Blog Post

Today, October 10, marks 21 years since Working America was born. What started out as a small door-knocking campaign in Cleveland, OH, has since become a powerful organizing force for working people.

“We had no idea when we knocked on the first door whether we could pull it off.” Founding Director Karen Nussbaum recalls. “All we knew is that there weren’t any shortcuts. We needed to help rebuild a working class movement one conversation at a time. Now we’ve got 5 million members, organizing with us for workplace rights, better healthcare, higher wages and stronger education.”

In the last 21 years, we’ve been pretty busy. We’ve participated in elections across the country, helped working people organize to pass laws to protect workers’ rights, and connected millions of people with government resources they qualify for. Here is a look back at some of our highlights: 

• Backed Hundreds of Champions for Working People: We’ve organized in 735 competitive elections and helped 465 labor-endorsed candidates win. 
• Clinched Critical Elections: Based on verifiable data from our randomized control trials, we know that Joe Biden would not have won the electoral votes of Arizona or Georgia in 2020 without the work of our canvassing and digital programs. The same is true for Katie Hobbs’ win in the 2022 Arizona governor’s race, Raphael Warnock in the 2022 Georgia race for U.S. Senate, and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s 2020 race for U.S. Senate. In each of these cases, the verified impact of our operation exceeded the margin of victory.
• Mobilized Support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare): We engaged with more than 180,000 people, mostly in working-class suburbs and exurbs, to build support and reduce backlash to the ACA in 2010.
• Defeated an Anti-Union Law for Public Sector Workers in Ohio: We won a 2011 ballot measure in Ohio that overturned its so-called “right-to-work” law (a type of law designed to weaken union power) for government workers by contacting 400,000 voters to mobilize support.
• Won $15 Minimum Wage for Municipal Workers in Greensboro and Winston-Salem, NC: We created pressure on city governments in Greensboro and Winston-Salem to raise the minimum wage. By sponsoring a city forum and driving a press narrative, we were able to get both cities to raise the minimum wage for municipal workers to $15 an hour.
• Launched the Black Worker Unemployment Benefits (UI) Project: Academic study verified that we helped 35,000 families access unemployment benefits (UI) with our UI Benefits Guide after our survey of 15,000 people revealed difficulties with the UI application process.
• Helped Families Get Affordable Internet: Our efforts to educate eligible families on the federal Affordable Connectivity Program succeeded in helping 50,000 families get access to affordable, reliable internet service, according to an academic study verifying our impact. 
• Delivered $200 Million worth of economic benefits to families through our outreach and education efforts, as independently verified through academic study.

“Every day, year in and year out, we’re in these communities, connecting with the people we serve,” said Executive Director Matt Morrison. “We’re building the power of working people on a scale that can be truly transformative.” 

We’re not slowing down now. Right now, we are having 40,000 conversations with voters every night across ten offices in the most critical swing states, ramping up to 70,000 per night by Election Day. We’re knocking on doors every day to get it done – and once the election is over, you can continue to count on us to organize working people to lobby for legislation, support worker strikes, and protect the right to unionize. Here’s to the next 21 years!