LPCA State Download 🌼| Progressive Governance Labs, Local Wins, Join Our Organizing Committee and more! | Spring 2025

📝 Share Your Story: How is the Trump Administration Impacting your Community?

Local Progress is rolling out a new tool to measure how the Trump Administration is impacting our communities. Our new storybank form is collecting on-the-ground accounts from local officials across the country to accurately map the impact of the federal government’s actions on local communities. These stories will help our network illustrate how federal policy actions are shaping people’s day to day lives and strategize how to fight back against the Trump administration’s divisive agenda, as well as assist our press work in telling the story of our collective resistance. We’re interested in everything from how teachers may have been shut out from Head Start programs to proactive actions your legislative body has taken to affirm the rights of immigrants in your community. Check out the form here and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions!

🧰 Tools to Interrupt Criminalization

The federal administration has escalated its use of criminalization to target immigrant communities and suppress dissent. In the past few weeks alone, over 300 student visas have been revoked on political grounds, and more than 200 immigrants—like Maryland father Abrego Garcia—have been deported to a notorious torture facility in El Salvador in defiance of court orders. These acts are part of a broader strategy: using criminalization to silence opposition and enforce policies that consolidate right-wing power. Local governments have the ability—and responsibility—to push back.

Here’s how we can act:

• Anchor our messaging. Use LP’s updated guides–Protecting Immigrant Rights Under a Hostile Federal Administration and Let’s Talk Real Safety–to align around a strong, consistent narrative. New content includes Best Practices for messaging on immigration and guidance on Responding to a Raid in your Community; and Addressing Public Suffering and Ending Harm and Surveillance, emphasizing the urgent need to move away from carceral solutions and toward real investments that address the root causes of harm.
• Interrupt policies that criminalize residents. Reach out to Interrupting Criminalization’s Help Desk for 1:1 assistance with any organizing, policy, budget, or litigation strategies.
• Strengthen community defense. Invite a local partner organization to sign up for National Immigration Project’s “Removal Defense for Community Defenders” training from May 15 through July 17.

📚 Calls to Action for Public Education

The federal government is poised to pass a billionaire-backed national voucher program that would defund our public schools and harm our students. It’s key that federal officials hear from folks on the ground about the harmful impact this defunding mechanism would have on students and the public education system. This toolkit from our friends at the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and NYU Metro Center will help you join the ranks of fellow LP members reaching out to their representatives in Washington — it’s powerful for elected officials in D.C. to hear from local electeds! 

Do you want to pass a resolution in your district about protecting public education? Do you want to connect with organizers who could work with you to advocate for this? Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch to support with a draft resolution and an organizing toolkit from our partners at Public School Strong.

Our partners at Popular Democracy are convening Hands Off Our Schools organizing calls – the next two are May 14 and June 11. Want to sign up? More here.

🌍 How to Protect Communities Before and After Climate Disasters

Local elected officials need to know how to protect the communities they serve in the lead up to and before a climate disaster. Hurricanes, wildfires, and floods not only destroy people’s physical and emotional well-being but also can cause families to get to the brink of financial crisis. Working with community disaster recovery organizers, insurance consumer protection advocates, disaster response attorneys, and housing counselors, the Equitable and Just Insurance Initiative released a report that details how state and local governments can protect people’s financial well-being before and after climate disasters. The report details policy recommendations state and local governments can implement from protecting renters and homeowners to helping people avoid scams and holding fossil fuel companies accountable. Read the report here!

🏡Apply by June 9: Advance Tenant Screening Protections

Every year, approximately 3.6 million individuals facing eviction assume an additional concern for their future: the challenge of finding a new home with an eviction on their record.

Results for America, in partnership with PolicyLink, National Housing Law Project, National Consumer Law Center, TechEquity and Upturn, invites place-based teams to apply for an 8-week Solutions Sprint, Unlocked: Opening the Door to Housing Access Through Tenant Screening Protections. This free learning series will provide teams with the knowledge, tools and strategies needed to design and implement policies that prevent the harms of eviction records and tenant screening practices—and expand access to affordable housing.