The idea
The internet has plenty of arguments. It's short on rooms.
More than 150 million Americans received wages in 2023 (SSA) — and there is no dedicated place where they talk to each other as what they are: the working majority.
The 120K or Less community is that place, in formation. It's where a home-health aide in Ohio and an electrician in Arizona discover they're doing the same math at the same kitchen table. It's where member polls tell our advocacy what to prioritize — not the other way around. And it's built on a rule the rest of the internet gave up on: we talk about issues, never parties.
Membership is free, the community comes with it, and every feature below ships at national launch.
What's being built
Six rooms, one house
Every part of the community exists to turn scattered frustration into organized, civil, useful voice.
Issue forums
Standing discussions organized by issue — healthcare costs, housing, wages, college, retirement — not by party or personality. Threads start from questions and lived experience, and chapter organizers surface the best of them to the national level.
Opens at launch
Member polls
Regular, structured polls of the membership — which issues to prioritize, how proposals land, what members are actually experiencing. Results are published to members, and they steer the organization's advocacy. One member, one response.
Opens at launch
Story sharing
A place to tell your own story — the double shift, the rent letter, the tuition bill — and read others'. Stories move to the public Member Stories page only with your written permission, never without it.
Opens at launch
Member Q&A
Ask questions and get straight answers — about the organization, about how a bill works, about how to check your voter registration. Answered by organizers and by members who know, with sources attached where facts are involved.
Opens at launch
Idea submissions
A front door for member proposals: policy ideas, event formats, chapter projects. Ideas with support get a written response from the organization — including "no, and here's why." Silence is not an answer we allow ourselves.
Opens at launch
Chapter rooms
Every state chapter gets its own space for local threads: statehouse bills, county meetups, chapter elections. National is for what we share; chapter rooms are for what's yours. See the chapter model.
Opens at launch
Community standards
Civil by design, not by luck
Most platforms moderate after the fire starts. Ours is built so it's hard to start one — and the standards are published before the doors open, so nobody's surprised.
The full code of conduct will be ratified and published on the Transparency page at launch, alongside the moderation guidelines volunteers are trained on. What follows is the spine of it — the parts that won't change.
- Real names optional, real respect required
- You can participate under a first name or a handle — plenty of members have bosses, clients, or family who don't need to know their politics. What's not optional: treating the person behind every screen name like a neighbor.
- Issues, not parties
- No party-line fights, no candidate cheerleading, no "your side did it first." We argue about healthcare costs, housing, wages, and taxes — the things members share — not the labels designed to divide them.
- Facts carry sources
- Claims presented as fact should link to where they came from, the same standard we hold ourselves to in the Research Center. Lived experience needs no citation — it just needs to be yours.
- The moderation pledge
- Trained volunteer moderators, published guidelines applied evenly, a reason given for every removal, and an appeal path for every decision. Moderation exists to protect the room, never to protect the organization from criticism.
- No selling, no scraping, no spam
- The community is not a marketplace and members are not a mailing list. Commercial pitches, data harvesting, and mass-posting get one warning at most.
Member polls
What a member poll looks like
Polls are how the membership steers. Here's the shape of one — question, options, published results.
Every poll states its question plainly, runs for a set window, and reports results to all members — including results the organization might not love. Polls inform advocacy priorities; they never collect data we'd sell, because we never sell data. When the membership is large enough for results to be meaningful, we'll say how many voted, every time.
One member, one response — the same rule as every vote we run.
Which cost pressure hits your household hardest right now?
Illustrative preview — sample data only. This is a design mock of the poll format; no poll has been run and these numbers measure nothing.
Illustrative sample for format preview only — member polling opens at national launch.
What it costs
The price of a seat in the room
Save your seat
The room opens at launch. The roll is open now.
Join free today and you're in the community the day it opens — forums, polls, and all. Your Work. Your Voice. Your Future.
Vote is Power.