01
What do we leave behind?
Extractive systems, growth-at-all-costs economics, the political maps that ignored the watersheds. Naming what we leave is the precondition of building anything else.
A living document · 2026 Congress
Joy is the strategy.
Ten priorities. Live discussions across 24 organizing communities. 50 shared resources for the work that comes next. Filter the matrix, drill into the deliberation, find your collaborators.
10
Priorities
24
Groups
38
Discussions
The deliberative frame
Three questions. Three days of community.
Every priority on this site is the answer to one or more of the questions below. They were chosen because they re-open the conversation that policy debates close down - about what kind of future is actually worth deliberating for.
02
What do we keep?
The land-based knowledge that predates colonization. The rituals of mutual aid. The soil practices, the seed banks, the songs. What lasted is the proof of what works.
03
What is the future?
Not a forecast - a commitment. The accountability story we tell about ourselves in ten years, written backward from a world we would actually want to inhabit.
Four currents the work runs through
Every priority touches at least one. Most touch two.
The themes are not buckets. They are the angles you can come at any priority from - economic, structural, spiritual, epistemic. Filter by them on the directory to find your own way in.
Sustainable Economics
Reparations, regenerative agriculture, community wealth, sufficiency - the question of who pays and who gets paid.
5 priorities
Sustainable Infrastructure
Energy grids, food systems, watersheds, governance - the physical and institutional bones of a different future.
3 priorities
Spiritual & Mutual Aid
Mutual aid, sacred sites, ritual, solidarity - the practices that hold communities together when systems fail.
4 priorities
Ways of Knowing
Indigenous knowledge, intergenerational education, bioregionalism - how we learn what the land has been trying to tell us.
5 priorities
Active conversations
What organizers are arguing about this week.
Community-Owned Energy
Latest thread · Pine Ridge Energy Committee
IRS Direct Pay claim - first-time filer questions
4 discussions active
Join the deliberation
Mutual Aid Networks
Latest thread · Asheville Climate Coalition
Heat-wave phone trees - how granular is your block-level coverage?
4 discussions active
Join the deliberation
Climate Reparations & Just Transition
Latest thread · Front Range Watershed Council
Polluter-pays state bill - who has model legislation?
3 discussions active
Join the deliberation
Indigenous Knowledge & Reconciliation
Latest thread · NDN Collective
How are folks structuring the "veto power, not consultation" language in writing?
4 discussions active
Join the deliberation
Communities at the table
24 groups, 38 threads, 50 resources.
Organizing communities, faith leaders, schools, and tribal councils working on the priorities. Find a collaborator near you, or register your own group.
Asheville Climate Coalition
187Asheville, NC
Stormwater testimony, cooperative weatherization, Buncombe watershed council
P02P04P07
Bridgeport Schools Climate Team
12Bridgeport, CT
8th-grade Watershed Literacy unit; intergenerational interviews; school-board presentations
P10
Cambridge Climate Coalition
410Cambridge, MA
Wellbeing Budget pilot; municipal solar; cooling-center mutual aid
P09P03P04
Cascadia Bioregional Council
95PDX/SEA · WA-OR-BC corridor
Inter-state watershed coordination; bioregional bond market pilot; treaty-aligned planning
P07
Chesapeake Bay Citizens
380Annapolis, MD · DMV region
Bay TMDL enforcement; cover-crop subsidies; bioregional zoning
P02P07
Diné College Education Institute
64Tsaile, AZ · Navajo Nation
Watershed literacy curricula; elder-led classroom partnerships
P01P10
Why "Joy"
Doom got us here. It will not get us out.
Most environmental websites lead with melting ice, burning trees, dying coral. The argument is that fear motivates. Forty years of evidence says it motivates exhaustion, not action.
The Congress chose joy on purpose. Not joy as denial - joy as the practiced muscle of imagining a future worth working for. Joy as the form of seriousness that doesn't burn out.
Each priority on this site has been tested against the same question: does this help anyone want to wake up tomorrow and do it again? If the answer is no, it didn't make the list.
Ready when you are
Find the priority that matches your week.
Filter by theme, by question, by what you have time for. Save the ones you want to act on. The directory is built to be used, not just read.