Civic-Engagement

Dear Representative Ocasio-Cortez, You have spent your career saying the economy should work for the people who actually work in it. I spent nine years building one that does. Liana Banyan is a cooperative commerce platform — three commercial websites with a constitutionally locked Cost+20% margin that sustainably funds sixteen charitable initiatives across food security, healthcare access, education, financial inclusion, civic engagement, and crisis response. Creators keep 83.3% of every transaction. Workers own the platform. Membership costs five dollars a year. No venture capital. No shareholders extracting value. No exit strategy — because the point is not to sell it, it is to sustain it. ...

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. ...

Dear Mr. Reeves, You gave your Matrix earnings to the special effects and costume design crews because you thought they deserved it more. You ride the subway. You gave up your seat. You have been one of the most famous people on Earth for thirty years and you behave like a person who genuinely does not believe he is more important than anyone else. That is not humility as a performance. That is a worldview. And I built a platform around it. ...

Dear Ms. Bullock, After Hurricane Katrina, you gave a million dollars. After the tsunami, you gave a million dollars. After Hurricane Harvey, you gave a million dollars. After the wildfires, you gave a million dollars. And in between, you built — quietly, without press conferences, without a foundation logo on every wall — the actual infrastructure of recovery that most people never see. You rebuild communities after disasters. I am building one before the next one hits. ...