Even
after an ‘Atlanta Forest Defender’ shot a Georgia state trooper in the
stomach and his comrades set off race riots in the city, the leftist
group at the center of it all is still fundraising.
This comes
months after the leftists threw Molotov cocktails at police and nearly
burned an elderly driver to death. Multiple members of the ‘occupation’
have been arrested on domestic terrorism charges. And yet the IRS and
Georgia’s Secretary of State have done nothing.
Even
Twitter suspended ‘Scenes from the Atlanta Forest’, an account calling
for a “Night of Rage” and “reciprocal violence to be done to the police
and their allies”, but the IRS has yet to take action to stop the
‘Atlanta Forest Defenders’ from taking in tax-deductible donations.
In
Atlanta, small business owners are sweeping away broken glass and
police have recovered explosive devices from some of the rioters. Yet
the ‘Atlanta Forest Defenders’ are still raising money through Open
Collective: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fundraising platform that Front Page
Magazine had previously exposed for providing fundraising for assorted
ecoterrorists including the ‘Just Stop Oil’ vandals who glued themselves to ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ painting.
That is despite the fact that Open Collective’s terms of service prohibit illegal activities.
The
Open Collective Foundation has received funding for digital
infrastructure grants from the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open
Society and Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network.
Meanwhile ordinary people have been suffering through another wave of leftist terror.
In November, an elderly man passing by the area was attacked. When he stopped his truck, “these people started coming out of the woods in camouflage stuff and blocked me in.”
Then they set the truck on fire.
“It seemed to me like they were going to burn the truck with me in it.”
Nobody’s
fundraising for the man who lost his truck and now suffers from a
medical condition, but the IRS is continuing to enable this domestic
terrorist campaign. In Atlanta, rioters had marched chanting, “If you build it, we will burn it.” The riots show that they mean it.
A
previous affidavit for the arrest of Atlanta Forest Defenders describes
them as “participating in actions as part of Defend the Atlanta Forest
(DTAF), a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland
Security as Domestic Violent Extremists”. It went on to describe a
variety of crimes including, “throwing molotov cocktails, rocks and
fireworks at uniformed police officers; arson of public buildings” and
“shooting metal ball bearings at contractors”.
Members of the
‘occupation’ charged with domestic terrorism were ordered not to
maintain “contact with Defend Atlanta Forest on social media”. Despite
that, neither Georgia nor the IRS, have revisited the legal status of
Defend the Atlanta Forest, its fund and its fiscal host.
While
the Forest Defense Justice Fund is not a nonprofit, its fiscal host, the
Network For Strong Communities, is a 501(c)(3). Beyond the Atlanta
Forest Defenders, Network For Strong Communities also acts as a host for
Atlanta Resistance Medics. Manuel Paez, the leftist who shot at a state
trooper and was killed in turn, was a member of the Atlanta Resistance
Medics.
The ‘medics’, similar to other riot support groups,
provide aid to rioters during street violence. The group’s blog suggests
that protesters “always be prepared to face tear gas every time you go
to a protest” and advises that the “key to avoiding arrest is to always
know where all the police are — and more importantly, to know where they
aren’t.”
An article about
the alleged shooter described the group’s “leaderless nature, its focus
on direct action, as well as its anarchist and Marxist leanings”.
“Don’t
burn The Communist Manifesto!” the shooter exclaimed at one point after
finding a copy of the book in a fire pit. “I mean, Marx isn’t perfect,
but he’s OK.”
That’s whom the media and the rioters have been mourning.
One
of the initiatives of the Network for Strong Communities is the Atlanta
Solidarity Fund which bailed out protesters and rioters: including
those charged with domestic terrorism.
Another is Copwatch: which provided training for the Atlanta Forest Defenders.
The
publicly listed leadership for the group consists of Adele “Earthworm”
MacLean, a local activist affiliated with Cop Watch House and Food Not
Bombs, both operating under the NSC umbrella. Marlon Kautz, who serves
as its CFO, is a member of Cop Watch, works with the Solidarity Fund,
and is the owner of the Teardown House which is the NSC’s registered
address.
The house, decorated with graffiti reading “Black Lives
Matter”, “No Cops”, “Build Up Resistance” and “Smash the State”, has
been featured in a number of articles.
“We build infrastructure for community solidarity and popular struggle,” Kautz has said.
Kautz,
a self-identified anarchist, and MacLean, who has been named as his
partner, moved to Atlanta and bought the house to “create
infrastructure” for activism.
After a decade of this, they finally hit the big time and are all over the national news.
Meanwhile
Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has yet to do anything
about NSC. The organization was briefly dissolved by his office for
failing to pay its fees, but is now listed as being in compliance.
The
IRS, which determined that NSC, was a “public charity” has failed to
revisit that finding even in the wake of the ongoing violence tearing
apart Georgia.
As discussed in David Horowitz’s and John Perazzo’s important booklet:
“Internal Radical Service”, the IRS has allowed leftist nonprofits to
abuse the tax code by financing violence and terror. While conservative
nonprofits are subject to ruthless IRS scrutiny, the organization has
failed to hold leftist nonprofits accountable after even the most
grotesque abuses.
There’s no way to understand what happened in
Atlanta without following the money trial. And there’s no way to stop
them without ending the abuse of 501(c)(3) nonprofits by the Left.
That’s why the David Horowitz Freedom Center is continuing to track the
leftist money behind the violence and expose its enablers at the federal
and state level. And until the IRS does its job, we are going to hold
it accountable for the violence it’s enabling in Atlanta and across
America.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
