The Public Eye, Winter 2015 cover

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The Public Eye, Winter 2015

PRA researcher Cole Parke exposes the history of the Illinois-based World Congress of Families, a right-wing group responsible for promoting laws criminalizing LGBTQ people & abortion around the world. PRA fellow Rachel Tabachnick writes about the lawmaker who passed the nation's first school voucher law, only to later be demonized by the Right's privatization juggernaut for warning against overreach. Author Robin Marty highlights the Right's anti-choice playbook of the last 30 years, and asks whether pro-choice could learn some valuable lessons from the Right's tactics.

In this issue

Natural Deception

Conned by the World Congress of Families
People in a protest wearing rainbow wigs, holding signs that say "love is a human right"

From Russia to Nigeria to Australia, a seemingly innocuous definition of the “natural family” is quietly being used as the basis of new laws to justify the criminalization of abortion and LGBTQ people. Pushing this definition is the World Congress…

Article
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Opening Pandora's Box

The Rise & Fall of the Right's School Voucher Pioneer
A young girl holding a sign that says Celebrate Teachers - Celebrate Choice! National School Choice Week

Polly Williams, the Wisconsin African American lawmaker behind the nation’s first school voucher program, believed vouchers could help students of color in urban Milwaukee. Conservative donors and right-wing think tanks saw her program as opening…

Article
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Meet Joe Scheidler, Patriarch of the Anti-Abortion Movement

A white man in the center of a circle, with other people bowing their heads and placing a hand on his shoulder and arms.

Nearly 30 years later, anti-abortion activists still work from Joe Scheidler’s blueprint. Could Scheidler’s story provide any clues to where the faults might lie in their strategy?

Article
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“Employers Feel Wildly Free to Pay People However They Want”: An Interview with Kim Bobo

Kim Bobo, the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), is one of the Left’s luminaries when it comes to the intersection of faith and economic justice. Bobo, who was herself raised an evangelical Christian, and is the…

Q&A
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The Art of Activism: Meredith Stern

From the cover of PE Winter 2015: the words "A Global Scam: Selling the 'Natural Family'"

When Meredith Stern (whose artwork is also featured on the front cover) chooses where to live, she embraces the “act locally, think globally” ethos. That’s why, once she put down roots in Providence, Rhode Island, the printmaker and collage artist…

Article
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