Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)  [Back to Top]
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), whose members in the late 1960s and early 70s invaded welfare offices across the U.S. -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. In the late 1960s, ACORN founder Wade Rathke was a NWRO organizer and a protegé of Wiley. Rathke also organized draft resistance for the militant group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the same period. Today ACORN claims 175,000 dues-paying member families, and more than 850 chapters in 70 U.S. cities in 38 states. It owns two radio stations, a housing corporation, and a law office, and maintains affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. ACORN also runs schools where children are trained in class consciousness; a network of "boot camps" for training street activists; and operations that extort contributions from banks and other businesses under threat of racial violence and trumped-up civil rights charges. In the 2004 election cycle, ACORN and its sister group Project Vote ran a nationwide voter mobilization drive that was marred by allegations of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams. ACORN’s get-out-the-vote activists were implicated in schemes that included the falsification and destruction of thousands of voter registration forms, and the registering of convicted felons even in states where felons are ineligible to vote.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, Reference.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

America Coming Together  [Back to Top]
America Coming Together (ACT) organized the Democratic Party's Government Union wing, which is represented by such leftist labor unions as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFSCME. ACT was one of the 33 "progressive" member organizations constituting the America Votes coalition. It was also a member group of the so-called Democrat Shadow Party, a nationwide network of non-profit activist groups pursuing leftist agendas and campaigning aggressively for Democrat political candidates. During the 2004 election, ACT ran what its website called "the largest voter contact program in history," with over 1,400 full-time paid canvassers -- many of whom were discovered to be felons convicted of violent crimes -- as well as thousands of volunteers working from 55 offices, contacting voters door-to-door and by phone. ACT used intrusive, high-pressure tactics to register and mobilize such voters, both by phone and by door-to-door canvassing. Not only did its canvassers register voters, but they compiled extensive personal dossiers on the latter -- including such private information as their drivers' license numbers and social security numbers -- information which could be retrieved on demand through the canvassers' hand-held Palm Pilots.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, Reference.com, SourceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org
Organization Website

Center for American Progress  [Back to Top]
The Center for American Progress (CAP) describes itself as "a nonpartisan research and educational institute" aimed at "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals." Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: "The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros' Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders." Soros and Halperin recruited Harold Ickes -- chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House -- to help organize the Center. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute. The name was changed to Center for American Progress (CAP) on September 1, 2003. The official purpose of the Center was to provide the left with something it supposedly lacked -- a think tank of its own.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org
Organization Website

Center for Constitutional Rights  [Back to Top]
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was co-founded in November 1966 by the radical attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kunstler, longtime members of the Communist and radical left. (Kinoy and Kuntsler were well known for their pro-Castro politics.) CCR characterizes itself as an organization that "uses litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction, to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections and least access to legal resources." In pursuit of these ends, CCR only defends clients whose political views it supports, among the more notable of whom have been the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party and the Chicago Seven. Vis a vis international matters, CCR has argued in court that: U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was unconstitutional and criminal and the U.S. Navy should not be permitted to use the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for bombing exercises. In addition, the Center attacked America's anti-Communist foreign policies concerning El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Cuba, and elsewhere in Central and South America. CCR is a core member of the open borders lobby, which seeks to effectively initiate an era of mass, unchecked immigration. When law-enforcement agencies attempted, in the wake of 9/11, to conduct voluntary interviews with several thousand Middle Eastern men who were in the United States on temporary visas, CCR denounced such "racial profiling." CCR's views on the political and psychological roots of anti-American terrorism were summarized in March 2002 by the organization's President, Michael Ratner, who said: "If the U.S. government truly wants its people to be safer and wants terrorist threats to diminish, it must make fundamental changes in its foreign policies ... particularly its unqualified support for Israel.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

Code Pink for Peace  [Back to Top]
Launched on November 17, 2002, Code Pink for Peace describes itself as a "grassroots peace and social justice movement" whose self-defined mission is "to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities." Rejecting "the Bush administration's fear-based politics that justify violence," the organization calls instead "for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law." Code Pink was founded by four radicals: Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin, Diane Wilson, and a radical Wiccan activist calling herself Starhawk. Ms. Evans is the nominal leader of the organization, which works closely with Medea Benjamin's group Global Exchange and Leslie Cagan's antiwar coalition United For Peace and Justice. In 2003 Jodie Evans led a delegation of fifteen Code Pink women to Baghdad, where they met with Iraqi women for the purpose of "creat[ing] the understanding that the people of Iraq are no different than you and me." "We who cherish children," said Evans, "will not consent to their murder...in a war for oil." In addition to scorning America's military action in Iraq, Code Pink also condemns the racism, sexism, poverty, corporate corruption, and environmental degradation they claim are rampant in the U.S. Depicting the financial cost of the Iraq War as a drain on resources that would be better earmarked for other purposes. The threat of distant terrorists, claims Code Pink, is insignificant when compared to the "real threats" that Americans face every day: "the illness or ordinary accident that could plunge us into poverty, the violence on our own streets, the corporate corruption that can result in the loss of our jobs, our pensions, our security." In conjunction with Global Exchange and United For Peace and Justice, Code Pink helped establish Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW) to monitor potential American abuses during the reconstruction of Iraq. Code Pink's and IOW's stated objective is to thin U.S. forces in Iraq by causing soldiers to seek discharges and be sent home as conscientious objectors.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

Democratic Socialists of America  [Back to Top]
Describing itself as "the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International," the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States. "We are socialists," reads the organization's boilerplate, "because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo." "To achieve a more just society," adds DSA, "many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed...Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States." Formed in 1983 during the Cold War by merging splinter factions of the Socialist movement, DSA brought together what it calls "former Socialists and Communists, former old leftists and new leftists, and many who had never been leftists at all."
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

EMILY's List (EL)  [Back to Top]
EMILY's List (EL) is a political network that raises money early in the election cycle each year for Democratic, pro-choice, female candidates. The organizers of EL believe that providing such "early" funding gives its recipients greater public credibility and, consequently, access to more campaign contributions from a wide variety of sources. "EMILY" is an acronym standing for "Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes the dough rise)." EMILY's List was established in 1985 by a group of some 25 women, led by Ellen Malcolm, who decided to bundle their political contributions in order to support "progressive" female candidates. These founders gathered in Malcolm's basement to prepare fundraising letters to their friends about the new network they were forming. By 1986, EL membership stood at 1,155. In 1994, EL began work as a "full-service" campaign organization, offering political consulting services and operating "get-out-the-vote" drives that targeted women. EL reported that in the 2002 election cycle, it raised $24 million for its own expenses and campaigns, as well as $9.7 million in bundled candidate contributions from its 73,000-plus members. In 2004, EL member donations totaled more than $10 million. Today EL claims a membership exceeding 100,000.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org
Organization Website

Freedom Socialist Party  [Back to Top]
The Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) is a Trotskyist political party founded in the mid-1960s as the Seattle branch of the Socialist Workers Party. Its early leaders were Richard Fraser and Clara Fraser. Still headquartered in Seattle, FSP also has branches in California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon, as well as small affiliates in Australia and Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada). Allied with Radical Women, FSP describes itself as "a revolutionary, socialist feminist organization, dedicated to the replacement of capitalist rule by a genuine workers' democracy that will guarantee full economic, social, political, and legal equality to women, people of color, gays, and all who are exploited, oppressed, and repelled by the profit system and its offshoot -- imperialism." FSP strongly supports Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba today, much as it backed the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong. Calling itself "a product of the living tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky," FSP characterizes the United States as a land where women are routinely oppressed and denied basic rights and freedoms.
Sources: Discover the Networks, Wikipedia, Answers.com
Organization Website

International ANSWER  [Back to Top]
International ANSWER (an acronym for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism") is run by Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, which is staffed by members of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. ANSWER views the United States as a racist, imperialist, sexist, homophobic nation and the world’s chief violator of human rights -- guilty of unspeakable atrocities, past and present, foreign and domestic. Founded on September 14, 2001, ANSWER held its initial mass demonstrations fifteen days thereafter, on September 29th in Washington, DC and San Francisco. These rallies drew 25,000 and 15,000 participants, respectively, to protest the Bush administration's impending invasion of Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime had aided and abetted the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for 9/11. In July 2002, ANSWER shifted its focus to denouncing the prospect of a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq. ANSWER’s first "six-figure" rally took place on April 20, 2002, when more than 100,000 people protested outside the White House and marched through Washington, DC “in support of justice for Palestine.”
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

Media Fund  [Back to Top]
Describing itself as "the largest media buying organization supporting a progressive message," The Media Fund (TMF) conceptualizes, produces, and places political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet. It was very active prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election; since then, it has been much less active. TMF was founded by Harold Ickes, a Democrat lobbyist and strategist who is widely recognized as the chief organizer of the Shadow Party. After passage of the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002, Ickes helped put George Soros together with such activists as Andrew Stern, Ellen R. Malcolm, Steve Rosenthal, Gina Glantz, Cecile Richards and others who were seeking ways to circumvent McCain-Feingold's soft-money ban. Ickes sought to organize what he informally called a "media fund" -- or sometimes "the president's media fund" -- a Section 527 stealth PAC that would raise money for campaign advertising. Ickes finally decided to simply call it The Media Fund, launching it in early 2003. The Media Fund subsequently received more than $28.1 million in donations, much of it from leftist government labor unions such as SEIU and AFSCME. TMF also received many millions of dollars whose ultimate source is untraceable, since the money was first laundered through Joint Victory Campaign 2004 (JVC 2004). George Soros gave millions of dollars to JVC 2004, as did close Soros associates Peter B. Lewis and Stephen Bing.
Sources: Discover the Network, SouceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org, Wikipedia
Organization Website

Media Matters  [Back to Top]
Established in May 2004, Media Matters for America is a "web-based, not-for-profit...progressive research and information center" seeking to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." But in addition to "news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible," the organization's concept of "misinformation" includes anything that "forwards the conservative agenda." Thus political differences of opinion are often portrayed by Media Matters as lies or worse. Media Matters' founder and CEO is David Brock. A reporter for the conservative magazine The American Spectator in the 1990s, Brock (in the aftermath of his biography of Hillary Clinton that brought disastrous reviews) engaged in a public self-denunciation, characterizing all his past writings critical of liberal figures as a confection of lies and slanders. In Brock's present judgment, the mainstream media have fallen under the sway of conservative ideology. He believes that conservatives have moved the mainstream media "to the right and therefore they've moved American politics to the right...I wanted to create an institution [Media Matters] to combat what they're doing." Standing behind Brock was John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and the head of the "progressive" Washington, DC think tank, the Center for American Progress. In 2004 Podesta provided Brock with office space for his fledgling enterprise. Soon after, Media Matters received over $2 million in seed donations from a roster of affluent donors including Leo Hindery Jr.; Susie Tompkins Buell; James Hormel; Bren Simon; and Gail Furman. Media Matters, which can accept tax-deductible contributions under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, has also benefited from the patronage of Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corporation and a longtime consort of leftist financier George Soros.
Sources: Discover the Network, SourceWatch.org, Wikipedia
Organization Website

MoveOn.org  [Back to Top]
MoveOn is a Web-based, grassroots political network that organizes "electronic advocacy groups" of online activists around specific issues; raises money for Democrat candidates through rock concerts and other entertainment events; generates political ads; and wins young recruits through its appeal to the Net-savvy, MTV subculture. Launched on September 22, 1998, MoveOn took its name from a favorite buzz phrase of Clinton supporters at the time of Clinton's impeachment. High-tech entrepreneur Wesley Boyd and his wife Joan Blades, who had earned a fortune with their software company Berkeley Systems, Inc., were angered by the Clinton impeachment. They wrote a one-sentence petition and e-mailed it to friends, who then e-mailed it to others in chain-letter fashion. It said, "Censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation." At the same time, Boyd and Blades launched MoveOn.org, where people could sign a pro-Clinton petition electronically. On October 23, 1999 Boyd and Blades rolled out MoveOn PAC, a federal political action committee designed to take political contributions from MoveOn's fast-growing membership. MoveOn PAC raised millions of dollars for Democrat candidates in the elections of 1998 and thereafter. Today, MoveOn boasts an e-mail list of more than 2.2 million members in the U.S. and over 800,000 abroad. Its ten full-time staffers work from home, staying in touch via e-mail, instant messaging and weekly conference calls. MoveOn uses its fundraising clout to push the Democratic Party to the left. More than a website, MoveOn.org is a movement tailored to persuade young people to support mainstream Democrats. MoveOn has received financial support from numerous leftist organizations, including the Tides Foundation, the Shefa Fund, the Stern Family Fund, the Steven and Michelle Kirsch Foundation, the Compton Foundation, and George Soros's Open Society Institute.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers,com, SourceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org
Organization Website

Not In Our Name  [Back to Top]
The Not In Our Name (NION) project -- a self-described "peace movement" -- was initiated on March 23, 2002 by the longtime Maoist activist C. Clark Kissinger, who is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government and its replacement with a Communist dictatorship. In 1987 Kissinger founded the radical "Refuse and Resist!", which is a member organization of NION. The NION project has produced, most notably, two documents publicly denouncing America's post-9/11 policies, both foreign and domestic. One of these documents, the NION "Pledge of Resistance," condemns "the injustices done by our government" in its pursuit of "endless war"; its greed-driven "transfusions of blood for oil"; its determination to "erode [our] freedoms"; and its eagerness to "invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children, [and annihilate] families on foreign soil." A separate document, the NION "Statement of Conscience," condemns not only the Bush administration's "stark new measures of repression," but also its "unjust, immoral, illegitimate, [and] openly imperial policy towards the world." According to NION, it is the American government -- and not that of any other nation -- that poses the most "grave dangers to the people of the world."
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia
Organization Website

People for the American Way  [Back to Top]
People for the American Way was established in 1981 as a Tides Foundation project designed to counteract the allegedly growing influence of what its founder, television producer and political activist Norman Lear, denounced as the "religious right." Lear also derided American consumerism, which he defined as a corrupting fixation with economic concerns, as the greatest menace to the American way of life. PFAW has been a leading force in the movement to scuttle the nomination of conservative judges to America's highest courts. In 1998 PFAW established the People For The American Way Voters Alliance, a political action committee whose raison d'etre was to "fight the right" by giving financial support to leftist political candidates and representatives. PFAW responded to the Bush victory in 2004 much as it had in 2000: by proclaiming that the voting process itself had been flawed and that Bush's victory was thus illegitimate. The organization immediately released a report titled "Shattering the Myth: An Initial Snapshot of Voter Disenfranchisement in the 2004 Elections." Even as PFAW holds fast to its "non-partisan" tag, the Capital Research Center reported that, in 2003 and 2004, 98 percent of the organization's political contributions went to left-liberal Democratic candidates. PFAW and its tax-exempt lobbying arm, the People for the American Way Foundation, are heavily supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Arca Foundation, the Bauman Family Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Lear Family Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and many others.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org, OpenSecrets.org
Organization Website

Shadow Party  [Back to Top]
The so-called "Shadow Democratic Party," or "Shadow Party," is a nationwide network of more than five-dozen unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. Its activities include fundraising, get-out-the-vote drives, political advertising, opposition research, and media manipulation. The Shadow Party was conceived and organized principally by George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold McEwan Ickes -- all identified with the Democratic Party left. A political consultancy called the Thunder Road Group (TRG), located on the 7th Floor of the historic Motion Picture Association of America headquarters at 888 Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, serves as the unofficial headquarters of the Shadow Party. Three other Shadow Party groups also lease space in the same building, including America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes, and the Partnership for America's Families. The clustering of these groups in a building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is significant. The MPAA has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Democratic Party; many high-ranking Democrats have transitioned comfortably from government jobs into glamorous posts in the MPAA's upper management.
Sources: Discover the Network
Organization Website

Thunder Road Group  [Back to Top]
The Thunder Road Group (TRG) is the strategic nerve center of the Shadow Party. It coordinates strategy for the Media Fund, America Coming Together (ACT), and America Votes -- the three groups most involved in Shadow Party strategic planning. TRG is a political consultancy that combines the roles of strategic planning, polling, opposition research, covert operations, and public relations. It is through TRG that the Shadow Party formulates its plans, dispatches orders to the network, and presents its public face to the world. "[The Thunder Road Group] is an operation unlike any other in politics, devising strategy, message, and public relations services for the 527s," writes The Boston Globe. TRG is named after a Bruce Springsteen song, "Thunder Road," whose lyrics declare, "It's a town full of losers, and I'm pulling out of here to win." The organization was founded in early 2004 by Jim Jordan, an attorney with a long track record as a Democrat "spin doctor." Among other high-profile assignments, Jordan handled press relations for the Senate committee investigating DNC fundraising in 1997 and for the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment proceedings of 1998. Jordan served as John Kerry's campaign manager from December 2002 to November 2003 when he was suddenly fired along with several other staffers. Within weeks, Harold Ickes and Ellen R. Malcolm recruited Jordan to handle publicity and strategy for Ickes' Media Fund, Malcolm's America Coming Together, and Cecile Richards' America Votes. In early 2004, Jordan established his own company, The Thunder Road Group, to handle the growing volume of work pouring in from those organizations. A July 27, 2004 article in The Hill reports that Jordan had already, by that time, collected $1.7 million in consulting fees and was drawing an $85,000 salary.
Sources: Discover the Network, SourceWatch.org,
Organization Website

Workers World Party  [Back to Top]
The Workers World Party is a Marxist-Leninist sect that was founded in 1959 by Sam Marcy. Marcy and his followers were members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) until 1958, when they split from SWP because, unlike that organization, they supported the presidential bid of the Progressive Party's Henry A. Wallace in 1948, the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the regime of Mao Zedong in China. Advocating socialist revolution and the abolition of private property in the United States, WWP is a staunch supporter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. The organization campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and it backed Saddam Hussein in his pre-war conflicts with the United States. WWP also supported the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. During the Cold War it always sided with the Communists, against America. In the 1960s, Marcy himself led demonstrations against the Vietnam War and called for the victory of the Vietcong.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website

World Social Forum  [Back to Top]
The World Social Forum is convened annually as a rejoinder to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, a yearly symposium of top business leaders, eminent political figures, journalists, and pundits. In contrast to the WEF whose concern is wealth generation, the WSF concerns itself with "how to better distribute wealth." The WSF mission statement condemns "neo-liberalism" (i.e., capitalism) and "domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism." Excoriating corporate executives attending the World Economic Forum, some WSF participants expressed hope of a leftist takeover of corporations. Both American and Israeli flags were set ablaze at the 2004 WSF. Some 60 WSF seminars were devoted to the subject of Israeli "crimes" against Palestinians and the Arab world. WSF's many funders include Oxfam, which held several workshops at the 2004 Forum, and the Ford Foundation, which contributed $100,000 to the 2001 WSF and $500,000 to the 2003 event. Among the sponsors of the 2005 WSF were Christian Aid and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Sources: Discover the Network, Wikipedia, Answers.com, SourceWatch.org
Organization Website