The purpose of ActivistSolutions.org is to increase the quantity and improve the quality of public participation in the democratic process.

Ongoing online (and eventually face-to-face) interactions are intended to stimulate a more actively involved and better-informed electorate.

Collaborating around specific ideas can attract large enough numbers of people to significantly influence government policy. The impact on American democratic process can be profound, one issue at a time.

Well functioning democracy requires informed collective problem solving, stimulated by dialogue and followed by action. The people affected by a public policy have the right and possibly the obligation to express their thoughts, get responses, and then act together to implement their ideas for making things better than they are.

Participants Instead of Consumers

People will invest more time and energy if they know that they will be heard, consensus will be built, and good ideas just might get implemented.

Public policy shouldn’t be crafted by political and organizational leaders alone. It should also be collaboratively created by the same people that those leaders hope to rally, lead, and serve.

Politically active people can do more than just follow or oppose ideas and action plans handed down to them from the top -- they can come up with their own ideas for solutions and strategies, improve and combine them, and then work together to lobby for those that they collectively select as the best.

Inviting everyday people to become key participants in government, instead of just consumers of it, might yield smarter policies and strategies. (James Surowiecki has made a persuasive case for this possibility in Wisdom of the Crowds.)

Better ideas, more participation, and good leaders are only the first half of the equation, though. The second (and probably more important) reason to invite bottom-up solutions is that this kind of many-to-many dialogue is pivotal to reinvigorating popular participation in the political process.