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One year ago, on Dec. 10, 2012, International Human Rights Day, CWA, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and NAACP launched the Democracy Initiative. Since then, other large membership organizations have signed on, representing 20 million activists. The Democracy Initiative is focused on three of our four democracy blocks: voting rights, money in politics, and Senate rules reform.

Last summer, 2 million members of Fix the Senate Now organizations mobilized to make sure the Senate confirmed a full, five-member National Labor Relations Board and leaders for top agencies including Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

In November, Senate Majority Leader Reid and nearly every Democratic Senator acted to end Senate gridlock and obstruction on Presidential nominations.

With negotiations around TPP winding down, secrecy is at an all-time high.

The Sierra Club has worked on trade issues for nearly two decades, because "trade rules have a huge impact on environmental protections." In 1998, for example, the World Trade Organization ordered the U.S. to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for sea turtles being killed in shrimp-fishing nets.