The CivicEcho Manifesto not-a-Manifesto

CivicEcho is a tool that lets you send messages to your political representatives as quickly as possible.

That’s it.

Not a party. Not a platform. Not a product. Not a campaign. Not a brand.

It doesn’t tell you what to believe.

It won’t lean you in one direction or another.

It won’t track you.

And it will never sell you out.

It takes your voice, your concerns, your values, your outrage, your hope, and delivers it where it needs to go: into the inboxes and contact forms of the people who represent you.

That’s all. And that’s enough.

This is for you.

This is for the teacher in Queens, stretching her paycheck between rent and school supplies.

This is for the farmer outside Lexington, praying the corn doesn’t burn up in the summer heat.

This is for the journeyman in Welch, watching his town crumble from years of neglect and deindustrialization.

This is for the nurse in Lafayette, who couldn’t save the man dying from a lack of insulin.

This is for the engineer in San Jose, six figures deep and still skipping meals to make rent.

This is for the student in Madison, told the only way up is under a mountain of debt.

This is for the boy in San Antonio, who watched ICE detain his dad without cause.

This is for the factory worker in Detroit, laid off from General Motors and waiting for a call that will never come.

This is for the teenager in Stockton, grieving the loss of her best friend to fentanyl.

This is for the Union worker in Cincinnati, on the third day of strike.

This is for the kid in Gary, who just wants a fair shot.

This is for anyone, anywhere, who’s ever felt unheard.
Who feels like the powers that be don’t listen.
Who rents and doesn’t own.
Whose parents don’t have a vacation home in Aspen.
Who cares enough to speak but has never been heard.

This is for you, and this is for us.
The rest of us.
The ones who have to wait in line.
The ones who get told they’re asking too much.
The ones who don’t get a seat at the table but still pick up the tab.
This is for us.
This is for you.

CivicEcho is licensed under the AGPL.

That means anyone can use it, remix it, deploy it; but if you serve it to others, you have to keep it open.

We did that because this tool isn’t a product. It’s a piece of infrastructure. No one should own the pipes of civic communication.

If you try to close it, hide it, or profit from it without sharing it back to the world, we’ll find out. Don’t do it.

Also, if you do decide to fork CivicEcho, or remix it, or mod it, just know that we do NOT endorse it. The only official version of CivicEcho lives here, at civicecho.org. We don’t endorse any forks, rebrands, or derivatives of CivicEcho unless otherwise stated. If you turn this tool into something partisan or nonsensical — that’s on you. Not us.

Don’t know what AGPL means? That’s okay. It just means we (and you) have to keep the code open and free.

• That people have the right to be heard, even if they don’t speak like politicians
• That freedom of expression means nothing if no one’s listening
• That technology should amplify the public, not the powerful
• That civic action should be as easy as opening a bag of chips

We don’t care what side you’re on, only that you have the means to speak your piece and see what happens next.

• It will never endorse candidates.
• It will never take ad money from political parties, PACs, or discourse farms.
• It will never sell user data.
• It will never require a login to use the basic tool.
• It will never be closed-source.
• It will never be yours alone, or ours alone.

Maybe CivicEcho stays simple.

Maybe one day it powers live town halls, mobile organizing, or real-time policy feedback loops.

Maybe it creates some real change.

But even if it never evolves past what it is right now, it still matters.

Because it works. Because it’s yours. Because someone, somewhere, needed this. And now it exists.