A typical gap year might include traveling the globe, but not many teens aim to work towards altering global politics or redefining the term activist after high school. However, not many teens are Carter Yost. As an organizing intern for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign and an advocate for Planned Parenthood, mental health awareness, climate change policy, and the arts, Carter has made strides in just a few short months. His activism work has been a priority throughout high school: engaging in campaign work since the age of 16, co-founding and acting as the marketing director for the youth nonprofit Silicon Prairie Theatre Company, participating in Young Democrats, and serving as the State President of the Nebraska Student Council Association. After bonding over our similar Midwestern roots, I interviewed Carter about his views on political polarity and why bipartisanship is the answer.
Tell me about your gap year so far and what drew you to support Pete Buttigieg...
My gap year has been equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. What’s wild to me is that, a year ago, it really was not in the cards. But it was around the same time we were experiencing some financial turbulence with college tuition that I heard Pete Buttigieg speak. With his rolled-up sleeves and refreshing optimism, he struck me as a reflection of everything I feel we need: calm, intelligent, young, and, importantly, a pragmatic and progressive democrat. What’s crazy is that seemingly every time Pete speaks, I never have to perform some mental gymnastics to get myself to agree with him. That’s pretty uncommon in my experience. I can just repeat verbatim his quote and I’m reciting both his rhetoric but
also my beliefs.
I had relatively limited campaign experience but pretty extensive activism and communications experience. So I sent in an application and moved to Iowa around three weeks later. I enjoyed it, partly because the message really resonates with people, and partly because it felt like I was a part of something so much bigger than myself. It is just so wonderfully wholesome and energizing when you can tell someone something they've been waiting to hear and see their positive emotional reaction; That is the whole reason why you do this kind of thing.
So, I'm taking a year and then returning back to school. It is great because I think that knowing that actually motivates me more to put my head down and do good work, rather than feeling a need to get my name out there. The whole goal of campaign work versus administrative work, or any other nonprofit work, is with the nonprofit the program already exists, and you're just trying to get people to understand why they should support it, but with a campaign you're actually asking them to not only care, but to perform an action for you. Voting is this deeply optimistic thing, and sort of a combative thing, to say “I
believe in this so steadfastly that I need to go and tell other people that, too.” The first internship I was with ended, so I had downtime before going back to the campaign. I ended up returning to Lincoln, Nebraska - my hometown - and joining a Planned Parenthood board, organizing the Nebraska Climate Strike, and help with advocacy and theater work. Honestly, it was a welcome change of pace. Not so much a respite as much a temporary gear change, but it’s been nice.
What are your goals for the nation if a Democrat resides in office after the 2020 election?
I think the biggest problem we have right now is this attitude of if ‘I disagree with you, then I
have to dislike you.’ That, to me, feels like a nurture over nature sort of problem. We've been institutionalized to generate hatred for someone just because they stand somewhere differently than we do or stand on a different hilltop and see the world a little differently.
I think the biggest thing we need to fight for is empathy and cooperation, or at least an attitude to say, let's sit down. That's my goal. We get lost on the fundamentals, but how are you supposed to create a solution if you can't agree on what the problem is in the first place. I want to see change culturally, to get people to talk with one another and to understand ‘I am not the enemy because I am different.’ I know that sounds heavily democratic and I want to echo we, being the democratic party, are not free of error. I mean, cancel culture is equally as problematic for those on the left side of the aisle. When we say “You voted for them?!” with this sense of disdain or disappointment, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Now, I don’t think we need to go back to any other level of cooperation or empathy we’ve
previously had, we actually need something further and greater, which is why we can't return to the past. We can't be ‘great again’, we just have to be greater than we've ever been. The way that happens is cooperation and willingness to admit that you are not always right. Willingness to say, okay, even if you think I'm wrong, I’m going to try really hard to tell you why I don't think I am, but I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong just because you're different. We've gotten to a great place of diversity at face value and now what we need to reconcile with is our unwillingness to accept diversity of input or diversity of thought. Now that we've addressed it as a shockingly significant problem within our country and with the
world, the way that we fix it is really simple: It's just continuing to storytell. Go beyond the standard talking points and say here';s why it matters to me, this is more than an acronym, or a logo. Young people are uniquely suited to do that really well, young people are the ones who still, to some extent, believe that they have the skills to fight change. It is much easier to hate a group or hate in the abstract. This is a quote from Pete's book: “It's much harder to be hateful to someone that you know personally, so the more that we can create personal relations and personal stories with one another, the more likely we are to understand why I'm coming from where I am.” I think those are sort of the things that I want to see addressed.
If that doesn't change, we can't actually address climate change, infrastructure, the political system, or gun control if we refuse to fix the central problem, which is total dissonance and dissonance leading to disdain.
With Nebraska historically voting Republican in midterm and presidential elections, what advice would you give to Democratic activists who live in red or swing states?
The biggest thing we can be doing, especially as young activists, is getting other people to buy in. There is this real sense of we're locked in either hyper partisanship or total political apathy. Those are your two options: you either don't really care, my parents believe this so I guess I believe that, too, or I'm gonna fight with you always.
Bridge building is what activism should be. So my biggest advice for young people and it's definitely true in the Midwest, but I think it's true pretty much wherever you are, is don't buy into a narrative that you don't agree with. There is no reason that you have to. It's slightly defeatist to just say, “Well, I guess that's the way it is.” This is true with climate change, we have a lot of people who totally understand the impending terrible nature of it all, but are locked in this fear paralysis of feeling like there is nothing they can do about it personally.
All of activism is that same thing: it's bridge building. If you don't believe in something, there's no reason you have to agree with that. The other thing is, there's real power in tenacity, especially as a young person. There’s this widespread sense of adults saying, your future is somewhere else. So grow up and then scatter. We send all the young Democrats to the coast and then we're shocked when Nebraska votes red. It's all because we just accept narratives the way that they are, rather than assembling a coalition of people who agree with you or people who don't, people who don't agree with you but at least are willing
to have a conversation and continue to tell your story and redefine the larger narrative.
The nitty-gritty answer is you have to keep fighting, but you don't need to see it as a war. Powerful activism is not synonymous with cancel culture. Building powerful activism is synonymous with bipartisanship in a weird way. I know cooperation can sometimes be seen as complacency, but we have to work together. Since when is that not productive? That's part of why I like Pete's message and part of why I like theater, it is all about community creation and community through this common thread of a narrative.
In relation to your Tedx Talk: “What, Now?!” The Procrastinator’s Problem and your self-proclaimed title as a “Procrasta-master,” how did you maintain a balance between academics, activism/political work, and extracurriculars such as theater during high school?
Well, this is not advice as much as what was personally true. My personal mentality was if I'm super busy, I actually won't have time to put anything off. If I just consume myself in work, there's absolutely no way that I can procrastinate. It's also because I really tried to actively pursue things I cared about. We're much more likely to do things well if we're personally inclined for it to go well. I did a lot of things I really care about: mental health advocacy, I was state president of the Nebraska Student Council Association, and involved in theater.
But none of that felt like a chore, because I enjoyed it. I hate the idea of if you love what you do, you'll never work. That's not true. Sometimes it sucks and sometimes it's hard and I can't pretend that every single moment in an activist’s life is rewarding. Sometimes you will actually even have your big moments that are bad, I mean it's just the nature of that, it can't always be great. But when it is great it totally makes
up for whatever lost time or disbelief you gain earlier. It's certainly emotionally rewarding to see other people do better. I think I have a tendency to throw myself into my work because I care about it, then it makes it a lot easier to do it well.
I have used the term “care about it” probably 45 times today, but I think it's because, fundamentally what I do, what I enjoy, and what I work towards is to get more people to care and invite people to an energetic, inclusive, and forward-looking world view.
I did a lot of stuff that I cared about and when I wasn't involved in something I cared about, I think it showed because the quality of work was significantly worse. I also found from a young age that I really was empowered by being a presenter. I found that equally or perhaps more important than the person in the spotlight is actually the person making sure that the spotlight is turned on and pointed at the right
people. That's what activism is, you can't always be and you shouldn't always be the one with the microphone.
How has your political activism intersected with arts advocacy?
I think the point where my passions and talents collide with one another is any situation in which the best way to make an argument is through storytelling. I consider myself, more than anything, someone who is really good at empowering and energizing other people through narrative. There is this deeply pathos thing to all of the work that I do. Now, not to say there isn’t a logical side to why I believe what I do, but there is a deeply human, deeply emotional component, both in theater and in politics. The whole goal of
art, fundamentally, and some might disagree with this, is to evoke an emotional reaction, to make someone feel something whether that's laughter or to feel energized.
Politics has the same potential, and we've really lost it, or we've directed it in an unhealthy way, which is to say the emotional goal is self serving, rather than my idea of advocacy, which is actually to enable other people to then go and advocate for themselves.
There is a crappy job of explaining the why behind anything both within artists and with politicians where if you don't feel what I feel it is because you don't understand. It's not because I told my story wrong, it's because you don't get it and that is so problematic. The whole goal of activism is inclusivity and optimism.
I think the intersection is storytelling, partly because I would consider myself an okay writer and an okay public speaker, but it's also because I am relatively in tune with my emotions and both of these things, both politics and performing, require you to care and ask other people to care. A really good play should invite you to have the same emotions people on stage do and a really good candidate should do the exact
same thing, which is to invite you to care more and to say I believe in it. So that's what I'm starting to do is to get other people to understand why I care and to get them to do the same.
What does daily life in and out of the campaign office look like?
It’s funny to me because, honestly, I actually slowed down a little bit after I graduated from high school. The majority of my high school days were probably 14 hours long before I got home, whereas an average workday with the campaign is around 8 to 10. During the day to day as a campaign staffer or an activist, I try and get all of my information by reading everything I possibly can about what happened during the day, mostly covered by larger media, including Iowa-specific news, and Twitter. In the
morning, I will check all of the late night monologues. A lot of people understand the world through a more comedic lens, which personally I love. I am all for comedic political commentary. I think it gets people to loosen up and be more cooperative, but it also doesn't always bring out the whole story. In a simple way, the majority of the job is creating an event and then getting people to go to the event. Organizing is about laying the groundwork, it's about enabling other people to become a part of this
community and a part of this campaign. I want to help out with that, so creating events like a house party is important. If the candidate is in town, your timetable speeds up dramatically and your level of anxiety goes through the roof because you're trying to get things to happen.
Otherwise, it's all about continuing to spread the message with whoever will listen, whether that's going to a farmers market with a clipboard, talking to people there, or making phone calls. I would do some info graphic design work to help explain these really complex 17-inch long, 17-page long policies through a little social media infographic on my Instagram story: six bullet points to try and condense policy.
It's all about telling people here's why I believe what I do. It's super fulfilling. It's so cool to get other people to say, “I didn't even think of that before.” It is really encouraging and a strong reminder of why I do what I do when I get a positive emotional reaction from people, in campaigns, art, and advocacy. Art does that, when you're trying to cause this reaction it might reshift their worldview. I keep drawing these lines between politics and performance art, but rightfully so because the correlation we see is a
really negative one and I don't think that has to be the case.
Is there anything else you would like to add about activism and getting involved?
If you see something and you dislike it, then get involved, because there's no reason you have to be a future leader you could actually be a leader right now. We don't need to view politics as something that we need to win. I don't think that there is winning, there is just progress. The goal of politics should be to do better for others, not to do better than your opponent. Sometimes there are bad days where it feels like progress has either been halted or regressed. If anything I think that should promote further tenacity rather than defeatism. I think at a core level it is so important that we continue to talk with one another. I know that that sounds a lot more morally superior than I mean it to because I am totally not without fault on any given one of these issues. I am not without my own errors of any sort. But, I've been able to continue to work and try to amend them forward. It is easy to think this is bad and everything's broken, but if we can fix one thing we've still fixed something. That's important and we lose that message a lot, which is that progress in any way, is actually still a step forward.
Words by Olivia Hicks