Our History

Since our founding in 1987, Western States Center has come to fill an important niche in the West. Prior to our creation, progressive organizations and leaders were often working in isolation from one another serving particular constituencies or advancing specific issues.

Scattered across a broad geographic area, they lacked resources, appropriate training programs, and mechanisms to share intelligence, plan strategies and spread successes. Opportunities to work together and increase their impact and effectiveness were often missed and national progressive funders and organizations often failed to understand and support the West. The right wing was gaining strength and important political ground while many progressives seemed disengaged from electoral efforts and disconnected from each other.

In response to this set of circumstances, the Center was established to help strengthen and further develop the progressive movement in the West. For more than two decades, Western States Center has served to connect activists and organizers, building our sense of share values, honing our strategies for building power, sharpening our political analyses, and forging relationships and alliances with the broader movement for social, economic, racial and environmental justice.