Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada

Mission, History and Accomplishments
PLAN exists to deepen democracy, transform power and achieve greater justice in Nevada. We employ leadership development, grassroots organizing, policy advocacy and direct action to build power with our communities. We have learned that many ordinary Nevadans are eager to get involved in our efforts to reverse growing inequality, fix our democracy, and protect our planet. When we talk to people at the door, on the phones, or in community meetings, we break through cynicism and inspire action. To shift to what is possible in Nevada, and nationally, PLAN invests in base building, grassroots fundraising, and a long-term campaign to move toward an economy that puts people and planet before corporations.  

Our theory of change demands that we work with communities of color to become civically engaged. Our work proves that year-round civic engagement, rooted in organizing around the issues communities care about the most, is the silver bullet against voter apathy and to motivate participation. Our organizing must be culturally competent, led by people most directly impacted by the issues at hand (i.e., Dreamers organizing immigrant voters; Native organizers working on Reservations; those with experience in mass incarceration mobilizing Black communities on criminal justice issues). We know that to attract people to PLAN and move them to take action with us in strong relationship, our work must be rooted in their own cultural traditions, such as drumming and singing traditional songs with elders and youth at Native civic engagement gatherings. 

Nevada is a very different state then when PLAN was formed in 1994, when 90 percent of all voters were white. Nevada’s electorate will be majority people of color by 2020. Latinos are projected to be one quarter of the electorate by 2036. Today, three in ten kindergartners in Clark County are white and Las Vegas is majority people of color, mirroring what the country will look like in 20 years.

PLAN’s staff and board have also changed since our founding, from white to Black and women of color led. PLAN’s intentional focus on racial justice goes back to 1998, when the coalition held its first annual Dismantling Racism workshop and established a POC-led Racial Justice Committee to guide internal and external anti-racism work, leading to our early efforts to restore voting rights to 40,000 former inmates.

PLAN has worked on criminal justice reform issues for many years within our other core areas. For example, we championed restoration of voting rights and access to jobs for former inmates within our civic engagement work. In addition, we worked on police oversight/criminalization issues within our racial justice program and 287g issues within our immigration program. Within the last two years, we have developed more of an explicit criminal justice program area.

PLAN has a long record of organizing and providing immigration/naturalization services in Latino and immigrant communities. PLAN worked with allies to create the Nevada Immigrant Coalition in 2004, which we continue to staff today. In 2016, we naturalized 1,353 new citizens, and have assisted many of them in registering to vote. PLAN has also worked to achieve concrete policy wins such as driver authorization cards, workplace safety training in Spanish, and has been instrumental in defeating every anti-immigrant bill that has been introduced into the legislature since 1995. Since 2016, our immigrant rights program has partnered with Laborers International Union of North America Local 169 to naturalize new Latino residents and register them to vote. In 2018, we held 60 events with the immigrant community, ranging from TPS and DACA forums to student workshops and public protests, directly engaging 3,500 immigrants. Those we helped naturalize registered and voted for the first time in 2018, which we celebrated by marching them to the polls with a mariachi band. Dreamers who could not vote were still active volunteers in registering and motivating their families and friends to vote.

Since our founding, PLAN has prioritized reproductive justice and has helped to defeat any and all attempts to undermine women’s health in Nevada, including parental notification. We encourage our member groups to assist women’s groups in achieving their missions. Although a number of organizations have declined to join because of this, and one labor union left PLAN in protest of our explicit pro-choice positions, we’re proud of our longstanding record on gender equity. PLAN has also had LTBTQ people in its leadership for 25 years, and worked with allies to make Nevada among the first states to pass legislation regarding workplace protections, transgender equity, and marriage equality.

Native American Tribes were among the original founding member groups of PLAN and we have prioritized working with them on voter registration and civic engagement, environmental justice, mining and water protection issues. PLAN served as the local hub for solidarity actions with Standing Rock and Indigenous women leaders have led the Reno Women’s March for three years. Additionally, we have sponsored key public events on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, linking this issue with the urgent need to end a patriarchal, extractive and white supremacist culture that subjects all our communities to violence.

Our work to defend the Affordable Care Act and defend the social safety net programs that help struggling families get by is centered in communities of color. At the eight economic justice community events we held in 2018, such as our May Day workshop, SNAP birthday celebration, and an all-Spanish language forum on the proposed “Public Charge” rule, our leaders stressed the importance of building community power through participation in the midterm election.

Environmental justice is one of PLAN’s core founding principals. Since 1994, we have helped lead organizing fights against nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, urban water grabs from rural Nevada, fracking and transnational gold mining conglomerates. We have seeded new conservation organizations in Nevada such as Nevadans Against Fracking, the Nevada Conservation League and the Great Basin Water Network. We have worked to enact concrete local and state policy changes, such as Nevada’s first renewable energy portfolio standards, net metering, mining oversight, and led the successful 2008 sustainable water ballot initiative. From 2009-2011, PLAN partnered with One Sky (which merged with 350.org in 2011) and employed a Green for All Fellow, focusing on Latino and African American communities in the climate debate.

For decades, PLAN has fought against various “Sagebrush Rebellions,” corporate-backed schemes to take vast swaths of public lands now open to the people and turn them over to state or private interests. We have more public lands, and more roadless areas, than any other state except Alaska. Corporations are on the march to further exploit these wild spaces for their water, minerals, gas and other natural wealth. PLAN’s work to create a new narrative for People and Planet before corporations stands in opposition to right wing, corporate-backed attacks on the public sector, be it public lands, public workers or public education. Long before the Bundy family, Nevada has been ground zero in the most contentious climate and environmental justice battles in the country.

In 2012, we reached out to a universe of just over 43,000 voters through phone banking. A scientific evaluation by the Analyst Institute found that we were able to increase turnout, which is rare in a presidential year. Another independent evaluation found that while PLAN represented 17.3% of the successful Nevada registrations in 2012, we accounted for 27.5% of the new registrants and 25.9% of new general election voters. In 2014, we registered 1342 voters (89% of our goal), made 41,157 calls, and had 11,407 conversations with individual voters. In 2016, we registered 5,926 voters from low income and communities of color, called 16,459 new voters, knocked on 10,077 doors, trained 150 immigrant leaders, held seven workshops, three retreats and 15 marches/protests involving tens of thousands of Nevadans.

In 2018, we registered 1,183 new voters, the vast majority between 17-25 years old, held 25 events at welfare offices, bus stations, community centers, colleges and high schools that directly included 1,800 people in these events. Our student civic engagement fellows spoke to high school, college and university classes and clubs about the history of civil rights and social justice work and why participating in elections matters.

Our statewide communications and field efforts operating from offices in Reno (Washoe County) and Las Vegas (Clark County), the past two decades have helped reframe the debate in Nevada on issues ranging from immigration to corporate taxes. We helped create a new imperative in Nevada where even the Chambers of Commerce agreed new revenues must be found to fund education. This resulted in passage of Nevada’s first corporate profits tax to fund education in 2015. PLAN has also been at the forefront of working to enact pro-democracy and electoral reform policies including campaign finance reform and voting rights.