Hey guys, so great to have you all here.
Now that the film is about
to go out in the world,
you've been doing a lot of reflection on
that week at Boys State.
You made so many small and big decisions
about how to conduct
yourself and how to campaign.
I wanna ask you what, looking back,
do you feel like you would
do differently and why?
I feel like the biggest thing that
I would do differently is
the political system is what we make it.
I feel like at a net level,
like it's very important in
our politics to understand that
at the end of the day,
like we all have to work and live
and cooperate within the same system.
And if we abandon that
or we get too focused
on the immediate objective
to the point of disrespecting
our fellow humans and fellow Americans,
then that becomes toxic
and it becomes cyclical.
How about you, René?
I spent a lot of time
trying to protect Steven
in the sense that, you know,
we would beat around the bush
or when we were doing like debates
and people would have
targeted pointed questions.
I made a rule that you weren't allowed
to ask pointed questions to
like specific candidates,
both candidates had to answer.
And I think the real strategy
should have been embracing.
Steven, what do you think about that?
What René had to say,
and also kind of just looking
back at your whole week,
both on a kind of personal
and a political level.
How do you kind of
reflect on your choices?
If I decided to run for
governor again, if I got to
know what I know now
and do it differently,
I'd probably be a little more forceful
and embrace more policy
and kind of say, Hey, look,
I've been able to talk to people here.
Here's what we agree
upon, let's get that done,
rather than talking about unity
and going forward together
as a party. But overall,
I wouldn't trade that
experience I had at the end,
after the race was over for anything else.
Do you guys, um, have
any advice for people
who may go through the program next,
but also just people younger than you
kind of entering the political
sort of atmosphere of today?
Read the newspaper.
Like that sounds really basic and simple,
but like social media is not a great way
of disseminating information.
I feel like social media,
whether you're liberal or conservative
allows for a lot of siloing,
you can get away with seeing
only what you wanna see
and confirmation bias is huge.
Like I think the key to a
healthy political system
is knowing relatively
objective version of events.
That's held to a pretty high
standard of objectivity.
Our democracy is a lot bigger than just me
and what would best serve me.
We need to look wide and remember that
we're all in this together.
And we've inherited it from the past
and we owe it to the future.
René?
My advice would be while
there is certainly, you know,
wrong ways to, to politically engage,
there's no right way.
You know, a lot of young organizers are,
are feeling discouraged because you know,
their work doesn't get
recognized because they're not,
you know, registering people to vote.
I think activism is
democracy, direct democracy.
I think the only reason why
we seem to have a disconnect
between politics and activism
today is because activism
could be so readily ignored
and so readily skewed
through like bias media campaign.
Meaning, it's not really something that
we have to pay attention to.
Therefore it's like, oh, you know,
they have to be intertwined.
That's a really, really good
point. Thank you. Steven?
Throw yourself into it and
immerse yourself into it.
Don't, don't be afraid of
what people were gonna say
or people gonna think.
It's informing yourself.
It's informing others, It's organizing.
It's using the tools
readily available to you
to create the change that you wanna see.
You can do that, or you can go
work on a political campaign.
You can go register voters,
you can make phone calls,
you can vote, your vote matters.
And you know, your, your future matters.
I think you have a
responsibility to pay attention
and to inform yourself and to be engaged.
You don't have a choice
of saying that politics
isn't for you or that
you're not interested in it
because it's definitely interested in you.
