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Tuesday, November 09, 2004 7:15:42 AM
Right Wing Organizations
For over 20 years, People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF) has countered the Right Wing’s efforts to roll back, or stop, social justice progress and to reshape government and society to its liking. Our research center monitors the power of right-wing groups, documenting their connections, funding, and reporting on their political influence.
Right-wing organizations come in all shapes and sizes, from think tanks to legal groups, local and national lobbying organizations, foundations and media forums. At any given moment, the Right is at work in our public school systems, courthouses, in Congress and state assemblies. At the same time, right-wing groups are reaching huge audiences through media outlets they own or influence—promoting regressive policies that seek to drive wedges between and among Americans.
These often single-issue groups have the ability to create multi-issue networks that can respond on a wide range of issues. People For the American Way Foundation’s library has files on over 800 groups and almost 300 individuals documenting their activities and providing information about their efforts to reshape society. This section presents a small portion of that information.
Accuracy in Academia
Alliance Defense Fund
American Center for Law and Justice
American Conservative Union
American Enterprise Institute
American Family Association
American Legislative Exchange Council
American Life League
Americans for Tax Reform
Bradley Foundation, Lynne and Harry
Campaign for Working Families PAC
Cato Institute
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Christian Coalition of America
Club for Growth
Collegiate Network
Concerned Women for America
Eagle Forum
Eagle Forum Collegians
Family Research Council
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Focus on the Family
FRCAction
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Heritage Foundation
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace
Independent Women's Forum
Institute for Justice
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Leadership Institute
Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Madison Project
National Association of Scholars
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Right to Life Committee
National Taxpayers Union
State Policy Network
Students for Academic Freedom
Traditional Values Coalition
Young America's Foundation
Accuracy in Academia
4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 330
Washington, DC 20008
www.academia.org
Founded: by Reed Irvine in 1985
Executive Director: Malcolm “Mal” Kline
Finances: $285, 643 (2002 budget)
Publications: Campus Report, a monthly newspaper
Affiliated with: Accuracy in Media
AIA's Principal Issues:
AIA’s Activities:
AIA's History:
Quotes about AIA:
AIA's Principal Issues:
Main issues: combating Title IX, multicultural education, and abortion, and fighting “liberal” ideas that are offensive to right-wing students. Asserts that many colleges and universities are openly dedicated to “indoctrinating” students with liberal or communist philosophy.
AIA seeks to expose “the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech.”
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AIA’s Activities:
AIA monitors and documents “[t]he use of classroom and/or university resources to indoctrinate students.” AIA’s monthly publication Campus Report focuses on “three issues: the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech.”
Sponsors an annual “Conservative University” conference. Recent speakers include: John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Lori Waters of Eagle Forum and Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips.
Sells books such as Ann Coulter’s Treason,Why the Left Hates America by Daniel Flynn and Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America by Kenneth Timmerman.
AIA has characterized the NAACP’s founder, W.E.B. Du Bois, as the “Father of Bad Multiculturalism.” According to AIA, “W.E.B. Du Bois is the father of the multiculturalism that is currently pervasive on American campuses. This is a multiculturalism that is…preoccupied with the negative aspects, both real and imagined, of our own culture.”
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AIA's History:
Founded by Reed Irvine to monitor college and university professors for teaching “disinformation” and “liberal” bias. The group clamed that 10,000 known Marxists teach on university campuses nationwide.
Accuracy, Fairness and Balance in Higher Education” published in 1985. According to AIA “youth are being indoctrinated” on liberal arts campuses.
AIA will investigate reports from students of seriously inaccurate information being imparted by classroom instructors—either through lectures or required reading material.
AIA will try to discuss the matter with the teacher to determine whether or not the complaint is valid and to see if the teacher would be willing to make a correction.
In cases where the professor declines this opportunity, AIA will employ other means to call the error to the attention of students and others who may be interested, including AIA supporters throughout the country.
In the eighties the group’s monitoring campaign caused widespread controversy on higher education campuses, eliciting fear and anger among academics and students.
President Reagan’s Secretary of Education, William Bennett, called Irvine’s academic watchdog group “a bad idea.”
Malcolm Kline was named AIA’s new executive director in fall 2003. He worked at the National Journalism Center for twenty years. Kline has written for: Newsmax.com, National Catholic Register, Catholic News Service, and Washington Times’s Insight magazine.
AIA’s former Executive Director was Daniel Flynn, author of Why the Left Hates America.
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Quotes about AIA:
“Accuracy in Academia plays an indispensable role in fighting the political distortions and biases that pass for knowledge on today’s college campuses. I am looking forward to being part of a campaign to challenge students to think more accurately and broad-mindedly about the fundamental issues that affect their lives.” -- Dinesh D’Souza, author and right-wing speaker
“Accuracy in Academia is reaching the leaders of tomorrow with the truth about the sexual revolution ignited in the 60s and raging today all about them. This awareness is critical to properly equipping the leaders of tomorrow. Accuracy in Academia is a lone voice carrying the message of truth and hope to a generation that seldom, if ever, is able to access the truth about America's crucial and fragile social constructs that have made us free. I am proud to stand with AIA as they relentlessly seek to provide to America's college student America's measured and true standard for a free society's smallest building block, marriage and family.” -- Judith A. Reisman, a right-wing speaker and author, published Crafting “Gay” Children: An Inquiry into the Abuse of Vulnerable Youth via Government Schooling & Mainstream Media in 2001.
“If sanity ever returns to the academic world, part of the credit will go to a small newspaper called Campus Report, which has exposed innumerable incidents of brainwashing replacing education on college campuses, storm trooper tactics being accepted and rewarded by ‘responsible’ college administrators, and academic and behavioral double standards being applied to the group to which one belongs, rather than one’s own behavior or performance.” -- Thomas Sowell, author and syndicated columnist
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Alliance Defense Fund
15333 N. Pima Road, Suite 165
Scottsdale AZ 85260
Phone: 1-800-TELL-ADF
www.alliancedefensefund.org
ADF’s Founders:
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ
Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts
Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family
Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries
Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media
Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)
President and General Counsel: Alan Sears
Date of founding: 1994
Finances: $15,411,093 (2001 budget)
Alliance Defense Fund’s Principal Issues:
Alliance Defense Fund’s Background:
Alan Sears’ Background:
Alliance Defense Fund’s Principal Issues:
ADF is a Christian legal firm established by more than 30 Christian ministries to help defend “family values” and work against the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).
ADF defines itself by its ability to strategize and coordinate with lawyers all over the United States. Lawyers who sign up for their “Blackstone Legal Institute” are expected to donate 450 pro bono hours over a three year period.
ADF has coordinated over 400 lawyers, over 125 right-wing organizations, and many conservative ministries on behalf of ADF-defined Christian legal issues.
ADF has been involved with 16 “victories” before the Supreme Court, including such high profile cases as Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network. ADF has had success in anti-gay cases all over the US, from Alaska to Massachusetts.
ADF has linked over 125 groups to create a combined effort to fight issues and on behalf of their views. ADF has brought together attorneys and allied legal groups to help develop a national strategy on controversial social issues, for example it has worked to develop a national strategy to “protect marriage” across the United States after Vermont's decision to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.
In addition to organizing lawyers and ministries, ADF also trains and recruits and provides grants to support legal cases as well as pro-bono assistance.
ADF also defends the right of Christians to “share the gospel” in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian.
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Alliance Defense Fund’s Background:
Unique to ADF is their collective of high-power founders, including wealthy right-wing organizations such as Dobson’s Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries.
The ADF embodies the beliefs of its founders, harnessing the efforts of a cadre of right-wing groups that have hundreds of million dollars at their disposal. All of these groups are influential members of the Right, they are pro-life and anti-gay and their ultimate goal is to see the law and government of the US enshrined with conservative Christian principles.
The relationship between ADF and it’s founders is one of mutual self-interest, the ADF has access to the resources and networking of these large organizations, meanwhile the large organizations have an endless supply of lawyers at their command.
ADF’s strength goes beyond their budget, and extends much further due to their influence with well-funded religious-right groups.
Two issues that all of the founders have in common is their work against the right to abortion and gays and lesbians. They are particularly tireless in attacking any and every attempt by gays and lesbians to have families, domestic partnership or civil unions, or be protected from discrimination in employment or housing.
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Alan Sears’ Background:
Alan Sears was the Executive Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under President Ronald Reagan. Sears was also a federal prosecutor for former Secretary of Interior Don Hodel (Hodel is a former Christian Coalition President).
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American Center for Law and Justice
P.O. Box 64429
1000 Regent University Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23467
www.aclj.org
Founder: Pat Robertson, founder of the 700 Club, Christian Coalition, Operation Blessing, Regent University
Date established: 1990
Executive Director/Chief Counsel: Jay Sekulow
Publications: Newsletter, education pamphlets, and reports.
Annual Budget: $15.9 million (2003)
Employees: 50
Media: Mr. Sekulow has been a popular guest on nationally televised news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Sekulow is also a frequent contributor and is often quoted in articles published in USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times.
Radio: “Jay Sekulow Live!” is a daily weekday radio show that is aired on over 140 radio stations in the U.S.
ACLJ’s Principal Issues:
ACLJ’s Activities:
About Jay Sekulow:
ACLJ Quotes:
ACLJ’s Principal Issues:
ACLJ is a legal advocacy group “dedicated to defending and advancing religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the two-parent, marriage-bound family.”
ACLJ is a strong supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.
ACLJ has been involved with more than 30 cases before the United States Supreme Court and has been successful in many of its lawsuits.
ACLJ is a strong supporter of school vouchers and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 2002 Cleveland voucher case before the Supreme Court.
The ACLJ supports the funding of faith-based social services, religious proclamations in the public domain, and often equates religious expression with patriotism. [10-9-01 news release]
ACLJ strongly opposes the right to legal, safe abortion and provides legal help to pro-life protesters who harass women seeking reproductive services.
The ACLJ challenges domestic partnership benefits for city and state employees, anti-discrimination ordinances that include sexual orientation, and generally fights against the right of gays and lesbians to be parents.
The ACLJ's legal services are free.
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ACLJ’s Activities:
ACLJ gives free legal advice and counsel and maintains a national Christian Affiliate Attorney list for referrals.
Two of the Supreme Court cases argued by Sekulow have become benchmark cases in the area of religious liberty litigation. In Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (496 US 226), Sekulow argued the right of public school students to form Bible clubs and religious organizations on their school campuses. In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, Sekulow defended the rights of religious groups to use public school property for religious meetings after hours.
A few other examples of ACLJ cases: ACLJ defended a group of parents who drove a transsexual teacher out of her job in Minnesota, has supporting a Kmart pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills, and has pursued litigation over various claims that children are being told that they cannot pray on school grounds or talk about their religion.
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About Jay Sekulow:
Jay Sekulow helped draft the Defense of the Marriage Act, which passed both houses and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. DOMA allows states to reject the legitimacy of same-sex marriage licenses awarded in other states, although, to this day no state offers marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Sekulow helped draft DOMA “at the request of several pro-family legislators, and gave expert testimony to both houses of Congress on this bill.” (Jay Sekulow, direct mail, March 1997)
The National Law Journal has named twice Sekulow one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers” in the United States. (1994, 1997)
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ACLJ Quotes:
ACLJ Quotes:
“This great American institution [Boy Scouts of America] has come under attack from homosexual activists—who may well set their sights on your church next.” --Jay Sekulow, direct mail, March 2000
“Can you imagine, that in public schools of America today, students are being taught that homosexual conduct, which in many states is still deemed illegal, is not only a viable alternative lifestyle, but is actually equal to heterosexual relationships?” --Jay Sekulow, January 2, 1997, Danbury News-Times
“Right now we have fully functioning offices connected with our national office—which is here in Virginia Beach [on Regents University Campus]—in Washington, DC, Atlanta, Kentucky, Mobile, and Phoenix. We also have close to 600 affiliates around the country, and are on the verge of launching our first eight state chapters, with the goal of opening 50 state chapters within the next 24 months.” Executive Director Keith Fournier, Human Events, December 20, 1996
[Updated April 2004]
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American Conservative Union
1007 Cameron Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
www.conservative.org or www.cpac.org
Founders: William F. Buckley, Jr., L. Brent Bozell, Frank S. Meyer, John Chamberlain, Jameson Campaigne, Sr., John Ashbrook, Katherine St. George, and Robert E. Bauman
Chairman: David A. Keene
Established: December 1964
Finances: $4,562,084 (1998)
Board members include: Senator Jesse Helms, Grover Norquist, Morton Blackwell, and L. Brent Bozell III.
Affiliated with: American Conservative Union Foundation, American Conservative Union PAC, Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
Publications: Battle Line, quarterly newsletter, along with reports, and legislative guides for Congress.
ACU’s Principle Issues:
ACU’s Activities:
ACU History:
Quotes about ACU:
ACU’s Principle Issues:
ACU defines itself as the nation's oldest conservative lobbying organization.
ACU is a multi-issue, umbrella organization that specializes in grassroots organizing as well as organizing and supporting conservative leadership.
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ACU’s Activities:
Publishing Congress members ratings according to ACU’s conservative standards.
Since 1974, ACU has hosted the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). CPAC is the largest conservative conference in the United States.
CPAC speakers have included: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Dick Armey, Jesse Helms, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Senator Sam Brownback, Bob Barr, Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, William Bennett, Ralph Reed, columnist George Will, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Grover Norquist, Charlton Heston of the NRA, Condoleezza Rice, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Oliver North, Rev. Lou Sheldon of Traditional Values Coalition, and many other conservative pundits, writers, and politicians.
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ACU History:
In 1974, ACU established and sponsored the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Reagan was a “long-time friend and ally” of ACU. In 1975, ACU asked Ronald Reagan to run for president. ACU takes credit for Reagan getting elected to the presidency in 1980, claiming they originally asked Reagan to run in 1975.
ACU and its state affiliates established one of the first independent campaigns on behalf of a presidential candidate. ACU orchestrated the campaign to elect Reagan, running hundreds of radio and newspaper ads comparing candidate Reagan to President Ford, and calling Reagan a conservative visionary and Ford a liberal.
Reagan’s victory in 1980 is credited to the ACU as the campaign that put his name in the public eye.
ACU launched "Project One Million" in 1981, seeking at least one million backers of a "Petition of Support" for Reagan's economic plan.
In 1992, the ACU Board of Directors endorsed Patrick Buchanan's presidential candidacy.
During the Clinton presidency, ACU remained a strong, vocal critic on issues such as health care. ACU’s director Donald Devine led a country-wide bus tour, called the “National Health Care Truth Tour.” Hilary Clinton herself stated that ACU’s activities were largely responsible for the defeat of the health plan proposal in 1993.
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Quotes about ACU:
“I’m grateful to David Keene and the members of the ACU from coast-to-coast for all of their help this year. The ACU has been an invaluable partner in advancing our compassionate, conservative agenda.” – President George W. Bush (ACU’s website)
[Updated September 2002]
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American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
www.aei.org and www.theamericanenterprise.org (American Enterprise Magazine)
Established: 1943
President/Executive Director:Christopher DeMuth
Finances: $24.4 million (2000)
Employees: 50 resident scholars and fellows
Publications: Monthly newsletter, dozens of books and hundreds of articles and reports each year, and a glossy policy magazine, The American Enterprise.
American Enterprise Institute’s Principal Issues:
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a think tank for conservatives, neoconservatives, and conservative libertarians.
Areas of interest include: America’s “culture war,” domestic policy and federal spending, education reform, neoconservatism, affirmative action, welfare reform.
President George W. Bush has appointed over a dozen people from AEI to senior positions in his administration. AEI claims that this is more than any other research institution.
American Enterprise Activities:
AEI sponsors and participates in debates and lectures on many issues.
AEI scholars have testified before Congress on a variety of issues.
Several AEI scholars have written articles in favor of government censorship of the arts.
Scholar Michael Novak has argued that prayer belongs in public schools and that it doesn’t violate the establishment clause.
AEI scholars have advocated federally-funded school voucher programs.
AEI's Background and History:
Most of AEI’s Board of Directors are CEOs of major companies, including ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, and Dow Chemicals.
Big donors include the top conservative foundations, including Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Corporate supporters have included: General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Proctor & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries.
Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, was until recently on the board of trustees of American Enterprise Institute. Other famous former trustees include Vice President Dick Cheney.
AEI Fellows and Scholars List [partial list]:
Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee
David Frum, a presidential speechwriter for President Bush, contributing editor to the right-wing magazine Weekly Standard
Christina Hoff Sommers, anti-feminist crusader, author of “Who Stole Feminism? How Women Betrayed Women”
Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a book that asserted inherent intelligence differences between the races
Ben J. Wattenberg, host of PBS weekly show “Think Tank”
[Updated September 2002]
American Family Association
P.O. Box 2440, Tupelo, MS 38803
www.afa.net
Chairman/Founder: the Rev. Donald Wildmon
Vice President: Tim Wildmon (son of Donald Wildmon)
Date of founding: 1977
Membership: AFA claims over 500,000 members.
Finances: $11.4 million (2000)
Staff: About 100 employees and five full-time lawyers.
State chapters: State Directors in 21 states. Also has smaller chapters, number unknown.
Publications: “AFA Journal,” published monthly, with a circulation of 180,000.
Radio: AFA has its own 200-station network of radio stations across the United States.
Videos: AFA has produced “Excess Access,” “It’s Not Gay,” and “Suffer the Children” Television: AFA has appeared on the following shows: “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “MacNeill Lehrer Report,” “Nightline,” “The 700 Club,” “Meet the Press,” “Crossfire,” and “Focus on the Family.”
Formerly known as: National Federation for Decency
Affiliate groups: AFA Foundation, Center for Law & Policy, American Family Radio, and Agape Press
AFA’s principal issues:
AFA Activities:
Profiles on AFA Affiliates:
Other Legal Activities by AFA/CLP include:
AFA State Affiliates:
AFA Quotes:
AFA’s principal issues:
American Family Association targets the media and entertainment industry’s “attack” on “traditional family values.”
Two of the main duties that AFA assigns to itself are “promoting the centrality of God in American life” and “promoting the Christian ethic of decency.”
“Indecent” influences in American culture include: television, the separation of church and state, pornography, “the homosexual agenda,” premarital sex, legal abortion, the National Endowment for the Arts, gambling, unfiltered internet access in libraries, and the removal of school-sponsored religious worship from public schools.
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AFA Activities:
AFA produces the radio show, "AFA Report," a 30-minute feature available on about 1,200 local radio stations nationwide. AFA launched their broadcast ministry American Family Radio (AFR) in 1987. AFR has approximately 200 radio stations in 27 states across the country. According to American Family Radio, “AFR has built more stations in a shorter time than any other broadcaster in the history of broadcasting.” The AFA built their small radio empire by applying for “noncommercial educational licenses.” When the FCC refused to grant some the licenses the AFA sued the FCC in federal court arguing that to deny religious groups noncommercial broadcasting licenses violates their First Amendment and Equal Protection rights.
For over twenty years AFA’s primary activities have been organizing boycotts against sponsors of TV shows with “anti-Christian” messages and ideas.
AFA has created two websites,www.onemillionmoms.com and www.onemilliondads.com, to “help parents do something about the trash on TV” by organizing weekly on-line boycotts of offensive advertising or television shows.
Among its hundreds of boycott targets over the years are "Cheers," "The Johnny Carson Show," "Saturday Night Live," "Roseanne," "Nightline," "NYPD Blue," and “Ellen.” AFA has called for widespread boycotts of all businesses that “promote” pornography, homosexuality, or other forms of “indecency.”
A major target has been Disney and its subsidiaries. According to the group “Disney’s attack on America’s families has become so blatent, [sic] so intentional, so obvious, that American Family Association has called for a boycott of all Disney products until such time as this activity ceases.”
Other boycott targets include American Airlines for their policy of providing domestic partner benefits and K-mart for selling music that has a “parental advisory warning” sticker, even to adults.
Donald Wildmon has called for the shutdown of PBS and as a result of the AFA's campaign, many state legislatures reduced funding for public broadcasting. The AFA spearheaded the attack on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the 1980’s, using direct mail and extensive print advertising to distort the NEA's record of sponsorship of the arts.
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Profiles on AFA Affiliates:
AFA Center for Law and Policy activities (CLP):
In 1990, the AFA established the AFA Center for Law & Policy as a litigation and public policy arm of the organization.
The Center for Law & Policy (CLP) is staffed by six full-time attorneys with a network of more than 400 affiliate lawyers. The CLP states that they provide representation to Christians in courts throughout the country, and advise state and federal legislators on constitutional, political and legal issues.
The CLP has been involved in several cases where they push for religious worship and symbols in public schools as well as the removal of curriculum that doesn’t reflect “traditional family values.”
Recently AFA has spearheaded a campaign to have their “In God We Trust” posters posted in every classroom, in every school in the United States. In 2001, the Mississippi state legislature passed a law requiring that each public school classroom, auditorium and cafeteria display a “In God We Trust” poster. However, when the Mississippi state legislature did not provide any funding for the bill, AFA/CLP volunteered to be the coordinator for the project. AFA/CLP is responsible for organizing and distributing 32,000 “In God We Trust” free posters in public schools in the state of Mississippi.
AFA/CLP has encouraged other states to follow Mississippi’s example, promising that anyone who may be afraid of a lawsuit would be defended by the AFA Center for Law & Policy for free. In 2001, AFA distributed 250,000 “In God We Trust” posters nationwide.
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Other Legal Activities by AFA/CLP include:
CLP represented the anti-gay group “Take Back Maryland” when they were accused of falsifying signatures for a petition to reverse an anti-discrimination bill that protected gays and lesbians from bias discrimination in employment and housing.
AFA filed lawsuits attempting to ban the curriculum, "Impressions," from public school classrooms on the grounds that it "promotes the religion of witchcraft."
AFA sponsored a rally in support of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama who refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom.
AFA Center for Law & Policy (CLP) won a lawsuit on behalf of pro-life protesters in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, over protest signs confiscated and held by city officials.
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AFA State Affiliates:
Many of AFA’s state chapters are very active on a state and local level. Gary Glenn of AFA Michigan has become a lightening rod in the state for controversy over civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. Glenn has opposed anti-discrimination policies of several Michigan cities by asserting that if passed, public bathrooms and showers would become co-ed. After the legislation passed in several towns, Glenn organized petitions to overturn the legislation, asserting that gays and lesbians pose a “public health hazard.” Glenn also has targeted a 4th grade environmental education course, alleging that the program is “anti-human” and promotes paganism.
AFA’s California director Scott Lively, of Abiding Truth Ministries and the Pro-Family Law Center, is an anti-gay activist who has written such books as “The Pink Swastika,” which claims that “homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.” [From the “The Pink Swastika” preface.] Lively has also written “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child, “ and “The Poisoned Stream: “Gay” Influence in Human History.” AFA California has launched the “California Campaign to Take Back the Schools” to stop the “homosexualization of American public schools.”
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AFA Quotes:
Quotes from the Reverend Don Wildmon on behalf of AFA:
"Now the Bush Administration is opening its arms to homosexual activists who have been working diligently to overthrow the traditional views of Western Civilization regarding human sexuality, marriage and family… AFA would never support the policies of a political party which embraced the homosexual movement. Period.” (4-16-01, AFA Press Release)
“We believe the national motto incorporates the foundational belief of our culture, and its words ‘In God we trust’ are a message our children need to see in school.” (July 2001, cover story of AFA Journal)
“But the National PTA continued right along, increasingly becoming a tool to promote a left-wing philosophy instead of helping the children with their educational needs. The latest project for the National PTA is the promotion of the homosexual agenda…Stop the PTA from using your children to promote their left-wing political agenda. “AFA Journal, February 2001 Edition
From AFA staffers:
“Over the years, AFA has consistently addressed the homosexual movement's obsession with infiltrating the public school system. Its eye-opening video “It's Not Gay”, which presents a heartbreaking look at the physical and emotional consequences of the homosexual lifestyle, has been the most popular video ever produced by AFA. “ (May 2001, “Homosexuals push for control of schools”)
“Nothing disappointed the [American Family Association] more than Disney's enthusiastic embrace of [the homosexual] movement that rejects everything that is sacred to Christians about human sexuality, marriage and family.” (April 2001, “Why the Disney Boycott Shouldn't Go Away”)
From AFA state affiliates:
“The church and this nation cry out for a revival of masculine Christianity, which is to say that we church leaders need to stop being such, for lack of a better word, sissies when it comes to social and political issues. We need to spend as much time confronting perpetrators as we do comforting victims. We need to do less fretting, and more fighting for righteousness. For every motherly, feminine ministry of the church such as a Crisis Pregnancy Center or ex-gay support group, we need a battle-hardened, take-it-to-the-enemy masculine ministry like Operation Rescue (questions of civil disobedience aside). For every God-hating radical in government, academia and media we need a bold, no-nonsense, truth-telling Christian counterpart: trained, equipped and endorsed by the local church.” –Scott Lively, Director of AFA California and Abiding Truth Ministries, author of “The Pink Swastika.” (quote source: http://www.abidingtruth.com/pfrc/archives/editorials/masculinechristianity.html)
"Under homosexual activists' political agenda, our children would face a future in which traditional marriage and families have been legally devalued, while state government -- despite the severe threat it poses to personal and public health -- not only legally endorses but uses our tax dollars to subsidize deadly homosexual behavior." –Gary Glenn, Director of AFA Michigan (2-17-01 Press Release)
[Updated September 2002]
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American Legislative Exchange Council
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
1129 20th St. NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036
Founder: Paul Weyrich, Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and others
Established: 1973
Executive Director: Duane Parde
Financials: $5,830,834 (2001 budget)
Employees: 28
Membership: claims 2,400 state legislators as members
Publications: ALEC Policy Forum (journal), policy papers, Task Force reports (9), Leadership Briefing (newsletter), Inside ALEC (monthly publication)
ALEC's Principal Issues:
ALEC's Activities:
ALEC's History:
ALEC Quotes:
ALEC's Principal Issues:
ALEC is a right wing public policy organization with strong ties to major corporations, trade associations and right wing politicians.
ALEC’s agenda includes rolling back civil rights, challenging government restrictions on corporate pollution, and limiting government regulations of commerce, privatizing public services, and representing the interests of the corporations that make up its supporters.
ALEC’s mission: “To promote the principles of federalism by developing and promoting policies…To enlist state legislators from all parties and members of the private sector who share ALEC’s mission…To conduct a policy making program that unites members of the public and private sector in a dynamic partnership to support research, policy development, and dissemination activities.”
ALEC claims that it is “the nation’s largest bipartisan, individual membership association of state legislators.” All of ALEC’s officers who are state legislator members are Republican.
ALEC is supported by many right-wing foundations and organizations, including but not limited to: National Rifle Association, Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Milliken Foundation, DeVos Foundation, Bradley Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.
ALEC has over three hundred corporate sponsors. Some corporations and trade groups that have strong ties to ALEC include: Enron, American Nuclear Energy Council, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Coors Brewing Company, Shell, Texaco, Union Pacific Railroad, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, others.
ALEC has proposed that many public services be taken over by for-profit private businesses, including schools, prisons, public transportation, and social and welfare services.
One of ALEC’s central concerns is government regulations of businesses, especially regulations that protect the environment and/or public health.
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ALEC's Activities:
According to ALEC: “During the 1999-2000 legislative cycle, ALEC legislators introduced more than 3100 pieces of legislation based on our models, and more than 450 of these were enacted…In the legislative Sessions of 2000, there were more than 2150 introductions promoting ALEC policy.”
ALEC develops and creates “model” legislation and through its national political network lobbies to get it passed in state legislatures.
ALEC has 9 “Task Forces” that mirror many of the government’s departments. Commerce & Economic Development Task Force; Criminal Justice Task Force; Energy, Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture Task Force; Tax & Fiscal Policy Task Force; Trade & Transportation Task Force; Health & Human Services Task Force; Education Task Force; Telecommunications & Information Technology Task Force; and the Federalism Task Force.
ALEC works closely with the State Policy Network, a national network of right-wing groups and foundations that push their agenda on the local and state level.
ALEC has been a strong supporter of deregulation of various industries. For example, in the 1990’s ALEC championed deregulation of the electricity industry by arguing that state’s had a monopoly over the “utility markets.” During this time Kenneth Lay of Enron was an active, outspoken member who strongly supported deregulation.
One of the issues that ALEC has had noteworthy success is education. ALEC created the first private school voucher legislation that proposed to funnel public education funds into private schools. ALEC argues that market competition will force public schools to improve or be put out of business.
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ALEC's History:
ALEC’s early years conformed to Weyrich’s vision, focusing on standard right wing causes such as opposing abortion and women’s rights and supporting school prayer.
In the 1980’s ALEC’s focus changed due to increased corporate interests and donations.
ALEC was one of President Reagan’s strongest supporters throughout the 1980’s and through its relationship with Reagan, ALEC gained notoriety. In the 80’s many of ALEC key employees were offered jobs in the Reagan administration.
In the mid-1980’s ALEC had its own political action committee, ALEC-PAC, that targeted key races that could influence partisan control over state legislatures.
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ALEC Quotes:
“Our members join for the purpose of having a seat at the table. That’s just what we do, that’s the service we offer. The organization is supported by money from the corporate sector, and, by paying to be members, corporations are allowed the opportunity to sit down at the table and discuss the issues that they have an interest in.”
-Dennis Bartlett, ALEC, 1997
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American Life League
P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, VA 22555
www.all.org
Established: 1979
President/Founder: Judie Brown
Finances: $6.9 million dollars (2000 budget)
Membership: claims 300,000 members
Formerly known as: American Life Lobby
ALL’s Principal Issues:
To end all forms of abortion without any exceptions made for the health and life of the mother, rape or incest.
ALL's work includes campaigns against the use of all contraceptives, lobbying for “abstinence-only education” and the elimination of sex education in public schools.
ALL also fights against euthanasia, fetal tissue and embryo research, and questions the use of vaccines, such as rubella, that are created from human tissue cells.
Brown has strongly criticized President George W. Bush for not supporting the Human Life Amendment and has chastised other conservative groups for giving him any support.
According to Judie Brown, “Abortion is never necessary to save a mother's life.”
ALL's Activities:
Organizes grassroots activists.
Lobbies on behalf of its issues.
Produces educational materials and publishes a weekly newsletter.
Participates in legal action
ALL has its own voting mobilization project.
Sells anti-abortion clothing, jewelry, stickers, and brochures.
Judie Brown is the grandmother of the modern anti-choice movement:
ALL’s early networking created the foundation for the outspoken anti-abortion movement in the 1980’s and the established movement as it exists now.
ALL helped to establish the “rescue movement” which made the use of aggressive tactics to disrupt reproductive health services commonplace.
These tactics, adopted and popularized by ALL, include “sidewalk counseling,” clinic blockades, and the systematic harassing and intimidation of patients, clinics and doctors.
According to Brown these activities are “free speech” and in 1994 ALL filed charges over the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act (FACE) in American Life League v. Reno. ALL lost in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
ALL's Friends and Allies in High Places
ALL defends anti-choice activists who have been arrested for blocking clinics and has applauded the controversial work of Operation Rescue and Randall Terry.
In 1996 when Bill Bennett and Ralph Reed questioned the GOP’s absolutist anti-abortion plank, Judie Brown gathered together 11 pro-life leaders including Family Research Council’s Gary Bauer and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to express their strong support of the Human Life Amendment and collective rejection of any exceptions for abortion.
Judie Brown is allegedly a member of the clandestine right wing organization Council for National Policy.
ALL’s History:
In 1979, Judie Brown broke from the National Right To Life Committee to form ALL.
Within less than a year of its founding, ALL had 68,000 members and was a liaison to 4,000 groups. ALL received virtually free publicity from religious-right leader Paul Weyrich with the help of right-wing direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie’s massive membership lists.
[Updated September 2002]
Americans for Tax Reform
1920 L St. NW, Suite 200
Washington DC 20036
www.atr.org
Established: ATR was founded in the mid-80s inside the Reagan White House. Norquist was tapped to head the group as an in-house operation to build support for the 1986 tax reform bill.
President/Executive Director: Grover Norquist
Finances: $1,244,171 (expenditures for 2001)
Employees: 14
High-profile staffers include: Peter Ferrara, ATR’s former general counsel and chief economist, is currently founder and President of the Virginia Chapter for the Club for Growth.
Affiliations: Americans for Tax Reform Foundation is the education and research arm of ATR. ATR is a member of the State Policy Network and of townhall.com, a right-wing Internet portal founded by the Heritage Foundation.
ATR’s Principal Issues:
ATR’s Activities:
ATR’s History and Background:
About Grover Norquist:
ATR alumni in the Bush administration:
Quotes by Grover Norquist:
Quotes about ATR:
ATR’s Principal Issues:
From ATR’s mission statement: “ATR opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle. We believe in a system in which taxes are simpler, fairer, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today. The government’s power to control one’s life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized… ATR serves as a national clearinghouse for the grassroots taxpayers’ movement by working with approximately 800 state and county level groups.”
ATR serves as the operational base for President Grover Norquist’s vast political operation.
ATR Foundation has received a number of grants from right wing foundations, including Olin, Scaife, Bradley, etc.
ATR is heavily funded by a number of corporate backers, with the tobacco, gambling and alcohol industries figuring most prominently in 1999. Other recent ATR funders have included Microsoft, Pfitzer, AOL Time Warner and UPS.
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ATR’s Activities:
ATR provides support to right-wing policies and candidates. In 1999, it spent $4.2 million on a television ad campaign touting the GOP tax plan.
ATR has also taken a lead in other causes dear to the GOP’s right wing, such as opposing campaign finance reform and attacking the 2000 presidential bid of Sen. John McCain.
During the 1996 elections ATR flooded 150 congressional districts with mail and phone calls which was supported by a $4.6 million donation from the Republican National Committee.
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ATR’s History and Background:
ATR was originally founded inside the Reagan White House and later became officially independent.
Norquist was a key grassroots proponent of the Contract With America and was Gingrich’s top unofficial advisor.
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About Grover Norquist:
Grover Norquist is also on the boards of the National Rifle Association of America and the American Conservative Union.
Norquist forged an early alliance with President Bush, traveling to Austin, Texas to meet with then-Governor Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove right after Bush's 1998 reelection. Norquist threw the full force of his influence behind the Bush campaign, playing a key role in defeating Sen. John McCain in the South Carolina primaries.
Norquist was a campaign staffer on the 1988, 1992, 1996 Republican Platform Committees and executive director of both the National Taxpayers' Union and the College Republicans.
Norquist writes the monthly politics column for the American Enterprise Institute magazine and used to write a monthly column for the American Spectator.
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ATR alumni in the Bush administration:
Nina Shokraii Rees, Special Assistant to the Vice President for Domestic Policy
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Quotes by Grover Norquist:
On Pat Robertson's 700 Club, Norquist said the following about the Bush Adminstration, “We is them, and they is us. When I walk through the White House, I recognize as many people as when I would walk through the Heritage Foundation.”
“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
“I want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP [gross national product] over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.”
“Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.”
“In the old days, George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse doorway and told children they could not come in. Today, the foes of school choice stand in the doorway and say to the grandchildren of George Wallace's victims, “You cannot get out.”
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Quotes about ATR:
Grover Norquist is “the person who I regard as the most innovative, creative, courageous and entrepreneurial leader of the anti-tax efforts and of conservative grassroots activism in America . . . He has truly made a difference and truly changed American history.”-- Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
“Americans for Tax Reform is a wonderful-sounding name. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a front organization for Grover Norquist’s lobbying activities.” --Former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-NH)
Norquist is “the V.I. Lenin of the anti-tax movement.”
-- Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal columnist
“Americans for Tax Reform is a front for the Republican Party. Republicans are hiding money in this group, and that is fundamentally dishonest.” --Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity
“You can wear too many hats and [Norquist] does. He’s a whole hat store. And that’s the conflict of interest: He’s head of a non-profit. He’s a corporate lobbyist. He’s a foreign lobbyist. This gives nonprofits, which are supposed to be doing research, a bad name.” --Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity
[Updated March 2003]
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Bradley Foundation, Lynne and Harry
PO Box 510860
Milwaukee, WI 53203-0153
www.bradleyfdn.org
Established: 1942
President/CEO: Michael W. Grebe Chairman of the Board of Directors: Thomas L. Rhodes
Finances: $532 million (2002 net assets)
Grants awarded, annually: $33.3 million (2002)
Employees: 18
Publications: The Lion Letter, annual report
Formerly known as: Allen Bradley Foundation
Bradley’s Principal Issues:
Bradley Foundation activities:
List of Right-Wing Grantees:
President Bush on the Bradley Foundation:
Bradley’s Principal Issues:
Bradley is one of the largest philanthropic foundations responsible for the financial backing of the right-wing agenda for nearly twenty years.
Bradley’s philanthropy supports right-wing organizations, educational programs, as well as many non-partisan social programs and civic organizations.
The issues that Bradley supports include: private school vouchers, faith-based social services, and welfare reform.
According to Bradley, the projects sponsored by the foundation “encourage improved government, a more vital sense of citizenship, and a strong belief in personal responsibility.”
Bradley has been accused of underreporting the grant amounts that it gives to many of the right-wing organizations that it supports.
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Bradley Foundation activities:
Bradley has made right-wing inroads in academia by establishing chairmanship positions, undergraduate and graduate programs, fellowships, and whole departments at many prestigious universities including: Boston College, Boston University, Bowling Green State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Catholic University, Columbia University, Georgetown University, George Mason University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Kenyon College, Marquette University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California- Berkeley, University of California- Los Angeles, University of California- San Diego, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and Washington University- St. Louis.
Bradley has supported and in some cases, had to defend controversial right-wing recipients of their grants, particularly Charles Murray and David Brock.
Charles Murray—Murray, author of “The Bell Curve,” which argues that intelligence is predicated on race, and “Losing Ground,” whose thesis is that social programs should be abolished. Murray’s work was so controversial and objectionable that the right-wing Manhattan Institute, supported by Bradley and for which he worked, asked him to leave. However, the Bradley Foundation stood by him because Murray, according to former Bradley President Joyce, “is one of the foremost social thinkers in the country.” Bradley extended Murray’s $100,000 per year grant when he went to the American Enterprise Institute. [Buying a Movement]
David Brock—In 1992 Bradley contributed $11,850 to David Brock for the publication of his work, “The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story,” which attacked Hill’s credibility.
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List of Right-Wing Grantees:
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
American Civil Rights Institute
American Civil Rights Union
American Conservative Union Foundation
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Becket Fund
Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO)
Capital Research Center
Center for Individual Rights
Center for Education Reform
Center for Public Justice
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation America
Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights
Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
Collegiate Network
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Empire Foundation for Policy Research
Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Equal Opportunity Foundation
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Galen Institute
Heartland Institute
Heritage Foundation
Hudson Institute
Hoover Institute
Institute for American Values
Institute for Justice
Leadership Institute
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
National Association of Scholars
National Center for Policy Analysis
Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
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President Bush on the Bradley Foundation:
“The reason that I am so happy that my friend Mike Grebe is here and Mike Joyce and others from The Bradley Foundation is because "Foundation America" must be a part of the revitalization of our communities as well. And The Bradley Foundation has always been willing to see different solutions. They have been willing to challenge the status quo. They say where we find failure, something else must occur. And the Foundation not only has been kind and generous with its donations, the Foundation also has been willing to help people think anew, and I appreciate you all coming. I am honored you're here and thanks for your good work.”
-President George W. Bush,
speaking at the Bradley Foundation-supported Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ, Milwaukee, July 2002.
tons more*@
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=16205&print=yes&units=all
This is just a quarter of this page.. so help yourself and look who is who and what they do..
For over 20 years, People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF) has countered the Right Wing’s efforts to roll back, or stop, social justice progress and to reshape government and society to its liking. Our research center monitors the power of right-wing groups, documenting their connections, funding, and reporting on their political influence.
Right-wing organizations come in all shapes and sizes, from think tanks to legal groups, local and national lobbying organizations, foundations and media forums. At any given moment, the Right is at work in our public school systems, courthouses, in Congress and state assemblies. At the same time, right-wing groups are reaching huge audiences through media outlets they own or influence—promoting regressive policies that seek to drive wedges between and among Americans.
These often single-issue groups have the ability to create multi-issue networks that can respond on a wide range of issues. People For the American Way Foundation’s library has files on over 800 groups and almost 300 individuals documenting their activities and providing information about their efforts to reshape society. This section presents a small portion of that information.
Accuracy in Academia
Alliance Defense Fund
American Center for Law and Justice
American Conservative Union
American Enterprise Institute
American Family Association
American Legislative Exchange Council
American Life League
Americans for Tax Reform
Bradley Foundation, Lynne and Harry
Campaign for Working Families PAC
Cato Institute
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Christian Coalition of America
Club for Growth
Collegiate Network
Concerned Women for America
Eagle Forum
Eagle Forum Collegians
Family Research Council
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Focus on the Family
FRCAction
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Heritage Foundation
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace
Independent Women's Forum
Institute for Justice
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Leadership Institute
Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Madison Project
National Association of Scholars
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Right to Life Committee
National Taxpayers Union
State Policy Network
Students for Academic Freedom
Traditional Values Coalition
Young America's Foundation
Accuracy in Academia
4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 330
Washington, DC 20008
www.academia.org
Founded: by Reed Irvine in 1985
Executive Director: Malcolm “Mal” Kline
Finances: $285, 643 (2002 budget)
Publications: Campus Report, a monthly newspaper
Affiliated with: Accuracy in Media
AIA's Principal Issues:
AIA’s Activities:
AIA's History:
Quotes about AIA:
AIA's Principal Issues:
Main issues: combating Title IX, multicultural education, and abortion, and fighting “liberal” ideas that are offensive to right-wing students. Asserts that many colleges and universities are openly dedicated to “indoctrinating” students with liberal or communist philosophy.
AIA seeks to expose “the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech.”
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AIA’s Activities:
AIA monitors and documents “[t]he use of classroom and/or university resources to indoctrinate students.” AIA’s monthly publication Campus Report focuses on “three issues: the exploitation of the classroom or university resources to indoctrinate students; discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and campus violations of free speech.”
Sponsors an annual “Conservative University” conference. Recent speakers include: John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Lori Waters of Eagle Forum and Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips.
Sells books such as Ann Coulter’s Treason,Why the Left Hates America by Daniel Flynn and Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America by Kenneth Timmerman.
AIA has characterized the NAACP’s founder, W.E.B. Du Bois, as the “Father of Bad Multiculturalism.” According to AIA, “W.E.B. Du Bois is the father of the multiculturalism that is currently pervasive on American campuses. This is a multiculturalism that is…preoccupied with the negative aspects, both real and imagined, of our own culture.”
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AIA's History:
Founded by Reed Irvine to monitor college and university professors for teaching “disinformation” and “liberal” bias. The group clamed that 10,000 known Marxists teach on university campuses nationwide.
Accuracy, Fairness and Balance in Higher Education” published in 1985. According to AIA “youth are being indoctrinated” on liberal arts campuses.
AIA will investigate reports from students of seriously inaccurate information being imparted by classroom instructors—either through lectures or required reading material.
AIA will try to discuss the matter with the teacher to determine whether or not the complaint is valid and to see if the teacher would be willing to make a correction.
In cases where the professor declines this opportunity, AIA will employ other means to call the error to the attention of students and others who may be interested, including AIA supporters throughout the country.
In the eighties the group’s monitoring campaign caused widespread controversy on higher education campuses, eliciting fear and anger among academics and students.
President Reagan’s Secretary of Education, William Bennett, called Irvine’s academic watchdog group “a bad idea.”
Malcolm Kline was named AIA’s new executive director in fall 2003. He worked at the National Journalism Center for twenty years. Kline has written for: Newsmax.com, National Catholic Register, Catholic News Service, and Washington Times’s Insight magazine.
AIA’s former Executive Director was Daniel Flynn, author of Why the Left Hates America.
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Quotes about AIA:
“Accuracy in Academia plays an indispensable role in fighting the political distortions and biases that pass for knowledge on today’s college campuses. I am looking forward to being part of a campaign to challenge students to think more accurately and broad-mindedly about the fundamental issues that affect their lives.” -- Dinesh D’Souza, author and right-wing speaker
“Accuracy in Academia is reaching the leaders of tomorrow with the truth about the sexual revolution ignited in the 60s and raging today all about them. This awareness is critical to properly equipping the leaders of tomorrow. Accuracy in Academia is a lone voice carrying the message of truth and hope to a generation that seldom, if ever, is able to access the truth about America's crucial and fragile social constructs that have made us free. I am proud to stand with AIA as they relentlessly seek to provide to America's college student America's measured and true standard for a free society's smallest building block, marriage and family.” -- Judith A. Reisman, a right-wing speaker and author, published Crafting “Gay” Children: An Inquiry into the Abuse of Vulnerable Youth via Government Schooling & Mainstream Media in 2001.
“If sanity ever returns to the academic world, part of the credit will go to a small newspaper called Campus Report, which has exposed innumerable incidents of brainwashing replacing education on college campuses, storm trooper tactics being accepted and rewarded by ‘responsible’ college administrators, and academic and behavioral double standards being applied to the group to which one belongs, rather than one’s own behavior or performance.” -- Thomas Sowell, author and syndicated columnist
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Alliance Defense Fund
15333 N. Pima Road, Suite 165
Scottsdale AZ 85260
Phone: 1-800-TELL-ADF
www.alliancedefensefund.org
ADF’s Founders:
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ
Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts
Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family
Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries
Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media
Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)
President and General Counsel: Alan Sears
Date of founding: 1994
Finances: $15,411,093 (2001 budget)
Alliance Defense Fund’s Principal Issues:
Alliance Defense Fund’s Background:
Alan Sears’ Background:
Alliance Defense Fund’s Principal Issues:
ADF is a Christian legal firm established by more than 30 Christian ministries to help defend “family values” and work against the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).
ADF defines itself by its ability to strategize and coordinate with lawyers all over the United States. Lawyers who sign up for their “Blackstone Legal Institute” are expected to donate 450 pro bono hours over a three year period.
ADF has coordinated over 400 lawyers, over 125 right-wing organizations, and many conservative ministries on behalf of ADF-defined Christian legal issues.
ADF has been involved with 16 “victories” before the Supreme Court, including such high profile cases as Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network. ADF has had success in anti-gay cases all over the US, from Alaska to Massachusetts.
ADF has linked over 125 groups to create a combined effort to fight issues and on behalf of their views. ADF has brought together attorneys and allied legal groups to help develop a national strategy on controversial social issues, for example it has worked to develop a national strategy to “protect marriage” across the United States after Vermont's decision to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.
In addition to organizing lawyers and ministries, ADF also trains and recruits and provides grants to support legal cases as well as pro-bono assistance.
ADF also defends the right of Christians to “share the gospel” in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian.
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Alliance Defense Fund’s Background:
Unique to ADF is their collective of high-power founders, including wealthy right-wing organizations such as Dobson’s Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries.
The ADF embodies the beliefs of its founders, harnessing the efforts of a cadre of right-wing groups that have hundreds of million dollars at their disposal. All of these groups are influential members of the Right, they are pro-life and anti-gay and their ultimate goal is to see the law and government of the US enshrined with conservative Christian principles.
The relationship between ADF and it’s founders is one of mutual self-interest, the ADF has access to the resources and networking of these large organizations, meanwhile the large organizations have an endless supply of lawyers at their command.
ADF’s strength goes beyond their budget, and extends much further due to their influence with well-funded religious-right groups.
Two issues that all of the founders have in common is their work against the right to abortion and gays and lesbians. They are particularly tireless in attacking any and every attempt by gays and lesbians to have families, domestic partnership or civil unions, or be protected from discrimination in employment or housing.
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Alan Sears’ Background:
Alan Sears was the Executive Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography under President Ronald Reagan. Sears was also a federal prosecutor for former Secretary of Interior Don Hodel (Hodel is a former Christian Coalition President).
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American Center for Law and Justice
P.O. Box 64429
1000 Regent University Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23467
www.aclj.org
Founder: Pat Robertson, founder of the 700 Club, Christian Coalition, Operation Blessing, Regent University
Date established: 1990
Executive Director/Chief Counsel: Jay Sekulow
Publications: Newsletter, education pamphlets, and reports.
Annual Budget: $15.9 million (2003)
Employees: 50
Media: Mr. Sekulow has been a popular guest on nationally televised news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Sekulow is also a frequent contributor and is often quoted in articles published in USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times.
Radio: “Jay Sekulow Live!” is a daily weekday radio show that is aired on over 140 radio stations in the U.S.
ACLJ’s Principal Issues:
ACLJ’s Activities:
About Jay Sekulow:
ACLJ Quotes:
ACLJ’s Principal Issues:
ACLJ is a legal advocacy group “dedicated to defending and advancing religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the two-parent, marriage-bound family.”
ACLJ is a strong supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban same-sex marriage.
ACLJ has been involved with more than 30 cases before the United States Supreme Court and has been successful in many of its lawsuits.
ACLJ is a strong supporter of school vouchers and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 2002 Cleveland voucher case before the Supreme Court.
The ACLJ supports the funding of faith-based social services, religious proclamations in the public domain, and often equates religious expression with patriotism. [10-9-01 news release]
ACLJ strongly opposes the right to legal, safe abortion and provides legal help to pro-life protesters who harass women seeking reproductive services.
The ACLJ challenges domestic partnership benefits for city and state employees, anti-discrimination ordinances that include sexual orientation, and generally fights against the right of gays and lesbians to be parents.
The ACLJ's legal services are free.
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ACLJ’s Activities:
ACLJ gives free legal advice and counsel and maintains a national Christian Affiliate Attorney list for referrals.
Two of the Supreme Court cases argued by Sekulow have become benchmark cases in the area of religious liberty litigation. In Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (496 US 226), Sekulow argued the right of public school students to form Bible clubs and religious organizations on their school campuses. In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, Sekulow defended the rights of religious groups to use public school property for religious meetings after hours.
A few other examples of ACLJ cases: ACLJ defended a group of parents who drove a transsexual teacher out of her job in Minnesota, has supporting a Kmart pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills, and has pursued litigation over various claims that children are being told that they cannot pray on school grounds or talk about their religion.
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About Jay Sekulow:
Jay Sekulow helped draft the Defense of the Marriage Act, which passed both houses and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. DOMA allows states to reject the legitimacy of same-sex marriage licenses awarded in other states, although, to this day no state offers marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Sekulow helped draft DOMA “at the request of several pro-family legislators, and gave expert testimony to both houses of Congress on this bill.” (Jay Sekulow, direct mail, March 1997)
The National Law Journal has named twice Sekulow one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers” in the United States. (1994, 1997)
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ACLJ Quotes:
ACLJ Quotes:
“This great American institution [Boy Scouts of America] has come under attack from homosexual activists—who may well set their sights on your church next.” --Jay Sekulow, direct mail, March 2000
“Can you imagine, that in public schools of America today, students are being taught that homosexual conduct, which in many states is still deemed illegal, is not only a viable alternative lifestyle, but is actually equal to heterosexual relationships?” --Jay Sekulow, January 2, 1997, Danbury News-Times
“Right now we have fully functioning offices connected with our national office—which is here in Virginia Beach [on Regents University Campus]—in Washington, DC, Atlanta, Kentucky, Mobile, and Phoenix. We also have close to 600 affiliates around the country, and are on the verge of launching our first eight state chapters, with the goal of opening 50 state chapters within the next 24 months.” Executive Director Keith Fournier, Human Events, December 20, 1996
[Updated April 2004]
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American Conservative Union
1007 Cameron Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
www.conservative.org or www.cpac.org
Founders: William F. Buckley, Jr., L. Brent Bozell, Frank S. Meyer, John Chamberlain, Jameson Campaigne, Sr., John Ashbrook, Katherine St. George, and Robert E. Bauman
Chairman: David A. Keene
Established: December 1964
Finances: $4,562,084 (1998)
Board members include: Senator Jesse Helms, Grover Norquist, Morton Blackwell, and L. Brent Bozell III.
Affiliated with: American Conservative Union Foundation, American Conservative Union PAC, Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
Publications: Battle Line, quarterly newsletter, along with reports, and legislative guides for Congress.
ACU’s Principle Issues:
ACU’s Activities:
ACU History:
Quotes about ACU:
ACU’s Principle Issues:
ACU defines itself as the nation's oldest conservative lobbying organization.
ACU is a multi-issue, umbrella organization that specializes in grassroots organizing as well as organizing and supporting conservative leadership.
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ACU’s Activities:
Publishing Congress members ratings according to ACU’s conservative standards.
Since 1974, ACU has hosted the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). CPAC is the largest conservative conference in the United States.
CPAC speakers have included: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Dick Armey, Jesse Helms, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Senator Sam Brownback, Bob Barr, Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, William Bennett, Ralph Reed, columnist George Will, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Grover Norquist, Charlton Heston of the NRA, Condoleezza Rice, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Oliver North, Rev. Lou Sheldon of Traditional Values Coalition, and many other conservative pundits, writers, and politicians.
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ACU History:
In 1974, ACU established and sponsored the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Reagan was a “long-time friend and ally” of ACU. In 1975, ACU asked Ronald Reagan to run for president. ACU takes credit for Reagan getting elected to the presidency in 1980, claiming they originally asked Reagan to run in 1975.
ACU and its state affiliates established one of the first independent campaigns on behalf of a presidential candidate. ACU orchestrated the campaign to elect Reagan, running hundreds of radio and newspaper ads comparing candidate Reagan to President Ford, and calling Reagan a conservative visionary and Ford a liberal.
Reagan’s victory in 1980 is credited to the ACU as the campaign that put his name in the public eye.
ACU launched "Project One Million" in 1981, seeking at least one million backers of a "Petition of Support" for Reagan's economic plan.
In 1992, the ACU Board of Directors endorsed Patrick Buchanan's presidential candidacy.
During the Clinton presidency, ACU remained a strong, vocal critic on issues such as health care. ACU’s director Donald Devine led a country-wide bus tour, called the “National Health Care Truth Tour.” Hilary Clinton herself stated that ACU’s activities were largely responsible for the defeat of the health plan proposal in 1993.
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Quotes about ACU:
“I’m grateful to David Keene and the members of the ACU from coast-to-coast for all of their help this year. The ACU has been an invaluable partner in advancing our compassionate, conservative agenda.” – President George W. Bush (ACU’s website)
[Updated September 2002]
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American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
www.aei.org and www.theamericanenterprise.org (American Enterprise Magazine)
Established: 1943
President/Executive Director:Christopher DeMuth
Finances: $24.4 million (2000)
Employees: 50 resident scholars and fellows
Publications: Monthly newsletter, dozens of books and hundreds of articles and reports each year, and a glossy policy magazine, The American Enterprise.
American Enterprise Institute’s Principal Issues:
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a think tank for conservatives, neoconservatives, and conservative libertarians.
Areas of interest include: America’s “culture war,” domestic policy and federal spending, education reform, neoconservatism, affirmative action, welfare reform.
President George W. Bush has appointed over a dozen people from AEI to senior positions in his administration. AEI claims that this is more than any other research institution.
American Enterprise Activities:
AEI sponsors and participates in debates and lectures on many issues.
AEI scholars have testified before Congress on a variety of issues.
Several AEI scholars have written articles in favor of government censorship of the arts.
Scholar Michael Novak has argued that prayer belongs in public schools and that it doesn’t violate the establishment clause.
AEI scholars have advocated federally-funded school voucher programs.
AEI's Background and History:
Most of AEI’s Board of Directors are CEOs of major companies, including ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, and Dow Chemicals.
Big donors include the top conservative foundations, including Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Corporate supporters have included: General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Proctor & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries.
Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, was until recently on the board of trustees of American Enterprise Institute. Other famous former trustees include Vice President Dick Cheney.
AEI Fellows and Scholars List [partial list]:
Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee
David Frum, a presidential speechwriter for President Bush, contributing editor to the right-wing magazine Weekly Standard
Christina Hoff Sommers, anti-feminist crusader, author of “Who Stole Feminism? How Women Betrayed Women”
Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a book that asserted inherent intelligence differences between the races
Ben J. Wattenberg, host of PBS weekly show “Think Tank”
[Updated September 2002]
American Family Association
P.O. Box 2440, Tupelo, MS 38803
www.afa.net
Chairman/Founder: the Rev. Donald Wildmon
Vice President: Tim Wildmon (son of Donald Wildmon)
Date of founding: 1977
Membership: AFA claims over 500,000 members.
Finances: $11.4 million (2000)
Staff: About 100 employees and five full-time lawyers.
State chapters: State Directors in 21 states. Also has smaller chapters, number unknown.
Publications: “AFA Journal,” published monthly, with a circulation of 180,000.
Radio: AFA has its own 200-station network of radio stations across the United States.
Videos: AFA has produced “Excess Access,” “It’s Not Gay,” and “Suffer the Children” Television: AFA has appeared on the following shows: “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “MacNeill Lehrer Report,” “Nightline,” “The 700 Club,” “Meet the Press,” “Crossfire,” and “Focus on the Family.”
Formerly known as: National Federation for Decency
Affiliate groups: AFA Foundation, Center for Law & Policy, American Family Radio, and Agape Press
AFA’s principal issues:
AFA Activities:
Profiles on AFA Affiliates:
Other Legal Activities by AFA/CLP include:
AFA State Affiliates:
AFA Quotes:
AFA’s principal issues:
American Family Association targets the media and entertainment industry’s “attack” on “traditional family values.”
Two of the main duties that AFA assigns to itself are “promoting the centrality of God in American life” and “promoting the Christian ethic of decency.”
“Indecent” influences in American culture include: television, the separation of church and state, pornography, “the homosexual agenda,” premarital sex, legal abortion, the National Endowment for the Arts, gambling, unfiltered internet access in libraries, and the removal of school-sponsored religious worship from public schools.
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AFA Activities:
AFA produces the radio show, "AFA Report," a 30-minute feature available on about 1,200 local radio stations nationwide. AFA launched their broadcast ministry American Family Radio (AFR) in 1987. AFR has approximately 200 radio stations in 27 states across the country. According to American Family Radio, “AFR has built more stations in a shorter time than any other broadcaster in the history of broadcasting.” The AFA built their small radio empire by applying for “noncommercial educational licenses.” When the FCC refused to grant some the licenses the AFA sued the FCC in federal court arguing that to deny religious groups noncommercial broadcasting licenses violates their First Amendment and Equal Protection rights.
For over twenty years AFA’s primary activities have been organizing boycotts against sponsors of TV shows with “anti-Christian” messages and ideas.
AFA has created two websites,www.onemillionmoms.com and www.onemilliondads.com, to “help parents do something about the trash on TV” by organizing weekly on-line boycotts of offensive advertising or television shows.
Among its hundreds of boycott targets over the years are "Cheers," "The Johnny Carson Show," "Saturday Night Live," "Roseanne," "Nightline," "NYPD Blue," and “Ellen.” AFA has called for widespread boycotts of all businesses that “promote” pornography, homosexuality, or other forms of “indecency.”
A major target has been Disney and its subsidiaries. According to the group “Disney’s attack on America’s families has become so blatent, [sic] so intentional, so obvious, that American Family Association has called for a boycott of all Disney products until such time as this activity ceases.”
Other boycott targets include American Airlines for their policy of providing domestic partner benefits and K-mart for selling music that has a “parental advisory warning” sticker, even to adults.
Donald Wildmon has called for the shutdown of PBS and as a result of the AFA's campaign, many state legislatures reduced funding for public broadcasting. The AFA spearheaded the attack on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the 1980’s, using direct mail and extensive print advertising to distort the NEA's record of sponsorship of the arts.
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Profiles on AFA Affiliates:
AFA Center for Law and Policy activities (CLP):
In 1990, the AFA established the AFA Center for Law & Policy as a litigation and public policy arm of the organization.
The Center for Law & Policy (CLP) is staffed by six full-time attorneys with a network of more than 400 affiliate lawyers. The CLP states that they provide representation to Christians in courts throughout the country, and advise state and federal legislators on constitutional, political and legal issues.
The CLP has been involved in several cases where they push for religious worship and symbols in public schools as well as the removal of curriculum that doesn’t reflect “traditional family values.”
Recently AFA has spearheaded a campaign to have their “In God We Trust” posters posted in every classroom, in every school in the United States. In 2001, the Mississippi state legislature passed a law requiring that each public school classroom, auditorium and cafeteria display a “In God We Trust” poster. However, when the Mississippi state legislature did not provide any funding for the bill, AFA/CLP volunteered to be the coordinator for the project. AFA/CLP is responsible for organizing and distributing 32,000 “In God We Trust” free posters in public schools in the state of Mississippi.
AFA/CLP has encouraged other states to follow Mississippi’s example, promising that anyone who may be afraid of a lawsuit would be defended by the AFA Center for Law & Policy for free. In 2001, AFA distributed 250,000 “In God We Trust” posters nationwide.
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Other Legal Activities by AFA/CLP include:
CLP represented the anti-gay group “Take Back Maryland” when they were accused of falsifying signatures for a petition to reverse an anti-discrimination bill that protected gays and lesbians from bias discrimination in employment and housing.
AFA filed lawsuits attempting to ban the curriculum, "Impressions," from public school classrooms on the grounds that it "promotes the religion of witchcraft."
AFA sponsored a rally in support of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama who refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom.
AFA Center for Law & Policy (CLP) won a lawsuit on behalf of pro-life protesters in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, over protest signs confiscated and held by city officials.
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AFA State Affiliates:
Many of AFA’s state chapters are very active on a state and local level. Gary Glenn of AFA Michigan has become a lightening rod in the state for controversy over civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. Glenn has opposed anti-discrimination policies of several Michigan cities by asserting that if passed, public bathrooms and showers would become co-ed. After the legislation passed in several towns, Glenn organized petitions to overturn the legislation, asserting that gays and lesbians pose a “public health hazard.” Glenn also has targeted a 4th grade environmental education course, alleging that the program is “anti-human” and promotes paganism.
AFA’s California director Scott Lively, of Abiding Truth Ministries and the Pro-Family Law Center, is an anti-gay activist who has written such books as “The Pink Swastika,” which claims that “homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.” [From the “The Pink Swastika” preface.] Lively has also written “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child, “ and “The Poisoned Stream: “Gay” Influence in Human History.” AFA California has launched the “California Campaign to Take Back the Schools” to stop the “homosexualization of American public schools.”
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AFA Quotes:
Quotes from the Reverend Don Wildmon on behalf of AFA:
"Now the Bush Administration is opening its arms to homosexual activists who have been working diligently to overthrow the traditional views of Western Civilization regarding human sexuality, marriage and family… AFA would never support the policies of a political party which embraced the homosexual movement. Period.” (4-16-01, AFA Press Release)
“We believe the national motto incorporates the foundational belief of our culture, and its words ‘In God we trust’ are a message our children need to see in school.” (July 2001, cover story of AFA Journal)
“But the National PTA continued right along, increasingly becoming a tool to promote a left-wing philosophy instead of helping the children with their educational needs. The latest project for the National PTA is the promotion of the homosexual agenda…Stop the PTA from using your children to promote their left-wing political agenda. “AFA Journal, February 2001 Edition
From AFA staffers:
“Over the years, AFA has consistently addressed the homosexual movement's obsession with infiltrating the public school system. Its eye-opening video “It's Not Gay”, which presents a heartbreaking look at the physical and emotional consequences of the homosexual lifestyle, has been the most popular video ever produced by AFA. “ (May 2001, “Homosexuals push for control of schools”)
“Nothing disappointed the [American Family Association] more than Disney's enthusiastic embrace of [the homosexual] movement that rejects everything that is sacred to Christians about human sexuality, marriage and family.” (April 2001, “Why the Disney Boycott Shouldn't Go Away”)
From AFA state affiliates:
“The church and this nation cry out for a revival of masculine Christianity, which is to say that we church leaders need to stop being such, for lack of a better word, sissies when it comes to social and political issues. We need to spend as much time confronting perpetrators as we do comforting victims. We need to do less fretting, and more fighting for righteousness. For every motherly, feminine ministry of the church such as a Crisis Pregnancy Center or ex-gay support group, we need a battle-hardened, take-it-to-the-enemy masculine ministry like Operation Rescue (questions of civil disobedience aside). For every God-hating radical in government, academia and media we need a bold, no-nonsense, truth-telling Christian counterpart: trained, equipped and endorsed by the local church.” –Scott Lively, Director of AFA California and Abiding Truth Ministries, author of “The Pink Swastika.” (quote source: http://www.abidingtruth.com/pfrc/archives/editorials/masculinechristianity.html)
"Under homosexual activists' political agenda, our children would face a future in which traditional marriage and families have been legally devalued, while state government -- despite the severe threat it poses to personal and public health -- not only legally endorses but uses our tax dollars to subsidize deadly homosexual behavior." –Gary Glenn, Director of AFA Michigan (2-17-01 Press Release)
[Updated September 2002]
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American Legislative Exchange Council
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
1129 20th St. NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036
Founder: Paul Weyrich, Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and others
Established: 1973
Executive Director: Duane Parde
Financials: $5,830,834 (2001 budget)
Employees: 28
Membership: claims 2,400 state legislators as members
Publications: ALEC Policy Forum (journal), policy papers, Task Force reports (9), Leadership Briefing (newsletter), Inside ALEC (monthly publication)
ALEC's Principal Issues:
ALEC's Activities:
ALEC's History:
ALEC Quotes:
ALEC's Principal Issues:
ALEC is a right wing public policy organization with strong ties to major corporations, trade associations and right wing politicians.
ALEC’s agenda includes rolling back civil rights, challenging government restrictions on corporate pollution, and limiting government regulations of commerce, privatizing public services, and representing the interests of the corporations that make up its supporters.
ALEC’s mission: “To promote the principles of federalism by developing and promoting policies…To enlist state legislators from all parties and members of the private sector who share ALEC’s mission…To conduct a policy making program that unites members of the public and private sector in a dynamic partnership to support research, policy development, and dissemination activities.”
ALEC claims that it is “the nation’s largest bipartisan, individual membership association of state legislators.” All of ALEC’s officers who are state legislator members are Republican.
ALEC is supported by many right-wing foundations and organizations, including but not limited to: National Rifle Association, Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Milliken Foundation, DeVos Foundation, Bradley Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.
ALEC has over three hundred corporate sponsors. Some corporations and trade groups that have strong ties to ALEC include: Enron, American Nuclear Energy Council, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Coors Brewing Company, Shell, Texaco, Union Pacific Railroad, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, others.
ALEC has proposed that many public services be taken over by for-profit private businesses, including schools, prisons, public transportation, and social and welfare services.
One of ALEC’s central concerns is government regulations of businesses, especially regulations that protect the environment and/or public health.
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ALEC's Activities:
According to ALEC: “During the 1999-2000 legislative cycle, ALEC legislators introduced more than 3100 pieces of legislation based on our models, and more than 450 of these were enacted…In the legislative Sessions of 2000, there were more than 2150 introductions promoting ALEC policy.”
ALEC develops and creates “model” legislation and through its national political network lobbies to get it passed in state legislatures.
ALEC has 9 “Task Forces” that mirror many of the government’s departments. Commerce & Economic Development Task Force; Criminal Justice Task Force; Energy, Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture Task Force; Tax & Fiscal Policy Task Force; Trade & Transportation Task Force; Health & Human Services Task Force; Education Task Force; Telecommunications & Information Technology Task Force; and the Federalism Task Force.
ALEC works closely with the State Policy Network, a national network of right-wing groups and foundations that push their agenda on the local and state level.
ALEC has been a strong supporter of deregulation of various industries. For example, in the 1990’s ALEC championed deregulation of the electricity industry by arguing that state’s had a monopoly over the “utility markets.” During this time Kenneth Lay of Enron was an active, outspoken member who strongly supported deregulation.
One of the issues that ALEC has had noteworthy success is education. ALEC created the first private school voucher legislation that proposed to funnel public education funds into private schools. ALEC argues that market competition will force public schools to improve or be put out of business.
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ALEC's History:
ALEC’s early years conformed to Weyrich’s vision, focusing on standard right wing causes such as opposing abortion and women’s rights and supporting school prayer.
In the 1980’s ALEC’s focus changed due to increased corporate interests and donations.
ALEC was one of President Reagan’s strongest supporters throughout the 1980’s and through its relationship with Reagan, ALEC gained notoriety. In the 80’s many of ALEC key employees were offered jobs in the Reagan administration.
In the mid-1980’s ALEC had its own political action committee, ALEC-PAC, that targeted key races that could influence partisan control over state legislatures.
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ALEC Quotes:
“Our members join for the purpose of having a seat at the table. That’s just what we do, that’s the service we offer. The organization is supported by money from the corporate sector, and, by paying to be members, corporations are allowed the opportunity to sit down at the table and discuss the issues that they have an interest in.”
-Dennis Bartlett, ALEC, 1997
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American Life League
P.O. Box 1350, Stafford, VA 22555
www.all.org
Established: 1979
President/Founder: Judie Brown
Finances: $6.9 million dollars (2000 budget)
Membership: claims 300,000 members
Formerly known as: American Life Lobby
ALL’s Principal Issues:
To end all forms of abortion without any exceptions made for the health and life of the mother, rape or incest.
ALL's work includes campaigns against the use of all contraceptives, lobbying for “abstinence-only education” and the elimination of sex education in public schools.
ALL also fights against euthanasia, fetal tissue and embryo research, and questions the use of vaccines, such as rubella, that are created from human tissue cells.
Brown has strongly criticized President George W. Bush for not supporting the Human Life Amendment and has chastised other conservative groups for giving him any support.
According to Judie Brown, “Abortion is never necessary to save a mother's life.”
ALL's Activities:
Organizes grassroots activists.
Lobbies on behalf of its issues.
Produces educational materials and publishes a weekly newsletter.
Participates in legal action
ALL has its own voting mobilization project.
Sells anti-abortion clothing, jewelry, stickers, and brochures.
Judie Brown is the grandmother of the modern anti-choice movement:
ALL’s early networking created the foundation for the outspoken anti-abortion movement in the 1980’s and the established movement as it exists now.
ALL helped to establish the “rescue movement” which made the use of aggressive tactics to disrupt reproductive health services commonplace.
These tactics, adopted and popularized by ALL, include “sidewalk counseling,” clinic blockades, and the systematic harassing and intimidation of patients, clinics and doctors.
According to Brown these activities are “free speech” and in 1994 ALL filed charges over the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act (FACE) in American Life League v. Reno. ALL lost in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
ALL's Friends and Allies in High Places
ALL defends anti-choice activists who have been arrested for blocking clinics and has applauded the controversial work of Operation Rescue and Randall Terry.
In 1996 when Bill Bennett and Ralph Reed questioned the GOP’s absolutist anti-abortion plank, Judie Brown gathered together 11 pro-life leaders including Family Research Council’s Gary Bauer and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to express their strong support of the Human Life Amendment and collective rejection of any exceptions for abortion.
Judie Brown is allegedly a member of the clandestine right wing organization Council for National Policy.
ALL’s History:
In 1979, Judie Brown broke from the National Right To Life Committee to form ALL.
Within less than a year of its founding, ALL had 68,000 members and was a liaison to 4,000 groups. ALL received virtually free publicity from religious-right leader Paul Weyrich with the help of right-wing direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie’s massive membership lists.
[Updated September 2002]
Americans for Tax Reform
1920 L St. NW, Suite 200
Washington DC 20036
www.atr.org
Established: ATR was founded in the mid-80s inside the Reagan White House. Norquist was tapped to head the group as an in-house operation to build support for the 1986 tax reform bill.
President/Executive Director: Grover Norquist
Finances: $1,244,171 (expenditures for 2001)
Employees: 14
High-profile staffers include: Peter Ferrara, ATR’s former general counsel and chief economist, is currently founder and President of the Virginia Chapter for the Club for Growth.
Affiliations: Americans for Tax Reform Foundation is the education and research arm of ATR. ATR is a member of the State Policy Network and of townhall.com, a right-wing Internet portal founded by the Heritage Foundation.
ATR’s Principal Issues:
ATR’s Activities:
ATR’s History and Background:
About Grover Norquist:
ATR alumni in the Bush administration:
Quotes by Grover Norquist:
Quotes about ATR:
ATR’s Principal Issues:
From ATR’s mission statement: “ATR opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle. We believe in a system in which taxes are simpler, fairer, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today. The government’s power to control one’s life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized… ATR serves as a national clearinghouse for the grassroots taxpayers’ movement by working with approximately 800 state and county level groups.”
ATR serves as the operational base for President Grover Norquist’s vast political operation.
ATR Foundation has received a number of grants from right wing foundations, including Olin, Scaife, Bradley, etc.
ATR is heavily funded by a number of corporate backers, with the tobacco, gambling and alcohol industries figuring most prominently in 1999. Other recent ATR funders have included Microsoft, Pfitzer, AOL Time Warner and UPS.
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ATR’s Activities:
ATR provides support to right-wing policies and candidates. In 1999, it spent $4.2 million on a television ad campaign touting the GOP tax plan.
ATR has also taken a lead in other causes dear to the GOP’s right wing, such as opposing campaign finance reform and attacking the 2000 presidential bid of Sen. John McCain.
During the 1996 elections ATR flooded 150 congressional districts with mail and phone calls which was supported by a $4.6 million donation from the Republican National Committee.
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ATR’s History and Background:
ATR was originally founded inside the Reagan White House and later became officially independent.
Norquist was a key grassroots proponent of the Contract With America and was Gingrich’s top unofficial advisor.
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About Grover Norquist:
Grover Norquist is also on the boards of the National Rifle Association of America and the American Conservative Union.
Norquist forged an early alliance with President Bush, traveling to Austin, Texas to meet with then-Governor Bush and his political advisor Karl Rove right after Bush's 1998 reelection. Norquist threw the full force of his influence behind the Bush campaign, playing a key role in defeating Sen. John McCain in the South Carolina primaries.
Norquist was a campaign staffer on the 1988, 1992, 1996 Republican Platform Committees and executive director of both the National Taxpayers' Union and the College Republicans.
Norquist writes the monthly politics column for the American Enterprise Institute magazine and used to write a monthly column for the American Spectator.
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ATR alumni in the Bush administration:
Nina Shokraii Rees, Special Assistant to the Vice President for Domestic Policy
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Quotes by Grover Norquist:
On Pat Robertson's 700 Club, Norquist said the following about the Bush Adminstration, “We is them, and they is us. When I walk through the White House, I recognize as many people as when I would walk through the Heritage Foundation.”
“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
“I want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP [gross national product] over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.”
“Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.”
“In the old days, George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse doorway and told children they could not come in. Today, the foes of school choice stand in the doorway and say to the grandchildren of George Wallace's victims, “You cannot get out.”
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Quotes about ATR:
Grover Norquist is “the person who I regard as the most innovative, creative, courageous and entrepreneurial leader of the anti-tax efforts and of conservative grassroots activism in America . . . He has truly made a difference and truly changed American history.”-- Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
“Americans for Tax Reform is a wonderful-sounding name. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a front organization for Grover Norquist’s lobbying activities.” --Former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-NH)
Norquist is “the V.I. Lenin of the anti-tax movement.”
-- Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal columnist
“Americans for Tax Reform is a front for the Republican Party. Republicans are hiding money in this group, and that is fundamentally dishonest.” --Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity
“You can wear too many hats and [Norquist] does. He’s a whole hat store. And that’s the conflict of interest: He’s head of a non-profit. He’s a corporate lobbyist. He’s a foreign lobbyist. This gives nonprofits, which are supposed to be doing research, a bad name.” --Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity
[Updated March 2003]
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Bradley Foundation, Lynne and Harry
PO Box 510860
Milwaukee, WI 53203-0153
www.bradleyfdn.org
Established: 1942
President/CEO: Michael W. Grebe Chairman of the Board of Directors: Thomas L. Rhodes
Finances: $532 million (2002 net assets)
Grants awarded, annually: $33.3 million (2002)
Employees: 18
Publications: The Lion Letter, annual report
Formerly known as: Allen Bradley Foundation
Bradley’s Principal Issues:
Bradley Foundation activities:
List of Right-Wing Grantees:
President Bush on the Bradley Foundation:
Bradley’s Principal Issues:
Bradley is one of the largest philanthropic foundations responsible for the financial backing of the right-wing agenda for nearly twenty years.
Bradley’s philanthropy supports right-wing organizations, educational programs, as well as many non-partisan social programs and civic organizations.
The issues that Bradley supports include: private school vouchers, faith-based social services, and welfare reform.
According to Bradley, the projects sponsored by the foundation “encourage improved government, a more vital sense of citizenship, and a strong belief in personal responsibility.”
Bradley has been accused of underreporting the grant amounts that it gives to many of the right-wing organizations that it supports.
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Bradley Foundation activities:
Bradley has made right-wing inroads in academia by establishing chairmanship positions, undergraduate and graduate programs, fellowships, and whole departments at many prestigious universities including: Boston College, Boston University, Bowling Green State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Catholic University, Columbia University, Georgetown University, George Mason University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Kenyon College, Marquette University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California- Berkeley, University of California- Los Angeles, University of California- San Diego, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, and Washington University- St. Louis.
Bradley has supported and in some cases, had to defend controversial right-wing recipients of their grants, particularly Charles Murray and David Brock.
Charles Murray—Murray, author of “The Bell Curve,” which argues that intelligence is predicated on race, and “Losing Ground,” whose thesis is that social programs should be abolished. Murray’s work was so controversial and objectionable that the right-wing Manhattan Institute, supported by Bradley and for which he worked, asked him to leave. However, the Bradley Foundation stood by him because Murray, according to former Bradley President Joyce, “is one of the foremost social thinkers in the country.” Bradley extended Murray’s $100,000 per year grant when he went to the American Enterprise Institute. [Buying a Movement]
David Brock—In 1992 Bradley contributed $11,850 to David Brock for the publication of his work, “The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story,” which attacked Hill’s credibility.
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List of Right-Wing Grantees:
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
American Civil Rights Institute
American Civil Rights Union
American Conservative Union Foundation
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Becket Fund
Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO)
Capital Research Center
Center for Individual Rights
Center for Education Reform
Center for Public Justice
Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation America
Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights
Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
Collegiate Network
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Empire Foundation for Policy Research
Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Equal Opportunity Foundation
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Galen Institute
Heartland Institute
Heritage Foundation
Hudson Institute
Hoover Institute
Institute for American Values
Institute for Justice
Leadership Institute
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
National Association of Scholars
National Center for Policy Analysis
Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
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President Bush on the Bradley Foundation:
“The reason that I am so happy that my friend Mike Grebe is here and Mike Joyce and others from The Bradley Foundation is because "Foundation America" must be a part of the revitalization of our communities as well. And The Bradley Foundation has always been willing to see different solutions. They have been willing to challenge the status quo. They say where we find failure, something else must occur. And the Foundation not only has been kind and generous with its donations, the Foundation also has been willing to help people think anew, and I appreciate you all coming. I am honored you're here and thanks for your good work.”
-President George W. Bush,
speaking at the Bradley Foundation-supported Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ, Milwaukee, July 2002.
tons more*@
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=16205&print=yes&units=all
This is just a quarter of this page.. so help yourself and look who is who and what they do..
"All truth passes through three states," wrote Arthur Schopenhauer. "First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
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