Project 2026 Podcast — Episode Summary "What Is Project 2026?" — Solo Episode with Jerry Norris Runtime: ~47 minutes Host: Jerry Norris (solo — Tanya is traveling, learning about Nordic cooperative culture) Opening context Jerry opens with a brief note on the Deep Green data center fight playing out before Lansing City Council — framing it as a live example of the core problem: institutional actors with financial stakes in a project pushing it through over community objection. He names it as a solid oxide fuel cell project dressed up as a data center, argues it will increase downtown pollution, and points to it as exactly why Project 2026 exists. He directs people to YouTube/Facebook for the counterpoint testimony, then pivots: today is about the bigger picture. What Project 2026 is — and isn't Three-word framework: community self-governance, basic needs as basic rights, cooperative economics. It's a direct counter to Project 2025, which Jerry describes as having replaced federal leadership with people loyal to Heritage Foundation and billionaire interests — without actually reducing bureaucracy as promised. Project 2026 isn't oppositional — it's a redirection. Stop beating your head against systems that won't listen. Build the alternative. He also explicitly de-centers The Fledge: this isn't a Fledge project. Communities in Detroit, Arizona, and around the world are doing versions of this. The goal is a platform that connects them. The problem: why now 44% of Americans — and 55–60%+ in Lansing — live below the ALICE threshold. Private equity is buying up every basic need category: food consolidated into five companies, housing being swallowed by investment firms, tech controlled by billionaires. Communities have zero real input on the decisions that govern their survival. The data center vote is the local proof of that. The urgency is real. ALICE households can't wait for a policy fix or a new president. Food needs to be on the table today. Bills need to get paid today. And the machine — regardless of who's in office — keeps producing the same outcomes. The ten basic needs Starting with the United Way's six (housing, healthcare, childcare, food, transportation, technology), Jerry expands to ten by adding energy, education, environment, and justice/safety/security — drawing on Maslow and practical interdependence: a house without electricity isn't really a house, and bad energy means bad environment means no justice. He notes there are probably more if you put all your heads together. Rights, he argues, aren't God-given — they're what we decide they are. If it's required for survival, it should be a right. The nine guiding principles — each with commentary Decentralize everything — Including food distribution, economics, governance. The data center vote should go directly to residents, not be delegated to a city council that isn't listening. Radical inclusion — Say yes to each other as much as possible. Give everyone a voice, a chance to experiment, to learn, to create. Sovereignty — You can grow your own food, but if you don't own the land, someone can take it. Sovereignty covers data, governance, health, territory — not just property. Ownership and governance must move together. Basic needs are basic rights — We shouldn't even have to defend this. If you were running a football team, you wouldn't starve the quarterback because he missed practice. Starve the failing systems — Don't burn them down. Build something better that redirects resources away from extractive systems into cooperatives. (He notes he gets called a communist for this — and responds with characteristic directness.) Public safety is free — Desperate people do desperate things. Invest in prevention and basic needs, and you need less police, fewer emergency responses. Lansing's fire department fielded 23,000 calls last year; only 10% were actual fires. Fix homelessness and a significant portion disappear. Create true democracy — Not the current model where 50% are governed by someone they hate and that flips every four years. Science-based, fact-based, grounded in real discourse. Direct democracy where possible. Permeate the culture — These ideas have to show up at dinner tables, in stories, in the culture itself. Culture is being eroded — ICE deporting people, communities being hollowed out. Push back by putting good values into the common sense of the community. Create true opportunity for prosperity — Real entrepreneurship means seeing a gap and filling it sustainably, not extracting from people. Cooperative prosperity — you build wealth with your co-op circle around you. Proof points: The Fledge in practice Sunshine House — 17 co-owners, rent-to-own with real transferable equity. Not the predatory version — genuine ownership building. Urbandale Farm — Teaching people to grow their own food, put gardens in backyards, reduce dependence on the five corporations controlling food. "The hand that feeds you is the hand that can starve you." The Entrepreneurial Journey — Cooperative business basics; problems solved by community members who get compensated, including with farm produce. Fledge Foundation — He's arm's length from it. Grants are colonization in his view — they impose values and can be canceled by any president. The goal is for the Foundation to work itself out of existence as cooperative ownership matures. Scaling He used to want 10,000 Fledges. He doesn't think that way anymore. What's needed is organizations everywhere embracing these models and building a network — start in Michigan, build through the Midwest, fractal-scale to national. It sounds utopian, he says, but it's how nature works: plants grow the same way for the same reasons, just in different soil. Call to action Check out the other episodes Explore the Project 2026 wiki (link in show notes) Come see The Fledge — 1300 Eureka Street, Lansing Bring your ideas