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SAN FRANCISCO TAXPAYERS FUNDED THE BAY BRIDGE PROTESTS

a look into AROC, the organization that billionaires and the city of san
francisco are paying to stage protests blocking the bay bridge
River Page

Jan 26, 2024



It’s ten in the morning and you're on the road. Traffic isn’t moving and you
stick your head out the window. In the distance, you see an asshole with a sign.
Maybe you agree with the sign, maybe not. It doesn’t matter, because whatever
the sign is asking you to do — end a war, stop a pipeline, legalize this or
criminalize that — is something only a handful of people with power can do, and
you know they can’t see the sign from the cruising altitude of their private
jets. It’s happened in LA, New York, Chicago, at Burning Man, and on San
Francisco's Bay Bridge, just to list a few examples from 2023. It’s almost
certain that by the end of 2024, we’ll have a new list.

But why?

Shutting down a highway or a bridge is a disruption to everyday life and
commerce that conveys a sense of grassroots urgency and desperation. In reality,
these events are almost always coordinated by longstanding, well-funded advocacy
organizations, many of which are bankrolled by giant, billionaire-funded NGOs
called “donor-advised funds.” Essentially, these are tax-exempt organizations
that funnel money into donor-chosen causes, allowing donors to take immediate
tax write-offs for money that can be distributed at a later date. Since money is
usually pooled but can be earmarked, donor-advised funds also function to
obscure exactly which organizations donors are personally funding. In recent
years, donor-advised funds have been behind traffic shutdowns promoting BLM and
environmental issues. For example, the 2019 “Extinction Rebellion” protests that
shut down traffic in DC were partly funded by the Climate Emergency Fund, which
has links to many wealthy donors, including members of the Kennedy clan.

Of course, climate change is no longer the issue du jour. Since the outbreak of
the Israel-Hamas war in October, many traffic shutdowns have been organized by
groups funded by Tides. This NGO conglomerate has six organizations under its
umbrella: the Tides Foundation, the Tides Network, Tides, Inc., and Tides Two
Rivers Fund. Collectively, they have assets totaling over $1.4 billion,
according to a 2022 internal audit. One of the earliest donor-advised funds,
Tides was created in 1976 by philanthropists Drummond Pike and Jane Bagley
Lehman, the latter being heir to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company fortune. In
more recent years, it’s received millions from extraordinarily wealthy left-wing
billionaires, such as George Soros, who gave the NGO $22 million in 2021.

Like most donor-advised funds, Tides distributes grants to outside
organizations. In Tides’ case, the money mostly goes to left-wing activist
groups. For example, the Tides Foundation has donated to Jewish Voice for Peace
— the "largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world,"
according to their website — which on November 3rd organized a protest in
Durham, North Carolina that blocked rush-hour traffic for three hours in support
of a cease-fire between the Israeli military and Hamas. Of course, Durham
residents stuck in traffic that day had about as much power over Middle Eastern
diplomacy as commuters stranded on the Bay Bridge did two weeks later. That
protest, which blocked traffic into San Francisco for hours on November 16th,
was also organized by an activist outfit funded by Tides, the Arab Resource
Organizing Center (AROC).

But to call AROC merely Tides-funded is an understatement. Although AROC
describes itself as “one of a handful of grassroots organizations building power
in the SWANA/Arab community,” it's anything but grassroots. Legally, it isn’t
even an independent non-profit organization. Instead, it's a “fiscally sponsored
project” of the Tides Center, which essentially means it is legally
indistinguishable from Tides. For example, AROC’s website compels readers to
make out checks to “Tides Center- Arab Resource and Organizing Center.” Since
AROC isn’t a legally distinct organization, the Tides Center isn’t legally
required to report how much money donors earmark for it, nor how much it
allocates to AROC on a discretionary basis. This legal structure makes AROC's
financials a black box.

AROC's lack of independence from Tides also makes it impossible to see who has
made large donations to AROC, something that, prior to a Supreme Court Case in
2021, they would have been required to disclose under California state law.
However, a recent Pirate Wires investigation has revealed the identity of at
least one donor: the San Francisco taxpayer.

SF city government 12.22.2023 public records request response

According to our public records request, since 2016, Tides — which again is
already in receipt of over $1.4 billion in assets — has received over $800,000
earmarked for AROC from the city of San Francisco, through both the Mayor's
Office of Housing and Community Development and the Office of Civic Engagement
and Immigrant Affairs. The services rendered for these funds run the gamut.
Although AROC has received money for ostensibly apolitical projects like census
outreach and social service connection, since 2020, it has also received grants
totaling over $190,000 for “coalition building [with] Arab-serving organizations
citywide." This is a drop in the bucket in terms of wasted taxpayer money in San
Francisco, to be sure, but it's absurd an activist group that’s legally
indistinguishable from an NGO with a $1.4 billion war chest should receive any
public money at all.

San Francisco taxpayers also gave AROC $50,000 in 2020, and $80,000 in 2022 for
“immigrant assistance.” This subsidizes legal services AROC offers to Arab and
Muslims immigrants in the Bay area. According to AROC’s profile on the
Immigration Advocates Network, this explicitly includes legal services for
“individuals who are not in legal immigration status,” and “individuals with
criminal histories.” I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds a lot like San Francisco
taxpayers are helping underwrite legal efforts to stop (specifically) Arab and
Muslim illegal immigrants and criminals from being deported.

And the grants AROC received for service connection and case management through
the Office of Community Development — which formed the bulk of funds received —
also raise questions.

Why would the city outsource immigrant and social services for the Arab
community to a dark money, billionaire-funded far-left activist organization?
The very idea that such services are needed for the Arab community specifically
suggests that greater and swifter assimilation is needed. If this is true, AROC
is more likely a stumbling block than a solution. Their mission statement —
prominently featured on the landing page of their website — is in fact a
contemptuous rejection of assimilation:

> AROC envisions powerful and liberated Arab communities living with freedom and
> self-determination from the Bay Area to our homelands. We are abolitionists,
> feminists, and internationalists who believe that the liberation of SWANA
> (South West Asian North African) people is inextricably tied to the liberation
> of all oppressed people.

From Benedict Arnold, to Jonathan Pollard, to Omar Matteen, there is nothing
more dangerous to national security than an American who sees his homeland in
another country. Handing over immigrants to a group that emphasizes
trans-continental ethnic solidarity is particularly unwise for a group in which
the chances of that solidarity being expressed via terrorist attack are uniquely
not zero. A second-generation Mexican immigrant who identifies more with people
south of the border than his own countryman is a shame. A second-generation
Afghan who identifies more with people in the Middle East than his own
countrymen is a gunman at an Orlando gay bar. Assimilation always matters — for
some more than others.

Much of that assimilation traditionally happens in public schools. But,
troublingly, AROC has its fingers in the SF education system, too. Currently,
AROC contracts with the San Francisco school district to provide workshops on
leadership and cultural enrichment for Arab and Muslim students. In October, the
group was accused of using their presence in several San Francisco public
schools to organize a walkout in support of Gaza. A parent group called SF
Guardians complained, alleging that the group had broken the rules of its
contract by interfering with the students’ education, violating privacy laws by
posting pictures of student protestors on its social media accounts, and
creating a discriminatory environment against student groups by leading a “from
the river to the sea” chant that SF Guardians considers antisemitic.

The school district says it’s currently investigating the allegations, but much
like the grants AROC received from the city, the very existence of a contract
(apparently unpaid) between SFSD and AROC was baffling from the start. The main
page of AROC website currently features a multi-paragraph pop-up statement that
opens with “AROC holds the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding
violence we’ve witnessed across historic Palestine.” It continues:

> While we understand the feelings of despair, confusion, and fear that may be
> gripping our families, friends, and community, we take this moment as an
> invitation to recommit ourselves to the revolutionary roots of Palestinian
> liberation—where the struggle to abolish apartheid, Zionism, and fascism in
> our homeland is one and the same with an international struggle for economic
> and political democracy, for education and healthcare for all, for right
> relations to land, for social justice, gender justice and climate justice,
> shaped in the interests of working people.

People, of course, can say whatever they want, but it's difficult to imagine
that a group which openly advocated a similar list of right-wing political
demands would be given public grant money and school contracts in San Francisco.
And to be sure, there are right-wing activist groups funded by billionaires, as
anyone who has heard anything liberals had to say about the Koch brothers during
the 2010s surely knows. But to their credit, you never hear about right-wing
astroturfed organizations blocking roads, probably because they recognize how
bad it is for public opinion. I doubt anyone stuck for hours on the Bay Bridge
came home more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people, or knew that
through their taxpayer dollars, they themselves were the ones paying to be
dangerously inconvenienced (in addition to commuters, the protest held up an
ambulance and other first responders for hours). If they did, perhaps the money
from left-wing billionaires and San Fransisco taxpayers would dry up, and Mossad
would have to pick up the slack.

– River Page

---

Feature image — Steve Rhodes

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Chris Coffman a day ago
Great article that makes lots of important connections! Donor Advised Funds are
one of the worst structures ever invented by our corrupt tax system. Not only do
they shield a trillion dollars from being taxed, they have further empowered the
already-excessively influential centimillionaire and billionaire class to
totally hi-jack what’s left of American democracy. This article is an excellent
first peek under the sheets of a vast subject that would shock and outrage
average Americans if they understood the scale of the abuse. Only the wealthy
themselves, the Government, and a tiny group of trust lawyers, tax accountants,
and other specialists who feed off this bonanza know anything about Donor
Advised Trusts. I’m glad you’ve figured it out too and I hope your article
triggers an avalanche of reporting.
Like (2)Reply (1)
River Page a day ago
Thanks! I hope it does too!
Like (1)Reply



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