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Dear John,
As election results have rolled in over the past few weeks, I’ve been particularly excited about a few victories that help to build community power, rewrite the rules of our economy, and expand our democracy: In Ohio, citizens voted to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitution. In Seattle, voters approved the Seattle Housing Levy, which will invest nearly $1 billion into affordable housing. In Philadelphia, Nicolas O’Rourke, a former organizer with our affiliate POWER Interfaith, was elected to the City Council on a platform of racial and economic justice. These wins excite me, bring me hope, and also remind me that such victories are tied into much longer term fights for transformation. In our spotlight this month [[link removed]] , we explore how our Chicago affiliate Grassroots Collaborative (GC) has been organizing coalitions, practicing co-governance, and thinking ahead to long term fights. For nearly 30 years they’ve been waging campaigns for racial, economic, and housing justice; they’ve had their fair share of wins, and they’ve faced more than a few challenges and losses along the way. What remains consistent is their ability to experiment, reflect and learn, and continue making moves to win a more just city. Now, GC is driving negotiations with the new mayor’s administration and winning investments in community needs like affordable housing and homelessness, mental health and public safety, education, and more.
I think this stance of acting, pausing to reflect and learn, and taking action again is critical to how we approach movement work more strategically. The stakes continue to rise for our communities: corporations exploit our lives at every turn, climate disasters grow worse and more frequent, and authoritarianism threatens our democracy, while organizers and community leaders are rising to elected office and working people are winning groundbreaking victories across the country. Both sets of actors — those who wield power inside our government and outside in our communities — are shifting the terrain on which we fight, and we need to be building the infrastructure that will sustain our movements for the long run.
Earlier this month we released a study evaluating the early years of our California program [[link removed]] that’s been exploring how to build the power of low-wage workers, people of color, and immigrants across the state. We learned some key lessons, from directly taking on corporations to weaving intersectional alliances. One question I keep returning to is how we can support people, organizations, and our movements to be adaptive, ask difficult questions, experiment, and build alliances in order to confront the challenges we face today.
The end of the year is often a time for celebration, reflection, and planning. As we do so, I hope you’ll join me in thinking about how we do our work and how we set ourselves and our movements up for even bigger wins ahead. And if you can, consider supporting PowerSwitch Action with a donation [[link removed]] so that we can continue to build the power of working people, families, and communities in 2024 and beyond. In solidarity, Lauren Jacobs Executive Director

Spotlight On: Coalition Organizing and Co-Governance in Chicago
Formed in 1997 as the driving force behind Chicago’s first living wage law, our Chicago affiliate Grassroots Collaborative (GC) has grown into a convener of coalitions — bringing together labor and community organizations, facilitating their political alignment, and uniting them in campaigns undergirded by shared values. This month Mariah Montgomery (our National Campaigns Director) spoke with Jung Yoon (Campaign Director at Grassroots Collaborative) about coalition organizing, co-governance, and how GC is planning for the years ahead.
Read their conversation [[link removed]]
Building People Power Across California
In order to rein in the greedy corporations that have been destabilizing our economy, fueling climate destruction, and threatening our democracy, we need to build larger and more powerful movements than ever before. So, for the past five years, we’ve been incubating a program in California that explores how to do just that — and we've learned some key lessons about taking on corporate power and weaving intersectional alliances in a way that builds long term power. Read the report [[link removed]]
Razing Liberty Square
We are partnering with Razing Liberty Square [[link removed]], a new documentary about climate gentrification and systemic racism in Liberty City, a historically Black neighborhood in Miami, Florida. As rising tides and dangerous storms threaten Miami’s luxury properties, real estate developers are pushing inwards with their sights set on places like Liberty City, which stands 12 feet above sea level. At the heart of Liberty City is Liberty Square, the first segregated public housing project in the South, now on track to be redeveloped into a $300 million mixed-income property. The film weaves together fights for climate, housing, and racial justice while telling the story of a community in peril and the ways that residents, families, and neighbors are standing up for themselves and each other. Watch the trailer [[link removed]]
Giving Tuesday!
At the beginning of 2023, we set our sights on new fights, while recommitting ourselves to a shared vision of our communities holding governing power and transforming society. We also recognized that our fights are not contained to a single calendar year, and that long term structural change is achieved through winning stepping-stone victories, experimenting and learning, and building deep, intersectional relationships. This year we’ve made strides towards our vision — we: Supported drivers who are standing up to corporations like Uber and Lyft and demanding better; Transformed a videogame about time travel and housing policy into a live theater performance; Released educational toolkits about utilities and tenant protections that help everyday people understand the systems we live in and how to change them; Trained organizers and campaigners from across our network on how to level up their fights against greedy corporations, and more! We hope you’ll consider supporting us with a donation so that we can continue experimenting, organizing, and building people power in 2024 and beyond.
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We are seeking experienced individuals to join our team! If you know anyone who would be a great fit, please send them our way. The ideal candidates will have a deep commitment to social, racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.

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PowerSwitch Action
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Oakland, CA 94612
United States
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