Reflective Democracy Campaign 2017

Eliminate the barriers to a reflective democracy.

The Reflective Democracy Campaign works to increase the power of women and people of color, and particularly those at the intersection, in American public life through groundbreaking research, engaging communications, and catalytic grantmaking.

American democracy is in crisis. Anti-democratic beliefs and the people who hold them are on the rise, and will likely soon be enshrined in laws, policies, and everyday practices. In the face of those forces, the Reflective Democracy Campaign is an essential voice for democratic values. The Campaign’s guiding principle is that the solution to the challenges we face is more democracy. The need for powerful, organized voices like ours is greater than ever.

In 2017, we are focusing on:

Building our Success: Expanding our groundbreaking research by completing new databases mapping the demographics of candidates and officeholders through the 2016 election. Evaluating and distributing learnings from our first round of grantees.

Expanding into New Areas: In 2017 we’ll tackle class, integrating it more explicitly into our race and gender analysis. We’ll also dive into local political power, enlarging our datasets of candidates and elected officeholders to include city-­level data.

Engaging with broader questions about the state of democracy, and with insights from beyond our borders: The outcome of the Presidential election is the expression of a broader crisis—one that has been decades in the making, and stretches beyond the U.S. What does this mean for democracy, and for progressive values? The Reflective Democracy Campaign aims to tackle these questions and more.