Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

You told a crowd of graduates that there is no such thing as a self-made man. You listed every person who helped you — coaches, training partners, teachers, the country that took you in — and you said the words out loud that most successful people are afraid to say: “I didn’t do this alone.”

Neither did anyone. And I built a platform around that fact.

Liana Banyan is a cooperative commerce platform — three commercial websites with a constitutionally locked Cost+20% margin that sustainably funds sixteen charitable initiatives. Creators keep 83.3% of every transaction. Workers own the platform. Five dollars a year to join. No venture capital. No shareholders. No exit strategy. The operating agreement locks the economics so no future board can extract what belongs to the members.

I am not asking for money. I am asking you to help open a door.

WHAT THIS IS

I enlisted in the U.S. Army National Guard at sixteen — Infantry, 11B, then Officer Candidate School, then IFR-rated helicopter pilot. Eight children. Twenty-one years building software. Nine years building this platform. I mention the military because it taught me something your speech already proved you understand: nobody succeeds alone. Every soldier who made it through a firefight had someone covering their sector. Every governor who accomplished anything had staff, advisors, constituents, and opponents who sharpened the work.

Interdependence. Not dependence. Not rugged individualism that pretends the ladder had no rungs built by someone else. Interdependence — where individual agency is preserved but nobody pretends they do not need anyone.

The scriptural version is 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 — the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The economic version is a cooperative where every member’s five-dollar contribution builds infrastructure that makes the next member’s path wider. The political version is Initiative #15: Power to the People.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

The Political Expedition is civic engagement built on a cooperative backbone. Voter education. Community organizing tools. Political participation infrastructure funded sustainably by commerce — not by donation cycles that evaporate between elections. Not partisan. Not left or right. The tagline is plain: “Not Left, Not Right — Forward Together.”

Your audience — the people who admire what you built, who came to this country or built businesses or served in uniform — they need to see that interdependence is not socialism. It is not redistribution. It is the recognition that the gym where you trained, the mentors who pushed you, the infrastructure of a country that let an immigrant become governor — all of that was built by people working together. This platform simply formalizes the reciprocity.

I call myself a Patriotic Interdependentalist. You may not use that phrase, but you have been living it in public for decades.

WHY TWO DOORS

Initiative #15 has two Door-Opening Crowns — one from the left, one from the right. The other letter went to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If that surprises you, good. The whole point is that cooperative economics is not a partisan idea. It is an American idea. The Grange. Rural electric cooperatives. Credit unions. REI. This country has been doing this for two hundred years. We just forgot.

If both doors open, people on every side of the aisle walk through the same entrance into the same cooperative — where they discover that the person they were told was their enemy is actually their neighbor, cooking meals, building businesses, and organizing voter drives under the same roof.

That is the architecture. Two doors. One room. Everyone works.

THE OFFER

I am offering you the Door-Opening Crown (Right) for Power to the People — a First Seat on the Political Expedition Council. The Crown holder leads alongside the other Door-Opener, sets standards for civic programming, and holds a seat on the Steering Committee governing all sixteen initiatives. As the council grows, members elect their own Board representative.

This is not ceremonial. The council builds real civic infrastructure — participation tools, education programs, community organizing frameworks — all sustainably funded by cooperative commerce.

One Crown. One Offer. No one else is receiving this letter for this role.

If this is not for you, I would be grateful for a referral. Someone who understands that civic infrastructure needs to survive longer than any single election.

There is a walkthrough at LianaBanyan.com/RedCarpet. No scheduling, no pitch deck, no salesman.

Help each other help ourselves.

As You Wish.

With respect for what you built — and what you admitted you did not build alone,

Jonathan Jones Founder & General Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation