# MoveOn Founded in September 1998 by software entrepreneurs **Joan Blades** and **Wes Boyd** — the married co-founders of Berkeley Systems — MoveOn is one of the oldest and largest progressive advocacy organizations in the United States. The founding act was a one-sentence email petition during the [[Clinton Impeachment]]: "Censure [[President Clinton]] and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation." That petition collected half a million signatures, making it one of the first viral email-based political actions in American history. ## Structure MoveOn operates as a **two-entity umbrella** with roughly **3 million members**: - **MoveOn Civic Action** — a 501(c)(4) focused on education, advocacy, and the petition platform - **MoveOn Political Action** — a PAC that endorses candidates, runs ad campaigns, and mobilizes voter turnout The organizational model pioneered several tactics that became standard progressive infrastructure: online fundraising at scale (raising $2 million in the 2000 cycle alone, unprecedented at the time), viral petition campaigns, member-funded TV ads, and rapid-response digital mobilization. MoveOn demonstrated before anyone else that **distributed small-dollar donors could compete with concentrated big-dollar fundraising** — an insight later weaponized by the Obama and Sanders campaigns. ## Leadership **Katie Bethell** became Executive Director in July 2025, succeeding Rahna Epting. Bethell came from WorkMoney, Paid Leave for the United States (PL+US), Change.org, and MomsRising — a career arc that tracks the evolution of digital progressive organizing. ## The Arc: 1998-2024 MoveOn's history tracks the evolution of progressive digital organizing itself: **1998-2003 (founding era):** Anti-impeachment petition to anti-[[Iraq War]] mobilization. The "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest (2003) was an early experiment in crowdsourced political media. **2004-2008 (electoral machine):** Endorsed Obama early in the 2008 primary (a significant signal to progressive voters), mobilized members for ground-game operations, became one of the largest outside spenders in Democratic politics. **2009-2016 (ACA and beyond):** Major player in defending the [[Affordable Care Act]], supporting Occupy Wall Street, and backing the Sanders insurgency in 2016. MoveOn's membership voted 78% to endorse Sanders over Clinton — a marker of its base's leftward drift. **2017-2020 (Trump 1.0 resistance):** Rapid anti-Trump mobilization, partner in the [[Pro-Democracy Movement]], major funder of 2018 midterm ground operations. Membership surged post-2016 as it had post-Iraq War. **2021-2024 (Biden era):** Pushed Biden leftward on student debt, climate, and judicial nominations. Supported Biden's re-election bid, then pivoted rapidly to support Harris after Biden's withdrawal. ## Trump 2.0 Resurgence (2025-2026) MoveOn has re-emerged as a central organizing hub in the second Trump era: **"Won't Back Down" Tour** (August 2025-present): National organizing campaign targeting competitive Republican-held House districts — Reps. [[Juan Ciscomani]] (AZ-6), Dave Schweikert (AZ-1), Don Bacon (NE-2), and others. Tour events feature Democratic stars (Sen. [[Elizabeth Warren]], Rep. [[Jasmine Crockett]], Rep. [[Maxwell Frost]]) alongside MeidasTouch. The explicit frame: hold Republicans accountable for the Trump economic agenda and build grassroots infrastructure to flip the House in 2026. **No Kings Coalition partnership:** MoveOn is a founding member of the [[No Kings Coalition]], the umbrella coordinating the largest street protests since the Civil Rights era. MoveOn's 3-million-member email list provides mobilization infrastructure that smaller coalition partners cannot match. **California Prop 50:** Spent six figures mobilizing 700,000+ California members to support the anti-gerrymandering special election measure. **2026 midterm strategy:** Endorsing and campaigning for progressive Democrats across competitive districts, with a focus on converting anti-Trump energy into a House majority. ## The Strategic Significance MoveOn's significance for the KB is threefold: First, it **pioneered the organizational model** — online fundraising, viral petitions, distributed grassroots mobilization — that every subsequent progressive organization (including [[Indivisible]], [[Swing Left]], and [[Run for Something]]) adapted. Second, its membership size (~3 million) gives it **structural weight** in coalition politics. When MoveOn endorses, it moves volunteers and small-dollar money. When it joins a coalition (like [[No Kings Coalition]]), it provides email-list infrastructure that amplifies smaller partners. Third, MoveOn's 28-year arc illustrates the **lifecycle problem** of progressive organizations: founding energy (anti-impeachment) gives way to institutional consolidation, which produces organizational inertia, which requires periodic reinvigoration by external crisis (Iraq War, Trump 1.0, [[Trump 2.0]]). The right-wing infrastructure documented elsewhere in this vault (see [[Koch Network]], [[Heritage Foundation]]) does not cycle this way — it builds durable institutions that persist between crises rather than requiring crisis to revive. ## See Also - [[Resistance Hub]] - [[Pro-Democracy Movement]] — the broader coalition MoveOn helped build - [[No Kings Coalition]] — the current street-mobilization coalition - [[Indivisible]] — the post-2016 grassroots complement - [[Community Organizing]] — methodological inheritance - [[Swing Left]] — electoral-strategy partner