While national politics is a miserable spectacle most days, the place that most needs your attention is your city.

On January 24, Paul Edwards at the Wheatley Institute at BYU held an interview with Princeton Professors, Robby George and Cornell West. George and West are good friends. They are also on different sides of the political spectrum. You can read about the remarkable event and watch the video here.

I cared about the issue of poverty, but volunteering in the community made me care about the people experiencing poverty. And at this personal scale, I could understand their experiences, find out how public policy actually affected them, and make a real difference in their lives and our community.

Inspired by a recent Engage workshop, Aimee Stewart, published this recent LTE about her family’s experience during an earlier era of immigration fear directed at Japanese Americans. This appeared in the Deseret News on February 15, 2025 and is here reposted with permission of the author.

I've stood on the sidelines of political and public debate all of my adult life because I convinced myself that's what a good journalist does. In my case, it's also been a cop out. My work, however, has been dedicated to helping others "better citizens, kinder neighbors and more effective advocates." Finally, I decided to take my own advice.

Parties are not for identity, nor are they ends in themselves. They are tools, and they are most effective when more people, acting out of loyalty to principle rather than to ideology, get more involved, not less.

America is in crisis over its identity. Again. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last. Principled citizen engagement, motivated by a desire to heal our communities, is necessary to resolve the crisis and sustain the nation over time.

Our society asks hard things of us at this moment. I cling to my faith because faith helps me to do hard things.

Welcome to Engage: A Forum for Civic Renewal! We are a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit organized in response to a crisis we feel is happening in our society. The crisis was long in coming and will be long in resolving. We aim to play the long game. As we see it, the crisis is threefold.