Milan van Dam says Gen Z is the generation that is most empathetic toward their peers.
At just 17 years old, Milan van Dam is not only the youngest-ever member of the executive committee, but also the youngest member of the DNC.(Courtesy of Milan van Dam)
Of the Democratic National Committee’s 65 executive members, only one is a high school student. At just 17 years old, Milan van Dam is not only the youngest-ever member of the executive committee but also the youngest member of the DNC.
A student from Potomac, Maryland, van Dam says he’s spent nearly half of his life organizing for Democrats. As the child of immigrants, he found himself naturally inclined toward activism. He’s worked on multiple congressional campaigns and has served in leadership positions with the Maryland High School Democrats and Montgomery County Young Democrats. Now he’s the National Chair of High School Democrats of America.
The High School Democrats of America mobilizes more than 11,000 members across the country in some 500 local chapters. Ahead of the midterms, van Dam and his colleagues are registering voters, making thousands of calls, and passing resolutions within the DNC in an attempt to make young voices heard.
This is no easy task. Van Dam said the Democratic Party can often be out of touch about what issues get Gen Z to the ballot box—matters such as affordability, immigration, and corporate political influences. The party also must compete with Republicans’ increasingly effective ability to target youth voters. Right now, van Dam says, Democrats have taken young people for granted and not met them where they’re at. Long-term work must be done, he says, to invest in young people, in youth organizing, and to frame a vision that resonates with young people.
Van Dam sat down with The Nation to discuss his organizing, the state of the Democratic Party, and the issues that drive Gen Z.
Cate Latimer and Alice Scott: You’ve spent nearly half of your life organizing for Democrats—what prompted you to join this cause?
Milan van Dam: When I was around 12 years old, I got involved with educational policy and did advocacy with the school board. I started advocating for [interactive teaching screens] because I was like, some schools have these screens and some of them don’t. I just became obsessed with wanting the government to work for everybody equally, and I was like, “OK, here it doesn’t. That seems like a problem.” Eventually, I just wanted to know where decisions were made, and I wanted to go there and tell people how decisions should be made, which is like a bit of a bossy teenager kind of thing to do. But I think I just really cared about making sure young people were being represented.
CL&AS: You’re the youngest-ever member of the DNC’s executive committee. How did you get there?
MvD: I think I literally just found High School Dems through Googling “high school Democrats” and joined. I became the first-rank caucus chair, then chair of the Maryland High School Democrats, then I was national vice chair. Eventually I was made national chair.
The year before, we passed a DNC bylaw charter amendment to put the [High School Democrats] national chair on the DNC executive committee. So that was something that I lobbied for the year before as well, not knowing that that seat would go to me at all—that was not intentional.
When I see people who recognize the importance of young people and are willing to give us an opportunity, I’m the first person to take it. My number-one priority will always be to represent the people who don’t get represented. So that’s really where I would say my desire to serve in that role comes from.
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CL&AS: Do other DNC members take you seriously?
MvD: It’s definitely mixed. I would say that there’s a very solid group of DNC members, party leaders, [and] elected officials that have consistently stood by the side of the next generation, whether that’s high school Dems or just young people in general.
At the same time, I think that when people get to know young people, they realize that we’re about more than the subset of issues that we’re reduced to. One of the things that surprises people is that my generation cares about healthcare, housing, and affordability in general. We’re usually reduced to like, ‘OK, they only care about climate change.’
And, while we’re super passionate about that issue as well, I think young people recognize that when we go out into the world, we have no idea how we’re going to be able to buy a house. We see our peers snatched up off the streets by ICE. And I think Gen Z is one of the generations that is the most empathetic toward their peers and is the most willing to fight for people who may not necessarily have the same issues as themselves.
CL&AS: How do young Democrats in the DNC feel about the recent spate of Democratic socialist candidates winning primaries against more establishment Democrats? How has it divided people or brought them together within the DNC?
MvD: Primaries are meant to be contentious—I think that’s healthy. That’s where we work out our differences. I just think that after the primaries, you all get together, [and] you’re like, ‘the other side is way worse.’ It’s not even a question, right? So whether it’s a more moderate candidate that won, or a progressive candidate, or one that we supported or didn’t, we’re going to back Democrats, especially in swing districts, up and down the ballot. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running for school board or the US Senate.
Democrats overall are really putting forward this new vision for affordability and new vision for standing up for people’s rights. That, I think, is really powerful. And even if we disagree on 5 percent of issues, we agree on 95 percent of issues, right? That’s very different from our stances as compared to the Trump administration or the Republican candidates running across the country, especially in federal races.
CL&AS: Young voters shifted right in the 2024 election, with President Donald Trump winning a larger share of the vote from 18-29-year-olds. What do you think is behind this shift, and how are you working to encourage youth support for progressive candidates in the next election?
MvD: Republicans put a lot of effort and money into winning young voters, and had a long-term plan—literally a 10-year plan—leading up to 2024. That paid off in the election. You saw young people, young men especially, shift overwhelmingly to the right because Democrats really did not reach digital media spaces. The online domain has been taken over by, in a lot of cases, paid Republican influencers and operatives, who kind of just sell themselves to young people as someone who’s on their side, right?
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You’re never gonna win voters when you don’t show up to where voters are. For too long, the Democratic Party and Democrats in general took young people for granted because they did win the overwhelming majority of the population. But that obviously changed in 2024, and it’s been changing over time.
There’s a huge amount of dissatisfaction and apathy coming from young people about the current political system. That’s why we see people not want to show up to vote. I recently had a friend tell me that he unregistered to vote, which is insane to me…. I don’t think that’s a very inspiring way forward.
We need to make sure that politics seems like something everyone can be involved in. Because everybody buys groceries, everybody buys gas, everybody wants to buy a house one day, and get a job, right? What we’re really trying to show as an organization, is that at a young age, even if you can’t vote yet, you can have a voice in politics, and you can work towards building a system that actually works for you.
CL&AS: What’s one issue where you think the party’s current position is genuinely out of step with where most young voters are?
MvD: As much as I don’t want to brew divisions within the party, I do think that we’ve seen the issue of corporate PAC and dark money in our politics cropping up pretty consistently. People are really tired of politicians that are bought and sold by the exact same bodies that are buying and selling Republicans. The Democratic Party needs to take a stance on that.
I’ve pushed for that a lot at the DNC. I’ve adopted two DNC resolutions that are related to dark money and campaign finance reform, and whether it’s insider trading or corporate donors, I think that the general message is that young people are really sick of not being able to trust their politicians and not knowing if they are working for them or on behalf of moneyed interests. That should be a very logical step forward, especially for party entities which actually do have the power to regulate corporate and dark money in our politics.
A recent resolution that we passed at an August meeting was titled “The Resolution Condemning the Culture of Corruption Surrounding Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement and Calling on Democrats to Hold Ourselves to a Higher Standard.” So this one specifically called on more transparency and ethics regarding campaign finance. It called for legislative reforms to address insider trading, abuse of power, and the influence of special interests in our politics. I think the real idea here was to ensure that while we’re calling out the corruption of the other side, we’re also guaranteeing that the Democratic Party holds ourselves to the same standard, and that that’s something that we support unequivocally.
CL&AS: What figures do you see as emblematic of the Democratic Party’s future, and who are the leaders of the Democratic Party that get Gen Z excited?
MvD: I think that Bernie in 2016 changed a lot for people. He’s like the father of the progressive movement and many young people see him as their political grandfather. He’s just a cool guy, and someone that spoke and listened to young people. He’s obviously not young himself, but he knows how to listen, how to meet the moment, and how to match the energy in the room.
And that’s something that a lot of Democrats are trying to learn from ahead of their 2028 runs. But in a lot of cases, Democrats—whether it’s local candidates, members of Congress, or presidential hopefuls—are recognizing that they need to be able to listen and represent a new vision.
Cate LatimerCate Latimer is a 2026 Puffin student writing fellow for The Nation. She is a journalist and documentary filmmaker at Brown University, where she serves as the editor in chief of The Brown Daily Herald.
Alice ScottAlice Scott is a 2026 Puffin student writing fellow for The Nation. She studies journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has reported for PBS NewsHour and published in Texas Highways magazine and the Austin American-Statesman.