Liberty Tree’s approach to achieving social change is rooted in the long history of pro-democracy movements in the Americas, as well as the more recent anti-corporate, pro-democracy campaigns of the 1990s. For a discussion of the continuing importance of the movements and organizing of the 1990s, including the Democracy Teach-Ins and the Program on Corporations Law and Democracy, read two articles: Seattle Uprising Still a Force in World Events, 15 Years Later and The Democratic Turn of the Century: Learning from the U.S.

Celebrating 10 years of “building a democracy movement for the U.S.A.,” some of the U.S.A.’s leading activists and intellectuals launched 10,000 for Democracy, a campaign to enlist 10,000 people as Liberty Tree members in the cause of building, “an unstoppable movement for deep systemic democratic change.” 

Over the weekend of September 19-21, the Global Climate Convergence (GCC) joined with System Change Not Climate Change (SCNCC) in bringing together over 3500 people for the Converge for Climate organizing conference “for People, Peace, and Planet Over Profit,” in New York City. On Sunday, the 21st, the two coalitions (GCC and SCNCC) formed a large system change bloc at the 300,000 strong People’s Climate March, the largest climate protest in world history. 

In 2013, Liberty Tree launched an effort to nationalize the Wisconsin’s Wave’s divestment organizing against Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. From May 18-23th, in a joint effort by Liberty Tree and Operation Green Jobs, unemployed workers and their supporters marched 150 miles from Philadelphia to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington D.C.. There, they launched the national Shut the Chamber! campaign, demanding that businesses and local chambers of commerce across the country cut off all ties with the national Chamber.

“On Valentine’s Day, February 14th 2011, eleven hundred students and teachers from the University of Wisconsin and Madison Area Technical College entered Wisconsin’s Capitol in protest of a proposed state budget and so-called ‘Budget Repair Bill.’ By the next evening, upwards of ten thousand people had joined the protest and begun occupying the Capitol Building.

On January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Citizens United v. FEC. That same day, MovetoAmend.org went live, and within two days nearly 30,000 people had signed the Motion to Amend the U.S. Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons entitled to constitutional protection, that money is not speech, and also to protect the right to vote and have one’s vote counted and to establish that federal and state laws establish a floor and not a ceiling for human rights, civil rights, and environmental protections enacted by local governments.

2009 began with a national gathering of the Bring the Guard Home movement in Washington D.C. on January 21st, the day after President Obama’s first inauguration. In addition to a press conference at the National Press Club, activists held a strategy meeting at which they developed plans for mutual support of their state legislative campaign and also a national conference to be held later that year.

Liberty Tree’s major work in 2006 employed local democracy to develop a new program area, Democratizing Defense. Liberty Tree provided legal, media, and other key strategic support to organizers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Massachusetts, and California who wanted to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan home by placing anti-war ballot measures on municipal, town, and county ballots.