National network
50501
50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement. A volunteer-built, nonviolent movement defending democracy, with state and local groups organizing days of action and community.
find groups in your state
don't see your state? start with a national organization.
These national organizations have local chapters, hubs, or groups across the country. Click through to find the one closest to you, or to start one where you live.
National network
Authors Against Book Bans
A national network of writers, illustrators, and other creators fighting book bans and challenges. Members back local grassroots groups, speak at school board meetings, meet with legislators, and stand with librarians, educators, parents, and students defending the freedom to read.
National network
Black Voters Matter
Co-founded by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, Black Voters Matter boosts voter registration and turnout in Black communities, mostly across the South, funds and trains local partner groups, and tours on its "Blackest Bus in America" to highlight voter suppression.
National network
Common Defense
Common Defense organizes veterans and engages the military community to transform our society by advocating for progressive policies that work for all of us.
National network
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
The largest socialist organization in the U.S. Local chapters organize tenants, workers, and neighbors to build an economy run for human need, not profit. Look up your chapter by zip code.
National network
Dream Defenders
Dream Defenders is a Black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism. We envision communities where safety is built through solidarity, care, and self-determination rather than through punishment and surveillance. Founded in 2012 in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Dream Defenders has grown into a powerful force advocating for liberation, justice, and dignity for Black and marginalized people across the United States and beyond.
National network
Indivisible
A network of thousands of local groups that hold elected officials accountable and defend democracy. Use the group map to find one near you, including groups marked newcomer-friendly.
National network
NDN Collective
Rapid City-based and Indigenous-led, this collective backs Native communities through organizing, grants, and loans to Indigenous groups and entrepreneurs. Its campaigns include LANDBACK, which seeks the return of Lakota lands in the Black Hills, along with climate justice and education equity.
National network
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
A national network organizing white people to fight racism and economic injustice as part of multiracial movements. Find a local chapter or join a regular online orientation.
National network
Sunrise Movement
A youth-led movement of local hubs working to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal. No hub near you? Sunrise will help you start one.
National network
Third Act
Organizes older Americans to protect climate and democracy, through volunteer-led working groups by location and by affinity.
National network
Working Families Party
Building a multiracial party of working people. WFP recruits and elects progressive candidates and organizes between elections, with state parties in 18 states and volunteer actions everywhere.
Common Defense
Common Defense organizes veterans and engages the military community to transform our society by advocating for progressive policies that work for all of us.
Cincinnati
Communities United for Action
A Cincinnati coalition of residents and neighborhood groups that trains low- and moderate-income members to lead campaigns. Members knock doors on issues like high utility bills, vacant foreclosed buildings, bank reinvestment, and environmental justice.
Statewide
Community Labor United
Community Labor United (CLU) is a coalition-building organization BY the people and FOR the people. Founded in 2005 to unite labor unions and community groups in advancing social, environmental, and economic justice, we’ve worked for more than two decades organizing and campaigning for the well-being of the working-class people of Massachusetts.
Local Bases Statewide
Community Voices Heard
OUR MISSION Community Voices Heard (CVH) is a Black and brown-led, power-building organization committed to fighting for dignity for people with low incomes and all New Yorkers. Guided by members, we center women’s voices and create unity to win financial security, a fully participatory democracy, and truly affordable homes for every New Yorker. CVH leads community organizing across the state because we will only achieve an equitable New York when we organize and fight together.
West Valley City / Salt Lake City
Comunidades Unidas
Comunidades Unidas / Communities United (CU) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded in 1999. 27 years later CU continues to be at the forefront of the immigrant rights movement in Utah to ensure Latinx and immigrants have equal opportunities to achieve their full potential. Comunidades Unidas engages with more than 14,000 individuals per year while maintaining our grassroots connection with our community.
Hartford
Connecticut Citizen Action
Founded on the first Earth Day, this Hartford-based statewide membership group uses canvassing, legislative advocacy, direct action and endorsements to push Connecticut on climate and environment, health care, economic justice and democracy reform.
COPAL
COPAL, Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina, is a member-based organization established in 2018 to improve the quality of life of Latine families. Over the past eight years, COPAL has evolved to become a well-known, grassroots power-building, and visionary transnational organization.
Corazón Arizona
CORAZÓN Arizona is a 501(c)3. We are a community of diverse faith traditions, beliefs, genders, and ethnicities. We are individuals and institutions organizing community power where all Arizonans and people belong and can live with ABUNDANCE and DIGNITY.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
The largest socialist organization in the U.S. Local chapters organize tenants, workers, and neighbors to build an economy run for human need, not profit. Look up your chapter by zip code.
Detroit
Detroit Action
We depend on the unique expertise and support of our membership to set priorities, build power, and organize in Detroit and throughout. To create the long-term change we want to see in our communities, we're actively building out our network of members who will sustain our organization and support the work we're doing both in Detroit and across Michigan.
Providence
Direct Action for Rights and Equality / DARE
DARE is organizing low-income families in communities of color for social, economic, and political justice since 1986.
Dream Defenders
Dream Defenders is a Black-led, feminist, socialist, abolitionist, and internationalist political formation fighting for a world without prisons, police, capitalism, and imperialism. We envision communities where safety is built through solidarity, care, and self-determination rather than through punishment and surveillance. Founded in 2012 in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Dream Defenders has grown into a powerful force advocating for liberation, justice, and dignity for Black and marginalized people across the United States and beyond.
Oahu
Faith Action for Community Equity
Faith Action is an organization of organizations mainly centered on the island of Oahu. We represent a large constituency that is diverse in race and ethnicity, religious affiliation, economic class, and neighborhoods. We prioritize justice and equity for all people of Hawaiʻi.
Birmingham
Faith in Action Alabama
Over 50 congregations across racial and faith lines make up this Alabama federation of the Faith in Action network. Organizing in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile, and Montgomery, members work to dismantle systemic racism and give residents a say in the policies that affect them.
Las Vegas | Statewide
Faith in Action Nevada
Faith in Action Nevada trains congregations and community members in Las Vegas and around the state to organize against racial and economic injustice, and its We Will Vote campaign registers, educates, and turns out voters of color.
Statewide
Faith in New York
Faith in New York (FINY) is a multifaith, multicultural organizing network of over 100 faith communities throughout New York City. We are committed to the work of social justice through faith-rooted community organizing in order to influence policies and systems that will create a more just and equitable New York for all New Yorkers.
Fresno / Central Valley
Faith in the Valley
Faith in the Valley is a faith-based grassroots community organization in California’s Central Valley representing families in Fresno, Kern, Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin Counties. Our work is led by volunteer leaders who are among the people most impacted by equity issues: low-wage workers, young people, immigrants and the formerly incarcerated.
Aberdeen / rural Washington
Firelands Workers Building Community Power
Organizing in English and Spanish across Washington's timber country, this membership group brings together working-class and immigrant families and youth. It runs a Timber Country Organizing School and door-to-door canvasses in Pacific County, and pushes for state wins like immigrant health coverage.
Statewide
Florida Immigrant Coalition
Florida Immigrant Coalition is a grassroots movement led by our diverse membership throughout the state including community organizations, farmworkers, youth, advocates, lawyers, union members, and more.
Statewide
Florida Rising
Florida Rising is a people-powered organization made up of members advancing economic and racial justice across Florida. Every individual has power but we have more power together.
Hudson Valley
For the Many
For the Many is building a grassroots movement of everyday people to transform New York so it works for all of us. For too long, greedy corporations, billionaires, and political elites have rigged our country to work against us. We are coming together across race and age to fight for laws and win elections that put the power back in our hands and create lasting change.
Missoula / Statewide
Forward Montana
Young Montanans lead this statewide civic engagement group, founded in 2004. It runs community organizing and high school fellowships, mobilizes young voters, and publishes legislative scorecards to keep lawmakers accountable.
Statewide
Freedom Oklahoma
Freedom Oklahoma advocates and organizes across Oklahoma and among the 39 sovereign tribal nations to build a future where all Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and fuller spectrum of people whose sexuality or gender or romantic identity exists beyond a heteronormative, binary framework (2SLGBTQ+), have the safety, resources, and community to thrive, everywhere we call home.
Phoenix
Fuerte Arts Movement
Uses art, culture, and community organizing to engage Arizonans in civic action and movements for social change.
Seattle
Fuse Washington
Washington State's largest progressive organization mobilizes activists online and off, builds coalitions, and educates voters from its Seattle base. It also lobbies lawmakers for good bills and calls out officials who let voters down.
Atlanta
Georgia Equality
From Atlanta, this statewide advocacy group works for LGBTQ+ Georgians and people living with HIV in urban, suburban, and rural communities. It lobbies for nondiscrimination and hate crime protections, transgender rights, and safe schools, and runs voter registration.
Atlanta
Georgia Youth Justice Coalition
The Georgia Youth Justice Coalition first formed in January 2021 as a grassroots collective of Black, brown, LGBTQ+, working class, and allied students advocating for youth power and justice in our state. Our early work emerged from a mass movement led by students for fair maps and fair budgets for Georgia's children and families. Since then, we’ve activated youth communities, shifted the political narrative, incubated movement leaders, built power, and won meaningful policy and electoral victories across our state.
Manchester
Granite State Organizing Project
Rooted in faith and democratic values, this Manchester-based coalition links faith congregations, unions, and community groups across New Hampshire. Members work together on civic engagement, community development, and human rights in the Granite State.
New Orleans
Greater New Orleans Caring Collective (GNOCC)
We are neighbors in the Greater New Orleans area who leverage relationships and resources to provide material support to at-risk families in our network and other organizations, thereby maximizing our reach. Our organizing principles include a focus on mutual aid and harm reduction as critical tools towards local community autonomy and resilience in the face of increasingly frequent catastrophic weather events and attempted wholesale destruction of public social programs by fascists and their sympathizers.
Ground Game Texas
Focused on "workers, wages and weed," this statewide group organizes Texans around issues rather than candidates. It helps local volunteers gather signatures for city ballot initiatives on things like marijuana decriminalization and higher wages, including in off-election years.
Know a group we're missing? Add it to the directory.
how do I pick the right group?
- Meets regularly, at least monthly, in person or online.
- Is led by the people most affected by the issue it works on.
- Has a way in for newcomers, like an orientation or a one-on-one.
- Asks you to do something, not just donate.
- Has won something, or knows what it's fighting to win.
You don't have to find the perfect fit. Pick the one closest to your heart or your home and go twice before you decide.
your first-meeting checklist
- Bring a friend if that makes it easier.
- Say why you came. One sentence is enough.
- Write down the name of one person you met.
- Say yes to one small task.
- Go back a second time.
why join an organization instead of just showing up to protests?
Protests show how many people care. Organizations turn that care into power that lasts. A good organization keeps you connected after the crowd goes home, trains you to lead, and wins concrete changes like tenant protections, fair wages, and clean air.
what is a base-building organization?
A base-building organization grows its power by recruiting, training, and organizing a large membership of everyday people over many years. Members set the agenda, build leadership, and take collective action on shared problems. Examples include tenant unions, labor unions, faith-based organizing groups, and community organizations rooted in a neighborhood or identity.
what happens at a first organizing meeting?
Usually someone welcomes you, people share names and why they came, and the group works through an agenda: updates, a plan, and asks for who will take on what. You can just listen the first time. Most groups will follow up for a one-on-one conversation.
not ready for a group yet?
Meet your neighborsquestions people ask
How much time does organizing take?
As little as one hour a month to start. Most groups have roles for every level of time and energy.
What if I'm shy or anxious around new people?
You're not alone. Many groups have behind-the-scenes roles like making calls, designing flyers, cooking, or tracking data. Bring a friend.
What if there's no group near me?
Look up your nearest union hall, tenant group, or faith-based organizing network. Or start a neighbor group using our toolkit. Many organizations began that way.
Do I have to pay dues?
Some groups ask for small dues, often on a sliding scale. Many are free.
common questions
How do I get involved in community organizing?
Start close to home. Learn the names of a few neighbors, then join a local organizing group that meets regularly and trains new members. Go to one meeting, say yes to one small task, and keep showing up. Our directory can help you find a group in your state.
How do I find activist groups near me?
Choose your state at the top of this page to see long-term organizing groups that work there, with priority groups listed first. If none are close by, national groups like Indivisible, DSA, Sunrise Movement, and Showing Up for Racial Justice have local chapters in most states.
What is a base-building organization?
A base-building organization grows its membership over years, trains everyday people to lead, and wins changes through collective action. Unlike a one-time protest or campaign, it keeps going between elections.
What is the difference between mutual aid and organizing?
Mutual aid meets people's needs right now, like groceries, rides, or rent. Organizing changes the conditions that create those needs, like wages, housing policy, or who holds power. Strong villages do both.
Is voting enough?
Voting matters, but it is just the first step. What happens between elections depends on organized people who keep showing up, pressing officials, and taking care of each other.