An Introduction to the Arc of Justice Alliance and the Infrastructure the Progressive Movement Has Been Missing for 50 Years

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Building What the Right Built -- From the Bottom Up

An Introduction to the Arc of Justice Alliance and the Infrastructure the Progressive Movement Has Been Missing for 50 Years

In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a confidential memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that would quietly reshape American politics for the next half century. He was alarmed -- by consumer advocates, by environmentalists, by a culture that was growing skeptical of corporate power. His prescription: build. Fund think tanks. Cultivate judges. Train political operatives. Dominate the narrative. Coordinate relentlessly.

They did exactly that. Heritage Foundation. Federalist Society. Koch network. ALEC. Fox News. A web of coordinated institutions, operating with a 30-, 40-, 50-year horizon, shifting courts, legislatures, school boards, and culture -- methodically, patiently, effectively.

The progressive movement, in the same decades, built extraordinary organizations. Powerful unions. Brilliant policy shops. Innovative community groups. Creative cultural institutions. Dedicated advocacy campaigns. And yet -- these achievements remained largely siloed. Even coalitions , some with hundreds of organizations , tend to be siled and not cooperating with other organizations working for different aspects of Justice freedom and equality Each organization or coalition doing important work, often unaware of parallel efforts a few miles or a few clicks away, competing for the same donors, reinventing the same wheels, unable to aggregate their collective strength into durable, strategic power.

That is the gap the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) exists to close.

Not Another Organization -- An Infrastructure

AJA is not a campaign, a think tank, a coalition, or a political action committee. It is not a command center that will tell other organizations what to do. It is not another progressive startup competing for donor project funding.

AJA is infrastructure -- a shared coordination layer for the progressive ecosystem. Think of it as a nervous system for the movement: connective tissue rather than command structure. A mycelial network beneath the forest floor, invisible but essential, allowing the trees above to share nutrients, signals, and strength.

The core question AJA answers is: what would it look like if progressive organizations could actually find each other, learn from and share resources with each other, coordinate with each other -- without surrendering their autonomy or being absorbed into a hierarchy? What becomes possible when the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts?

What AJA Is Building

At its most practical level, AJA begins with a comprehensive directory of progressive organizations -- from national advocacy groups and unions to local grassroots organizations, faith communities, policy institutes, media outlets, and the service providers and funders who support them all. Organizations can claim their listing, build out their profile, and become discoverable as/to potential partners, collaborators, and funders.

But the directory is just the beginning. AJA is designed to be a living platform for movement intelligence -- surfacing patterns, identifying gaps, enabling structured coordination spaces, and building the kind of compounding institutional knowledge that the right has accumulated over decades but the left has never systematically captured.

Project 2029, AJA's policy readiness initiative, takes this further -- creating the infrastructure to develop comprehensive, implementation-ready progressive policy frameworks drawing on the expertise already distributed across hundreds of organizations, so that the next opportunity for change finds us prepared rather than scrambling.

Why Bottom-Up Matters

The right built its infrastructure top-down: billionaire donors, elite institutions, disciplined message control. That model has real power -- but it also has real limits. It cannot easily generate the grassroots energy, the moral authority, the creative innovation, or the genuine community rootedness that have always been the progressive movement's deepest strengths.

AJA is designed to build bottom-up. The coordination emerges from participation, not from authority. The intelligence comes from the organizations doing the work, not from a central bureau deciding what matters. The connections form by consent, through genuine alignment, not through institutional mandate.

This approach reflects something deeper than strategy. It reflects a values commitment -- to autonomy, to partnership, to the wisdom embedded in communities, to the kinds of indigenous and systems-based frameworks that recognize that healthy ecosystems depend on diversity and interdependence, not monoculture and hierarchy.

A 50-Year Vision

Powell thought in decades. So must we.

AJA is not a response to the current crisis -- though the current crisis makes it urgent. It is a long-term infrastructure project, designed to strengthen the progressive ecosystem across a 10-, 20-, and 50-year horizon. The goal is not to win the next election but to build the durable, coordinated power that makes sustained democratic progress possible -- and to make that power resistant to the erosion that has plagued each generation of progressive organizing.

What does that world look like in 50 years? It looks like a movement that has built connective tissue as strong as its individual organizations. One where the insights developed in a community health clinic in Mississippi can inform policy advocates in Washington. Where the storytelling innovations of a cultural collective in Los Angeles strengthen the message of a labor union in Ohio. Where resources flow to where they are most needed, coordination happens at the speed of opportunity, and progressive power compounds across generations rather than starting over every four years.

About This Research Series

The articles that follow in this series represent our working research -- explorations of the landscape AJA is designed to serve, the problems it is designed to solve, and the ideas that are shaping how we build it. They are developed with the assistance of AI research tools, and we are being transparent about that because we believe the progressive movement deserves honest partners, not polished facades.

Nothing in this series is final. These are not position papers or policy mandates. They are invitations -- to think alongside us, to push back on our framing, to share what you know that we don't, to tell us what your organization needs from infrastructure that doesn't yet exist.

The progressive movement has always been, at its best, a collective intelligence project. AJA is an attempt to build the systems that let that intelligence accumulate and compound. This research series is an early expression of that commitment -- thinking out loud, in public, with you.

Get Involved

If you lead or work with a progressive organization, we want you and your organization in the directory. If you have thoughts on what coordination infrastructure should look like, we want to hear them. If you're interested in helping build AJA, reach out.

The arc of the moral universe may be long. But it doesn't bend by itself. It bends because people -- and the organizations they build -- decide to pull together.

AJA is how we pull together.

Rob Kall is the founder and publisher of OpEdNews.com and co-founder of the Arc of Justice Alliance alongside Chuck Pennacchio. He is the author of Bottom-Up Revolution, an NPR featured Mosaic artist and and inventor of biofeedback technology. This article is part of an ongoing series documenting the exploring of ideas and approaches to the development of AJA's infrastructure , ecosystem pretty and strategy.

NOTE: This article was developed with AI research assistance as part of an ongoing exploration of the ideas behind the Arc of Justice Alliance. Nothing here is final -- this is a working document, an invitation to think together about what progressive infrastructure can become.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation