Step Up Louisiana

The group advocates for the critical race-theory influenced concept of “equity,” stating it seeks to promote “equity and justice in our schools and workplaces through voter education, advocacy, and direct action.”  ² Moreover, the group claims to operate year-round canvassing campaigns focused on mobilizing voters around economic, education, and climate issues.  ³

Background

Step Up Louisiana is a left-of-center advocacy group focused on voter mobilization, racial issues, and economic issues. Step Up Louisiana claimed that it viewed “every issue through a racial justice lens.” Moreover, the group claimed that “economic and education justice in the South is fundamentally a fight against structural racism.”  ¹

The group advocates for the critical race-theory influenced concept of equity, stating it seeks to promote “equity and justice in our schools and workplaces through voter education, advocacy, and direct action.”  ²

Activities

Step Up Louisiana organizes various campaigns centered around economic, labor, and racial issues.  ¹

The Fall For Liberation was a 2024 campaign of Step Up Louisiana that was developed in conjunction with the Center for Popular Democracy and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. The goal of the campaign was to raise a large organizing campaign based around 43 “Organizers in Training,” who took part in 12-week training program. Issues on which the organization’s campaign focused included climate, education, and labor issues. Moreover, the group sought to establish a “Worker’s Bill of Rights” for New Orleans. The model of the campaign was for organizers in training to “engage their own networks, creating a ripple effect with a goal of creating a voter mobilization structure of more than 12,000 Louisianans.” ⁴  The group claimed that the results of the campaign included having knocked on over 31,000 doors, made almost 46,000 calls, and sending around 41,000 texts. The group stated that its effort to pass a “Worker’s Bill of Rights” passed, winning around 80 percent of the vote.  ⁵

Step Up Louisiana ran year-round canvassing campaigns focused on mobilizing voters around economic, education, and climate issues.  ³

Funding

In 2025, the Ford Foundation gave $850,000 to Step Up Louisiana, which was to be paid out by February 2029.  ⁶

In 2024, Step Up Louisiana received $300,000 from the Windward Fund, an organization that at the time was under the management of Arabella Advisors, a noted left-of-center orchestrator of so-called “dark-money” funding. ⁷

In 2024, Step Up Louisiana received $60,000 from Tides Advocacy, as well as $170,000 in 2024 and $75,000 in 2023 from the Tides Foundation; both of these organizations are part of the large left-of-center Tides passthrough grantmaking network. ^{8  9}

In 2023, Step Up Louisiana received $175,000 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. ¹⁰

People

As of May 2026, co-founder Maria Harmon was  co-executive director of Step Up Louisiana.  ¹¹ She took up the position in October 2016. Previously, she was a community organizer for the Micah Project-PICO, a community organizer for Democracy Prep Public Schools, a field organizer for Campaign for Louisiana, a graduate assistant for PICO LA, and an intern for the Louisiana Democratic Party.  ¹²

Co-founder Benjamin Zucker ¹¹ was a co-director of the organization from January 2017 to April 2026. As of April 2026, Zucker was the executive director of the New Economic Justice Organizing Project. Previously, he was a union organizer for Fight for 15.  ¹³