With slogans like “it’s time to take the financial system back: join the revolution” and “a protest with every purchase,” here comes the Occupy Money Cooperative, Inc. [1]
| by Brendan Hunt - August 5, 2013 This article will examine the background of the Occupy Money Cooperative (OMC) and their “founding board,” as well as other so-called Occupy Wall Street organizers. It will expose the group of individuals who are co-opting the Occupy community to serve their own partisan political and financial agendas. The evidence will show these groups are directly linked to George Soros, the U.S. State Department, al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist networks, the Federal Reserve and much more. |  The revolution: sponsored by VISA |
FALSE ADVERTISING
The Occupy Money Cooperative (OMC) bills itself as “the start of the financial services revolution,” whose “target market” is “the unbanked and underbanked… over 30 million households.” [4][8] Some, however, see the OMC as a betrayal of the original purpose of Occupy, which was to serve as an external agitation challenging the financial and banking industry. [9]
The Occupy Money Cooperative (OMC) bills itself as “the start of the financial services revolution,” whose “target market” is “the unbanked and underbanked… over 30 million households.” [4][8] Some, however, see the OMC as a betrayal of the original purpose of Occupy, which was to serve as an external agitation challenging the financial and banking industry. [9]
 | Many organizations have tried to ride the momentum of Occupy Wall Street by labeling their projects "occupy"-this or "occupy"-that. In mainstream articles, from Forbes to Credit Union Times, and on their own website, the OMC group consistently, and falsely, represents itself as the official Occupy Wall Street organization. [8][12] For example, on their FAQ page, the OMC writes “Why is Occupy launching a card?” [4] A Forbes article states “the Occupy Wall Street movement… has given birth to something new: a financial institution.” [8] These claims are deliberately phrased to be misleading and deceiving. |
The Occupy community is not pushing this money-making scam. It’s merely a small group of well-off individuals using their influence to manipulate the movement and profit from a “cashless economy.” [7]
The main product they’re pushing is a pre-paid debit Occupy Card. [4] Once the OMC gets sufficient funds for staff and other operating expenses, it will launch the Card, which will cost 99 cents a month and be issued through a bank, the very institutions Occupy Wall Street was protesting. [4][8] At the time of this writing, it is still unclear which bank the Occupy Money Cooperative team up with.
When asked whether, like many other prepaid debit cards, it will charge for ATM withdrawals, balance inquiries, reloading the card, transaction statements, declined transactions and more, the group’s founder (Carne Ross) said that the details of the card would be revealed when the card is launched. “Like any prepaid card, there will be a range of fees.” Yet in other literature the OMC misleads people to think it will only cost 99 cents.
Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said that with the few details offered so far, it’s hard to tell how Occupy’s debit card will fare. Prepaid debit cards have had a reputation for gouging their customers with fees for everything from checking the balance to calling customer service to reloading money onto the card. [8]
From the OMC website: “when people use a debit card, pre-paid debit card or a credit card, a revenue stream is generated each time the card is used in a transaction. A significant part of that revenue will now go to the Occupy Money Cooperative instead of a conventional financial institution that has additional costs like dividends to shareholders.” [4]
Notice the deliberately nebulous language. They write “a significant part” of the revenue will go to the OMC, but are careful not to mention how much. The sentence is also structured to diminish the fact that a portion of the “revenue stream” will be going directly to conventional financial institutions. “The Occupy Card will be on an innovative platform that is integrated with the Visa platform. Your Occupy Card will be accepted everywhere Visa is.” [4] VISA will be getting “their standard share of any transaction revenue,” yet the OMC has the nerve to call this “a big change.” [4]
Who exactly on the OMC’s founding board will be handling the money? And what exactly will it be spent on? The OMC website says, “donations will fund the development costs of The Occupy Card platform, the hiring of a staff, a permanent office location, community outreach, our permanent website, and legal funds… Once we reach a certain size, revenue from operations will supply sufficient resources for our maintenance, growth and the development of additional services.” [4] OMC founder Carne Ross adds, “at this point, we’re not offering anything like the services of a credit union, where you can have a checking account or savings account… but we hope to eventually.” Already signing up members, the OMC is in the process of raising money. [8]
The main product they’re pushing is a pre-paid debit Occupy Card. [4] Once the OMC gets sufficient funds for staff and other operating expenses, it will launch the Card, which will cost 99 cents a month and be issued through a bank, the very institutions Occupy Wall Street was protesting. [4][8] At the time of this writing, it is still unclear which bank the Occupy Money Cooperative team up with.
When asked whether, like many other prepaid debit cards, it will charge for ATM withdrawals, balance inquiries, reloading the card, transaction statements, declined transactions and more, the group’s founder (Carne Ross) said that the details of the card would be revealed when the card is launched. “Like any prepaid card, there will be a range of fees.” Yet in other literature the OMC misleads people to think it will only cost 99 cents.
Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said that with the few details offered so far, it’s hard to tell how Occupy’s debit card will fare. Prepaid debit cards have had a reputation for gouging their customers with fees for everything from checking the balance to calling customer service to reloading money onto the card. [8]
From the OMC website: “when people use a debit card, pre-paid debit card or a credit card, a revenue stream is generated each time the card is used in a transaction. A significant part of that revenue will now go to the Occupy Money Cooperative instead of a conventional financial institution that has additional costs like dividends to shareholders.” [4]
Notice the deliberately nebulous language. They write “a significant part” of the revenue will go to the OMC, but are careful not to mention how much. The sentence is also structured to diminish the fact that a portion of the “revenue stream” will be going directly to conventional financial institutions. “The Occupy Card will be on an innovative platform that is integrated with the Visa platform. Your Occupy Card will be accepted everywhere Visa is.” [4] VISA will be getting “their standard share of any transaction revenue,” yet the OMC has the nerve to call this “a big change.” [4]
Who exactly on the OMC’s founding board will be handling the money? And what exactly will it be spent on? The OMC website says, “donations will fund the development costs of The Occupy Card platform, the hiring of a staff, a permanent office location, community outreach, our permanent website, and legal funds… Once we reach a certain size, revenue from operations will supply sufficient resources for our maintenance, growth and the development of additional services.” [4] OMC founder Carne Ross adds, “at this point, we’re not offering anything like the services of a credit union, where you can have a checking account or savings account… but we hope to eventually.” Already signing up members, the OMC is in the process of raising money. [8]
| CARNE ROSS Carne Ross, founder of the OMC, used to be head of the Arab-Israel desk in the Foreign Office’s Near East/North Africa department, then speechwriter for the Foreign Secretary. He landed at the United Kingdom mission to the U.N. in late 1997, where his brief was mostly conflicts in the Middle East — most notably Iraq during the era in which Western powers were ratcheting up sanctions. Ross has often been on the eccentric end of the British foreign service and was reprimanded at one point by Tunisia for attempting to defuse a tense pre-Iraq War meeting on sanctions against Iraq by playing a Paul Weller record. [10] |  Carne Ross |
Colum Lynch, the Washington Post’s U.N. reporter who covered Ross, said “Carne was in the classic position of trying to make life as difficult as possible for the Iraqis… There was a big pushback on sanctions and the Brits were sort of on their own trying to keep them in place.” Lynch pointed to a specific instance when the British were trying to get the State Department to impose stricter regulations on oil pricing in the oil for food program: “In some ways, he was more aggressive in trying to clamp down on the Iraqis than even the Americans.” [10]
Ross admits that he enjoyed the power and excitement of the job. “During war you become the authority,” Ross says. “My main job with the U.K. mission was Afghanistan and Iraq, the two biggest issues, which made me feel very important. When I was at the U.N., I had TV crews running down corridors after me. I was a P-5 diplomat dealing with the biggest issues of the day.” In his personal life, he drank excessively and “was very aggressive professionally. I liked destroying people.” [10]
Ross took a sabbatical from 2002–2003 and taught at the New School, though he was still a member of the Foreign Office. He was posted to Kosovo in 2003. In 2004 he testified for the Butler Review, the British government’s inquiry into the intelligence which led to the invasion of Iraq. Ross’s testimony that he had not seen evidence of weapons of mass destruction during his tenure at the U.N. marked the end of his career, though he gave it in secret in an effort to keep his job. [10]
After transmitting the testimony to the inquiry, he resigned from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He says he has a warm relationship with many of his former colleagues there, and maintains a good working relationship with the U.S. State Department. After leaving, Ross founded Independent Diplomat, which he calls the world’s first diplomatic advisory firm and moved into a spacious office in New York’s Flatiron District. George Soros is a major donor to Ross’ organization. [10]
His team of 16 employees based in offices in New York, Juba, London, Brussels, and the Somaliland capital Hargeisa don’t see themselves as charity workers. Ross works with State Department officials, helping to echo or amplify concerns that Washington had to his clients. His specialty seems to be influencing the actions of foreign governments. His sister is an editor at the Financial Times and his wife, Karmen, is a Croatian filmmaker whose documentary about rape during the war in Bosnia won two Emmys. He is described as having an “anarchist viewpoint.” [10]
A Buzzfeed reporter named Rosie Gray first encountered Ross at a meeting of Occupy Wall Street’s Alternative Banking working group in fall 2011, as a reporter for the Village Voice. A few dozen people were gathered in the offices of Independent Diplomat, Matthew Stoller, a blogger and former aide to the radical Florida Democrat Alan Grayson, and Cathy O’Neil, (see list of board members below). The crowd did not skew typically “Occupy.” There was even a current Goldman Sachs employee there who had to remain anonymous. Ross led the discussion.” [10]
Everyone at the meeting seemed to know much more about finance than most Occupy protesters, according to Gray. Ross continued to hold these meetings at his office for nearly two years. His group was called The Occupy Bank before they changed it to Occupy Money Cooperative. They were down to a handful of diehard members until recently, including a commodities trader who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity. [10]
“Carne is definitely a big picture guy,” the trader said. Though Carne is the de facto leader of the group, it’s supposed to have the same kind of horizontal structure that all Occupy groups strive for, and the trader sometimes ribs him for his most recent book’s title: The Leaderless Revolution. Ross’s politics don’t dovetail entirely with the larger Occupy community either. [10]
Ross says the Independent Diplomat only helps “people committed to democracy and protection of human rights.” Yet they work with groups who have a military bent. The Polisario Front, for example, has been accused of human rights abuses in its struggle for independence from Morocco. Ross insists that, “we never helped armed groups… we never did it.” [10]
One Ross client who has drawn particular criticism is the pro-Russian political party of Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Georgian Dream, which has had loyalists of former Prime Minister Mikheil Saakashvili arrested and prosecuted since its election last fall. The arrests have drawn criticism from the State Department. Ross was hired because Ivanishvili “wanted to get a better grip on how the EU and the Council of Europe was thinking about Georgia.” [10]
Saakashili’s American friends don’t buy Ross’ argument: “All I can really speak to is Georgia, but in that case these guys didn’t know who they were representing, or the money made it too good to check,” said Michael Goldfarb, a conservative operative who has worked on lobbying for the Saakashvili side. “Still, anyone who represents a bunch of dodgy proto-states like Northern Cyprus, South Sudan, Western Sahara and Somliland as nonprofit is probably making some profit.” [10]
Ross’ group also took on the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces as a client. “The basis of our philosophy is legitimate representatives of the people need to be included in the diplomatic discussion. The coalition falls squarely within that definition,” Ross explained. In a Buzzfeed interview, he refused to go into detail about the Syrian conflict, saying it wouldn’t be proper for him to weigh in on American policy there because of his clients. [10]
As many people know, the Syrian rebels have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda. [22] The vast majority of the fighting in the Syrian civil war is done by a ruthless terrorist organization known as the al-Nusra Front. [23] The rebel leaders eat the organs of their enemies and teach child soldiers how to behead people. [24][25]
The leader of the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution, Moaz al-Khatib (Carne Ross’ client), has called on the US to reconsider its decision to list the al-Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organization; al-Khatib has stated that all rebel forces whose main goal is the “the fall of the regime” should be left alone. [21]
The United States is arming and funding the al-Nusra Front in an effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (echoing the 2011 situation in Libya). [26] Carne Ross is a liason between the U.S. State Department and these mercenaries we hire to do our dirty work in the Middle East.
OTHER BOARD MEMBERS
The OMC repeatedly emphasizes the “coop belongs to its members by definition.” [4] “OMC will be owned and controlled by its members. Its members will consist of its customers. If you use its products, you will automatically become a member of the cooperative, with a voice in how the coop will be run, and what services it will develop.” [1] However, on another page it says “the coop is run by a small founding board.” [3] How will they reconcile the two conflicting ideas?
“The OMC is governed by a board of directors who will guide the development of the Coop… Eventually, the membership of the Coop will vote for board members in a democratic and participatory procedure.” [7] No details on how that is to be accomplished. So let’s take a closer look at the existing OMC Board of Directors, a group that will most likely stay in power after any voting done by their “customers.”
Robert Hockett: a finance Professor at Cornell University Law School, Fellow of the Century Foundation, and author for the New America Foundation. Hockett also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Americans for Financial Reform, and a number of federal and state legislators and local governments. He holds advanced degrees from the University of Kansas; the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar; and Yale University. Following law school, he also clerked for the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. [5]
Cathy O’Neil: Senior Data Scientist at Johnson Research Labs. Cathy earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, and postdoc at the MIT math department. She was also a professor at Barnard College and is co-authoring a book called “Doing Data Science.” She worked as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis, and then for RiskMetrics, a risk software company that assesses risk for the holdings of hedge funds and banks. For the last couple years she’s been a data scientist in the New York start-up scene. She writes a blog at mathbabe.org and is involved with the #OccupyWallStreet Alternative Banking Working Group. [5]
Ray Gillenwater: former executive at BlackBerry and a current entrepreneur and investor. Ray has his own nonprofit, The Spark (www.thespark.org). [5]
Christian Brammer: trained as a banker, doing a full rotation through Deutsche Bank before becoming a longtime Director. Christian was also a Managing Director at Rabobank in London. He later moved to the Adirondack Mountains where he spent the best part of three years designing and building a house for his family. More recently he has taught about capital markets at Skidmore College. He was also Director of Risk Management at Cornwall Capital, a successful short-side hedge fund, during the 2007 financial crisis. Currently Christian is working as a risk management consultant. [5]
Paul Ferris: an engineer, marketer and technology-expert with an international background in the financial services. He has 20 years of experience as a businessman and entrepreneur combining technology and marketing in large-scale campaigns. He is active on Board, management and community-level in charity initiatives. He supports Oxfam, Fairtrade. and similar initiatives. [5]
One of their lower-level organizers is Harrison Schultz. In an OMC website blog post dated July 26 titled “Week One,” Schultz notes how he and a friend “set up a banner and a table with some pamphlets on it at the NYC #reRoute Conference to [promote the OMC] build political power for a new economy.” [2]
Ross admits that he enjoyed the power and excitement of the job. “During war you become the authority,” Ross says. “My main job with the U.K. mission was Afghanistan and Iraq, the two biggest issues, which made me feel very important. When I was at the U.N., I had TV crews running down corridors after me. I was a P-5 diplomat dealing with the biggest issues of the day.” In his personal life, he drank excessively and “was very aggressive professionally. I liked destroying people.” [10]
Ross took a sabbatical from 2002–2003 and taught at the New School, though he was still a member of the Foreign Office. He was posted to Kosovo in 2003. In 2004 he testified for the Butler Review, the British government’s inquiry into the intelligence which led to the invasion of Iraq. Ross’s testimony that he had not seen evidence of weapons of mass destruction during his tenure at the U.N. marked the end of his career, though he gave it in secret in an effort to keep his job. [10]
After transmitting the testimony to the inquiry, he resigned from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He says he has a warm relationship with many of his former colleagues there, and maintains a good working relationship with the U.S. State Department. After leaving, Ross founded Independent Diplomat, which he calls the world’s first diplomatic advisory firm and moved into a spacious office in New York’s Flatiron District. George Soros is a major donor to Ross’ organization. [10]
His team of 16 employees based in offices in New York, Juba, London, Brussels, and the Somaliland capital Hargeisa don’t see themselves as charity workers. Ross works with State Department officials, helping to echo or amplify concerns that Washington had to his clients. His specialty seems to be influencing the actions of foreign governments. His sister is an editor at the Financial Times and his wife, Karmen, is a Croatian filmmaker whose documentary about rape during the war in Bosnia won two Emmys. He is described as having an “anarchist viewpoint.” [10]
A Buzzfeed reporter named Rosie Gray first encountered Ross at a meeting of Occupy Wall Street’s Alternative Banking working group in fall 2011, as a reporter for the Village Voice. A few dozen people were gathered in the offices of Independent Diplomat, Matthew Stoller, a blogger and former aide to the radical Florida Democrat Alan Grayson, and Cathy O’Neil, (see list of board members below). The crowd did not skew typically “Occupy.” There was even a current Goldman Sachs employee there who had to remain anonymous. Ross led the discussion.” [10]
Everyone at the meeting seemed to know much more about finance than most Occupy protesters, according to Gray. Ross continued to hold these meetings at his office for nearly two years. His group was called The Occupy Bank before they changed it to Occupy Money Cooperative. They were down to a handful of diehard members until recently, including a commodities trader who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity. [10]
“Carne is definitely a big picture guy,” the trader said. Though Carne is the de facto leader of the group, it’s supposed to have the same kind of horizontal structure that all Occupy groups strive for, and the trader sometimes ribs him for his most recent book’s title: The Leaderless Revolution. Ross’s politics don’t dovetail entirely with the larger Occupy community either. [10]
Ross says the Independent Diplomat only helps “people committed to democracy and protection of human rights.” Yet they work with groups who have a military bent. The Polisario Front, for example, has been accused of human rights abuses in its struggle for independence from Morocco. Ross insists that, “we never helped armed groups… we never did it.” [10]
One Ross client who has drawn particular criticism is the pro-Russian political party of Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Georgian Dream, which has had loyalists of former Prime Minister Mikheil Saakashvili arrested and prosecuted since its election last fall. The arrests have drawn criticism from the State Department. Ross was hired because Ivanishvili “wanted to get a better grip on how the EU and the Council of Europe was thinking about Georgia.” [10]
Saakashili’s American friends don’t buy Ross’ argument: “All I can really speak to is Georgia, but in that case these guys didn’t know who they were representing, or the money made it too good to check,” said Michael Goldfarb, a conservative operative who has worked on lobbying for the Saakashvili side. “Still, anyone who represents a bunch of dodgy proto-states like Northern Cyprus, South Sudan, Western Sahara and Somliland as nonprofit is probably making some profit.” [10]
Ross’ group also took on the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces as a client. “The basis of our philosophy is legitimate representatives of the people need to be included in the diplomatic discussion. The coalition falls squarely within that definition,” Ross explained. In a Buzzfeed interview, he refused to go into detail about the Syrian conflict, saying it wouldn’t be proper for him to weigh in on American policy there because of his clients. [10]
As many people know, the Syrian rebels have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda. [22] The vast majority of the fighting in the Syrian civil war is done by a ruthless terrorist organization known as the al-Nusra Front. [23] The rebel leaders eat the organs of their enemies and teach child soldiers how to behead people. [24][25]
The leader of the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution, Moaz al-Khatib (Carne Ross’ client), has called on the US to reconsider its decision to list the al-Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organization; al-Khatib has stated that all rebel forces whose main goal is the “the fall of the regime” should be left alone. [21]
The United States is arming and funding the al-Nusra Front in an effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (echoing the 2011 situation in Libya). [26] Carne Ross is a liason between the U.S. State Department and these mercenaries we hire to do our dirty work in the Middle East.
OTHER BOARD MEMBERS
The OMC repeatedly emphasizes the “coop belongs to its members by definition.” [4] “OMC will be owned and controlled by its members. Its members will consist of its customers. If you use its products, you will automatically become a member of the cooperative, with a voice in how the coop will be run, and what services it will develop.” [1] However, on another page it says “the coop is run by a small founding board.” [3] How will they reconcile the two conflicting ideas?
“The OMC is governed by a board of directors who will guide the development of the Coop… Eventually, the membership of the Coop will vote for board members in a democratic and participatory procedure.” [7] No details on how that is to be accomplished. So let’s take a closer look at the existing OMC Board of Directors, a group that will most likely stay in power after any voting done by their “customers.”
Robert Hockett: a finance Professor at Cornell University Law School, Fellow of the Century Foundation, and author for the New America Foundation. Hockett also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, Americans for Financial Reform, and a number of federal and state legislators and local governments. He holds advanced degrees from the University of Kansas; the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar; and Yale University. Following law school, he also clerked for the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. [5]
Cathy O’Neil: Senior Data Scientist at Johnson Research Labs. Cathy earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, and postdoc at the MIT math department. She was also a professor at Barnard College and is co-authoring a book called “Doing Data Science.” She worked as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis, and then for RiskMetrics, a risk software company that assesses risk for the holdings of hedge funds and banks. For the last couple years she’s been a data scientist in the New York start-up scene. She writes a blog at mathbabe.org and is involved with the #OccupyWallStreet Alternative Banking Working Group. [5]
Ray Gillenwater: former executive at BlackBerry and a current entrepreneur and investor. Ray has his own nonprofit, The Spark (www.thespark.org). [5]
Christian Brammer: trained as a banker, doing a full rotation through Deutsche Bank before becoming a longtime Director. Christian was also a Managing Director at Rabobank in London. He later moved to the Adirondack Mountains where he spent the best part of three years designing and building a house for his family. More recently he has taught about capital markets at Skidmore College. He was also Director of Risk Management at Cornwall Capital, a successful short-side hedge fund, during the 2007 financial crisis. Currently Christian is working as a risk management consultant. [5]
Paul Ferris: an engineer, marketer and technology-expert with an international background in the financial services. He has 20 years of experience as a businessman and entrepreneur combining technology and marketing in large-scale campaigns. He is active on Board, management and community-level in charity initiatives. He supports Oxfam, Fairtrade. and similar initiatives. [5]
One of their lower-level organizers is Harrison Schultz. In an OMC website blog post dated July 26 titled “Week One,” Schultz notes how he and a friend “set up a banner and a table with some pamphlets on it at the NYC #reRoute Conference to [promote the OMC] build political power for a new economy.” [2]
| He advises his comrades, “the more support we can drum up for the Occupy Coop and the Occupy Card before the mainstream media gets wind of it the better.” [2] Of course that would also help in avoiding any due criticism this project might receive. Schultz gained some notoriety in the Occupy community for his 2012 appearance on Fox News. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Schultz blames the police for Occupy rapes, claiming that they sent the rapists into the park. [14] | |
TRANSPARENCY
When I posted these concerns in the popular Occupy Wall Street facebook group that is used by the New York City community, I was met with invective, ad hominem attacks, and childish name-calling by a small group of OMC supporters. Individuals like Charles Lenchner and Aaron Minter (aka Aaron Black) instigated this backlash in an effort to suppress the valid questions I raised.
I knew Minter from when I was attending the Occupy protest actions, and I knew he secretly organized “occupy” events for leftist organizations. So I called him out on it, as well as his buddy Lenchner. I took screenshots of our entire conversation, and it’s a good thing I did. When I woke up the following morning, I found that my Facebook account was disabled for over 24 hours. Someone had flagged my posts as being against “community standards” and a number of my comments were erased from the thread.
READ THE FACEBOOK THREAD HERE
There is a reason why select individuals responded so viciously to, and censored, my comments. They are all part of a small ring of people who repeatedly exploit the Occupy movement to promote events for partisan political purposes. Here is some background information on these folks. It will give the reader a better understanding of how a grassroots movement can get co-opted, much like the Koch brothers did to the Tea Party.
Aaron Minter (Aaron Black), 41, facilitates Occupy events, such as the bus trip to protest the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa. These events are sponsored by organizations like the SEIU, ones who publicly back Barack Obama, and who work to get Democrats elected. This fact is kept hidden from most people, but certain sympathetic individuals in the Occupy community know what’s going on.
Aaron was arrested on April 5, 2012, for vandalizing more than 20 subway stations throughout New York City, plastering subway seats with stickers that read “priority seating for the 1 percent.” [18] He also chained open gates at the stations, including the Steinway Street station in Queens, and passed out flyers reading, “Free Entry” that mimicked MTA service announcement flyers. [15]
Police spotted him in a March 4 NY1 segment: Aaron had invited the news media to follow him along and film his stunt. [15] After cops saw the NY1 video, they found Aaron hanging around other protesters in Union Square at around 11:15 p.m., a day after the act. He was charged with criminal mischief (a felony) as well as making graffiti, and possession of graffiti instruments, both misdemeanors. [18] Aaron was sentenced to 10 days at Rikers Island jail. [20]
Aaron Minter, has a history of arrests for menacing, and one for burglary the day after 9/11, at a closed store two blocks from Ground Zero. [18] He also uses a fictitious last name, perhaps to throw off any curious individuals looking into his past.
I was there on the weeklong RNC bus trip in August 2012, which Aaron hosted. It started off a little rocky because he let a known drug dealer and beater of women on board, against the wishes of some Occupiers. Throughout the trip, this individual physically abused his “girlfriend” – spitting in her face and head butting her.
The protesters slept in an open field that week, but Aaron was put up in a Tampa hotel room. We had a running joke that he was the 1% of the 99%.
The bus trip was paid for by the SEIU, and was only to go to the RNC and back, passing by the Democrat Convention the very next week (thus, keeping the heat off Obama). When Occupiers who came on the trip found out about this, they protested, and Aaron was forced to take one bus to the DNC while the other headed back to New York.
When they arrived at the DNC protest, Aaron went on CNN and said “A lot of our people are not interested in protesting Obama.” [13] This caused a bit of an internal firestorm, because many of the Occupiers had come specifically to protest Obama’s administration. [20] It also fueled the rumors the Aaron had a hidden agenda. At the New York Trinity Church Occupy encampment the next morning, there were a lot of boos when Aaron’s democratic leanings were discussed. No transportation back to NYC was provided to the DNC protesters either, and many were left stranded. [13]
Aaron also meets regularly with White House officials to plan events like "Occupy the NRA." He also has an office in Washington, DC at H street & 7th. If anything, this information should call into question his abilities and motives as an organizer for the Occupy community.
Charles Lenchner, another Occupy infiltrator, often collaborates with the Working Families Party, an ACORN front group. [17] He held a seminar at the Organizing 2.0 Conference about how to translate lessons about new media from the Obama campaign to local campaigns. [16]
Lenchner also authored a report-back titled “Reportback: The 99%Spring Training for Trainers and the Plot to Coopt #Occupy” dated March 25, 2012. [19] The title is a bit misleading because his report actually dismisses allegations of any plots, and ridicules those who are concerned about it. Here are some excerpts from Lenchner’s article:
“This past weekend I attended the Training for Trainers (T4T) of the 99% Spring. This is being organized by a very large and powerful coalition in which MoveOn is one of the larger partners, as is the AFL-CIO.
“On the one hand, this is obviously a progressive agenda that most occupiers would agree with. On the other, occupiers have struggled with the fear of cooptation to an exhausting degree. I’ve participated in online and in person conversations about the 99%Spring, and the critiques fall into three main arguments:
“1. MoveOn and the DC based labor movement bureaucracy can’t be trusted as they are committed to working within the system and for Democratic candidates.
“2. The 99%Spring uses occupy inspired themes and memes (“the 99%”) but without doing the hard work of actually working with Occupy Wall Street.
“3. The overall effort seems utterly disconnected from the nationwide May First plans that many (most?) occupiers are actively working towards, which are also referenced with “spring” language.
“4. This isn’t it’s own thing, but rather me making fun of how the nervous nellies respond to larger forces in the political world: “Halp! We’re being coopted! The Democratic Party is both capable and interested in implementing a well thought out plan to make us serve their interests!”
“Speaking as an occupier most active in the Tech Ops Working Group of the NYC General Assembly, my first response to the 99%Spring was envy… [but Occupy Wall Street hasn’t been able to do something like train] 100,000 activists and organizers in nonviolent direct action. So why not welcome an effort that is doing that?
“The Training for Trainers was fantastic… There was zero, none, nada discussion of the Obama campaign, electoral politics, the Democratic Party, or MoveOn. To sum up then, the critiques against the 99% Spring are false. Those who lobbed uninformed critiques are now in a position of having to apologize and take back their words or lose credibility. They ‘proved’ that MoveOn provided support for an amazing, collaborative effort resting on teachings used widely inside the Occupy movement.” “Questions might still be asked about the ultimate purpose of MoveOn, unions, and the long list of community organizing groups that make up the 99%Spring effort. One of the most important is: Where is this coming from? What might it be going?
“Liz Butler of the Movement Strategy Center is one of the prime movers and shakers of this effort. (And the New Organizing Institute.)
“The overall strategy seems to be similar or based on what Stephen Lerner (formerly of SEIU) was articulating in a series of talks about “creating a crisis for the rich.” In a nutshell, it proposes mass direct action aimed broadly at the 1% in order to force them to make concessions.
“When we talk about ‘demands’ or ‘goals’ there are laundry lists galore… But behind all those disparate goals lies a framework: increasing the share of wealth that flows to the 99% and reducing the portion controlled by the 1%. That’s the prize. And large parts of the power structure (i.e., Democrats and even some corporations) think it’s a good thing too.
“Getting MoveOn to be part of this coalition isn’t as simple as it looks. MoveOn is large enough to do whatever it wants without local partners, and for a long time that’s what it did. But the last few years have seen greater efforts to partner, with Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream representing a real break with past practice. But the 99% Spring is an example of a large powerful organization placing resources in the service of a fairly radical agenda and allowing others to take the lead.
When I posted these concerns in the popular Occupy Wall Street facebook group that is used by the New York City community, I was met with invective, ad hominem attacks, and childish name-calling by a small group of OMC supporters. Individuals like Charles Lenchner and Aaron Minter (aka Aaron Black) instigated this backlash in an effort to suppress the valid questions I raised.
I knew Minter from when I was attending the Occupy protest actions, and I knew he secretly organized “occupy” events for leftist organizations. So I called him out on it, as well as his buddy Lenchner. I took screenshots of our entire conversation, and it’s a good thing I did. When I woke up the following morning, I found that my Facebook account was disabled for over 24 hours. Someone had flagged my posts as being against “community standards” and a number of my comments were erased from the thread.
READ THE FACEBOOK THREAD HERE
There is a reason why select individuals responded so viciously to, and censored, my comments. They are all part of a small ring of people who repeatedly exploit the Occupy movement to promote events for partisan political purposes. Here is some background information on these folks. It will give the reader a better understanding of how a grassroots movement can get co-opted, much like the Koch brothers did to the Tea Party.
Aaron Minter (Aaron Black), 41, facilitates Occupy events, such as the bus trip to protest the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa. These events are sponsored by organizations like the SEIU, ones who publicly back Barack Obama, and who work to get Democrats elected. This fact is kept hidden from most people, but certain sympathetic individuals in the Occupy community know what’s going on.
Aaron was arrested on April 5, 2012, for vandalizing more than 20 subway stations throughout New York City, plastering subway seats with stickers that read “priority seating for the 1 percent.” [18] He also chained open gates at the stations, including the Steinway Street station in Queens, and passed out flyers reading, “Free Entry” that mimicked MTA service announcement flyers. [15]
Police spotted him in a March 4 NY1 segment: Aaron had invited the news media to follow him along and film his stunt. [15] After cops saw the NY1 video, they found Aaron hanging around other protesters in Union Square at around 11:15 p.m., a day after the act. He was charged with criminal mischief (a felony) as well as making graffiti, and possession of graffiti instruments, both misdemeanors. [18] Aaron was sentenced to 10 days at Rikers Island jail. [20]
Aaron Minter, has a history of arrests for menacing, and one for burglary the day after 9/11, at a closed store two blocks from Ground Zero. [18] He also uses a fictitious last name, perhaps to throw off any curious individuals looking into his past.
I was there on the weeklong RNC bus trip in August 2012, which Aaron hosted. It started off a little rocky because he let a known drug dealer and beater of women on board, against the wishes of some Occupiers. Throughout the trip, this individual physically abused his “girlfriend” – spitting in her face and head butting her.
The protesters slept in an open field that week, but Aaron was put up in a Tampa hotel room. We had a running joke that he was the 1% of the 99%.
The bus trip was paid for by the SEIU, and was only to go to the RNC and back, passing by the Democrat Convention the very next week (thus, keeping the heat off Obama). When Occupiers who came on the trip found out about this, they protested, and Aaron was forced to take one bus to the DNC while the other headed back to New York.
When they arrived at the DNC protest, Aaron went on CNN and said “A lot of our people are not interested in protesting Obama.” [13] This caused a bit of an internal firestorm, because many of the Occupiers had come specifically to protest Obama’s administration. [20] It also fueled the rumors the Aaron had a hidden agenda. At the New York Trinity Church Occupy encampment the next morning, there were a lot of boos when Aaron’s democratic leanings were discussed. No transportation back to NYC was provided to the DNC protesters either, and many were left stranded. [13]
Aaron also meets regularly with White House officials to plan events like "Occupy the NRA." He also has an office in Washington, DC at H street & 7th. If anything, this information should call into question his abilities and motives as an organizer for the Occupy community.
Charles Lenchner, another Occupy infiltrator, often collaborates with the Working Families Party, an ACORN front group. [17] He held a seminar at the Organizing 2.0 Conference about how to translate lessons about new media from the Obama campaign to local campaigns. [16]
Lenchner also authored a report-back titled “Reportback: The 99%Spring Training for Trainers and the Plot to Coopt #Occupy” dated March 25, 2012. [19] The title is a bit misleading because his report actually dismisses allegations of any plots, and ridicules those who are concerned about it. Here are some excerpts from Lenchner’s article:
“This past weekend I attended the Training for Trainers (T4T) of the 99% Spring. This is being organized by a very large and powerful coalition in which MoveOn is one of the larger partners, as is the AFL-CIO.
“On the one hand, this is obviously a progressive agenda that most occupiers would agree with. On the other, occupiers have struggled with the fear of cooptation to an exhausting degree. I’ve participated in online and in person conversations about the 99%Spring, and the critiques fall into three main arguments:
“1. MoveOn and the DC based labor movement bureaucracy can’t be trusted as they are committed to working within the system and for Democratic candidates.
“2. The 99%Spring uses occupy inspired themes and memes (“the 99%”) but without doing the hard work of actually working with Occupy Wall Street.
“3. The overall effort seems utterly disconnected from the nationwide May First plans that many (most?) occupiers are actively working towards, which are also referenced with “spring” language.
“4. This isn’t it’s own thing, but rather me making fun of how the nervous nellies respond to larger forces in the political world: “Halp! We’re being coopted! The Democratic Party is both capable and interested in implementing a well thought out plan to make us serve their interests!”
“Speaking as an occupier most active in the Tech Ops Working Group of the NYC General Assembly, my first response to the 99%Spring was envy… [but Occupy Wall Street hasn’t been able to do something like train] 100,000 activists and organizers in nonviolent direct action. So why not welcome an effort that is doing that?
“The Training for Trainers was fantastic… There was zero, none, nada discussion of the Obama campaign, electoral politics, the Democratic Party, or MoveOn. To sum up then, the critiques against the 99% Spring are false. Those who lobbed uninformed critiques are now in a position of having to apologize and take back their words or lose credibility. They ‘proved’ that MoveOn provided support for an amazing, collaborative effort resting on teachings used widely inside the Occupy movement.” “Questions might still be asked about the ultimate purpose of MoveOn, unions, and the long list of community organizing groups that make up the 99%Spring effort. One of the most important is: Where is this coming from? What might it be going?
“Liz Butler of the Movement Strategy Center is one of the prime movers and shakers of this effort. (And the New Organizing Institute.)
“The overall strategy seems to be similar or based on what Stephen Lerner (formerly of SEIU) was articulating in a series of talks about “creating a crisis for the rich.” In a nutshell, it proposes mass direct action aimed broadly at the 1% in order to force them to make concessions.
“When we talk about ‘demands’ or ‘goals’ there are laundry lists galore… But behind all those disparate goals lies a framework: increasing the share of wealth that flows to the 99% and reducing the portion controlled by the 1%. That’s the prize. And large parts of the power structure (i.e., Democrats and even some corporations) think it’s a good thing too.
“Getting MoveOn to be part of this coalition isn’t as simple as it looks. MoveOn is large enough to do whatever it wants without local partners, and for a long time that’s what it did. But the last few years have seen greater efforts to partner, with Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream representing a real break with past practice. But the 99% Spring is an example of a large powerful organization placing resources in the service of a fairly radical agenda and allowing others to take the lead.
| “Like who? Like Domestic Workers United, a labor rights organization representing working class women of color. One of their staff members, Harmony Goldberg, was a lead trainer this weekend. If you think Goldberg is a MoveOn/DemParty dupe, please shoot yourself right now. Whew! You’re still here! Thank god.” [19] As you can see, Lenchner is just an apologist for these partisan political groups operating behind the scenes in the Occupy community. He even encourages those who question the facts to shoot themselves! This naysayer behavior is typical of the small little clique that has manipulated the energy of the Occupy movement for its own agendas, one of their goals being the deflection of any valid criticism. |  Aaron Minter and Charles Lenchner at the 2012 DNC |
CONCLUSIONS
There are many folks in the Occupy community who share the concerns raised in this article, yet have reservations about commenting publicly on these issues, because they have a personal relationship with the people involved. I, on the other hand, am thoroughly disgusted with this little group of manipulators and have no problem calling them out. I encourage others to let their voice be heard, and to not be intimidated by these Occupy Con-Artists. I know they pay for your bus trips to go protest all over the country, but they are just using you.
I believe more people need to be made aware of this blatant money-making scam, and the details behind the OMC’s organizers, before it gains any traction. Please pass this information on to others so they can avoid the pitfalls I’ve spoken about here. Large corporations and political entities are trying to subvert the movement I worked so hard to build, and I’m tired of it. This type of infiltration is a common occurrence in grassroots movements, and folks should be aware of just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Sources:
1) http://www.occupycooperative.com/
2) http://www.occupycooperative.com/week_one
3) http://www.occupycooperative.com/who_we_are
4) http://www.occupycooperative.com/faq
5) http://www.occupycooperative.com/board
6) http://www.occupycooperative.com/ourvalues
7) http://www.occupycooperative.com/the_occupy_cardth benefits
8) http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2013/07/23/the-occupy-movement-is-launching-a-money-cooperative/
9) http://www.mintpressnews.com/occupy-movement-soldiers-on-launches-collective-banking-enterprise/165815/
10) http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/how-carne-ross-created-a-new-kind-of-diplomacy
12) http://www.brendanhunt.com/1/post/2013/07/group-claiming-to-be-occupy-wall-street-teams-up-with-visa-to-offer-debit-cards-for-a-monthly-fee.html
13) http://occupytrinity.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/03-september-2012-sunday/
14) http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/04/occupier-harrison-schultz-lies-about-occupy-rapes
15) http://www.qgazette.com/news/2012-04-11/Front_Page/Cops_Nab_Two_OWS_Subway_Vandals.html?print=1
16) http://my.firedoglake.com/sumofchange/2010/01/19/training-tuesday-learning-from-obama-for-local-campaigns/
17) http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2009/10/alleged-corruption-in-obamas-working-families-party-inside-the-dfs-experience/
18)http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/taped_ows_dolts_deface_the_music_thgC29ypNKMJL84VNAIy1N
19) http://tech.nycga.net/2012/03/25/reportback-the-99spring-training-for-trainers-and-the-plot-to-coopt-occupy/
20) http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/21/occupy-wall-street-organizer-shipped-to-rikers-island/
21) http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2012/1212/For-newly-recognized-Syrian-rebel-coalition-a-first-dispute-with-US-video
22) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/syria-al-qaeda-connection/2075323/
23) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/10/syria-al-nusra-front-jihadi?cmp=wp-plugin
24) http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/syrian-rebel-leader-eats-heart-of-enemy-soldier-on-camera-video/
25) http://www.newstiller.com/en/world/694-children-forced-to-behead-captives-in-syria
26) http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/politics/us-syrian-rebels
There are many folks in the Occupy community who share the concerns raised in this article, yet have reservations about commenting publicly on these issues, because they have a personal relationship with the people involved. I, on the other hand, am thoroughly disgusted with this little group of manipulators and have no problem calling them out. I encourage others to let their voice be heard, and to not be intimidated by these Occupy Con-Artists. I know they pay for your bus trips to go protest all over the country, but they are just using you.
I believe more people need to be made aware of this blatant money-making scam, and the details behind the OMC’s organizers, before it gains any traction. Please pass this information on to others so they can avoid the pitfalls I’ve spoken about here. Large corporations and political entities are trying to subvert the movement I worked so hard to build, and I’m tired of it. This type of infiltration is a common occurrence in grassroots movements, and folks should be aware of just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Sources:
1) http://www.occupycooperative.com/
2) http://www.occupycooperative.com/week_one
3) http://www.occupycooperative.com/who_we_are
4) http://www.occupycooperative.com/faq
5) http://www.occupycooperative.com/board
6) http://www.occupycooperative.com/ourvalues
7) http://www.occupycooperative.com/the_occupy_cardth benefits
8) http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2013/07/23/the-occupy-movement-is-launching-a-money-cooperative/
9) http://www.mintpressnews.com/occupy-movement-soldiers-on-launches-collective-banking-enterprise/165815/
10) http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/how-carne-ross-created-a-new-kind-of-diplomacy
12) http://www.brendanhunt.com/1/post/2013/07/group-claiming-to-be-occupy-wall-street-teams-up-with-visa-to-offer-debit-cards-for-a-monthly-fee.html
13) http://occupytrinity.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/03-september-2012-sunday/
14) http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/04/occupier-harrison-schultz-lies-about-occupy-rapes
15) http://www.qgazette.com/news/2012-04-11/Front_Page/Cops_Nab_Two_OWS_Subway_Vandals.html?print=1
16) http://my.firedoglake.com/sumofchange/2010/01/19/training-tuesday-learning-from-obama-for-local-campaigns/
17) http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2009/10/alleged-corruption-in-obamas-working-families-party-inside-the-dfs-experience/
18)http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/taped_ows_dolts_deface_the_music_thgC29ypNKMJL84VNAIy1N
19) http://tech.nycga.net/2012/03/25/reportback-the-99spring-training-for-trainers-and-the-plot-to-coopt-occupy/
20) http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/21/occupy-wall-street-organizer-shipped-to-rikers-island/
21) http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2012/1212/For-newly-recognized-Syrian-rebel-coalition-a-first-dispute-with-US-video
22) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/syria-al-qaeda-connection/2075323/
23) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/10/syria-al-nusra-front-jihadi?cmp=wp-plugin
24) http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/syrian-rebel-leader-eats-heart-of-enemy-soldier-on-camera-video/
25) http://www.newstiller.com/en/world/694-children-forced-to-behead-captives-in-syria
26) http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/politics/us-syrian-rebels
