Institute for Policy Studies (Brochure)

IDEAS into ACTION for PEACE, JUSTICE, and the ENVIRONMENTI N S T I T U T E F O R P O L I C Y S T U D I E S

IDEAS INTO ACTION SINCE 1963

Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin founded the Institute in 1963. Reeling from the shock of the Cuban Missile crisis and wary of the looming disaster in Vietnam, they saw their country losing its way, increasingly unable to give human needs priority over an insatiable national security state. The nation’s capital needed an independent source of policy alternatives.

As Washington’s first progressive multi-issue “think tank,” IPS has served as a policy and research resource for visionary social justice movements

for four decades: from the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960’s to the peace and global justice movements of the last decade.

In September 1976, the Institute’s destiny became irrevocably linked with the international human rights struggle when agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet murdered two IPS colleagues on Embassy Row. Since then, our annual Letelier-Moffitt human rights awards ceremony has celebrated heroes of human rights in the U.S, and Latin America.

IPS, journalist

and iconoclast I.F.

Stone once said,

is “the Institute

for the rest of us.”

Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin

Latelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards,

honoring the past and present

1112 16TH ST. NW, SUITE 600 WASHINGTON, DC 20036 202.234.9382 IPS-DC.ORG

FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT

Washington is awash with dealmakers who pursue narrow, short-term interests. But who looks out for future generations? Who is responsible for the stewardship of the planet? Who seeks to go beyond temporary peace to a future without the possibility of war? Who says, “Let’s try an approach that protects human rights, meets human needs and can sustain our resources over decades and centuries, not election cycles?”

The Institute for Policy Studies is the counterweight to the dealmakers. We work to reclaim democracy. We collaborate with grassroots movements to foster the conditions for long-term change. We promote relationships, linking activists and public officials who share our belief that a better world is possible. We launch, inform and sustain democratic movements.

John Cavanagh

Director

E. Ethelbert Miller

Board of Trustees

Jesse Jackson with IPS and the

Congressional Progressive Caucus

“Four War Years,” an open mic for

Iraq Veterans. IPS nurtures causes.

Cities for Peace helped pass anti-

war resolutions in over 300 cities

All the world’s people have a right to security. Thie means economic

and social security. It also means internationalist security based on

justice – something only possible when governments deal with their

people and with each other based on principles of mutual respect,

human rights, and international law. In the short term, those principles

lead us to educate and sustain the global movements to oppose the

Iraq War and to prevent war in Iran and beyond. In the longer term,

our work includes reclaiming the centrality of the United Nations and

promoting an entirely new foreign policy for our country, based on

fairness instead of inequality, justice instead of power.

IPS is promoting a “Just Security” agenda that lays out non-military solutions to the core challenges of climate chaos, global poverty, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and regional wars. We’re working with dozens of organizations to spark a national conversation on our “Just Security” alternative; coordinating hundreds of city council resolutions to bring the troops home from Iraq; and producing talking points, fact sheets, and policy documents for Congress and the peace movement on the costs of the Iraq war and how to end it justly.

Goals

The Institute’s work is organized into over a dozen projects reflecting our public scholars’ diverse areas of expertise. In practice, these projects collaborate strategically to pursue three overarching policy goals:

Peace

I N I T I A T I V E S & A C C O M P L I S H M E N T S

All people also have a right to clean air, land, water, and food.

We have a responsibility to keep the planet habitable for future

generations of humans and other living things. IPS scholars monitor

the insidious role of the World Bank and other international financial

institutions in climate-altering fossil fuel investment. We collaborate

with international efforts to keep the alternative energy movements

focused on truly sustainable solutions rather than ephemeral “quick

fixes” (like the rush to rebuild the nuclear power industry). And we

are convening academic, industry, and government experts to develop

better strategies for managing and disposing of nuclear waste.

The world’s wealth derives in large part from resources that belong to

all of its people. Thus, extreme income inequality is both unfair and

unsustainable. All people have rights to a decent living as set forth

in the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights. The Institute’s work explicitly links the welfare of people in

the United States to the welfare of people in impoverished countries

and emphasizes the need to reverse the global policies accelerating

inequality. Our annual CEO pay analysis dramatizes the obscene

extremes of inequality. IPS also addresses and explains reckless trade

and investment policies that drive the global “race to the bottom.”

Boosted by the media blitz surrounding our annual “Executive Excess” report, IPS is spearheading a campaign of labor, religious, small business, and other activists to rein in extreme inequality. At the international level, we’re building a broad coalition to end child labor and establish worker rights on African rubber plantations; helping average Americans understand how impoverished country debts undermine U.S. jobs, security and the environment; and promoting more just and sustainable alternatives to “free trade.”

IPS is partnering with the International Forum on Globalization to critique false environmental solutions and promote transformational policies that emphasize sustainability, equity, and protecting the “commons.” We’re pushing the World Bank to expand clean energy lending; organizing a research team to identify an alternative energy and economic future for the Americas; and bringing activists, journalists and policymakers to Latin America to expose the environmental and human costs of the misguided “war on drugs.”

Justice Environment

Naul Ojeda

IPS-DC.ORG202.234.9382

1112 16TH ST. NWSUITE 600WASHINGTON, DC 20036

REPORTSBOOKS

These recent Institute works are available at ips-dc.org, or by contacting us at the information below.