Piper Hendricks: 26 Lessons for 2026 - Part 1
Newsletter 414 - January 12, 2026
Piper Hendricks is the CEO of Stories Change Power. She “has a passion for the power of stories, a record of developing innovative strategies, and an eye for content that moves people to action. Two themes span her nontraditional career path: justice and storytelling. In a variety of formats, she’s employed storytelling to inspire action; whether in the courtroom, on the silver screen, or on Capitol Hill. She champions change to promote opportunity across contexts.”
In December, Piper posted a two-part article on her blog “26 Lessons for 2026,” drawing from what she learned from the National Conference on Citizenship ( NCoC), the ListenFirst Coalition’s Bridging Summit, and ComNet (the Communications Network’s annual gathering), among other meetings she attended last fall.
The themes she pulled out resonated with many of the themes we have been writing about here, but added to what we have been saying about why these themes (particularly individual agency and the need for widespread involvement/action) are so important. We asked Piper if we could share her list here, and she agreed. We did have to abridge her commentary somewhat to fit our format, and have added a few comments highlighting connections between her work and ours. For her full commentary on each of her 26 lessons, go to her original posts, Lessons: Part 1 and Lessons: Part 2.
Piper Hendricks’ Lessons:
Lesson 1: Know Your Own Power: We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.
In moments of uncertainty, it can be tempting to look outward for a savior – a brilliant leader, a rock-solid institution, or your favored political party. When it comes to the future of the United States, that’s a mistake.
Whether you call it a constitutional republic or a democracy, our real strength has never come from the top. It comes from ordinary people when we decide that our values, our voices, and our actions matter. However small those may seem, we have power.
After all, our form of government is not self-executing; it relies on millions of us choosing to stay informed, speak up, and act, even when it feels inconvenient or unpopular. (See #4.) …
When we remember our own agency, our perspective shifts: we stop feeling like unbuckled passengers in a runaway political moment and start acting like the authors of our shared future that we are.
[As an example of how this has been done in the past, Piper linked to David Eisner’s essay that we published earlier this fall.]
Beyond Intractability Connections. This lesson pulls together several themes we have been writing about often. One is the notion that “politics” and “democracy” are not “spectator sports.” Rather, we all have the responsibility to participate in our own governance. Too many people see politics as a sport — we watch from afar and root for the home team against the opponents — the enemy. If democracy is to work, we have to change this story from being a spectator in a competitive power-over contest to being participants in power-with community building in which we all gain power by working together.
2. Identity Shift: What It Means To Be A “Citizen”
The shift we need is more than just perspective; it’s our very identity. Alongside the myriad identities we hold – brother, niece, grandparent, trucker, nurse, artist, Coloradan, Minnesotan, Hispanic, Brazilian, Singaporean, Christian, Muslim, etc. – citizen should make our lists.
As Harry Boyte has warned, many have been lulled into seeing citizenship as a form of consumerism: citizens as passive recipients of services and benefits in the transactional marketplace of politics. Such impressions miss a world of opportunity, responsibility, and privilege.
If you hear “citizenship” as a legal status we hold, you’re not alone. It took me several months to broaden what I hear to include being a member of a nationwide community.
Today, I understand citizenship is a relationship — a reciprocal one — between each of us and the country we share.
Today, I hear “citizenship” as something we do.
Today, I hear “citizen” as an identity that can be a source of belonging, pride, and connection. …
The more we practice civic engagement and the more we “flex our civic muscle,” the more our identity will shift and we’ll experience ourselves as contributors to a shared stewardship — not spectators.
3. Being An Engaged Citizen Is More Than Voting
As Valerie Lemmie from the Kettering Foundation reminded us at NCoC, many mistakenly think being a citizen is only two things: voting and obeying laws. Thinking of completing your ballot as the only expression of civic power is like exercising once a year and assuming you’re fit. Similarly, not breaking laws is a low bar — the civic health equivalent of not having ice cream every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Given this shrunken view of citizenship, it’s no surprise much of our civic muscle has atrophied (especially when realities like dark money and gerrymandering hamstring our voting power).
But here’s good news: no matter our age or circumstances, we can build that muscle back. Citizenship is exercised daily, not annually. It is lived through community relationships, shared stewardship, and the ongoing work of strengthening our neighborhoods, communities, and country.
Mike Kenig and I recently detailed how to get started in this webinar.
Beyond Intractability Connections: We have other articles in this blog/newsletter about this broader concept of citizenship. See, for example, Daniel Stid’s article on Four Ways To Reframe Democracy in America and Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy talking about Better Together America.
4. Being An Engaged Citizen Takes Courage
Just like working other muscles, using your civic muscle isn’t always comfortable. In fact, being involved in your community or in public life can be incredibly uncomfortable. It’s easier not to find out what people in your community care about, not ask questions at a town meeting, not to learn more about local issues, not to correct a piece of misinformation in a group chat, and not to talk to people who disagree with you. And it’s certainly easier not to put together a citizens’ gathering when you know someone who has threatened violence is going to show up. …
When we use that word [courage], let’s be clear about two things:
Courage isn’t about being fearless, never feeling nervous, and always being certain. It’s about feeling the fear, nerves, and uncertainty and showing up anyway.
Courage isn’t just for superheroes. Yes, these are challenging times, but there is space – and need – for everyday people across the country to find the way to contribute their talent, time, and treasure to our shared future. (See #15--coming in the next post.)
5. Being An Engaged Citizen Also Involves Invisible Labor
If there’s a common thread through examples of engaged citizenship I’ve seen across the country, it’s how much happens behind the scenes. For every step forward, there are countless meetings. For every public meeting, there are months of coordination. For every 5-minute video, there’s a thousand fold in planning and editing. For every one-hour webinar, there’s twenty-fold in preparation and follow-up. … This isn’t the work that shows up in headlines or news clips, but it is the work that brings and holds communities together.
6. We Can’t Solve Problems Without Caring And Connection
What fuels all of this work – visible and invisible? Vinay Orekondy of Better Together America clearly answered that question at NCoC: We can’t solve problems if we aren’t talking to each other – and if we don’t care about each other.
Knowing our own power isn’t enough; we need to be connected to other people and care what happens to them. That may seem simple as you read this post, but consider how divisions across the country look – and sound – in practice. Odds are you’ve seen or heard examples of the 4Ds in comments, social posts, conversations, or elsewhere: dissociate; devalue; dehumanize; destroy.
This 4D slope begins with “they are different than us,” moves to “their difference makes them less valuable than us,” which leads to a profound lack of empathy, and ends with the ability to destroy others because, after all, they aren’t really human anyway.
I heard another form of this disconnect at the Principles First conference earlier this year, when a speaker wisely noted that rather than recognize the real problems people are facing, some treat those people as if they are the problem to be solved. That, too, is demoralizing and dehumanizing.
Surrounded by messages of “us v. them,” it can be tempting to sever connection to “them.” But that’s the civic equivalent of cutting off one of your own hands. Can you count the number of tasks in your day that would drastically change if you lost your left or right hand? When it comes to the civic body* as a whole, severing connection to “them” is severing the possibility of real, lasting solutions.
(*If you aren’t familiar with that phrase, or even if you think you are, you’ll want to hear Dr. Allison Ralph’s talk on the topic.)
Beyond Intractability Connections. This lesson aligns very well with our notion of “The Great Reframing.” As we wrote in Newsletter 385.
“[The] Great Reframing” is a fundamental change in the way we look at the problems we face.... Instead of assuming that our big social and political conflicts are between us (”the good guys”) and them (the “the bad guys”), the Great Reframing defines the primary problem as the destructive ways we engage with each other about all those other things. It [the primary problem] is the act of assuming “the other is to blame.” It is the act of humiliating the other, trying to delegitimize, disempower, and disenfranchise “the other.” Those actions, which often cause parallel toxic reactions on the other side, constitute the really big problem that is driving us further and further apart, and is preventing us from making any progress on the issues we care most about.
7. Political Activity ≠ Civic Health
… More political activity does not automatically translate to stronger communities. As being a citizen is about more than voting (#3), civic health is about more than political campaigns and elections. Civic health addresses what’s important in people’s daily lives, e.g., education, safety, belonging, and economic opportunity.
8. Federal Dysfunction Means We Must Look Local
To address those priorities, many look to “Uncle Sam” by default. But federal officials just set a record for the number of days the U.S. government shut down. Too many of those officials operate as if “community” means “my party.” Looking to Washington, D.C. to save us is like expecting five minutes a day with a broken shake weight to build all the muscle you’ll ever need.
Yes, there are glimmers of hope from D.C., but if we wait for Congress or the White House to model healthier behavior, we’ll be skeletons gathering dust on the civic couch.
Daniel Stid of the American Enterprise Institute offered a less grim perspective at NCoC, explaining that while our national attention fixates on Washington, our actual lives are decentralized: we’re governed and resourced at the state and local levels.
In other words, civic opportunity lives close to home, not far away.
Beyond Intractability Connections. We’ve heard the same thing from many, many people. See, for instance, in addition to our conversation with Vinay Orekondy and Caleb Christen mentioned above, our conversations with Martin Carcasson, Jacob Bornstein, and Daniel Stid’s article on Bottom Up Civic Renewal as well as his recent post in this newsletter: The Laboratories of Democracy Need New Infrastructure.
9. But Don’t Just Look Local, Take Action!
Looking local doesn’t mean transferring unrealistic expectations of federal officials to local officials instead. We need to collectively DIY – or DIO? DO IT OURSELVES.
We know citizen-led action is do-able because it’s already being done. People across the country know local problems are easier to see, local people are easier to reach, and local solutions… well, they aren’t always easy, but they are possible. And, like a capstan pulling in the anchor that’s been slowing us down, each turn gets easier as more people lean in and momentum grows. (Ditto for Braver Angels’ Civic Action-Engine!)
At the same time, that local focus doesn’t mean we ignore the rest of the country. This is the American experiment, remember? And like the 20 or so centers around the world that each had dozens of teams involved in the Human Genome Project, we need to stay connected across communities and states, share ideas, and build on each other’s successes.
We’re not choosing local over national; we’re starting where we have the most influence while seeing the bigger picture.
Beyond Intractability Connections: This is a perfect description of what we have in mind with “Massively Parallel Action:” massive numbers of people and organizations each working in different localities, on different issues, pursuing different objectives, but all generally sharing one goal: the strengthening of American (or other countries’) civic structures and engagement systems and problem-solving abilities. (This could be more simply described as “democracy,” but that has become a highly-contested and misunderstood term, so we are using these other practical manifestations of “democracy” instead.
10. Political Polarization – And The Industrial Outrage Complex – Is Harming All Of Us
Among the many reasons I appreciate Braver Angels’ approach is the reminder that political disagreement on its own isn’t a problem; as “Reds” in particular know, healthy democracies depend on healthy debate. What’s hurting us now is how:
We’ve become so outraged at “the other side” that we won’t even speak to “them;”
People have productized that outrage; and
So many of us regularly consume that toxic product. …
Conflict entrepreneurs generate a constant stream of content designed to make us feel threatened by people who think differently. This content chips away at trust, makes compromise look weak, and convinces us “others” aren’t human – i.e., it wants us to forget #6. As conflict entrepreneurs rake in the money, we pay the price in strained relationships with family, friends, and neighbors. Being constantly primed for battle takes a toll on us mentally and physically and leaves us less safe and less effective.
Recognizing how the outrage machine works is an important flexing of civic muscle. That recognition doesn’t magically fix polarization, but we know we’re being played, we can make more intentional choices about where we get our information and how we engage with each other.
Beyond Intractability Connections: We have been writing frequently, of course, about political polarization ever since we started this newsletter three years ago. But we just recently wrote about changing where and how we get our information in our recent newsletter entitled Adapting Information Feeds to Support the Great Reframing which corresponds, in large part, to what Piper is talking about here.
11. Communicators, Focus On Shared Interests And Values
A basic rule of communication is “know your audience.” Communications professionals may be tempted to interpret that as segmenting audiences based on age, geography, income, gender, or any other number of demographics. Further, many default to sharing messages that matter to their organization’s leadership or funders.
Instead, as Sofi Andorsky of Third Plateau clearly reminded attendees at our ComNet panel, to be effective communicators and bridge-builders, we must speak to people based on how they relate to the world, not based on our internal priorities or what funders expect. To reach people, we need to focus on what matters to them and find their shared interests and values. (Braver Angels does this in Braver Arts and Braver Faith, for example.)
12. Authentic Communication > Metrics
Another common mistake in this era of fragmented information consumption is assuming big numbers indicate meaningful impact. ..Many in the depolarization/pro-democracy field are failing to reach the general public. [Rather,] we’re talking to ourselves. While metrics like earned media and shares on social have their place, we need to prioritize connection. Connection is what actually makes a difference, and authenticity begets connection. That can look like letting go of some control and letting people carry your message in their own words.
13. Build A Big Tent/Don’t Go It Alone
Big problems can require big coalitions, which is why I’ve written before about a “big tent.”
Two things are crucial in constructing that tent: 1) define it by what we’re for, not what (or whom) we’re against; and 2) don’t ask people to leave our differences at the door – er, flap – of the tent. …
The point isn’t to iron out every disagreement or erase ideological diversity; it’s to create enough connection, trust, and coordination that people can move in the same general direction without needing perfect alignment.
Beyond Intractability Connections: As we said above, this very similar to what we call the “massively parallel approach.” That’s one of the reasons we liked Piper’s list so much. It fleshes out the notion of massively parallel action in a way that is different from ours, yet very much in sync.
Piper’s second set of 13 lessons will come in the next newsletter. Remember, to get the full version of each of these, go to: 26 Lessons for 2026 - Part I
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