Shift the Country

Shift the Country Has Moved!

Shift the Country has moved to a new Shift the Country website, as of July 11, 2022!

This Website Has A Mix Of Legacy Info & Links To The New Website

We need everyone who can do anything anywhere to jump in and help. 

We can take care of each other.  We can help each other through.  We can hold this country together through a very rough winter.

The US is in the biggest set of crises in decades with a pandemic, a tenuous presidential transition, widespread science denial endangering public health, insidious disinformation efforts, upcoming complicated vaccine distributions, empowered hate groups, institutional erosion, and intensifying disasters.

Change is coming… whether we drive it or not.  Chaos and trauma push us into shock, inaction, and hand-wringing.  All of us can help in ways that are decisive, impactful, and purposeful; and that pull us forward through overwhelm and crisis.

When millions of people each do something helpful… shift can happen.  We find our way through.  Together.

We have a 5-part approach to get this shift going.  It’s adaptable, scalable, and flexible.  Any person or organization can plug in anywhere.

*** Help fund this shift on Patreon. *** Or on the new website. ***

Where We're Making Shift Happen

We're here:

We'll ramp up our social media, videos, workshops, storytelling, blog posts, webinars, and community-building as funds come in.

Holler when you've got stories to tell and examples of stuff we can share.  That's all part of our 5-Part Approach for creating a phenomenon here - spiraling up, and spreading ruckusSign up for team work.  Help us get the word out.  Share each other's progress.  Then we spread shift further, and keep right on going.

More money makes more shift happen.  Donations help us make this shift happen.  We're totally crowdfunded via contributions on the new website and PatreonEvery bit of help helps us make more shift happen.  Contributions are not deductible for federal income tax purposes as charitable contributions.

5-Part Strategy To Make Shift Happen

We can create something like a phenomenon by doing several things in combination.  It doesn’t have to be a huge phenomenon.  It can be in a small, rural town.  It might be in a regional community, or a national online interest group.  It can be anywhere.

Any person, tiny informal group, or big organization can find a way to make some shift happen somewhere with this approach.  It might just be about looking after neighbors.  It might be a regional public health push.  It can be anything.

We can collectively do these 5 things to catalyze big shift:

  • Thing 1: Create A Phenomenon of Action, Advocacy, & Energy
  • Thing 2: Build Power By Taking Connecting & Coalitions To New Levels
  • Thing 3: Involve Businesses Through Partnerships & Pressure
  • Thing 4: Champion Vision, Values, & Moral Courage
  • Thing 5: Spread This Shift Everywhere, & Drive The Narrative 

The interrelated parts of the approach here are designed to Create Something Like A Phenomenon when used together.

We Can Make This Shift Happen

Thank you for your interest, action, support and time.  In everything you're doing in this moment.

We – Americans – can help build coalitions.  We can help each other survive a deadly pandemic.  We can help the US hold a successful and fair election.  We can help hold this country together during the pandemic and a potentially tumultuous presidential transfer of power.  We can help institutions help us survive, while we also work on transforming them to serve all Americans in more equitable, just, and sustainable ways.  We can help shift this country so that we can partner with other countries for a global transformation to address the urgency that is climate change.

“We believe that COVID-19 will be one of the biggest economic, political, and cultural turning points of our lifetime, and how we respond will shape our future.” – New Media Ventures website

People are already fighting for each other; fighting for this country; fighting for public health action to save lives.  They are working to help keep other people alive in hospitals and nursing homes; to keep grocery stores and other critical services operating; to help feed people; to help reform police departments and spending in communities everywhere.

We – together – can do even more.  It’s going to take millions of us doing all the things.  Shift the Country is bringing more of the things, as are so many others.  Together we can help organize, catalyze, and amplify action and transformation at a scale never before seen in this country.

Shift the Country can help you and anyone else take it to the next level.  We’re here to make serious shift happen.  We’re here to help us all survive, stay alive, and thrive.  There are ways.  We find them together.

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other." - Douglas Everett

Keep the faith - in humanity, if nothing else.  Hold the line.  Hold the light.  Try not to get dead.

We will absolutely find ways through.  There is an other side.  We help each other get there.  We make it worth getting to. 

That's how we get it done.

Onward.

Legacy 2020 Info:  4-Part Mission

Shift the Country is an initiative founded in this moment of great disruption.  We're here to energize the majority.  We're here to advocate for mass action - a groundswell of people doing helpful things.  Mass transformation.  Big shift.  We’re coming into an extremely intense time.  We need it all.

Our 4-part mission is to get people doing helpful things, to help people help each other through several crises, to hold civil society and institutions together, and to make transformation along the way.

Join us - sign up to get involved, or check out the social media and event links below.

This call for a groundswell of people doing helpful things is in addition to voting and protests – because we’ll need way more than voting and protests to get through what’s coming.

We’re calling on Americans to get engaged doing helpful things.  To be more helpful than ever before.  To be more engaged than many already are.  We’re calling on Americans to do even more helpful things even as people are already doing so much extra for so many reasons.

We need all the things – everything from checking on your neighbors to helping hold society together.  We need little tiny things, great big huge things, individual things, small group things, huge national alliance things, local coalition things, business things, entrepreneurial things, big idea things, process things, adaptive things, nonprofit things, partnership things, work things, family things, friend things, church things, school things, simple things, complicated things, courageous things, heartwarming things, loving things, tough things, fearless things, unprecedented things, things online, things in the real world, risky things, relatively safe things… and a whole range of things in between.

If everybody who’s in a position to do at least something does something – or maybe a few somethings – we’ll have millions of people doing millions of things.  And we all move forward.  We all have a better shot of surviving.  We all have a better shot of making this country into something more like what we might dream it could be.  For all of us.

The Shift the Country approach is designed to help us take practical action in communities and throughout social networks everywhere in this country to help us look after each other, get through several crises, hold things together, and to do good in many ways across society while we do.  It’s designed to strengthen the social fabric, and renew and refresh the social contract.  To help people get through, to survive, and to help more people survive.

In the longer term, the structure of this work is designed to help shift the country away from individualism as the greatest good – and to help shift the country toward an ethos of service, connection, humanity, and community.

Author George Monbiot notes difficulty with this kind of cultural transformation in our overarching cultural mythology; our shared story.  He puts forward “The New Political Story That Could Change Everything,” in a TED Talk here or here.  In it, Monbiot says:

“We need a new restoration story, which is going to guide us out of the mess we're in, which tells us why we're in the mess and tells us how to get out of that mess.  And that story, if we tell it right, will infect the minds of people across the political spectrum.  Our task is to tell the story that lights the path to a better world.”

Monbiot suggests:  “Our new story could go something like this.  Disorder afflicts the land!  Caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of people who say there's no such thing as society, who tell us that our highest purpose in life is to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin.  But the heroes of the story, us, we'll revolt against this disorder.  We will fight those nefarious forces by building rich, engaging, inclusive, and generous communities, and, in doing so, we will restore harmony to the land.”  And so we can.  And the Shift the Country framework can help.

Legacy 2020 Info:  4 Principles

We can navigate this time of disruption with 4 principles:  connection, community, resilience, and problem-solving.  Those 4 principles can help us survive, and to shift toward a more equitable, just, inclusive, and sustainable society.  The principles are our strengths, too.  We are a resilient country of problem-solvers and innovators.  When the unimaginable happens – and it will – Americans are good at leaping into the unexpected, helping each other, and finding ways through.  This framework can help us do all of that as new shocks and crises occur over the coming weeks and months.

LINKS.  || I'm In! Sign Me Up || Donate via Patreon || Donate via Website || 5 Ways To Make Shift Happen || 10 Critical Parts Of Society || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Services || The Original Blog || The New 2022 Substack ||

MORE RELATED STUFF IS BELOW.  Tagged resources below are blog posts & videos for Shift the Country in general (2016-2021).  Help us spread this shift everywhere with everyone you know & totally raise an absolute ruckus.  Contributions help us make more shift happen faster.  Thank you.  Good luck.

shift the country - general
Shift the Country - White Paper

The Shift the Country white paper is the basic foundation for the 501(c)(4) organization, mission, and initial operations.

VIDEO: Creating Tipping Points (Tool)

This is on how to deliberately create tipping points - or how to deliberately make something "go viral" either online or in the real world. Creating tipping points & leveraging social networks to do it is one of the 15 Civic Engagement Tools that help us make shift happen. It's also one of the 5 parts of our strategy to Shift the Country.  Our "tipping points" tool online is here.  This video is on the founder's wall on Facebook here. August 6, 2020.

VIDEO: How Do We Hold US Through The Inauguration?

So the US President isn't willing to commit to a peaceful transition of power. Now what? We have options for everyday actions. It's more than voting, and it's more than protesting. Check this out to find out more (also we do know how to spell - major typo in the video chyron though). 9/24/20. This video was livestreamed to our Shift the Country FB Page as well.

VIDEO: How Taking Care of People Can Help Save US

We can counter the individualism damaging the health and well-being of this country by looking after each other. Caring about people. Celebrating community. Having compassion. Embracing humanity. Anchoring in connection and community. Doing that can help make shift happen, too. This was originally broadcast on the Shift the Country Facebook page on August 15, 2020.

VIDEO: Inaugural Video, Shift the Country (Ep 001)

Episode 001 of FB Live and other broadcasts to come.  8/1/2020.  Executive Director Vanessa Burnett and Gary Monti from the Board of Directors kick off the series with a 60-minute overview of the work planned by the new Shift the Country nonprofit.  In the spirit of adaptability, the first 3 minutes is dead air as we were working out the broadcast bumps.  It's a work in progress. Broadcast covers the mission, 5 principles, 5-part strategy, 15 civic engagement tools, 10 structural change areas, and context and structure behind the work - such as countering tyranny, nationalist oligarchy, and addressing a massive pandemic catastrophe.

VIDEO: Shift the Country Mission

Shift the Country is a new nonprofit founded in this moment of great disruption to help people help each other through several simultaneous crises, to hold civil society and institutions together, to get voters engaged in doing all of that, and to make transformation along the way. This video is about that mission & why we're doing it. Original broadcast on our Shift the Country Facebook Page on August 6, 2020.

VIDEO: These 6 Months Are The Fight Of Our Lives

We're in some stuff. This one is on the 5 main parts of the risk landscape in front of us between now and February - through the election and transition of administrations. Plus - how do we survive? August 30, 2020.  The 5 main parts of the risk landscape include 1) the out of control coronavirus pandemic (and complex system interruptions and related cascading effects); 2) emerging authoritarianism in the US; 3) the influence of a growing nationalist oligarchy on destabilization in the US; 4) an information war with many fronts; 5) the election and transition of power. This also gets into the 5-part Shift the Country strategy to help us get through these next months.

VIDEO: What Is Civic Engagement Anyway?

We're pushing massive civic engagement in the US to help us through all the crisis and chaos in front of us. What the heck is that, anyway? This video gets into that. Here's our list of 15 civic engagement tools. It's a list for now as we're writing the tools - but if something jumps out, you can start doing it now. These are for us to make shift happen where we live. This video is also on the Shift the Country FB page. September 3, 2020.

VIDEO: Why Civic Engagement Is Critical

The mission here at Shift the Country is to help people help each other through several simultaneous crises, to hold civil society and its institutions together, to get voters engaged in doing all of that, and to make transformation along the way. This video is on why civic engagement is such an enormous piece of all of that. This was originally published on August 15, 2020 on the Shift the Country Facebook page.

VIDEO: Wicked Problems of Now vs. Magical Thinking

The initiative to Shift the Country was built in the summer of 2020 for this highly unique & unprecedented moment in time. It's a whole set of wicked problems, & some were understood to be huge risks prior to this year. Our framework is set up to help people navigate the complex landscape of multiple disasters combined with active erosion of government institutions and active obstruction of response efforts. The first 48 minutes get into how magical thinking works & why it isn't helpful now. The second half gets into complex systems, a great disruption, and catastrophe and big disaster preparation in the US based on experience inside the federal systems that were supposed to be built to help with some of the current crises. This was originally broadcast on our Shift the Country Facebook Page on August 9, 2020.