Our Mission

The first aspect is to provide a more respectful and action oriented political dialogue.

We are aware that the word respectful has different connotations to different people, so let us be clear what we mean by that word. Respectful to us means trying to find common ground with those you disagree with so you can begin to make a positive movement towards change. It means listening to other points of view, assuming best intentions, and not shouting down those who disagree with you. It means being open to having your views changed, and looking to foster nuance in your conversation.

It does not mean making space for those who choose to use slurs, or racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, transphobic, or other forms of bigoted or discriminatory language. It does not mean that people should should feel like they can’t be impassioned or even angry by systems or injustice.

Our second goal is to get citizenry to become more informed and engaged in politics. Local politics are especially subject to disengagement by citizenry.

There are so many candidates that are often obscure, it is easy to understand why people feel overwhelmed and do not vote.

Many people have experienced seeing an arcane (but important) electoral race like “city auditor” on their ballot. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed not knowing about the position, much less which candidate to vote for. By informing citizens we hope to stimulate feelings of agency and thus encourage constituents to vote.

The third prong of our mission is to empower citizenry to better utilize their ideas, skills and passion to effect change in whichever area most engages them.

There are already so many wonderful organizations and people working to improve their community, but many of them are obscure or disconnected. Project Inquire has the goal of creating a community of passionate people to network and foster good ideas. A lot of people don’t know how to best utilize their skills for positive change and we want to change that! As an example we could connect a food bank with a systems admin who has a few hours a week to volunteer so he can help manage their database of donors and distribution volunteers. That skilled individuals skills can thus be put to the best possible use for an organization that may greatly need such help.

In the long term we would also like to provide mini-grants to kick-start great ideas for community improvement projects.