Building FireStriker: Why I'm Making Civic Tech Free

A solo software engineer shares the origin story of FireStriker, a free civic engagement and legislative intelligence platform. Inspired by watching his community miss a critical window to oppose data center approvals in El Paso, he identified a tooling gap: grassroots organizations rely on disconnected free tools while well-funded opponents use $30K+/year legislative tracking platforms. FireStriker aims to bridge this gap by offering member management, event coordination, dues/donations via Stripe (zero platform fee), bill tracking across federal and state legislatures, legislator stance detection, engagement intelligence, and government meeting tracking — all free. The platform is built nights and weekends by a single developer and is launching soon.