Courage Campaign

The Courage Campaign is a progressive grassroots advocacy organization based in California. With more than 750,000 members, the group works on a variety of progressive causes, such as LGBT equality (including the repeal of California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act) and economic issues such as health insurance reform, tax reform, and job creation. They also organize around California ballot measures, leading the online efforts to successfully pass Proposition 30 and defeating Proposition 32 in 2012. The chair and founder of Courage Campaign is Rick Jacobs.

The organization relies heavily on online and grassroots organizing methods, including email, Facebook, and Twitter. Courage’s EqualityOnTrial.com, founded to cover the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial when the courtroom forbade live television coverage, is the #1 Google search result for “Prop 8 Trial” and has received over five million views and 150,000 comments. Courage Campaign has produced a number of videos that have gone viral, including “Fidelity, Don’t Divorce Us” a four-minute video featuring same-sex couples who were married before the passage of Proposition 8 in which each couple makes the same request of the California Supreme Court: "Don't divorce us." The video is accompanied by the song Fidelity by Regina Spektor and to date has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

Their efforts have been praised by former Speaker and current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who said of Jacobs and Courage on September 22, 2011, “Rick knows this better than anybody – we can do just so much in the Congress with our inside maneuvering. Without the outside mobilization, we cannot do the best possible job. So thank you, Rick Jacobs, thank you Courage, for making the future better.”