Our History

Following January 6th, 2021 and the threat of further attacks on our democracy, a few of our founders assembled a “task force of students” in Arizona as a localized effort to protect & expand student rights and representation.

Our goal was to center students in the fight for grassroots pro-democracy reforms, enact the systemic solutions that would prevent another Jan 6th from happening, and pull our wider republic back from the footsteps of fascism.

Our initial student-representation work led several local victories—including a student constitution expanding youth power & rights, and town halls to hold public school board members accountable.

As the threats to democracy evolved in 2022, so did our mission. In Arizona, we organized students and won protections for voting rights and the state’s referendum process—kickstarting our voting rights program. We also expanded our efforts past Arizona to California, New York, and nationally to grow our network of students empowered to defend democracy.

In 2023, we relocated to Washington, DC, grew our team, and started work on new campaigns to protect our rights from an Article V convention, bring students together in campus democracy coalitions to continue our work fighting for student rights & critical democracy reforms, and teach student activists how to leverage Freedom of Information laws to hold power accountable while keeping themselves safe.

Less than 12 days after election day 2024, we rapidly convened young civil & voting rights leaders to DC to chart our path forward as a democracy movement. Together, we laid the groundwork for our plans to organize for our freedoms, resist autocratic attacks like Project 2025, fight to protect DC’s autonomy, and envision an inclusive democracy for a post-Trump era. Our conclusion was clear—to successfully organize under autocracy, we require a student movement that transcends person and party.

Since Trump’s inauguration in 2025, we have refocused our efforts to training & organizing students en-masse to resist Trump’s attacks on our campuses & wider communities.

Read more about our post-election work to organize students against authoritarianism and for a more inclusive democracy!