People for the American Way (PFAW) Foundation

History

In the early 1980s, American film producer and left-wing activist Norman Lear, along with left-of-center former U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan (D-TX) and other aligned business interests, founded PFAW to fight against the “radical and extremist agenda” of right-wing televangelists and the broader religious right² Lear created a series of television commercials featuring famous faces (notably champion boxer Muhammad Ali and actress Goldie Hawn) alongside blue-collar Americans that gained notoriety attacking the televangelist preachers for imposing their political views.³ Building on these commercials, Lear founded PFAW as a means to further expound upon this message.⁴

In a 1985 speech entitled “the Threat of the Religious Right,” Lear criticized “ultra-fundamentalist evangelists” including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their simplistic solutions to complex problems and for proclaiming a monopoly on truth based in their Biblically self-evident moral answers.⁵

Falwell retorted, “Norman Lear is clearly anti-Christian,” whose “vendetta is against everyone who is preaching the gospel.”⁴ Lear’s fervent opposition to Falwell’s Moral Majority became the early soul of Lear’s PFAW organization. ⁴

By 1986, headed by controversial D.C. insider Tony Podesta, PFAW emerged as a preeminent force on the left, with a $5 million annual budget that relied on the media to amplify its message. ⁴

PFAW’s operations initially were focused on opposing religious-minded censorship and continued federal funding for schools to teach “secular humanism.”⁴ PFAW opposed numerous efforts to nominate conservative judges, including helping defeat the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. PFAW also led the battle to secure a constitutional protection for flag-burning.⁶

PFAW has partnered with other left wing groups such as the NAACP, ACLU, and the AFL-CIO.⁷ Moreover the group has increasingly involved itself in political campaigns. In 1998, PFAW underwrote a national television campaign called “Let’s Move On” to attack Republican critics of President Bill Clinton, and the same year they established the People For The American Way Voters Alliance PAC that since 2002 has given 100% of its more than $400k in campaign contributions to Democrats.⁸

In 2006, the Democracy Alliance approved a grant to PFAW, and the Gill Foundation gave a Democracy Alliance-approved grant of $50,000 to PFAW’s spinoff group, Young People For.⁹

PFAW has received support from several philanthropies including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the  Bauman Family Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Open Society Institute (now Open Society Foundations), the Public Welfare Foundation, the Barbra Streisand Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.¹⁰

Programs

People for the American Way Foundation operates several programs under its umbrella. The group has an African American Religious Affairs program which provides resources for clergy to their congregations. The program also houses a “get out the vote” program to encourage African-American voter turnout. ¹

The group has Decision Watch, which monitors the court decisions of lower courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. The program monitors court rulings and explains how they impact issues that concern the group. ¹

The group features Defend the Black Vote, which is a “get out the vote” campaign geared towards Black voters. The group claims it is “pushing back against vote suppression and intimidation aimed at Black voters.” The group uses text messaging and direct mail to encourage citizens to vote. ¹

The group features Grandparents for Truth which is set up to oppose the mandating of age-appropriate materials and pornography bans in school and public libraries. ¹

The group also features the Young Elected Officials Network, which is a network of left-of-center activists and politicians. ¹

Activism

In October 2024, the People for the American Way Foundation’s Defend the Black Vote campaign posted a nationwide billboard and bus shelter ads in major cities in battleground states to mobilize African-American voters and “combat voter suppression and misinformation.” The group also injected $100,000 into the Art for the Polls program to fund art projects in North Carolina, Ohio, and New York because these states allegedly have “a history of voter suppression.” ¹¹

In October 2024, the People for the American Way Foundation’s Defend the Black Vote made a last-minute push to encourage 3.5 million African-American men to cast their votes via a peer-to-peer text messaging campaign. The targeted voters were in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Massachusetts, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, Delaware, and Colorado.  The program claimed that it built upon successes in 2022 and 2020. ¹²

In October 2024, the People for the American Way Foundation teamed up with political influencer Kat Abughazaleh to produce a video series called “The Dangerous Reality of White Christian Nationalism.” ¹³

Leadership

Svante Myrick is the president of the People for the American Way Foundation and its sister group, People for the American Way. He previously worked as the executive director of PFAW and was a mayor of Ithaca, New York for 10 years. ¹⁴

The previous president of the People for the American Way Foundation was Ben Jealous, who became executive director of the Sierra Club and was a former president and CEO of the NAACP. ¹⁵

Financials

According to the People for the American Way Foundation’s 2023 tax return, the group had $3,727,640 in revenue, $4,987,122 in expenses, and $7,275,116 in net assets. The group sent $1,326,510 to People for the American Way. ¹⁶

Since 2020, the Park Foundation has sent the group $442,750. ¹⁷

The cell phone company CREDO Mobile donated to the group to support the group’s “get out the vote” campaign targeted towards infrequent African-American male voters. ¹⁸

In November 2024, the Ford Foundation awarded the group $200,000 to support its “get out the vote” efforts to turnout African-American voters. ¹⁹