9 to 5's mission is to strengthen women’s ability to win economic justice and to winning family-friendly policies to help working people balance responsibilities at home and on the job.
Founded: 1973
National Executive Director: Leng Leng Chancey
Current Campaigns:
Equal Opportunity for all Women
Work Family Flexibility
Family Supporting Jobs
Power of Participation
Voter Resources
Accomplishments:
Helped to pass the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act
Civil Rights Act of 1991
The Family Medical Leave Act
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
The Blue Bench
The Blue Bench serves as Metro-Denver's only full-service rape crisis center, working to help the victims of sexual assault and to end the cycle of violence.
Founded:1983
Executive Director: Megan Carvajal
Mission: TBB's mission is to eliminate sexual assault and diminish the impact it has on individuals, their loved ones and our community through comprehensive issue advocacy, prevention, and care.
Services:
24-hour English and Spanish Sexual Assault Hotline
Therapy
Survivor Groups for women and men
Workshops for Family and Friends of Sexual Assault Survivors
Abuse Prevention Training Program
Self-Protection and Empowerment Training
Case Management
Colorado House Majority Project
The Colorado House Majority Project is an initiative of the Colorado Democratic Party that works to protect and grow the Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives. The HMP team – made up of elected Representatives, seasoned campaign staff, and countless dedicated volunteers works year-round on candidate recruitment, fundraising, and grassroots organizing so that our caucus goes into each election season in the best possible position to secure Democratic victories.
Majority Leader: Monica Duran
Accomplishments:
2020, HMP maintained the largest Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives since 1966 with 41 democratic seats.
Codified reproductive rights,
Record Investments in Affordable Housing
Significant new Regulations of Oil and Gas industry
2022: maintained the Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives
Equality California
Equality California brings the voices of LGBTQ+ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ+ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating, and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve.
Founded: 1998
Executive Director: Tony Hoang
Current Campaigns:
Criminal Justice Reform: LGBTQ+ people face disproportionate rates of arrest, conviction, incarceration, and recidivism compared to their non-LGBTQ+ peers.
Education: Studies show that LGBTQ+ students are more likely to face bullying, harassment, and discrimination in schools than their non-LGBTQ+ peers.
Faith and Religion: We are proud to work alongside faith leaders to create acceptance and understanding of LGBTQ+ people in communities of faith.
Gun Violence Prevention: LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and hate-motivated crimes in general.
Hate Crimes and Safety: Transgender women face epidemic rates of murder and violent crimes.
Healthcare: Despite rising acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in California and across the United States, the LGBTQ+ community continues to face widespread disparities in health and wellbeing, due in part to lack of access to quality, affordable healthcare.
HIV Advocacy: Despite significant advances in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, HIV/AIDS is still claiming the lives of many in the LGBTQ+ community.
Immigration: We work to educate the LGBTQ+ community and broader community of immigration activists on the compounded disparities that LGBTQ+ undocumented Californians face.
Marriage Equality and LGBTQ+ Families: We are working to ensure that same-sex couples and their families are afforded the full and equal protections that marriage provides.
Racial Justice: We cannot achieve full, lived equality for all LGBTQ+ people until we dismantle systemic racism.
Seniors and Aging: We are working to secure the civil right protections ad budgetary resources to ensure that LGBTQ+ seniors in California can live safe, dignified lives.
Tobacco: For decades, Big Tobacco has targeted the LGBTQ+ community specifically, resulting in significantly higher rates of smoking and use of other tobacco products and the health problems associated with them.
Transgender Equality: Transgender people continue to face disproportionate levels of discrimination and violence in many areas of life.
Accomplishments:
Equality California has successfully worked to modernize California’s outdated, ineffective and discriminatory laws that criminalized people living with HIV and to reform California’s broken sex offender registry, which for decades treated LGBTQ+ people differently from their non-LGBTQ+ peers. Equality California has also worked in coalition with racial justice and civil rights organizations to pass legislation restoring voting rights to people on parole, reforming California’s law enforcement use-of-force policy, ban the use of chokeholds and better prevent racial discrimination in jury selection. Equality California also strongly backed Governor Newsom’s actions to end California’s unjust, outdated and racist death penalty system.
In 2016, Equality California and Equality California Institute launched our Safe and Supportive Schools Program to build on our legislative success and ensure every LGBTQ+ child in California has access to a welcoming and affirming learning environment.
In August 2020, Equality California Institute, in partnership with AmeriCorps, launched its newest peer-led mentorship and after-school program, supporting LGBTQ+ students to create positive school environments. Under Equality California’s leadership, 20 dedicated AmeriCorps members work directly with self-selected LGBTQ+ and allied students at Fresno Unified School District, providing a safe and supportive space for personal growth and professional development over the course of an academic year.
In the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, Equality California launched the “Safe and Equal” Campaign. The campaign is aimed at ending gun violence by advocating for tougher common sense gun safety laws at the federal and state level. Equality California has made adoption of laws to reduce gun violence and mass shootings one of its highest organizational priorities.
Equality California worked with then-Attorney General Kamala Harris to pass legislation eliminating the”Gay Panic” and “Transgender Panic” defenses that have been asserted by defendants who have argued that their violent behavior was a rational response to discovering that the victim was LGBTQ+.
Equality California works closely with The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) and state equality organizations across the country to modernize outdated, ineffective and discriminatory HIV laws. Through ETAF’s HIV Is Not A Crime campaign, we are supporting our Nevada-based affiliate Silver State Equality and partners at Equality Virginia, AIDS Foundation Chicago, Equality Georgia, Equality Ohio, Garden State Equality and Nashville Cares to replicate our success modernizing California’s HIV criminal laws.
We sponsored and helped pass a first-in-the-nation Seniors Long Term Care Bill of Rights, which strengthens – strengthening protections for LGBTQ+ seniors living in long term care facilities against discrimination, and legislation on Recognizing the Needs of LGBTQ Older Adults, ensuring that LGBTQ older adults are recognized as a population in need of special attention.
For over a decade, Equality California has been working in coalition to secure non-discrimination protections for transgender people, focusing on education, employment, healthcare and housing. Today, we continue the critical work of ensuring full and lasting equality in all areas of life for transgender people. Equality California is proud to have co-founded Transform California, the nation’s most ambitious campaign to educate the public about transgender Californians and the challenges they face.
Equality Florida Institute
Equality Florida is Florida’s statewide civil rights organization dedicated to securing full equality for Florida’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) community.
Founded: 1997
Membership: 135,000
Executive Director: Nadine Smith
Current Campaigns:
Protect our hard-fought victory of securing statewide nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Floridians in the workplace, housing, and public spaces – no matter where in Florida they live.
Uproot anti-LGBTQ+ hatred and bigotry by changing the culture in our schools to one of acceptance and inclusion of ALL students.
Continue to advance transgender equality and combat the rise in anti-transgender violence, especially among black transgender women.
End HIV stigma and modernize Florida’s HIV-specific laws.
Accomplishments:
We lead the fight that won marriage equality! In 2015, after a two-year education and legal campaign, plaintiffs in Equality Florida’s lawsuit became the first same-sex couples to marry in Florida.
Since we formed in 1997, we’ve defeated or neutralized every anti-LGBTQ+ bill introduced in the Tallahassee – a 100% success record.
60% of Floridians are protected from anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination thanks to more than 200 local non-discrimination, safe schools, and domestic partnership policies passed on our watch.
We played a key leadership role in overturning Florida’s shameful ban on gay and lesbian adoption which was struck down in 2010 and repealed entirely in 2015.
We are the largest state LGBTQ+ group in the country with more than 300,000 supporters, over 1,000 volunteers, and staff in nine cities.
Equality Maine
Equality Maine’s mission is to protect and advance full equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Mainers by creating an inclusive and intersectional movement through political action, community building, education, engagement and collaboration.
Founded: 1984
Executive Director: Gia Drew
Current Campaigns:
Empowering LGBTQ+ young leaders across the state.
Supporting educators, students, and parents in their efforts to create safer schools for our youth.
Helping workplaces become more inclusive and welcoming to LGBTQ+ employees, customers, and clients.
Expanding our Network for Older Adults programs to support LGBTQ+ older adults.
Increasing access to health care for all
Continuing to change hearts and minds across the state as we work to protect the rights and freedoms we’ve fought so hard to win.
Accomplishments:
Since 1992, EqualityMaine Foundation’s Joel Abromson Memorial Scholarship Fund has given more than $20,000 in scholarships to young champions of equality, supporting a new generation of grassroots leadership in Maine.
In 1993, EqualityMaine helped draft, lobby and pass legislation that amended the Maine Civil Rights Act to protect LGBTQ+ people from hate crimes.
In 1999, EqualityMaine helped draft, lobby and pass legislation extending the same hospital visitation rights to same-sex couples as married spouses and immediate family members.
In 2001, EqualityMaine passed legislation requiring insurance providers in Maine to provide health care policies that include domestic partnership coverage to employers that request it.
In 2002, EqualityMaine helped Westbrook uphold its local non-discrimination ordinance and provided support and testimony to Cumberland County’s successful efforts to provide domestic partner benefits to all of its employees.
In 2004, EqualityMaine passed a statewide domestic partnership law that extended inheritance rights, next-of-kin status for funeral and burial arrangements, and guardian and conservator rights to same-sex couples and unmarried heterosexual couples.
In 2005, EqualityMaine passed a non-discrimination law based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in employment, housing, education, credit, and public accommodations. EqualityMaine worked with the Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign to uphold the non-discrimination law and secure a resounding victory at the polls, making Maine the 16th state to include sexual orientation and the 6th state to include gender identity and expression in a statewide non-discrimination law.
Also in 2005, EqualityMaine defeated a constitutional amendment on marriage, and worked in coalition with other progressive groups to defeat an anti-choice “gay gene” bill and two anti-LGBTQ+ sex education bills.
In 2006, EqualityMaine Foundation, along with coalition partners Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders and Maine Civil Liberties Union, produced a DVD featuring three same-sex couples from Maine who talk about their relationships and families and why being able to marry is so important.
In 2007, EqualityMaine passed family medical leave legislation that addressed some of the inequities that gay and lesbian families face in the workplace. The bill amended Maine’s Family Medical Leave Act to include domestic partners. We also played a role in legislation that addressed absentee ballots, workers compensation, and tax-filing status for domestic partners.
In 2008, EqualityMaine ran a decline-to-sign effort and successfully prevented Michael Heath from gathering enough signatures to repeal our non-discrimination law, defund civil rights teams, eliminate joint and second parent adoption and outlaw civil unions through a citizen initiative. EqualityMaine volunteers talked with more than 4,000 pro-equality voters at the polls on primary election day and outnumbered Heath’s signature collectors 3-1.
In 2009, EqualityMaine and our coalition partners in the Maine Freedom to Marry Coalition launched a formal campaign to win the freedom to marry. During the legislative public hearing on the marriage bill, attended by more than 4,000 people, we outnumbered our opposition 3 to 1 and created an unforgettable “sea of red.”
In May 2009, we passed marriage equality legislation by solid margins in both the senate and house, making Maine the first state to pass a marriage bill through the legislature and have it signed by the governor. The law was overturned later that year through a People’s Veto initiative.
In 2010, EqualityMaine launched a community-based organizing project to increase support for the freedom to marry in rural areas and the faith community.
In 2011, EqualityMaine launched an unprecedented field campaign to have one-on-one persuasion conversations with conflicted Maine voters and gathered tens of thousands of signatures from every county in Maine to put marriage on the ballot in November 2012.
Also in 2011, EqualityMaine and our coalition partners defeated an anti-trans bathroom bill, one of the first stand-alone trans bills in the country and passed statewide anti-bullying legislation.
In 2012, EqualityMaine and the Maine Freedom to Marry Coalition launched a Citizens’ Initiative ballot measure campaign to win the freedom to marry and on Election Day, Maine became the first state to win the freedom to marry without legislative or court approval and the first state to bring marriage directly to its voters.
In 2013, we launched new efforts to make equality real for our most vulnerable community members, including LGBT youth and elders, transgender Mainers and LGBTQ+ people living in rural Maine, and created the 24 member Maine LGBTQ+ coalition.
In 2014, EqualityMaine successfully defeated an Indiana-style “religious freedom” bill that would have created loopholes in our non-discrimination law.
In 2015, EqualityMaine worked with 8 openly gay and lesbian state legislators, a historic high, to defeat yet another “religious freedom” bill, and to successfully pass an LGBTQ-inclusive update to the state’s family laws - the “Maine Parentage Act.”
In 2016, EqualityMaine worked with our partners at MaineTransNet, ACLU, and Consumers for Affordable Health Care to make Portland the first city in the state to remove exclusions for trans health care from the city’s health plan for employees and their dependents.
Equality Texas
Equality Texas works to secure full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Texans through education, community organizing, and collaboration.
Founded: 1989
CEO: Ricardo Martinez
Current Campaigns:
Resources for Parents of Trans Youth
Report Discrimination in UIL Sports
Issue Briefs
Ending Discrimination
Building Strong Families
Protecting LGBTW+ Youth
Preventing Violence
Anti-Trans Bills: Bathroom Bill 3.0
Gay/Trans Panic Defense
Hate Crimes
Conversion Therapy
Romeo-Juliet Defense Act
“No Promo Homo” Laws
Streamlining Identity Document Changes
Accomplishments:
Led the fight for stronger hate crime laws; helped pass the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act through the house; brought national attention to anti-gay hate crimes in Texas.
Defeated measures that would prevent gays and lesbians from serving as foster and adoptive parents.
Defeated the anti-gay marriage bills that would have prevented the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages and civil unions, 1997, 1999, and 2001.
Increased AIDS and HIV funding; facilitated the passage of the Omnibus AIDS bill; pressed for adoption of HIV grant programs and HIV services funding.
Won appointment of openly gay and lesbian people to state commissions.
Achieved the adoption of nondiscrimination policies protecting lesbian and gay employees in five major state agencies.
Defeated attempts to quarantine PWA’s; blocked proposed legislation to mandate HIV testing.
Working in coalition with other groups, defeated the enactment of initiative and referendum which would have subject us to anti-gay ballot measures.
Successfully lobbied for the passage of anti-redlining bills prohibiting discrimination on the basis of marital status which protects lesbians and gays.
Stopped legislation that would have prohibited state governments from providing benefits to domestic partners.
Defeated efforts to deny funding for art with any homosexual content.
Successfully defeated 19 of the 20 anti- LGBTQ bills filed during the 2019 86th Legislative Session.
In 2019, saw 6 pro-LGBTQ pro-active bills make it to a legislative hearing for the first time, including ban on conversion therapy, elimination of the gay/trans panic defense, and adding gender identity to the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act.
Government Accountability Project
Government Accountability Project’s mission is to promote corporate and government accountability by protecting whistleblowers, advancing occupational free speech, and empowering citizen activists. The Government Accountability Project is the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization. Located in Washington, DC, Government Accountability Project is a nonpartisan, public interest group. In addition to focusing on whistleblower support in our stated program areas, we lead campaigns to enact whistleblower protection laws both domestically and internationally.
Founded: 1977
Executive Director and CEO: Louis Clark
Current Campaigns:
Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act
Department of Energy Nuclear Regulatory Commission Whistleblower Act
COVID-19 Whistleblower Protection Act
Special Inspector General for Law Enforcement Act
Investigate Public and Private Corruption
Accomplishments:
We won the Robert MacLean case at the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision. The ruling is one of our most significant legal victories and is the result of eight years of litigation. Robert disclosed that the Department of Homeland Security was removing U.S. Air Marshals for budgetary reasons from transcontinental flights amidst a confirmed terrorist threat involving such flights. When his disclosures went public, the agency quickly reversed itself. Years later when the agency discovered that MacLean was the whistleblower he was fired, ironically on bogus national security grounds. The new Supreme Court precedent mandates that no agency can impose security rules limiting the free speech of federal employees that undermine the Whistleblower Protection Act. Even more fundamentally, the MacLean case has affirmed that individual government workers have the freedom to warn the nation when bureaucrats make potentially disastrous mistakes.
We fought a tough battle against the Department of Agriculture’s “HIMP” plan to reduce the number of meat inspectors at poultry plants and allow producers to increase line speeds at those facilities. Although we won some concessions, we are unhappy with the final rule and are challenging it in court. Meanwhile we have learned from internal sources that the Department plans to impose similar rules across all species -- first on hog production and then beef processing. We are now launching a preemptive campaign to stop these deregulatory plans before they are even launched.
Agricultural interests across the country are pressuring state legislators and governments to criminalize potential whistleblowing by making it illegal for workers to take pictures or make tape recordings at food production facilities. For nearly thirty years some of our most compelling evidence of animal cruelty and gross health and safety violations has come from video and audio recordings. Over the last several years, we have successfully fought corporate efforts to pressure prosecutors to go after workers who have captured violations electronically. Undeterred, now agricultural behemoths have resorted to pressuring state government officials to create criminal statutes to stop this type of whistleblowing. Despite being completely outgunned financially, we have stopped most of these efforts, except in Iowa, Utah, and Idaho. In Idaho we have joined a lawsuit to challenge the law and have gained some significant traction with newspaper editorial boards and even among some agricultural companies that want to disassociate with the effort to shut whistleblowers down.
As for banking and finance, we are representing whistleblowers who exposed the practices that led to the international financial meltdown in 2008 and additional ones on the inadequacy of the efforts by the banks to reform their operations. In fact, the banks have shockingly devised numerous ways to undermine whistleblowers. These include internal rules to force employees to expose themselves if they take information to federal regulators, warnings about criminal liability for sharing confidential documents with the media or government officials, and secret agreements that pay potential whistleblowers to keep silent. We have formed a coalition of over 250 groups representing millions of members to formally demand that the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) put an end to those and similar efforts to intimidate and silence potential whistleblowers.
On national security we have become a lightning rod for national security whistleblowers from both intelligence agencies and their contractor employees who are blowing the whistle on mass surveillance of Americans, government lying about the accuracy and effectiveness of drone attacks, and the practice and cover-up of torture. Needless to say these cases are painful to defend because we are facing an aggressive Department of Justice, the White House and leaders in Congress from both parties. On our side are civil libertarians of all political stripes, privacy defenders, peace advocates and – judging from our popular American Whistleblower Tour to college campuses – a significant portion of this nation’s next generation of leaders.
Other cases are going remarkably well. Franz Gayl who blew the whistle on the failure of the Department of Defense to supply Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan has won full reinstatement, the return of his security and an end to fake criminal investigations. Our nuclear weapons whistleblower Donna Busche has received widespread Congressional support and national attention for her environmental and safety challenges to Bechtel’s billion dollar Department of Energy contract to build the largest waste treatment facility in the world. Our Veterans Administration (VA) whistleblowers have received national praise and well-deserved vindication.
Without question, a new day is dawning for those who witness corruption and choose to challenge it. The Department of Justice tried to convince the Supreme Court that it was outrageous that one person’s idea about national security should trump the collective wisdom of an entire Department of Government with over 60,000 employees dedicated to protecting national security. The Court essentially ruled that Congress fully intended that one person who has a reasonable concern has the right to express those beliefs. For democracy to prevail everyone must remain supportive of those voices of reason and witnesses to violations of the rule of law by unelected leaders who find it easier to stifle the truth-tellers than to listen to them.
Minnesota DFL House Caucus
The Minnesota DFL supports and works to enact the ideals and principles of the Democratic Party. The House Caucus focuses specifically on Minnesota's House of Representatives with the agendas of job creation, quality education, access to affordable health care, and fair taxes.
Majority Leader: Representative Melissa Hortman
Ohio Citizen Action
Ohio Citizen Action organizes and mobilizes people to advocate for public interests that protect public health, improve environmental quality, and benefit consumers. Our campaigns connect Ohioans and build a movement to protect democracy and create a sustainable future.
Founded: 1975
Executive Director: Rachael Belz
Current Campaigns:
FirstEnergy Nuclear Bailout
Wind Power in Ohio
AEP Solar Farm
Clean Energy Standards
Fixed Rate Hikes
Civic Engagement Work
Accomplishments:
Pollution prevention 'good neighbor' campaigns with the Eramet manganese refinery in Marietta and Columbus-based Heartland Petroleum.
Shut down 22 of Ohio's oldest, most polluting coal boilers.
Prevented new pollution from proposed (but never built) projects like a 1,000 MW coal plant in Meigs County, a garbage incinerator in Cleveland and a coal-to-liquid fuel plant in Wellsvile.
Aggregated Cincinnati residents into an electricity buying group and securing 100% clean, renewable energy to meet their needs.
Defeated a bill that would have repealed Ohio's energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.
Organic Consumers Association
To protect and advocate for consumers’ right to safe, healthful food and other consumer products, a just food and farming system and an environment rich in biodiversity and free of pollutants.
Founded: 1998
Executive Director:Rosemary Welch
International Director:Ercilia Sahores
Current Campaigns:
Safeguard Organic Standards (SOS): An ongoing campaign to stop industry and the USDA from degrading U.S. organic standards. Current work includes pressuring Horizon and Aurora dairies and the USDA to stop allowing factory farm dairy feedlots to label their milk as “USDA Organic.” Other efforts include developing and policing new organic standards for vitamins, herbs, body care products, pet food, clothing and fertilizer, as well as integrating organic and fair trade standards.
Breaking the Chains: Buy Local, Organic and Fair Made. Breaking the Chains encourages consumers to realize that where you buy a green or organic product is just as important as what you buy. OCA encourages consumers to boycott the chains and shop instead at local, independently owned retailers and coops; and to purchase, whenever possible, locally and regionally produced products.
Save the Bees. Protect bees and other pollinators by choosing organic food, grown without toxic insecticides, and by planting bee-friendly gardens.
Regenerative Agriculture: With the worsening crises in public health, biodiversity, and global warming, the future can look bleak. Fortunately, there’s a solution: regenerative food, farming, and land use. If regenerative practices are implemented on enough land, we’ll reach zero net emissions by 2030 and begin to reverse global warming.
Boycott Big Meat: “Boycott Big Meat” is a national consumer education and lobbying campaign to advance the transition away from today’s centralized industrial meat production to a system of organic regenerative pasture-raised and grass-fed meat production built and run by a diverse network of local and regional independent farmers, ranchers, processors, and retailers who are committed.
The Myth of Natural: Consumers rely on labels, advertising and marketing information to help them choose products they believe to be safe, healthful and produced using practices that are aligned with their values. Many food companies exploit this fact. They knowingly mislead consumers by claiming their products are “natural” when in fact those products contain pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), antibiotics, growth hormones and artificial ingredients. The most prevalent examples of false labeling and advertising are use of terms like “Natural,” “All Natural” and “100% Natural.”
Appetite for a Change/Children’s Environmental Health: An ongoing campaign to make school food programs healthy and sustainable, to integrate organic foods and non-toxic products into our schools and homes, creating a safer and healthier environment for our children to learn and grow.
Millions against Monsanto: For more than two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, including the development of genetically modified seeds. Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of the world’s food supply and destruction of the environment has reached the tipping point.
Accomplishments:
Since its founding, the Organic Consumers Association has managed to significantly raise awareness about the importance of organic farming and the negative impacts of genetically modified crops and corporate agriculture.
For many years, OCA has published its online newsletter, Organic Bytes, which offers useful news, tips, and information for the green-minded consumer. Organic Bytes now has a readership of over 400,000 people.
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Citizens Regeneration Lobby
CRL works through grassroots and legislative action to further policies that support organic agriculture, health, and sustainability. CRL promotes the transition to a regenerative food, farming and land-use system as the pathway to revitalizing rural economies and communities, regenerating public health, restoring biodiversity and climate stability, cleaning up the environment, and strengthening local democracies. CRL is the political-action arm of the Organic Consumers Association.
Political Director: Alexis Baden-Mayer
Current Campaigns:
Consumers experience declining nutritional quality and increasing health risks from contaminated, chemical food.
Agricultural workers often endure discrimination, long hours, low wages and unhealthy working conditions.
Rural communities are declining economically and experiencing a sharp drop in population, especially young people.
The environment suffers from soil depletion and water pollution from chemical inputs and toxic waste associated with factory farms and GMO mono-cropping.
Greenhouse gas emissions from a chemical and fossil fuel intensive food and farming system are responsible for up to 44-57 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, driving global warming and disrupting the climate.
Farm animals are subjected to unnecessary suffering.
Texas Campaign for the Environment
Empowering Texans to fight pollution through sustained grassroots organizing campaigns that shift corporate and governmental policy. We envision a Texas free from pollution.
Founded: 1991
Executive Director: Robin Schneider
Current Campaigns:
Shifting public and private investment to clean energy for a healthy economy
Fighting the facilities causing environmental crises across Texas
Tell U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg: Fight for our climate!
Working to advance local policies and programs that conserve energy, reduce emissions, and help the transition to clean, affordable power for everyone.
Advocate for better product and packaging design by reducing single-use bags and partner with manufacturers to recycle hazardous products such as e-waste.
Accomplishments:
1997: Started Public Research Works which was later renamed Texas Campaign for the Environment Fund (TCE Fund) and opened a canvass office in Austin with a focus on air pollution. We worked with many allies to close the Grandfather Loophole in the Texas Clean Air Act, drastically reducing emissions from older polluting facilities. TCE also assisted in the fight against lignite (coal) strip mining in Bastrop and Lee Counties to fuel a power plant that ran Alcoa’s aluminum smelter in Rockdale.
Early 2000s - TCE continued work on waste and recycling issues. We helped communities in Northeast Travis County who were fighting air and water pollution from three neighboring landfills. We also succeeded in pressuring electronics companies such as Dell, Apple, Samsung and others to create takeback recycling programs. These programs shift the burden of recycling products and packaging from local governments and provide a bottom-line incentive to design for recycling. TCE played a leading role in the Texas Legislature passing producer takeback laws for computers and televisions.
Throughout its history, TCE has advocated for a Zero Waste economy. This includes creating policies and designing our economic systems around how we can sustainably deal with consumer waste as well as industrial pollution. TCE has spent more than a decade working for local municipal policies that will bring Texas closer to Zero Waste. Our efforts helped lead to ordinances requiring recycling for residents of multi-family buildings in Dallas and Austin and for recycling for all residents served by the city in Houston, one of the last major U.S. cities to do so. We led efforts to pass single-use bag efforts and to oppose preemption bills at the Texas Legislature. TCE coordinated efforts to defend bad ordinances in the state courts, but in 2018 the Texas Supreme Court invalidated the local bag ordinances.
TCE has also watchdogged the waste industry and assisted Texans faced with problem waste facilities. We helped organize in the South Texas town of Rio Hondo to stop a problem liquid waste company from polluting the largest freshwater waterway going into the Lower Laguna Madre. We worked with neighbors to trash facilities to hem in expanding landfills. We also led the effort to defeat the “One Bin for All” proposal in Houston which would purposefully mix trash and recyclables, making it harder for sorting, and likely leading to incineration.
2014: TCE helped pass an ordinance in Dallas that effectively stopped a wasteful and destructive drilling practice called fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) from coming to Dallas. We also assisted Denton residents in the successful effort to ban fracking by citizen vote. However, in 2015 the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 40, a sweeping law to invalidate local ordinances to restrict the operations of oil and gas. The law’s constitutionality has yet to be tested.
After Hurricane Harvey, we assisted in the efforts to clean up the San Jacinto Waste Pits east of Houston after many toxic waste sites were flooded. We worked to defend federal funding of the Superfund toxic waste clean-up program when its funding was under attack in 2017.
2018: Began a concentrated effort to organize in the Coastal Bend to oppose the air pollution permit of a massive ExxonMobil-Sabic plastics pellet plant. While that permit was granted, we helped form a local coalition to oppose the petrochemical and fossil fuel export build-out more broadly. We have been working to stop four proposed baywater desalination plants that would provide the water needed for the petrochemical buildout in the Coastal Bend. Two are proposed by the City of Corpus Christi, the main water provider for the region, and two by the Port of Corpus Christi. TCE is also fighting new and expanding crude oil and fracked gas (Liquified Natural Gas or LNG) exporting facilities across the Texas Gulf Coast. Limiting export will have a major impact on limiting fracking especially in the Permian Basin, Barnett Shale, and even in the Bakken in North Dakota.
2020: Broadened our organizing to address the other ways the fossil fuel industry contributes to pollution, climate change, and the destruction of our natural resources. We joined with other groups to contest flaring permit applications–requests to burn off large quantities of useful fossil fuel resources simply because a company hasn’t found a way to make use of them profitably–sought by ConocoPhillips at the Railroad Commission of Texas. TCE also joined Insure Our Future and Stop the Money Pipeline to oppose the financing and insuring of dangerous fossil fuel projects.
After Winter Storm Uri, TCE developed the Texas Power to the People Pledge (TexasPowertothePeople.org) which lays out principles for policy makers to address the underlying issues that caused the grid failure in February 2021. TCE organized meetings with legislative offices to request that they sign onto these principles which also highlights the role of the fracked gas companies and pipelines that contributed to the grid failure, the excessive profiteering of some companies, and the lack of oversight by state agencies like the Texas Railroad Commission and Public Utility Commission.