heard the phrase “civic decline.” But they are extremely clear on one thing: things start to go wrong when people are not nice.

To them, “not nice” behavior is concrete. It is something you can see. “A mean face,” one four-year-old explained, squinting and tightening his fists to demonstrate. Others described it as yelling, complaining, touching things that are not yours, or calling someone stupid. Some talked about it more directly: “When another friend bit me.” “[When] they don’t treat people how they want to be treated.” “[When] they’re grumpy like Grumpy Monkey.” In their world, these moments disrupt the group quickly. When they happen, kids expect the grownups in the room to step in. One child proposed a clear enforcement mechanism: “The teacher should take them home and their mommy can put them on their bed for time out.”

But the bigger problem is often exclusion. A bad day at school is rarely about academics—it is about belonging. Even small moments carry weight: someone touching your desk without permission, someone throwing away your pencil, someone insisting you are a ninja if you are not.

Fairness is another fault line kids notice quickly. When asked what they would do if they had ten cookies and another child had none, most favored balance. “I would give them some of my cookies” or “Give them five so we would have an even number.” Others proposed partial sharing: “I’d give one so I would have nine.” “If I have extra cookies, they can have my extra cookies.” Only two children suggested keeping everything: “I would just eat them myself” (though we were told he was very hungry at the time) and “I would keep them all in my hand.” But the dominant instinct was visible fairness. Or, in one particularly elegant solution: “Make more cookies. And then he can have 10 cookies too.” That same instinct showed up again later—when asked what they would do if they were in charge of the country for a day, one child simply said, “Give them my cookies.”

Kids also notice when effort does not lead to success. One child described the feeling simply: “Building a high building but it keeps falling down.” Frustration, in their view, often builds from there. When asked why someone might feel grumpy or sad, many traced it back to something that happened earlier: “Because something bad happened to them.” and again, “Because their friends are not nice.” In their framework, problems are connected. Hurt people often become the ones acting unkind.

Finally, they notice when the rules themselves feel unstable. One child described bringing a favorite toy to school and being allowed to have it briefly—but not later. “I could only have him for snack time.” The frustration was not just the rule itself. It was the rule changing. For kids, predictability matters. When expectations shift without explanation, trust starts to erode.

Taken together, their diagnosis is surprisingly clear. Things deteriorate when people are unkind, when someone is excluded, when fairness feels off, when effort does not lead to progress, and when the people in charge seem inconsistent or absent.

The Repair Agenda

Most kids are not drafting ten-point policy plans. They are not talking about “systems change.” Their solutions are much more practical. Much more immediate. If you ask them how to make things better, the answers cluster around a few simple conditions.

Start with playing. A lot of kids seemed to believe the country’s problems might ease up considerably if everyone just had somewhere to climb and run around. “I would tell them to all go to Hawaii and go on a waterslide,” one child told us. Even when it came to school, the same logic applied: learning works best when it still feels like play—“when we get to do the lab stations where you get to play.” Finally, one respondent offered what may be the simplest theory of social cohesion we’ve heard all year: “Playing with someone nice.” In their world, togetherness is preventative care.

Then there is food. Snacks are not a side note. They are infrastructure. “Adults should know snack time is at 3:00 and they can pick any snack they want,” one child said, with the calm authority of someone who has thought this through. Another explained, very emphatically, “I like Chick-fil-A.” And when asked what to do if someone didn’t have food, the answer was immediate. “Give away some.” In their world, hunger is solvable, sharing is obvious, and fairness is something you can see.

Rest follows naturally. They may resist naps themselves, but they understand the pattern. When someone is unkind, something else is usually going on. “They need to rest a little bit more,” one respondent said. Another offered the simplest reset available. “Take a break.” or spoken from true personal experience they might just need “Water and bandaid.”

And finally, repair. For kindergartners, apologies are not ceremonial. They are functional. It starts with stopping the behavior. “I’ll say, ‘Stop! I don’t like that. Don’t do it ANY day!’” one child explained. Then comes care. “A hug.” “A smooch.” Or, as one child put it, “a hug, or a kiss and respect.” Another suggested a slightly more advanced approach:

“Say something nice to them, give them a compliment or ask them what made them upset.” - 7 year old girl, Virginia

The goal is not punishment. The goal is to help someone feel better so everyone can return to playing together.

Final Thoughts

It is hard not to hear, beneath the humor, a serious civic vision.

A country with more kindness, places to gather, and fewer barriers to belonging. A country that takes fairness seriously in ways people can see and feel. A country that intervenes early, apologizes often, and understands that sometimes conflict is what happens when people are overwhelmed.

Rather than our tradition of leaving you with more questions, we’re passing along a few things these experts thought all adults should know:

• “Share with everybody.” - 4 year old boy, New York

• “Learn to be kind.” - 4 year old boy, Texas

• “Don’t be naughty.” - 4 year old boy, California

• “People need to be treated good… make everyone feel included.” - 6 year old girl, Washington

And finally, one child offered a gentle reminder:

“Grown ups do not know everything. Kids are sometimes smarter than grown ups.” - 4 year old boy, Vermont

Honestly, that feels about right.

It may be April Fools…But the quotes are real.

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Murmuration’s Chief Research Officer, Sarah Stamper, sat down with political scientist Hahrie Han for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Stamper: Thank you so much for making the time to talk with us about everything that’s been going on in your research, your lab, and winning the MacArthur Fellowship.

I want to start by talking about your newest book, “Undivided,” which centers on Crossroads, a large evangelical church in Cincinnati, as a primary case study. In the book, you followed a predominantly white evangelical megachurch in Cincinnati as it launched a program called Undivided to confront structural racism within its congregation and the broader community.

The book centers on the journeys of several church members as they confront difficult conversations about race and shift their perspectives over time. In Crossroads’ transformation, how much of the momentum came from explicitly theological commitments, and how much from relational organizing strategies that might translate beyond a faith-based setting?

Hahrie Han: I think a lot of people assume the program had the effects it did because the participants all believed in God, which is a faith commitment that animates people to action in a unique way. But, I think what actually mattered was that it was a group of people who had a visceral experience of the value of collective life. They had been part of this really vibrant church community ahead of confronting the issues they grappled with in the program. These are people who knew in their bones already that what we can do when we act together with others is more powerful than what we can do when we act alone. I always tell my students, once you’ve learned that lesson, once you have an experience like that in your life, you can never un-have it.

Sarah Stamper: Murmuration’s data shows that as third spaces vanish, belonging, community, and civic participation decline. In that context, and the context of faith communities, how should we think about the scalability and durability of relational organizing?

Hahrie Han: I 100% agree with the findings that you’re describing. With the loss of intermediary organizations, we’ve lost many of the natural social networks that knit our social fabric together. That was one of the things that the church, Crossroads, in my book offered: a culture of relational interaction.

They had lots of different sayings in the church, but one of the more common sayings was “we do life together.” It means that if you’re a part of this church, it’s not just that you show up for an hour on Sunday. No. Instead, it’s “we do life together,” which means that we want you to come and use our lobby as a co-working space, and there’s always free coffee, and there’s always babysitting that’s available so that parents can come and participate in events. They really want to provide a wraparound community to the people who are part of their church.

It’s a great question about the scalability of those kinds of social networks. And in fact, that was part of what made me really interested in studying these megachurches. If you’re getting 50,000 people together in person every Sunday, there’s something powerful going on. I wanted to understand how they draw all these people together. It’s true that it’s hard to scale the kind of dense relational networks that we talk about in relational organizing, but we have a ton of evidence that you can. It happens across megachurches every week, and there’s no inherent reason that I’ve seen that says that can only happen in a church environment.

96% of the budget of these megachurches comes from individual donations and most megachurches are growing. People are committing real resources to these places, which tells me that people are hungry for opportunities to be part of relational communities. When they find it, then those communities have a natural scalability to them.

Now, one thing that’s really different about churches relative to a lot of relational organizing that happens in more issue-based civic and political spaces is that churches have a natural organizational unit to them. If I’m part of a church, then I might tithe, I might sign up as a member, or as a congregant. There are different ways in which there’s an organization, and that organization has a governing board, it has a leader, all the things that go into self-governing associations. It has a structure to it. Often it has a physical space, but not always.

In contrast, a lot of times, the kind of relational organizing that we’re doing, going door to door around issues, is trying to pick people off one by one from their natural social environments. That’s what is really hard to scale. Yet, we have decades and decades of data that tell us there are other ways we can do it. When you organize through structures, school boards, churches, gun clubs, hobby organizations, YMCAs, libraries, where there’s a natural base, then it’s a lot faster to scale.

Sarah Stamper: In many civic contexts, success is defined by what’s easiest to count—clicks, contacts, turnout, short-term engagement metrics. What are the dangers of measuring only what’s easy rather than what actually builds power? Are there indicators you think better capture whether civic capacity is genuinely growing or eroding over time?

Hahrie Han: I hope that one lesson people take away from my work is this idea that it’s not just that we get people involved that matters, it’s how we get them involved that really matters.

I’ve spent my career studying the micro foundations of collective action. The key finding that comes out across all these different kinds of studies that I’ve done–from political campaigns to community organizing to issue-based work to church-based work to whatever–is that how you engage people affects what we’re able to accomplish together. I totally understand why we count clicks and likes and actions and things like that because those are observable behaviors that give us a sense of what’s happening. But if that’s the only thing we count, then we’re only getting a partial sense of the picture for the reasons that we already talked about. So what does it mean to measure not just what people do, but also whether they’re building the kind of capacity that we need?

I always think about it at the micro, meso, and macro levels. At the micro level, we want to understand whether or not people are not only taking action, but also developing those kinds of strategic, agentic capacities. We have to rely on some survey data to be able to capture some of the more effective orientations that we know underlie that kind of capacity. But then we also want to look at the meso level, which is about building collective vehicles or structures through which people can take action. You could have individuals who have all the affective and behavioral orientations that we need to take civic action. But if they’re doing it alone, it’s ultimately not going to build the kind of collective capacity that we need. We have to measure organizations at the meso level and then finally institutional change at the macro level.

Sarah Stamper: If our metrics and incentives shape behavior, they also shape the ecosystem itself. If you were designing civic infrastructure for the next 20 years and not the next election cycle, what would you prioritize?

Hahrie Han: There’s a famous political scientist who wrote in the mid-20th century, Albert Hirschman, who has this terrific book called “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty” that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. The idea behind it is that market-based organizations operate on the logic of exit. So if I don’t like your “product,” then I leave. If I don’t like Cheerios, I go buy Chex. If I don’t like Heinz Ketchup, I go by Hunts. I can go to the store and can pick different products based on what I like.

But the logic of civic and political organizations, he argues, should operate on this logic of voice, which means that if I don’t like the product—which could be a candidate, a policy, or a position—then instead of exiting, instead of just leaving like we might with a different type of “product,” I should fight and try to exercise voice within the organization to get the organization to change. That distinction between exit and voice as the dominating logic behind what differentiates market-based organizations and civic organizations is a foundational insight.

The next question is, what does it take to build voice-based organizations? In the 21st century, people are so accustomed to thinking about network-based activity and thinking that you can’t please everybody. We should instead be thinking about the mechanisms of loyalty, which is what the third part of his argument is— that we need to generate people’s willingness and commitment to exercising voice when they disagree and build organizations in which disagreement is allowed.

If I were redesigning a civic architecture that would work for what we need in our moment, whether it’s online or offline, digital or not, I would be thinking about the measures of self-governing, voice-based organizations to ensure we have a supply of civic opportunity that matches what we know we need to build the civic capacity that we want.

Sarah Stamper: Your lab’s civic opportunity mapping shows stark disparities in where people can find meaningful participation. What surprised you most about that data? And what should funders and practitioners be doing differently in response?

Hahrie Han: One of the things I was most surprised by is that in about 80% of counties in America, the top providers of civic opportunity are still social and fraternal organizations and faith-based institutions. Social-fraternal organizations include sororities, fraternities, Elks, Masons, Rotary Clubs, ethnic clubs, hometown associations, hobby groups, and so on. Along with faith-based institutions, they are the top providers of civic opportunity. They’re the ones who invite people into civic life most often.

What that tells me is that the places where people are gathering to come together are really still the same kind of places that they’ve always gathered and tried to come together. Those kinds of organizations still matter for building the kind of civic fabric that we need, for tilling the soil in the ways to make civic life work.

We’ve also been delighted to see the way funders and other organizations have built on these insights–about where the civic deserts are and what providers of civic opportunity look like–to try to make investments to renew civic architecture in certain places. For example, we’ve done a lot of work with an organization called the Trust for Civic Life, which is really a consortium of funders that have come together to try to invest in a set of pilot counties to see if they can reinvigorate civic life by building civic opportunity.

Sarah Stamper: Murmuration’s research shows that despite the challenges many Americans face, hope has held steady across the country. Even amid financial strain, rising stress, and widespread burnout, hope has held steady—an often overlooked but powerful sign of community resilience.

I would love for you to talk about examples or ways that you think movements can actually sustain hope without denying the loss or the failure or the risks that we’re experiencing. How are you thinking about hope in this moment?

Hahrie Han: I love the Maimonides quote that says, “hope is belief in the plausibility of the possible, not only the necessity of the probable.” I feel the most hopeless when I look at data and it says, probabilistically speaking, that we’re heading in this direction or that direction or somewhere negative. Hope requires a leap of faith that we can do things that are unexpected. Anyone who’s been part of a really vibrant community knows that it’s true that we can do unexpected things if we invest in each other.

I feel most hopeful when I am in a relationship or in dialogue with everyday Americans just living their lives, trying to do work, and trying to build their community. I feel most hopeless when I spend all my time with policymakers or funders in DC.

When I first started as an organizer, before I was a scholar, one of my mentors told me, “people are people are people,” and you have to always remember that. I still feel like that’s true, that when I’m on the ground with people, I’m reminded that we might disagree, we might have different politics, we might have all these different things that seem to divide us, but then in the end, people are people are people. Once you recognize that, then it’s hard not to feel hopeful.

Sarah Stamper: People are people are people—but you’re a person who just won a MacArthur Fellowship! Congratulations. That fellowship is often framed as both recognition for past work, but also freedom to reset or expand your research agenda. Can you give us a glimpse of what might come next and what this unlocks for you?

Hahrie Han: It’s such an enormous privilege and gift, not to mention a total shock to receive the fellowship. It was completely unexpected. It’s not like I had been planning for it, so I’ve had to spend a few months thinking about what makes the most sense.

I don’t know that I’ve totally landed on it, but—not unrelated to everything that we just talked about—I have a sense that the underlying paradigm that most people have about how public life works is somewhat broken. We’re at a moment where we need a different paradigm that helps us understand how we can rebuild the very foundations of what public and civic life can be in America. I would love to be able to develop a project that can help move us towards that alternate paradigm.

Right now, too many people experience public life as a spectacle that they’re only invited to consume every two to four years, maybe. When they’re invited to consume it, they don’t really like the choices that are before them. So a lot of people are responding with a kind of fight or flight response that is not unreasonable, given the way in which they feel disempowered from the system. There are glimmers where people are rebuilding a different kind of paradigm that is grounded in practice that recognizes people as architects of their own future. I would love to be able to do some kind of work that helps us bring that paradigm to life.

Sarah Stamper: We’ll stay tuned for that. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to speak with you and to see where your work goes next. And as always, thank you so much for being in community with us and for being in this conversation.

About Hahrie Han
Hahrie Han is the Inaugural Director of the SNF Agora Institute, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, and Faculty Director of the P3 Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University. She is an award-winning author of five books and numerous scholarly articles. Her latest book (Knopf 2024), about faith and race in America with a focus on evangelical megachurches, was named to the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of the Year in 2024, and the New Yorker’s list of Recommended Books for 2024. She has also written for scholarly and public outlets ranging from the New York Times and the Washington Post to the American Political Science Review, Nature Human Behavior, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). She is a 2025 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (so-called “genius grants”), is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was named a 2022 Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation, and delivered the Tanner Lectures at Harvard University in 2024.

About Sarah Stamper
Sarah Stamper has been a neuroscientist for over 15 years, specializing in the quantitative analysis of behavior and systems. At Murmuration, Sarah leads a team of data and scientific experts building cutting-edge data and insights that empower partners to better understand, engage, and mobilize their communities. She also authors State of Us, a series that explores what America is feeling, thinking, and moving toward together, for Murmuration’s Substack. Before joining Murmuration, she led product and data science at Helm, a civic technology company. She also previously led research at the Art & Science Group, providing valuable data and insights to K-12 institutions, higher education, and nonprofit organizations, shaping their approaches to community engagement and strategic planning.

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Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

Technology is often told as a generational story. Younger Americans are supposed to be the ones who adapt first—the “digital natives” who grow up alongside new tools and incorporate them into everyday life. From social media to smartphones, each wave of technology has arrived with the assumption that younger people will lead the way. Artificial intelligence might seem like the next chapter in that pattern.

And in one sense, it is. Younger Americans are experimenting with AI tools more than anyone else. They’re using them to write, summarize, organize ideas, plan projects, and navigate everyday tasks. AI is showing up in homework, early careers, creative projects, and even personal decision-making.

But the data tells a more complicated story. The same generation using these tools most frequently is also among the most skeptical about what they do and what they might become.

Heavy Use, Growing Doubt

Artificial intelligence is already woven into daily life for many Americans, but using AI and trusting AI are two very different things. In fact, the data reveals a stark reality: despite all of the hype around AI technology, most Americans remain deeply skeptical.

Increasingly, Americans are saying that they think Artificial Intelligence technology is a bad thing and that it is having a negative impact on the world. Young Americans are leading the way. Above age 35, 46% say AI is bad; under age 35, it is 58%. Above age 35, 49% say AI is having a negative impact on the world; under age 35, it is 66%.

It is not only that younger Americans are more negative in their assessment—they are also more certain. Uncertainty about the impact of AI is much higher among older Americans. Over a third of those age 65+ say they are unsure whether AI is having a positive or negative impact on the world. It is possible that as older Americans have more experience with AI, they will come around to the views of younger people.

Most strikingly, Americans—especially younger people—simply do not trust AI to be safe. Nearly seven in ten (67%) say they lack confidence in its safety, a concern that is even more pronounced among those aged 18–34, where 70% express the same skepticism.

The Worries Behind the Numbers

When Americans talk about AI in their own words, the concerns come into focus quickly. They are not abstract worries about the future of technology. They are specific, practical fears about how these systems work today and how they might be used tomorrow.

The most common concern centers on misinformation. Many respondents worry about tools that generate confident answers without actually knowing whether those answers are true. In our data, 21% of participants raised concerns about AI producing false or misleading information. People also worry about how easily these tools could be used for manipulation with 14% mentioning malicious use by bad actors, and 12% pointing to the lack of regulation or oversight.

As respondents put it:

“Artificial meaning fake, need we say more?” - 64, Female, Hidalgo, TX

“How many instances do we see of AI providing false information? A government report used AI and was filled with nonsense.” - 29, Female, Eagle, ID

“The current implementation lies frequently with extreme confidence.” - 30, Male, Leon, FL

“AI can be trained to produce lies and fake narratives.” - 73, Male, San Francisco, CA

Another concern that surfaces often is dependence. People worry about what happens when judgment, creativity, or decision making begin to migrate from humans to machines. About 11% of people talk about people losing the ability to think critically or function independently if AI becomes too embedded in everyday life.

This is captured best by the following responses:

“It is destroying the ability to think critically about sources and research.” - 27, Male, Baltimore, MD

“It removes the need for humanity to exercise critical thinking skills.” - 43, Male, Salisbury, NC

“It will erode the users’ ability to think for themselves, making them easily manipulated.” - 70, Female, Richmond, VA

For younger Americans, these concerns are unfolding in a particular social and economic context.

This is a generation already navigating a fragile information environment. Trust in institutions is low, and the line between real and manufactured content is increasingly difficult to see. AI does not create that instability, but it amplifies it. Tools that can generate convincing text, images, and voices raise the stakes of discernment at a moment when many people already feel overwhelmed by information. In about 8% of responses, there are specific concerns about deepfakes, impersonation, and identity fraud. As one 32-year-old man put it, “Fake images, videos, and voices can be used to confuse or lie to nations.”

At the same time, young adults are entering a labor market shaped by uncertainty. Concerns about job displacement and economic disruption show up clearly in the responses. There is a recurring sense that AI may replace work faster than it supports workers, particularly for early career professionals and people in creative fields.

“[AI] takes jobs away from artists and writers. It prevents people from using critical thinking and using their own talents.” - 26, Female, Riverside, CA

“Employers will use it to replace human functions rather than passing the benefits off to employees.” - 20, Male, New York City, NY

“It has the potential to prematurely upset a jobs-based society, or prematurely bring about an apocalypse.” - 36, Male, Somerset, NJ

“I feel that it will take away jobs of my great grandchildren. Exactly what jobs will be in store for them to have if AI takes over?” - 75, Female, Glen Carbon, IL

Taken together, these responses suggest that the anxiety around AI is not only about the technology itself. It is about trust, information, work, and the pace of change in a society that already feels unstable to many people.

Final Thoughts

What’s notable is how often these worries are framed not as personal inconvenience, but as collective risk. People talk about AI changing society, reshaping opportunity, and shifting power. They are asking, implicitly: Who is this for? Who decides how it’s used? And who bears the cost when it goes wrong?

Beneath the polling numbers sit deeper questions:

• What would it look like for people to have meaningful input into how or if AI is deployed in their schools, workplaces, and communities?

• How do we build norms and guardrails that increase transparency without stifling innovation?

• How do we ensure that the potential benefits of new AI technologies do not bypass the generation most anxious about its consequences?

These are not questions engineers can answer alone. They require public deliberation, institutional trust, and civic infrastructure strong enough to hold complex tradeoffs.

Still thinking for ourselves.

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This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that strengthens community-driven change at the local level. By equipping local organizations with powerful data, technology, and insights, Murmuration helps them amplify community voices, build collective power, and drive solutions that reflect the lived realities of the people they serve. murmuration.org

This month, Murmuration partnered with the Iowa Food Bank Association to better understand how people are experiencing food insecurity, in Iowa, neighboring states, and nationwide. Iowa is often seen as a symbol of agricultural abundance, a place that helps feed the country. But even in a state defined by food production, many households are feeling the strain of rising costs and shrinking support networks.

It is challenging and expensive. Each week I watch how much items I generally purchase increase. It’s shamefully confusing to understand what is driving the price increases. - Female, 74, Black Hawk, Iowa

Food insecurity is an everyday pressure shaping how people across the country think about their lives, community responsibility, and what government is for.

Reshaping Household Life

The rising cost of food is reshaping how Americans manage their households.

“I usually go without eating to make sure my child has everything I can do for her. This past year has been the most stressful and hardest year I’ve had.” – 36, Female, Democrat, San Bernardino, CA

Across the country, groceries are now one of the largest monthly expenses families face. Thirty percent of Americans say food is the single biggest cost in their household budget each month, second only to housing (40%).

That pressure is visible in how people shop. Nearly seven in ten Americans (69%) say they are dissatisfied with the price they pay for food and groceries, while only 12% say they are satisfied. But dissatisfaction alone doesn’t capture the scale of adjustment households are making. Rising food prices are forcing people to change both what they buy and how they spend elsewhere.

More than three-quarters of Americans say they have had to adjust their grocery purchases due to rising costs. Thirty-two percent report making major changes to the types or amounts of food they buy, while another 45% say they have made smaller changes. Only 21% say they have not had to adjust at all.

“It’s expensive and I don’t get to buy healthy food due to high prices and I don’t have enough to complete meals for the month. I have to skip several meals a week to survive.” – 45, Female, Republican, Tarrant, TX

“[We are] constantly changing where we buy certain items trying to take advantage of local specials and sales.” – 75, Male, Independent, Racine, WI

Those adjustments ripple outward. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say rising food costs have forced them to change spending in other areas of their lives, including childcare, transportation, and entertainment.

For most households, this isn’t about luxury items. It’s about constant calculation.

“Grocery shopping was one of my favorite things, now it leaves me with a feeling of dread and anxiety. I’m thankful we are able to still afford food but we can barely afford anything else. Food, rent, and utilities are killing us.” – 37, Female, Independent, Maricopa, AZ

Only one in four Americans (25%) say they can buy whatever food they want without thinking much about the cost. Most people (61%) say they can afford enough food but must be careful about what they spend. And 12% say they often do not have enough money to buy the food they need.

“We always buy loss leaders or discounted and past-dated foods when possible.” – 85, Male, Democrat, Grafton, NH

In other words, food insecurity doesn’t always show up as empty refrigerators. Often, it shows up as vigilance: reading prices carefully, switching brands, skipping certain items, or cutting back elsewhere just to keep groceries on the table.

Rising Food Insecurity

For many Americans, food insecurity is no longer something they associate with distant communities or rare hardship. It is something they recognize around them. Seventy-two percent of Americans say food insecurity is a problem in their state, including 43% who describe it as a big problem. Sixty-two percent say it is a problem in their own community, with 32% calling it a big problem locally.

These perceptions are grounded in real experiences. Over half of Americans in our survey say they have received government assistance at some point in their lives—including programs like SNAP—and many also engage with the food system through community support such as food banks.

This dual reality—people both receiving and giving help—reveals how embedded food insecurity has become in everyday civic life; woven into the social fabric of communities across the country.

Support for Solutions

Despite the complexity of the issue, one thing stands out clearly in the data: Americans broadly agree that food insecurity is a problem worth solving, and they support practical ways to address it. Across programs and across contexts, there is consensus that food assistance should exist and that it plays an important role in supporting families and communities.

At the same time, people remain uncertain about how well the systems delivering that help are working. Only 38% believe food assistance programs in their state are well run with low levels of waste or fraud, while 42% disagree and 21% say they are unsure. That gap points to a deeper tension in public opinion. Americans may support the purpose of these programs, but many remain skeptical about whether the systems behind them operate as effectively or fairly as they should.

In other words, the public is not just thinking about whether help exists—they are thinking about whether the institutions responsible for delivering it can be trusted to work.

Final Thoughts

These findings are a window into a broader American condition: rising costs, widening strain, and a growing sense that basic needs are becoming harder to guarantee.

Food insecurity is bigger than just food. It is about dignity. It is about stability. It is about whether communities can thrive when families cannot reliably meet the most fundamental need of all.

It is also about civic trust. When people see neighbors struggling, they form judgments about whether institutions are responsive. When they rely on food banks or federal programs, they develop lived opinions about how well those systems work. These experiences shape how people think about government—not in theory, but in practice.

The data leaves us with harder questions about how Americans are experiencing daily life and the systems meant to help them:

• How do everyday encounters with food banks, grocery prices, and assistance programs shape whether people believe the system works for families like theirs?

• If the public already recognizes food insecurity as a real and widespread problem—and strongly supports practical solutions—what is standing between that and meaningful action?

• And perhaps most fundamentally: when something as basic as access to food becomes uncertain, what does that do to people’s sense of security, belonging, and trust in the institutions meant to serve them?

Our data reflects a national reality: widespread dissatisfaction with food prices, broad recognition of the implications for health, hunger, and finances, and strong support for practical—and already established—solutions. Right now, the public’s clarity outpaces the political response.

Food is foundational. So is action.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org.

“It is strange to have the entire country focused on where you live, but it’s absolutely necessary, because this shit can and will happen again, and it can happen anywhere.” - 49, Male, Independent, Minneapolis, MN

Civic Pulse asked 1,231 people across Minnesota how they are experiencing their lives and these events in their own communities. When compared to the start of the year, 28% of Minnesotans say conditions have gotten worse, 33% say they’ve gotten better, and 27% say they feel about the same.

Those shifts don’t resolve into a single shared experience or storyline. The emotional landscape in Minnesota right now is layered: Anger and division are prominent, yet they coexist with resilience, determination, and support.

The graphic above is an overview of how people describe this moment in their community. Each circle represents an emotion people selected. The size of the circle reflects how many people chose that word. The lines between circles show how often those emotions were selected together by the same respondents. Thicker lines mean those feelings commonly co-occur. In other words, this chart doesn’t show separate camps of emotion. It shows how feelings overlap.

What Minnesotans told us points to something more complex than a simple political or partisan reaction. What we found was a state navigating strain, uncertainty–and solidarity–in real time.

The View From Here

Civic Pulse asked what feels misunderstood about this moment in Minnesota and what people outside the state most need to understand about their lives right now. The context is important: large numbers of people are not only following events closely, but have been personally impacted by the federal immigration activity.

Several themes surfaced again and again: safety concerns, frustration with media narratives, and nuanced views about enforcement and limits.

Here is how Minnesotans put it, in their own words:

“People need to understand that people who are citizens have been afraid to leave their homes.” - 50, Female, Democrat, Minneapolis, MN

“The ICE officers are going basically door to door and do not give a hoot about anything [except] to get immigrants regardless if they’re legal or not. I am for illegal [immigrants] to be deported but to harass legal ones is insane”. - 32, Male, Republican, Shakopee, MN

“Support your community, support your local law enforcement and keep it peaceful.” - 57, Male, Independent, Inver Grove Heights, MN

“Government is seeking retaliation on democratic states… Minnesota is filled with wonderful people.” - 70, Female, Republican, Pierz, MN

“If it was only dangerous criminals being deported we would be fine. They are deporting and targeting individuals based on skin tone and that’s not okay… Just stay organized and positive, we will get through this together. Also, make sure to stay peaceful.” - 31, Female, Democrat, St. Louis Park, MN

“This is not about being a Republican or Democrat. It is about due process for all.” - 35, Male, Republican, Burnsville, MN

“There’s a lot of hate, and I think much of it is based on misinformation.” - 53, Female, Independent, Detroit Lakes, MN

And amid the tension, many people told us they are seeing something else too—neighbors stepping up to organize and respond.

When Neighbors Become Leaders

Across political lines, respondents described ordinary people doing small, steady things: checking in, arranging rides, showing up at gatherings, sharing information, standing watch, keeping the peace. And many agree that people are mobilizing and coming together at the community level.

As one woman from Wrenshall put it:

Although our citizens have been abused and threatened, we have become stronger as a community because we had to. - 53, Female, Democrat, Wrenshall, MN

Before turning to more of their words, three numbers help frame what’s happening beneath the headlines:

That combination is striking. Even amid anger and division, more than half are witnessing acts of care—and nearly half believe something lasting could grow from it.

Here’s how they described who is stepping up:

“Kids, elderly, neighbors” - 34, Female, Independent, Minneapolis, MN

“Local people who have no political experience” - 32, Female, Republican, Cold Spring, MN

“Everyday housewives from the burbs are putting themselves in danger to protect others.” - 43, Male, Democrat, Plymouth, MN

“I see local law enforcement do a great job.” - 48, Male, Republican, St. Cloud, MN

“I noticed that a lot of small businesses and restaurants have stepped up a lot” - 31, Female, Democrat, St. Louis Park, MN

And when people talk about what care and support actually look like on the ground, the details become even more tangible:

“Providing a warm place for protesters to warm with some hot chocolate and treats....and rallying together to fight for the rights of innocent lives. Truly touching to witness.” - 51, Female, Independent, Saint Paul, MN

“We brought food and diapers to a family who’s been affected and can’t work” - 55, Male, Republican, Farmington, MN

“My church delivers meals to people who don’t want to leave home.” - 39, Female, Democrat, Rochester, MN

“My children’s school’s social worker drives a young girl to and from school because she is too afraid of riding the bus because of her and her family’s race and how parents have been detained at the stop.” - 33, Female, Independent, Blaine, MN

Taken together, these examples are not abstract. They are practical. Local. Often quiet. In a moment defined by national attention, much of the response is happening at the block, school, church, and storefront level—neighbor to neighbor.

Final Thoughts

In Minnesotans’ own words, what we heard over these two weeks is not a single narrative but a portrait of a community navigating tension and care at the same time. People described fear and vigilance, but also solidarity. They described division, but also neighbors showing up for one another. This moment feels unsettled, and its long-term impact is still unfolding.

One man from Lake Elmo put it this way:

“They are focusing on only the conflict. Officials on both sides should be working together to solve the crisis, not further division.” - 38, Male, Republican

His words reflect something we heard repeatedly: Many Minnesotans want less escalation and more problem-solving. And this moment should leave all of us with questions:

• How do we create more pathways for everyday leadership in our communities, not just in moments of emergency?

• How can communities of support and organizing continue to persevere and sustain longer-term efforts?

• And can national conversations hold space for complexity rather than flattening lived experience into partisan shorthand?

If we want to understand the civic health of this country, we have to listen at the community level. Not only to what people believe, but to what they feel. And one thing we heard over and over again was captured by this woman from Inver Grove Heights:

“If [people] think these things can’t happen in their own cities, they are dead wrong.” - 43, Female, Independent, Inver Grove Heights, MN

Elevating community voices.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org.

Our Chief Research Officer, Sarah Stamper, sat down with Rachel Janfaza of The Up and Up for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Stamper: Welcome, Rachel. To kick us off, can you share a bit about your work at The Up and Up?

Rachel Janfaza: When I started The Up and Up, it was just a newsletter, but it’s grown to be a research and media organization focused on Gen Z. We do regular listening sessions with young people across the country and have a community of Gen Zers that we tap into for insights. We also do qualitative reality check surveys with our Gen Z community. This group has grown organically through conversations, interviews, listening sessions, and then their broader networks. We always ask our community members to share the opportunities with their classmates, their friends, their family, cousins, siblings, and anyone they think would want to share their point of view. There’s a lot of hard data we are told about Gen Z. We see headlines every single day about their politics, the way that they’re thinking about work and education. At The Up and Up, we try to go a level deeper than just the hard data and find real personal stories that humanize the numbers in the headlines.

Sarah Stamper: Given you’re a member of Gen Z and work to uncover their stories, what do you think is most understood about Gen Z, and what has been oversimplified or misconstrued in the media and the public discourse?

Rachel Janfaza: The biggest misconception that I’ve sought to push back on is this idea that all of Gen Z thinks, acts, and votes the same. Gen Z is not monolithic. In fact, there are varied experiences within the Gen Z demographic. This is a wide range of young people across the country from different backgrounds. This is the most diverse generation in American history. And depending on how old you are within the generation of Gen Z, when you were born, you grew up in a very different context.

Last year, I started to write about the theory of the two Gen Zs, the idea that our generation was split down the middle by the COVID-19 pandemic, and also by the different technologies that we’ve grown up with. We see this evolving every single day with AI and the way that it’s changing so rapidly. I’m on the oldest cusp of Gen Z, born in 1997. My childhood, my K-12 education, and even my college and early career experience are so different than someone who is either in middle school or high school today. So I really look at that framework as a way to try to understand where different parts of Gen Z are coming from, depending on these shared experiences that we’ve had while growing up.

Sarah Stamper: You brought up AI, which is so top of mind and prominent in the news right now. We’re finding in our own data at Murmuration that young people have real concerns about what AI means for the future, that they are more likely to say that AI is “very bad” and much more likely to say that it’ll have a negative impact on the world. What are you finding when you talk with Gen Z and young people about AI?

Rachel Janfaza: There’s also been research from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation showing that AI makes Gen Z anxious, and that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, too. In my research and conversations with Gen Z, there’s a range of perspectives and opinions on AI, and how it’s changing things, but the truth is, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are, AI is changing your life in one way or another. Being the first generation to grow up with that is really daunting.

I think Gen Z is expected to usher in new technological changes and a technological revolution, and has always been at the forefront of that. And to a certain degree, Gen Z is leading AI, but it’s also disrupting their adolescent experience, their workforce development, their education, the way they think about their relationships, and their own identity. This is also a generation that has a strange relationship with technology because they rely on it so heavily during COVID, and it has also disrupted their life in so many ways when looking at just social media alone.

Now, to add AI on top of that is scary for some, but it is also seen as a massive opportunity for others. When I ask about AI in our listening sessions, depending on the point that someone is at in their education or their career, we hear a range of responses. But for the most part, for college students or those who haven’t yet entered the workforce, and high schoolers even younger than that, they’re constantly being told that this tool exists but there’s a whole sort of wild west of rules, or lack thereof, of when they’re allowed to use it, and whether or not they will be judged for using it. And yet they’re also being told that it’s going to change everything, so if they don’t know how to use it, they’re going to be left behind. That creates a really complicated dynamic where young people are both being taught that they should know how to use this, but also they could be punished for trying.

The strongest concern I hear is about work and about feeling like they’re not really being set up for the changing work environment. There are a lot of students who fear that the college education that they’re spending so much money on and work so hard to get, that degree will be outdated the moment they get it, if it’s not rooted in AI. I think there’s also a conversation being had about education and human skills that will never be replaced by AI. No one knows really what it’s going to look like even a year from now, let alone five, 10 years from now. I think it’s warranted for there to be a lot of anxiety and a lot of concern, but also at the same time, a feeling of excitement that there’s a lot of good that comes from AI, too.

Our research also shows that young people are using it for navigating relationships or how they feel about themselves, whether that be through AI therapy or conversations they’re having with chatbots. Sometimes it might seem a little bit strange to have a relationship with a chatbot in that way. And there’s been some horrible stories about tragedies that have occurred because young people are relying on this technology to fill the void that a human should be filling. But I think there’s also some positives that can come from that, and more access to mental health resources and support that should and can be explored as well.

Sarah Stamper: One of the themes that we see in Murmuration research is how differently Gen Z thinks about and defines belonging. It’s much less about institutions. It’s more about identity, peer network, and digital or third spaces. How are they talking to you about belonging, community, and purpose?

Rachel Janfaza: This is something I’ve been asking a lot about recently, and it gets at a root problem that a lot of young people in our community have identified, which is the fact that it’s hard for them to find a place where they feel they belong. I think that’s the root of many of the crises that we see within Gen Z, whether it’s the loneliness epidemic or Gen Z’s compassion recession.

Gen Z tells me that when they feel they do belong, it’s in third spaces—a space that’s not school or work or home but somewhere else where they feel that they have community. I did a project over the summer focused on identity, and the most salient part of people’s identity for Gen Z and Gen Alpha was often rooted in religion or familial backgrounds. I think that’s because that’s where they feel they belong, and that’s where they drive their identity from. Young people also get this from fandoms, sororities, fraternities, sports teams, theater clubs, and online communities–but the big one is religious or spiritual groups. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and in a world that is moving at the speed of light, whether it’s the way AI is changing so quickly or the rapid speed of internet culture, I think it’s hard to feel like you belong anywhere for more than just a second, let alone a long period of time. It’s really the relationships and the camaraderie that come from those third places that I think are what is driving young people to them.

Sarah Stamper: Murmuration research consistently finds that almost everyone agrees that no political party fully represents them these days. You’ve highlighted the record-high share of Americans and young people identifying as political independents. In light of this, what do you think organizers should be thinking about in terms of how to engage with young people? And if a political party is a very weak hook, what’s a stronger entry point? Should they be thinking about issues or local problems, relational trust, or something else?

Rachel Janfaza: Young people are so frustrated with both parties. But it’s actually an opportunity for new leaders and organizers to reach them because they just want to feel heard. Part of why Gen Z has disaffected from both traditional parties is that they don’t feel like either party is listening to them.

We’ve seen the mistake that politicians have made in thinking that just by showing up on social media or on some new media platform and going on a podcast is like this magic fix that’s going to suddenly get Gen Z to want to engage with them or to vote for them. But young people can tell when someone is just trying to get someone to vote for them and read right through it. They grew up online, so they have a very high bar of what it means to be authentic. They’re also craving leaders who are actually blending that online engagement with in-person ideas, strategies, and tactics.

I think a lot of young people have felt gaslit by both parties, and that leaders don’t address the actual root cause of the problem. They just kind of sugarcoat it or pretend it doesn’t exist, or will say that something that a young person can very clearly see is happening or feels in their own everyday life, whether it be something like the cost of living or the way that their community is being discriminated against. They can see these things happening in their day-to-day lives, and then they hear leaders and elected officials pretend like that doesn’t exist or it’s not happening, which is frustrating and alienating.

Organizers can circumvent that by addressing young people’s lived experiences head-on by acknowledging the problems they face and offering solutions that are rooted in local issues. We are seeing young people talk very passionately about their local politics and about issues that are present in their day-to-day community. At a time when the national political conversation is so divisive and unrelenting, rooting themselves in the local allows young people to feel more agency and a pathway to be involved because the macro-national level can feel overwhelming and like it doesn’t apply to the individual. But things that are happening in individual communities without a doubt make a difference in their day-to-day lives.

Sarah Stamper: A cornerstone of the Gen Z experience is growing up in a world where every major event is captured, it’s shared, it’s remixed, and it’s sometimes distorted online. How does this shape younger people’s interpretation of reality and their trust in institutions?

Rachel Janfaza: I’ve written a lot about the two Gen Zs and the fact that Gen Z 1.0 was kind of leading the forefront of these movements for social justice, whether it be climate strikes, the March for Our Lives, or protests for racial justice during the summer of 2020. There are a lot of similarities right now to 2020. I also wrote about Gen Z 2.0, which retracted from that. There wasn’t much activism during the Biden years. Being MAGA was more counterculture. There was a shift to the right amongst Gen Z. Now we’re seeing that young people are starting to protest again by leading massive school walkouts against this administration and against the actions that ICE is taking in communities across the country. The thing to note about Gen Z’s relationship to all of this is that it’s very fluid. They don’t see one political party as being better than the other. They see both as problematic, and they’re willing to speak out against both. They’re willing to share when they disagree with what elected officials and leaders are doing.

The protests that are happening now in response to some of the actions of this administration or that ICE is taking aren’t something that Democrats should celebrate. I think that Democrats have a lot of work to do to earn young voters’ support in November. And the fact that there’s frustration doesn’t necessarily mean that that frustration will work in their favor.

But what it does indicate is that young people are going to speak out and stand up for what they believe in. And especially when that’s happening in their local community or when they feel such close proximity to it because they watch it on their social media feeds, and they’re paying attention and they’re going to do something about it, no matter what party is in charge.

Sarah Stamper: We are coming up on America’s 250th birthday at a moment where pride and belonging are fragile. It’s especially true for young people who associate America with instability and unmet promise. What kinds of concrete changes would move the needle for this generation?

Rachel Janfaza: The number one issue that young people face, and we’ve been hearing this for years, is the cost of living and the fact that their life feels so unaffordable. I think that’s part of why we’re seeing young people flip-flop back and forth between political parties and not want to be a part of either political party because they don’t feel that either party has their best interests in mind when it comes to the cost of living. If elected officials can help with solutions, with lowering costs, or at least address the fact that they understand that young people are feeling this way, I do think that could move the needle. In certain states, actions are being taken to make education more affordable or to make sure that there are more pathways to education or a good-paying job. A lot of this happens on the local level, and it makes a big difference in young people’s lives.

Sarah Stamper: In this conversation, we have talked about any number of pressures that people are under—cost of living and the economy, feeling politically unmoored, and feeling lonely or in search of third spaces. While these things directly impact Gen Z, they are also shared pressures and experiences for people of many different generations. Where should we start to build cooperation between generations and foster more cross-generational understanding?

Rachel Janfaza: It’s all about mentorship. A lot of generational fractures could be healed by younger people having an ally in an older person, and vice versa, an older person feeling that they have a companion who’s a bit younger than them, who can help them through the challenges they’re facing. This can be mutually beneficial, and I think that there’s so much wisdom that young people can gain from older generations who have been through this before.

If you’re thinking about the economic headwinds that Gen Z is up against, having a millennial mentor who can talk about what it was like to be in the 2008 recession and to graduate during that time and find a job, or lost a job, or faced the housing crisis that ensued—all of that is so relevant to someone in Gen Z right now. Similarly, with all the global conflicts we experience today, talking to someone older who experienced Vietnam and hearing about what that was like, there’s so much that can be learned.

When it comes to belonging and the crisis of loneliness, it’s not isolated to Gen Z. I think all of us feel it when we live in virtual realities. Having a mentorship relationship can allow people to feel like they belong and that they have a point and purpose, and purpose is something that we all crave.

When it comes to work, if AI is changing the workforce, none of us knows how to handle that. I think it’s really important that more of the managers and CEOs, and people in positions of leadership, can help their Gen Z employees understand where they can add the most value. At the same time, I think that Gen Z can and should be willing to ask their managers, CEOs, and mentors for guidance, for help, and for advice about where they can add the most value. Mentorship is a great way to foster that intergenerational dialogue and companionship.

Sarah Stamper: Murmuration research shows that hope is surprisingly persistent in communities and in particular, Gen Z is holding on to that hope. What gives you hope for the future right now?

Rachel Janfaza: We similarly hear that young people are feeling hopeful despite listing a range of concerns that they have. A lot of it comes from the community and from each other. I recently asked, “What in the country right now gives you hope?” in a reality check we did, and one of the answers was, “Americans. I believe Americans are brave and fundamentally good people, even if there’s a faction among us that is lost and angry.” I think people see hope when Americans come together. We also heard a lot about unity. Young people give other young people hope. People also said the midterms give them hope. And there’s religion.

What gives me hope is in our listening sessions, when we have two people with very diametrically opposed views who are willing to have a back-and-forth dialogue, and they don’t have to come to some agreement. We’re not singing Kumbaya, that’s not really the point of what we do. The point is to show that there are varying viewpoints and that you can still have a productive conversation, and it doesn’t have to lead to chaos, division, and hatred, and that there can be respect even for people who have different viewpoints. That’s what gives me hope.

Sarah Stamper: It was a pleasure to talk with you more about your work and how you’ve championed elevating the voices of Gen Z and increasingly Gen Alpha. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.

About Rachel Janfaza
Rachel Janfaza is the founder of The Up and Up, a research, media, and strategy firm focused on Gen Z. Her written work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Vox, The Free Press, Glamour, POLITICO Magazine, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, and Bustle. And her on-air analysis has been featured on CNN, MSNBC/MSNOW, CBS, C-SPAN, NY-1, and WNYC Public Radio. She is also a contributor to The Bulwark.

About Sarah Stamper
Sarah Stamper has been a neuroscientist for over 15 years, specializing in the quantitative analysis of behavior and systems. At Murmuration, Sarah leads a team of data and scientific experts building cutting-edge data and insights that empower partners to better understand, engage, and mobilize their communities. She also authors State of Us, a series that explores what America is feeling, thinking, and moving toward together, for Murmuration’s Substack. Before joining Murmuration, she led product and data science at Helm, a civic technology company. She also previously led research at the Art & Science Group, providing valuable data and insights to K-12 institutions, higher education, and nonprofit organizations, shaping their approaches to community engagement and strategic planning.

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Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

Nations, like relationships, are tested in the same way.

In the last few weeks, our State of Us work has focused on a harder truth. Americans feel deeply divided, and increasingly unsure that we’re moving toward a better future at all. Together, our findings point to a country where people are alarmed by what they see happening around them, yet still deeply invested in one another and in the ideas of kindness and empathy.

So we asked Americans to look ahead and tell us what they hope might improve, and what they fear may lie ahead. This is what they said, for better or worse.

For Better

When people talk about what they hope will improve this year, they are most often reaching for something emotional rather than institutional. The single most common hope is not about policy or finances, but about how people treat one another. More than one in five respondents (23%) expressed hope for less hate, more kindness, greater empathy, and a sense that people might find ways to coexist more peacefully. In a moment defined by polarization and fatigue, many are yearning for emotional relief and social repair—less anger in public life, fewer divisions in everyday interactions, and a softer tone overall.

Economic hopes come next, but they are strikingly personal. Nearly one in five people (19%) focused on personal finances and the hope that everyday costs like groceries, gas, and rent become more manageable, or that the cost of living eases its grip. A similar share (16%) spoke more broadly about the economy, referencing inflation, interest rates, the stock market, or national debt. Together, these responses suggest that optimism is closely tied to financial breathing room: people aren’t necessarily imagining abundance, but stability, predictability, and a sense that things won’t keep getting harder.

Politics also surfaces as a source of hope for a meaningful group of people (15%). These responses are less about enthusiasm and more about resolution including hopes for calmer governance, better leadership, functional policymaking, or simply an end to constant political turmoil. A smaller but notable group explicitly expressed hope tied to opposition to the current administration (7%), reflecting a desire for change, accountability, or limits on executive power rather than confidence in any single alternative.

Beyond the most common themes, a long tail of smaller, more diffuse hopes rounds out how people imagine things getting better. Some respondents are looking beyond U.S. borders, expressing hope for de-escalation abroad, an end to ongoing wars, or more stable global relations (7%). Others talk about safer communities and less violence (6%), progress on immigration (5.0%), greater protection of civil rights (4%), and improvements in healthcare access (4%). Far fewer respondents named housing, climate, education, or technology, but their presence still reflects a broad and interconnected view of what “getting better” could mean.

For Worse

When people talk about what they fear could get worse this year, their concerns shift outward and upward—from interpersonal strain to large-scale instability. The most common fear centers on political conflict:

Nearly one in five respondents (18%) worry about international matters like escalating wars, widening global unrest, or deteriorating foreign relations. These responses often carry a sense of powerlessness, reflecting anxiety about forces far beyond individual control and the possibility that global violence could intensify rather than resolve.

An identical share (18%) have fears about politics at home. They anticipate worsening political dysfunction including deepening polarization, policy failures, democratic backsliding, or further erosion of trust in government. For many, the concern is not just disagreement but a sense that the political system itself may become more chaotic, punitive, or unresponsive.

Economic anxiety remains central, but again appears in both personal and national forms. About 15% fear their personal financial situation will deteriorate, citing rising costs, stagnant wages, or growing precarity, while 14% worry more broadly about the economy (e.g. recession, inflation, debt, or market instability). Together, these responses suggest a pervasive fear that financial strain may intensify, leaving households with even less margin for error.

Violence also looms with nearly 12% of people worrying about increased violence, declining public safety, or the prevalence of guns. These fears are often rooted in concerns about crime, mass violence, or a general sense that everyday spaces feel less safe.

A smaller but still notable share expresses fear that social and emotional conditions will worsen. About 8% worry about rising hatred, anger, or cruelty, suggesting concern that social norms around empathy and coexistence may continue to erode. Others fear rollbacks in civil rights (6%), harsher immigration enforcement or deportations (6%), negative outcomes tied to opposition to the current administration (6%), environmental and climate deterioration (3%), housing instability (2%), worsening healthcare access (2%), job insecurity (2%), protests and unrest (2%), unchecked technological change like AI (1%), and declines in education or faith in institutions. While each is named by relatively few individuals, together they convey a diffuse sense that multiple systems could fray at once.

Final Thoughts

Reading these responses side by side, one thing becomes clear. People haven’t lost the capacity to hope. They’ve lost confidence that hope will be protected.

Hopes for the year ahead are modest, human, and close to home. They’re hoping for less pressure, less anger, fewer shocks and a world that feels a little more livable than it does right now. Fears, by contrast, are sharper and more structural. They cluster around escalation rather than improvement: widening wars, deepening political dysfunction, rising costs, growing violence, and eroding rights.

The imbalance is telling. It suggests that while people still believe things could get better, they are far less convinced that the forces shaping their lives are moving in that direction. This raises deeper questions about:

• Are people who fear systemic collapse still willing to invest in local efforts?

• Do people see emotional repair as a precondition for political repair?

• At what point does financial insecurity start to reshape people’s expectations of democracy, fairness, or government responsibility?

What comes next depends on whether people believe that our future can be made, protected, and sustained.

Love, tested by reality

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

At the same time, education is not experienced as a standalone issue. It is crowded into the same political and economic space as every other pressure people are carrying right now. When voters think about their lives, they are thinking about grocery bills, rent, childcare, healthcare, crime, and jobs. Schools matter deeply, but they are competing with a long list of urgent concerns that feel immediate and relentless.

Young people, in particular, offer a revealing lens into this tension. Looking at education through their eyes helps clarify why it matters and why it so often gets crowded out.

Education as a Voting Issue

As important as education is to many, it is rarely the single defining issue driving vote choice. A very small share of voters (9%) say it is their top issue. Most (64%) call it very important but stop short of calling it their top issue. For the rest, it falls even further down the priority list.

This pattern reflects a broader reality: education matters, but it is competing in a crowded field of urgent concerns. People do not separate schools from the rest of their lives, and they evaluate them alongside the pressures shaping their day-to-day experience.

For young voters, this dynamic is especially pronounced. Gen Z is navigating high costs of living, student debt, and a volatile labor market. Education is not just about schools in the abstract; it is about whether learning, credentials, and job training will actually translate into financial stability.

That said, economic issues offer a bridge to education as a voting issue. Americans overwhelmingly agree that education and job training are among the best paths to financial stability. For many families—and especially for younger adults—education is fundamentally about whether the next generation will be able to build a secure life at all.

Education as Community Stability

When we ask people directly about local schools, most Americans (71%) say the quality of schools in their community is very important to them. And, across generations, people describe schools as anchors of community life—places that reduce stress for families, support opportunity, and create the conditions for long-term flourishing.

That belief, especially amongst young people, comes through clearly in broad agreement with statements like:

For Gen Z, these ideas land with particular force. Young adults are more likely than older Americans to strongly endorse the view that education shapes economic outcomes, community stability, and the future health of society. In their own words:

“Schools can help uplift students and help them become productive members of society.” – 28, Male, Democrat, Ohio

“Better schools produce more well-rounded adults. If those adults stay in the community then the community succeeds. Also, people struggle to read information critically and do research in today’s society. A more educated populace is one with more critical thinking skills.” – 29, Female, Democrat, Kentucky

Final Thoughts

Education remains one of the clearest shared aspirations Americans have. But it is also increasingly experienced as part of a broader struggle: the struggle to stay afloat, to raise children in a stable environment, and to believe that the future can still be better than the present.

All of this points to some larger questions about schools, stability, and community life:

• How might our local conversations about schools change if we started with the pressures people are facing first, like affordability, safety, and economic insecurity?

• How much of our economic anxiety is really an education anxiety, about whether the next generation will be able to build a secure life?

• What kinds of investments in schools today would prevent the biggest problems communities are worried about tomorrow?

The question is not whether Americans care about schools. They do. The question is whether we can speak about education in a way that meets people where they are, in the full reality of their lives.

Report card: we have work to do.

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This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org.

And yet, if there is one thing Americans across the spectrum seem to share, it is this: a deep desire to move beyond polarization, a sense that the country is falling short of its values, and a growing alarm over the division that surrounds politics today.

Those feelings can be isolating. But they are not rare. As we have learned through Civic Pulse, many Americans describe a political climate defined by tension, uncertainty, and instability. So, the question now is not simply what we may or may not still have in common. It is whether disagreement itself has begun to feel like something more dangerous: a source of fear, hostility, and social fracture.

Commonality Beneath Conflict

Americans are not naïve about how divided the country feels right now. Most people recognize that political differences run deep, with 74% of Americans saying that the country is “deeply divided by different fundamental values.” Only 16% believe that “Americans mostly share the same fundamental values.”

That sense of division is not abstract. Nearly seven in ten Americans describe the country today as either completely or mostly divided, with only about one in four seeing the nation as mostly united.

And yet, something else emerges alongside this bleak diagnosis.

Even as Americans acknowledge the depth of political conflict, many still resist the idea that politics has erased everything we share. When asked to think about Americans they disagree with politically, nearly half (49%) say: “We mostly have things in common as Americans, despite our political differences.” Only 29% take the more fatalistic view that political differences have left no common ground at all. In other words, by a wide margin (+20pp), people continue to believe that there is more connecting us than separating us.

This belief in commonality is not confined to one party. A majority of Republicans (57%) say Americans mostly have things in common, as do pluralities of Democrats (44%) and Independents (45%). Still, the gap is worth noticing. The sense of shared ground is less secure among Democrats and Independents—a signal that even if Americans want unity, many are less confident it is still within reach.

And that uncertainty matters, because the consequences of division are not only cultural or rhetorical. Increasingly, Americans describe the political climate not just as frustrating, but as destabilizing and something that shapes how stable and safe the future feels.

Politics as a Source of Fear

In a year that already feels uneven, it is perhaps not surprising that so many Americans are bracing for disruption. And yet, it is still startling to see it in the numbers.

A majority of Americans say they are very (22%) or somewhat (30%) worried that “something unexpected could significantly disrupt their life this year”. When people name what they fear most, many share concerns that are financial (42%): losing a job, rising costs, or other economic risk factors.

The second most prevalent set of worries, however, is political (39% of people). Americans express fears about domestic unrest, government abuse, and even the possibility of civil war or international conflict.

“A civil war or a world war. Domestic conflicts are rising and seem to be ramping up more than regressing.” - 27, Male, Independent, West Des Moines, Iowa

“Political unrest within our country” – 62, Female, Republican, Bucks, PA

“I’m seriously worried that one of my children will join protests and be murdered.” - 46, Female, Independent, Peoria, IL,

“War, unlawfulness from Americans in our country against each other.” - 68, Female, Democrat, Salem, Oregon

What is striking is how quickly these political fears move from the abstract to the personal. For many Americans, politics is no longer something happening “out there,” but something that shapes whether the country feels secure.

In fact, about half of Americans (53%) say they feel threatened or unsafe as a result of current politics in the United States: 39% feel somewhat threatened or unsafe and 14% feel very threatened or unsafe. This rises sharply among Democrats (+37pp) compared to Republicans, though notably over a third of Republicans (34%) share the feeling.

Even more unsettling, Americans (80%) are very concerned that other people may be threatened or unsafe due to current politics. The gap here is telling. Americans demonstrating care for others are far more likely to perceive danger facing their fellow citizens than to describe themselves as directly unsafe. Even those who feel relatively secure are alert to the broader political atmosphere and attentive to what others may be experiencing.

Final Thoughts

What these findings suggest is not that Americans have lost interest in one another, or even that they have fully lost faith in the possibility of shared ground. The deeper problem is that they also sense something more destabilizing: that the systems meant to help us navigate disagreement are instead intensifying it.

The result is a country on alert—less confident that conflict can be resolved peacefully, less trusting that institutions will act responsibly, and more worried about what the political climate is doing to the safety and cohesion of everyday life.

At the same time, these are not the only forces shaping civic life. In many places, community has become an important antidote to the fear and threat that so often defines politics right now and serves a reminder that civic life is not only about conflict, but also about care and shared responsibility. Across the country, people continue to show up for one another in practical, grounded ways: organizing mutual aid and GoFundMes for rent assistance, forming local huddles to help neighbors navigate legal or medical needs, connecting at-risk families with food donations, offering rides to school or work, and stepping in when institutions feel distant or unreliable. These everyday acts do not erase division, but they offer something real alongside it: evidence that many Americans are still invested in each other, and that community can still serve as a source of stability.

With that in mind, as we consider how to restore trust in each other and confidence in the future of the country, we ask:

• How do we show up (or continue to show up) for one another in communities where so many feel anxious, threatened, or unsafe?

• Under what conditions could civic life feel stable, lawful, and safe again, especially for those who feel most vulnerable?

• Can we build a civic life and political culture where disagreement does not create more division?

Understanding how Americans are experiencing division and fear, in this moment, is a step toward figuring out what it would take to move forward together.

Fear travels fast. So can care.

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Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org.

Today, the second installment of The Exchange, our new interview series with influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life, features Jason Llorenz, Executive Director, and Linh Nguyen, Chief Strategy & Programs Officer at Rise United and co-founder of CreatorCon LIVE, of Rise United in conversation with Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby. Rise United is a networking and training hub for content creators who engage their peers in national, statewide, and local issues.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Slaby: Welcome, Linh and Jason. To kick us off, can you share a bit about your work at Rise United?

Jason Llorenz: My work at Rise United is driven by the idea that talent is everywhere and the ability for young people to engage in civic life is not equally distributed. The creator economy can act as a connecting tissue that gives people bridges into thinking about civic life, values and leadership, and we’re building Rise United into a place where the creator generator can do just that. Rise United‘s programs build around the idea that there is an entire generation of untapped talent and opportunity and voices that need connection. Our programs offer supportive opportunities for creators to come into community with each other, to be led by their peers, build their skills, and to form and solidify civic identity. We think leadership starts with who you are. When we build our creator cohorts we’re looking for folks who are go-hards for their community. Folks who are already talking about their values, they already care, they’re building an audience and all they need, what they’re really craving is connection to others so that they’re not alone, they’re craving opportunities to build and get better. And they’re looking for a table that says, “You belong here.” That doesn’t exist today.

Linh Nguyen: We’ve learned that the highest level of influence is peer to peer. We’re not going to need someone in the White House telling us what to do, what to believe, how to act. Oftentimes, it is our most trusted inner circle of people we know and we intimately know. But that peer-to-peer lateral influence is something that I feel is so deeply misunderstood within this creator ecosystem.

Through Rise United, we’ve been building place-based fellowship models where the hope is that no, we’re not gonna parachute and tell y’all how to vote or what to say to your audience, or here’s your one-page memo about how to talk about immigration and education. Our hope and our purpose is to reverse the playbook a little bit.

We’re looking upstream at creators and those becoming creators. We’re looking for people with community trust — local “go hards” for their city or town who might lead niche communities organically but they haven’t quite launched themselves as an influencer or a creator. For Rise United Education Fund, investing early in untapped leaders with an audience who care about what’s happening where they live will be a huge and unique contribution to civic life.

Developing their civic and political identity through our program is our big bet on the future of American civic participation

Michael Slaby: Obviously, we’re in a very heavy moment for America. A few weeks ago, Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota. Sense-making and finding a shared reality feel difficult, or sometimes it feels impossible. Can you talk about how storytelling and creators help us build trust and can help us find the shared reality that we are craving to help us build community?
N.B. This interview was recorded prior to the murder of Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026.

Jason Llorenz: We are in a barrage right now against our senses, against our values, our belief in what is real, and even the idea of what should happen when we know something is real.

There are the sense makers like Brian Baez who do very well researched pieces that are trying to connect this attack on ourselves to a framework that says, yes, there is a legal and a policy in a kind of democratically grounded way of thinking about this. I see him as an example of someone who tries to connect cultural resonance with a very well-researched, grounded approach to thinking about these things.

I think of people like the Korean Vegan, who is doing some of the most powerful storytelling from her personal experiences while making beautiful food in front of you, translating her personal anger. There’s a visceralness to that beautiful storytelling around food and the connection between that sense-making and civic life. Think about how we all get stories or we come to things. We either see them, we smell them, we feel them, we think them, but we only have a certain number of senses on social media. We are competing for nanoseconds of attention as people are scrolling. The beauty of the connection powerfully invites us into an experience that is so palpably raw for her. It makes her content creative and undeniably irresistible.

She’s just one example—the beauty of the creator environment is you’ve got people who are experimenting in a thousand ways about how to draw us into conversation and bring us into something that maybe we would not have stuck around for. Maybe it’s about voting, maybe about power, maybe about beauty, maybe about relationships, maybe about money. There is an immense and unique opportunity in this culture to bring us into new ideas, new ways of being, and new types of power.

Linh Nguyen: After the 2024 election cycle, we did a wellness check on our creator networks and got very visceral feedback that a lot of people felt paralyzed, alone, and unsure how to make sense of what had happened in Minnesota. They just witnessed, and likely participated in, their first presidential election and saw Trump win again. Many doubted whether they should continue their work. But at Rise United, we believe that sharing information can help make sense and the way that information starts to move people to really show up is incredibly important. We’re trying to carve out an experimental lab that pushes young people to think differently and challenge probably everything that they have understood in this moment to have them unlearn it, and then walk their thousands of followers through that process too.

Jason Llorenz: Today, we have a thousand ways to bring people into civic life versus the idea of working with an established creator with a million followers. We’re trying to support creators that are new and diverse in cracking the algorithm. Right now, it’s all about creativity, trust, and authenticity in breaking through.

Michael Slaby: I’m curious about your recruiting process. How do you find creators and how do you invite people into the Rise United network?

Jason Llorenz: We’re looking for creators with a smaller, growing audience. It’s usually folks with under a hundred thousand followers, at that early early stage, but who show in their own content or their grid that they care about their community, that they’re talking about their values or they’re building a community. Our vetting process is to bring them in to ask them to create a one-minute video that talks about what you care about or what your community deserves. Ultimately, our vision is that in the years ahead, we are able to support creators across the United States who are working together and are linked in both a local and national network that can have immense narrative power.

Linh Nguyen: These early-stage creators demonstrate a baseline potential. They’re already talking about their city, their campus, or other communities they belong to, not necessarily talking about civics or politics. A lot of bigger, well-established creator institutions will not place their bet on these people. But Rise United shows up to support these early-stage creators before they scale up and gain traction, well before they hit their viral moments.

Michael Slaby: Can you share a bit more about creators you’ve worked with that stand out to you?

Linh Nguyen: Last year, we hand-selected a phenomenal group of creators in Virginia primarily to participate in a Rise United fellowship cohort. They’re black and brown young creators folks. Some were fourth-year students at the University of Virginia, so they’re balancing graduation along with trying to figure out their next career moves, and some were creators who lived in more rural parts of Virginia and quite literally can’t make their way across the state.

One of the creators at the outset questioned if she was even a good fit for our program and didn’t quite see herself as a creator. She wanted to talk about voting in Virginia and who was going to be on the ballot. She was a runner and her content was framed as, “Come running with me. I’m going to run 20 miles to the polls to go vote and you all are coming along.” And she ended up being a rising star.

Jason Llorenz: There was another young man in that cohort who stands out to me for his responsibility. He applied to be in the fellowship and before he did, he zeroed out his social media channels purposefully because he wanted to start from zero. He had hundreds of thousands of followers, but he scrubbed everything to get a fresh start with us.

One of his most powerful videos said, “Come vote with me as a Latino Republican.” He knew the power that he had amongst his peers who might have voted for Trump or whatever and turned it into a conversation about where we are right now. It was a powerful invitation to say, “What are we doing?”

Michael Slaby: We often feel a pressure for constant speed and velocity in storytelling, media, and culture-making. So much of social media and communications is oriented towards scale. I’m curious about the ways small creators can focus on efficacy and the depth of context that comes from slowing down and from telling deeper stories that are a source of relationship and trust building with their audiences rather than the chase for speed.

Jason Llorenz: It’s interesting that if you look at where consumer brands are going, they’re so far ahead of those of us who are thinking about civic life and building political power. Consumer brands know exactly what we’re talking about: emerging creators are the future. Political and civic engagement work seems continuously stuck in a late cycle of last-minute investment that is the exact opposite of the type of relationships creators build over time.

If we want a different outcome in 2028, we need to make an investment of time and relationship-building today. But it seems like so much of the way that we come to building people power shows up way too late. And it’s cost us dearly.

Michael Slaby: What’s giving you guys hope for the future right now?

Linh Nguyen: What gives me a lot of optimism is that creators are dang good at asking better questions. “How do I grow as a human being doing this with you guys? If you want me to talk about these issues, how does this help me? How does it help my family? How does it help my people?” They are much more sophisticated. It’s probably the best signal I’ve seen in a pretty long time.

Jason Llorenz: What gives me hope is the fact that if you look at history, it’s the darkest times that lead to our biggest leaps forward. The repression of the 1940s and 50s leads to the 60s and in a kind of movement forward. Every leap forward comes after huge losses. And things that feel very dark and very painful, and we are in that moment today. At least that’s the way it feels to me. So I try to hold onto the idea that 10 and 20 years from now, we will have wanted to be a part of building what comes next and the belief that yes, we have lost a lot of ground. And from that will come a resurgence led by young people who say, “No, we want something better. We demand something better from our society, our government, and ourselves.”

Michael Slaby: And the work that you are doing at Rise Together is part of how we get ready. Thank you for taking the time for this conversation today and for all the work you're doing.

About Jason Llorenz
Jason is passionate about leadership and how technology is changing life, business and generations new paths to civic identity. Jason is co-founder and executive director of Rise United, a creator-powered civic and cultural organization that invests early in emerging storytellers as a long-term pipeline for civic leadership, narrative power, and community trust. Jason grew up in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He holds a BA from Cazenovia College and JD from SUNY Buffalo Law School. When not working, he finds inspiration in his two little girls and peace in the dances and musical heritage of Cuba and the Caribbean.

About Linh Nguyen
Linh Nguyen is a community organizer and creative producer, serving as Chief Strategy & Programs Officer at Rise United and co-founder of CreatorCon LIVE, a conference reimagining how creators, companies, and brands come together at the intersection of policy, culture, and tech. With over a decade of experience, she builds creator-led campaigns that shift narrative and power, spanning presidential races, barrier-breaking campaigns in Texas, and national initiatives with Live Nation Urban, Ben & Jerry’s, and AARP. Linh lives in Texas with her family and her 4-year-old daughter (her endless source of inspiration).

About Michael Slaby
Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012 where he oversaw all technology and analytics and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.

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Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org