I'm 25 years old.

I am an ex-Republican and now Democrat.

- Hi, my name is Kat.

I'm 27 years old

And I am an ex-Democrat,

who now identifies as an Independent,

with more conservative leanings.

(soft music)

- Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Northern Indiana, on the outskirts of a city,

I was basically in Elkhart, Indiana.

30 minutes away from the Amish, from Shipshewana.

My house was at the end of cornfield,

in the middle of the woods,

so I grew up in a small town in the Midwest.

- So I grew up an island north of Seattle,

called Whidbey Island.

Yeah, it was super small,

our main town, Langley, is about two streets.

And I grew up without television,

so I have a little bit different background.

I grew up with lots of nature and the radio station.

When did you first learn what politics were?

- I think I first learned about politics

from my dad when I was like six or seven years old,

because he would make jokes.

He would make like, the little one line, punch line jokes,

about other political parties.

And I started learning like, oh, this will be funny,

and that's side's bad, and this side's good.

Like, my dad would never say it that plainly,

but you could tell from reading between the lines.

I actually remember being like,

maybe eight years old and 9/11 had just happened,

and I was driving with my mom,

we were stopping off at a fast food place,

and we walk in, and there was a news reporter there.

And they were like, "How do you feel about this?"

And I remember smiling,

'cause my dad had made a joke about Cuba.

And I was like, "Yeah, I think it's good

"that the president is going to invade Iraq.

"I think he should do Cuba next."

'Cause I thought it would be funny,

and I had no idea, I was like eight years old.

And so of course, they put my picture and that quote,

and the fact that I was eight years old,

on the front page of our local newspaper.

- So when I was younger, I really enjoyed

going up into my grandmother's attic

and totally digging through all of her artifacts.

Her pins, buttons, travel items, all sorts of things.

I noticed there was a lot

of conservative buttons, paraphernalia.

And it got me thinking,

how could my loving, wonderful, artistic grandmother,

be such a conservative supporter?

And on an island half-full of hippies,

it feels like you would be absolutely alienated

if you were conservative.

It was that little inkling when I was younger,

that now has blossomed into what I know now.

Which is that, there's something very different

then what we've been told.

- What was your political affiliation growing up?

My political affiliation growing up

was completely right-wing conservative.

I would say up until the age of 12, I had this strong...

I felt like my identity was like,

Christian, home-schooled, in Indiana.

I remember slapping campaign stickers

for the McCain-Palin election, all over my notebooks.

And just posting about it on Facebook.

Everyone around me where I was growing up,

was right-leaning.

Whether that be, hardcore conservative

or Republican libertarian.

That was the spectrum.

- So I was surrounded by Democrats,

my family was not too active,

so we were all kind of like, in that middle zone,

where you think everyone's a Democrat.

Like, that's the right thing to be,

and we're fed all these things by the media

about Republicans, so it feels not cool to be that way.

What made you change your mind?

- I think it took a few years.

I think that I changed my mind through teenage years

into early adulthood.

I think it really took growing up

and seeing other parts of the world,

maturing, getting out of my bubble, college moving.

But I think I remember the biggest thing

that took me out of my bubble,

and it was more so like, a moral standpoint.

Is that I started doing musical theater

around age 12 or 13.

And that started exposing me to

a broader sense of the community.

And I remember I had tons of friends who were gay, LGBTQIA.

It must have been the first Obama election

into the second election,

that people kept talking about marriage.

Marriage and civil rights with LGBT,

and I remember that being such a hot topic,

and people around me in the community,

were saying stuff like,

"Well, you can have a union, but you can't have a marriage."

And I was like, wait.

Even being like 16, I'm like,

that is the definition of being prejudice.

The political landscape around that time

with marriage equality and LGBT,

with a lot of laws being passed from the other side,

to suppress it, really, really, really pushed me

into a different direction and a different path.

- In the first election that I got to be a part of

as a voter, I really got to think about politics

for the first time.

So this was around the time when Facebook

was starting to really take off,

and I was seeing a lot of libertarian forums,

and different perspectives,

and I wondered, am I an anarchist?

Why do I feel like what's going politically

with the Democrats is not making enough change?

Why do I feel like there's a discordance there?

And so I started to explore more groups,

and I discovered the Green Party.

Which was a little bit anarchist and a little bit pro Earth,

and then a little bit of worker's rights,

which is the main thing that I'm not supporting

is the working class.

The first time I got to vote,

I voted for Jill Stein as a Green Party candidate,

when it was Mitt Romney versus Obama,

and I got a lot of flack for it,

like why would you vote Green Party?

What is your vote gonna do?

But I truly believe and I still believe

that your vote needs to be a vote of conscience.

- What does your family think about your beliefs?

My family definitely knows.

I would say take those angsty teen years,

when I was 17 or 18 and then when I was like,

I'm gonna break free from Amish town.

I definitely used that as a way

to poke and jab at my parents.

I would love to sit down with my family

and have a more mature, older conversation,

but being in my younger years,

I feel like, I've directly been told things like,

oh, I remember when I went to college

and thought I was a liberal too,

and then I grew up and I learned.

And it's like, it's so demeaning.

I think the older I get, and the more healed I get myself,

that I realize a lot of people's reflectiona

are projections of their own understanding.

- In the beginning, my family has been kind of

individualistic when it comes to politics.

Like, it's your personal matter,

we don't really wanna talk about it too much,

because it does get a little heated.

I think even on Facebook,

when I would make a lot of political posts,

I would have family members, who I love very dearly,

reach out to me and say,

are you sure you wanna talk about this?

And that's when I'm like,

should I even be treading on people's toes?

Do I wanna make my family feel like,

maybe I don't agree with them.

But yeah, overtime the shift has been

from me being able to express how I feel,

to how something will benefit all of us,

and so I think that's helped the conversation,

is how I bring it about as well.

I'm trying not to be so divisive.

I'm not so pointed.

I'm trying to be like, okay, I understand

where you're coming and that together

we can get to the same destination.

What does your party stand for?

- My party,

I feel like,

is going through an identity crisis.

The party has folded in on itself.

So I feel like, what I define as my party for Democrats,

is a little up in the air.

Like, media-wise the want me to say

it's like, caring, more sociologically involved,

and progressive, but at the same time,

I haven't seen it be.

Ideally, my party would stand for independence

and an entity that is not enchained

by another entity above them.

Ideally, my party would not be paid off by billionaires,

paid off by world banks, paid off by other countries,

paid off by lobbyists and corporations.

- Where I fall in the spectrum between

libertarian, conservative, and justice Democrat,

social Democrat, whatever you wanna call it,

is absolutely liberty.

It's absolutely patriotism.

It's healthcare, it's clean water, it's clean flood.

It's these basic, basic rights,

and then it's looking back at natural law

in our constitution and going back to the foundation.

So I feel like that structure can fit

into several different parties,

it's ultimately who is the party benefiting?

Is it the corporations or is it the people?

And so I'm all about the people

and any party is for the people,

the working class people, and our rich fellows,

all of the people.

'Cause all of the people deserve to have equal benefit

from the government's labor.

- What do you think is the biggest

misconception about your political party?

I would say the biggest misconception about Democrats,

is a lot of misconceptions that are made to

perpetuate stereotypes.

Every single person is like, feel good, do-gooder,

that just loves to pat their own back and cry in a corner.

That's like, such a stereotype for Democrats.

To me, that's not what I've experienced.

I've experienced a lot of...

It's almost like Democrats have been associated

with being feminine, so it's like they're too soft,

they're too emotional.

There can be extreme courage within softness,

and people don't get that.

- The main fear I have as being more conservative now,

is being mistaken as a racist,

as a anti-human,

as a non-intelligent being.

I've heard all sorts of things about conservatives.

It's fascinating to hear how both sides

have a very warped perspective of the other,

by dehumanizing anyone, it just hurts yourself.

Like, ultimately, our end goal is unity,

and the more sit around and try to paint the other person

as an animal, the longer it's gonna take

to get to where we need to go.

And you look back in history,

and all the terrible things that have happened,

they've used dehumanizing tactics

to make people feel like they have a certain

supremacy and a privilege to believe what they do.

So we've got a great painted landscape of division,

because of the media thinking that one side is evil.

What is one thing you would change