Founded by Jean Hardisty in Chicago as Midwest Research, with a staff of three.
|
 |
 |
|
| 1982 |
Midwest Research produces two award-winning posters emphasizing the broad spectrum of right-wing violence.
View Poster 1 - View Poster 2
|
|
Researcher Chip Berlet appears live on the NBC Today Show to discuss Posse Comitatus recruiting in the beleaguered farm belt.
|
 |
 |
|
|
Berlet is named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by Lyndon LaRouche against NBC News and others. |
|
In response to the New Right's "pro-family" movement, Midwest Research publishes its first monograph, Nostalgia on the Right: Historical Roots of the Idealized Family, by historian Nancy Theriot. |
 |
|
|
Midwest Research attains 501(c)3 status, becoming a not-for-profit organization. |
 |
An online computer bulletin board system
(BBS) is launched, the second progressive BBS in the United States,
and the first devoted exclusively to challenging the Right.
(read more) |
 |
|
| 1986 |
Apartheid in our Living Rooms: U.S. Foreign Policy and South Africa, by Prexy Nesbitt, is published in response to the Reagan administration's constructive engagement policy and the U.S. presence in South Africa.
|
|
Midwest Research receives the Citizens Alert "Rev. Willie Baker
Award" for "outstanding efforts" in
working for racial justice in Chicago by helping anti-racist activists
understand how White supremacist and antisemitic groups mobilized
support in neighborhoods.
|
 |
| With a farewell from Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, the office moves to Boston and is renamed
Political Research Associates. |
 |
|
PRA works with the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and other groups in a national network to expose FBI spying on the progressive movement against U.S. intervention in Central America.
|
1988 |
|
 |
Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag, a topical report by Chip Berlet and Joel Bellman, is published by PRA.
|
PRA leads a research project on right-wing attacks on Legal Services for the poor.
|
|
| 1990 |
PRA leads a research project on right-wing obsession with obscenity and pornography, with a special focus on their attacks on the artists Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano.
|
|
PRA collaborates with South End Press to co-publish two books by Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism, and Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party.
|
 |
| PRA publishes Chip Berlet's report Right Woos Left: Populist Party, LaRouchian and Other Fascist Overtures to Progressives and Why They Must be Rejected. |
 |
|
|
PRA celebrates its ten-year anniversary!
|
In response to the anti-environmentalist movement, PRA publishes The Scent of Opportunity: A Survey of the Wise Use/Property Rights Movement in New England.
|
|
PRA begins publication of its magazine, The Public Eye.
|
 |
|
PRA Executive Director Jean Hardisty serves as an expert witness in the successful legal challenge to the anti-gay Amendment Two in Colorado. She then pens groundbreaking study “Constructing Homophobia” in Public Eye magazine.
|
 |
PRA produces a twelve-part set of packets titled Constructing Homophobia: How the Right Wing Defines Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals as a Threat to Civilization.
|
 |
|
|
PRA completes groundbreaking research on Christian Reconstructionism,
an ultra-fundamentalist wing of the Christian Right that has been a factor
behind increased violence in the anti-abortion movement. (read the article)
|
 |
|
South End Press publishes Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, edited by Chip Berlet. The book receives the Gustavus Myers award.
|
 |
PRA report warns of the rise of armed citizen’s militia movement and the potential for violence—before Oklahoma City bombing. |
 |
|
| 1996 |
Lucy Williams’ Public Eye article “The Right’s Attack on Aid to Families with Dependent Children” is published.
|
|
In the face of the right's demonizing rhetoric about "welfare queens," PRA publishes Decades of Distortion, a report that documents the right's strategic misidentification and stereotyping of those aided by public assistance.
|
 |
 |
|
 |
A joint research report with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Equal Partners in Faith, Calculated Compassion, is first to identify the Christian Right “Ex-Gay” movement as another attack on gay rights using softer rhetoric and clever re-framing of issues. |
 |
|
Beacon Press publishes Jean Hardisty’s Mobilizing Resentment, winner of the Gustavus Myers award.
|
 |
PRA publishes Defending Public Education, the first in a series of Activist Resource Kits, primary and secondary materials about campaigns on the Right. |
 |
|
 |
Guilford Press publishes Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, by Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, which receives the Gustavus Myers award. |
 |
|
PRA publishes a Public Eye Special Issue on 9/11 focuses on Nationalism and Nativism.
|
2001 |
|
| 2002 |
PRA issues a Special Report on a Massachusetts think tank: The Pioneer Institute: Privatizing the Common Wealth.
|
|
PRA publishes acclaimed research on the African-American anti-abortion movement and the Right's attack on LGBT safe zones in high schools.
|
 |
 |
|
|
After more than 20 years at PRA, founder and executive director Jean Hardisty steps down to serve as President Emerita.
|
 |
|
PRA welcomes Katherine Ragsdale as the new Executive Director.
|
 |
| Defending Justice: An Activist Resource Kit is published. It includes over 250 pages of information on how to resist the growing system of courts, surveillance, policing, and incarceration. With it, a comanion website, www.defendingjustice.org, is launched. |
 |
|
 |
The expanded Public Eye addresses intelligent design, left-right resistance to the Patriot Act, conservative attempts to takeover mainstream churches, the latest tactics by conservative NGOs at the UN, white supremacy on the Web, and biased, agenda-driven science.
|
|
PRA celebrates its 25th anniversary!
|
|
