History

Starting in 2002, we were founded as FRESC (Front Range Economic Strategy Center). Over the following decade, we built power for working families by advocating for living wages, jobs with benefits and community resources in municipal-level policy campaigns, including the Campaign for Responsible Development, a national model for winning community benefits agreements in redevelopment projects, piloted at the Gates Rubber factory and Denver Union Station. Over the ensuing decade, UNE solidified a community organizing model rooted in basebuilding, winning campaigns for working people and their families including increases to the minimum wage, combatting wage theft and ensuring community voices were included in public planning processes for redevelopments and housing programs.

In 2017, the organization transformed into United for a New Economy (UNE). Our sibling organization, UNE Action, was launched in 2016 to support UNE’s work with political organizing. UNE co-chaired the committee to pass paid family medical leave (FAMLI) in Colorado in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And in 2024 UNE members, along with partners at Colorado Homes for All, testified in front of the state legislature to pass one of the strongest For Cause Eviction policies in the country. 

Our home office is located in Commerce City with our work focusing in Adams County, especially Westminster and Commerce City. Our members are primarily low-income, people of color (POC) and immigrant people, who have been consistently marginalized and most disproportionately impacted by social and economic oppression. We activate and mobilize our communities and audiences to take action on the priorities identified by UNE’s membership as a whole.