Jeff Blum, Executive Director of USAction & USAction Education Fund



USAction and USAction Education Fund build power by uniting people locally and nationally – on-the-ground and online – to create an America that works for all of us. As Executive Director, Jeff Blum helps shape a programmatic agenda including the creation of some of the nation’s strongest progressive coalitions, making democracy real by organizing issue and civic engagement efforts to achieve social, racial, and economic justice. We work every day with real people, in real places, for real change.

Blum is currently a founder and co-chair of Health Care for America Now, which is leading the fight for quality, affordable health care for all. He served on the steering committee of Americans United to Protect Social Security, which led the successful campaign to stop Social Security privatization, and co-founded two coalitions to safely and responsibly end the war in Iraq. In 2006, USAction helped elect seven new Members of Congress who are members of USAction’s state affilates. In 2004, USAction Education Fund registered 570,000 new voters and conducted GOTV among 1.3 million voters in 2316 precincts.

Blum’s experience in grassroots organizing is extensive. He founded and directed Pennsylvania Citizen Action, where he helped lead successful campaigns to reform the state’s public utility law, create a toxics right to know law and expand access to generic drugs for senior citizens. He has also worked for the Peoples’ Coalition for Peace and Justice, Massachusetts Fair Share, People for the American Way (where he co-coordinated the campaign to establish AmeriCorps), Surface Transportation Policy Project, Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Citizens Fund; and was Transportation Policy Director for Citizen Action, where he led the first-ever national campaign to promote public transit and Amtrak in the 1997 highway law reauthorization. Blum has also served as President of Maryland Citizen Action, founder and member of the Advisory Board of the Jewish Fund for Justice and as a member of the board of Citizens for Tax Justice. He is on the executive committee of America Votes and is an advisor to Progress Now.

His life-long interest in public transportation issues has included organizing for better public transit in MA, MD and PA. In Pennsylvania, he ran for state Senate in 1990 and was the Northeast Pennsylvania Regional Director of the Clinton/Gore Campaign in 1992. He has a BSN from Boston University and has attended the University of Chicago and the University of Warwick, England. He and his wife, the writer Ellen Cassedy, reside in Takoma Park, MD, and have two children.