Last week the Daily Caller reported that the Tucson-based group, Alliance For Global Justice was “listed as an organizer and fiscal sponsor for the group Refuse Fascism”, responsible for the “violent shut down of the Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley.”
The Daily Caller report noted that the City of Tucson gave $10,000 to Alliance For Global Justice (AfGJ).
On Saturday, the Arizona Daily Star reported that AfGJ merely served as “a pass-through for other nonprofits.” The Star’s report reads in part:
… [C]city officials said the $10,000 grant went to a different nonprofit — Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras, also known as the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, which works to address human-rights violations that threaten tribal members from passing back and forth across the border with Mexico.
“Not one dollar of city taxpayer money went to the Alliance for Global Justice,” said city spokeswoman Lane Mandle.
“In September 2015, the city, acting as a pass-through agency, issued $10,000 of state-shared gaming allocations to Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras. In accordance with state law, gaming allocations must pass from the tribes through a governmental agency.
“Tucson and other cities throughout the state act as a pass-through for these grants every year. The city neither controls the funding, nor selects who receives the grant money,” she added.
While the City of Tucson has little control over anything, the AfGJ does appear to wield considerable control and/or influence. By funding, planning, organizing, and participating in community events in Tucson, the Southwest, and as seen last week; California, the AfGJ is busy forwarding its agendas and spreading its messages.
Since Derechos Hermanos first introduced AfGJ to Tucsonans in 2011, the organization, under the leadership of Chuck Kaufman, has grown. AfGJ first captured attention in 2013 when Kaufman was arrested for participating in the hijacking of a federal vehicle transporting criminal illegal aliens to the federal courthouse as part of Operation Streamline.
A short time later, AfGJ came under scrutiny when one of their members passed out a flier to junior high students inviting them to the Tear Down the Wall event. The fliers were distributed to students at Desert Sky Middle-School’s anti-bullying event sponsored by the Fund for Civility.
At the time, Vail School District Superintendent Cal Baker denied that the District would have condoned the invite had officials been aware of it.
AfGJ’s announcement describes the event kids were invited to:
Join us for Tear Down the Walls National Gathering
Join together with a multitude of activists from around the country on Nov. 1-3 in Tucson, AZ for Tear Down the Walls National Gathering! We all have many walls we are working to tear down: Wall Street, the US border and Israeli apartheid walls, prison walls, the Pentagon militarism walls, the walls of capitalism, the walls of oppression by race, gender, ethnicity, personal identity – the list goes on. Among them are the walls that weaken our efforts, the walls between our separate movements.
Tear Down the Walls National Gathering will bring multiple movements to strategize and network together on how to build a more unified, powerful movement for transformational change in the US. This will be the largest gathering of those working for social and economic justice in the US in 2013. You will not want to miss being part of this conversation!
The National Gathering is in beautiful Tucson during the best time of the year! The Gathering will be capped by our participation in Tucson’s famous All Souls Procession which regularly draws 20,000 participants and is a unique combo of solemn procession and Mardi Gras.