39 West 14th Street, #206
New York, NY
10011

• Assets: $116,969 (2005)
• Grants Received: $278,575 (2005)
• Grants Awarded: $148,299 (2005)

When the avowedly socialist International Action Center (IAC) demanded, in March of 2004, that the United States "immediately end the criminal occupation of Iraq" and exhorted its followers to "express solidarity with the courageous Iraqi resistance that has derailed the U.S. Empire," the group's position on the Iraq War was unambiguous. The IAC, founded in 1992, is the brainchild of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and regularly trumpets its support for a host of radical causes. On the infrequent occasions when it is not taking its stand with Iraq's terrorist insurgency, the group's agenda runs from everything from the institution of universal housing and healthcare to the toppling of "the new capitalist world order."

To finance this radical advocacy, the IAC relies on the support of a little-known, New York-based non-profit called the People's Rights Fund Inc. (PRF). As the PRF acknowledges on its website, "The People's Rights Fund, Inc. helps to fund the educational and organizing work of the International Action Center." According to the Capital Research Center, a group that monitors leftwing non-profits, the PRF doled out $62,000 to the IAC in 2002 alone.

Whether the PRF is in fact permitted to fund the IAC, however, is a matter of contentious dispute. Under Internal Revenue Service guidelines, the PRF, as a tax-exempt group, is debarred from engaging in "substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms," precisely the ingredients in the IAC's extremist sloganeering. Moreover, the IRS's 501(c)(3) provisions stipulate that non-profit foundations like PRF must pursue "objective evaluations," rather than "express conclusions on the basis of strong emotional feelings." The PRF's longtime support for the IAC suggests that it is prepared to flout the IRS provisions in the interest of funding its extremist agenda.

In 1997, PRF dollars helped launch an anti-nuclear campaign by the IAC. An IAC press release from the time made no attempt to mask the money trail leading from the IAC back to the PFR, asking supporters to send "tax-deductible donations for this anti-nuclear campaign" to a joint IAC-PRF initiative called the "People's Rights Fund-DU Education Project." (DU is an acronym for "Depleted Uranium.") As part of the project, the groups pressed for an immediate ban on all conventional weaponry and the suspension of nuclear power. This was followed up by a 1999 campaign against the NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia. Again, a press release revealed the connection between the IAC and the PFR:

"We urgently need to collect the funds necessary for a huge demonstration. It is through the self-sacrifice and cooperation of thousands of people of conscience that we will succeed in building this new movement. Donations to the 'People's Rights Fund/To Stop the War' are tax deductible."

One year later, in January of 2000, the IAC and the PFR began a campaign against sanctions on Iraq, urging followers to "take a concrete stand against the U.S. policy of sanctions that are inflicting genocide against an entire people." Contributions were to be sent to the PFR.

The PFR was particularly active in 2001. In March of that year, for instance, a PFR filmmaking project, the People's Video Network (PVN), held a special ceremony in honor of Ellen Andors, the late socialist documentary filmmaker. A press release noted that "Ellen used multi-media as a way to educate about capitalism's ills and the need to struggle against them." Besides the PVN, other sponsors of the event were the Workers World Party and the International Action Center.

Also initiated in 2001 was another joint project of the IAC and the PRF, a campaign called the "International Action Center National Peoples Campaign," or "Millions for Mumia." The campaign was aimed at expressing solidarity with the "political prisoner" Mumia Abu-Jamal, a taxi driver and former Black Panther activist sentenced to death in the 1980s for murdering a police officer.

In June of 2001, the PRF sponsored an anti-war conference in New York City and protests at FBI headquarters; the PRF also invested its capital in the cause of Israel-bashing, bankrolling a mock-court known as the "Independent Commissions of Inquiry into U.S.-backed Israeli War Crimes." In September 2001, the PRF gave financial support to the International Action Center and International A.N.S.W.E.R., and sponsored a number of demonstrations, teach-ins, and other radical gatherings in Washington and New York City. (Not coincidentally, the IAC, International A.N.S.W.E.R., and the PRF al share the same New York headquarters on 39 West 14th Street.) Beyond aiding the IAC in its anti-war campaigns, the PRF, under the guise of "educational" outreach, unveiled its own line of anti-war propaganda. For example, one PRF announcement from 2001, cited in a Front Page Magazine article by Edward Immler, stated:

The People's Rights Fund is sponsoring the holding of educational events to inform the people of the U.S. about the dangers of a new war initiated by the U.S. government, about the racist attacks in this country, and concerning the threats to civil liberties to the people of this country. The Fund is also sponsoring the production of educational materials on these subjects.

Though demonstrably connected to the radical IAC, the PRF is not forthcoming about the IAC's extremist political agendas. To the contrary, the PRF website presents a purposefully vague account of the IAC's activities:

The IAC organizes educational events such as meetings, conferences and panel discussions on many issues in many cities. The IAC also initiates and supports many national, regional, and local activities and protests focusing on U.S. militarism abroad and on racism, repression and injustice at home.

Whatever the actual accomplishments of the IAC/PRF's collaborative campaigns, these groups have succeeded in muddying any distinction between the supposedly agenda-free PRF and the militantly radical IAC. One July 2001 email sent out by the IAC indicated that the group had no compunction about abusing the PRF's tax-free status for financial gain. Following an obligatory fulmination against "the Bush administration's attack on women's rights, people of color, the environment, workers rights, and the poor," the IAC email noted: "Any donation you are able to make, whether it is your tax return or not, is completely tax-deductible when it is made out to the People's Rights Fund." The two groups even developed a joint initiative, the "Peoples Rights Fund/IAC Project." That the project amounts to little more than a covert effort to facilitate the flow of finances from the PRF to the IAC is revealed by the PRF website itself, which notes that the project seeks "to fund the production of IAC materials such as books, pamphlets, fact sheets and videos on a variety of important issues of the day." Likewise, the IAC directs its supporters to "Please make a check out to Peoples Rights Fund/IAC Project," gleefully noting that, "As an extra incentive, your tax-deductable donation can reduce, even if by a little, the money available to the Pentagon."

Heightened public concern about the abuse of tax-free status has had no appreciable impact on the alliance between the IAC and the PRF. In 2002, according to the Capital Research Center, the PRF contributed $62,000 of its $447,045 in revenues to the IAC's coffers. The IAC promptly put the money to use. Among the group's 2002 activities was its sponsorship of a Los Angeles forum "to expose crimes committed by the U.S. military against the [South] Korean people"; the purpose of this forum was to advance the IAC's claim that America's military presence in South Korea is the "main obstacle to peace, democracy, and reunification of the peninsula." (On the subject of North Korea's Stalinist regime, the IAC was deliberately silent.) Along with International ANSWER, the IAC also took part in several anti-war and anti-Israel demonstrations. Supporters of these events were invited to contribute donations directly to the PRF.

In tandem with its role as a leading sponsor of the IAC and International ANSWER, the PRF presides over several leftist advocacy campaigns. This is not a new development. Since its founding in 1986, when the foundation declared its intention to bankroll causes "too controversial for more traditional funders," the PRF has been the financial fuel behind a vast array of leftwing campaigns. In the early 1990s, the PRF sponsored opposition to the first Gulf War; later, the foundation underwrote the manufacture of leaflets and other political literature denouncing the imposition of sanctions on Iraq. Even today, the PRF has remained a committed sponsor of opposition to the first Gulf War. Currently the PRF is sponsoring a propaganda video reviving the unsubstantiated claim, continuously advanced by the far left, that depleted uranium caused widespread harm to American troops during the Gulf War. The video, to be released sometime in 2005, is titled Poison Dust. It will outline "the history of radiation, graphically documenting the horrifying damage caused by DU [Depleted Uranium] weapons." According to the PRF website, the video will also "help bring to the public one of the greatest secrets of the 1991 Gulf War and the current war and occupation in Iraq." The PRF intends to distribute the video among leftwing students and activists, labor unions, military families, and what it mysteriously calls "international communities."

Anti-war sentiment is also the animating principle of another PRF project. Demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, it is called the "Troops Out Now Coalition Project." The PRF website acknowledges that "[t]he People's Rights Fund is the fiscal sponsor for this project." The site further adds that "[d]onations will be used for anti-war aspects of this activity." But such advocacy is expressly proscribed by the tax-free provisions under which the PRF operates.

Another PRF campaign is the "National Anti-Death Penalty Education Project," which seeks to increase "public awareness about the discriminatory and inhuman character of the death penalty."

Still another PRF undertaking is the "Colombia Project." The PRF reveals few details about the project itself, allowing only that it is intended to "raise public awareness about the dangers of war and conditions of life faced by the Colombian people." A deeper glimpse into the real agenda of the project comes from the longtime IAC campaign of the same name. Funded by the PRF, the Colombian campaign seeks to "support all the progressive forces fighting for social change in Colombia." Among the forces championed by the IAC, with recourse to PRF funding, are Colombia's notorious Marxist guerrilla groups, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Both of the ELN and the FARC are designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. The "Colombia Project" is not the first instance of the PRF cheering the communist cause. In the past, the PRF has provided funding for "informational material" used in demonstrations against the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.