How to empower through representation

This project applies the People's Assembly framework — twenty-two policy domains organized to span the scope of governmental activity — to Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District. The analytical unit is the domain. The geographic scope is PA-3: parts of Philadelphia, Delaware County, and Montgomery County. The aim is to document, in sourced terms, where formal representation diverges from operational reality.

Each domain is analyzed through five lenses: the statutory architecture (Track 1), administrative implementation (Track 2), constituent experience, gap analysis between Tracks 1 and 2, and an assessment of which parts of the formal architecture are statutorily stable versus administratively vulnerable. The methodology is documented in full on the methodology page and applied uniformly across the twenty-two.

Policy proposals and reform recommendations are out of scope on these analytical pages. They are generated downstream by contributors through the propose tier of the contribute workflow. Surfacing the gap is the job of the analysis; closing it is the job of whoever does the proposing.

The framework itself — the twenty-two domains as topical seats of a People's Assembly — is the Square Party-level idea this project applies. To follow that framework or register interest in topical specialization, the sign-up form is on the assembly page.

The twenty-two domains, in PA-3

State indicators describe analytical state, not domain importance. Published domains have verified PA-3 content. In review is drafted but unchecked. Drafting is research underway. Planned is scaffolded, not yet researched. The honest current state: one domain is being adapted from a separate research document; the rest are scaffolded and await contributors.

  • Identity & Legal Status

    Citizenship, immigration, vital records, legal personhood, identification systems, the architecture of \"who counts as what\" for governmental purposes.

  • Historical & Public Records

    Public records, archives, FOIA, the census, historical preservation, transparency law, the records infrastructure that makes everything else possible to verify.

  • Mental Health

    Mental health care access, mental health parity, crisis response systems, public mental health services, the institutional architecture for serious mental illness.

  • Public Health

    Disease surveillance, public health agencies, vaccination, health emergencies, environmental health, the population-level health apparatus distinct from individual medical care.

  • Commerce & Industry

    Trade regulation, antitrust, business formation, industrial policy, supply chains, sector-specific regulation outside the carve-outs that have their own domains.

  • Food & Medicine

    Food safety, drug regulation, supply chains for both, the FDA's regulatory domain, medical device regulation, the gray areas (supplements, off-label).

  • Government Operations

    How government runs itself — civil service, procurement, transparency, internal accountability, the meta-domain that shapes how every other domain actually functions.

  • Energy

    Electricity grid, fuels, energy policy, transition planning, utility regulation, the public-private architecture of energy delivery.

  • Finance & TaxationDrafting

    Tax policy, public finance, banking regulation, the fiscal architecture across federal, state, and local layers.

  • Social Welfare

    Income support, SNAP, TANF, housing assistance, social insurance — the architecture of public support for people whose circumstances put them outside what the labor market alone provides.

  • Agriculture

    Farms, food systems at the source, agricultural labor, USDA programs, water for irrigation, soil and land use.

  • Environment & Natural Resources

    Air, water, lands, wildlife, climate policy, environmental regulation across federal, state, and local layers.

  • Education

    Schools from pre-K through higher education, curriculum, funding formulas, accreditation, the public/private/charter mix, special education, libraries qua educational institutions.

  • Labor & Employment

    Wages, working conditions, unions and collective bargaining, workplace safety, unemployment insurance, gig and platform work, the full architecture of the employer-employee relationship.

  • Gambling & White Collar Crime

    Casino and gambling regulation, financial crime, securities fraud, public corruption — the regulatory and enforcement architecture for the kinds of harm that don't show up in violent crime statistics.

  • Arts & Sciences

    Public funding and infrastructure for the arts, the sciences, and the public communication of both — grants, institutions, public broadcasting, research universities qua research.

  • Foreign Policy & Action

    Diplomacy, foreign aid, international agreements, military action abroad, the institutional architecture of how the U.S. interacts with the rest of the world.

  • Digital Infrastructure

    Broadband access, telecommunications, internet governance, public digital services, the public-private edges of digital infrastructure.

  • Public Safety, Law Enforcement & Security

    Policing, prosecution, corrections, courts, national security, intelligence, the full enforcement and adjudication apparatus.

  • Emergency Management

    Disaster preparedness and response, FEMA, civil defense, mutual aid, the layered federal/state/local emergency apparatus.

  • Land & Property

    Real property law, zoning, eminent domain, housing, public land, the legal infrastructure of who owns what and what they can do with it.

  • Physical Infrastructure

    Roads, transit, water systems, ports, bridges, the built environment that everyone uses regardless of whether they think about it.

How to engage

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