Research | Political Research Associates

The Art of Activism: David Bacon

For more than 30 years, David Bacon has been writing about and photographing people who are displaced by poverty in Mexico and choose to cross into the United States in search of a better life.

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U.N. Condemns "Conversion Therapy," But U.S. Right Continues Promoting in Africa

This week, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) took the historic step of expressing concern about “conversion therapy,” also known as “ex-gay” or “reparative” therapy. But while much of the Western world is taking steps to eradicate…

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Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Law A Copy of U.S. Right-Backed Laws in Russia/Nigeria

Reports of the new anti-gay bill—“Prohibition of the Promotion of Unnatural Sexual Practices Bill of 2014” being considered in Uganda have caught the world unaware. Supporters of Uganda’s LGBTQ community had hoped that the Uganda court’s…

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Ebola: The Right's New Code Word for Islamophobia, Homophobia, & Xenophobia

The recent Ebola cases in the U.S. have sparked popular news outlets and Religious Right leaders into an undeniable state of panic. The mention of Ebola is accompanied by an urging to close “the border,” as the U.S. Right re-employs its all-too-…

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From Singapore to Arizona

Right-Wing Groups Invade Classrooms and Curriculum

“From merely glancing through this booklet,” she explained to him, “I learned a simple yet important lesson: that bigotry is very much alive and it was naïve of me to think I could be safe from it even in school.”

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Midterm Elections: School Privatization Continues to Advance DeVos/Heritage Foundation Strategy

Midterm elections present a particularly fruitful opportunity for the school privatization movement to maximize their investment. Since 1974, in mid-term or non-presidential election years, the federal election turnout has failed to reach 40% of…

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Lincoln, Slave Narratives, and Hollywood’s Neoliberal Agenda

Why does Hollywood keep distorting history to portray exceptional individuals rescuing America from collective problems?

(Editorial note: This essay has been revised and updated from a previous version. 11/5/2014.) Recently, a number of acclaimed films focusing on the life of Abraham Lincoln, slavery, and the Civil War have distorted historical reality to suggest that…

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Neoliberal Language Lessons

How right-wing power—along with free-market ideas—shifted from conservative Christians to the Tea Party

In his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, political geographer David Harvey traces the triumph of neoliberalism back to a “revolutionary turning-point” in the late 1970s. In the United States, Harvey notes, Ronald Reagan participated in this…

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Christian Right Undermines Marriage Equality With Religious Supremacism

The Christian Right has been operating on multiple fronts to stop—or at least limit—the scope of the advance of marriage equality, including seeking to enable business owners, civil workers, and elected officials to openly discriminate against LGBTQ…

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Christian Right's Historical Repetition

CAUTION: BEWARE OF [HOMOS]

It’s like watching history repeat itself: African governments copying the tricks of the past, using propaganda to deny the plight of sexual minorities in their countries, while running full steam to destroy them.

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Christian Right Doubles Down in the Face of Catholic Progress

Despite subsequent backtracking, the Catholic world is abuzz with news that the Synod of Bishops could be taking steps toward a dramatic overhaul in the church’s long-standing doctrine on LGBTQ people, as well as its view on divorced …

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Neoliberalism, Higher Education, and the Rise of Contingent Faculty Labor

Higher education is under attack by the neoliberal enterprise. While most colleges and universities are still nonprofit institutions, they have been overtaken by the neoliberal agenda.

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The Nullification of Religious Liberty

It’s true. Religious liberty is under sustained attack in America—but not in the way the Christian Right would have us believe. A theocratic (and sometimes Neo-Confederate) movement within the broader Christian Right is targeting the religious…

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Friedrich von Hayek, Thomas Piketty, and the Search for Political Economy

Seventy years after the Right embraced von Hayek’s manifesto, does Piketty’s rock-star reception portend a new revolution?

The response to Piketty from liberal audiences, eager to find an analysis deeper than a Paul Krugman column, reflects not only the economic politics of our own time. It also indicates a longing, however tentative, to bring these economic questions…

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Globalization and NAFTA Caused Migration from Mexico

When NAFTA was passed two decades ago, its boosters promised it would bring “First World” status for the Mexican people. Instead, it prompted a great migration north.

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An Uncharitable Choice

The Faith-Based Takeover of Federal Programs

Two presidents in a row have increasingly steered federal grants and contracts to conservative Christian groups—including houses of worship.

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Beyond Prisons, Mental Health Clinics

When Austerity Opens Cages, Where Do the Services Go?

Barbed wire in a spiral form outside a brown building.

Neoliberal policies that result in institutional closures carry a cost, too. Could communities seize the moment to redirect resources toward self-determination and liberation?

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How Colorblindness Co-Evolved with Free-Market Thinking

Protesters wearing masks. One protester holding a sign that says "The system isn't broken it was built this way."

As White supremacists shifted tactics in response to mass social movements, they needed a mass electoral base. Neoliberals helped build it for them—and colorblindness helped wipe out some inconvenient historical truths.

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Attack On NYC Art Gallery Highlights Fascist Organizing in U.S. Immigrant Communities

New York City is one of the most diverse U.S. cities, and has a profusion of immigrant communities. While this might make the city seem like one of the least likely places for fascist activism, the opposite seems to be true: there is a spate of…

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From the New Right to Neoliberalism

The Threat to Democracy Has Grown

President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas participate in the initialing ceremony of the North American Free Trade Agreement in San Antonio, Texas.

The U.S. is in the grip of an unprecedented dominance of right-wing ideologies and policies. Many progressive commentators see that the same band of New Right actors that have long pushed a conservative agenda are up to their old tricks, trying to…

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