This story appeared in the Spring 2020 Letters & Science magazine.
Most people would be daunted by the challenge of trying to bridge the yawning chasm between our modern political parties. Not only is Steven Olikara, a 2012 environmental studies and political science graduate, trying to do something about it, he’s tackling the generational gap, too.
In 2013, just a year after graduating as UW-Madison’s first-ever environmental studies major, Olikara founded the Millennial Action Project (MAP), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization aimed at building bipartisan bridges between state and national legislators under the age of 40. At a time during which polarization between Democrats and Republicans is at an all-time high, Olikara has made it his mission to harness millennial energy to forge a new path.
“Partisan polarization leads to short-term thinking and policy-making,” says Olikara, “which means we’re not having a future-looking political discussion or trying to find common ground.”
MAP’s staffers work directly with millennial legislators and Congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle, providing them with information and support to pass bipartisan bills on a wide range of issues. Over the past seven years, Olikara and MAP have worked with more than 1,000 legislators and helped set up chapters in 29 states. MAP helped legislators affect gerrymandering reform in Ohio and authorized research from the Centers for Disease Control to advance the discussion on gun control in several states.
Olikara found inspiration to create MAP in his other burning passion—music. Growing up in Brookfield, WI, Olikara played guitar, bass and drums, and sang in bands devoted to everything from rock, funk and hip-hop to punk and folk.
But the musical style he kept coming back to was jazz.
With jazz, it’s all about listening, a call and response that results in a beautiful, improvisational art form,” Olikara explains. “That collaboration led to better art, not worse.”
Collaboration is a quality that’s been glaringly absent from U.S. politics over the last decade.
“In political discourse today, it’s more like call and shut down. We’ve lost that collective spirit,” he says.
MAP’s agenda encompasses two issues Olikara focused on during his time as a Udall Scholar and a Truman Scholar at UW: energy and the environment. Folks who were on campus during his tenure (2008–12) may remember him as the student who introduced President Barack Obama during his campaign stop in Madison. (UW-Madison hosts its own MAP chapter, which has partnered with the Department of Political Science.)
These days, Olikara’s picking up steam on multiple fronts. In February, he launched a new audio and video podcast series called Meeting in Middle America to bring MAP’s collaborative message to a new platform. In April, he’ll present in Washington, DC with former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold as part of an event hosted by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. His music remains critical to him—he’ll be releasing an album of original compositions this summer. (“Think of it as a mix of Bon Iver and Nirvana,” he says.)
But it’s MAP that has the lion’s share of his attention.
“Investing in our democracy is the challenge of our time,” Olikara says. “Now is the time to lean in and fix it.”