CONTROLLED OPPOSITION

Let’s build a movement against fascism outside the control of the genocidal pro-war Democratic Party

While progressive Senator Cory Booker was giving his 25 hour Democratic Party infomercial on the Senate floor a Palestinian father could be seen on social media emerging from clouds of concrete dust in Gaza holding his headless child to the heavens. Two days later in another theatrical stunt designed to secure progressive loyalty to the Democratic Party Bernie introduces a bill to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel which Booker voted against. Where was Bernie when he was voting to silence anti genocide protesters and backing Biden’s arms sales?

Capitalizing on the understandable anxiety of a Trump victory the Democrats are once again deploying their astroturf movement Indivisible. Since the mythology of the Democrats is that they are the party of the left they need to attract support from those who desire a progressive agenda. The party was trounced out of power for refusing to end the genocide or provide for the needs of the American people. The Republicans employed a similar strategy and used the fear of an Obama administration to launch the Tea Party to counter the perception that their party had moved away from their conservative roots. This is one method the billionaire class uses to tamp down any threat to their power.

After spending 18 brutal days in the Orange County Jail for the crime of sharing meals with the hungry I was released into the arms of Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez and handed a Tupperware of the best vegan Mac and Cheese I have ever tasted. News helicopters whirled above but they were not there for me. Socialite Casey Anthony, whose daughter was found dead as she partied was also being released from the Orlando jail at the same time as myself.

I was one of nearly 30 food servers arrested in the summer of 2011 after an appellate court ruled Florida’s most liberal city had the constitutional right to ban the sharing of meals with the homeless when Food Not Bombs appealed the Orlando groups first arrest.

On April 4, 2007, at the conclusion of an Orlando police undercover investigation that, according to the Orlando Weekly, cost taxpayers $65,000, Food Not Bombs volunteer Eric Montanez was arrested. When Food Not Bombs lost its appeal of the city ordinance volunteers defied the order and continued to provide the meals at Lake Eola Park picnic grounds

.When I finally was able to access my email one message included a call from Ad Busters to “Occupy Wall Street” on October 17th in a campaign to protest Obama’s bailout of the banks instead of coming to the aid of the 5.5 million families who lost their homes to foreclosure.

I supported the strategy of occupation and delivered hundreds of pounds of rice to New York and Washington DC and cooking equipment ready to help feed the protests. By Thanksgiving I had participated in over two dozen camps when the Obama administration aggressively started to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement.

A year after Occupy Wall Street was smashed Naomi Wolf wrote in the Guardian that, “FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF)… reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Many of us started organizing to ReOccupy the camps on May Day. As we were building our campaign a group calling itself 99% Spring asked San Francisco Bay activists to join them at a meeting in the Mission District. Nearly a hundred people sat around a conference room listening to the facilitators and watched their 20 minute inspirational film.

After the video people started to ask questions about why was there no mention of Obama’s bail out of the banks or his wars. The organizers dodged our questions and moved on to their plan. When it was suggested that many of us had already been planning to start the occupation on International Workers' Day they claimed they had already picked their day in April. The presenters were clearly uncomfortable and deflected our questions. Nearly half of those attending walked out at lunch and never returned realizing that 99% Spring was just another Democratic Party front group designed to co-opt our movement.

The resulting confusion from their heavily promoted 99% Spring made organizing an independent return to the streets difficult. Masked people trashed areas of Seattle on May Day posing as a Black Block and news broke of a May first plot to bomb a bridge. The FBI had entrapped five of the 2011 Occupy Cleveland cooks including three young Food Not Bombs activists in a plot to use plastic explosives to topple the Route 82 bridge spanning Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park on 30 April 2012. Media reports of these events made sure that we didn’t continue the occupations.

The controlled opposition of the 99% Spring was only one of such subversions used to suppress threats against the Democratic Party from the left. MoveOn.org and Common Cause are among the well financed “grassroots” groups like Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution designed to “sheepdog” people they fear might dedicate their energy to organize against corporate power and war redirecting them back into the dominate political system.

I signed up with Our Revolution in 2016 when Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. Since he supported military contracts like the F-35 I was skeptical that he would bring the change he was campaigning on but I gave him a chance. It seems that contact list is still being used for the purpose of corralling those who might be a threat to their agenda from the left into their orbit. Bernie asked us to vote for the cackling about Libyan Open Air Slave Markets Hillary Clinton. He would go on to ask us to back genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That list was an important factor in drawing so many people to the Hands Off and Anti-Oligarchy Democratic Party rallies.

Those lists were also used to send out a Cory Booker fundraising text shortly after the Senator voted to stop Bernie’s theatrical attempt to cut arms shipments to Israel. Messaging intended to mobilize people still gullible enough to believe that the Democrats could be a progressive challenge to the madness of the Trump administration. The Pussy Hat distraction of the first Trump administration has become the Hands Off of Trump’s second term.

In their all out effort to protect their system of exploitation and empire they also launched the AOC/Bernie Anti Oligarch tour, started another group, 5051 to attract those who had become wise to the Indivisible scam, and made much of the Cory Booker 25 hour content free yapathon. We are sure to see even more seemingly progressive groups emerge but none will be opposed to the genocide, war or corporate power.

In 2016 when it became clear that Trump would win the election two Congressional staff members, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, initiated Indivisible “publishing a twenty-three-page document drafted by a handful of former Democratic Congressional staffers in the days after Trump was elected. The subtitle: “A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” with the intention of harnessing the fear many rightly had of what might happen during his first administration. It is no surprise that when the Democrats returned to power they made no effort to reverse some of the most damaging of Trump’s policies like the tax cuts for the wealthy, the mass deportations of migrants or even move the US Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv.

The August 18, 2017, issue of the Progressive Magazine writes, “Indivisible has, in a very short time, emerged as the public face of citizen resistance to Trump. Like the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, the official outgrowth of Bernie Sanders' primary campaign, Indivisible has received a surge of interest post election. Unlike those groups, it didn’t exist beforehand.” The Tides Foundation provided $350,000 to help them start.

The article goes on to say, “The former staffers, including Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, now the group’s executive director and chief strategy officer respectively, had seen the Tea Party kneecap their bosses” attempts to pass progressive policies during Obama’s first term.”

One core member, Peter Dreier, claimed, “the goal of Indivisible was to “save American democracy&” and “resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy."

Anyone following the Democratic Party knows the last thing they support is democracy, otherwise for example, Bernie Sanders would have been their nominee, they wouldn’t have sued to keep the Green Party off the ballot in state after state and they would have held a primary in 2024. To claim the political party that refused to increase the minimum wage, presided over an economy that caused a 30% increase in the number of Americans who became homeless during their four years in power and armed the genocide of Gaza as “humane” seems a stretch.

Indivisible’s website states, “We’re a grassroots movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.”

It is rare to see a grassroots movement receive millions in donations from wealthy foundations like Open Society Foundation that gave $3 million to one arm of Indivisible in 2023; $1,135,000 in 2022; $500,000 to one account in 2021 and $375,000 to another account also in 2021; $1,750,000 in 2019; $500,000 in 2018 and $350,000 in 2017. The Open Society Foundation has not posted how much it donated in 2024 and it is not clear how many millions more was provided by other foundations to the other Indivisible units like Indivisible Project, Indivisible Civics, and Indivisible Action. Open Secrets reported that one of the sections of Indivisible raised $9,922,930 in 2024. Hardly grassroots.

Indivisible isn’t the only Democratic Party project that was funded by Soros. In the second quarter of 2020, his organizations gave at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign's largest donors. Soros was the country's largest donor to political campaigns in 2022 donating $128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in that election cycle. While Soros' Open Society Foundation was financing the Hands Off rallies Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury happens to be Soros Fund Management partner Scott Bessent.

The Democrats are employing the same Color Revolution strategy they used to topple the elected governments of Ukraine and Georgia. Build a system of controlled opposition in defense of US centric corporate power. The Soros funding of regime change programs in Georgia was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution coup. Alexander Lomaia, secretary of the Georgian Security Council, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2.5 million. The Biden administration was still seeking to subvert the democratically elected government of Georgia with a second color revolution as he left office. Like most of Biden’s policies Trump is continuing the effort to replace that government with a US compliant puppet.

I echo CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in strongly agreeing with most of the demands listed on publicity for the Hands Off rallies, Hands Off Medicare, Hands off Social Security, Hands Off Education, Hands Off Public Lands, Hands Off Immigrants and Hands Off LGBTQIA+.

But what suggested to me that these Hands Off rallies have another goal other than to stand against the terror of the CIA linked vultures hovering around the Trump administration was what was absent in their messaging. Their publicity didn’t include Hands Off Gaza or Hands Off Yemen even while US bombs were tearing children to shreds as people gathered for the rallies. Horrors that were beyond anything we have ever witnessed raging at the exact time these rallies were taking place.

Even more telling was that one of the institutions they want to protect is the organization directing the regime change war against Russia. The "Hands Off!" rally's website even offers a pdf of a “Hands Off NATO” sign for activists to print and bring to their rallies. The website also quotes MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting saying, "This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people." Does that include the dozens of “everyday people” who have been calling me nearly everyday for the past two years desperate for food often remarking that it makes them angry that we can fund a war in Ukraine but we can’t provide for our own people here in the US.

While most of those who join these rallies have the best intentions, some even came holding handmade signs against the genocide in Gaza or waved a Palestinian flag, it is unlikely that Indivisible intends to unite with the massive protests against the murder of Palestinian families. Their message of peace was drowned out by all the Ukrainian flags supporting the deadly war against Russia and their support of the political party that just spent 15 months slaughtering Palestinian babies.

It is understandable that people would join the Hands Off rallies. The stunning cascade dismantling our rights and social supports is frightening. Legal residents being snatched off the streets and deported, the privatizing of social services and threats to donate our National Parks to Trump’s billionaire friends for mining and oil extraction couldn’t be more terrifying. Americans are leading busy lives, struggling to pay their bills and base their political perspectives from limited information served by the same corporate media that supports the agenda of the war state and naturally joined the rallies in desperation. Had I not been following Indivisible since their founding and realized their organization was designed to kill any opposition to the system I would have also participated. I just can’t join rallies where it’s ok with the organizers for people to wave the Ukrainian flag. I don’t want to be seen as supporting war let alone one led by supporters of Stepan Bandera.

When rallies get such positive national news you know they have the support of those in power. You won't see dozens of Democratic Party officials participating in protests that threaten the economic and political system. Insider trading success Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi spoke to her fawning supporters in the swing state Pennsylvania. Former vice presidential running mate Tim Waltz screamed to his supporters that the Democrats were back. The ghoulish anti-homeless YIMBY California State Senator Scott Wiener gloated over a video of himself he shared on Facebook that opened with a fluttering Ukrainian flag outside San Francisco City Hall. Wiener came to Santa Cruz on April 5, 2019 helping launch the luxury high rise condominium craze that is turning our community into a 15 Minute Smart City hell-scape.

Santa Cruz Indivisible is dominated by our city’s worst West-siders and pro development politicians. Their Facebook site includes supporters like anti-homeless Take Back Santa Cruz activist and former city councilperson Richelle Noroyan. One of the first members is the founder of the Predictive Policing Software Ryan Coonerty now used by CIA contractor Palantir to target Palestinians. Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti helped finance this program when he was Vice President of Yahoo.

Those who waved their Ukrainian flags most likely believed that Russia’s military actions were unprovoked and feared Trump’s claims of making peace with Putin were real. Nothing says provoked like the torrent of western leaders spending the last 20 years threatening to topple the Russian government. On March 26, 2022, Biden continued those regime change threats during a speech in Warsaw saying of President Putin that,”For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The Hands Off events share the same Zionist sponsors as the current regime so it’s no wonder there was silence about the bombings of Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Trumps threats to attack Iran. In a January 2024, article, “I don’t belong”: A Jewish student leaves Occidental College over wartime protests” the Forward writes, “Dreier, who identified himself as a “committed Jew” and has taught at the school for 30 years, acknowledged that “there are Jewish and Arab students feeling traumatized by what is happening in the Middle East.”

The Bernie AOC billionaire funded Anti-Oligarch tour is a second major front after Indivisible in the campaign to absorb those who might otherwise participate in an authentic movement against fascism into their dead end project. Police arrested Pro-Palestine protestors that had unfurled a banner saying "Free Palestine" at the Nampa, Idaho, rally as Sanders repeated his “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism&” Zionist mantra followed by “I am doing my best to demand not another nickel for Netanyahu’s war.” Bernie is careful to accuse Netanyahu and avoids placing blame on Israel or his own record of voting for the genocide. Many in the crowd chanted Free Palestine as they removed the protesters. Non-Binary Artist in Recovery Blakeley posted a video of the tour saying “Bernie continues to claim “Israel has a right to defend themselves against terrorism” 18 months into a fucking genocide is actually fucking grotesque and you can’t call yourself pro-Palestine if you think this is okay or excusable.” Even though the Idaho crowned chanted Free Palestine Bernie ignored them and continued with his speech.

Of course he turned his back on his supporters.In 2023, as the genocide was reaching its most murderous levels, Bernie Sanders voted for a Senate Resolution condemning anti-genocide student protesters and organizations as "antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible". AOC and Bernie are not likely to travel to the Louisiana Detention Center where Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil is now being held.

This could spell disaster for our future as the US threatens to start a global war while the economy collapses. Two aircraft carrier armadas, six to ten B 2 stealth bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons, and dozens of heavy transport planes, air defense systems are set to attack Iran if they fail to bend to Trump’s demands. At the same time Ukraine is increasing its attacks on Russia while it is reported that Moscow strikes a meeting with NATO officers in Kyiv and the global economic system crashes, threatening to force millions of Americans into financial ruin. Yet none of this was even a blip on the agenda of the Hands Off or Anti-Oligarch rallies.

Indivisible helped smother any possibility of using the terror of Trump’s first term to build a massive movement. Their solution was more war, austerity and a genocide.

If we have any hope of the change required to defend ourselves from the onslaught of the End Times Techno-fascists implementing their Stargate AI digital future we had better stop falling for the two party illusion. We urgently need to build a movement independent of the Democratic Party. A movement that threatens power.

Food Not Bombs - PO Box 422, Santa Cruz CA 95061 USA www.foodnotbombs.net