One year ago, 5 million women, families, and allies across the world raised our voices in unison to demand a better way forward. On that day, we marched. The world took notice.

Women and allies — united together — created the largest day of protest in the history of the United States. The reverberations of that day have been felt across our nation and the world ever since. In 2017, we made our voices heard in the fight against Islamophobic immigration decrees at the airport protests; we made our voices heard in the fight to protect health care. We stood up for black lives and Dreamers. We rang the alarm over threats to our planet. With the #metoo movement, we came out of the shadows to call out those who attack us, igniting a national conversation and concrete change. We will not allow ourselves to be degraded, deprived of dignity, or dehumanized, and we will not be relegated to the shadows.

But protest alone is not enough. We must wield our power through protest and at the ballot box. We have increasingly shown up at the polls and made our voices heard at the ballot box. We are energized by recent key elections in Virginia and Alabama. In every election from this day forward, we will raise our voices through our votes, in greater numbers and with great clarity about who supports a future we can all believe in.

Now it’s time to build our movement together. This movement belongs to all of us, and all of our voices need to be heard loud and clear.

That’s why we’re launching Operation Marching Orders: through this participatory democratic method we can articulate what we want for our country, for our future, and what we’ll fight for in the coming year.

Imagine that you could give your elected officials “marching orders” on the change you want to see. Imagine holding them accountable to the values, principles, and political platform we identify together, as a movement.

Welcome to Operation Marching Orders (OMO) – our way of putting you, the marchroots (what we call all of us who have marched and resisted), in the driver’s seat of the major decisions we will make as an organization and the political platform we will fight for as a movement.

It consists of a few phases, but right now we’re going to address only the first one: Crowdsourcing Our Agenda. (For those of you who like extra-credit and extra reading, the second phase will be a fun way to crowdsource the candidates we will support.)

How do we get millions of people’s voices heard to define what we want for our country? Simple. We ask them. We have a country-wide conversation.

The Operation Marching Orders conversation begins with a poll. Not some boring old poll, but a really cool, interactive poll in which you can see in real time how fellow participants are voting and what opinions are aligned with your principles and values. The best part: participants can add their own statements to be voted on. (Note: these statements will be highly moderated to reduce duplication and trolling.)

Here is a sample poll so you can get the gist of what participating was like. (Obviously this is not the conversation we will be having during OMO, it’s just to give you a sense of what this poll is like.)

Imagine an organization where you make the big decisions and set the agenda – where you give the leadership its marching orders. Where a bottom-up philosophy isn’t just talking points on a website–it’s a true organizing principle. After all, if the marchroots is expected to do the hard work necessary to turn our country around by fighting for candidates and causes, they’d better be the candidates and causes the marchroots believes in, not candidates and causes imposed by a top-down model.

What we love about OMO is that it allows the people of our country to really own the movement for change. This interactive poll gives us all a voice in the change we want to see, gives us the information we need to shape our country, encourages participation in activism in the year ahead, and can serve to re-awaken those who want to get involved but don’t know where to start.

Operation Marching Orders is using state-of-the-art, AI-mediated civic engagement technology for polling the members of our community over a two week period. (That’s quite a sentence! Sometimes doing it is better than talking about it, so go check out our kinda’ silly sample poll here.)

The poll will contain 10-20 preloaded statements in which participants will be prompted to vote agree/disagree/pass on statements submitted by others and/or enter their own statements for everyone to vote on. These statements may be something like (and we’re making this up for the time being as we craft the real questions): “The electoral college should be abolished.” Then everyone votes on it: agree, disagree, or pass and someone enters: “The electoral college is not the root of the problem”

And as we said, the best part is that participants can add their own statements to the poll. This ensures that people are voting on the issues that really matter to them. This also means that the poll is ever-changing, so people can go back each day, or hour, to check if there are new statements to be voted on.

The results of OMO will help us define who we are as a movement, what we’re fighting for, and what we want for our country. Once the poll is closed, we will synthesize the results of OMO into a political platform that we will publicize on our site and in the media so that all elected officials and candidates for office know what their marching orders are.

March On will use this platform when making endorsements to make sure that all candidates we support are aligned with our values and principles. March On leadership will also consider this platform its marching orders and will direct the organization to fight for the issues and priorities identified through this exercise. Our partner organizations will be free to use this platform for their political purposes as well, since our intent is for this to serve as an agenda or platform for the progressive-resistance movement writ large.

District-specific data will be shared with participating March On affiliates and issue-specific data will be shared with partner organizations.

March On answers the question that so many posed after the Women’s Marches of 2017: what’s next?

On January 21, 2017, millions of people marched around the country and across the world to raise our collective voices in hope for a better future. Since that day, the work has continued in local communities and organizations. Now, these organizations and the marchers they represent are coming together to fulfill the potential of that historic moment and take our movement to the next level.

Founded by the leaders of many of the Women’s Marches across the country, MARCH ON is women-led, but open to all, and employs a sophisticated political strategy to coordinate concrete actions at the federal, state, and local level through the joint efforts of millions of marchers. MARCH ON is a 501(c)(4) organization with a Super PAC–MARCH ON’s Fight Back PAC and an affiliated (c)(3) project.

March On will never communicate raw voting data that can identify you (e.g. names, emails, or social profiles) and will not sell any participant metadata.