Lauren Windsor is the executive producer
and creator of
The Undercurrent,
a grassroots political web-show for investigative and field reporting.
Occupy Wall Street One Year Anniversary, Sept. 17, 2012: Interview with organizer Justin Wedes, first day of shooting The Undercurrent.
The Undercurrent is
sponsored by
American Family Voices.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Lauren became engaged in activism, starting a political blog called Lady Libertine. As the Occupy Wall Street movement gained momentum, she volunteered for the Occupy LA media team, and became a protest junkie, filming events across the country.
In 2012 on the one year anniversary of Occupy, Lauren launched The Undercurrent with The Young Turks Network.
The original pitch for the show was to Current Television, to create a grassroots political reporting program with two citizen journalist anchors in New York and Los Angeles, and correspondents reporting from Occupy sites across the country. Hence the name The Undercurrent.
Current TV passed and shortly thereafter was sold to Al Jazeera, but The Young Turks decided to move forward with a scaled-down version of the concept for YouTube. Lauren would be the host, reporter, editor, and producer, and the Turks would provide graphics, financial, and technical support. Many thanks go to Steve Oh, Tim Collins, Sky Adams, Kimani David, and Messiah Rhodes in those early years!
March 20, 2013, Beyond Coal Campaign: Questioning then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on fracking.
The mission of The Undercurrent has always been to provide on-the-ground insight from legislators and leading advocates from across the ideological spectrum, from a progressive point of view. Issue areas of focus are Wall Street reform, money in politics, and climate change. A year into the show, Lauren accepted a job offer to be the creative director for American Family Voices, a progressive non-profit in Washington, DC that works on economic issues affecting the lower and middle classes, with a particular focus on Wall Street reform... yay, synergy! Accordingly, AFV would become the primary sponsor for The Undercurrent.
Lauren is now the executive director of American Family Voices, and The Undercurrent has been going strong for more than eight years. Lauren’s work has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, Politico, and many other outlets, and she has appeared on Current Television, RT, Thom Hartmann TV and Radio, The Young Turks, and the Background Briefing with Ian Masters.
The Koch donor retreat audio recordings were published in coordination with The Nation, Huffington Post, and Salon.
Broadcast and cable news, and print and digital publications across the country reported on them,
including The New York Times, below.
Sept. 10, 2014: Questioning Sen. Mitch McConnell about statements made at the Koch brothers retreat.
The Undercurrent's investigative reporting on the Koch brothers’ summer donor retreat in 2014, breaking several hours of audio tapes from key Senate candidates, was one of the biggest political stories of the year. That work was featured in the New York Times bestseller "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" by Jane Mayer.
You can read Lauren's editorial work at LaurenWindsor.com.
July 2015: With Charles Koch
at the summer Koch donor retreat in Dana Point, CA.
Dec. 2015: Reporting from the COP 21 Climate Change Summit in Paris.
July 2016: At the RNC with Tim Phillips, president of Koch brothers group Americans for Prosperity.
July 2017: Asking Rep. Jan Schakowsky whether she supports Medicare for All.
