Idea: An accelerator to help ambitious optimists get into activism and politics.
Imagine a campus that looks more like a campground. Many small cabins organized in circles around larger common areas, with the center of campus anchored by a large quad with one large building on each end, a dining room for 100+, and a library with lots of tables too. This institution doesn’t have classes, but famous guests do often give talks during dinners. Most of the work is done in small cooperative groups, organized by mission, each taking specific actions in activism and politics.
This is my 10-year vision for the Positive Politics Accelerator. Our mission is to help as many people as possible get into activism and politics. Think Y Combinator for Politics. As I wrote about in my book Positive Politics, these people will be ambitious optimists, each dedicated to solving the world’s biggest problems through their work.
So what’s the 1-year vision? How do we get from here to there? That’s what I’m building now. Imagine a small retreat this summer at an rental home with a few bedrooms, in nature near water with a trail for long walks. 6-12 ambitious optimists living together for 3-7 days, each sprinting towards a specific mission in activism and/or politics. We’re doing this retreat for real this summer!
Our Summer 2026 retreat will be the MVP for the Positive Politics Accelerator. We will all work together on each idea and pressure test your paths to impact. I will also invite special guests who will help you turn your ideas into bills, pilots, and even constitutional amendments. If you’ve always wanted to get into activism or politics, but don’t where to start, this retreat is for you!
The goal of this retreat is to prove can make political progress in days, not decades. Each win by our fellows reinforces the idea that politics is so much more than elections. By focusing on direct activism instead of just electoral politics, we can change laws and minds faster and help encourage the next generation of ambitious optimists to join us. The Positive Politics Accelerator will be a new front door into politics!
This accelerator takes its inspiration from the first university in Western history, The Academy, founded by Plato in 387 BC. Academy students like Aristotle learned philosophy, political science, history, biology, math, and more here, because Plato believed that future leaders should be well rounded and educated, so we could have more philosopher kings and fewer tyrants. Our Accelerator will be the modern Academy.
Cost should not be a barrier to entry for anyone, so I’m already talking with potential donors to fund scholarships for our retreats and accelerator. Next, we’ll want to create endowments to consistently and sustainably fund future classes. And once we prove this model can scale to hundreds of fellows per year, our nonprofit should raise a fund to buy an old college or retreat center and transform it into the Positive Politics campus of our dreams!
This post is a work in progress. To apply, go to positivepolitics.org/apply!