Manufacturing the Muslim Menace - Political Research Associates

Private Firms, Public Servants, and the Threat to Rights and Security
About the Civil Liberties Team
Project Director Thomas Cincotta
heads PRA’s nationwide investigation
of regional counterintelligence
strategies. A criminal defense
lawyer, he coordinated the Denver
chapter of the National Lawyers
Guild (NLG) in support of peace
groups and other dissidents during the 2008 Democratic
National Convention. He connected progressive
lawyers with other community efforts around sentencing
reform, immigrant rights, and police misconduct.
He also represented migrant farm workers and
served on the board of El Centro Humanitario, Denver’s
first day laborer center. Cincotta currently serves
on the NLG’s national executive board and international
committee. Before becoming a lawyer, Cincotta
worked as a labor representative for UNITE HERE
Local 217 in Providence, Rhode Island.
Tarso Luís Ramos is Executive
Director of Political Research Associates,
a role he assumed after serving
as PRA’s research director for
three years. As research director, he
focused on anti-immigrant groups
and the rise of “colorblind” ideology.
He also launched three new research projects—on
civil liberties, right-wing attacks on mainline churches,
and Islamophobia and antisemitism on college
campuses. Before joining PRA, he served as founding
director of Western States Center’s racial justice program,
which resists racist public policy initiatives and
supports the base-building work of progressive people
of color-led organizations. As projects director on civil
liberties of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project in
the mid-90s, he tracked the Right’s anti-union and
anti-environmental campaigns.
Senior Analyst Chip Berlet, at PRA
since 1982, has written, edited, and
co-authored numerous articles on
civil liberties, surveillance, and government
repression for publications
as varied as the New York Times,
Boston Globe, Utne Reader, and
Amnesty Now. He serves as a vice president of the Defending
Dissent Foundation. Berlet spent several years
as a paralegal investigator for lawsuits filed by the
American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers
Guild and other groups against the FBI, CIA, Military
Intelligence, and local police Red Squads. His article
on “Violence and Public Policy” appeared in the journal
of Criminology and Public Policy special issue on terrorism.
He also wrote the entry on “Surveillance
Abuse” for the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment.
Berlet is coauthor, with Matthew N. Lyons, of
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort
published by Guilford Press (2000).
Program associate Maria Planansky is a member of
PRA’s research team. In addition to managing the editorial,
production, and communication outreach for
“Manufacturing the Muslim Menace,” she coordinates
the organization’s investigation into antisemitism
and Islamophobia on college campuses. Before joining
PRA as a staff member, she served as an editorial
intern, assisting with Public Eye. In addition to her
work with PRA, she covers the Boston music scene as
a contributing writer at Foundwaves and helps out with
the Family Folk Chorale and Independent Film Festival
Boston.
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