We Share Power
Democracy is about equal empowerment among free and equal people across all of our society, and we share power at every level of governance. We are inspired by Ella Baker’s insight that group-based leadership offers more ownership, sustainability, and meaning than charismatic leadership models.

We Act With Integrity
Integrity is the reflection of outer and inner. The highest goal of civic life is to close gaps between is and ought, so we align means with ends to reflect our hopes for a safer, happier, and healthier world in the internal culture we create. Our internal model is consistent with our long-term vision.

We Have a Positive Relationship To Change
We’ve voted to implement a system where Affinity Spaces can propose ideas to make our systems more healthy, welcoming, and dynamic. After ideas are surfaced, all Youth Organizers discuss the proposals, refine them, and vote to approve or deny them. This voting system allows us to center the insights of disinherited communities, embrace change, and create a healthier culture.

We Use Consent-Based Accountability Systems
Many student-led organizations struggle with their accountability, retention, and impact. This is a problem because people are interdependent. Every position in Rhizome is opt-in and grounded in clear, time-bound, and consent-based accountability standards. This allows us to sustain shared commitments and steward transitions gracefully. We approach collective power as an outgrowth of proactive consent and we strive to be sustainable and accountable.

We Are Organized
Something that happens when you start with 90 Co-Founders who bring strong ideas is that you either 1) implode or 2) get super organized. With one unpaid full time staff for 21 months, we had to establish clear workflows and ensure that all of us took responsibility. The result is that we’ve built a trust-based and distributed system that embraces both freedom and responsibility.

We Are Proactive, Not Reactive
We know the only viable path toward a healthy civic culture is through proactive efforts, proactive relationships, and proactive steps to create the world we want to live in. We don’t react to current events, chase funding that doesn’t fit us or only focus on what is wrong with our country. We don’t focus deeply on specific policies or limit our scope to one issue. We engage at the intersections.

We Have Long Time-Horizons
Young people today are forced to grow up fast, and to develop longer time horizons than older generations. We know that uniting a generation of compassionate, effective young leaders is a necessary investment in America’s long-term health and happiness. As Howard Thurman wrote, “Community cannot feed for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them — of those unknown and undiscovered.”

We Move Together
By creating information ecologies that allow for learnings between young people across different communities, we balance the need for local leadership with the need for emerging leaders from different communities to learn from each other at scale. Rich information ecologies, feedback loops, and voting systems let us avoid small wars and schisms while moving together.

We Harness Technology
Tech does not determine its own uses, people do. We are building something never seen before because Rhizome was not possible in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s. We are made possible by advancements in technology, and by the tech-fluency of the young people who lead our work. We harness technology to learn from each other, build relationships, and grow methodically.

We’re Collaborative, Not Competitive
Competition too often gets in the way of ambition, as people lose sight of ourselves and miss the forest for the trees. This is why our theory of change is grounded in emergence, not resistance. Our system is flexible to the needs of each community, flexible to the incredible work being done in our communities, and embraces community care and sympathetic joy as pillars of our culture.

We Value Multigenerational Work
We must combine our energy and imagination with the wisdom of elders. We seek elders to guide our thinking, open new doors, and teach us what they’ve learned so that we can pass it forward to those generations who follow. As Toni Morrison once claimed, “Your real job is if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, your job is to empower somebody else.”

We Work Where We’re Needed
One of the very earliest decisions we voted on was to prioritize Title 1 schools, under-resourced schools, and rural resource deserts. Although we know this will make us grow slower than a path of least resistance, early expansion will focus on under-resourced schools in diverse and/or rural districts. We strive to make sure that we’re spending our time where it’s most needed.

We Don’t Do Urgency
We don’t sprint at constant deadlines because we want to work sustainably. We move fast and get the work done, but we do it through clear planning, proactive feedback loops, and steady steps that we take each week. We also take time to be goofy together, and to ensure we see each other as people. Civics is the work of a lifetime so we pace ourselves, take time to reflect, and enjoy it.

We Do Dignity
Dignity is something we receive from others, from the shared process of seeing and being seen. To dignify each other in our work, we get to know each other, respect each other, and show each other appreciation for the work we’re doing together. This can be as simple as making sure that everyone has cameras on for a virtual meeting, and as deep as centering why we do this work.