George Soros is one of the wealthiest promoters of globalisation, and much of his wealth is based on international corporate investments. Some websites claim that large protests like those at Ferguson raise huge amounts of cash, particularly from wealthy capitalists like Soros. Yet it doesn't look like these claims are widely reported in mainstream sources, but rather usually are carried on blogs and other less credible sources. Further, the rightwing sources that usually carry the stories have a major bias to discredit the self-identified "grassroots" protest movements as being controlled by corporate sponsors.
What do you think?
POLITICO is a decent site, I think, but the source above was the Washington Times, (not Washington Post), and isn't that a less credible source?
Here is the article 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.”
Mr. Zimmerman said OSF has been giving to these types of groups since its inception in the early ‘90s...
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.
“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.
...
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.
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.
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.
http://ift.tt/1NlS7uX
My first question would be how the Washington TImes knows that Soros gave $33 million, because the WT did not actually post a copy of Soros' tax filings that supposedly have this information. And secondly, does this claim of the $33 million mean that he directly gave it to activities that were directly part of the Ferguson protests, or just to organizations that work nationally like Sojourners that also in turn are active in some way in Ferguson's protests or movement for better rights and conditions? If the latter, it could be misleading to say that Soros gave $33 million "to the protests" when in fact he just gave it to national organizations that in turn spent some of their efforts in helping Ferguson.
Here is what I am talking about: Wikipedia reports that the 33 million is for social justice projects in the US in general, not just for Ferguson activities in particular:
Soros' Open Society Foundation
This criticism by Glenn Beck of a major global capitalist is ironic, because Glenn Beck himself is a pro-establishment neoconservative. In Beck's view, is Soros' funding trying to make a far left anti-capitalist society that would ultimately remove Beck's financial power? This does not make sense.
Examiner.com claims that protestors were paid and promised cash to protest:
http://ift.tt/1RduTgr
Isn't that strange if this was a "grounds-up" "grassroots protest movement?
And yet on the other hand, is Examiner.com, along with "Right Scoop", really a reliable news source? It seems more likely they are just repeating some claims they heard elsewhere.
The Daily Mail on the other hand is a mainstream news source and it carries a report against Soros funding Ferguson. Yet it trumpets what in fact is a misleading claim that Soros is funding Ferguson to the tune of $33 million, when in fact it is only $33 million made to social justice projects in the US in general:
The Snopes website explains:
In other words, the "neoliberal" Open Society Foundation might give to groups like Sojourners, and Sojourners can help with Ferguson, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the OSF is directly running Ferguson. OSF theoretically could be using these groups to run Ferguson's protests, but at the same time, this mere fact that Sojourners and other groups get funding from OSF does not show that OSF is actually running Ferguson's protests - not to mention that the $33 million is being labeled misleadingly.
Still, there is the weird claim that some protestors were being promised payment for protesting, which is being used to support the claim that wealthy capitalist foundations were helping to drive the protests:
Of course, just because someone makes a printout with names and dates of payments does not actually mean that people were paid with these amounts. Are we supposed to believe that someone somehow had special internal access to an extensive list of activists paid by these numerous organizations on certain dates and then just printed it out on an untitled blank sheet of computer paper? It seems like something a right winger could easily make up, while a person who actually works for the organizations would either not have real access to or would not publicize to discredit their own movement. Either way, these articles I've looked at do not look very reliable. It seems you would need to do a lot more research to verify these claims, which as we know have a grain of truth (Sojourners supports the protests) but are also very misleading (eg. the claim that Soros' OSF gave $33 million to promote Ferguson's protests).
What do you think?
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Andrew Moore for Politico Magazine But as the months wore on, the media frenzy built up and the money rolled in, Ferguson turned into something else. A struggling suburb without a prominent industry suddenly had one: Ferguson Inc., a national protest movement.... The problem is no one seems to know where the money is going. They only know who is not seeing it: folks on the ground. Ferguson Inc. may be big business, but its dividends for the average St. Louis protester are few. Three months after the grand jury let Wilson walk, many struggle simply to survive. Since August, millions of dollars have been raised or donated to further the Ferguson cause. Older and historically underfunded St. Louis groups like the Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) and Missourians for Organizational Reform and Empowerment (MORE) received six-figure grants [SOURCE: WASHINGTON TIMES] from George Soros’ foundations. Meanwhile, new organizations like Heal STL—founded by St. Louis alderman Antonio French, himself a prominent protester—raised tens of thousands in August before going down in flames, literally, in November, after which an additional $30,000 was raised to rebuild office space. http://ift.tt/1NlS961 |
Here is the article 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.”
Mr. Zimmerman said OSF has been giving to these types of groups since its inception in the early ‘90s...
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.
“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.
...
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.
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.
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.
http://ift.tt/1NlS7uX
My first question would be how the Washington TImes knows that Soros gave $33 million, because the WT did not actually post a copy of Soros' tax filings that supposedly have this information. And secondly, does this claim of the $33 million mean that he directly gave it to activities that were directly part of the Ferguson protests, or just to organizations that work nationally like Sojourners that also in turn are active in some way in Ferguson's protests or movement for better rights and conditions? If the latter, it could be misleading to say that Soros gave $33 million "to the protests" when in fact he just gave it to national organizations that in turn spent some of their efforts in helping Ferguson.
Here is what I am talking about: Wikipedia reports that the 33 million is for social justice projects in the US in general, not just for Ferguson activities in particular:
Soros' Open Society Foundation
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reported granting at least $33 million to civil rights and social justice organizations in the United States.[15] This funding included groups such as the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment that supported protests in the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the death of Eric Garner, the shooting of Tamir Rice and the shooting of Michael Brown. Criticism Critics on the left have argued that the Open Society Foundations serve to perpetuate institutions which reinforce the existing social order. Nicolas Guilhot, writing in Critical Sociology, connects the Soros charities to the history of capitalist philanthropy maintained by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. Guilhot argues that control over the social sciences by monied interests has depoliticized this field and reinforced a capitalist view of modernization. He argues that despite critiques of malfunctioning free markets, Soros is actually a neoliberal who believes that competitive markets are the best way to organize society.[24] According to this view, the apparent radicalism of Soros' "open society" serves as cover for the capitalist order, the basic rules of which are never actually questioned or "opened".[7] Glenn Beck has accused Soros of using OSF to intentionally undermine societies with the intention of establishing a unitary global government. http://ift.tt/1N21dxG |
Examiner.com claims that protestors were paid and promised cash to protest:
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Tuesday the Right Scoop revealed that there is now outright evidence of suspect organizations that paid outside protesters to show up. It seems that said protestors were promised money and are angry because it hasn't been paid yet. The hired protestors with the Black Lives Matter movement have started a #CutTheCheck hashtag. After the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) allegedly stopped paying them, they held a sit-in in Missouri. Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) has been paying protesters $5,000 a month to demonstrate in Ferguson, according to Front Page Magazine. Hired protestors who haven’t been paid held a sit-in at MORE’s offices and posted a demand letter online this past week. If you are connecting the dots, MORE is the re-branded Missouri branch of ACORN, which filed for bankruptcy in late 2010. MORE and other groups supporting the Black Lives Matter movement have received millions of dollars from billionaire financier George Soros. It seems that early in the movement, MORE and a local St. Louis organization Organization for Black Struggle created a joint account in which national donors from all over the world have donated over $150,000 to sustain the movement. Since then little to none of that money has been seen. |
Isn't that strange if this was a "grounds-up" "grassroots protest movement?
And yet on the other hand, is Examiner.com, along with "Right Scoop", really a reliable news source? It seems more likely they are just repeating some claims they heard elsewhere.
The Daily Mail on the other hand is a mainstream news source and it carries a report against Soros funding Ferguson. Yet it trumpets what in fact is a misleading claim that Soros is funding Ferguson to the tune of $33 million, when in fact it is only $33 million made to social justice projects in the US in general:
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Billionaire George Soros spent $33MILLION bankrolling Ferguson demonstrators One recipient of his funding is the Organization for Black Struggle, which in turned established a group called the Hands Up Coalition, that has helped make ubiquitous the 'hands up, don't shoot' slogan. The words are reference to how contentious witness accounts describing how Michael Brown was raising his hands in surrender when Ferguson officer Darren Wilson shot him dead this August. Soros also gave money to the Drug Policy Alliance, which worked on the perpetuation of the 'black lives matter' buzz phrase, which has been incorporated into speeches by political figures including Hillary Clinton. The billionaire's fortune was made from speculating on financial markets, most notably making more than $1billion in the 1990s helping cripple the British financial system by speculation on the pound sterling. http://ift.tt/1NlS963 |
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And that such groups may have received part of their funding from the OSF network doesn't mean those funds were given for the specific purpose of organizing Ferguson-related protests, or with the knowledge or intent they would be used thusly. http://ift.tt/1RduSJu |
Still, there is the weird claim that some protestors were being promised payment for protesting, which is being used to support the claim that wealthy capitalist foundations were helping to drive the protests:
Quote:
  And on May 14, MORE published a list of who has been paid: [see website for print-outs with long lists of dates, organizations, and names with hundreds of dollars listed next to each name] SOURCE: http://ift.tt/1NlS7v4 |
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1RduTgv
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