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Financialization is a big word that’s causing big problems for working families. Financialization is the strategy that corporate and wealthy interests are using to get and keep an even bigger share of the economic pie. It’s the “financial strip-mining of America,” writes Les Leopold, director of the Labor Institute of New York City, in “Runaway Inequality.” 

Allies took on the destructive Fast Track Authorization for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with real results. We forced individual lawmakers to take a stand and let their constituents know whose side they were on, big corporate interests or everyday Americans.

Seattle passed a ballot initiative that created a funding system that will democratize the city's elections. A Chicago ballot measure promoting small-donor public financing in the city's 50 wards was overwhelmingly approved by voters.

Democracy Initiative organizations and activists are gathering signatures for a state ballot initiative to automatically register Alaska citizens to vote as they sign up for the Permanent Fund Dividend. The PFD is paid annually to Alaska citizens, based on the state's oil revenue dividends.

In Maine this past Election Day, voters approved Question One, an initiative that strengthens the state's landmark Clean Elections law, expands small-dollar public financing for campaigns and making candidates more accountable to the voters by requiring that outside groups disclose their top three donors on all political ads.