The CCPC Story
How We Started
CCPC was formed in July of 2016 out of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. In January of 2016, we opened the first Bernie Sanders campaign office in Ohio at 11910 Detroit Ave. in Lakewood. That office has never closed. Today it is the office of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus and is still all volunteer staffed and all volunteer funded.
OUR MISSION AND Purpose
Built on the progressive agenda and values of Bernie’s Political Revolution, the mission of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus is to educate, organize and mobilize progressives to fight for economic, environmental, political, racial and social justice.
How We Create Change
We create change by bringing together causes and people from all over the county to fight for justice as one united voice. By engaging people and groups who are both new to activism and politics and seasoned organizers, we build coalitions that have the power to make change. Finally, we work to make activism inclusive and accessible to Black and Indigenous people of color, people with disabilities, women and the LGBTQIA community.
Our Work
Since 2016, we have worked hard to address injustices at the city, state and federal level. Here are some of our primary focuses since our founding:
Addressing wealth inequality including Medicare for All, Fight- for-15, and the Q referendum campaigns and the CLASH Lead Safe Initiative in 2019.
Electing progressive candidates in Cuyahoga County. Click here to view our current endorsed candidates.
Moving the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party in a more progressive direction and making it a more effective entity.
Strengthening local activism and organizations by forming partnerships and sharing information and opportunities to work together through our weekly newsletter.
CCPC Today
During the pandemic, we continued to accelerate our work on issues that affect wealth inequality including rent foreclosures, utility shut offs and advocating at the local, state and national level for stimulus packages and legislation that truly benefit those who were suddenly in need. We also continued to play an active role in efforts to address systemic racism through our work on the county jail and immigration.
The Future of CCPC
We look forward to building on our past accomplishments and will continue to seek new opportunities to educate, organize and mobilize around the values of the Political Revolution Bernie started in 2016. The economic devastation of the Pandemic has further revealed the deep economic and racist fissures in our society and is likely to produce an even greater number of wealth inequality and justice issues as this nation and our local communities attempt to recover. As a leader in Cuyahoga County, it is our duty to help wherever we can make a difference.
We have seven endorsed candidates on the ballot this November and hope to add to the growing number of CCPC-endorsed candidates who became elected officials. Included in this list is Chris Ronayne, who is running for Cuyahoga County Executive.
We are now firmly entrenched in the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. The next step is to make progressive changes in its bylaws and to change its culture so that it becomes a vibrant and activist party, not a mechanism for rubber stamp endorsements of insiders running for office as it has been in the past.
After the election of 2020 we had hoped to still be celebrating the end of the Trump Resistance period of our history. January 6 and the recent Supreme Court decisions overturning Roe v Wade, gutting environmental regulations and expanding gun rights have made it clear that Resistance is ongoing, and that fighting fascism needs to be a large part of our mission moving forward.
CCPC's past, present and future is the shadow of the late great activist Matt Kuhns.
Matt passed away in June of 2022. Matt was a large part of everything we did since our beginning in 2016. His memory will forever be entrenched in the soul of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus.
