No More Stolen Elections!

Unite for Voting Rights and Democratic Elections

In 2013, Liberty Tree launched an effort to nationalize the Wisconsin’s Wave’s divestment organizing against Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. From May 18-23th, in a joint effort by Liberty Tree and Operation Green Jobs, unemployed workers and their supporters marched 150 miles from Philadelphia to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C.. There, they launched the national Shut the Chamber! campaign, demanding that businesses and local chambers of commerce across the country cut off all ties with the national Chamber. Support from small business owners across the country started to pour in. As one businesswoman put it, “The chamber does not represent consumers or small businesses, it only represents big corporate interests, which are anti democracy.” Over the course of the next two years, the Shut the Chamber! campaign organized national days of action and a series of virtual marches against the Chamber modeled on the action by the Democratizing Education Network in 2006.

Later that Summer, August 7-11 of 2013, 740 people from 48 states and a dozen countries returned to Madison for the second Democracy Convention. This second convention involved the same conferences as the first, though some were renamed and reframed. Thus, in 2013, the nine conferences of the Democracy Convention were the Constitutional Reform Conference, Democratizing Defense Conference, Earth Democracy Conference, Economic Democracy Conference, Education for Democracy Conference, Community Democracy Conference, Media Democracy Conference, Race and Democracy Conference, and the Representative Democracy Conference.

One direct result of the Earth Democracy Conference at the Democracy Convention was the formation of a new coalition effort called the Global Climate Convergence (GCC), sponsored by Liberty Tree’s new Climate Democracy program. Since 2013, the GCC has coordinated annual Earth Day to May Day (April 22-May 1) mobilizations that bring together poor people’s organizations, labor unions, farmer organizations, and student and community groups around the world. The goal of these mobilizations is to develop the networks, trust, and shared politics required to organize a Global Climate Strike intended to cause sufficient economic and political disruption to bring about the rapid transition to a democratic, socially just, renewable, and post-carbon economy.

Shut the ChamberClimate ChangeThe Democracy MovementGlobal Climate Convergence