 The process and system for a national initiative was proposed in the early 2000s by Mike Gravel, a former U.S.Senator, and the Democracy Foundation, a non-profit non-governmental organization.The set of proposals, referred to by its proponents as the National Initiative for Democracy (and later renamed National Citizens Initiative for Democracy in 2012), gathered endorsements from Ralph Nader, author, activist and former independent candidate for President of the United States; Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, political activist and author; Tom Atlee, author of "The Tao of Democracy" and co-director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence Institute; and Howard Zinn, author of the bestseller "A People's History of the United States".