When I first started organizing in rural Scotland, our biggest obstacle wasn’t opposition from powerful interests or a lack of willing volunteers. It was something far more mundane: we couldn’t reliably reach the people who wanted to help. Phone trees went...
When the Money Stops, the Mission Must Continue I have spent two decades studying community organizations, and I can tell you this: funding loss is not a theoretical risk. It is an eventuality. Grants get cut. Government contracts shift priorities. Foundations...
The Money Stopped Coming Remember when transit agencies suddenly had breathing room? When they could actually plan more than two fiscal years out? That was the federal COVID relief era talking. Starting in 2020, Congress sent roughly $69.5 billion to public...
The Budget That Nobody Reads (But Probably Should) Your city council just passed a budget. It’s probably around 400 pages long. It contains decisions that will directly affect whether your street gets repaired, whether your kid’s rec center stays open, and...
The Landscape Shifted, and Most of Us Didn’t Notice Somewhere between 2007 and now, something enormous happened in American religious life, and it happened so quietly that most people missed it. One in three adults today claims no religious affiliation at...
The Temperature Gap Nobody Talks About at Dinner Parties Here’s something that should honestly be front-page news but somehow isn’t: the block you live on might be significantly hotter than the neighborhood five miles away. Not in that “the AC is...
