Caravan Research

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The Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ)

Support the People’s Caravan against Border Walls!

PHRO or the People’s Human Rights Observatory (Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos) is moving forward with plans for a caravan that will travel to the US-Mexico border wall.

The caravan will denounce border walls in the US and Mexico, as well as in Palestine, and against Cuba, where the blockade forms a virtual wall. The caravan will expose and oppose police militarization and the construction of prison walls, all funded by our US taxes. These walls hurt “we, the people” and serve only those who profit from keeping the rest of us down, separate, and divided. The People’s Unity Caravan Against the Walls of Infamy is an antidote. Together, we can tear down the walls!

The People’s Human Rights Observatory was initiated by the People’s Human Rights Council (Consejo de Derechos del Pueblo), a grassroots organization of urban and rural workers and indigenous communities. While PHRO is based in Oaxaca, it’s members include organizations and individuals from around Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, the United States, Switzerland, and Spain. The Alliance for Global Justice and School of the Americas Watch are the PHRO’s US representatives.

Communists Funding the Resistance: The Alliance for Global Justice

The Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ). This Tucson, Arizona-based group had largely flown under the radar since its 1998 founding. AfGJ bills itself as “A little bit people’s think tank, a whole lot of organizing.” Indeed, everyone on AfGJ’s staff has considerable experience in organizing, both at home and abroad. But AfGJ does more than just organize. It helps fund many different left-wing groups through a legal maneuver known as “fiscal sponsorship.”

According to its most recent (2015) IRS filing, AfGJ had just under $2.3 million in revenue, $2.1 million in expenses, and $753,909 in assets.

AfGJ’s funding reads like a Who’s Who of radical left-wing foundations. Since 2004, AfGJ has received over $200,000 in funding from the Tides Foundation. Tides’ radicalism has been documented many times by Capital Research Center. Indeed, when other left-wing foundations want to give money to radical leftist groups but don’t want to be seen giving it directly, they donate to Tides as a pass-through. (Previous CRC papers on Tides: Green Watch, August 2012; Foundation Watch, July 2011; and Foundation Watch, October 2010.) From 2004 to 2006, the Open Society Institute (now known as Open Society Foundations) gave $100,000 to AfGJ. The Open Society Institute was founded by billionaire George Soros, who seems never to have met a leftist cause he didn’t want to fund.

Other such foundations include:

-The Arca Foundation, which has given $245,000 since 2002. CRC’s Matthew Vadum described Arca as “on the cutting edge of radical left-wing causes, embracing Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the Palestinian cause, Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizing, and the never-ending social justice campaigns of the Left” (Foundation Watch, October 2011).

-The Firedoll Foundation has given $101,500 since 2008. Firedoll has also donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a “charity” that had financial ties to the Holy Land Foundation. The founders of the Holy Land Foundation were given prison sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years in 2009 after being convicted of funneling over $15 million to the terrorist organization Hamas.

-The Brightwater Fund has donated $510,00 to AfGJ since 2011. Brightwater also funds the radical leftist Popular Resistance, which has protested at the homes of members of the Federal Communications Commission. In one instance, members of the group blocked the driveway of Commissioner Tom Wheeler.

-The New World Foundation has donated $95,000 since 2003. The philanthropy also gives money to the Tides Foundation. From 1982 to 1988 it was chaired by none other than Hillary Clinton. During that time, it donated money to radical groups like the Christic Institute, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), and the National Lawyers Guild (the aforementioned communist front group).

-AfGJ has also received $30,000 in grants from the Foundation for Deep Ecology, an environmental foundation that considers human beings to be a plague upon the earth; $172,000 from the Hill Snowdon Foundation, which has given over $5 million since 2000 to the Tides Foundation; and $30,000 from the charitable arm of every leftist’s favorite confectionary maker, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation.

AfGJ has also taken money from corporate foundations, including $10,000 from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, $10,000 from the Aetna Foundation, $5,000 from the Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund, $119,000 from the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, and $21,100 from the Schwab Charitable Fund (the last three corporations provide “donor-advised funds” to individuals or foundations who use the funds to make charitable donations, often anonymously).

Earlier this year, these funding streams were reported on the blog Bombthrowers, (“Do Bank of America, Fidelity, and Schwab support the Berkeley violence?” February 8, 2017). The blog post asked:

Now that esteemed companies like Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab Corporation know that the money they give to [AfGJ] can be funneled to violent groups like Refuse Fascism, do they condone violence like that which occurred in Berkeley?

Do they approve of mobs that prevent conservative speakers from being heard?

And, if they don’t, will they stop funding [AfGJ]?

The “Our Principles” page of the AfGJ’s website proclaims, “We are anti-capitalist without rigidly adhering to any one utopian alternative economic model.” It also states, “We support group rights as equal to or superior to the rights of individuals articulated by 18th Century European men.” Anti-capitalist, utopian economic model, group rights over individual rights—that fits the first part of the definition of communist quite well.

Hard Core Left-Wing Leadership The Alliance for Global Justice finds its origins in an organization founded in 1979 called the Nicaragua Network, a group that was dedicated to supporting the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. By the 1990s the Nicaragua Network was running a number of international campaigns involving World Bank protests and labor rights. According to AfGJ’s website, when a group named Nicaragua Network tried to organize campaigns that had little to do with Nicaragua, it confused its activists and donors. In response, members of the Nicaragua Network formed the Alliance for Global Justice in 1998.

AfGJ was initially headquartered in Washington, D.C. It still maintains an office there, and its most recent IRS filing lists a telephone number with DC’s 202 area code, but in 2013 AfGJ moved its primary headquarters to Tucson, Arizona, according to its IRS disclosures.

Katherine Hoyt and Chuck Kaufman have served as “National Co-Coordinators” for AfGJ, which they joined as staff members in 2003. Both have long histories of involvement in far-left causes. Hoyt received a Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University. In the 1960s, she moved to Nicaragua where in 1967 she married Dr. Bayardo Gonzalez. She was an active supporter of the Sandinistas prior to their overthrow of the corrupt Somoza regime.

AfGJ provides fiscal sponsorship services that fund groups that do not have 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service. This means AfGJ is a “pass through” entity that allows donors who want to give to a group that lacks tax-exempt status to donate instead to the AfGJ. This mechanism helps individual donors, who may now deduct the donation from their income taxes, and also helps foundation donors, who are generally forbidden to give to groups that lack nonprofit status. It also helps the groups that finally receive the monies, because they don’t have to report on their activities to the public and, if convenient, they can pop up, perform legally dubious actions, and then disappear with no accountability. AfGJ takes a 7 to 8 percent administrative fee from the money that it passes on to other groups.

The purpose of AfGJ’s fiscal sponsorship service, according to its IRS filing, is “to help the progressive movement grow and gain more influence on regional, national, and international levels.” AfGJ claims to have supported over 85 groups in this manner.

Here is a list of some of these groups from their website

Additional resource

Don't forget the UN and USAID factor either. Soros Open Society Foundation/USAID

Leaked Documents Prove Soros’s Open Society Is Working with UN in Supporting Current Illegal Migrant Crisis