building the new majoritythe new world foundation perspective

2 1

Copyright ©2005

The New World Foundation666 West End Avenue, Suite 1bNew York, NY 10025212-249-1023info@newwf.orghttp://www.newwf.orghttp://www.phoenixfund.org

Fighting for the Future in American Politics

L ike many who identify with social justice traditions in

American politics, the Board and staff of The New World

Foundation have reflected on the 2004 elections and arrived at

a new sense of commitment: we can do better.

We can do better in building a citizenry that is motivated

by values of democracy, decency and inclusion; that has higher

expectations for economic security, healthy communities

and good government; that is informed about the enormous

choices facing us in the world, from superpower wars to global

warming.

We can also do more to activate the millions of young

people coming of age, the millions disenfranchised by poverty

and racism, and those who do not yet dare to hope for a more

just society.

Certainly, these are reactionary times. We are well aware of

the destructive, and sometimes seductive, power that has been

amassed by the Right at all levels of the federal government

and in many states, even with the slimmest margins of support.

We are also aware that many of the past gains achieved by

social movements and progressive alliances have been deeply

compromised or swept away. So this is a sober moment, when

each of us must decide whether to concede or to rebuild.

We choose to rebuild and so do many others. Some focus

primarily on rebuilding vigorous party politics, some on

countering the Right in statehouses and Congress, some on

developing new issues and messages.

2 3

As a public charity, New World has focused on rebuilding the

frontline ways in which people connect to civic participation

and political action in the broadest sense—what we call

the “social infrastructure” for creating an expanding base of

voters willing to both challenge and exercise power. And on

the frontlines today, we see activity that is already producing

progressive new majorities in many places and showing us

how a new political era can grow “from the ashes of the old.”

We have established The New Majority Fund at The New

World Foundation as a way to expand funding for this work

and multiply the places where civic activism for social justice

promotes voter awareness and participation.

In this booklet, we would like to share our view of the

field with other foundations and donors. We want to expand

our collective “radar screen,” to add a frontline layer to our

understanding of what a new majority requires. We want to

connect the immediate moment to a long-term perspective, so

that we, who have resources to invest, will make a difference

in the next generation, as well as in the next national debate.

“ Philanthropy can and does promote civic renewal by paying attention to the often overlooked smaller grassroots groups that are the heart and soul of vigorous communities.”

—William A. Schambra, Hudson Institute/Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, 2005

The Right Has Learned What Some of Us Forgot…So much of the post-’04 discussion has focused on messaging, money, mobilization, and candidate management that we have overlooked the very essence of the Right’s ascendancy in the past thirty years: they have built a base.

As William Schambra of the right-wing Bradley Center reminds us in the quote above, the Right has invested time and money in broadening and politicizing their core constituencies. They have funded an organizing program that focuses on Christian conservatives, anti-government libertarians, and “white flight” families in the far suburbs and ex-urbs. They have also made inroads into what was once solidly liberal terrain: the working families of “middle America,” whose jobs and futures have been down-sized, but who are no longer attached to the culture of inclusion that prevailed when they were the new immigrants and when unions and civic associations were stronger.

The Right’s attention to re-organizing these constituents into “smaller grassroots groups” on their side of the political spectrum has given them a populist veneer that belies their elite status and “command and control” leadership. This investment strategy is smart and long term: grassroots groups provide a sense of identity, moral purpose, and community support. They filter media messages, articulate values, and suggest the language of political appeal. They become the new vehicles for civic engagement, political action, and ultimately, electoral impact.

Ironically, the Right learned about grassroots base-building—its power to shift political alignments and define political eras—from their own defeats at the hands of the New Deal and Great Society in the 1930s and 1960s. Those were moments, fueled by the upsurge of powerful social justice movements and the sweep of broad alliances, when the liberal-progressive spectrum set the political standard. In those days, the Right knew that ideas and messages were important, but they learned they were not enough.

They learned well, as this chart of “The Conservative Power Structure” demonstrates. The Right has always built from the top down, using the leverage of class privilege and power—but this time they’ve also built

4 5

from the bottom up, and they’ve filled the distance in between with organizing groups and resource intermediaries. They have created an infrastructure for conservative politics that has density and connectivity.

Meanwhile, on the liberal-progressive side, organizing structures have gotten thinner as the distance between the standard bearers and the grassroots has grown. Too many national leaders and Beltway policy centers have forgotten that progressive politics have always been propelled by organized constituencies and by organizing the unorganized, by messages and social values that come from base as well as to it.

The good news is that not everybody forgot. Many activists at the grassroots level have kept the lessons of past movements close to heart

and are already re-organizing from the ground up. This is where New World provides support. We are convinced that renewed grassroots energy is what has kept the American public closely and sharply split. And so the 2004 national election was not the liberal equivalent of “1964,” when Barry Goldwater garnered only 25% of the vote and conservatives lost credibility as national leaders. Those who care about social justice and democratic values are not 30 years away from national influence.

But we must ask ourselves, honestly, is this enough? Are we moving closer or further away from influence and power? How do we recognize the promising opportunities in front of us and expand our strategic investments?

GOP: Command & ControlMessaging: Coordinated, Disciplined, Scaled

The Conservative Power Structure

P R I M A R Y B A S E C O N S T I T U E N C I E S

The Message Machine/Money MatrixMajor foundations and donors, Heritage, Cato, AEI, etc.

The Party Infrastructure 350,00 grassroots volunteers

Membership Dues, Activists, New Leaders, Candidate Pipelines, Accountability

NationalTaxpayers

Union:300k

members

FreedomWorks:360k members600k database

Center forEducation

Reform

HomeSchoolLegal

DefenseAssn.

IntercollegiateStudies Inst.

IntercollegiateNetwork:

53k members

College Pro-LifeInformation

Network

HomeSchooling

Networks in all50 states, e.g.

Christian HomeEducators of

Ohio

VouchersLocal

capacityvia 37

grassrootsgroupsacross

US

LocalAnti-TaxGroups:

All 50states in

NTUdatabaseGun Clubs

e.g. OhioRifle & Pistol

Assn.

EvangelicalConservatives:

40 million

RomanCatholic

Conservatives

Pro-GunOwners &

Libertarians

Anti-ImmigrantSuburban/Ex-Urban

Communities

Anti-TaxSuburban/Ex-Urban

Conservatives

School ‘Choice’PrivatizationMovement

Colleges, Seminaries &Universities

Focus onthe Family

ChristianCoalition

of America

US CatholicConference

Pro-Life Committee

Nat’l Right to LifeCommittee

City and regional Pastor networks& State policy networks

Suburban/Ex-urban

Megachurches

RuralEvangelicalChurches

Local Dioceses

PriestsFor Life

Gun Ownersof America

Anti-ImmigrantFAIR supports

groups &local immigrationreform groups in:

AZ,CA,CO,GA,KS,MI,MA,MN,MO,

NJ,NY,NC,RI,SC,TN,TX,VA,WI

Club ConnectionMonthly magazine

Discounts and services

Knights ofColumbus

NRA:2.75 millionmembers

FAIR:Federation ofAmericans forImmigration

Reform

AmericanFamily

Association

SouthernBaptist

Convention

Campus MediaCirculation: 2 million with

volunteers at 1000 colleges, giving TA and

funding for campus publications, training

student editors, feeding stories and editorials,

developing internet groups

Source: Lee Cokorinos, Capacity Development Group, 2004© The New World Foundation 2005

6 7

Who Will Build the New Majority?As New World identifies frontline organizing that engages constituencies in the electoral arena, we have found that most effective groups are able to align multiple constituencies and issues, creating new terrain on which broad electoral alliances can ultimately form, and opening new pathways to political participation.

These groups operate on three levels. They focus on the core base, people who are socially concerned and often active voters, like union members, civil rights activists, people of faith and service professionals. They work to maximize that core base with new organizing. Through very intentional outreach and activism, they also connect to new constituencies that are often unorganized or isolated, like immigrants and youth.

From the volume and energy of the people they set in motion, by making community demands for government responsibility and corporate accountability, these groups begin to shift the overall political climate, influence the media and policy debates, and challenge uncertain or “swing” voters with new and different viewpoints.

We will examine diverse examples later on, but for now, let’s start with a leading case. Think about how much progressive grassroots organizing has reshaped politics in California from the so-called “Red” state of Ronald Reagan and his cronies a decade ago. A lot has happened in that time: healthcare and service sector unions organized hundreds of thousands of new members, recent immigrants and their children became active citizens and voters, liberal churches and temples got involved again, environmentalists were recruited to a broader agenda, new leaders and candidates stepped forward.

This wave of organizing and civic engagement has fueled new levels of voter participation, especially in low-income communities, which in turn is generating a more educated, experienced voting public. The electoral shifts are impressive. Right-wing ballot initiatives that were winning by 70–30% margins a decade ago are now losing by that margin. Strongholds of reaction like the San Fernando Valley are not so conservative anymore; they even voted not to secede from the City of Los Angeles. San Jose overcame Prop. 13 to create a tax base for social services. San Diego elected

the first liberal majority on the city council in its history. Progressives like Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, and Antonio Villaraigosa have become leading public officials.

Of course, there is a long way to go to secure these shifts at the statewide level, and progress has been uneven (Arnold, for instance). But it’s easy to forget how much has been accomplished with new organizing, new forms of civic participation, and a renewed focus on voter registration and turnout over the past decade.

Lesson #1: Don’t ignore the core. We need to build on the strength of the core constituencies that are the foundation for the new majority. Taking the national 2004 election profile as a loose indicator of progressive values:

Expanded Core

New BaseConstituencies

Swing Voters

Core BaseConstituencies

Components of the New Majority

Unions17 million members,

25 million in union households

African Americans

Latinos

Young Votersthe only blue age group

Single Women

Religious Minorities

65%blue

25%

12%

11%

18%

22%

all voters

all voters

all voters

all voters

all voters

88%blue

56–65%blue

54%blue

62%blue

77%blue

93%blue

Jews Muslims

The Top “Blue” Constituencies in ’04

Source: The New York Times; www.wvwv.org

8 9

There are other groups in the core as well: liberal people of faith, environmentalists, civil libertarians, the gay rights movement, the anti-war movement, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, consumer advocates, New Deal seniors. All together, the core groups consistently represent 35–45% of the electorate in any given place or issue.

As much as we rely on core constituencies in constructing majorities, their base organizations have been repeatedly ignored by national election strategists and funders. Under the surface run the intersecting fault lines of race, class, and gender. Our core base is predominantly people of color, the working class and poor, and women heads of household. Yet our national leaders remain predominantly white, male, and highly privileged. Whether in public office or other institutions, they appear unable to articulate or implement a vision of racial equality and social justice, even in the face of rampant racism and tokenism from the Right. It is past time to reverse this pattern. It is especially imperative to recognize the central role that people of color are already playing at the core of progressive politics, to invest in the organizations they are leading at the state and local level, and to support these leaders in expanding the core and reaching the new constituencies we need to organize.

Lesson #2: Expand the Core. With new organizing and mobilizing, there is plenty of room for core groups to grow to their fullest potential and reach their broadest memberships. We can even move white men, if they are organized around economic justice. Taking an example from the ’04 elections, the Garin exit polls showed that white men overall voted 60% for Bush, but white men in unions voted 61% for Kerry. So union membership matters in broadening the core, which makes new union organizing a crucial political battleground.

How the core constituencies interact to support each other is equally critical. One of the untold stories of California is the role of progressive faith-based organizing in supporting union drives, countering the Right’s appeal to evangelicals with appeals to justice, and building bridges between low-income and middle class voters.

In addition, the greatest potential for progressive civic engagement lies in urban centers. Every city with a population over 500,000 voted Blue in ’04, as did half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000, even in very Red states. The potential to challenge conservative power is also expanding from urban cores outward, extending into greater metro areas that include several suburban rings and often multiple counties.

These greater metro areas are, in fact, distinct regional economies that remain dynamic centers of population growth and will increasingly dominate state politics. Organizing “to scale” means understanding how to build civic activism that is defined by regional economic realities and not only by existing political boundaries.

Lesson #3: Connect with New Constituencies. The path to a sustainable new majority runs through the new voters, and the future voters, who are just now being organized at the grassroots—on both sides of the political divide.

When social justice issues get to people first, when community alliances embrace new constituencies and open doors to their empowerment, when eligible voters see continuous neighborhood activity led by people they know, when non-voters see spirited battles to break down barriers to voting, then the electorate generally expands and moves toward progressive candidates and causes. The regular new voters created in this process are the folks who have swung the balance in every metro region of California. Their constituencies are the heart of new organizing among unions, in public universities, in inter-faith networks—the places where the core constituencies connect with and lend strength to new civic activism.

So let’s imagine that the “youth vote” had decided the last election. If no one but 18 to 29 year-olds had voted in 2004, Kerry would have won the Electoral College by a 2:1 margin.

Again, we are using the choices presented in 2004 as very loose indicators of progressive viewpoints, and not suggesting that progressives can only express themselves through the Democratic Party. Indeed the “age gap,” along with the fact that young voters still have low turnout rates, begs some tough questions. Who is really talking politics to this

The New Constituencies

Their ChildrenComing-of-age children of immigrants

Youth 14-18The next electorate, 21 million

Low-Income Communities,Working Poor

60 million, majority non-voters

Families without Health Care47 million

Immigrants from Global South30 million since 1990

Source: US Census 2000

10 11

constituency of young people and speaking to them as young workers, as community college students, as tenants and consumers, or perhaps, as new parents? And who is speaking to the cohort right behind them, the 14 to 18 year-olds—through family, through school, through culture, community, and media? Where do they see living examples of courage in the face of injustice and action in place of indifference? Who inspires them to become political leaders and activists in their own generation?

Let’s also think a few steps ahead about the Latino vote and what it means to potential majorities and new political alignments:

The map tells us where both present and future battlegrounds lie. Latinos are not the only significant new immigrants, but they are the most rapidly expanding group in the new electorate. While they are highly concentrated in urban centers, over half live in metro area suburbs. Though far from homogeneous, they are forging a new political identity in the crucible of American racial and ethnic politics.

The potential of Latinos to emerge as a decisively progressive voting bloc is already evidenced in California and Colorado, where they are represented by highly visible office holders and liberal standard-bearers. In Florida, where conservative Cubans have claimed the mantle of representation, the Latino vote is split, but it is moving in more progressive directions—notwithstanding the fact that in 2004 not a single Democrat holding a statewide office spoke Spanish. At New World, we are investing in the civic engagement projects in South Florida, Orlando and among farm workers that are challenging those old dynamics. These groups are creating leadership streams that reflect the new and next base of activism, and reflect the real potential of a progressive majority forming in Florida.

The Latino population map also tells us to take note of the Old South, the states where new Latino immigration is explosive. We see enormous potential for this influx to create multi-racial alliances that can contest the reactionary power structure in the region and its decisive grip on national politics. Indeed, we cannot concede the South in the face of this potential. But it will surely require long term investment in frontline organizing, strong anchor organizations, active bridge-building, and new enfranchisement battles.

Clearly, what New World sees and values in the field begins with strong base-building organizations that have a long term strategy for creating a progressive majority, propelled by substantive policy victories along the way, especially for poor people. This is different from short-term election strategies that focus on winning office and on a few swing states and swing voters, as we saw from both parties in 2004. That is not a route to a lasting progressive majority on the ground. Building the new majority for a social justice agenda requires us to speak to and from our core constituencies, to help them grow, to connect and organize with the new constituencies, and to move the wider public by exercising political clout and re-taking the policy initiative.

So we not only need to understand who will build the new majority, but also how to do it well.

What’s already working:

✽Continuous Organizing✽Frontline Resources✽Building Alliances

Today, we see the most effective voter participation work being built by frontline organizations that can sustain organizing activity beyond and between election cycles.

States Where Latino Populations Exceed 12%

States With Fastest Growing Latino Populations

Latinos as a Rising Electoral Force

CA 32.5%

NV 32.5%

NE

MN

AR

KY

TN NC

SC

GAAL

AZ 25%

CO 17%

NM 42%

TX 32%

IL12.5%

NY 15%

NJ 13%

FL 17%

Source: US Census 2000

The 2004 Youth Vote

EV Totals:Kerry: 375Bush: 163

Source: musicforAmerica.com

12 13

What do we mean by frontline? We mean the social justice organizations—as well as civic associations, labor, religious and educational institutions—that grow on the ground, inside a community, that represent webs of relationships and values, where you have to live with what you do and how you do it. We mean organizations that are led by people who reflect their communities and are in it for the long haul—not coincidentally, these organizations are led by a much higher percentage of people of color, women, union leaders, and 25 to 50 year-olds than we find inside the Beltway.

While the last round of national elections saw real progress in educational outreach to new and occasional voters, many of the best funded national efforts were still “parachute” operations of outside canvassers who didn’t always land smoothly on the ground and who didn’t leave enough behind when they went home. In contrast, the strongest progressive results in both registration and turnout were achieved by frontline organizations, as in South Florida, where they told national voter mobilization groups to send the money, but not parachute organizers. Instead, these groups placed over 200 local activists and emerging leaders in nationally funded slots—leaders who are still there, spearheading union drives, Hispanic and Caribbean community organizations, statewide issue campaigns, and ongoing voter education work.

This raises the question of frontline resources. South Florida’s GOTV work was exceptional, that is, both excellent and unusual, because local organizations used their clout with national unions and advocacy groups to claim and deploy national money. In general, however, the sector we are discussing has been chronically under-funded. One reason is that most frontline organizations are not part of national networks, or are effective primarily as local chapters of national networks, such as Jobs with Justice, ACORN or PICO. Foundation grants and donor contributions tend to flow more readily to the national level and to professional advocacy and policy centers, which funders find easier to identify and identify with, than most community-based groups.

We absolutely need more funding across the political apparatus, from top to bottom and sideways; this is not a Beltway vs. grassroots argument. This is an argument about striking strategic balances, and about the fact that the current distribution of progressive political participation funding is seriously out of balance. Far more is spent on the national superstructure than the frontline infrastructure. As a result, base building activity has been egregiously under-funded. This disparity not only reveals the race, class and gender inequities within progressive and liberal politics, it deepens them. Among the many challenges ahead, the most profound is how to effectively channel funding, as well as technical assistance and networking resources, to the frontlines in a sustained way.

And while continuous organizing at the community level and an adequate stream of frontline funding are necessary to build constituencies

for civic activism, clearly, they are not in themselves sufficient to generate a new majority. That requires a third step, the conscious forging of alliances across constituencies and issues, connecting communities to each other and to all parts of the political process.

At New World, we are seeing a new generation of alliance building efforts emerge across the country with exactly this mission. They are different than the protest politics of 20 or 30 years ago that relied on mass mobilization without creating ongoing organization. They are also different from the organizing tradition of banging on doors to get a seat at the table and different from the legislative advocacy coalitions where “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” They are not electoral vehicles per se, but create the infrastructures that make participation possible, supplying the motivation to get involved and the means to make a difference.

We call them new majority structures. From our own program alone, we have found 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) efforts in 22 greater metro areas and seven rural states that meet a basic definition:

New majority structures are civic alliances; they may emerge within one umbrella organization or in a looser consortium of complementary organizations. They are alliances with organizing capacities that connect and integrate multiple constituencies, expanding the core and reaching the new. The most common structures are labor-community-interfaith collaborations, though several have been initiated by social service providers and advocates. They are also multi-issue alliances with applied research and policy capacities, and they create common agendas that are pro-active and escalating. They coordinate their activities through strategic planning, and also through intensive civic leadership development across their constituencies.

In the graphic below, we have indicated the main activities of new majority structures, which stress civic engagement and connect to political participation from multiple directions, all within the parameters

New Majority Structures: Key Ingredients

Cross-ConstituencyOrganizing

StrategicAlliances

Multi-IssueAgendas

Pro-ActivePlatforms

CivicLeadershipNetworksPolitical

Participation

New ElectoralCoalitions/Candidates

14 15

of 501(c)(3) or (c)(4) funding. The voter participation component includes public information, voter education and registration, and citizenship education. We have also shown that the arena of electoral candidacies and partisan coalitions is distinct. The new majority structures we fund don’t cross that space. Rather, new majority structures build the foundation for those participants who can and do enter the electoral arena. They build the groundwork for ongoing political participation through frontline issue campaigns, direct action, voter outreach, media messaging, and leadership networking. They construct the springboard from which people flow into the electoral arena, the place where new electoral alliances can be formed, new candidates can emerge, and new majorities can both win and govern.

Lesson #4: Integrate the Infrastructure. Integration is one of the primary features that distinguishes these structures from older organizing and advocacy traditions. New majority structures fuse issue and identity politics, overcoming competition between single constituencies and single issues, while bridging the usual distance between foot soldiers and policy centers. While there is no one-size-fits-all model, we have seen some very effective examples of how this works.

This example is taken from Working Partnerships, a labor-community-interfaith collaboration in San Jose and Santa Clara County, California. We see that over the past decade, they have created a multi-issue agenda that escalates in scale and in the constituencies impacted. The agenda does not stand alone. It is also linked to Leadership Institutes that have brought together union presidents and shop stewards, pastors and deacons,

neighborhood association and PTA presidents, social service managers, immigrant rights advocates, and small business owners. Together, they study their regional economy, understand the policy process, multiply relationships, build a common agenda, and craft a shared vision. More than 400 people have been trained in the last six years, creating a new nexus of civic leadership.

New majority structures are also re-inventing ways to connect this holistic approach to the electoral arena. In an example that may well be cited for years to come, we can see how the (c)(4) organization ALLERT emerged as a Black-Latino electoral force in South Los Angeles working with the (c)(3) organization SCOPE, a strong set of local community organizations, an array of service and public sector unions, and neighborhood congregations large and small.

ALLERT’s organizing of new voter participation across old racial divides is impressive, as is the multi-racial civic coalition that expressed itself at the polls in May 2005, electing progressive Antonio Villaraigosa mayor of LA by an overwhelming margin. But the deeper story is that electoral engagement was accomplished through a deep infrastructure that includes the ongoing work of many other exemplary frontline organizations with new majority approaches: SCOPE/AGENDA, LAANE, Clergy & Laity United (CLUE), Justice for Janitors and Hotel Workers Local 11, and the Community

Mar ’03 May ’03 Oct ’03 Mar ’04 May ’04 Nov ’04 Mar ’05 May ’05 Nov ’05Nov ’02

Target and Build KeyNeighborhood Precincts

(c)(4)Union-CBO-Church

Partnership

Create Hi-tech Database

Organize Over Multiple Election Cycles

Expand the Electorate:238,000 voter database

150,000 supportive voters

Pathways to Voter ParticipationALLERT in South Los Angeles

Issue Advocacy & Organizing Combine with Multi-Racial Voter Outreach in Every Election Cycle

199719961995 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Living Wage

WPUSA forms

Children’s HealthInitiative

CommunityBenefits Policy

Tax Initiative forSocial Programs

Metro Alliances are WorkingWorking Partnerships in San Jose, CA

A Pro-active Agenda Links Multiple Constituencies and Leadership Networks

16 17

Coalition, to name only a few of the outstanding groups in Los Angeles that are building grassroots organizations, permanent alliances, policy campaigns, a broader platform of issues, and new civic leadership.

Lesson #5: All Elections, All the Time. At the bottom of the ALLERT graphic is the timeline of LA elections the organization has engaged since its formation: virtually every election held in LA City and County, primary, general, or special. They vote a lot in LA. But the lesson here for everyone is: building civic engagement and a culture of participation that includes the electoral arena cannot be a sometime thing—or a somewhere else thing. It cannot be achieved with last minute mobilizations geared to national election cycles and confined to swing districts and states. Building a progressive and energetic new majority requires ongoing organizing, continuous civic engagement, the capacity to create new policy directions, and the capacity to inspire new leaders and volunteers. This activity needs to be local, ubiquitous and sustained, so people can see they make a difference. The Right moved from base organizing to the electoral rebuilding process by getting leaders from its core constituencies to run for school boards, city councils, and county commissions. That trajectory works for progressives too, but we have to invest in the base to begin with.

Where are New Majority Structures Emerging?The electoral and legislative shifts that follow from new waves of organizing for social change are not unique to Los Angeles. San Jose, a city of 1 million, has seen the number of progressives on the city council rise from three to a majority of eight out of ten, and the GOP lost its Silicon Valley congressional seat. San Diego, a city of 1.3 million that has been a conservative stronghold and Navy town for generations, recently elected its first liberal majority to the city council, and in 2005, they passed a sweeping living wage ordinance. Moreover, the last mayoral election featured a progressive write-in candidate, who would have unseated the incumbent if all the ballots had been counted. Political battles remain intense, but power is shifting.

These results are also not unique to California. Similar structures and shifts are emerging in metro areas across the country, as well as in a number of smaller rural states where organizing and alliance building has a cross-county character.

Here we offer two maps highlighting where we know that new majority structures are being built and expanded, with the caveat that this represents only our own field work at New World and not the full

Battleground states in 2004

Metro/State Areaswith New Majority Structures

San Diego

Los Angeles

San Jose

Oakland

Seattle

Las Vegas

Denver

Albuquerque

Minneapolis

Milwaukee

Chicago

Saint Louis

Cleveland

Boston

New Haven

Burlington

New York

Washington DC

Fairfax County

Atlanta

Miami

Orlando

Battleground states in 2004

Smaller Rural Stateswith New Majority Structures

Montana

Iowa

Arkansas

Kentucky

TennesseeNorth

Carolina

AlabamaMississippi

Maine

18 19

knowledge base of kindred funders. Between all of us in the funding world, there is much more to be shared, discovered, nurtured, seeded, evaluated, and even disputed in terms of potential.

Why do we see this parallel development in so many different places? Several contextual reasons come to mind. In most places, there is little protective buffer left from the New Deal or Great Society and rarely a liberal establishment to negotiate with, at least that has any negotiable resources. So this generation of activists recognizes that they have little to gain from either concessionary insider politics or largely symbolic outsider politics. What matters is a substantial and energized popular base and elected officials at the local and state level who owe them accountability.

Progressives haven’t seen this hybrid approach to political action deployed on a wide scale for quite some time. Yet the concept has deep roots in American political culture, from the Progressive Era, to the New Deal, to the Civil Rights Era: powerful electoral alliances require independent social activism as well as leverage points in elected office. The goal is both power and empowerment, expanding where and how we apply democratic standards in our society.

It isn’t clear whether this new pattern or paradigm shift has been understood by national political leaders, but it is clear that groups on the ground intend to go forward with or without them.

To cite some further examples:The dynamic voter education work underway in South Florida is

being driven by new immigrant groups fighting for inclusion like Unite for Dignity and Mi Familia Vota, which registered 72,000 new voters in ’04. They have developed intensive leadership trainings, weekly radio programs, community outreach networks, policy education seminars, and direct action campaigns around labor and immigrant rights, the environment, redistricting, social services, and more. By their side is a constellation of community organizing centers, farm worker associations and unions, service centers and advocacy groups that are weaving a strong infrastructure for new voting patterns—not only in Miami/Dade but also in Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Latino electorate of South Florida shifted 10% in a progressive direction last year, including the Cuban vote.

Up in Massachusetts, a (c)(4) group organizing in the smaller cities, Mass Neighbor to Neighbor, works with a core base of public housing tenants, many immigrant women, in low-income neighborhoods where job loss, housing displacement, health care access and declining schools are major issues. This base has become an energetic force behind a statewide policy platform, the Working Families Agenda, a coalition of labor, community groups, and voter mobilization efforts. As part of its policy analysis, Mass N2N also developed a methodology that identified 47 state legislators in both parties who mis-represent the potential electorate of their districts on social justice issues. It turns out that

educated activists who become new voters have an impact: progressives have won 31 of those 47 seats over the last six years, in turn securing the state tax base for social programs and a minimum wage increase.

Colorado, a classic swing state, went for Bush in the 2004 presidential contest. Yet old and new forces, including frontline donors, combined to reverse that trend at the state level, swinging both state legislative houses back to liberal majorities, while electing Latinos to the U.S. Senate and the House. One margin of difference was the increased turnout from working class suburbs and Latino communities surrounding Denver, where the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC) has been working over the past three years.

FRESC is a progressive labor/community alliance of over 40 groups in the greater Denver area. Its policy work focuses on community benefits agreements with government and the private sector to ensure that economic development investments create positive impacts on job quality, housing, the environment, and more. FRESC is currently taking on a multi-county transportation justice campaign as metro Denver creates a vast new transit system. In 2004, FRESC activists worked with allies to add voter education to their issue campaigns, especially among low-income workers in adjoining suburban counties that had been ignored in the past. FRESC has not only helped to awaken this voter potential but is also building a common agenda through its regional economic perspective.

Even down in Mississippi, which ranks among the most reactionary states, shifts are underway. It started 13 years ago, when Southern Echo won a campaign for redistricting reform, successfully propelled by

199719961995199419931992 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Local OrganizationsIn Key Delta Counties

RedistrictingBattle Won

Cross-County Alliances

Multi-LevelVoter Participation

State EducationBudget Salvaged

Cross-County Alliances are WorkingSouthern Echo in Mississippi

Voting Rights AgendaExpands Core Constituencies, Potentials for State Alliances

20 21

organizing in largely disenfranchised African-American communities in the rural Delta counties. That organizing has continued ever since, through county organizations working on education and criminal justice reform at the local and state level and a continuing focus on voting rights and the accountability of local elected officials. Echo’s inter-generational leadership development work has helped sustain these efforts and brought a new generation into this very old fight against racism and reaction. Over this same period, more than 20 Echo leaders have been elected as school board members, county supervisors, and mayors. The state’s Black Legislative Caucus has also grown from 22 to 47 representatives. The Caucus has made a critical difference in major legislative battles, most recently anchoring a bi-racial alliance that salvaged the education budget from the hands of a rabidly right-wing governor.

We cannot possibly recount here all the examples and prospects that are bubbling up across the country through new majority structures and approaches. We do welcome inquiries and discussions among funders about the specific sites we highlight on New World’s maps and look forward to synthesizing the multiple mapping efforts that are underway.

In the meantime, we can draw another lesson:

Lesson #6: All States, All Elections, All the Time. States where new majority potentials are most advanced, like California or Massachusetts, cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, they should garner national resources precisely because they are pioneers, moving progressive participation forward, creating policy initiatives that set a national standard, and providing models and methods for others to draw on. Of course, we should pay attention to battleground states like Florida or Colorado, Ohio or Pennsylvania—national resources should flow to the new majority structures that can tip the balances there, but not just for the next national election, for the long term. Nor can we afford to neglect the states where we seem far from power, the places like Mississippi, where we can learn to challenge the Right on their own terrain and begin to tie up their resources.

Having a national lens doesn’t mean setting one’s sights only on the White House or Congress. It means looking at the whole picture and all its parts. Clearly, it also means significantly multiplying the funding and resources available to this work, across the board.

Lesson #7: Fund early and often. These examples contain another funding lesson that applies to national, regional and local foundations and donors. Every one of the groups we have cited began their work with very modest investments from foundations such as New World, who have relatively small endowments but long-standing field presence and a strategy of focused grantmaking. Those small investments have proven highly cost-effective and are reaping large returns.

In 1996, Working Partnerships had a budget of $83,000 and grants from the McKay Foundation, the UU Veatch Program, the French-American Charitable Trust and New World. Today, its annual budget is $1.7 million. In 1992, AGENDA was formed in LA with a $143,000 budget, kicked off by New World and Liberty Hill. It then spawned a host of work under the umbrella of SCOPE and, in 2002, became a springboard for ALLERT with a startup budget of $150,000. By 2004, that total was $800,000 and is still climbing. Southern Echo had a budget of $80,000 in 1992, when it won redistricting reform, with early funders that included the Norman Foundation and the Bert & Mary Meyer Fund, along with New World. Today, Southern Echo has a budget of $1.48 million for work across the region.

The Sum of the PartsWe have focused so intently on this one layer of work not because we think it’s the only layer that needs investment, but because we think it has been perilously under-valued and under-funded relative to its impact. To put it another way, we believe that without this layer of frontline alliance building, we will not have the bone marrow to regenerate a healthy body politic.

It’s hard to represent this world on paper—it is so invisible from inside the Beltway, or from the vantage point of most past and present power models. The examples we cite may seem small and scattered to some, though not to those who are moving large cities and whole states; not to those who are watching women, workers, and people of color rise to leadership roles; and not to those who are putting their own right to health care or housing or retirement on the line when they organize for justice.

It is nonetheless a fair and necessary question to ask: can this kind of work really grow to scale?

We argue that it can and is growing to scale, toward both statewide majorities and national impact, with two kinds of synergy occuring. For one, the new majority structures (and embryos) we have identified with stars are increasingly talking to one another. With several groups playing anchor roles, particularly those in California, there are multiplying opportunities for these structures to exchange, share, network, cross-train, and evaluate among themselves. Formal and informal learning tours, surveys, and consultations are taking place. New collaborations have been formed around how to build community benefits campaigns; how to build deep civic leadership circles; how to challenge corporate power, from health care chains to Wal-Mart; and how to build the regulatory power of local government.

22 23

This cross-fertilization is accelerating the development of new alliance structures in more metro centers and rural states—and spreading the concept to national organizing networks that are updating their models, and to local activists who are seriously looking for how to build something more enduring than last November’s mobilization.

The second kind of synergy we have seen is internal, inside metro and cross-county politics. To us, it looks something like a spiraling Venn diagram in three stages and describes the new majority approach in its fullest potential:

The right-hand third of the chart represents where most new majority efforts stand today: rebuilding the civic infrastructure of participation, engaging and linking core bases, reaching out to new bases, generating new voices, training civic leaders from the community, developing prospective candidates, and beginning to frame the policy debate with pro-active agendas and messages.

The left-hand third of the chart represents what can be done with a strong infrastructure in place, including a growing body of local elected officials (LEOs) accountable to the alliance. Those officials and their civic pulpits then multiply impacts on local media and other office seekers, so that social issues and values become amplified in regular public discourse, so that change in a progressive direction becomes a compelling alternative to swing voters as well, and a new electoral majority begins to gel. Probably Los Angeles, San Jose and Massachusetts are the places where this second stage of the work has advanced furthest.

With added resources, we think that many more new majority structures will advance, and at an accelerated pace. Two areas particularly require new investment, as much on the local level as the national. First is messaging, where frontline groups need the staffing to shape mainstream media and produce independent media, where they need better internal communications systems to craft and coordinate common messages, and where they need more sophisticated information technology for databases and strategic planning.

Second, we need deeper organizational funding over the long term, general operating support that can meet multiple demands: underwriting

Expanding Voter

Engagement

Civil S

ocie

ty

Organ

izin

g

Core Base

New Base

New Leaders/Candidates

New Platform &Credible Messages

aM

andate

Creating

Polit

ica

l power building

LEOs

Swing Base

Amplifying ProgressiveSocial Values

Expanding Voter

Engagement

Civil S

ocie

ty

Organ

izin

gaM

andate

Creating

Polit

ica

l power building

LEOs

Core Base

Swing Base New Base

GROUNDED

SUSTAINED

CONNECTED

SCALED

New Leaders/Candidates

New Platform &Credible Messages

Amplifying ProgressiveSocial Values

Message Machine

Money Matrix

Synergy: Building the New Majority

24 25

infrastructure building and political participation, enabling staffing to expand alongside the opportunities for action, training and retaining a new generation of staff and leaders, securing technical assistance when needed, and incorporating it into organizational practice. This is a lesson to be re-learned from the Right and its use of national and local philanthropy over the past 30 years.

The dividends from adding this third layer of resources to the frontline organizations actually yield a double pay-off. We create the infrastructure we must have for prolonged battles with the Right and for fundamentally shifting the electorate. We also give depth and resonance to the superstructure, to the national message machines, funding streams, and policy centers that are now being expanded and must continue to grow. This synergy can produce new political dynamics, perhaps even movements, where:

• messages are grounded in the language of communities, • political engagement is sustained not episodic,• core, new and swing voters become aligned and connected,• new majorities and real victories are scaled, reaching the next levels of

power with political leaders who reflect their constituencies.

The World as We Know ItOur argument has been premised on the political world we live in today, and on the opportunities in front of us that we have means to address. We think that despite the sway of reactionary forces in America, valuable space for democratic action remains; there is still contested terrain to be fought for and unclaimed terrain that we can build upon. This is a young nation, historically and demographically. It is an endowed nation, in its resources, its diversity, and the energy of its people.

Yet we are also mindful that the world as we know it may change precipitously and irrevocably within a generation. Most Americans are not attending to the environment, but global climate change is well underway. Most Americans pay little mind to developing nations, but they are reshaping the global economy and challenging its enormous imbalance of wealth and power. Most Americans assume that affluence and opportunity are boundless, without reckoning on personal and national debts coming due. Most Americans are uneasy about foreign interventions, but resist confronting the role the U.S. government plays in fueling global insecurity through militarism, resource wars, and the support of repressive regimes around the world.

Things can shift dramatically in a lifetime: rivers die, levees fail, markets collapse, wars consume, empires fall. Recognizing that so much about the future lies beyond our immediate anticipation and action does not, however, negate the work we have to do right now. If anything, the uncertainty ahead should accelerate our actions.

Whether we face a period of crisis or more gradual change, we need to construct a new vision of America, a vision that measures our well-being by the health of our communities instead of the wealth we each consume, a vision that honors our democratic dreams and not a superpower fantasy.

Whatever the pace of change, our greatest strength in setting a democratic course will be the depth of our civic culture and its capacity to engage these issues on the frontlines.

The ways we are organized in every day life to tackle our collective problems, the ways we are empowered to make a difference when it counts, the ways we exercise our rights as equal citizens and human beings, the ways we resist injustice and manipulation, the ways we protect the next generations—these will be the test of any time to come.

Core Base

Swing Base New Base

GROUNDED

SUSTAINED

CONNECTED

SCALED

New Platform &Credible Messages

Message Machine

Money Matrix

26 27

The New Majority Fund at NWF

The New Majority Fund at The New World Foundation aims to expand the flow of funding to social justice organizing that generates civic

engagement and electoral participation on the frontlines. The Fund is open to individual donors, family funds, foundation re-granting, and foundation partnerships. It is a place where we can compare notes on rapidly evolving work, create space for experimentation and new ventures, and compound the impacts of our grantmaking.

Program Strategies: The Fund will support two kinds of grantmaking:

I. Growing Anchors and Alliances means expanding the funding stream to the new majority efforts that are springing up in major metro centers and across counties in rural states. Our focus is on alliances that connect constituencies, old and new, by forging pro-active, multi-issue policy agendas linked to voter education and outreach campaigns. These are the groups building the infrastructure for political participation out of which new electoral alliances are forming and in turn, new majorities can grow and govern. In our survey of this field, we see four layers of funding, all requiring solid field knowledge of stages of development, local potentials, and capacity building issues:

• Established Anchors that have made substantial impacts on metro and state electoral participation and are mentors to other groups at the state, regional and national level.

• Emerging Anchors that are building solid metro infrastructures and are ready to expand their agendas and alliances, acting as hubs for statewide efforts.

• Networking Structures, collaborations and training programs that share models and methodologies across parallel groups, that build internal organizational capacity in the field, and that increase funding access.

• Start-up Structures that are building new partnerships, staffing up, learning from mentors, developing strategies and initiating programs.

II. Linking Resources to Action designates five initiatives, already underway, that address opportunities to add constituency strength and organizational capacity to new majority efforts. Our approach is to develop and fund projects in each area, working with partner grantees from the metros and states, testing new models and informing future work for the entire field.

New Constituencies: Projects in five states are experimenting with how to link constituency associations with existing metro alliances. Three priority groups are:

• Community college students• Human service professionals• New congregations

Civic Leadership Circles: Established anchor organizations are expanding technical assistance to metro alliances across the country to create:

• Cross-constituency civic leadership institutes and academies in metro centers and rural states

• Documentation of best practices and curricula, including web-based resource centers and convenings across leadership programs

Local Elected Officials: Current projects review best practices nationally and develop three levels of work connecting metro and rural state alliances to LEOs:

• Recruitment and accountability programs with CBOs• Policy training and support• Affinity networks by locale, region, issue and constituency

Media and Communications: Based on New World’s 2005 Media Audit of frontline organizations, projects in four major metro areas and two rural states are building messaging capacity by expanding:

• In-house media staffing and inter-group coordination• Message research and development• Radio, cable and internet production• Communications networks with membership bases and partners• Information technology for databases, targeting, polling and evaluation

The Grassroots Money Matrix: Moving to scale requires more foundation investment but also much broader revenue streams from local bases. Three pilot projects already in process look at fundraising potentials in:

• Credit-union giving programs• Alumni donor bases developed from campus organizing• Dues-paying membership structures in 501(c)(3) organizations

Fund Structure: The New Majority Fund intends to make grants totaling $3 million annually and welcomes both large and small donors, as well as institutional contributors. Staffed by New World’s senior program officers, the Fund’s operations are governed by the NWF Board, which includes many leading practitioners from the field.

28

New World Foundation Board & Staff

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2005–2006 organizational affiliations for identification only

Burt LauderdaleKentuckians for the CommonwealthLondon, KYBoard Chair

Sofia QuinteroChica Luna ProductionsNew York, NY Vice-Chair

Julie GoodridgeNorth Star Asset ManagementBoston, MATreasurer

Fred Azcarate National Jobs with JusticeWashington, DCSecretary

Leroy Johnson Southern EchoJackson, MSChair Emeritus

Stephen Bright Southern Center for Human RightsAtlanta, GA

Cindy C. ChoiKhmer Girls in ActionLos Angeles, CA

Phaedra Ellis-LampkinsWorking Partnerships USASan Jose, CA

Michael GuerreroGrassroots Global Justice Los Angeles, CA

Joel Harrison Family RepresentativeNew York, NY

Charles Hey-MaestreAttorney-at-LawSan Juan, PR

Penn LohAlternatives for Community & the EnvironmentBoston, MA

Anthony ThigpennAGENDA/SCOPELos Angeles, CA

STAFF

PresidentColin Greer

Senior Program OfficersAnn BastianAlta StarrHeeten Kalan

Grants AdministratorMinnette Coleman

Finance AdministratorBeata Pudelko

Program AssociateChad Jones

About the New World Foundation and Opportunities for Partnership

The New World Foundation has just turned 50 years old, and one of the most important things we’ve learned over the years is that we

need to join forces to make a difference. Having grown from a private foundation to a public charity, we combine New World’s resources with other foundations, family funds and donors to build strategic grantmaking programs.

Our current grantmaking is structured into three funds. The budget for each fund is raised through collaborating funders with New World providing core support, fiscal sponsorship, staffing and overhead costs. In addition to The New Majority Fund, we sponsor:

The Phoenix Fund for Workers & Communities, which supports worker organizing for economic justice and human rights in the U.S. and Mexico, funding labor-community alliances and immigrant worker centers that promote fair labor standards, economic policy reform, and civic participation.

The Global Environmental Health & Justice Fund, which supports environmental justice activism in the U.S. and in the global South, supporting poor communities in the fight for healthy environments, community empowerment, corporate accountability, effective government regulation, and sustainable economic practices.

Special Projects and Programs: In addition to the grants made from its core funds, New World’s discretionary grantmaking is responsive to timely opportunities to promote political participation and the visibility of peace and justice issues.

We also founded and continue to sponsor the Alston-Bannerman Fellows Program, providing sabbaticals to veteran activists of color in the U.S. To help nurture the next generation in progressive philanthropy, we sponsor and house a national network of young donors and program officers, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP).

Past special projects have included Take Action Awards for youth activists and The Harold Fleming Award for civil rights leadership. In the 1990s, New World also sponsored the development of the 21st Century Foundation, which works with African-American donors to promote community activism.

New World is proud to have participated in some of the most significant progressive advances of the past 50 years. We welcome donors and foundations who would like to join us in nurturing the important movements of the future.

To contact The New Majority Fund:

Colin Greer, PresidentThe New World Foundation666 West End Avenue, Suite 1BNew York, NY 10025 212-249-1023cgreer@newwf.org

The New Majority Fund at New World Foundation666 West End Avenue, Suite 1B

New York, NY 10025 212-249-1023

email: cgreer@newwf.orghttp://www.newwf.org