Affected party / affected parties
People who are directly experiencing the harms caused by a policy, system, or institution. On America’s Plan, affected parties are not treated as stakeholders to be consulted — they are the primary authors of problem definitions and proposed solutions. Experts advise. Affected parties decide.
America’s Plan
A civic infrastructure platform built to give affected communities the tools to move from documented experience to concrete policy change. The platform is organized around a four-stage pipeline — Sentiment, Plan, Pressure, Accountability — and is structured around issue hubs, a shared commons, and a deliberation forum. It takes no positions on policy outcomes.
Commons
The shared knowledge base of America’s Plan — a wiki-style space where affected community members document what they know about an issue: the problem, the evidence, the competing accounts, and the history. The commons is not a discussion space. It is a research foundation that the deliberation process builds on.
Core principles
The rights-first, democracy-anchored baselines that guide how America’s Plan frames problems, evaluates tactics, and makes decisions. Core principles are not aspirational statements — they are constraints. Work that violates them is not appropriate for this platform regardless of the goal.
Facilitator
A trained volunteer who guides a deliberative discussion toward a productive outcome. Facilitators do not take sides on the issue being discussed. Their job is to keep the process structured, ensure all relevant perspectives are heard, and turn the discussion into a usable record — documented positions, areas of agreement, and actionable proposals.
Hub
See: Issue Hub.
Issue
A specific, bounded problem or area of harm that can be framed, researched, deliberated on, and addressed through a concrete proposal. Issues are organized into issue hubs on the platform.
Issue hub
A structured space on America’s Plan organized around a single issue or policy area. Each hub combines a commons, a deliberation forum, a pipeline tracker, and an accountability archive. Hubs are maintained by volunteer coordinators and open to participation by anyone affected by the issue.
Pipeline
The four-stage process through which America’s Plan moves an issue from awareness to accountability: Sentiment (documenting the problem), Plan (developing a community-driven proposal), Pressure (organizing public advocacy around that proposal), and Accountability (tracking whether decision-makers kept their commitments). The pipeline does not end at a declared win — it continues until delivery is verified.
Sentiment / public sentiment
How affected people and the broader public are visibly responding to a policy, institution, or proposal. On this platform, sentiment is the first stage of the pipeline — the process of documenting what a community knows, believes, and has experienced, so that deliberation has a factual foundation to build on. It is distinct from a poll or a petition.
Support staff / support team
Volunteers who maintain the platform’s tools, onboarding processes, and user experience — keeping the site, forum, and commons functional and accessible for all participants.
Volunteer
Anyone contributing time or skills to America’s Plan without a formal paid role. The entire project is volunteer-built at this stage. Volunteers may contribute as writers, researchers, facilitators, issue coordinators, platform developers, or community connectors.
We the people
The broader public that America’s Plan is ultimately accountable to — with particular emphasis on communities whose rights and democratic standing the platform is designed to strengthen. The phrase comes from the Preamble to the Constitution, but its moral foundation was laid eleven years earlier in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” On this platform, those words are not rhetorical. They are a design constraint — the standard against which every decision about structure, process, and participation is measured.
This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance under human review. See our full AI and editorial practices.