#occupy

[readytoescalate]

Buildings are easier to defend than outdoor camps AND they can be more disruptive. For anyone ready to escalate for Gaza, check out this re-issue of a text that has been used in previous movements.

[liberalsarecool]

Occupy was correct. They saw the future. They knew the past.

[ridenwithbiden]

[an-experienced-gentleman]

You occupy all of my thoughts.

Six Sexy Words

[queerism1969]

[eretzyisrael]

BY PARK MACDOUGALD

The “movement,” in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). Let’s take each in turn.

JVP is, in essence, the “Jewish”-branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, backed by the usual big-money progressive donors—including some, like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that were instrumental in selling Obama’s Iran Deal to the public. JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute. JVP has also received nearly $1.5 million from various donor-advised funds—which allow wealthy clients to give anonymously through their financial institutions—run through the charitable giving arms of Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, and TIAA, according to NGO Monitor’s review of those institutions’ tax documents.

SJP, by contrast, is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and related charities for fundraising for Hamas. SJP is a subsidiary of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); SJP in fact has no “formal corporate structure of its own but operates as AMP’s campus brand,” according to a lawsuit filed last week against AJP Educational Fund, the parent nonprofit of AMP. Both AMP and SJP were founded by the same man, Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian academic who formerly fundraised for KindHearts, an Islamic charity dissolved in 2012 pursuant to a settlement with the U.S. Treasury, which froze the group’s assets for fundraising for Hamas (KindHearts did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement). And several of AMP’s senior leaders are former fundraisers for HLF and related charities, according to November congressional testimony from former U.S. Treasury official Jonathan Schanzer. An ongoing federal lawsuit by the family of David Boim, an American teenager killed in a Hamas terrorist attack in 1996, goes so far as to allege that AMP is a “disguised continuance” and “legal alter-ego” of the Islamic Association for Palestine, was founded with startup money from current Hamas official Musa Abu Marzook and dissolved alongside HLF. AMP has denied it is a continuation of IAP.

Today, however, National SJP is legally a “fiscal sponsorship” of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation. A fiscal sponsorship is a legal arrangement in which a larger nonprofit “sponsors” a smaller group, essentially lending it the sponsor’s tax-exempt status and providing back-office support in exchange for fees and influence over the sponsorship’s operations. For legal and tax purposes, the sponsor and the sponsorship are the same entity, meaning that the sponsorship is relieved of the requirement to independently disclose its donors or file a Form 990 with the IRS. This makes fiscal sponsorships a “convenient way to mask links between donors and controversial causes,” according to the Capital Research Center. Donors, in other words, can effectively use nonprofits such as WESPAC to obscure their direct connections to controversial causes.

Something of the sort appears to be happening with WESPAC. Run by the market researcher Howard Horowitz, WESPAC reveals very little about its donors, although scattered reporting and public disclosures suggest that the group is used as a pass-through between larger institutions and pro-Palestinian radicals. Since 2006, for instance, WESPAC has received more than half a million in donations from the Elias Foundation, a family foundation run by the private equity investor James Mann and his wife. WESPAC has also received smaller amounts from Grassroots International (an “environmental” group heavily funded by Thousand Currents), the Sparkplug Foundation (a far-left group funded by the Wall Street fortune of Felice and Yoram Gelman), and the Bafrayung Fund, run by Rachel Gelman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the sister of Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman. (A self-described “abolitionist,” Gelman was featured in a 2020 New York Times feature on “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.”) In 2022, WESPAC also received $97,000 from the Tides Foundation, the grant-making arm of the Tides Nexus.

WESPAC, however, is not merely the fiscal sponsor of the Hamas-linked SJP but also the fiscal sponsor of the third group involved in organizing the Columbia protests, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), formerly known as New York City SJP. Founded by the Palestinian American lawyer Nerdeen Kiswani, a former activist with the Hunter College and CUNY chapters of SJP, WOL has emerged over the past seven months as perhaps the most notorious antisemitic group in the country, and has been banned from Facebook and Instagram for glorifying Hamas. A full list of the group’s provocations would take thousands of words, but it has been the central organizing force in the series of “Flood”-themed protests in New York City since Oct. 7, including multiple bridge and highway blockades, a November riot at Grand Central Station, the vandalism of the New York Public Library, and protests at the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting. In addition to their confrontational tactics, WOL-led protests tend to have a few other hallmarks. These include eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Jewish state—such as Arabic chants of “strike, strike, Tel Aviv”; the prominent display of Hezbollah flags and other insignia of explicitly Islamist resistance; the presence of masked Arab street muscle; and the antisemitic intimidation of counterprotesters by said masked Arab street muscle.

WOL’s role appears to be that of shock troops, akin to the role played by black block militants on the anarchist side of the ledger. WOL is, however, connected to more seemingly “mainstream” elements of the anti-Israel movement. Abdullah Akl, a prominent WOL leader—indeed, the man leading the “strike Tel Aviv” chants in the video linked above—is also listed as a “field organizer” on the website of MPower Change, the “advocacy project” led by Linda Sarsour. MPower Change, in turn, is a fiscal sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy, another large progressive clearinghouse. NEO Philanthropy and its 501(c)(4) “sister,” NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021 alone, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

[whiny-little-bitch]

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[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

[troutreznor]

vintage pins found at a tiny thrift store in Oregon City for 10cents a piece

[readytoescalate]

"EMORY IS EVERYWHERE": AN OPEN INVITATION FROM PROTESTORS OCCUPYING EMORY UNIVERSITY

As the Palestine Solidarity movement rips across college campuses, college administrators and government bureaucrats are rushing to denounce anyone taking action as an “outside agitator”. Those who grease the gears of the war machine think that this rhetoric will erode public support for bold actions at Emory. They are wrong. 45 years after the Camp David Accords - an infamously botched, imperialist plan for peace between Israel and Egypt with no input from Palestinians - was orchestrated by an Emory faculty alum President Carter, we observe that there is nowhere on Earth “outside” of Emory University. We want to say as clearly as possible - we welcome “outside agitators” to our struggle against the ruthless genocide of Palestinians. Emory University has the highest tuition, the lowest acceptance rate, and by far the highest endowment of any institution in Georgia. Economic barriers, infamously racist standardized testing, and nepotism have barred many from studying at Emory. To students in Atlanta and beyond - we invite you to struggle with us. Local high school students dream of attending Emory, and many teachers encourage them to study hard and take up extracurriculars to increase their chance acceptance, knowing their chance of admission is slim. To local high school students and teachers, we invite you to struggle with us. Just down the street from Emory Hospital Midtown is the site of the former Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter. In a bid to gentrify the city and evict its houseless population, the City closed the shelter and did not replace it, displacing hundreds and cutting off a last line of support for thousands of poor people in the city. Emory University purchased this building, just one example of Emory’s contribution to gentrification in Atlanta. To those without homes, or those displaced by gentrification, we invite you to struggle with us. Emory’s $11 billion endowment, the 11th highest in the country, is an outsized influence in Atlanta’s economy. While economic inequality widens in the city, Emory remains a bastion of the rich. To the restaurant workers, house cleaners, gig workers, and all proletarians - we invite you to struggle with us. In 2020, Emory University laied off or furloughed over 1500 employees. To those who are no longer affiliated with the university - we invite you to struggle with us. 4 out of 5 students at Emory are not from Georgia. While the Freedom Riders were heading down to Georgia in the 1960’s to fight for Black people’s right to vote, segregationist governors cast them as “outside agitators”. To those from outside Atlanta and Georgia, we invite you to struggle with us. 1 in 5 students at Emory are from outside of the United States. The Palestinian students murdered by American weapons under Biden will never be one of those students. To those from outside of the country, we invite you to struggle with us. In April 2023, Emory admin called the police to break up a protest led by students against Cop City on the quad. None of the pigs were Emory students. To all of those who struggle against police brutality, we invite you to struggle with us. EMORY IS EVERYWHERE. THE PLACE FOR DIVISION IS NOWHERE. WE INVITE YOU TO STRUGGLE WITH US.

[jadeseadragon]

Jewish Voice for Peace

Oakland, CA

[victusinveritas]

Donald Sutherland at Occupy Vancouver. Photo by Jazmin Miranda Photography.

https://ounodesign.com/2011/10/15/occupy-vancouver/

RIP to a real one.

[albertayebisackey]

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. ― Gustave Flaubert

[wisdomfish]

"As we refuse to be preoccupied with ourselves and our own importance and seek to love and serve others, it will reorient us from self-centeredness to other-centeredness—to serving and caring for others just as Jesus did for us. In the narcissistic culture of contemporary America, this is a particularly powerful countercultural witness of Christ’s presence and lordship in our lives."

~ Thomas A. Tarrants

[void-thegod]

My beef with the American political landscape is this:

Everyone, no matter who they are, is more or less tired of this stupid bullshit.

There is not enough rich white and rich people doing anything.

The people with the largest support networks aren't doing much with them.

The most disenfranchised (disabled, minority, queer, brown, poor) are supposed to fix all this

While most of the power lay in the hands of those who don't want to do shit.

As someone who has been poor with very little support throughout my life - I have done what I can. Mostly giving money to people in need when I can. I'm poor. So it's nothing to brag about

But when I need help?

8/10 no one is going to be there -- physically, mentally, financially and/or socially.

Most people are fucked up in one way or another.

But it seems to me (as someone on the lowest rungs) that a lot more could be done by say...

Celebrities

Rich folk

People who have an audience

To end this shit.

[climatecalling]

In their new book, Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce ... detail seven tactics that have been successfully used to change the world: base-building, disruptive movements, narrative shift, electoral changes, inside-outside campaigns, momentum, and collective care. ... As for examples, we talk about Occupy Wall Street and the marriage equality movement. A lot of people think of Occupy Wall Street as a protest, but its largest impact was changing the narrative, changing the understanding of what was the cause of the 2008 economic crisis and what are some ways out of that crisis. ... Sometimes flashpoints are unplanned, as with the murder of George Floyd. Sometimes people can stage big moments, as environmental activists did when they organized arrests at the Obama White House to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. Those moments are opportunities to gather thousands of activists together ... to train them in a vision and techniques of how to launch campaigns when they go back home. ... There is cynicism about politics because it hasn’t consistently delivered material improvement in people’s lives. ... Our book features examples where electoral strategies are driven by community groups and unions that aren’t just inviting people to vote, but are inviting people to be part of organizations to work on the issues they care most about. ... The challenges we face are so large and daunting that without many thousands of people capable of understanding the power relationships in our society and what the leverage points are, we aren’t going to win. A big hope of this book is that it ... makes strategy accessible to many more people in the years to come.