UPDATE: Unrig Summit is now the American Democracy Summit.

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February 8, 2018

By Jen Johnson
Digital Director, Represent.Us

It probably won't come as a surprise to you that our broken political system has become the number one issue in the United States. But until last weekend's Unrig the System Summit, you might not have known that a growing movement is assembling to fix it - and democracy reform partners just unveiled a crowdsourced way to track what's going on in the movement and get involved.

The Movement, In Real Life. Finally.

The movement to fix our broken system spans generations, and thousands of people are working on it every day. But it's been decades since movement leaders actually got together in person to share their knowledge, talk about solutions, and build bridges across political parties.

That's the kind of stagnation that holds movements back.

At Unrig the System Summit, 1,500 conservatives, liberals, activists, and experts flocked to Tulane University for three days to talk about real, winnable solutions and strategies to fix our corrupt political system.

The Summit covered a huge range of topics affecting American democracy right now, from gerrymandering to voting systems; the electoral college to building race and class coalitions. And every attendee had access to hands-on workshops, to train the leaders of the anti-corruption movement in the critical skills needed to win campaigns.

Stagnation, gone. But what will they do when they get home?

Introducing the Movement Map: A beautiful way to see what's happening in the anti-corruption movement

Unrig the System Summit is over, but the activists who came together are working on campaigns that live on - some will even be on the 2018 ballot. But it would take you an entire weekend scouring the Internet to find out where all those campaigns are, who's behind them, and how you can stay connected.

Partners in the movement know that most people aren't going to spend their weekends that way - so they did it for you. Democracy Initiative, Small Planet Institute and Represent.Us put their ears to the ground and worked with 51 campaigns across the country put each campaign on the map.

The Movement Map is a movement-wide reference for active political campaigns. It enables activists and advocacy leaders find out exactly which reform efforts are happening in cities, counties, and states across America.

Here's what's exciting about the Movement Map:

  • It will show all of the major ongoing anti-corruption campaigns, providing a quick glance of the movement
  • It allows people to find campaigns by geographic location as well as type of reform, scale of the campaign, and more.
  • It provides contact information and links to learn more directly at those campaign's online properties.
  • It's a resource for everyone: the map is unbranded and will soon have functionality allowing it to be embedded on any website.

Type of reform, contact information, policy summaries, and status updates are all available on the constantly-updated map. If you know of a campaign that's not on it, just click the "Add a Campaign" button.

Looking ahead

Above all, Unrig the System Summit was about collaboration – bringing everyone together to focus on real solutions to the problems of our corrupt political system. Developing an extensive network of reformers and creating shared resources helps to facilitate this by eliminating duplicative labor and unleashing the potential of this movement.

The anti-corruption movement is a rising political force in America – and this summit was the launchpad. We arrived as thousands of people running hundreds of campaigns, but we're leaving as a unified movement. Coming out of this conference, the political reform movement is ready to start winning.

The time to fix our democracy is now.

RepresentUs is America’s leading anti-corruption organization working city-by-city, state-by-state to fix our broken political system.