The Center for Popular Democracy works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions. CPD strengthens our collective capacity to envision and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.

OUR CAMPAIGNS

Reforming the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve has tremendous influence over our economy. Although our communities continue to suffer through a weak recovery and economic inequality keeps growing, corporate and financial interests are demanding that the Fed put the brakes on growth so wages don’t rise. Read more...

Restoring a Fair Work Week

The Fair Workweek Initiative (FWI), a collaborative effort anchored by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), is bringing together leading worker-organizing and community-based organizations across the country and allied research and policy groups to develop, drive and win policy change. Read more...

Holding Wall Street Accountable

The banking crisis of the last few years was catastrophic. Homeownership rates for low- and moderate-income families and families of color have plummeted. Neighborhoods are losing families and home value, further eroding the tax base and causing cities and states to lay off workers and eliminate important programs and services. Read more...

Raising the Minimum Wage

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and our core partners are helping to drive local efforts across the country to improve the lives of working people by raising the minimum wage. Employment at the current minimum wage is driving working people deeper into poverty across the county. Read more...

Ensuring Paid Sick Time for All Workers

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) has been on the front lines of the national movement to guarantee paid sick days to workers. On September 25, 2013, the campaign scored a major victory when the Jersey City Council adopted an ordinance that guarantees sick leave to all workers in Jersey City. Read more...

Improving Job Quality

Over the past 40 years, the U.S. economy has failed too many workers. Millions of middle-class jobs have been replaced by jobs that offer too few hours, too low pay, and no benefits. Public policy, driven by corporate interests, is a chief culprit of this great unraveling. Read more...

Supporting Car Wash Workers

Every day in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, thousands of vehicles roll into car washes. These are the livery cars that shuttle Wall Street executives between meetings, the taxis that take tourists into the Chicago Loop, and cars and vans that transport people across the sprawling California metropolis, helping our economy run. Read more...

Winning Economic Justice

Workers continue to face daunting challenges, from stagnant wages and outright wage theft, to budget constraints and corporate profiteering. CPD provides organizing, strategy, communications, research, policy and legal support as communities fight to win concrete improvements on the job, and new policies at the city and state level that promote economic justice, and to build a broader workers’ movement for social justice. We accomplish this through:


Organizing support through new worker organizing and coalition building support;


Policy advocacy and strategy support for multiple campaigns, including minimum wage, wage theft, paid sick leave, and innovative policies to raise job standards; and


Raising the profile of economic and community justice issues by advancing policy and organizing campaigns and developing publishing reports illustrating abuse in a range of working sectors.