Essay Submission from Alexia Conine
The first time I understood what "global engagement" actually meant wasn't in a classroom or on the Senate floor. It was on a train platform, not far from my back door, on a night cold enough that your breath hung in the air. We were handing out supplies to families, bused from Texas, who had just arrived from countries I had only read about. I remember one family clearly — standing in the freezing cold in Crocs, no coats, looking around – no idea where they had landed. What I had always thought of as a distant issue was suddenly right in front of me, shivering. That moment changed how I see the Midwest. It's not separate from the world's hardest problems; it's often where they arrive first.
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, I believe the Midwest will play an important role in shaping how this country engages with the world - not by making grand gestures from a distance, but by doing what it has always done: staying close to real people, learning from what's happening on the ground, and turning those lessons into something useful. Growing up near Chicago, I've seen firsthand how this works. Chicago isn't just a regional city, it's a hub for international trade, business, and travel, a place where the rest of the world passes through constantly. In 2024, Illinois exported a record $80.8 billion in goods, making it the fifth largest state exporter in the country — numbers that reflect how connected the Midwest is to the rest of the world (U.S. Trade Representative).
But the economics isn’t what stuck with me - what stuck with me was the migrant crisis, and what it looked like on a local level. The families arriving in Chicago weren't part of a policy debate, they were people trying to figure out where they were going to sleep that night. That experience didn't give me answers about immigration. What it gave me was something more difficult to articulate and more lasting: the understanding that engaging with the world isn't only about diplomacy; it's about what communities do when global challenges show up on your front door.
I've seen that same thing in smaller moments, too. When I started organizing period poverty drives for Chicago high schools, it felt like a local effort. Then I started learning how lack of access to menstrual products affects millions of women worldwide. Something that felt neighborhood-sized was actually part of a global story. That happens a lot in the Midwest, I've noticed. You start local and realize, somewhere along the way, that you've been touching something much larger the whole time.
This spring, serving as a Senate Page put me in a different kind of room. Working on the Senate floor, watching national decisions take shape, I kept thinking about the train platform. The issues being debated - immigration, economic policy – no longer abstract. I had already seen what they looked like in real life. I thought about the family on the platform, and whether anyone in that room had. I thought about how different those conversations might be if more people had. That's what the Midwest gives people who grow up here: a reference point. A way of understanding that policy isn't separate from people.
Looking ahead, I think that's one of the Midwest's most underrated strengths - the way it shapes how people think. Through Political Discussion Club, Students Demand Action, and serving as junior class president, I've learned that global engagement starts long before anyone gets near a Senate floor. It starts with being willing to listen to someone whose experience is different from your own and letting that actually change how you see things. The Midwest has a way of making that feel less like a lesson and more like a way of life.
The challenges ahead for the United States - economic inequality, migration, affordable housing, an economic shift toward tech and finance - aren't uniquely American problems; they're global ones. And many of them are already being worked on in Midwest communities, by regular people.
What I took from that night on the train platform is something I keep coming back to: global engagement doesn't start at the top. It starts in places where people show up and respond to what's right in front of them, even without all the answers. That capacity to stay close to the problem and respond with what you have, is something the Midwest understands quietly and demonstrates consistently. As the United States looks toward its next 250 years, I believe that solving problems at the local level will continue to ripple out and bring solutions to broader global issues.
