The key question isn’t big government versus small government -- it’s who government works for.
Elizabeth Warren
About TICO
In the almost 250 years since the birth of our nation, we have amended our constitution twenty-seven times, elected 45 presidents, and established 50 states and fourteen territories. Yet, the foundational structure of our democratic government institutions and the ways citizens interact with them are almost identical to how they were in 1776.
As a result of these out of date practices, marginalized communities are left out of the policy-making processes affecting them. This diffusion of power extends from people for whom the government and its functionings are most accessible and applicable to those for whom it's not. The distribution of power impacts our allocation of resources and what we understand as needs. If the same voices have access to centers of power, then we're missing out on so many ideas, issues and experiences.
We want to break the divisions that exist between groups in our society to create opportunities in which everyone has access to government power and feels protected.
We believe that the tools of political participation should be constantly updated. We believe in a society built on the foundations of multiculturalism and respect for human rights. We can build this society through actively engaging in perpetually innovative and sustained civic organizing. As we define it, civic organizing is the process of questioning our society and institutions, guiding political participation, and promoting perpetually innovative and sustained organizing to ensure effective social action.
Politics as it occurs to everyday people originates from the community; it is a politics that gives rise to concrete action and organization. As such, TICO serves the integral role of innovating political and institutional engagement in the US through crafting civic organizing solutions.