Press Coverage

A coalition of progressive groups claiming to represent millions of Americans is planning a multi-state effort urging the expansion of Social Security benefits.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy For America (DFA say they will be joined by several other groups including MoveOn.org in putting out a series of TV and online ads planned for the near future.

After the Democratic-led Senate on Thursday announced it had come to an agreement on interest rates on federal student loans, leaders hailed the deal as long-overdue. Progressive activists are grumbling the deal, which closely resembles the House Republican bill, would leave students worse off than doing nothing […] Liberals have adamantly opposed tying rates to the market, and even though the compromise sets caps for how high the rates can rise, activists think Democrats effectively caved to Republicans on the matter. “The Senate proposal on student loans treats students like an ATM,” Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) said in a statement, pointing out that if Congress simply did nothing, the interest rates would remain lower than the 10-year caps.

The group that led the movement to draft former Gov. Brian Schweitzer to run for the U.S. Senate now wants him to reconsider. On Saturday, Schweitzer told reporters he had decided not to run for the Senate because he wants to remain in Montana. Spearheading the effort is the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, based in Washington, D.C. The group said its ai???Draft Brian Schweitzerai??? effort recruited more than 600 Montana volunteers, raised more than $48,000 and gathered nearly 4,000 in-state supporters and 23,000 others nationally. ai???Conversations are happening at a very high level and organizing is happening at a very grass-roots level about urging Brian to reconsider,ai??? said Adam Green, co-founder of PCCC.

The Senateai??i??s bipartisan student loan compromise remains on track for passage, but movement will wait for next week, along with votes on alternatives that seem certain to fail. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., expressed frustration with the compromise thatai??i??s now expected to hit the Senate floor next week, noting prior proposals offered by Democrats wouldnai??i??t have raised interest rates… Some outside liberal groups, including the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, are joining in criticizing the compromise announced Wednesday night that is on track for Senate passage next week. ai???The Senate proposal on student loans treats students like an ATM,ai??? PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement. ai???Rates will go up to 8.25% for undergraduates and 9.5% for graduates under the deal ai??i?? which is higher than if the Senate did nothing. Instead of pummeling students, Congress should listen to the more than 1,200 professors who support Sen. Warrenai??i??s bill and lower rates for students.ai???

More than 1,000 educators representing 568 institutions of higher education across the country have signed a petition to support Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warrenai??i??s student loan bill, effectively joining forces in the fight to lower interest rates on federal subsidized loans. Texas contributed 45 signatures to the petition, representing 24 of the Lone Star Stateai??i??s colleges and universities, including Texas A&M and University of Texas at Austin.

The letter, which will run in the Chronicle of Higher Education, was put out by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and other advocate groups; it demands that Congress work toward more affordable higher education opportunities for students across the country, especially those who come from lower and middle class backgrounds.

More than 1,000 college professors from 568 higher education institutions around the country haveAi??signed a letterAi??calling on Congress to pass legislation authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would dramatically lower interest rates on federal student loans […]Ai??The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will run the names of the professors with the letter in an ad (pictured below) in the print edition of Wednesday’s Chronicle of Higher Education, a national newspaper covering academia in the United States, ahead ofAi??a procedural vote in the SenateAi??on legislation that would bring the interest rate on new, subsidized Stafford loans back down to 3.4 percent for one year.

Rep. (now Senator) Ed Markey (D-Mass.) won his special election Tuesday for the Senate seat of Secretary of State John Kerry. Markey defeated Republican Gabriel Gomez. […] Markey joins Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who used his election to put out an email solicitation for donations to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to elect more progressives like Markey.

A grassroots movement is building excitement about former Governor Brian Schweitzer’s possible candidacy to run for the US Senate.

The movement is called “Draft Brian Schweitzer” and is being led by Billings resident Sean Whiting.

The group has three simple goals – to gather 5,000 signatures state wide, recruit 500 state wide volunteers and raise $50,000.

In asking Congress to redraw the map of places where the right to vote may be at risk, the Supreme Court tossed the ball to an institution suffering record-low approval ratings whose ability to pass any meaningful legislation remains in doubt.

[…] Stephanie Taylor, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, was less optimistic.

“A dysfunctional Congress will not provide the protections necessary to make sure all people can vote,” Taylor said. “The Roberts Court continues to ignore common-sense protections to make sure our democracy is owned by the people, not the powerful. History will not look kindly on John Roberts.”

Across the hall from Paul’s display, staffers from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a 1 million-member advocacy group founded by two former MoveOn.org organizers, was doing a brisk business handing out blue-and-white bumper stickers declaring, “I’m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.”

Warren, the senator from Massachusetts who endeared herself to the left by pushing for student loan reform and greater Wall Street regulation, long ago surpassed Obama as a darling of the left, said Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The thousands of liberal activists and bloggers who gathered here in recent days were President Obama’s base ai??i?? they helped propel him to victory in 2008 and ensure that he was reelected in 2012. But for many, the luster has worn off the president, with the phone and email surveillance scandal ai??i?? and Obama’s defense of it ai??i?? the latest in a lengthy list of disappointments.

“When he proposes cutting Social Security benefits, does nothing on jobs, does nothing on holding Wall Street accountable and now is spying on every American, that’s not something he can ask people who wanted hope and change to rally around,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “There are many who spent so much time in 2008 and 2012 to elect this Democratic president, and [this] is not what we bargained for.”

“This conference is about bottom up people power,” said Adam Green with Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Green’s committee raised $100,000 to convince Elizabeth Warren to run for the Senate.

“We wanted to show her how much grassroots support would be there and it worked,” Green said.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political-action committee based in Washington, D.C., is leading an active “draft Schweitzer” movement, rounding up money and supporters. The group’s co-founder, Adam Green, visited with Schweitzer in Montana in May, and the group is buying Internet ads in Montana saying “Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate!” So far, PCCC has raised $29,000 dedicated to helping the Schweitzer Senate campaign, signed up 415 people who say they’ll work as volunteers on the campaign and had nearly 18,300 people sign an on-line petition urging Schweitzer to run.

The concern that Cuomo isnai??i??t really one of them continues to this month as the left presses him on passing a system of publicly financed political campaigns. Cuomo unveiled the bill for elections reform this week and it includes a $41 million public system thatai??i??s similar to New York Cityai??i??s program. Still, this the $20 million man trying to get the money out of politics, a governor who has assembled a massive war chest from a variety of interests while also backing an overhaul of the very system heai??i??s so thrives in.

Itai??i??s a dissonant note for some. So thatai??i??s why a liberal group, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is unveiling today a petition to pressure singer Paul Simon, who is slated to perform at a high-dollar Cuomo fundraiser, to support publicly financed elections.

A coalition of progressive leaders, including MoveOn.org Executive Director Anna Galland, Rebuild the Dream President Van Jones and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas are pressuring Democratic House leaders crafting campaign finance reform legislation to be introduced this year…Signing the letter, along with Galland, Jones and Moulitsas, are Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founders Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green, Democracy for America chair Jim Dean, CREDO CEO Michael Kieschnick, CREDO political director Becky Bond, Wolf PAC founder Cenk Uygur and Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.

A group of liberal groups is out with a letter Wednesday urging Democratic Hill leaders to come to a consensus on a public financing elections bill. Currently, three different proposals are being considered — and the groups urged lawmakers to merge the bills into one proposal. At the heart of the bills is a proposal to create a system of publicly financed congressional elections. The groups — which include the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, MoveOn.org, Democracy For America, CREDO and others — support the Yarmuth and Sarbanes proposals, but they oppose the Price bill.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is among those organizations trying to keep the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet record surveillance practices in the spotlight. On Wednesday, the group delivered a petition demanding a congressional investigation to Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy, D-Vt., as well as two prominent supporters of the surveillance program, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The petition has nearly 97,000 signatories.

The email went out shortly after midnight Thursday, a few hours after the news broke about the Obama administration’s large-scale monitoring of Americans’ cell-phone records: “You are being spied on.” It was sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading liberal organization, to its list of supporters, and it asked them to sign a petition demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance. “It’s simply unacceptable,” the email said. As further revelations about domestic surveillance have emerged in recent days, the group has kept up the drumbeat. The response, PCCC officials say, has been overwhelming — a sign of the widespread liberal anger at Obama over civil liberties.

A progressive group upset with news about the breadth of the Obama Administration’s surveillance efforts started raising money Monday to help self-confessed leaker Edward Snowden’s legal defense. Snowden admitted Sunday he leaked information to The Guardian and The Washington Post about the large, classified telephone and internet surveillance programs aimed at thwarting terrorism. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced the initiative with an e-mail from Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, which has represented federal employees in the past.

Progressives have begun raising money for the legal defense of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who has admitted to leaking several secret national security documents to the British newspaper The Guardian and the Washington Post.
In an email to supporters today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said that because “whistleblower” cases are extremely expensive to litigate, they would raise money to pay Snowden’s legal fees.

Friday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-leaning advocacy group, announced a series of internet ads they would run across the country targeting Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. ai??i?? a fierce defender of the Obama administration’s counter-terror tactics ai??i?? and against Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who told reporters Thursday he was “glad” NSA was keeping tabs on phone records.

“In 36 hours, nearly 20,000 people have signed the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s petition calling on both houses of Congress to hold investigations and reveal their findings to the public,” committee spokesman Matt Wall said.

The New York Times also ran a scathing editorial against President Obama Thursday night that accused his administration of losing “all credibility” on the issue of national security.

Just hours after the Guardian newspaper reported on a secret court order that allows the government access to Verizon company phone records, progressive groups are marshaling an organized response. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) posted an online petition demanding a congressional investigation of the domestic surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Vinson’s order relies on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, 50 USC 1861, better known as the “business records” portion. It allows FBI agents to obtain any “tangible thing,” including “books, records, papers, documents, and other items,” a broad term that includes dumps from private-sector computer databases with limited judicial oversight.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the order as “beyond Orwellian,” and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a petition to Congress.

Prior to Christieai??i??s announcement, the liberal group New Jersey Working Families alliance joined forces with a national group, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), to petition Christie to hold the election in November.

The Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate campaign has set its first Missoula organizing meet-up for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Montgomery Distillery in downtown Missoula. Members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in Montana and nationally launched the effort after Baucus announced last month that he would retire from the Senate. The committee said more than 18,000 people nationally have urged Schweitzer to run at DraftSchweitzer.com.