Over the past month, Mediamouse.org has been hard at work updating and revising the Progressive Directory of Western Michigan and are excited to be re-launching it.

It is a project that we inherited from the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID) back in 2007 when GRIID moved to Mediamouse.org. In the years since the Directory was initially created in 2003, it had become quite out of date, with many of the groups that are listed becoming inactive or contact information changing.

However, we are pleased to announce that the Directory has been completely updated and revised. We now list over 100 groups in the West Michigan area that are working broadly on progressive/left social change efforts. It is obviously quite difficult to determine what is "progressive" or "left", but we believe that the groups listed are doing generally solid work that will be of interest to people looking to get involved in social change work.

We also have written a new mission statement that is more consistent with what we are doing here at Mediamouse.org: "The Progressive Directory of Western Michigan connects people with groups that are working towards a more egalitarian world/community with the goal of encouraging folks to get involved." We are hoping that the Directory will be one vehicle through which people will get involved in local activism.

Moreover, we have changed the way the Directory is maintained. Rather than being an "opt-in" Directory in which groups are required to join a listserv and participate in networking that previously (although not for several years) included monthly meetings, we now just list mission statements and general contact information in order to keep the information more current.

Please check out the directory and add any groups that we may have missed.