Links to other resources

1. What Works for the Inner City and the Truly Disadvantaged

Children
Youth
Education
Job Training, Job Creation, Worker's Rights and Reform of Welfare Reform
Housing, Economic Development, Community Development and Community Banking
Police, Criminal Justice, Prison and Drug Policy Reform
The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System

2. Race and Economic Justice

3. Capacity Building and Replication of Inner City Nonprofit Organizations

4. Economic Policy, Budget Priorities, Poverty and Inequality

5. Corporate Welfare, Tax Breaks for the Rich and the Military-Industrial Complex

6. Campaign Finance Reform, Voter Democracy and Reduction of Corporate Power

7. Advocacy and Community Organizing

8. Communicating What Works On Conventional Media and the Internet

9. Media Reform and Alternative Media

10. Political Alliance

1. What Works for the Inner City and the Truly Disadvantaged

A. Children

American Youth Policy Forum
In its efforts to "link research and practice" for policymakers whose aim is the healthy, successful development of youth, the AYPF provides a front-line look at programs that work. It organizes field trips -- to children's museums, innovative schools, and summer programs -- sponsors lunchtime forums, facilitates network-building, and publishes a variety of reports analyzing exemplary practices in education, training, transition-to-employment, national and community service, and related policies and practices in youth work. Its website is an award-winning resource in its own right.

Children's Aid Society of New York
The Children's Aid Society is one of the country's oldest and largest child welfare agencies, founded in 1853 in New York. With programs such as dance classes run by the famous African-American company of Alvin Ailey and foster parenting for the "boarder babies," often HIV-positive, abandoned in hospitals, CAS approaches the "whole child" in body and spirit, at home, at school, and at play. The Society has served more than 120,000 of the city's neediest children and families.

Children's Defense Fund
Since 1973, under its mission to Leave No Child Behind, the CDF has proved itself one of the strongest, most consistent voices in America advocating for children. Its purview is wide, from gun control to literacy, immigration to childcare, and in each area its principles are to push for policies that will allow all children to grow up healthy, well-educated, and safe in a just and moral society.

Comer School Development Program, Yale Child Study Center
The Program, developed at Yale University, is a holistic educational reform strategy. Providing stimulating and sound curricula, materials, and teacher training based on the principles of child, adolescent, and adult development, it aims to bring together schools, families, and communities to help children become life-long learners. As of 2000, the Program was being used in 62 school districts in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

National Black Child Development Institute
For 30 years, the National Black Child Development Institute has mobilized and offered resources to a nationwide network of volunteers committed to improving and protecting the quality of life of African-American children and families. The organization believes that to make "equality and access...a reality for our children," the whole community, from the pastor to the barber, must commit itself.

National Head Start Association
The National Head Start Association is a private not-for profit membership organization dedicated to the concerns of the Head Start community. Founded by Head Start directors in 1973, when the program was threatened by the Nixon administration, the NHSA has grown to include parents, staff, and "friends." The group keeps Washington aware of the vital need for the flagship pre-school program for poor children and informs the Head Start community of crucial legislative and political developments affecting it.

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B. Youth

Academy for Educational Development
The Academy for Educational Development is service organization operating more than 225 programs in 89 countries on almost every continent. Collaborating with local policymakers, the Academy focuses on a broad range of issues, from health care to girls' education to global climate change, and offers varied services, including evaluation, marketing, and technological design. It is a large organization, with a staff of 850 and an annual budget of $135 million.

Dorchester Youth Collaborative
An incredible program that was founded in 1981 in response to the need for programs to serve the most at risk youth of Boston -- teens likely to become involved in criminal justice and social service systems. Their mission is to engage these teens in relationships and projects that promote the health and safety of the community and the development of the youth. They have a unique acting program that has resulted in an independent, limited distribution feature film by Miramax and anti-drug public service announcements for Blockbuster designed by and featuring the youth themselves.

Ford Foundation
Since 1936, the Ford Foundation has provided more than $10 billion in grants and loans around the world. Its mission to achieve peace and justice by eradicating poverty and inequality is carried out by aiding a vast variety of endeavors, from the American Library Association in Chicago to the Citizens Democracy Movement in Mexico. With outposts from Cairo to Moscow, the Ford Foundation has concentrated on "underserved populations," including the poor, women and girls. Its educational initiatives aim to broaden access and improve achievement.

National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Nearly a century old, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency promotes effective, humane, fair, and economically sound solutions to the problems of violence and crime. It works with correctional facilities to comply with the law and evaluate their programs. At the same time, it aids communities and families to help at-risk kids, prevent gun violence, and find alternatives to incarceration, particularly for youthful offenders. In 2000, NCCD joined other racial and criminal-justice advocates in supporting a moratorium on capital punishment.

National Youth Development Information Center
NYDIC is a project of the National Collaboration for Youth that provides practice-related information at low or no cost, including directories and links to youth websites; resources on research, program funding, development, and evaluation; statistics on youth; policy updates; and job listings. In contrast to "deficit-based models" that see the young as bundles of risks and problems, the National Collaboration sees youth positively, and defines youth development as activities that help youngsters meet the challenges of growing up by nurturing their social, moral, emotional, physical, and intellectual potential.

Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute, established by the Soros Foundation of the billionaire stock-trader George Soros, has distinguished itself with its imaginative approaches to building democratic institutions and practices alongside free-market economic structures. It has worked principally in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in other countries including the U.S. Underscored by the principle that "nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth," the Open Society Institute wants most of all to promote peaceful discourse and conflict resolution, funding such initiatives as a high-school debate program in the U.S. and comprehensive child-abuse prevention programs in Central Europe, where popular ignorance of the problem and a collapsing social safety net have put children at risk.

YouthBuild USA
YouthBuild is a comprehensive youth and community development program as well as an alternative school. Designed to run on a 12-month cycle, YouthBuild engages unemployed and out-of-school young adults, ages 16 to 24, who construct and rehabilitate affordable housing in their own communities while taking advantage of academic opportunities and counseling. Many graduates go on to construction-related jobs or college.

W. K. Kellogg Foundation
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to apply knowledge to helping individuals, communities, and institutions to solve their own problems. Established in 1930 by the cereal maker W. K. Kellogg, the Foundation has a special interest in food and agricultural issues. It has also focused on access to health care, as well as many issues related to youth. Its Weaving in a Future Tense project brings together youth, community, and civil development groups to encourage young people to become active citizens.

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C. Education

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
The mission of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is to support efforts that promote a just, equitable, and sustainable society. Through its grant-making programs, the Foundation endeavors to enhance the capacity of individuals, families, and local or larger institutions. Among its most interesting initiatives has been its investment in its hometown of Flint, Michigan. Since 1926, the Foundation has granted $430 million to the city and country. Since the shutdown of a General Motors parts plant and the layoff of thousands of auto workers in 1994, the Mott Foundation has addressed issues of massive economic and social dislocation, in part through helping to rebuild the area's educational institutions.

Coalition for Community Schools
The Coalition for Community Schools is a community in itself, of people and groups engaged in creating and sustaining schools that are a hub for children, families, and others in the neighborhood, "before, during, and after school, seven days a week." The Web site encourages the active participation of users through its forum and invites them to contribute articles, tools, and critiques.

College Is Possible
America's colleges and universities have prepared this site to guide visitors to the books, websites, and other resources that admissions and financial aid professionals consider most helpful. With planning, preparation -- and the right information -- college is possible for almost every American.

CollegeNET
Launched in 1995, CollegeNET is a portal for applying to college over the web. The site serves as the web-based admissions applications services for over 500 colleges and universities, including Virginia Tech, Ohio State, and the University of Washington. For $9, a student's records will be circulated to college recruiters by CollegeNET, which also offers scholarship offers, a college search service, and a bookshop.

FinAid: The Smart Student Guide to Financial Aid
This site offers a comprehensive annotated collection of information about student financial aid on the web. FinAid is rated by the educational community as the best website of its kind.

GED Testing Service
For more than 50 years, the GED or General Educational Development degree has been the credential for job-seekers and others who did not receive a traditional high-school diploma. In 1942, the Center pioneered the evaluation of education and training attained outside the classroom. Today, the GED Center for Adult Learning serves adult learners through corporations, the military, and its testing service.

Math Forum Student Center
The goal of the Math Forum Student Center is to build an online community of educators, students, researchers, parents, and other citizens who care about math and math education. Through its growing collection of mailing lists, web-based discussion areas, and ask-an-expert services, the Center provides ways to participate in conversations, reach others with similar interests, or find an answer to a burning math question.

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Through litigation, community education, and leadership development, MALDEF works towards its primary objective: to protect and promote the civil rights of the 29 million Latinos living in the U.S. MALDEF has challenged the presidential candidates to respond to the issues of its constituency, and through its website provides educational and scholarship resources, as well as news and calls to political action.

National Council of La Raza
The National Council of La Raza, established in 1968, is the largest national Hispanic organization, serving all Hispanic nationalities residing in the U.S. and working with other organizations and coalitions around Latinos' issues of poverty and work, civil rights, health, education, and leadership. NCLR has long worked for the rights of immigrant and migrant farm workers. It has recently added its voice to the debate on Social Security, advocating a strong federal commitment to the program, which it sees as crucial to Hispanics, who continue to suffer high unemployment and work in low-wage jobs without pensions.

National Education Association
NEA, one of America's two largest teachers' unions, is committed to advancing the cause of public education for students, teachers, and communities. Founded in 1857 in Philadelphia and now headquartered in Washington, the NEA claims 2.5 million members who work at every level of education, from pre-school to university graduate programs. Its publications, available through the website, provide information on everything from school vouchers to inspiring kids to do their homework.

Web Teachers
Founded by two teachers in Tennessee and now sponsored by the U.S. cable-TV industry and Tech Corps, Web Teachers provides teachers a variety of services, including tutorials and resources, for using the Web as an educational tool. It has recently become available in Spanish.

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D. Job Training, Job Creation, Worker's Rights and Reform of Welfare Reform

AFSCME
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has over 1.3 million members -- the public service and health care workers who keep our cities and towns running. Members have built the most active and powerful union in the labor movement, and for

purpose: "to make sure that each and every member of AFSCME gets a fair deal from the boss and the politicians."

Capital Commitment
Headquartered in Washington, Capital Commitment is designed to train economically disadvantaged people for employment in the growing telecommunications industry, giving them skills to work with voice, data, and video technologies. CC has procured over $1 million worth of equipment from major companies to use in training, which includes not only technical skills but also "life plans", the faculties to adjust to the work environment and set longer-term goals. One of CC's aims is to get all its students into jobs that pay more than $10 an hour.

Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Casey Foundation has worked for more than half a century to improve the future for kids at risk. Believing that children and families thrive when their communities are healthy, the Casey Foundation has focused not only on direct support services to vulnerable children and families, but increasingly on strengthening whole neighborhoods. To that end, the Foundation is planning to commit half of its grant-making to long-term efforts in 22 demonstration cities to "help stimulate a local movement" to improve kids' chances. The website also contains Casey's invaluable annual Kids Count data base of states' records on the essential measures of child health and well-being.

Center for Community Change
For almost 30 years, the Center for Community Change has worked both at the grassroots level and with federal policymakers to "reduce poverty and rebuild" some of the nation's poorest communities. Among CCC's staff and associates are some of the nation's leading experts on community development, organizing, housing, welfare reform, jobs, and Native American issues. The organization was instrumental in passing federal legislation that gives incentives to banks that extend home mortgages and invest in economic development in the inner city.

Center for Policy Alternatives
As "devolution" -- the process of giving more power to the states and less to the federal government -- progresses, the CPA is engaging, educating, organizing, and linking up progressive leaders and activists in the 50 states to create environmentally sustainable economies, fair, participatory democracies, and energized communities.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy conducts research and analysis on a range of government policies and programs. Its emphasis is on tax and fiscal policy and census and income analysis, with particular attention to those programs and policies that affect low- and moderate-income people.

The Delancey Street Foundation, Inc.
The Delancey Street project encompasses a square block in San Francisco's Embarcadero district. There, 1,000 former drug addicts, convicts, and homeless people of different races and sexes live together in a drug-, alcohol-, and violence-free community. Using an "each-one-teach-one" model, residents gain their high-school diplomas and run a print shop, a trucking service, a restaurant, and other small businesses. One year's residency costs $10,000 per person, and over 23 years this investment has been repaid in thousands of reclaimed lives.

Discovery Health
DiscoveryHealth.com is one of the educational and entertainment-oriented websites of Discovery Communications Inc. It provides information on health, nutrition, alternative medicine, and exercise.

Economic Policy Institute
The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit think tank that provides research and education to promote strategies for a prosperous, fair, and sustainable economy. The Institute stresses real-world analysis and a concern for the living standards of working people, including a recent report on how the economic boom is marred by inequality. Its excellent website -- part of its efforts to make its findings accessible to the general public, the media, and policymakers -- contains analysis of economic and poll data, as well as editorials and an audio archive of EPI's events.

Health Finder
healthfinder® is a free gateway to reliable consumer health and human services information developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. healthfinder® can lead you to selected online publications, clearinghouses, databases, websites, and support and self-help groups, as well as the government agencies and not-for-profit organizations that produce reliable information for the public.

Job Corps
Job Corps is a program of the U.S. Department of Labor that provides education and job training for at-risk youth ages 16 through 24. It links private employers with public schools, peer counseling programs, and job-seeking youth. To enroll, a youth must meet a number of eligibility criteria. She or he must be in need of more education and training, low-income, and drug-free; she or he may also be a school dropout, homeless, or a disabled person of any age. The requirement that parents with dependent children already have childcare may disadvantage women from joining the Job Corps.

National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, now part of the Center for Community Change
The organizations joined in the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support represents people of all classes and colors in urban, suburban, and rural areas. They are deeply disturbed by the profound disconnect between what the media and most politicians say about entrenched poverty and income inequality and what people know to be true from everyday life. They call on people and organizations of conscience to join them in a movement for economic justice.

National Center for Children in Poverty
The NCCP, at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University in New York, works to identify and promote strategies to reduce the number of children living in poverty in the U.S. -- a figure that exceeded 13 million in 1999. By stimulating, conducting, and communicating research and disseminating the facts about children living in poverty, the NCCP hopes to encourage not only solutions that work, but also optimism that child poverty can be eradicated.

Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America
The OIC, which started in an abandoned jailhouse in Philadelphia in 1964, has provided pre-vocational and job-skills training and employment services to over a million of America's hardest people to employ. A 1989 study estimated that these workers had generated $120 billion in earnings and $22 billion in taxes and their employment had saved $35 billion in welfare costs. With a motto of "Helping People Help Themselves," OIC works through a national network of local affiliated organizations.

Parents World
A website produced by a group of single parents with messages and chats, hints from parenting advice writers, notes on divorce and dating, and links to other parenting sites.

STRIVE
Located in New York and founded by a venture capitalist and businessman, STRIVE seeks to help people find and keep jobs through a program that emphasizes confidence-building, motivation, and personal responsibility.

Urban Institute
Since 1968, the Urban Institute in Washington, has produced some of the most reliable and penetrating research on race, crime, the cities, poverty, welfare, and government programs including Social Security. Frequently cited in the media, the Institute aims to sharpen thinking about society's problems and their solutions; to improve government decisions and their implementation; and to increase citizen awareness about important public choices.

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E. Housing, Economic Development, Community Development and Community Banking

Development Training Institute
Founded in 1981, DTI offers comprehensive training to individuals and organizations that do community development. It offers its services to a range of organizations, including community-based groups and agencies, banks, and state and local governments.

Enterprise Foundation
The Foundation's mission is to see that all low-income people in the U.S. can move out of poverty and into fit and affordable housing and the mainstream of American life. A national nonprofit organization, the Foundation has raised or leveraged more than $3.4 billion, created more than 107,000 units of affordable housing for low-income Americans, and placed 31,000 in jobs. Aiming to build a nationwide community-development movement, the Foundation provides funding and a wide range of tools and training, particularly in housing.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation
LISC provides grants, loans, and equity funding for community development corporations to help turn neighborhoods into communities. USA Today described one LISC-funded project in northeast Philadelphia as "built with federal tax credits and charming architectural details." Recent bipartisan congressional legislation to increase tax incentives and strengthen the institutions that provide equity has enabled LISC to attract more and sturdier private investment both for housing and new businesses in blighted neighborhoods.

Community Action Partnership
Community Action Agencies are public and private organizations established under the Equal Opportunity Act of 1964 to wage the War on Poverty. The Community Action Partnership brings together 1,000 CAAs to support their work with conferences and training and to make sure their issues are heard in the national forum. Recently, CAP has been active in closing the Digital Divide between those who have access to the Internet and its educational and economic opportunities and those who do not.

National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials
NAHRO is a professional membership organization comprised of 9,500 housing and community development groups. Its mission is to create affordable housing and strong communities for all Americans, particularly those with low and moderate incomes. Because NAHRO's members administer many federal Housing & Urban Development programs, such as Public Housing and Section 8, at the local level, the website provides frequently used HUD forms and updates on government regulations.

National Congress for Community Economic Development
Founded in 1970, NCCED is the trade association and advocate for the nationwide community-based development industry, comprising some 36,000 community development corporations. With strategies from political activism to professional development, the Congress and its members have created 550,000 units of affordable housing, 71 million square feet of commercial/industrial space, and 247,000 new private-sector jobs.

National Low Income Housing Coalition
As the real estate market booms in almost every U.S. city, more and more low- and moderate-income Americans are priced out of their neighborhoods, doubling or tripling up, moving into sub-standard housing, or even becoming homeless. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, established in 1974, is the only national organization dedicated solely to ending America's housing crisis. The NLIHC educates and organizes, provides up-to-date information and analysis and a forum for discussion, writes policy, and advocates for decent, affordable housing within healthy neighborhoods for everyone.

National Neighborhood Coalition
The demands on nonprofit and community-based organizations to be the problem-solvers for the nation's urban neighborhoods and rural communities have increased tremendously since the NNC's founding in 1979. To help these organizations keep ahead of the curve, the NNC brings together people and groups concerned about neighborhoods, acts as a conduit for information about programs and policies, and provides its constituents a strong voice in Washington.

New Community Corporation
New Community is the largest community development corporation in the United States as well as New Jersey's largest non-profit housing corporation. It was born from the civil disorders in Newark, New Jersey in 1967 that left the city in ruins. Since that time, it has developed housing, brought a major supermarket chain to the community and helped to salvage hundreds of lives.

ShoreBank
The idea was hatched in 1973 by four friends at the Eagle, a hangout near the University of Chicago. The first deposits were wooed from friends and neighbors in their parlors and kitchens. Now, nearly 30 years later, the Bank is the country's oldest and largest community development bank, committed to the health of the communities it serves. South Shore Bank lends far beyond its hometown to families and businesses across America and as far away as Bangladesh and Kenya.

Surdna Foundation
The Surdna Foundation was established in 1917 by John Emory Andrus to pursue a range of philanthropic purposes. It has a particular zeal for helping young people explore their own identities and relationship to the outside world through the arts and to become effective citizens who can solve problems in their schools and communities. The Foundation also supports efforts to develop affordable owner-occupied and rental housing in urban neighborhoods.

Urban Institute
Since 1968, the Urban Institute in Washington has produced some of the most reliable and penetrating research on race, crime, the cities, poverty, welfare, and government programs including Social Security. Frequently cited in the media, the Institute aims to sharpen thinking about society's problems and its solutions; to improve government decisions and its implementation; and to increase citizen awareness about important public choices.

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F. Police, Criminal Justice, Prison and Drug Policy Reform

Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
The Center is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to furthering and protecting the civil, constitutional, and human rights of immigrants, refugees, indigenous peoples, children, and the poor. Its cases and causes include the defense of Haitian exiles, Native American burial sites, and the Chiapas Indians of Mexico, as well as opposition to the death penalty. The Center encourages students, lawyers, and other volunteers to join its efforts.

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a private nonprofit whose mission is to reduce society's reliance on incarceration as a solution to social problems. Its reports highlight the failures of current tough-on-crime policies and propose just sentencing and workable corrective alternatives to imprisonment, especially for juvenile offenders. The Center supports local initiatives such as one in Maryland that supports youth in their transition from detention back to the community, to keep them in school and at work and out of the criminal justice system.

Drug Policy Alliance Network
The Drug Policy Alliance Network represents people seeking alternatives to the current punitive and ineffective War on Drugs. The organization favors a shift away from criminal prosecution to a public-health approach to drug abuse and addiction. It points out that workable solutions to drug abuse and trafficking already exist in other countries and, to some extent, in the U.S..

Drug Strategies
Drug Strategies is a nonprofit research institute that promotes more effective approaches to the nation's drug problems and supports private and public initiatives that reduce the demand for drugs through prevention, treatment, and law enforcement. Its annual reviews of federal drug-control spending, politics, and programs has been praised as rigorous and free of cant. Among the programs it supports is one in Baltimore that provides acupuncture treatment for women addicts in danger of losing custody of their children.

Fortune Society
Founded in 1967, the Fortune Society helps prisoners, ex-offenders, and those facing jail or prison time. It works to improve prison conditions and protect prisoners' rights. Staffed primarily by ex-offenders, the Society is committed to providing the foundation from which new lives can be launched after incarceration. In that effort, its services include everything from English as a Second Language to acupuncture and massage. Working with allies in the community, the Fortune Society seeks to reverse current punitive criminal justice policy and to address the root causes of crime through outreach and advocacy.

Brady Campaign
Founded in 1974 as Handgun Control, Inc., by a victim of gun violence, the Brady Campaign became the driving force for significant gun safety legislation in the 1980s, when Sarah Brady joined the organization as chair. Brady's husband, former White House Press Secretary Jim Brady, was wounded in the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981.

International Centre for Prison Studies
The International Centre for Prison Studies seeks to assist governments and other agencies to understand the purpose of prison and what can be expected of it, in order to develop appropriate policies. The Centre's academic research and projects are available to groups and individuals, including policymakers, practitioners, and administrators, the media, and the general public internationally. Its website, in English, Spanish, and French, features a map through which users can find imprisonment rates in countries around the world.

National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
The National Center informs Americans on the personal, social, and economic costs of drug abuse. While assessing what works in prevention and treatment, it helps provide tools for front-line workers in the field. It also works to remove the stigma of abuse and replace shame and despair with hope. A recent CASA commission released a report on doping of Olympic athletes, with proposals for prevention and policing of the problem.

Police Executive Research Forum
PERF is a national membership organization of progressive police executives from the largest city, county, and state law enforcement agencies. Incorporated in 1977, PERF is dedicated to improving policing and advancing professionalism through research and involvement in public policy debate. The organization's wide range of concerns is reflected in some of its recent projects: the assessment of a program in which U.S. police trained Ukrainian officers, and a report on abortion-clinic violence, reflecting the conflicting interests of all parties -- providers, patients, protesters, and police.

Police Foundation
The Police Foundation acts as a catalyst for change and an advocate for new ideas. It reminds its members of the fundamental purposes of policing, and it works to strengthen the vulnerable link between the police and the public they serve. Because too many communities still fear the police, the Foundation's programs improve accountability and professionalism on the force. To help build the infrastructures for effective community policing, it has also innovated sophisticated computerized community crime mapping systems.

Sentencing Project
The Sentencing Project is one of the country's most reliable independent source of criminal justice policy analysis, data, and program information for the public and policymakers. Its reports and communiques provide an informed, humane understanding of crime and criminals, a reasoned voice for alternatives to imprisonment, and respectful and rehabilitative treatment of people in prison.

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G. The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System

Justice Policy Institute
The Justice Policy Institute produces and disseminates accurate information and corrects misinformation on crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system. It is a project of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

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2. Race and Economic Justice

American Association for Affirmative Action
The American Association for Affirmative Action is the association of professionals managing affirmative action, equal opportunity, diversity, and other human resource programs. Founded in 1974, the AAAA is dedicated to the elimination of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnic background, or any other criterion that deprives people of opportunities to live and work. The organization runs many activities designed to help Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action professionals be more successful and productive in their careers. Its website offers regulatory updates, conference and training calendars, and links.

Center for Law and Social Policy
CLASP is a national public-interest law firm, specializing in helping the underprivileged.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1940 under the leadership of the late Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black U.S. Supreme Court Justice. For more than half a century, LDF has used the law as a powerful tool to pry open doors of opportunity long closed to African Americans, other people of color, women, and the poor.

Asian American Justice Center
The Asian American Justice Center, formerly the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, is a nonprofit collaboration of Asian-American legal rights organizations. The Consortium focuses on such issues as affirmative action, hate crimes, immigration, and voting rights.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The NAACP, nearly a century old, is the nation's largest and strongest civil rights organization, dedicated to ensuring the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority-group citizens and eliminating racial discrimination through democratic processes. Building on its vital role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, the organization's current activities -- for instance, exposing the barriers to advancement for African-Americans in the hotel industry -- demonstrate that its ultimate mission to wipe out racial prejudice in America is far from accomplished.

National Congress of American Indians
The National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944, is the oldest, largest, and most representative national Indian organization serving the needs of a broad membership of American Indian and Alaska Native governments. Engaged in "the battle to protect tribal self-government and the rights of native people," the NCAI attacks a wide range of challenges, from pressuring sports teams to discard mascots that caricature and denigrate Native Americans to redressing basic problems of the poor, such as substandard housing.

National Leadership Council on Civil Rights
The NLCCR and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund now collaborate through CivilRights.org. CivilRights.org is the site of record for relevant and up-to-the minute civil rights news and information.

National Puerto Rican Coalition, Inc.
The Coalition's mission is systematically to strengthen and enhance the social, political, and economic well-being of Puerto Ricans throughout the U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico, with a special focus on the most vulnerable. During NPRC's 20-year history, the lot of the 6.2 million Puerto Ricans in the U.S. has not significantly improved; for instance, fully half of Puerto Rican workers still live in poverty. Serving its mission to bring attention to its issues at the national level, the NPRC's website provides an easy-to-use guide to Congressional leaders and committees, including their phone numbers.

Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama, combats hate, intolerance, and discrimination through education and litigation. It is internationally known for its tolerance education program, its legal victories against white supremacist groups, and its tracking of hate groups. Inscribed in its Civil Rights Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, are the names of activists killed during the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968 and the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

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3. Capacity Building for and Replication of Inner City Nonprofit Organizations

National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
Aiming to reverse the trend of a smaller percentage of giving in a time of greater wealth, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy wants to create a movement of progressive philanthropies to turn financial assets into social change. NCRP's mission is to embolden the philanthropy community to become fully responsive to the communities they serve and accountable to all. It encourages giving to disadvantaged populations, including very low-income communities, people of color, and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender populations. The group also monitors the right wing's use of philanthropy in achieving its political ends.

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4. Economic Policy, Budget Priorities, Poverty and Inequality

American Prospect
The American Prospect is a liberal journal of philosophy, politics, and public life, which publishes articles for the general reader that attempt to break through conventional understandings and creatively reframe public questions. The American Prospect is firmly committed -- however unfashionably -- to a belief in public improvement. America can do much good, and it can do much better.

Campaign for America's Future
This group of over 100 -- mostly labor leaders, academics, and journalists -- "are challenging the big money corporate agenda by encouraging Americans to speak up." Their focus is primarily on economic issues, including falling wages, and aside from maintaining an informative website, CAF's activities include a pledge drive against the privatization of Social Security.

Citizens for Tax Justice
CTJ's mission is to give ordinary people a greater voice in the development of tax laws. Its research and advocacy were key in the passage of federal tax reform legislation in 1986 that closed tax loopholes for corporations and the rich and lowered taxes for the poor and middle class. It has continued to work with labor, community, and church groups for tax laws that contribute to a sustainable, equitable economy.

Coalition on Human Needs
CHN is an alliance of national organizations working together to promote public policies that address the needs of poor people and other vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The group was formed in 1981 by people worried about the Reagan Administration's plans to consolidate federal appropriations for human needs into block grants to the states, which likely meant major cuts. Today, CHN acts as a clearinghouse for information and convenes forums and working groups on poverty and human needs.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

The Nation
The Nation is America's oldest weekly of progressive politics and cultural criticism. In the discussion of political and social questions, it "makes an earnest effort to...wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."

National Priorities Project
NPP is a nonprofit research and education organization that keeps track of federal spending, especially in the areas of education, labor, health, and human services. It provides useful analyses of the impact of federal budget decisions on states and localities.

OMB Watch
OMB Watch was formed in 1983 to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees regulation, the budget, information collection and dissemination, proposed legislation, testimony by agencies, and much more. By then, it was apparent that OMB's actions were having an enormous impact on agency operations and the pursuit of social justice.

Taxpayers for Common Sense
A nonpartisan advocate for American taxpayers, TCS is dedicated to cutting wasteful spending and subsidies in order to achieve a responsible and efficient government that lives within its means. Its reports pinpoint corporate welfare and pork barrel appropriations.

TomPaine.com
TomPaine.com is an online journal of opinion inspired by the great patriot Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and The Rights of Man. Paine was a man of humble origins and modest education, who used his extraordinary writing talents to advance the cause of liberty and democracy against distant and unaccountable rulers. The site's contributors include many progressive regulars, including Nation political writer David Corn, anti-globalization movement chronicler Naomi Klein, and environmentalist Bill McKibben.

United for a Fair Economy
United for a Fair Economy is part of a broad social movement of people concerned that "economic apartheid" -- or the concentration of wealth and the growing income gap between rich and poor -- is hurting our nation. Its goal is to revitalize America through a fairer distribution of wealth. The group's website links users with others in a network of activists for economic equality.

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5. Corporate Welfare, Tax Breaks for the Rich and the Military-Industrial Complex

Center for Defense Information
Founded in 1972 as an independent monitor of the military, the Center for Defense Information seeks realistic and cost-effective military spending without excess expenditures for weapons and policies that increase the danger of war. Its directors and staff believe this is possible without compromising the national security.

Corporate Watch
Corporate Watch provides news, analysis, research tools, and action resources to respond to corporate activity around the globe. It also communicates with people who are directly affected by corporate abuses, from aerial spraying of poisonous herbicides in Colombia to the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian anti-Shell activist and environmentalist. It fights alongside other global activists for corporate accountability, human rights, and social and environmental justice. Corporate Watch is free of corporate sponsorship.

Corporate Welfare Information Center
The Center links to articles and other publications about corporate freeloading and influence through tax breaks, subsidies, business-friendly campaign-financing laws, and other government entitlements for the rich.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

6. Campaign Finance Reform, Voter Democracy and Reduction of Corporate Power

Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
For years, the Right has used the ballot initiative process to raise money, increase conservative voter turnout, and advance its agenda: school prayer, tough crime policies, a crackdown on immigration, and the defeat of affirmative action and gay rights, to name a few planks. In the process, it has often divided the progressive community along economic, racial, and ethnic lines. The BISC was founded in 1996 to help defeat these right-wing initiatives and develop a national ballot initiative strategy on behalf of progressive change.

The Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity's mission is to provide the American public with the findings of its investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability, and ethics-related issues.

Center for Responsive Politics
The CRP provides specific information on campaign finance spending, lobbyists, and business contributions to politicians (broken down by industry, region, and amount).

FairVote
FairVote is one of the most important groups working to redress the corruption of American democracy.

Common Cause
Common Cause is a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen's lobbying organization promoting open, honest, and accountable government, including meaningful campaign-finance reform. Supported by the dues and contributions of over 250,000 members in every state across the nation, Common Cause represents the unified voice of the people against corruption in government and big-money special interests.

Voter March
VM represents a rapidly growing grassroots movement of ordinary citizens who have joined together in support of essential democratic rights, and against those who wish to take them away. A good place to go to find out how you can do something.

Democracy South
DS tracks how campaign contributions influence public policy, with a special focus on the South, and looks at ways to combat the overall influence of money on politics.

Fannie Lou Hamer Project
The FLHP works on a number of fronts to redefine electoral corruption as a civil rights issue critical to African-Americans.

Global Exchange
GE's Democracy Project organizes grassroots support for ongoing electoral reform efforts.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

Instant Runoff Voting
Instant runoff voting (IRV) is a voting reform that asks the voter to rank the candidates in order of preference. It is a simple, common-sense reform that would greatly improve our democratic process as this thorough site makes clear.

Institute for Policy Studies
Progressive think tank whose program areas include the global economy, paths for the 21st century, sustainable communities, and peace and security.

The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
MALDEF, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and promote the civil rights of the more than 29 million Latinos living in the United States, has recently taken up the cause of electoral reform in the wake of Election 2000.

NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the US, has been at the forefront of confronting the many charges of minority voters being intimidated and obstructed from voting in Florida.

National Leadership Council on Civil Rights
The NLCCR has been directly involved in investigating charges of voter disfranchisement in Florida. Read their findings and see what you can do to get involved.

Project Vote Smart
Project Vote Smart has been praised by The New York Times, CNN, PBS, and other major media outlet as a trusted and comprehensive source of information on candidates and issues. It was selected by the American Political Science Association as the best political website.

Public Agenda
Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public-opinion research and citizen education organization founded in 1975 by social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. It conducts in-depth polls, focus groups, and forums and publishes its findings in accessible, attractive reports on American's feelings about such complex issues as abortion, welfare, and race.

Public Campaign
Public Campaign is dedicated to reforms that would dramatically reduce the role of special interest money in America's elections and the influences of big contributors in American politics. Its website is bannered with the slogans "Clean Money, Clean Elections" and "Stop the Fat Cats"; it is illustrated with a large cat reclining comfortably against the Capitol building on a pile of money. Along with articles about campaign finance abuses and reform efforts, the site offers updates on public perceptions of corruption in the electoral process.

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7. Advocacy and Community Organizing

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities conducts research and analysis on a range of government policies and programs. Its emphasis is on tax and fiscal policy and census and income analysis, with particular attention to those programs and policies that affect low- and moderate-income people.

Children's Partnership
The mission of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Children's Partnership is to inform leaders and the public about the needs of America's 70 million children and to engage them in ways that benefit children. The organization, based in Washington, emphasizes health care and computer access and literacy, and its website features a parents' guide to online resources and pathways to involvement.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

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8. Communicating What Works on Conventional Media and the Internet

Austin Free-Net
Austin Free-Net is a nonprofit corporation that wants to give computer access to every resident of Austin, Texas, especially those who don't have computers in their homes. It buys, collects, and installs computers with Web access, printers, and other hardware in public places including libraries and community centers, and provides technical support. AFN is supported largely by small, individual donations of money and equipment.

Benton Foundation
The Benton Foundation is the legacy of William Benton (1900-1973), the ad agency founder, publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and lifelong champion of free speech and civil liberties. As a U.S. Senator, Benton was the first to propose the expulsion of Joseph McCarthy from the U.S. Senate in 1951. These passions are reflected in the foundation's programs to expand public debate, enable children's and artists' use of the Internet, and encourage public radio to engage the public in health-policy decisions.

Digital Divide Network
The Digital Divide Network tackles the growing gap between those who have access to computer and Internet technology and information skills and those who do not. The purpose of the DDN is to facilitate the sharing of ideas, information, and creative solutions among industry partners, private foundations, nonprofit organizations, and governments. It is building a national database of local tech-access programs on its website.

W. T. Grant Foundation
The goal of the William T. Grant Foundation is to help create a society that values young people and enables them to reach their full potential. It pursues this goal primarily by investing in research: in health, social and behavioral sciences; marketing and communications; and in those fields traditionally concerned with youth development and mental health, such as pediatrics, psychology, psychiatry, and social work.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

Morino Institute
The Morino Institute works with the successful Internet entrepreneurs who drive the New Economy. It wants to use the Net and the wealth it has created to close the growing national and global divide between the new rich and the people the New Economy and shrinking government entitlement programs have left behind. The Institute's founder, Mario Merino, has coined the term "venture philanthropy" for the process of helping nonprofits become better managed in order to "generate high social rates of return on their investments."

People for the American Way
People For the American Way organizes and mobilizes Americans through education and action alerts to fight for justice, civil rights, and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. PFAW tracks right-wing attacks on constitutional freedoms and lobbies for progressive legislation, particularly the protection of the First American guarantees of freedom of speech and separation of church and state.

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9. Media Reform and Alternative Media

About-Face
Based in San Francisco, CA. Promotes positve self-esteem in girls of all ages, sizes, races and backgrounds through a spirited approach to media education, outreach and activism.

ACME
"ACME, free of corporate media funding, is a strategic network linking media educators, health advocates, media reformers, independent media makers, community organizers and others.

Adbusters
Adbusters is a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.

Alliance for Better Campaigns
The Alliance for Better Campaigns is a public interest group that seeks to improve elections by promoting campaigns where the most useful information reaches the greatest number of citizens in the most engaging ways.

Alliance for Community Media
A nonprofit membership organization founded in 1976, the Alliance represents over 1,000 Public, Educational and Governmental access organizations and community media centers throughout the country.

Alliance for Public TechnologyThe Alliance for Public Technology is a nonprofit membership organization based in Washington, DC. concerned with fostering access to affordable and useful information and communication services and technologies by all people.

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
The AFTRA is a national labor union that represents members in four major areas: 1) news and broadcasting; 2) entertainment programming; 3) the recording business; and, 4) commercials and non-broadcast, indusrtial, and educational media.

Asian American Journalists Association
The Asian American Journalists Association has a threefold mission to: 1) encourage Asian Americans to enter the ranks of journalism; 2) work for fair and accurate coverage of Asian Pacific Americans; 3) increase the number of Asian Pacific American journalists and news managers in the industry.

Association for Progressive CommunicationsThe Association for Progressive Communications is an international network of civil society organizations dedicated to empowering and supporting those working for peace, human rights, development and protection of the environment, through the strategic use of information and communication technologies.

Association of Independent Video and Filmakers
The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers is a membership organization serving local and international film and videomakers—from documentarians and experimental artists to makers of narrative features.

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Brennan Center for Justice
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University of Law unites thinkers and advocates to develop and implement an innovative, nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality and human dignity while safegaurding fundamental freedoms.

Campaign Legal Center
The Legal Center advances a nonpartisan agenda by representing the public perspective in administrative and legal proceedings interpreting and enforcing the campaign and media laws.

Center for Communications and Community
The Center for Communications and Community is a journalism, research, and training institution working to fill the void that exists between grassroots practitioners, the non-profit sector, media research scholars, working journalists, and policymakers interested in community development.

Center for Democracy and Technology
The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age.

Center for Democratic Communications
The Center for Democratic Communications is an organization devoted to protecting the right of all people to a communication system based upon the principles of democracy and self-determination.

Center for Digital Democracy
The Center for Digital Democracy is committed to preserving the openess and diversity of the Internet in the broadband era, and to realizing the full potential of digital communications through the development and encouragement of noncommercial, public interest programming.

Center for Media and Democracy
The Center for Media and Democracy is a nonprofit, public interest organization that serves citizens, journalists and researchers seeking to recognize and combat manipulative and misleading PR practices.

Center for Media Justice, formerly the Youth Media Council
The Youth Media Council (YMC) is a youth organizing, leadership development, media capacity-building and watchdog project dedicated to amplifying the public voice of marginalized youth and their communities.

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Chicago Media Watch
Chicago Media Watch's goal is media literacy—to educate the public about media omissions, distortions, propaganda and lies, and to highlight what is underreported.

Children Now
Children Now is a research and action organization dedicated to assuring that children grow up in economically secure families, where parents can go to work confident that their children are supported by quality health coverage, a positive media environment, a good early education, and safe, enriching activities to do after school. California focus with Oakland and Los Angeles offices.

Citizens for Media Literacy
Citizens for Media Literacy is a nonprofit, public interest organization linking media literacy with the concepts and practices of citizenship.

Commercial Alert
Commercial Alert's mission is to keep commercial culture within its proper sphere and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.

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Commercialism in Education Research Unit
CERU conducts research, disseminates information, and helps facilitate dialogue between the education community, policy makers, and the public at large about commercial activities in schools.

Common Courage Press
Common Courage Press (CCP) was founded in 1991 and is located in Monroe, Maine. It publishes books for social justice on race, gender, feminism, economics, ecology, labor, and U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The Press seeks to provide an analysis of problems from a range of perspectives, and to aid activists and others in developing strategies for action. CCP books can be found in Top Ten lists, but not (yet) those of The New York Times variety.

Common Dreams
Common Dreams News Center breaks news and views for the progressive community. Along with coverage of issues often missed in the mainstream press, such as union organizing and anti-globalization activism, it links to hundreds of publications and broadcast media websites.

Communication Rights in the Information Society
CRIS is a campaign to ensure that communication rights are central to the information society and to the upcoming World Summit to the Information Society (WSIS). Our vision of the Information Society is grounded in the Right to Communicate, as a means to enhance human rights and to strengthen the social, economic and cultural lives of people and communities.

Communications Workers of America
CWA, America's largest communications and media union, represents over 700,000 women and men in both private and public sectors, including over half a million workers who are building the Information Highway.

Computer Professional for Social Responsibility
CPSR works to influence decisions regarding the development and use of computers because those decisions have far-reaching consequences and reflect our basic values and priorities.

Consumer Project on Technology
The Consumer Project on Technology supports and conducts research and educational projects ecouraging citizen-consumer interest in intellectual property rights, health care, electronic commerce and competition policy.

Creative Commons
The Creative Commons is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share by expanding the spectrum of possiblities between full copyright and the public domain.

Dollars and Sense
Dollars and Sense is a bimonthly magazine of "what's left in economics." It covers the effects of economic policy and business developments on real people, from women in China to professors trying to organize unions at U.S. universities and colleges.

Downtown Community Television Center
Downtown Community Television Center believes that expanding grass-roots public access (particularly for members of low-income and minority communities) to the electronic media arts invigorates our democracy.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a nonprofit group of lawyers, volunteers and visionaries working to protect our digital rights.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. It works to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, it exposes important news stories that are neglected and defends working journalists when they are muzzled.

Free Radio Berkeley
Free Radio Berkeley was instrumental in creating an ever growing micropower broadcasting movement to liberate the airwaves and break the corporate broadcast media's stranglehold on the free flow of news, information, ideas, cultural and artistic creativity.

Free Speech TV
Working with activists and artists, Free Speech TV airs primarily social, political, cultural, and environmental documentaries acquired from independent producers via direct broadcast satellite.

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Future of Music Coalition
The Future of Music Coalition is a collaboration between members of the music, technology, public policy and intellectual property law communities to promote business models that will help musicians and citizens benefit from new technologies.

Grand Rapids Institute for Informational Democracy
Based in Michigan, GRID provides media education workshops, reports on local news, trains community members in media relations and many more skills necessary for practicing democracy in a media-saturated society.

Hightower Radio
Hightower Radio is the source for commentaries on politics and progressive issues by the down-home, sharp-shooting Texan populist Jim Hightower and other sympathetic folk.

Independent Media Institute
The Independent Media Institute characterizes the mainstream press as "celebrity fluff, talking hairdos. News you can't use from sources you don't trust." As an antidote, this nonprofit organization works to strengthen independent and alternative journalism and to improve the public's access to independent information sources with its networks and congresses. IMI believes that democracy is enhanced when more voices are heard.

Institute for Public Accuracy
As a nationwide consortium of policy researchers, the Institute for Public Accuracy seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for those whose perspectives are commonly drowned out by corporate-backed think tanks and other influential institutions.

Internation Women's Media Foundation
The IWMF's mission is to strengthen the role of women in the news media around the world, based on the belief that no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice.

KIDSNET
KIDSNET helps children, families and educators intelligently access the educational opportunities available from television, radio and multimedia sources. KIDSNET does this by encouraging media literacy in children and a commitment to educational excellence in broadcasters. KIDSNET produces and distributes educational and informational resources for parents, children and educators.

Media Access Project
Media Access Project is a nonprofit public interest law firm which promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media by providing guidance and representation to scores of national and local nonprofit groups.

Media Alliance
Media Alliance's mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility.

MediaChannel
MediaChannel is concerned with the political, cultural and social impacts of the media, large and small. MediaChannel exists to provide information and diverse perspectives and inspire debate, collaboration, action and citizen engagement.

Media Democracy Legal Project
The MDLP's mission is to bring about, by means of the legal process, the governance of the publicly owned airwaves in accordance with democratic ideals and the United States Constitution.

Media Education Foundation
The Media Education Foundation is a nonprofit educational organization devoted to media research and production of resources to aid educators and others in fostering media literacy.

Mind On the Media
Mind On the Media's mission is to inspire independent thinking and foster critical analysis of media messages.

Mountain Eye Media
Mountain Eye Media holds videoactivist workshops where individuals gain video production skills, learn about alternative distribution channels, innovative uses for video and other forms of media activism. Mountain Eye Media also produces and distributes its own documentaries.

National Association of Black Journalists
The National Association of Black Journalists is an organization of journalists, students and media-related professionals that provides quality programs and services to and advocates on behalf of black journalists worldwide.

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National Federation of Community Broadcasters
The National Federation of Community Broadcasters is a national membership organization of community-oriented, non-commercial radio stations committed to localism and community participation and support.

National Writers Union
The National Writers Union is the trade union for freelance writers of all genres who work for American publishers or employers. We are committed to improving the economic and working conditions of freelance writers through the collective strength of our 6500 members in 17 local chapters throughout the country.

NetAction
NetAction is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting use of the Internet for effective grassroots citizen action campaigns, and to educating the public, policy makers, and the media about technology policy issues.

New Mexico Media Literary Project
The New Mexico Media Literacy Project provides dynamic speakers, multimedia workshops, unique videos and CD-ROMS with the goal of making New Mexico the most media literate state in the US.

Newspaper Guild
Founded as a print journalist's union, the Guild today is primarily a media union whose members are diverse in their occupations, but who share the view that the best working conditions are achieved by people who have a say in their workplace.

Obligation, Inc.
Obligation, Inc. takes on television and public education to remind businesses and governments of their responsibilty to children.

Our Media
Our Media (Nuestros Medios) is an emerging global network of scholars and practitioners concerned with the field of alternative, community, and citizens’ media.

Our Media Voice
Our Media Voice is building a national coalition to challenge the mass media's pervasive violence, stereotyping, lack of diverse perspectives, and limited coverage of the critical issues of our times.

Paper Tiger Television
Through the production and distribution of its public access series, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the corporate control of mainstream media.

Parents Television Council
The Parents Television Council (PTC) was established in 1995 as a nonpartisan group, offering private sector solutions to restore television to its roots as an independent and socially responsible entertainment medium.

Prometheus Radio Project
The Prometheus Radio Project serves as a microradio resource center offering legal, technical, and organizational support for the non-commercial community broadcasters

Public Campaign
Public Campaign is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to sweeping reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of special interest money in America's elections and the influence of big contributors in American politics.

Public Knowledge
Public Knowledge is a public interest organization dedicated to fortifying a vibrant information commons in the digital age by working with libraries, educators, scientists, artists, musicians, and journalists among many more stakeholders.

Radio Free Richmond
Radio Free Richmond is creating alternative community radio for Richmond and participating in the national debate over community radio

Reclaim the Media
Reclaim the Media is a coalition of independent journalists, media activists and community organizers in the Pacific Northwest, promoting press freedom and community media access as prerequisites for a functioning democracy.

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is a nonprofit dedicated to providing free legal assistance to journalists since 1970.

Rocky Mountain Media Watch
Rocky Mountain Media Watch exposes media excess, helps citizens visualize what constitutes better journalism and teaches activists and community groups to improve their media skills and increase coverage of their issues.

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Save Our Media
The Save Our Media website informs citizens about the FCC's review of media ownership rules with a factsheet, breaking news and actions people can take to promote media diversity.

Scenic America
Scenic America is the only national nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the scenic character of America's communities and countryside.

Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children
Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children counters the harmful effects of marketing to children through action, advocacy, education, research, and collaboration among organizations and individuals who care about children.

Strategic Press Information Network
The SPIN Project, sponsored by the Independent Media Institute, works with grassroots and advocacy groups to help them spread their messages effectively and accurately to the media.

Union for Democratic Communications
The Union for Democratic Communications is an organization of communication researchers, journalists, media producers, policy analysts, academics and activists dedicated to: critical study of communications; production and distribution of democratically produced media; fostering alternative production; development of democratic communications systems locally, regionally and internationally.

Video Activists Network
The Video Activists Network is an informal association of activists and politically conscious artists using video to support social, economic and environmental justice campaigns.

Whispered Media
Whispered Media offers video witnessing, support and training, collects archival political footage, and produces video works about specific grassroots campaigns and organizations.

Women's Radio Fund
The Women's Radio Fund is building a support network for women radio producers and broadcasters worldwide.

World Association for Christian Communication
WACC aims to promote democratic forms of communication, to contribute towards building a communications environment that is open to all and founded on respect for human dignity. WACC supports processes that lead to the democratisation of the mass media including advocacy, reflection, policy development, and networking. The WACC works to implement communication programmes and to support projects that lead to the empowerment of people, especially the dispossessed and marginalised, indigenous peoples, refugees, migrants, women, children and people with disabilities.

World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC)
AMARC is an international non-governmental organization serving the community radio movement, with almost 3000 members and associates in 106 countries. Its goal is to support and contribute to the development of community and participatory radio along the principals of solidarity and international cooperation.

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10. Political Alliance

Institute for Policy Studies
Progressive think tank whose program areas include the global economy, paths for the 21st century, sustainable communities, and peace and security.