The Arc of Justice Network (AJN) follows in the footsteps of the Justice for All Network (JFAN), founded in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world and forced most of us to hibernate. For the fortunate 80% of us with broadband access, the magic of Zoom technology allowed us to connect and reconnect. For the next three semesters, I taught my Politics of Consumerism, 1968: Year Without End, and Berlin Hot, Berlin Cold, 1914-1949 at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
On Sunday’s, for the next five years, our fifteen-member strategy group — what one of our members called “a think tank with a heart” — soon adopted the title Justice for All Network, to match our deep commitment to achieving Universal Transformational Justice (UTJ), inspired by the United Nations’ unanimously-adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), on December 10, 1948.
The JFAN group went through several iterations until early January 2025, when it quietly and informally disbanded, following the election of Trump 2.0. JFAN’s legacy, however, lives on, as I partnered with long-time political friend and author of The Bottom Up Revolution, Rob Kall, to build a justice-centered answer to the 55-year right-wing Master Plan (see David Sirota’s book by the same name), aka the 1971 “Powell Memo.” Louis Powell, whose dynamic blueprint to capture major American institutions (i.e., political, judicial, military, media, academic), on behalf of big business, was rewarded with a Nixon Supreme Court appointment in 1972. The Powell Memo set in motion the establishment of unified and coordinated think tanks, legislative “white papers,” communications, electoral campaigns, and pro-corporate court-packing – in the form of The Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Fox News, the Southern Strategy, and the Federalist Society. Fast forward to the 2024 election, when the latest iteration of the Powell Memo, entitled Project 2025, came to light.
For those of us alert to the five-decade growth of neoliberalism and neoconservatism – the pro-corporate domestic and foreign policy ideology and agenda – urgently warned those who would listen that Project 2025 represented an existential threat to our already fragile democratic institutions should Trump and the GOP prevail on November 4th. Having secured the trifecta (SCOTUS, Senate, and House), Trump 2.0 began assembling a cabinet of loyalists and unqualified sycophants: Hegseth, Patel, RFK JR., et al. Not surprisingly, the minority Democrats lurched forward leaderless, rudderless, and strategy-less. (Today, seven weeks out from the November 3rd midterm election, very little has changed for the Democrats, other than putting almost all of their resources and activities into the hopes of winning back majority control of the House and/or Senate. Notably, there is nothing approaching a strategy beyond 11/03, even assuming they win one or both chambers, except for loose discussion about holding “accountability” hearings and ongoing legal challenges to Trump and GOP attacks on institutions, norms, and traditions. There is no unity on a domestic or foreign policy agenda.)
So, immediately after the malignant narcissist officially returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, Rob Kall and I started up what would become the Arc of Justice Alliance. The threads that had coursed through JFAN’s work in the form of shared vision, shared values, and shared mission (see below) continue to flow through the Arc of Justice Alliance infrastructure (to connect and coordinate individuals and organizations) and, now, as of September 11, 2026, even more intentionally, pulsate with the parallel and complementary strategic, alliance-building, and conference-holding work of the Arc of Justice Network.
Register at https://ArcOfJustice.net for the Nov 13-14 event in Philly.