This isn’t how these things are supposed to start.
We didn’t launch The Fair Ground with a five-year plan or a grant from a foundation named after a dead billionaire. There was no ribbon-cutting. No blue check. No beige powerpoints.
We launched with rage. With sarcasm. With a well-aimed PDF.
It started—as all great civic uprisings do—in a Facebook comment section, where one of us made the mistake of asking a school board candidate a direct question. The reply? Condescension, censorship, and a dozen sock puppet accounts calling us “divisive.”
Naturally, we replied with a spreadsheet.
Then came the screenshots. The FOIAs. The property records. The late-night group chats with messages like “wait… is that LLC tied to her husband’s donation?” and “someone check if this address is real.”
At some point, someone said, “We should make this a site.”
Someone else said, “We should make it a problem.”
So we did both.
We were tired of:
Watching local decisions get made in closed rooms by people with shared last names. Seeing public forums treated like improv auditions for bad faith. Being told that “civility” matters more than accuracy. Getting more answers from Zillow than from elected officials. Being blocked from community groups for asking where the money went.
We built The Fair Ground to:
Burn the fence that keeps people out of civic life. Make boring stuff funny. Make complicated stuff accessible. Name names. Link receipts. Demand better. Give people the tools they’re told they don’t need. Turn every “just let it go” into a four-part series.
This was never about going viral.
This was about going local—loudly, publicly, relentlessly.
And if you’re reading this, you’re part of it now.
The Fair Ground didn’t start with permission.
It started because no one was giving it.
And we don’t plan on asking.
