Strategic Support
Our Campaigns Overview
Since its founding in 2005, Progressive States Network has worked to build a network of progressive legislators committed to working with grassroots advocates, progressive policy institutions, unions and community groups to move progressive policy and transform the political debate across the fifty states. Through our email communication, conference calls,conferences and other work, we have brought strong progressive elected state leaders together with one another and with their key organizational allies to allow for better information exchange, strategic cooperation across states, and a deepening of links between like-minded progressive legislators and advocacy groups within each state.
On a range of specific camapaigns, the Progressive States Network, working with our affiliated C4 action arm, Progressive States Action, provides the coordinated strategic support to our legislative network and allies with the logistical and strategic advocacy tools necessary for advancing key progressive economic and social policies.
Supporting State Legislators & Advocates
PSN provides a range of Strategic Services to legislators and advocates, including drafting legislation, hosting multi-state conference calls and Events nationally and in states, issuing Legislative Alerts on innovative legislation, distributing Issue Updates on key issue areas, and conducting Action Campaigns to mobilize grassroots support.
Contact us for additional help.
What Progressives Face & the Opportunity
As we documented in our report, Governing the Nation from the Statehouses, the rightwing has used state governments to advance their agenda. For nearly forty years, the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council and associated organizations has networked conservative state legislators across the fifty states and coordinated their work with
corporate and ideological interests on the right.
Despite these challenges for progressives, Progressive States Network has worked to build an alternative network of legislators and allied organizations to promote progressive policy. And as we documented in Building a Progressive Majority in the States, polls and other indicators highlight the opportunities to advance progressive policy.
In our Political Strategy section, we highlight the political context of state developments and how progressives should take advantage of these developments in a range of Dispatch Strategy Items, just as our Eye on the Right feature helps progressives track the methods and wedge issues used by the rightwing. We also highlight resources from around the web that put a Spotlight on Rightwing Organizing,
Current Campaings
Jun 09 2010
Progressive States Network to provide day-to-day support to state legislators and community organizations in each state to help make that happen. This accompanying package of issues is not designed to be an exhaustive set of policies but instead strategically focuses on those that can attract support from disaffected voters and thereby "wedge" those rightwing politicians whose allegiance to campaign contributors clashes with the desires of many of the voters who put them into office. And Progressive States as an organization has committed to providing legislative support to campaigns in states advancing these policies.
- Wage Standards and Workplace Freedom – assuring
that American workers receive a decent wage and the freedom of speech in the workplace to stand up for their own interests. - Balancing Work and Family – helping create a more family-friendly workplace and society through better family leave policies, paid sick days, support for child care and access to contraception.
- Health Care for All – extending health care coverage to all Americans, while helping cut costs for those currently receiving health coverage.
- Smart Growth and Green Jobs – promoting energy independence and job growth through new transit options, smart development to strengthen our communities, and new energy technologies.
- Broadband Buildout and Technology Investments – promoting universal and affordable Internet broadband, networking energy, health care & education systems, investing locally in technology jobs, and promoting diverse voices in local media.
- Tax and Budget Reform – creating more equity and accountability in state tax systems, economic development subsidies, and public contracts.
- Fair and Clean Elections – eliminating corruption in lobbying, establishing public financing for elections, protecting voting rights, and promoting reforms like national popular vote to assure that every vote counts.
- State Immigration Project to help provide legislators with the resources to respond to anti-immigrant attacks and instead promote policies to more effectively integrate immigrant families into our communities.
Progressive States Network has also promoted a more specific set of state bills, called our Mulit-State Shared Agenda, that legislative leaders and allies have sought to introduce in a large number of states around the country. Those bills in 2010 included:
- Paid Sick Days – Require employers to provide paid sick days to employees for them to take care of their own illness, that of a family member, or deal with domestic violence.
- Election Reforms to Help Drive Turnout in 2010 and 2012 – Enact legislation to increase voter turnout, including improved public assistance agency compliance with the National Voter Registration Act(NVRA), allowing all voters to vote by mail, and making presidential elections competitive in every state by implementing a national popular vote for the President.
- Prescription Drug Reforms: Reducing Costs and Improving Quality – Enact an integrated prescription drug policy to curb costly industry marketing practices, promote generic medications and join multi-state collaboratives to pool state purchasing power.
- Corporate Transparency in State Budgets – Require full public information about how corporate interests benefiting from government contracts, economic subsidies and tax breaks are spending the money received.
- Green Buildings – Implement policies aimed at making new and existing buildings more environmentally friendly.
- Foreclosure and Predatory Lending Reform – Require lenders to use mediation, require proper maintenance of foreclosed homes, give homeowners right to rent former homes, increase state enforcement powers, and give whistle-blower protections to employees at lending institutions.
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