Organization

AlterNet is an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of dozens of other independent media sources. AlterNet’s aim is to inspire citizen action and advocacy surrounding key issues including the environment, technology and cultural trends, policy debate, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues. Our editorial mix underscores a commitment to fairness, equity and global stewardship, and making connections across generational, ethnic and issue lines.

A coalition of progressive grassroots organizations

Mission To provide the one website focusing on California politics and public policy that will be the hub for progressive Californians to receive and share breaking news and more detailed and thoughtful information and to build alliances across their different policy areas. We make available briefs on issues of the day, articulate and communicate a progressive message on state issues, and facilitate the effective involvement of people and resources on these issues. The purpose is not to supplant anything already being done, but to connect policy, politics, and people. While there are a number of organizations and websites that focus on either national issues and politics or narrow California policy issues, there is not one site that provides across the board information to California progressives and that provides the means to get information to them and the public through the media.

The California Teachers Association exists to protect and promote the well-being of its members; to improve the conditions of teaching and learning; to advance the cause of free, universal, and quality public education. As a professional organization of 335,000 members and 950 local chapters, CTA works with education and community coalitions to direct the priorities of education change in this state.

A progressive think tank dedicated to helping improve the political environment for moderate and progressive programs, issues, and values through policy analysis, long-term strategy, and the use of communication and marketing methods designed to reach the broad public in ways that will engage them emotionally as well as intellectually.

Demos seeks to build a fairer America where democratic participation and opportunity are available to all. Our work flows from a set of core principles: strong democracy, widely shared economic opportunity, and a public sector working effectively in the public interest. These principles have been seriously compromised over the past three decades as private power has wielded more influence over public life, as economic inequities have grown, and as government has been discredited and fiscally crippled. Demos works to reverse these trends, to articulate the connections between our three guiding principles, and to help craft an overarching vision for a more equitable America. Founded in 2000, Demos combines research, policy development and advocacy to bring about change.

The Downtown for Democracy Foundation is a research, education and advocacy organization whose mission is to study the relationship between the creative community and politics in America today; to formulate and promote effective political discourse based upon the traditional progressive values of individual liberty, social justice, and participatory democracy; to translate that discourse into grassroots strategies for advancing short- and long-term progressive goals; and to encourage political participation among the creative class and young people.

The Downtown for Democracy Foundation (D4D Foundation) is a new non-profit organization established in 2005, inspired by the work of Downtown for Democracy, a political action committee (PAC) that galvanized New York’s creative community to engage in the 2004 elections.

Some of our founding board members were involved with these efforts and saw the need for a non-partisan organization using similar creative approaches to engage the cultural community and youth in America’s civic and political life. They also believed there was a strong need for an organization that articulates core progressive values as a coherent ideology—one that appeals to these groups and situates their unique identities and lifestyles within a broader narrative about the progressive movement—rather simply identifying “issues” through which to mobilize them or appealing to perceived self-interests that coincide with a progressive agenda.

As part of this philosophy, the D4D Foundation is structured so that organizing strategies and coalition building, ideology and issue work are developed together rather than separately. The result is a new non-profit intended not only to mobilize the creative community and youth, but also to build bridges between those constituencies and other groups and to contribute tactical innovations, ideas and policy to a shared progressive endeavor.

Faith Voices seeks to strengthen progressive religious organizations, to engender new ideas and language, and to identify and develop religious leadership for social change. We serve our diverse member organizations by enhancing community interconnections for coalition work. We are the exclusive provider of the powerful new technology, Synanim, a dialogic, collaborative internet technology that enables large numbers to reach creative synthesis, while being educated, bonded, and activated. Through our unique technologies and services, we help our membership contribute to the renewal of American democratic life.

FaithfulAmerica is a progressive, inclusive, and responsive interfaith electronic advocacy community dedicated to providing a powerful collective voice to help advance the cause of compassion and justice in public policy.

Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more, diverse, progressive and public interest-oriented media system