The mission of The Progressive is to be a journalistic voice for peace and social justice at home and abroad. The magazine, its affiliates, and its staff steadfastly oppose militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, the disenfranchisement of the citizenry, poverty, and prejudice in all its guises. We champion peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy.

On January 9, 1909, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette founded La Follette’s Weekly to be "a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional."

In 1929, La Follette’s Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, and the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years.

For nine decades, The Progressive has been a courageous voice for democracy, peace, social justice, civil rights, civil liberties, and environmental awareness.

For nine decades, The Progressive has denounced corporate power and decried U.S. support for brutal regimes abroad.

The Progressive was in the forefront of the battle for women’s suffrage and for the abolition of child labor.

The Progressive led the fight to stay out of World War I.

The Progressive railed against the Palmer Raids in the early 1920s.

The Progressive championed the unemployed during the Depression.

The Progressive has opposed nuclear weapons from August 1945 to the present.

The Progressive, more than any other publication, helped to expose McCarthyism in the 50s.

Early on, The Progressive warned against U.S. involvement in Indochina.

The Progressive was a leading voice in the civil rights era, publishing the words of Martin Luther King Jr. five times in the 1960s.

In the 70s, The Progressive devoted attention to the environmental movement, kicking it off with a special Earth Day issue in 1970 entitled "The Crisis of Survival."

Then, in 1979, The Progressive won national attention for its article "The H-Bomb Secret: How we got it and why we’re telling it," which the U.S. government suppressed for six months. But The Progressive prevailed on this landmark First Amendment case.

In the 1980s, The Progressive published pathbreaking stories about U.S. support for death squads in Central America.

In the 1990s, The Progressive stood up for the rights of immigrants, women on welfare, gays and lesbians, prisoners, and other scapegoats.

The Progressive also campaigned tirelessly to end the economic sanctions on Iraq, prevent U.S. involvement in the Colombian civil war, adopt a sane policy toward drugs, and institute public funding of political campaigns.

During the George W. Bush Administration, The Progressive focused on his messianic militarism, his mendacious war against Iraq, the assault that he and John Ashcroft have leveled against our civil liberties, the ruinous dismantling of our regulatory system, and an economic policy shamelessly skewed toward the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of the rest of us.

Throughout the years, The Progressive has published leading social critics such as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Carl Sandburg, George Orwell, A.J. Muste, James Baldwin, I.F. Stone, June Jordan, Noam Chomsky, and Edward W. Said.

And The Progressive has opened its pages to liberal politicians such as Adlai Stevenson, J.W. Fulbright, George McGovern, Russ Feingold, Tammy Baldwin, Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders.

These days our contributors include David Barsamian, Kate Clinton, Susan Douglas, Will Durst, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eduardo Galeano, Nat Hentoff, Molly Ivins, Andrea Lewis, Fred McKissack, John Nichols, Adolph L. Reed, Jr., and Howard Zinn.

The Progressive is also known for its investigative reporting. Managing Editor Anne-Marie Cusac has won several national awards for her exposés of brutality behind bars, including the prestigious George Polk Award.

Since 1993, The Progressive, Inc., has been directing the Progressive Media Project, which distributes commentaries to newspapers around the country in an effort to diversify and democratize the debate.

In all of its activities, The Progressive, as it has since 1909, strives to put forward ideas that will help bring about a more just society and a more peaceful, humane world.