What To Do After Taking The Foundations of New York City

Increase political capital by joining // participate online // stay curious // extend time horizons // explore // have a good time // I will help

The Foundations of New York City (Cohort 10) will run from September 16 through November 18 this fall. Applications are open through this Friday.

This is Part II of a two-part series. Part I, which was published yesterday, is entitled “Why You Should Take The Foundations of New York City This Fall.”

Both MNY alumni and prospective students often ask: “What should I do after the class is over?”

There is no one answer that fits everyone, because it depends on your goals and what you are capable of doing given your own personal constraints. So I could answer the question with “it depends” and then run away.

But, while any one individual’s path forward will depend on their context, it’s possible to give general strategic advice (think in dominos) that will help most people think through their path.

Increase political capital

Political capital is specialized knowledge and personal relationships, both of which are built over time. And political capital buys you things in the political world; so if you want to be efficacious, whatever your goals are, you need to get the political capital commensurate to their achievement:

If you want to start a business, you must turn yourself into a new pool of capital somehow. And if you want to get something done in the political realm, you must turn yourself into a new pool of political capital.

That means you must cultivate relationships, get specialized knowledge, grow ties to your local community, and have a record of working on political and civic issues you care about (which means you should do that work by yourself before there’s any capital reward in sight).

So what is the best way to increase political capital in New York City? You shouldn’t assume any hard limits here, but one thing most people should do is join a civic organization of some kind. Whether a corporate board, a parks volunteer group, a community board, or whatever—you should join something.

Once you are a regular member of one of these groups, you will quickly see that it’s connected to many other groups around the city, that all of these people know each other, and that it’s a smaller world than you thought. You’ll find that many people are far fewer degrees of separation away than you thought. You will gain the scaled social access of an institution for yourself, rather than having to build it out node by node from scratch.

💡 Joining something and actively participating for ~three months tends to cause the most lightbulb moments in my experience (“Oh, I see how I could talk to various people and make something happen!”).

Participate online in a way that works for you

Caveat emptor.

The internet remains almost undefeated for forging new ties, getting invitations to new places, and spreading your ideas. But many people are afraid to meaningfully participate in this arena, and their models for “being political on the internet” are usually terrible.

But if you go through my class, you’ll meet a ton of people who have a great, productive time doing civics on the internet. There are good methodologies you can learn. You don’t have to have a bad time.

Further: notice that I said “participate online.” I didn’t say “use social media.” The latter is a subset of the former. You can write long-form essays, you can send people emails telling them what you think of their work, you can DM them on LinkedIn (which I love) to get a coffee, you can make a quiz and share it, you can curate art—there is no functional ceiling to options.

An online presence also weaves in wonderfully with an offline record of joining and participating in person. These strategies are greater than the sum of their parts.

Keep the beginner’s mind, and stay curious

You will learn a lot in the class, but there is a whole world of things left to learn.

There is no such thing as “being done” with learning about government and law.

And the more you learn, the more possibilities occur to you.

Also: don’t fall into the social trap of “being the person who knows about politics.” This person has an opinion on everything, and is often confident. But, as you will viscerally appreciate after completing the class, most of these people don’t actually know much of anything—but they’ve tied “knowing about politics” to their core identity stack, and have lost the ability to say “I don’t know.” This fatal wound cauterizes their ability to keep learning.

Extend your time horizons

Many people want to have a larger effect on the civic realm than their current level of political capital can afford, and they want it faster than circumstances permit. It’s useful to state, out loud, what you want to achieve. See if it’s reasonable, and war game it out with me or another MNY graduate.

You will find no greater cheerleader of people who think they can go further and faster than the status quo than me—it’s definitely possible. But you have to have a good theory of the case and work at it.

And many of the subcomponents to effective civic action in New York City themselves must be cultivated over time—like an online audience. Do you want to be respected for your ideas and policy proposals? Do you want people to come to you as an expert? Then you should expect to earn their esteem over time as you regularly publish good, thoughtful work. It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise—although that is the strategy that many meme-based accounts use. I’m not against making memes, but they can’t replace deep, regular work in many ways.

Explore, let knowledge and experience compound

Politics and government cannot be learned just from books or classes. You have to do things in the political system. It contains so much dark matter that either isn’t visible from the outside, or only psychologically lands with you once you have personal experience of it.

And you should keep interacting with the system (remember to join something!) over time, increasing your knowledge, and letting the two build on each other. Your view of the system will evolve over time. The Foundations of New York City is only an intensive introduction; it’s up to you to take your good foundational knowledge and go forth to build something on it.

Also, breathe. Take a beat. Chill. New York City wasn’t built in a day, and your civic career won’t be either. Don’t try to force it. Let it unfold.

Politicians are made the same way that great art is. Great art is the product of someone who has worked over a long time to hone their craft. But politicians are self-forged, both art and artist. Let yourself embrace the good art of politics.

Have a good time

If your political and civic work isn’t getting you status from good people, interesting attention from interesting people, invitations to fun events, maybe even jobs and money—that’s a problem. It means your work will be harder to sustain, especially at the beginning when you know the least.

Instead of primarily optimizing for a pace of work, most people would be better off optimizing for having a good time, since that dictates whether they will actually continue with civic work (although there are some who love the grit and hard work primarily, bless them).

Thankfully, having a good time and robust civic achievement can go hand in hand, and they get easier to pair over time.

Just like having a “gym friend” helps you go to the gym more, having a “politics/civics” friend helps you do those things more. To wit:

I will help. Keep up with MNY after finishing class

MNY puts on a ton of events, and those will only increase going forward. You can go with me to City Council hearings, administrative rule hearings, campaign events, the city archives, criminal court, and more. You can see the government in operation, and meet its components (who are just people).

And doing in the political arena is way more fun when you do it with people you know and like—it is perhaps the only sustainable way for most people. Don’t try to do it by yourself if you don’t have to!

You can also learn the practical skills of civic engagement, like reading great books, writing, throwing successful community events, and posting online.

My general attitude toward helping people become great civic actors for New York City is: it’s easiest to help people who help themselves. If you take the class, you want to keep going, and you demonstrate the willingness and can-do spirit of an autonomous civic actor, it’s easier to work together.

Excelsior.