A hope for democracy

I am rounding out my first term in the Montana Legislature and have spent the past year thinking about hope: where we find hope, how we create it, what is both feeding and eroding it, and the future of hope within our democratic institutions. I am writing to share one of the conversations on hope I’ve been having with myself.

I recently returned from a legislative leadership academy with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers from across the West. We gathered to learn about the history of state legislatures, how to negotiate and build consensus, communicate effectively and find common gr...