The Democracy Center

Founded in San Francisco in 1992, The Democracy Center works globally to help citizens understand and influence the public decisions that impact their lives. Through a combination of investigations and reporting, advocacy training, and leading international citizen campaigns, they have worked with social and environmental justice activists in more than three-dozen countries on five continents. As The Democracy Center begins its third decade, a special emphasis of their work is strengthening citizen action on the global climate crisis and helping citizens challenge the power of corporations.

In their second decade, the Democracy Center moved to the heart of the ‘global south’, Bolivia, and from there began to work in the movement for a more just vision of economic globalization. In 2000, the Center provided groundbreaking reports from the scene of the now-famous Cochabamba Water Revolt against the U.S. engineering giant, Bechtel, winning top honors from Project Censored. Later, the Center helped lead the global campaign that forced Bechtel to drop its $50 million World Bank lawsuit against the people of Cochabamba. In the years since, the Center has reported on the secret local dealings of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Enron. They also joined with citizens worldwide to form a global campaign to reform corporate-dominated trade rules.