Big Tent Nation

s across the political spectrum that broad based American prosperity has been eroding for decades. What we’re struggling with as a nation is how to come together and turn things around. This is a complex issue that’s beyond silver bullet solutions, but scaling up citizen engagement is a critical piece of the puzzle. To facilitate this, Big Tent Nation is building a platform that radically simplifies the civic engagement process for mainstream citizens. Our online environment leverages civic technology best practices to make it substantially easier and more rewarding for citizens to learn about economic issues, define common ground and form coalitions to pursue shared prosperity. We will offer every American the opportunity to build a personalized civic homepage in just two minutes. It will be customized to reflect their highest priority economic concerns and serve as a nonpartisan portal through which they can connect and partner with fellow citizens, thought leaders and elected officials. Big Tent Nation will provide a rich and empowering environment that integrates learning, dialogue, collaboration and advocacy. This will result in a unique context within which all political stakeholders passionate about shared prosperity can work together to forge pragmatic solutions. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent you’re welcome at Big Tent Nation. The only thing we need to agree on is that American prosperity is at risk and worth fighting for. Different perspectives on how to move forward are inevitable – and a powerful resource if paired with mutual respect. The fact is, getting better at working together despite our differences is essential to this nation’s long term growth and stability. It’s also important to understand that participating on Big Tent doesn’t require lots of time and heavy lifting. Our lives are too hectic for big new commitments – so all we’re really asking for is that you stand up for prosperity and be counted. Despite partisanship and polarization, the majority of Americans from across the political spectrum agree on many economic issues vital to national prosperity (see table below). The challenge is ensuring these areas of general consensus are better represented in U.S. economic policy. We've done extensive research into how political decision making really works - and what mainstream citizens can do to get a seat at the table. We’ve also analyzed the American electorate and identified literally millions of engaged citizens like you for whom the Big Tent platform will be extremely compelling. Integrate these insights into an online environment that leverages the most powerful lessons from user experience design, collective action and gamification and you have the ground-breaking civic empowerment platform America needs to get beyond gridlock and seize the future. It won't be easy by any means, but with enough citizens on board change becomes inevitable. This movement is really building momentum. The first Big Tent Nation product release will be launched in the next few months – and it looks great. We have a world class technical team chomping at the bit to build out the full, game changing Big Tent platform. We’re also getting support and guidance from many of the smartest people in the world – thought leaders from top universities, technology firms, think tanks and even political insiders who’ve had it with the current system. Our biggest gap? More people like you. We need citizens who are fed up with gridlock and finger pointing to come off the sidelines and be heard. We’re going to harness cutting edge technology to make getting involved as easy and rewarding as possible, but if we’re going to restore broad-based prosperity and the American Dream you’ll have to make the first move!