Ending America's longest war · 2019–2021
Ending the war in Afghanistan was popular with voters and untouchable in Washington. Alexander led the campaign that changed that, stage by stage. Common Defense's narrative work made "end the forever wars" a demand candidates had to answer; seven presidential candidates signed the pledge, and the commitment became a plank in the 2020 Democratic platform. He co-led a first-of-its-kind coalition of foreign policy advocacy organizations that nominated 100 progressives for appointments in the incoming administration, more than 25 of whom were chosen. In the endgame, he led the outside pressure campaign and negotiated directly with the White House ahead of President Biden's decision to withdraw. George Packer's account in The Atlantic opens with the White House calling Alexander to deliver the news; Alexander Ward's The Internationalists tells the full story.
The first impeachment · 2019
Swing-district members of Congress believed impeachment would end their careers. Alexander directed the campaign that gave them cover to act anyway: identifying the decisive members, organizing constituents in their districts, and making examples out of opponents that became a national news cycle. The House initiated impeachment after the exact frontline members of Congress the campaign targeted flipped and came out in support in a joint op-ed in The Washington Post just days afterwards.
Progressives for Harris · 2024
When President Biden withdrew and the Democratic ticket changed overnight, the progressive movement had no shared channel to respond. Alexander organized and bottom-lined the Progressives for Harris national call in five days: 37 speakers including senators, members of Congress, nine union presidents, and state and local officials. The call drew 550,000 views, raised $55,000, and generated 20,000 volunteer shift sign-ups — converting a moment of uncertainty into unity and volunteer capacity at the start of the general election. As the lead organizer of the coalition and stage manager for the call itself, Alexander navigated still-raw tensions and divides within the left over issues like Gaza, and built unity towards a common purpose.
Leadership at scale
Alexander has held senior command of large organizing operations for a decade. At NextGen America he led the 2024 national field program: eight state teams, hundreds of staff organizers, a unionized workforce, and a data system that tracked registration goals down to the individual organizer. At Common Defense he built and managed the staff from zero, ran multi-million-dollar budgets across three legal entities, and later served on the board overseeing a 40-person unionized organization.
Early on AI · 2023–present
Alexander started working on AI regulation in 2023, as Senior Advisor to New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, chair of the Senate Technology Committee. He has spent the past year in it full-time, serving as the founding Head of the Left Coalition at Humans First, then helping incubate its successor organization Irreplaceable; convening town halls in Boston and New York; briefing members of Congress; and making the case in national media that AI politics is bottom versus top, not left versus right. The industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep itself unregulated. Alexander's work is about organizing the people on the other end of that money.
Stopping the ICE deployment in Florida · 2025
When active-duty Marines were ordered to support ICE operations in Florida, Alexander organized the veteran opposition: a large-scale open letter from Florida veterans, public testimony, and a run of pieces in local media. The Marine unit's deployment to the Everglades detention site was revoked, and Orange County ended its agreement to hold ICE detainees. A statewide fight, won with local organizing.
Fairness for Veterans Act · 2016
He helped craft the legislative strategy that carried the act through a gridlocked Congress, reforming discharge appeals for veterans with service-related trauma.
Common Defense · 2016–2021
Co-founded and built the largest grassroots organization of progressive veterans in the country: 250,000 subscribers, a million dollars in grassroots donations, and a base of veteran volunteers no one had organized before. He still serves on its board.
Hand the microphone to the people affected
When the administration banned transgender troops, his team made trans veterans the national spokespeople and found plaintiffs for the ACLU's legal challenge. The pattern runs through all his work: the most credible voice in any fight is the person living it.
Climate accountability · 2024–2025
At Public Citizen, he worked with litigators pursuing fossil fuel companies, defended "make polluters pay" laws, and helped lead the lobbying that stopped a civil immunity waiver for Big Oil.