Guest Blog by Cary Moon & Dionne Foster: Building Political Infrastructure

A guest blog written by Cary Moon & Dionne Foster, Executive Director of Progress Alliance

In this moment of political instability, some of us are seeking more effective ways to invest our resources and energy for lasting progressive change. Supporting great candidates is of course essential. But what if we could build sustainable progressive power in our state, rooted in a more inclusive democracy that represents all our communities? 

What if we had the infrastructure in place year round to organize vision and collaboration around solutions – instead of just a flurry of activity at election time? Could we as donors support the organizing and deep partnerships necessary to achieve the policy wins that move our society toward equity across race and class? 

If you’re interested in this sort of systems change, we would like to introduce you to the work of Progress Alliance of Washington. This 18-year old cross-class membership organization exists to strategically invest in a robust ecosystem of community based organizations, resourced by progressive donors. 

The theory of change at Progress Alliance is to invest in all the parts of healthy democracy that need to happen outside of elections. Supporting 17 community-based organizations in 4 regions across the state via multi-year grants, building modes of collaboration to develop and win policy solutions, removing barriers to participation, and developing the narrative strategies to build support for progressive policy. 

It supports the dynamic strategies that keep our state politics moving in the right direction for the future: toward more racial equity, a more inclusive democracy, more shared prosperity, and healthy communities. 

Here is one example of how Progress Alliance works: In our unjust world, working class and BIPOC communities historically have been denied access to elected office because elections are expensive and excellent candidates aren’t always connected to enough financial resources to run their campaigns. So Progress Alliance addressed this barrier by creating the First Mile program.

First Mile establishes a funding pool from progressive donors and partners with BIPOC-led political organizations to identify and direct this funding to the best BIPOC candidates across Washington state, up and down the ballot. This direct injection of funding has made a big difference in the last few election cycles in our state. From 2019 to 2023, our cross-class, multi-racial donor circle has moved nearly $1.6 million in total to 138 progressive candidates of color across 30 of Washington state’s 39 counties, helping 72 community leaders win and step into public office.  

Another example: About 10 years ago, elected leaders in our state were struggling to make the case for more stable and sustainable sources of revenue necessary to run government. Austerity thinking was devastating communities and blocking investments we needed to thrive. Embarrassing for a so-called progressive state, Washington had the absolute worst, most regressive tax system of all the states, where wealthy people pay very little of their wealth in taxes compared to poor and working class people.

So Progress Alliance teamed up with several partner organizations to take on this challenge: How do we create a different story about taxes? How do we make clear for people that the worsening inequality and failure to fund public schools are caused by an unjust tax system? How do we build the public and political will for a more progressive tax system? Progress Alliance invested in the research, narrative creation, and policy development to help launch the Balance Our Tax Code coalition and make the case for a more just tax system, starting with a state capital gains tax. This legislation was finally passed in 2021, after a long collaborative campaign. WA is no longer in 50th place for regressive taxation – but we aren’t out of the woods yet. Defending against the backlash on this progressive tax is on the ballot in November.

Interested in learning more and seeing if this might be a good fit for your future? Progress Alliance can organize a group sessions to learn from Dionne Foster, the Executive Director of the organization. Or join an upcoming Virtual Information Session on First Mile on September 10th from 5:30-7:30pm.