Powering a Political Revolution, North Dakota's Non-Partisan League

In this episode, Chris Mitchell, the director of our Community Broadband Networks initiative, interviews David Morris, the co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the director of the Public Good initiative about the history behind North Dakota's Non-Partisan League. In this podcast, Morris goes into detail on the League's political influence and how their policies set North Dakota on a trajectory of local ownership and a tradition of fighting concentrated economic power. He also notes that North Dakotans are still fending off challenges from major banks and pharmaceutical chains, and that the tradition of local ownership is strong throughout the state. "This is an example of effective organizing that had an impact," says Morris. "There are much more examples of that than there are top-down, 'somebody created a great idea somewhere in Congress or the White House' and they implemented it. It's almost always pressure from the grassroots level that moves us forward."