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Formation | February 2021 |
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Type | Nonprofit |
EIN: 85-3189807 | |
Executive Director | Faiz Shakir |
Website | perfectunion |
More Perfect Union is a progressive non-profit news media organization founded in February 2021 by Faiz Shakir. The outlet, named after a phrase in the U.S. Constitution, specializes in video reporting and opinion coverage about the American labor movement, economic policy, and corporate accountability. [1] [2]
In August 2021, More Perfect Union won the Sidney Award for outstanding investigative journalism. [3]
In August 2021, More Perfect Union won the Sidney Award for its coverage of the Frito-Lay strike. "MPU was the first national outlet to cover the strike," the Sidney Hillman Foundation wrote in awarding the prize. "They published dispatches from the ground over a three-week period which collectively generated over 4 million views and spurred follow-on coverage by outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and NPR... After a three-week strike, Frito's Topeka plant struck an agreement to end the 'suicide shifts' and forced 7-day workweeks." [3]
Also in August 2021, More Perfect Union confirmed with actor Danny DeVito that he had been stripped of his verified status on Twitter after he tweeted a message of solidarity to striking Nabisco workers: "NO CONTRACT NO SNACKS." [4] The news spread widely and contributed to DeVito and his rallying cry becoming popular labor memes. [5]
In November 2021, More Perfect Union launched an explainer series called "The Class Room". It is "aimed at providing a left-wing answer to PragerU, a YouTube titan of right-wing ideology," the New York Times reported. [1]
More Perfect Union says it receives funding from various donors, including from George Soros' Open Society Foundations, but does not take money from labor unions. [1]
In 2023 The Class Room was awarded The Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis. [6]
Nabisco is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
Tides Foundation is a left-leaning donor advised fund based in the United States. It was founded in San Francisco in 1976 by Drummond Pike. Tides distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, which are often politically progressive. An affiliated group, Tides Advocacy, is a "massive progressive incubator." Tides has received substantial funding from George Soros.
Sidney Hillman was an American labor leader. He was the head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and in marshaling labor's support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party.
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of its products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc., PepsiCo has since expanded from its namesake product Pepsi Cola to an immensely diversified range of food and beverage brands. The largest and most recent acquisition was Pioneer Foods in 2020 for US$1.7 billion and prior to it was buying the Quaker Oats Company in 2001, which added the Gatorade brand to the Pepsi portfolio and Tropicana Products in 1998.
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations. It merged with the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged in 2004 with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. After a bitter internal dispute in 2009, the majority of the UNITE side of the union, along with some of the disgruntled HERE locals left UNITE HERE, and formed a new union named Workers United, led by former UNITE president Bruce Raynor.
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (FFDFF) is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema founded by Nancy Buirski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor of The New York Times and documentary filmmaker.
The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) is a labor union in the United States and Canada primarily representing workers in the food processing industry. The union was established in 1886 as the Journeyman Bakers Union. The contemporary BCTGM was formed in January 1999 as a merger of the Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers' International Union and the American Federation of Grain Millers.
ThinkProgress was an American progressive news website that was active from 2005 to 2019. It was a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. Founded by Judd Legum in 2005, the site's reports were regularly discussed by mainstream news outlets and peer-reviewed academic journals. ThinkProgress also hosted a climate section called Climate Progress, which was founded by Joe Romm.
Bruce S. Raynor is an American labor union executive. He is the former Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), former President of Workers United, former General President of UNITE HERE, a founding member of the Leadership Council of the Change to Win Federation (CTW), and a member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees. He was Chairman of several union-affiliated national pension and insurance funds. He was Chairman of the Board of Amalgamated Life Insurance Company, a union-affiliated insurance company established in 1943. Raynor also served as chairman of the Amalgamated Bank, the only union-owned bank in the U.S., and as former co-chair and current member of the Council of Institutional Investors, an organization of institutional investors. Raynor is also President of The Sidney Hillman Foundation, a foundation that supports and rewards socially conscious journalism.
Frito-Lay, Inc. is an American subsidiary of PepsiCo that manufactures, markets, and sells corn chips, potato chips, and other snack foods. The primary snack food brands produced under the Frito-Lay name include Fritos corn chips, Cheetos cheese-flavored snacks, Doritos and Tostitos tortilla chips, Lay's and Ruffles potato chips, Rold Gold pretzels, and Walkers potato crisps. Each brand generated annual worldwide sales over $1 billion in 2009.
The United Garment Workers of America was a United States labor union which existed between 1891 and 1994. It was an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a progressive nonprofit watchdog and advocacy organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. CMD publishes ExposedbyCMD.org, SourceWatch.org, and ALECexposed.org.
Trymaine D. Lee is an American journalist. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as part of a team at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. From 2006 to 2010, Lee wrote for The New York Times and from early 2011 to November 2012 he was a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. Since then Lee has been a national reporter for MSNBC, where he writes for the network's digital arm, and hosts the podcast Into America.
Nico Pitney is an American journalist, editor and media executive who has helped lead several prominent left-leaning media outlets, including HuffPost and NowThis.
The Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIC) was an international economic development venture launched in 1922 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in conjunction with the government of Soviet Russia. The corporation, mostly funded measure by small donations from sympathetic American union members, was conceived as a mechanism for the launch of new clothing factories to help alleviate the economic distress which had wracked the Soviet republic during the recently terminated era of Civil War and War Communism.
Jordan Daniel Chariton is an American investigative reporter. Chariton is the CEO of Status Coup, a progressive media outlet that features investigative and on-the-ground reporting on politics, corruption, the working class, social justice, and the environment.
Mississippi Today is a nonprofit online newspaper based in Ridgeland, Mississippi
Faiz Shakir is an American Democratic political advisor. He serves as senior advisor to Bernie Sanders and executive director of the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union. Previously, he was campaign manager for Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, an aide to Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, an editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress blog, and political director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Raised in Florida by Pakistani immigrants, Shakir is a progressive liberal and an advocate for Muslim American communities.
The 2021 Nabisco strike was a labor strike involving workers for the American snack manufacturer Nabisco, a subsidiary of Mondelez International. The strike began at a Nabisco facility in Portland, Oregon on August 10 and over the next few days spread to several more Nabisco facilities throughout the United States.
More Perfect Union, a video-centric outlet that has a staff of 24 and backing from George Soros's Open Society Foundation, among other donors, does not take money from labor unions, Mr. Shakir said.