Email from Political Research Associates A Busy Season for PRA September/October 2024 Dear Readers and Partners, In case you missed it, Political Research Associates (PRA) is thrilled to announce that our year-long, nationwide search for a new Executive Director is complete! Incoming Executive Director Sylvia Broude brings 20 years of experience leading grassroots campaigns and non-profits to build multiracial and cross-class people power. Sylvia’s strengths as an organizer, facilitator and strategist will be instrumental as we continue to advance our mission. And after nearly two decades as PRA’s Executive Director, Tarso Luís Ramos is beginning a new chapter in his life in 2025. Join us to celebrate Tarso’s legacy and hear from Tarso about what this new chapter, and new political moment, means for PRA and our movements. Register at bit.ly/celebratingtarso Keep reading for podcast recommendations, our featured new report on the Hindu American Foundation, some pre-election materials from PRA, how you can help our organization in this moment, and some recommended reading from Religion Dispatches.  With gratitude! Political Research Associates Listen Now! Season 3 of Inform Your Resistance is here! This season host Koki Mendis interviews guests who discuss the most significant contemporary threats to democracy from the mainstream and Far Right.  Join us as we explore the unlikely intersections and outsized influence of the anti-immigrant movement, the large and underestimated New Apostolic Reformation, the Hindu Right's influence in domestic politics, and more! Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Introducing The Insurgence: Sheriffs! Research Director Cloee Cooper uncoveres how a national network of far-right sheriffs is mobilizing to create a White Christian republic, one county at a time. The series features first-hand accounts from people across the country who have come up against the sometimes-fatal consequences from the unchecked power of county sheriffs and their growing alignment with the new Far Right. The Insurgence is produced by Cuentero Productions and Political Research Associates. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. In Case You Missed It PRA and our partner, the Savera coalition, have published a new, breaking report on the Hindu American Foundation. The Hindu American Foundation has been exercising its influence for 20 years by masquerading as an advocacy group for minority rights, but is better understood as a key actor in a global Hindu supremacist movement and an emerging player in the U.S. Far Right. Election Prep Recommended Reading: Read about how the Heritage Foundation has put out a worrying new plan to fight antisemitism in Religion Dispatches: Heritage Foundation’s Christian Nationalist ‘Project Esther’ Won’t Combat Antisemitism — But it Will Weaponize Jews by Ben Lorber On October 7, the Heritage Foundation released a new outline for combatting antisemitism—but in reality, the plan is a blueprint for cracking down on Palestinian rights protesters and progressive funding. Recommended Listening: Coming soon: The final episode—"Stop the Steal"—of PRA and Cuentero Productions' new podcast The Insurgence: Sheriffs addresses the role sheriffs within CSPOA plan to play to intimidate voters and throw a wrench in the election certification process. The episode will be available this Thursday, October 31 wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe today to get the episode in your feed. Recommended Resources: For potential organizing in the wake of the election: Take a look at Harnessing Our Power to End (HOPE) Political Violence, a guide for communities across the United States to organize to counter political violence. Please revisit our 2020 resource Paramilitaries at Your Protest: An Activist Field Guide to the Armed Far Right, which offers guidance for identifying far-right actors who may show up to monitor or intimidate voters. We Need Your Help For over 40 years, PRA has offered unimpeachable research on authoritarian forces directly to the grassroots leaders who are fighting to protect and build democracy. PRA’s understanding of supremacist forces is crucial—especially in this deeply fraught political moment. PRA is taking on these issues daily in Religion Dispatches (RD), a secular online magazine that has been helping readers better understand the relationship between religion, culture, and politics since 2008. With a compelling and accessible blend of scholarship and journalism, Religion Dispatches seeks to tease out strands in religious thought and practice that underwrite structures of inequality and injustice. We believe shining a light on how religion shapes our world helps our readers recognize and disrupt authoritarianism and other forces threatening to undermine democracy. Together, PRA and RD are working tirelessly to share crucial research on and insightful analysis of authoritarianism. We know this work is necessary to defeat antidemocratic threats and to build a more just world in which we can all flourish. But we need your help. Will you give today to strengthen our efforts and keep the fight going? In solidarity, Evan Derkacz Editor, Religion Dispatches Donate Today The Latest from PRA and Religion Dispatches Church Attendance is (Once Again) Correlated with Authoritarianism — So Why Do We Refuse to Acknowledge It? by Chrissy Stroop A new report from the Public Religion Research Institute shows a correlation between church attendance and support for Donald Trump and his policies. So why do many media institutions continue to disparage secularism and lift up religiosity? This is No Ordinary Anti-Blackness — The Racist History of the Pet-Eating Conspiracy by Kyrah Malika Daniels and Dianne M. Stewart The Vance-Trump talking point of Haitians purportedly eating pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio is not just another outlandish lie spread by the campaign—it has a history rooted in anti-Haitian racist fearmongering. The Case for Open Borders: Author Q&A with John Washington by Reece Jones Reece Jones discusses the book "The Case for Open Borders" with author John Washington, the idea of open borders, and the way the Left and the Right react to the idea. The New Antisemitism and Neo-McCarthyism by Ben Lorber Authoritarian forces in the U.S. are desperate to quell the grassroots upsurge in Palestine solidarity protests by responding with neo-McCarthyist repression tactics, recalling a period of extreme anti-Left repression driven by the U.S Right in the 1950s. Old Problems, New Tricks: The AI-Enabled Far Right Hits the Elections Cycle by Bunny McKenzie Mack Artificial Intelligence is exacerbating a problem that marginalized communities have been warning us about since the dawn of social media: far-right disinformation. For more analysis and resources, browse PRA's most recent articles and 40-year archive on our website. Get involved with PRA! 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