What’s at Stake

American ideals are undermined and Americans’ lives are threatened by unwarranted police violence and a justice system dominated by judges who were put on the bench to protect the powerful.

What We’re Doing

People For the American Way is working to promote safer communities and a more just justice system by:

• Mobilizing campaigns to get local officials to adopt policies recommended in People For the American Way’s “All Safe” roadmap for transforming public safety.
• Building support for confirmation of fair-minded judges to all federal court vacancies.

What We’ve Accomplished

People For the American Way is proud of our work to help ensure equal justice for our communities in American courtrooms and interactions with law enforcement. Through our relationships with elected officials across the country, we are sharing our extensively-researched policy recommendations to transform public safety and end police killings.

• Following the murder of George Floyd, we engaged criminal justice experts in a two-year research effort to produce All Safe: Transforming Public Safety, our roadmap for changing policing in America. We are securing the commitment of 40 mayors from across the country to implement the critical reforms in All Safe.
• In 1987, People For the American Way was instrumental in keeping far-right nominee Robert Bork off the U.S. Supreme Court, with a high-profile campaign that included a famous TV ad featuring Gregory Peck.
• With members and allies, we helped ensure confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court
• Through our grassroots mobilization, education and activism campaigns, we have contributed to the confirmation of fair-minded federal judges and stopped the confirmation of unsuitable nominees – while raising the prominence of federal courts in the minds of progressive voters.