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Communist asshole George Soros funds Ferguson protests, hopes to spur civil action

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There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson 
protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer 
Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his 
ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.

Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a 
business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while 
forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations 
that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he 
did with MoveOn.org.

Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of 
funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to 
interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by 
The Washington Times.

In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to 
support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-
roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the 
most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society 
Foundations.

The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave 
rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-
day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national 
cause celebre.

“Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in 
government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, 
democratic society,” said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. 
Soros‘ Open Society Foundations’ U.S. programs, in an interview 
with The Washington Times. “Helping groups combine policy, 
research [and] data collection with community organizing feels 
very much the way our society becomes more accountable.”

No strings attached

Mr. Zimmerman said OSF has been giving to these types of groups 
since its inception in the early ‘90s, and that, although groups 
involved in the protests have been recipients of Mr. Soros‘ 
grants, they were in no way directed to protest at the behest of 
Open Society.

“The incidents, whether in Staten Island, Cleveland or Ferguson, 
were spontaneous protests — we don’t have the ability to control 
or dictate what others say or choose to say,” Mr. Zimmerman 
said. “But these circumstances focused people’s attention — and 
it became increasingly evident to the social justice groups 
involved that what a particular incident like Ferguson 
represents is a lack of accountability and a lack of democratic 
participation.”

Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in 
Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed 
by a nationwide online and social media campaign.

Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor 
and exploit anything related to the incident that they could 
portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic 
research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep 
the story alive.

The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. 
Soros‘ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content 
and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s 
website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a 
social media echo chamber of Facebook “likes” and Twitter 
hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online 
newsfeeds.

Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in 
Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York 
and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the 
Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in 
Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation — all 
funded in part by Mr. Soros — descended on Ferguson starting in 
August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city 
until late last month.

Broaden issue focus

All were aimed at keeping the media’s attention on the city and 
to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated 
causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination 
narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August.

“I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand 
with the young organizers and affirm their leadership,” said 
Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy 
Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 
million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson 
in October.

“We recognized this movement is similar to the work we’re doing 
at DPA,” said Ms. Frederique. “The war on drugs has always been 
to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of 
color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the 
work we do and what this movement is all about.”

Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of 
#BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the 
killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on 
DPA’s news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just 
Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, 
according to the most recent of his foundation’s tax filings.

“I think #BlackLivesMatter’s success is because of organizing. 
This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been 
sustained organizing and conversations about police violence 
since then,” said Ms. Frederique. “Its explosion into the 
mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a 
time when everyone was lost for words. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is 
liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.”

#BlackLivesMatter

With the backing of national civil rights organizations and Mr. 
Soros‘ funding, “Black Lives Matter” grew from a hashtag into a 
social media phenomenon, including a #BlackLivesMatter bus tour 
and march in September.

“More than 500 of us have traveled from Boston, Chicago, 
Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, 
Tucson, Washington, D.C., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and 
other cities to support the people of Ferguson and help turn a 
local moment into a national movement,” wrote Akiba Solomon, a 
journalist at Colorlines, describing the event.

Colorlines is an online news site that focuses on race issues 
and is published by Race Forward, a group that received $200,000 
from Mr. Soros’s foundation in 2011. Colorlines has published 
tirelessly on the activities in Ferguson and heavily promoted 
the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and activities.

At the end of the #BlackLivesMatter march, organizers met with 
civil rights groups like the Organization for Black Struggle and 
Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment to strategize 
their operations moving forward, Ms. Solomon wrote. OBS and MORE 
are also funded by Mr. Soros.

Mr. Soros gave $5.4 million to Ferguson and Staten Island grass-
roots efforts last year to help “further police reform, 
accountability and public transparency,” the Open Society 
Foundations said in a blog post in December. About half of those 
funds were earmarked to Ferguson, with the money primarily going 
to OBS and MORE, the foundation said.

OBS and MORE, along with the Dream Defenders, established the 
“Hands Up Coalition” — another so-called “grass-roots” 
organization in Missouri, whose name was based on now-known-to-
be-false claims that Brown had his hands up before being shot. 
The Defenders were built to rally support and awareness for the 
Trayvon Martin case and were funded by the Tides Foundation, 
another recipient of Soros cash.

Hands Up Coalition has made it its mission to recruit and 
organize youth nationwide to start local events in their 
communities — trying to take Ferguson nationwide.

Years and weekends of ‘resistance’

Hands Up Coalition has dubbed 2015 as “The Year of Resistance,” 
and its outreach program strongly resembles how President 
Obama’s political action committee — Organizing for Action — 
rallies youth for its causes, complete with a similarly designed 
Web page and call to action.

Mr. Soros, who made his fortune betting against the British 
pound during the currency crisis in the early ‘90s, is a well-
known supporter of progressive-liberal causes and is a political 
donor to Mr. Obama’s campaigns. He committed $1 million to Mr. 
Obama’s super PAC in 2012.

Mr. Soros‘ two largest foundations manage almost $3 billion in 
assets per year, according to their most recent respective tax 
returns. The Foundation to Promote Open Society managed $2.2 
billion in assets in 2011, and his Open Society Institute 
managed $685.9 million in 2012.

In comparison, David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers 
whom liberals often call a threat to democracy — and worse — for 
their conservative influence, had $308 million tied up in their 
foundation and institute in 2011.

One of the organizations that Mr. Soros funds, and which fueled 
the demonstrations in Ferguson, is the Gamaliel Foundation, a 
network of grass-roots, interreligious and interracial 
organizations. Mr. Obama started his career as a community 
organizer at a Gamaliel affiliate in Chicago.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of 
Christ in Florissant, Missouri, which is part of the Gamaliel 
network, said in one of the group’s webinars that clergy 
involved with Gamaliel must be “protectors of the narrative” of 
what happened in Ferguson.

The Gamaliel affiliate in St. Louis — Metropolitan Congregations 
United — organized the “Weekend of Resistance” in October, in 
which clergy members from around the nation were called to come 
to Ferguson to protest.

Clergy involvement

Representatives of Sojourners, a national evangelical Christian 
organization committed “to faith in action for social justice,” 
attended the weekend. The group received $150,000 from Mr. Soros 
in 2011.

Clergy representatives from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor 
Conference, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright serves as a trustee, 
also showed up. Mr. Wright was Mr. Obama’s pastor in Chicago 
before some of his racially charged sermons, including the 
phrase “God damn America,” forced Mr. Obama to distance himself. 
SDPC received $250,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011.

During Gamaliel’s weekend protest event, Sunday was deemed 
“Hands Up Sabbath,” where clergy were asked to speak out about 
racial issues, using packets and talking points prepared for 
them by another religion-based community organizing group, PICO.

PICO is also supported by the Open Society Foundations, 
according to its website.

The weekend concluded Monday, when clergy members were asked to 
lead in acts of civil disobedience, prompting many of them to go 
to jail in the hopes of gaining media attention.

It worked, as imagery of clergy members down on their hands and 
knees in front of police dominated the mainstream news cycle 
that day — two months after Brown’s shooting.

“After the initial shooting, we were all hit in the face with 
how blatant racism really is,” said the Rev. Susan Sneed, a 
Gamaliel organizer who helped stage the October weekend event. 
“We began quickly hearing from our other affiliates offering 
support.”

At the end of August, Gamaliel had a large organizational 
meeting to discuss its Ferguson strategy, Ms. Sneed said.

It had its affiliates in New York and California handling the 
St. Louis Twitter feed and Facebook page, helped in correcting 
any inaccurate stories in the press and promoted their events, 
she said.

“When we started marching down the street, saying, ‘hands up, 
don’t shoot,’ those images reached all over the world,” said Ms. 
Sneed, referring to the moment she realized Ferguson was going 
to become a movement. “The Twitter images, Facebook posts of 
burning buildings — it’s everywhere, and the imagery is 
powerful. And the youth — the youth is so engaged. They’ve found 
a voice in Ferguson.”

National activists descend

Larry Fellows III, 29, a Missouri native, did find his voice in 
the chaos of Ferguson with the help of outside assistance backed 
by Mr. Soros.

Mr. Fellows is co-founder of the Millennial Activists United, a 
key source of video and stories developed in Ferguson by youth 
activists used to inspire other groups nationally.

Mr. Fellows explained how he started his organization in an 
interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (another Soros-
backed entity that sent national representatives to Missouri) in 
November.

“Initially, it would just be that we would show up for protests, 
and the next day we’d clean up the streets. A lot of the same 
people were out at the protests and going out to lunch and 
talking about what was happening. That became a cycle until a 
lot of us figured out we needed to have a strategy,” Mr. Fellows 
explained to the ACLU, which posted the interview in its blog.

“Then a lot of organizers from across the country started to 
come in to help us do the planning and do the strategizing. That 
helped us start doing it on our own and planning out actions and 
what our narratives were going to be,” he said.

MAU has listed on its website that it has partnered with 
Gamaliel network churches. They’ve also received training on 
civil disobedience from the Advancement Project — which was 
given a $500,000 grant from Mr. Soros in 2013 “to build a fair 
and just, multi-racial democracy in America through litigation, 
community organizing support, public policy reform, and 
strategic communications,” according to the Foundation’s website.

The Advancement Project, based in Washington, also arranged the 
meeting between community organizers in Ferguson and Mr. Obama 
last month to brief him on the situation in Ferguson and to set 
up a task force that examines trust between police and minority 
communities.

In addition, the Advancement Project has also dedicated some of 
its staff to lead organizations in Ferguson, like the Don’t 
Shoot Coalition, another grass-roots group that preaches the 
same message, links to the same Facebook posts and “likes” the 
same articles as DPA, ACLU, Hands Up Coalition, OBS, MORE and 
others.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-
funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/?page=all

  

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Communist asshole George Soros funds Ferguson protests, hopes to spur civil action "Hangin' Is Too Good For Him" <hanging.niggers@heavy.com> - 2015-08-18 10:20 +0200

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