A short history of the Progressive Los Angeles Network

The Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) was formally launched in December 1999. PLAN was founded and built on the success of the 1998 Progressive L.A. Conference which was co-sponsored by a number of local and national institutions and organizations including Occidental College, The Nation Institute, Liberty Hill Foundation, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The Progressive LA Conference was an overwhelming success and gave participants a sense that the growth of a wide variety of progressive social movements had reached an important threshold. As a result, attendees and others within the progressive movement in Los Angeles expressed a desire to participate in further discussion about how to develop a common agenda that is community based, inclusive and brings together the wealth of experience and knowledge of organizers, activists, and researchers.

In 1999, the organizers of the 1998 Conference consulted dozens of grassroots, community, labor, and environmental leaders about how to capitalize on the conference's momentum. Participants decided to develop a community-driven network that could develop a public policy agenda and action plan for Los Angeles, using the resources and knowledge of public policy experts and the experience and leadership of influential activists and organizers in Los Angeles. PLAN is this network.

See who is on the PLAN Advisory Board

Read about the history of progressive social movements in Los Angeles in the twentieth century.

Learn more about PLAN by browsing  the documents created by the workgroups