In 1973, Schoolhouse Rock! made its television debut, a series of short animated musical clips designed to educate children about science, history, mathematics, and civics that aired Saturday mornings on ABC. Arguably the most memorable Schoolhouse Rock! was “I’m Just a Bill,” which premiered on March 27, 1976, and tells the story of how a bill becomes a law.
Close to fifty years later, co-founders Brendan Burch and Wendy Willis of the nonprofit Now What?! discussed their organization’s efforts to use short animation clips to better educate the electorate at the Pittsburgh Indie Expo (PIE), held on March 15, 2026, at the Heinz History Center in the Steel City.
“There was a lot of frustration with the inability of the previous administration to communicate their accomplishments and wins,” Burch said of the seeds of the Now What?! “So I started calling around and learned to my horror that one in four Americans can’t name a single branch of the U.S. government. Ninety-two million people did not vote in the 2024 election. So basically a third of the country did not vote. And in thinking about this challenge, like how do we break through to people who are just apathetic and don’t want to participate in democracy? Because the only way democracy works is if everyone is participating.”
For Brendan Burch – CEO of the award-winning animation studio Six Point Harness – the answer was obvious. “I think animation is uniquely equipped to break through the noise as a medium,” Burch explained. “But also everyone loves cartoons, especially the people that we need to vote, eighteen to forty. Animation has a way of really simplifying sort of complicated topics and you can really push things in a way that you can’t and have an influence.”
In terms of topics that Now What?! spotlights, they are strictly domestic as opposed to foreign affairs. “We’re dealing with issues like child care, public care, lobbying, corruption,” Brendan Burch said. “We’re trying to see as much as what we’re doing through an economic lens. And we are a 501(c)(3) so we are technically a nonpartisan. They say the facts tend to have a liberal bias but I do think that most people sort of live in the middle with their politics. I think a lot of people are just kind of tired with the system overall and when one in four Americans can’t name a single branch of the U.S. government, then you have a problem.”
As a result, the topics that Now What?! tackles are not necessarily liberal or conservative but geared towards average Americans. “This is not left versus right, it’s up versus down,” Burch emphasized. “We’re in this situation where the wealth gap is so dramatic right now, and we have people sort of sticking to their tribes and fighting it out with each other. But we have way more in common that we don’t.”
Middle Class Matt is a prime example. Creator Adam Lustick designed the character as someone who could represent “the last middle-class man in America.” In one animation, for instance, Middle Class Mike confronts a hedge fund buying up homes in his neighborhood while in another he addresses the high costs of childcare.
“It was like, this will be our fastball down the middle,” Brendan Burch said of his initial reaction to Lustick’s proposal. “Our first three shorts were ‘Snubby the Friendly Gun,’ ‘Fetus Monster,’ and ‘Stop it With the Voting.’ We were purposely trying to set a tone with those works. ‘We’re going to do some weird shit.’ And so when Matt came, it was like, alright, this is going to sort of be our middle of the road (debut). Anybody will hopefully like this guy.”
The fact that Middle Class Matt appears in more than one animated video also fits in with the overall objectives of Now What?! “We talk about Smokey the Bear or the Republican elephant or the Democratic donkey,” Burch explained. “They’re these symbols that you sort of associate with something almost immediately. So when we’re talking to creators, the basic that we’re looking out for is characters who we think can sort of live in this Now What?! universe. We have Richard Prickle, who’s our Greek billionaire who doesn’t want women or poor people to vote because it ruins his lifestyle. We have Doby Bill, who is going to take you through how money moves through the system. And then we have Black Dynamite, we other characters. But I think for this to work, for all these characters to sort of exist together, we’re going to just have to be regular, we’re going to have to be consistent, and we’re going to have to have more and more content.”
Now What?! currently has plans to organize film festivals in swing states and attend popular culture conventions throughout the country. “A big part of our plan is to be at events like PIE, and be at events like Comic-Con, and to show up and to tell people about misinformation, and to eventually register voters,” Brendan Burch said. “We want to get to the point by 2028 where we can go to Comic-Con and people will be like, oh my god, that’s Black Dynamite or that’s Middle Class Matt, and they come over to the booth to buy something from us and we get them to register to vote.”
Brendan Burch admits that whenever they meet with a potential creator, “A lot of them want to do their version of Schoolhouse Rock!” As a result, Lexie Kahanovitz crafted Oligarchy Does Not Rock – which explains the meaning of an oligarchy for those unaware – as an animated musical short that mimics Schoolhouse Rock! The same holds true for Executive Order Anthem by Jackie Emerson and Adrianna Duncan, which features a singing executive order similar to the singing bill in “I’m Just a Bill.”
“The left is sort of preaching to their choir, the right’s preaching to their choir,” Brendan Burch told attendees at the Pittsburgh Indie Expo. “We’ve got to figure out some way to break it down and break through.”
In an age when many Americans scroll through headlines rather than read articles and get their news through memes and short videos on TikToc, Now What?! just might be the answer.
Anthony Letizia