Articles
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Being Pro-Working Class Isn’t Enough, We Need Victories People Can Feel
We must reclaim populism from process. Being pro-union, anti-billionaire, and pro-working class isn’t a sufficient economic vision for the scale of crisis we’re in. To win, the Left needs to prioritize promises and outcomes working people can feel. What a...
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A Love Letter and A Call to Women of Color Leaders
In the wake of backlash against racial equity in tech and intensifying authoritarianism, what can an Audre Lorde-inspired reading group teach us about the care practices necessary to turn grief and rage into collective power? For many of us, the...
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(Almost) Everyone is wrong: Reparations are possible
Every critic of reparations should know that it’s already been done. Back in 1862, America gave reparations, but they were given to the wrong people. President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Action Law, which offered reparations to...
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Returning Autonomy and Power to the People: The Case for People’s Assemblies
Introduction: More Than a Vote In the United States, democracy is often defined by the ballot box. Every two or four years, citizens are asked to cast votes for candidates who make promises to represent them. But what happens in...
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How to Win Back Rural America
The path to restoring and securing democracy runs through red, rural America. Here’s our strategy for forging it. I am the executive director of Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC), a 47-year-old multicultural, multi-issue network of nine grassroots organizations spanning...
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Four Opportunities To Grow Powerful And Resilient Organizers
In recent years, a growing chorus has pointed to community organizing as critical to rebuilding our democracy and countering rising authoritarianism. But community organizing is only as strong as the people who do the organizing work, and right now, many...
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Completing the Social Housing Vision
A call to fellow organizers: Don’t replicate the exclusions we’re all fighting against. The progressive left has correctly diagnosed the housing crisis. We understand that Wall Street landlords and private equity firms have transformed homes into profit centers. We...
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Luddite Socialism: Revising Our Relationship to Technology
Leftists must become more critical of cell phones and social media. Is Luddite Socialism the answer to decentering digital technology from our organizing? The Left, like the rest of society, is addicted to their cell-phones and social media. The consumption...
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Inviting Communities To Take On Corporate Power Structures
Although people are intimately aware of the impact that corporate power has on their families and communities, and know what is needed to curb it, many find it difficult to overcome skepticism about creating change through the political process. Our guests, Dania Rajendra, a writer and organizing and founding director of the Athena Coalition, and Andrea Dehlendorf, co-founder of United for Respect, discuss ways we can meaningfully invite, engage, and empower people to join and lead the fight to curb corporate power.
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The Opposite Of Corporate Power Is People Power
Although we’ve seen meaningful progress in recent years to rein in runaway corporate power, a lack of a strong, grassroots-baked base has meant those actions haven’t been able to be sustained for long. In this conversation, LiJia Gong, formerly with Local Progress, and Ryan Gerety from Athena Coalition, focus on the need for bold, accessible, and relevant policy solutions that center everyday people, name corporate harms, and move beyond the limits of elite-driven anti-monopoly strategies.
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How Our Money Feeds Corporate Power
All too often, corporate power is measured largely by the profits and balance sheets of Big Business. But the story of how these corporations and those that own and control them make this money isn’t simply about whatever tangible goods and services they offer; it's a story of how corporations have managed to deeply embed themselves in our economy to extract as much of our resources as possible. Our guest, Lenore Palladino from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Sue Holmberg from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, discuss how our public and private money is enriching the wealthy at the expense of small businesses, workers, and consumers.
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Lessons From Fights For Public Control of Banking and Broadband Infrastructure
Looking around our economy, many of us know that the fight to rein in corporate power isn’t limited to a few very powerful tech companies. In this conversation, Trinity Tran from the California Public Banking Alliance (CPBA) and Sean Gonsalves from ILSR discuss how communities are successfully organizing for public banking and public broadband today.
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How We Beat Corporate Power Before
The concentration of wealth and power we face today is on a scale once unimaginable to many. Yet, the presence of corporate power in our lives is not new. Over the course of our history, a wide range of communities have come together to fight back and reclaim the economy and the levers of power in service of everyday communities. Our guests, Ron Knox from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and Candace Milner from Demos, discuss the history of reining in corporate power and the people who led those fights.
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When Disaster Strikes: Housing Inequality and The Rising Threat of Disaster Capitalism
Fueled by massive resources, corporate power is reshaping vast parts of our housing market, and with it, many of the neighborhoods that communities across the country have long called home. However, as our communities face more frequent once-in-a-generation climate events, corporate investors are also exploiting these disasters to acquire more of our homes. In this conversation, Iris Craige from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), Audrey Aradanas from Miami Homes for All, and Stella Adams from Blueprint North Carolina discuss the role of corporate power in housing and specifically after natural disasters.
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The Corporate Power of It All
Building on our efforts to curb corporate power, Liberation in a Generation recently organized a special edition of The Forge—an online magazine focused on organizing and strategy—centered on reining in the rising influence of Big Business on our lives, communities and economy. Bringing together a wide range of grassroots leaders and organizers, this edition offers firsthand perspectives and collective strategies for weakening corporate power, reminding us that these challenges are part of a long arc and that we all hold power and potential, collectively, to rein in runaway corporate power.
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The Contours of Corporate Power
Corporate power, its reach, and impacts are felt in all kinds of ways in our daily lives, but often its presence isn’t clearly visible or easy to spot. Our guest, Corrine Hendrickson from Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN) and Sofia Lopez from Texas Organizing Project (TOP), discuss the visible and invisible ways corporate power harms communities.
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Our Prescription for Winning: Give Organizers What They Need to Thrive
At this moment, our sector is immersed in a critical debate over what it takes to win. Yet primarily scrutinizing current organizers in a rush toward correction risks getting the diagnosis wrong. Right now, organizers are hard at work across...
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We Won’t Always Have a Mamdani: Funders Must Invest In Civic Engagement To Sustain Voter Turnout Among Marginalized Communities.
To build consistent voter turnout beyond star candidates, funders must shift from late-cycle spam to early, year-round investments in community-based civic education, trusted messengers, and leadership development. It seems counterintuitive to focus on voter turnout in New York City, given...
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The Coming Storm In New York
5 Lessons Learned for Mamdani From 40 Years of Building Independent Politics in Chicago. In 1983, Harold Washington was the first Black man to be elected mayor of Chicago. He was elected by a grassroots movement of community organizations, progressive...
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Updated Insights for More Effective Coalitions
The Climate Advocacy Lab’s Blueprint for Multiracial, Cross-Class Climate Movement is an updated report and workbook providing tools to build healthier, more effective climate coalitions through strategic culture, governance, and conflict management. Back in 2022, we noticed that there were...