How We Work
Witness. Document. Amplify.
This network exists because the tools of outrage-driven media are part of the problem. The algorithm, the hot take, the engagement metric: these fragment communities, reward the most inflammatory voices, and make it harder to see clearly what is actually happening.
We are trying to do something different.
Journalism Standards
We are not a media organization. But anyone participating in this network, whether creator or community member, professional journalist or ordinary witness, is engaged in an act of documentation. That act carries responsibility.
Accuracy over speed. Verify before you amplify. A false claim that spreads quickly does more damage than a true one that travels slowly. If you are not sure, say so. If you were wrong, correct it publicly and without defensiveness.
Documentation over assertion. “This happened” is more powerful than “this is outrageous.” Show the evidence. Name the date, the place, the people involved where it is safe to do so. A documented record is harder to dismiss and harder to disappear than an opinion.
Specificity over generalization. Broad claims about systems and patterns matter, but they land harder when grounded in specific, documented instances. The particular illuminates the general. Start with what you actually witnessed.
Engage across difference. This network will only work if it reaches people who don’t already agree with everything in it. That means communicating in ways that invite rather than exclude, that explain rather than assume, that treat the audience as capable of handling complexity. Preaching to the converted feels good. It doesn’t move anything.
Resist the algorithm. The platforms we use are designed to reward outrage, conflict, and emotional provocation. Be conscious of this. Ask yourself: am I sharing this because it is true and important, or because it made me angry? Both can be true at once, but the test is whether the content informs or merely inflames.
Build community, not audience. An audience consumes. A community participates. The goal of this network is not to accumulate followers but to connect people who are witnessing the same things from different vantage points and to help them find each other.
The Groundswell Model
Something important is already happening, and it did not start with this project.
As federal institutions have failed or been weaponized, communities across the United States have been quietly building something else. In Appalachia, across West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, western North Carolina, and into Pennsylvania, organizations like Reimagine Appalachia and Coalfield Development have been weaving together networks of mutual aid, resilience, and local economic sovereignty. When storms hit, when emergencies come, when the government doesn’t show up, these networks do. They share resources, skills, and knowledge across county and state lines. They don’t wait for permission.
This is the model.
What this network is attempting to do is take that same instinct, hyper-local, community-rooted, built on trust and mutual witness, and extend it across borders. Not to replace the local, but to connect locals to each other across national boundaries.
A farmer in Appalachia building a resilience hub after a flood has something in common with a farmer in Australia navigating the aftermath of a fire season. A community organizer in Detroit working around the failure of city services has something in common with a community organizer in a former mining town in Wales doing the same. A legal observer in Minneapolis documenting enforcement activity has something in common with a journalist in Hungary who has watched democratic institutions erode in real time.
These people don’t know each other yet. They should.
Who This Network Is For
The communities most harmed by concentrated power, institutional failure, and the erosion of democratic norms are rarely the ones with the loudest platforms. That is not an accident. It is part of the same system this network exists to document.
We are actively working against that pattern.
This network seeks out creators and witnesses from communities that are directly experiencing what is being documented: immigrants and their families, Black and Indigenous communities, working-class and rural communities, communities in the Global South watching a familiar pattern unfold in a new country, and people whose relationship to power has never included the assumption that institutions would protect them.
We are not looking for a token representative from each category. We are looking for voices that are already doing honest, grounded work and have not yet found the connections and amplification they deserve.
Practically, this means:
- Actively recruiting creators from BIPOC, Indigenous, immigrant, and working-class communities
- Ensuring that “international perspective” means more than English-speaking Western countries
- Recognizing that food sovereignty, land rights, and ecological resilience are political issues, not lifestyle content
- Centering the experiences of people who have been living under versions of this for longer than most Americans have been paying attention
If you are nominating a creator, we encourage you to ask yourself whether your list of nominations reflects the full range of people doing this work, or whether it reflects the part of that world you already move in.
We are building this network as we go. We will get this wrong sometimes. We are committed to being corrected when we do.
What This Is Not
This is not a top-down organization. There is no headquarters, no leadership structure, no approved messaging. It is a network: self-organizing, distributed, resilient by design.
This is not a media outlet. We are not producing content for consumption. We are connecting witnesses so they can find each other and amplify what they are already seeing.
This is not a rescue operation. No country, organization, or individual is coming to save anyone. This network exists to bear witness, share perspective, document a record, and remind people that they are not alone and not crazy. The work of change happens on the ground, in communities, by the people who live there.
This is not about outrage. Outrage has its place. But sustained outrage without grounding becomes fuel for the algorithm and leads to burnout. This network is oriented toward clarity, documentation, and connection, which are harder and more durable than anger.
A Groundswell, Not a Campaign
Campaigns have endpoints. Groundswells don’t.
What is happening in Appalachia, in rural communities across the US, in international networks of people paying attention: this is not a response to a single election or a single administration. It is a response to decades of institutional failure, concentrated power, and the slow erosion of the idea that ordinary people have a stake in how the world is organized.
This network is one small part of that larger movement. It doesn’t need to be more than that. It just needs to do its part: connect people, document what is happening, share what is possible, and keep the record honest.
That is enough. That is, in fact, everything.
This project is open. Fork it. Translate it. Adapt it. Share it.