New Year’s Resolution: if you’re an active voter, find and befriend one non-voter
Starting this year, progressives should assign ourselves one mission as a New Year’s Resolution: each person should find one ...
Sign the pledge to save Santa Claus’s home at the North Pole
We all know Santa Claus and his elves live at the icy North Pole — but it won’t be for much longer. If the planet keeps heating ...
Free copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in American hotels
On December 10, we commemorate Human Rights Day: the anniversary of the day in 1948 when the nation members of the United Nations ...
Place more federal work centers outside the Beltway
Partly thanks to this Vox piece, one classic idea that’s been attracting new attention is the chestnut to relocate federal ...
The Loyal Opposition in America should form a Shadow Cabinet
In the United Kingdom, major political parties that are out of power in parliament aren’t entirely erased out of the ...
Demand more accurate and informative maps for visualizing election results
When national election results are reported to the American public, they are by default visualized in maps with each state filled in ...
Add “Criminal Injustice” to the law school curriculum
There’s broad consensus among the public, as well as experts, that America’s criminal justice system is in dire need of ...
Organize an emergency committee to defend Medicare
It may be a challenge to pin down President-Elect Donald Trump’s exact position and intentions on Medicare and Social Security, ...
Support Our Diplomats bumper stickers & celebrations
It’s a classic American tradition to honor the valor of U.S. military service-members who risk their lives on the ...
Curb dynastic wealth with these tax ideas
In a blockbuster scoop, The New York Times recently reported evidence that presidential nominee Donald Trump could’ve legally ...
Cap nonprofit CEO salaries to the US President’s salary
Runaway executive salaries aren’t limited to corporate America. Top universities and many other nonprofit institutions also ...
Cities should stop banking with predatory banks that rip off their communities
Elected leaders to city government would have good reason to stop giving certain banks their business: those banks are exploiting their ...
A new intergenerational movement to bring the young and the aging together
Today’s youngest will grow up experiencing a new phenomenon in human history: being alive at the same time as four to five ...
Take the Public Transit Challenge, just like the Minimum Wage Challenge
As anyone who relies on the local bus or train lines to get around can show by example, public mass transit is a necessity in modern ...
Overhaul the way medicines are innovated by de-linking R&D costs from drug prices
Judging by the national headlines in America today, one particularly effective way to make a killing in the corporate sector is to be a ...
Retrain all remaining coal workers for great jobs in clean energy
Clean energy is a booming sector, with the solar industry adding new jobs 12 times faster than the national job growth rate. ...
Let’s throw Virginia Gov. McAuliffe an envelope-stuffing party—to support voting rights
America should be a place of second chances — an ideal that’s often harshly flouted by the workings of our criminal justice ...
Show #LoveTrumpsHate with a voter pledge map
The presidential candidacy of Donald Trump is fueling extremist, bigoted rhetoric against marginalized groups and emboldening ...
Colleges should just require students to be voters
Here’s the most straightforward way to get young people to vote: make them. That is, we should push America’s institutions ...
If a corporate deserter doesn’t want to pay US taxes, don’t let it buy US elections
As far as lucrative business practices go, one clever gimmick is an increasingly popular one: the “corporate inversion,” in ...
There’s a lawyers shortage—for Americans who aren’t rich. Here’s how to fix it.
Yes, there is a lawyers shortage in our country — for ordinary Americans who need professional legal counsel, especially low-income ...
T-shirts showing life-sized exit wounds from an assault weapon
In response to the Orlando gay nightclub massacre, the Boston Globe published an editorial with a straightforward message: “ban ...
Launch a new “Media Beacon Project” to counter misleading portrayals of American Muslims
Anti-Muslim sentiment and bigotry are soaring to frightening levels in America, along with harassment, bullying, and death threats ...
Stop special perks like U.S. Embassy parties for corporate deserters
U.S. multinational companies that simply changed their addresses on file, just to dodge taxes to Uncle Sam, are still enjoying various ...
The “If I ever die in a mass shooting, please politicize my death” card
Here’s a simple idea. Don’t just tweet or declare that “If I ever die in a mass shooting, please politicize my ...
Global treaty to help save antibiotic medicines from becoming useless against disease
We overuse antibiotic medicines to our peril. The problem is that as the microbes make copies of themselves, then copies of copies, ...
The right to know if global companies are profiting off human rights abuses in their supply chains
Modern day slavery, sex trafficking, and forced child labor aren’t just festering in the shadows in far-flung locales. These ...
Panama Papers: The Response
By now, chances are that readers of this website have heard of the Panama Papers. So let’s get right to the point: what should be ...
Fund a Veterans Trust Fund before the war’s aftermath
For America’s elected leaders, the warnings of history loom over one of the most important decisions they can ever make: we must ...
Warren Buffett: make sure the CEO loses everything if a bank has to be bailed out
Despite various policy and regulatory reforms to rein in excessive CEO pay, top executives continue to rake in the huge ...
Delicious idea for overhauling the corporate income tax: replace it with stocks
Thanks to rampant tax-dodging trickery and sophistry, corporate America is enjoying huge payoffs even as it complains loudly about the ...
Eyes on the Supreme Court…and the “invisible justices”
The rulings issued by the Supreme Court of the United States aren’t the only important decisions it makes. So are its choices ...
When the data crunching crunches you in the new age of algorithms
The robot takeover will have profound implications for the future of work and daily life—but not in the way that lay folks might guess. ...
“If you have nothing to hide, show us your email passwords”
The Apple vs. FBI drama is in the national headlines, which means so are the issues it raises around democratic governance, civil ...
Awesome way to tackle a bunch of problems at the same time: cell phones waste, global poverty, climate change
Summary The global community faces a challenge: how do we lift developing nations out of poverty while avoiding the greenhouse ...
Require expertise in climate threats to get an MBA degree from business school
Top business leaders in the U.S. and abroad are among the voices calling for carbon pricing, whether in the form of emissions trading ...
Open up the popular federal retirement plan to all Americans
Here’s an idea so compelling that it’s backed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Center for Economic Policy and Research, the ...
Novel proposal for single, limited terms for Justices of the Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death this presidential election year has jolted Supreme Court watchers, catapulting the ...
The 1% to root for: redirect 1% of political ad spending to organizing voters in the Rising American Electorate
To build a vibrant progressive infrastructure lasting for years to come, we should create a groundswell of pressure on donors to move a ...
Train a new corps of activists on how to convert businesses into worker-owned cooperatives
Worker coops aren’t the standard way of running a business in America. That’s a big reason why they’re catching on. ...
Shorten the work week and lengthen vacations—it’ll create jobs!
Spend fewer hours at work, use your paid days off, and take longer vacations — and at the same time, help put other Americans back to ...
The European Union should refuse to admit climate denier Americans
Climate change is fact. The scientific consensus. The settled understanding of reality that should be assumed during the search for ...
The corporate race to the bottom leads to Delaware. Let’s stop that.
Delaware is the preferred state for thousands of companies seeking a corporate charter, including those with no real connection to the ...
Quitting is a sign of empowered workers. Let’s empower them more through Unemployment Insurance.
Quitters never prosper, right? Think again: for rank-and-file workers, quitting is a good sign that they have the financial means to ...
A big idea for better science: a Wikipedia for software code
Whether the field is physics, biology, or neuroscience, chances are that the scientific breakthroughs making headlines today ...
Raise the standard minimum age for buying guns to 25 years
The national debate on gun violence often overlooks these two intertwined factors that combine to produce daily carnage: people under ...
2020 Cities By 2020 Leading On Climate Change
Cities, not Congress, are leading the charge on climate change. It’s time to accelerate the movement to double the number of ...
Walk the walk, progressive organizations: The Progressive Accountability Project
When powerhouse PR firm FitzGibbon Media recently imploded amid revelations of its founder & owner’s unacceptable workplace ...
New Kickstarter-way of donating to political candidates: “Take a stand or get nothing”
Frustrated that a candidate for elected office hasn’t taken a stance on a heated issue yet? Here’s an idea offered by ...
To crack down on tax evasion by wealthy investors, create an international register of who owns which financial securities
Secrecy allows tax-dodging by super wealthy investors to fester around the world. Here’s one idea from economist Gabriel Zucman ...
How to solve low voter turnout in national elections (hint: mandatory city elections)
If you think universal voter turnout is an impossible pipe dream in the United States, because Congress would never enact a law ...
IRS: Disclose what tax perks Members of Congress are giving themselves
Presidential candidates typically release their tax returns as standard practice in the modern era, but most Members of Congress ...
Require the US Government to look hard at the human costs of war—the impact on local populations
Despite the horrific impact of war, the U.S. Government does not systematically look at how the use of U.S. military force affects ...
Google: integrate carbon pricing into your search engine
Let’s demand for Google and other tech companies to integrate carbon pricing or emissions trackers into all their relevant online ...
X Prize idea: technology that can make invisible carbon emissions visible
What if we had a way to visualize in real-time the carbon dioxide emissions spewing out into our atmosphere, causing climate change? ...
An international climate club: to give ourselves bigger sticks to combat climate change
To prevent global climate catastrophe, humanity needs bigger “sticks” to curb carbon pollution. But how can we enact the ...
Novel way to curb sky-high CEO pay: base the corporate income tax on it
For those seeking new ideas to curb outrageous levels of corporate CEO pay, here’s a novel rethinking of the tax code itself: ...
Rebrand it: the real “right to work” is full employment
Let’s turn the tables on conservatives and their powerful corporate donors who love to talk about “right-to-work,” ...
Here’s how states can help rein in abuse of federal tax loopholes
Here’s how to step up the effort against corporate abuse of federal tax laws: get the states to deny their own state tax ...
Clever but underused progressive tax ideas for urban inequality
Although much of the public debate on inequality focuses on national policies, there’s an impressive array of state and local ...
Get the racist slurs out of these official government place names
More than 1,400 locations across America have racist slurs, dehumanizing language, or other derogatory terms in their ...
Colleges: self-impose a carbon tax
Dear college & university students, we can do something about climate change right on our nation’s campuses, with or without ...
Create a new American tradition: Vote At The Dinner Table Day
We already have a National Voter Registration Day in America. In the same spirit, it’s time to establish a National Vote ...
To spark interest in civil liberties, put up mystery surveillance cams
Here’s a creative way to spark more public curiosity and concern about mass surveillance and civil liberties: put up mysterious ...
Build Debtor Prisons!
Satirical campaign to build debtors prisons again (by the way, these functionally still exist) to highlight bullshit debtors laws ...
Drag dirty fossil fuel CEOs trying to stay hidden into the sunlight
Why don’t we know the names of the oil company CEO’s? Let’s start a campaign to make oil company leadership ...
Millionaire Bake Sales
Modeled on right wing campus diversity bake sales, but in which millionaires pay no taxes and everyone else pays extra, students with ...
The God Parents Project
Let’s shift the paradigm and encourage people to choose god-parenthood or secondary parenthood instead of becoming parents. The ...
Get low-interest loans and check cashing at the Post Office!
Fight usury by making the post office a provider of low-interest loans and check cashing. Make use of this vital institution to put ...
Create a corruption index for rating elected officials
Combine information from existing voter guides and lists concerning ethics and democracy reform, e.g. common cause, CREW, etc., in ...
VETO meme
Let’s help Obama stand strong for progressive values! Create a VETO meme to carry him through his final years as president. ...
Play Games, Help Science!
Predicting how proteins are folded is key to creating the drugs to fight most diseases. Foldit is an online computer game in which ...
The Metaphor Project
Shift culture by identifying key metaphors underlying social problems, and use storytelling and multimedia to promote new metaphors. ...
Wealth Addicts Anonymous
A New York Times op-ed by former Wall Street trader Sam Polk proposes an AA for Wealth Addiction. ...
Reinstore Usury Laws
Multi-year campaign to allow for caps on interest rates, combination national and state “chipping away” approach. Submitted ...
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Network
Create a network of people who organize local MLK day school programs, rallies, etc. – there must be thousands of them! But no ...
Make Medicare and Medicaid a buy-in option on Health exchanges
Pretty straight-forward: Make Medicare and Medicaid a buy-in option on the health care exchanges – to correspond with levels in ...
Wiki Movement
A simple Wikipedia-like platform that maps and documents the movement ecosystem online – by state, issue, etc. and allows us to ...
Dream Big Together + Story of the Future
2020. 2042. 2050. Lots of people and groups are starting to create future visions, scenarios, strategies. Is it possible we could ...
Movement Moment Fire Department
The next Sandy. The next Wisconsin. The next BP. The next Occupy. The next Moral Mondays. There should be a team of people and groups ...
Whisteblowers Foundation
A rich whistleblower should create a fund to reward broke whistleblowers and support them through the challenges of whistle-blowing. ...
Obama’s Legacy Project: Executive Orders!
What are all the things Obama and agencies can do with the executive branch? And what are all the bad things they should NOT do? A ...
Organizational Recycling Center
When orgs die, there should be a place to transition the best pieces (assets, intellectual property, models, lists, donors, ...
Crowd-source Corporations’ Reviews and Awards
Crowd-source reviews of and rewards to corporations for ethical actions. Like YELP for corporate malfeasance and good behavior. ...
Open Source Canvass Co-op
“Canvassing can be one of the most effective forms of civic outreach, but it’s also one of the most resource-intensive. As ...
Progressive Awesome Foundation
Use mini-grants to promote progressive values, the same way the Awesome Foundation promotes Awesome. Submitted by: Multiple submitters ...
Timebank as Millennial Stimulus Package
Skilled but undermployed? Contribute your knowledge, time and elbow grease into a timebank for the Millennial generation as hours to ...
Make phone calls as easy as signing petitions
Petitions and emails to targets are, by themselves, very low-impact. Their benefit is recruiting new activists and creating a media ...
Applied Scholars Network
National network of scholars (profs, grad students, undergrads) who do research to support community organizations and social ...
Pledge to vote for the candidate who spends the least
Pick 1-2 races and do intensive organizing to get people to pledge to vote for the candidate who spends the least. Disruptive and crazy ...
Crowd-source a syllabus in social change
Help people understand the history and best practices for changing their community by crowd-sourcing a syllabus of key readings and ...
Advocate to fix dorm voting in VAN
The VAN (Voter Activation Network) has inadequate systems for students on campus and dorms. Advocate with VAN to fix them in advance of ...
Math Teachers for Correct Arithmetic
DC Math teachers with calculators and butcher paper confront lying members of Congress on their horrible arithmetic — great ...
Ice Fishers Against Climate Change
Organize Midwestern Ice Fishers in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Maine and New York who are ...
Transparency Notices: “This Decision was made by X Level of Government”
We often forget at which level of government decisions are made which affect our lives. Imagine getting a notice about changes in SNAP ...