The Mission
We’re not a political group. We’re not a charity. We’re not influencers. We’re not funded or controlled by any party, institution, ideology, or agenda. We are regular people, neighbors, and community members just like you committed to showing up for each other.
Our mission is to rebuild civic strength through local clubs organized around these core pillars:
Growth & Development: We help each other level up through skill-sharing, training, mentorship, leadership roles, volunteering, and helping each other find work. Our clubs create clear paths for people to grow into capable, confident leaders by taking action, not chasing titles.
Aid & Support: Our strength is in the network we’re building together, from the neighborhood to the national level. When someone’s in need, they don’t just have a local club, they have an entire community of people across the country who share the same values and are ready to step in.
Good Times: Strong relationships are the foundation of strong communities. We don’t build those bonds through formal meetings or rigid agendas. We build them through cookouts, tailgates, block parties, backyard bonfires, pick-up games, and anything else that brings people together.
Our Values
We are focused on restoring trust, purpose, and community through common sense American values:
Unity: We come from different backgrounds, beliefs, and walks of life, but we’re united by a common goal: rebuilding civic strength, together. This is for anyone willing to show up, pitch in, and treat others with respect. We don’t tolerate hate or division. If you’re here to build, you’re one of us.
Honor: In a world full of shortcuts and easy outs, we choose the hard way. Real honor means keeping your word, owning your actions, and following through, especially when it’s difficult. We do right by our families, our friends, and our communities, because that’s simply who we are.
Action: When something’s broken, we don’t sit around, complain, make excuses, or hope someone more “official” will fix it. We are people of action. We don’t need applause or perfect conditions. We step up, take care of our own, and do the work our communities need, to the best of our ability.
Why I Started 842 Club
Micah Horner
Founder of 842 Club
I come from a working class family. I dropped out and was on my own at 17 years old. No diploma, no degree, no connections. I found my path by discovering my local hardcore punk music scene, playing in bands, and getting involved in the community.
The music gave me purpose, identity, and a code to live by: stand together, keep your word, and make things happen.
It taught me that community is not a spectator sport. If you’re in the room, you’re expected to participate. Grab the mic, jump off the stage, start a band, book a show, make a flyer, run the door, and sweep the floor when it’s over.
We were too young to play in bars or clubs, and too broke for real venues. When no one else would give us a space, a civic club opened their lodge to us. We packed it with our friends, made a ton of noise, and built something real.
They saw value in what we were doing and they backed us when no one else would.
This was my first exposure to the concept of civic clubs. However, it would be many years before I fully understood just how important civic clubs were to our communities, and how rare they’ve become.
Now, I’m a husband, a father, and someone who believes in doing the work.
I’ve spent my career helping technology companies develop and launch tools that solve real problems. I work closely with executives, engineers, and frontline teams around the world to develop strategies, align teams, and build the operational infrastructure that supports long-term growth.
I’m now using the skills and experience I’ve gained to return to my roots: rebuilding the kind of civic strength that gave me a foundation when I had nothing else.
Over the years, I’ve lost too many friends to addiction, isolation, and despair. I’ve seen what happens when we let our communities unravel and how quickly extremists move in to fill the gaps we leave behind.
That’s why I started 842 Club. Not as a brand, political group, or hobby club, but as a real, nationwide support network with autonomous, local chapters built around unity, honor, and action.
It’s my turn to give back and help rebuild what our local civic club quietly showed us was possible all those years ago: real community and real spaces where anyone is welcome and everyone has a role.
We’re here to rebuild civic strength from the ground up, one club at a time.
Let’s get to work.
Why a Civic Club?
Civic clubs like Lions Club, Rotary Club, and Kiwanis were an American innovation inspired by earlier fraternal orders, such as the Freemasons, Shriners, Knights of Columbus, Elks, and Eagles, which themselves were inspired by the guild structures of medieval Europe.
American civic life experienced a fraternal explosion in the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, an era often called the “Golden Age of Fraternalism.” Hundreds of new fraternal orders were established, blending the ritualistic format of the Freemasons with uniquely American purposes.
In an era before modern insurance and welfare, fraternal orders often maintained mutual aid funds (effectively early insurance pools) to support members and their families in times of illness or hardship. Fraternal orders also became vehicles for civic projects: they built impressive lodge halls (often the grandest building in town), sponsored parades, and engaged in charitable works for the public.
By the end of the 19th century, an estimated 5 million Americans belonged to some 600 fraternal organizations, an astounding figure that approached 40% of the adult male population. The fraternal model was firmly entrenched as a pillar of American civic culture. This model set the stage for the next evolution: the rise of open, service-oriented civic clubs in the 20th century.
While the traditional fraternal orders thrived on ritual, exclusivity, and inward mutual aid, a new breed of clubs emerged in the early 20th century that were more open and oriented toward community service, rather than just member benefits, thus broadening the inclusivity and public impact of the older fraternal tradition. They turned outward, channeling that same sense of solidarity and duty into public service, community support, and philanthropy.
They drew from the same core values, but reimagined them for a changing world. These clubs traded secret handshakes for open luncheons and insurance benefits for charity fundraisers, aligning civic club culture with the progressive spirit of the age. They raised funds for families in crisis, ran food drives, mentored young leaders, and supported public health efforts. They built parks, libraries, orphanages, and schools all across the country, and eventually, the world.
Another significant development in the 20th century was the rise of veterans’ service organizations, which were a kind of civic club dedicated to those who served in the armed forces. In 1914, several of these regional societies merged to formally establish the national VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). The VFW’s mission was and remains “to serve our veterans, the military, and our communities”. Early VFW posts provided disabled or sick veterans with support and lobbied Congress for the creation of veterans’ hospitals and benefits. The VFW quickly grew after World War I as those veterans joined, and it became, alongside the newer American Legion (founded in 1919), a powerful advocate for veterans’ rights. These organizations contributed richly to civic life, championing patriotism, public service, and mutual support among veterans.
While these organizations evolved from private, member-only aid to public service and impact, the root principles never changed: when institutions fail, we step up for each other and build our own support infrastructure. In doing so, civic clubs helped establish many practices we take for granted in modern public life: community fundraising drives, volunteer-led service projects, scholarship programs, and international humanitarian campaigns. They taught generations of Americans the habits of self-governance (running meetings, electing officers, debating projects), thereby strengthening democracy at the grassroots.
Now it’s time for our generation to step up, lead, and create the kind of local civic infrastructure that makes sense in the world we’ve inherited.
We carry forward the legacy of the organizations that held communities together for generations. Just like American civic clubs reimagined old traditions to meet the needs of their time in the early 20th century, we’re evolving the model again to meet the realities of the 21st century.
Same spirit and purpose, but done in a way that addresses the challenges of working people today.
It’s time for us to stop complaining and waiting for someone else to fix what’s broken.
It’s our turn to build. And we’re ready.