It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about.
A month after President Barack Obama won re-election, top brass from three dozen of the most powerful groups in liberal politics met at the headquarters of the National Education Association, a few blocks north of the White House. Brought together by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Communication Workers of America, and the NAACP, the meeting was invite-only and off the record. Despite all the Democratic wins in November, a sense of outrage filled the room as labor officials, environmentalists, civil rights activists, immigration reformers, and a panoply of other progressive leaders discussed the challenges facing the left and what to do to beat back the deep-pocketed conservative movement.
At the end of the day, many of the attendees closed with a pledge of money and staff resources to build a national, coordinated campaign around three goals: getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation. The groups in attendance pledged a total of millions of dollars and dozens of organizers to form a united front on these issues — potentially, a coalition of a kind rarely seen in liberal politics, where squabbling is common and a stay-in-your-lane attitude often prevails. “It was so exciting,” says Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director. “We weren’t just wringing our hands about the Koch brothers. We were saying, ‘I’ll put in this amount of dollars and this many organizers.'”
The liberal activists have dubbed this effort the Democracy Initiative. The campaign, Brune says, has since been attracting other members — and also interest from foundations looking to give money — because many groups on the left believe they cannot accomplish their own goals without winning reforms on the Initiative’s three issues. “This isn’t an optional activity for us,” Brune said. “It is mission critical.”
Read more: Mother Jones
