Project Archives
In our 25-year history we have worked on several local and national projects, with some notable successes. You can find out more about them here.
Amending the Constitution
All of the Alliance's work and campaigns are focused on ending aspects of corporate rule. When it comes to our election system, we have advocated for public funding of elections at every level of government. And after the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling, we joined with many other organizations to help found the Move to Amend coalition. Alliance members and supporters in Massachusetts were involved in forming We the People Massachusetts, and our Portland, OR chapter continues to be a Move to Amend affiliate.
The Alliance has also developed media on aspects of money in politics beyond the amendment campaign. Three issues of Justice Rising focused on this issue: Money in Democracy, Part 1: Reclaiming Our Elections, Money in Democracy, Part 2: Who—or What—Occupies the Government Control Room?, and Money in Democracy, Part 3: Policymakers—Committed to Public Values or Corporate Agendas?
The Alliance has also developed media on aspects of money in politics beyond the amendment campaign. Three issues of Justice Rising focused on this issue: Money in Democracy, Part 1: Reclaiming Our Elections, Money in Democracy, Part 2: Who—or What—Occupies the Government Control Room?, and Money in Democracy, Part 3: Policymakers—Committed to Public Values or Corporate Agendas?
Defending Water for Life
For more than a decade, the Alliance's Defending Water for Life campaign worked internationally and locally to protect water resources and water/sanitation systems out of the hands of speculators. When water was proposed as a commodity to be added to global trade agreements, we protested. When Nestle and other companies attempted to take possession of local water resources, we worked on the town level to pass successful local rights ordinances. You can read more here.
Local Food RULES!
This Alliance sponsored project built resistance to the corporate capture of our food regulatory systems, systems that serve industrial agriculture and harms local farmers and ecosystems. Municipal ordinances protecting self-determination over local food exchanges, food sovereignty, and the right to food are the way forward. Thanks to organizing by the Local Food RULES! campaign, more than 125 Maine towns and cities passed ordinances to reclaim control over local food systems. In 2021, voters approved an Amendment to the Maine state Constitution to establish a right to food, "that all individuals have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment, sustenance, bodily health and well-being."
Read more here. You can also visit the Local Food RULES website and Food for Maine's Future, which carries on this work.
Read more here. You can also visit the Local Food RULES website and Food for Maine's Future, which carries on this work.
Trade Justice
The Alliance for Democracy has long opposed undemocratic multinational trade deals that enshrine corporate power over the will of the people. We brought our perspective to the teach-ins and talks that were key to launching an anti-corporate globalization movement at the "Battle of Seattle," organized against the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATTS) and the Multinational Agreement on Investment (MAI), and took on the Trans-Pacific Partnership by encouraging cities and towns to pass anti-TPP resolutions, and to declare themselves "TPP Free Zones," meaning that they would ignore any TPP-related directive aimed at striking local laws off the books, or overturning local board decisions.
In the runup to the eventual defeat of the TPP, Alliance activists, labor, and determined grassroots organizing, more than 100 cities and counties passed resolutions opposing the TPP, some of which contained TPP Free Zone language as well. Learn more here.
In the runup to the eventual defeat of the TPP, Alliance activists, labor, and determined grassroots organizing, more than 100 cities and counties passed resolutions opposing the TPP, some of which contained TPP Free Zone language as well. Learn more here.
