America’s Plan is a long-term civic project, and any serious public work has to take safety and access seriously. This page explains how we think about risk, what we are doing to reduce harm, and what you can do to protect yourself while participating.
The short version: you should not have to trade basic safety, privacy, or dignity to help build better public life. At the same time, no online project can remove risk completely, especially when it touches real power. This page is our honest starting point.
What we are (and are not) doing with this site
On the main americasplan.org site:
- We do not allow public comments, user logins, or media uploads on WordPress.
- We do not collect profile information or build marketing-style tracking profiles here.
- We do use basic hosting, security, and analytics tools that see standard technical information like IP address, browser type, and pages visited.
You can read more detail in the Privacy Policy, but the core idea is simple: keep the main site as a relatively low-risk place to read, share, and link without turning it into another social platform that collects and monetizes user data.
Forum and discussion safety
Most live interaction will happen in the forum, not in WordPress comments. That means:
- Discussion takes place in a dedicated forum environment, with its own accounts and tools.
- Moderation and community rules are designed to support issue-focused, affected‑party‑centered work, not endless argument.
- We will prioritize the safety of people who are directly affected by issues and who may face social, economic, or political risk when they speak up.
Specific forum policies (including how to report problems) will be detailed in the Community Guidelines and in the forum’s own rules. This page focuses on the bigger picture and how to think about your own risk.
Thinking about your own risk
Different people face different levels of risk. Some can speak freely under their own names; others may face consequences at work, at school, at home, in their community, or in relation to government or corporate actors.
Before you share identifying details, it is worth asking:
- Could this information reasonably put me at risk if it were widely known?
- Am I comfortable with this being public for a long time?
- Would I be safer sharing this under a pseudonym or only in certain spaces?
If you are not sure, it is fine to start cautiously. You can contribute to issue analysis, commons material, or background work without putting every detail of your personal situation in public view.
What we ask of other participants
Safety is not only about tools and policies; it is about how people treat each other. To help keep this space safer and more accessible, we expect participants to:
- Avoid doxxing, outing, or sharing other people’s personal details without explicit consent.
- Take care when quoting or forwarding others’ stories outside their original context.
- Avoid using someone’s experience as a prop in arguments without centering their perspective.
- Respect requests to redact or update sensitive information when it is reasonable to do so.
These expectations will be written into our Community Guidelines and enforced in the forum as part of basic moderation practice.
Access and barriers
America’s Plan is meant to be usable by ordinary people, not just specialists. That includes:
- Writing in accessible language whenever possible.
- Providing context and definitions in issue hubs and commons materials.
- Organizing information so people can find starting points without reading everything first.
At the same time, we know there are real access limits we cannot solve alone: internet access, time, caregiving responsibilities, disability and accessibility needs, language barriers, and more. As the project grows, we want to be explicit about what we can and cannot promise, and to listen to people about where the biggest barriers are.
Handling sensitive topics
Some issues involve high personal or political risk: immigration status, workplace abuses, state violence, certain kinds of organizing, and more. In those spaces, safety and access need extra attention.
For those issues, we expect to:
- Take extra care with identifying details and specific stories.
- Encourage pseudonymous participation when appropriate.
- Be cautious about linking sensitive discussion directly from high-visibility public pages.
- Work with affected people to decide what should be public, what should be semi‑public, and what should stay within smaller groups.
Limits of what we can promise
We will do our best to:
- Keep the main site and forum reasonably secure and up to date.
- Respond in good faith when people report safety or access concerns.
- Be transparent about what we collect and how we use it.
We cannot promise to:
- Eliminate all risk for participants.
- Control how third parties use public information once it is posted.
- Guarantee that no one will ever behave badly or misuse what they see.
That is why this page is partly about tools and policies, and partly about helping you think through your own boundaries.
If you have a concern
If you believe something about the site, forum, or project is unsafe, inaccessible, or puts people at unreasonable risk, please let us know. For now, the simplest path is to use the Contact page and include “Safety & Access” in your subject line.
Useful details might include:
- what you saw or experienced;
- where it happened (specific page, forum area, or tool);
- what you are worried might happen if nothing changes.
We cannot fix everything instantly, but we can only improve what we know about. Structured feedback on safety and access will help shape how this project grows.
Where to go next
- Community – what kind of community this is and how we relate to one another.
- Community Guidelines – detailed expectations and moderation rules (coming online as the forum matures).
- Privacy Policy – detailed information about how data is handled on the main site.
- Contact – to report a safety or access concern or ask a question.
This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance under human review. See our full AI and editorial practices.