Josh Silver is the co-founder and director of RepresentUs, a post-partisan, nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to build the movement that fixes America's corrupt political system. Silver formerly served as CEO and co-founder of Free Press, an "activist group that promotes accountability journalism and Internet openness." He served as the director of development for a cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution, and was the campaign manager of the successful 1998 "Clean Elections" ballot measure in Arizona. He has published widely on democracy, media, telecommunications, campaign finance and a range of other public policy issues. Silver has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and in most major media outlets. He speaks nationally on democracy and issues of money in politics.
Background
Silver was born in New York, NY and grew up in Ashfield and Shelburne, Massachusetts. His mother, Genie Zeiger, an essayist, poet, and creative writing teacher, died in 2009. His father, Carl Silver, is a clinical psychologist in Western Massachusetts. Josh Silver has one sister. In 1995 Josh Silver was on a river trip in Peru with a friend, Patchen Miller, when they were ambushed and shot; Silver was seriously wounded but survived; Miller did not.
Silver posits that a broken and corrupt political system has a paralyzing effect on nearly every issue. He advocates using the term “corruption” to describe the combined influence of lobbying, the “revolving door,” and campaign contributions, as well as broken election laws that foster extremism and block competition. Silver sees this corruption as afflicting politicians of both parties. Silver argues that past democracy reform efforts have failed partly because they were overly focused on appealing to the political Left and/or overly focused on passing reform legislation through Congress; he points out that members of Congress, who have achieved their positions under current election and campaign finance laws, are unlikely to approve legislation that would change those laws in order to increase political competition and/or limit the influence of the special interests and moneyed donors who have financed their political careers. Silver advocates a grassroots campaign of citizen-led legislative lobbying and ballot initiatives passed at the city and state level to fix policy locally while building momentum towards national reform. The organization he co-founded and directs, RepresentUs, was established to support these grassroots anti-corruption efforts.
