Your civic participation creates cascades that ripple through your community. Built on research from Self-Determination Theory, participatory democracy frameworks, and community organizing methodologies.
Your civic journey starts here
Building from awareness → engagement → organizing → systemic change
Stage: Just beginning
Track bills, monitor representatives, and participate in public comment periods. Information transparency is the highest-leverage intervention in democratic systems.
Monitor federal and state legislation aligned with your values. Plain-language summaries powered by AI with human review.
See how your representatives vote on issues you care about. Personalized analysis based on your stated priorities.
Get alerts for regulations.gov comment periods. Your input shapes federal policy during 30-90 day windows.
Build power through organized people + resources. Inspired by Grace Lee Boggs, Marshall Ganz, and adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy.
Coordinate neighborhood pods (5-20 people) for everyday support and emergency response. Build resilience through distributed care networks.
Craft compelling stories using Marshall Ganz's framework: Story of Self → Story of Us → Story of Now
Map pathways from individual actions to systemic outcomes. Identify leverage points using Donella Meadows' systems framework.
Find organizations working on your issues. Build cross-sector coalitions. Strength comes from diverse perspectives united by shared goals.
Research shows that close friends with real-world ties are far more influential than casual connections. A 61-million person Facebook experiment found that friend-endorsed civic messages generated 340,000 additional votes through social contagion.
When you take civic action and your network sees it (with your consent), you create three types of cascades:
Systems thinker Donella Meadows identified information flow as the highest-impact, lowest-cost intervention point. The Toxic Release Inventory reduced industrial emissions by 40% through transparency alone - no new regulations required.
This platform prioritizes information interventions: legislative transparency, representative responsiveness tracking, and community-sourced policy impact reports.
Self-Determination Theory identifies three psychological needs that drive sustained engagement without manipulation:
We never use extractive engagement patterns. No infinite scroll. No addictive notifications. No points-for-points-sake. Just honest tools for democratic participation.
From adrienne maree brown: "Small is good, small is all. What we practice at small scale sets patterns for the whole system."
This platform synthesizes 2020-2025 research from: Taiwan's vTaiwan consensus platform (80% government responsiveness), Barcelona's Decidim participatory democracy tool (7,000+ citizen proposals), Ireland's citizens' assemblies (constitutional amendments via public deliberation), Yale social pressure experiments (8.1 percentage point turnout increase), behavioral economics research on intrinsic motivation, systems theory leverage points, community organizing methodologies (Alinsky, Boggs, Ganz, brown), and civic tech implementation best practices.
Key Sources: Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan), Leverage Points (Donella Meadows), Emergent Strategy (adrienne maree brown), Public Narrative (Marshall Ganz), Social Influence & Political Participation meta-analyses, Decidim "soft infrastructure" research, vTaiwan deliberation platform analysis, activist burnout prevention studies.
Understanding your civic motivation helps us provide the most relevant tools and connections. This assessment is based on Stanford research identifying four civic motivation types.
Pods are small (5-20 people) groups for everyday mutual support and emergency response. They work best when neighbors know each other and can meet face-to-face.