It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many younger Americans look at Washington and state capitals with a sense of grave disappointment. After all, they have experienced firsthand a growing climate crisis, racial injustice, the breakdown of democratic institutions and norms, gender inequity and widespread economic insecurity — issues that have been much discussed but rarely addressed.

Many of these young people have also grown up participating in active shooter drills at school. Unlike the famous duck-and-cover drills of the 1950s meant to prepare kids for a nuclear war that never happened, this country has witnessed the persistent drumbeat of school shootings. Can we really blame young people for feeling disillusioned with the US political system that allows this to continue?

And since March 2020, these Americans have spent key moments of their youth struggling to survive a global pandemic where many of our leaders offered meager, contradictory and half-hearted policies as core institutions, including schools, shut down.