Anti-Trump Groups Threaten ‘Largest Civil Disobedience Action of the Century’
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by AARON KLEIN
16 Mar 2016
6,585 comments
With little fanfare and almost no news media attention, some of the same radical groups involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally last week are plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month.
They intend to march across the East Coast in order to spark a “fire that transforms the political climate in America.”
The operation, calling itself Democracy Spring, is threatening “drama in Washington” with the “largest civil disobedience action of the century.” The radicals believe this will result in the arrest of thousands of their own activists.
“We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail,” the website for Democracy Spring declares, channeling rhetoric from the Occupy movement.
The group is backed by numerous organizations, including the George Soros-funded groups MoveOn.org, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Demos.
The pro-Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) MoveOn.org has been playing a prominent role in organizing anti-Trump activism, including last weekend’s shutdown of the billionaire’s rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion.
Another group endorsing Democracy Spring is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA’s Chicago branch drove protesters to last weekend’s nixed Chicago Trump event, as this reporter exposed.
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, announced in a press release earlier this month it is “all in behind Democracy Spring,” perhaps indicating significant mobilization.
Next month’s Democracy Spring chaos is set to begin with a meetup on April 2 at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
“Then, in the spirit of Granny D, the Selma to Montgomery marchers, Cesar Chavez and the farmworker pilgrimage, and others who walked for freedom, we will set out on a 10 day, 140-mile march from Philadelphia to the Nation’s Capitol,” states the website.
In Washington DC, Democracy Spring expects “thousands of Americans” to engage in a “sit-in on the Capitol building in Washington DC in what will be the largest civil disobedience action of the century.”
What do the radicals claim to want?
Despite the fact that many of the main groups endorsing Democracy Spring are funded by billionaire Soros, the group complains that “American elections are dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.”
But if the status quo goes unchallenged, the 2016 election — already set to be the most billionaire-dominated, secret money-drenched, voter suppression-marred contest in modern American history — will likely yield a President and a Congress more bound to the masters of big money than ever before.
The stage is set for a bold intervention to turn the tinder of passive public frustration into a fire that transforms the political climate in America, that sparks a popular movement that can’t be stopped.
The group continues:
We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government.
The leaders of the group have already held training sessions, the website says. Democracy Spring states it is requiring “mandatory nonviolent civil disobedience trainings twice a day for those risking arrest from April 11th-16th.”
For those arrested, the group says it has already secured the legal aid of an unnamed lawyer “with decades of experience with civil disobedience cases.”
“He is leading a team of pro-bono lawyers who will provide legal counsel and representation for all participants who risk arrest as part of this campaign,” the website continues.
Democracy Spring is threatening “drama in Washington” that cannot be ignored: “With hundreds of patriotic Americans being sent to jail, day after day for at least a week — simply for sitting in to save our democracy — the drama in Washington will rock the business-as-usual cycle of this election and catapult this critical issue on to center stage.”
The group says that it is not plotting violence.
The website posts the following rules for those engaging in civil disobedience:
We will use no violence, verbal or physical, toward any person.
We will maintain an attitude of openness and respect toward all we encounter in our actions.
We will not destroy or damage any property.
We will carry no weapons or any means of physical defense, including shields.
We will not wear masks or otherwise conceal our faces or identities.
We will exercise personal and collective responsibility to ensure that all participants adhere to this agreement.
Despite the involvement of groups active in opposing Trump, Democracy Spring’s website does not mention Trump by name.
In December, Kai Newkirk, campaign director of Democracy Spring, interrupted Trump at a CNN-hosted GOP debate, saying, “The American people deserve free and fair elections, not billionaire auctions.”
It remains to be seen how many people will actually turn up for Democracy Spring’s planned revolution. So far, the group only has 1,653 Twitter followers, while their Facebook page boasts 4,778 followers. The group sent out three Facebook invitations for next month’s events, garnering only 57 guests for Sit-In Day 1, 11 guests for Day 2, and 5 guests for Day 3.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...f-the-century/
What is Democracy Spring?
By David Drudge (CALIFORNIA NETWORK)
3/17/2016 (4 hours ago)
A new movement called "Democracy Spring" is forming and it could have an impact on the upcoming presidential election and thereafter. The movement, inspired by various socialist groups, aims to disrupt public events and engage in civil disobedience to gain attention.
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Occupy Wall Street returns as Democracy Spring, but nobody knows how big it will become
LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Thousands of protesters may shut down cities on the East coast beginning April 2, as the Democracy Spring movement is launched. Seen as a spiritual successor to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Democracy Spring will bring together several groups of disaffected youth and minorities to start a "fire that transforms the political climate in America."
Democracy Spring is a coalition of various leftist groups and unions. It appears designed to capture youth interest, and it may well do so, since according to polling, most millennials view socialism favorably.
The reason for socialism's popularity with the youth is that they feel the American Dream is a falsehood. Many grew up told that attending college and earning a degree was a path to prosperity, only to graduate into a soft job market with falling wages and crushing student loan debts. The natural reaction is to blame the system, which results in anger and resentment.
This is what is fueling Democracy Spring for many participants. However, other organizations, such as Black Lives Matter, will likely participate in the movement as well. Black Lives Matter is dedicated to highlighting racial injustice, but through protest and disruption. Members of this movement routinely disrupt political rallies and have actually interfered with campaign events for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Protesters have been booted from Trump and Clinton events due to their antics, whereas the self-proclaimed socialist, Bernie Sanders has given them his microphone.
One Black Lives Matter leader, Tef Poe, tweeted a clear threat, but deleted it afterwards. He tweeted: "Dear white people if Trump wins young niggas such as myself are fully hell bent on inciting riots everywhere we go. Just so you know."
Democracy Spring is also supported by Democratic Socialists of America, a leftist group with political aspirations, as well as the AFL-CIO, Dolores Huerta Foundation and many others.
One surprising supporter is the Franciscan Action Network, which advocates for environmental issues among others.
Democracy Spring has already flexed its fledgling muscles. It's organization efforts have resulted in the shutdown of several pro-Trump events and rallies. While nobody will dispute an organization's right to protest, Democracy Spring's plans for disruption, civil disobedience, and subtle hints of violence are actually stifling speech.
By shutting down pro-conservative events, Democracy Spring is destroying democracy by shutting down speech. The key to freedom is letting others do things you don't like. However, the ironically named Democracy Spring appears to have no such scruples.
The movement plans organized civil disobedience to begin on April 2 in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.
http://www.catholic.org/news/nationa...y.php?id=67941
Largest Civil Disobedience Action of the Century isn’t Anti-Trump, It’s Pro-Democracy
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by KAI NEWKIRK
18 Mar 2016
23 comments
In an article published here Wednesday, Aaron Klein wrongly characterized Democracy Spring as an “Anti-Trump” campaign organized by “radicals…involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally.”
We want to set the record straight, make it clear where we stand on Trump, and reach out to the all the conservatives who agree with us that big money is corrupting our political system.
First, setting aside any opinions on it, the assertion that the Chicago disruption was the work of Democracy Spring is simply untrue. Over 100 organizations have endorsed Democracy Spring. Their independent actions (and funders – George Soros hasn’t given us a dime) are distinct from our collective effort.
Second, while the leaders, organizations, and the vast majority of participants in Democracy Spring have profound and severe disagreements with Donald Trump, our nonviolent, non-partisan campaign is not a response to him.
Nor is it a response to any single candidate, party, or election. Democracy Spring is a response to the corruption of our entire political system, a system dominated by big money and inaccessible to many Americans who face growing barriers to the ballot box.
No matter who you support for president this year, surely we can all agree that our elected officials should work for all of us – not just wealthy special interests and big campaign contributors. In fact, we know many voters support Trump because he calls out this corrupt system and claims to stand outside of it as a self-financing candidate.
To this, we say: we hear you. The system is corrupt. The economy is rigged. Big campaign contributors do pull the strings in Washington. Working people are right to be angry about trade policy and the betrayal of the middle class, working families, and the poor by an elite establishment that profits from the status quo.
But we also challenge Trump supporters to consider a few things. Our corrupt campaign finance system goes far beyond presidential races and will not change by simply electing a president who supposedly can’t be bought. Without serious policy solutions, whoever we elect Commander-in-Chief will still have to deal with 435 members of Congress who are more eager to appease their donors than their own constituents.
Trump has yet to propose any solutions that would ensure every member of Congress and candidate for local and state office in America are elected in a way that makes them, as James Madison wrote, “solely dependent upon the People as whole – not the rich more than the poor.” If our system only allows us to choose between candidates who are bought by billionaires and billionaires themselves, then it is not a democracy. It is plutocracy.
That is why more than 2,600 American patriots have pledged to risk arrest in Democracy Spring, a massive nonviolent sit-in at the U.S. Capitol this April. The campaign will force Congress to choose between putting hundreds of peaceful defenders of the republic in handcuffs, or simply doing their job and passing reforms to fix our broken system.
It’s true Democracy Spring is led by many organizations associated with the left. But there’s no reason it must remain that way. We are a nonpartisan campaign open to all. And conservatives and liberals agree when it comes to the urgent need for solutions to rebalance the system.
Last year, John Pudner, the political strategist who helped lead Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA)100%
’s 2014 upset over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, launched Take Back our Republic to advance conservative solutions to the problem of money in politics. For example, Take Back supports tax credits for small donations to political candidates to encourage more people to become involved in the political process. The group also supports more disclosure of large donors to ensure voters’ right to know who is trying to influence their vote and their lawmakers.
In a recent column, Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics lawyer, explained why the current system fails to address the needs and concerns of conservatives. He wrote, “campaign contributions drive spending on earmarks and other wasteful programs — bridges to nowhere, contracts for equipment the military does not need, solar energy companies that go bankrupt on the government’s dime and for-profit educational institutions that don’t educate.” Moreover, he writes, “campaign contributions breed more regulation” as companies use campaign cash to win special legal advantages over their competitors.
Progressives would disagree on public funding to spur clean energy innovation and the characterization of more regulations as necessarily bad, but we stand fully with Painter on his core point: “[Today’s] system is a betrayal of the vision of participatory democracy embraced by the founders of our country.”
Indeed, there is an opportunity today for progressives and conservatives to stand together to defend our republic and win reform that will let us settle our other differences on an even, open playing field where the best ideas and the broadest support are what count – not the backing of a moneyed elite.
Yet – and allegiance to the values that truly make America a great country demand that we make this crystal clear – Donald Trump’s candidacy is making this kind of unity across differences incredibly difficult. We are a nonpartisan campaign but not an amoral one. We are compelled to speak (and I am confident that I can speak for us all) when I say that Trump’s statements, proposed policies, and threats of violence concerning undocumented immigrants, Muslims, the KKK, protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, and others have crossed a very serious line into the territory of fascism and hate speech.
America is better than this. Conservatives are better than this.
Democracy Spring is a nonviolent campaign and, in the tradition of the civil rights movement, will strive to reach out to our most bitter opponents. We will seek unity with all who agree that every American deserves an equal voice and a government of, by, and for the people. Rather than letting our differences divide us, conservatives and progressives of conscience should come together on this common ground and renew our republic.
Politicians from both parties broke the system. It’s going to take voters from both parties — and independents committed to neither — to force our representatives to fix it.
It’s time to demand that Congress listen to the people and pass common-sense solutions to return our government to us all.
Kai Newkirk is lead organizer of Democracy Spring.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...pro-democracy/
Thousands Pledge to Get Arrested in D.C. Protests Next Month
by AARON KLEIN
24 Mar 2016
893 comments
The leaders of Democracy Spring, a coalition of far-left groups plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month, told Breitbart News they have already confirmed 2,912 protesters who pledged specifically to risk arrest.
Those protesters signed an option on the coalition’s website explicitly stating, “I pledge to be one among thousands who will risk arrest to save democracy in DC between April 11 – 16.”
Other pledge options for protests include:
*I pledge to come to Washington DC to support the sit in through legal protest but cannot risk arrest.
*I want to join the march from Philadelphia to Washington DC, sometime between April 2 – 11.
*I want to volunteer to help organize this campaign.
Kai Newkirk, Democracy Spring’s campaign director, explained that his team called each of the 2,912 protesters pledging to risk arrest and spent about twenty minutes on the phone expounding on the movement’s goals as well as helping to coordinate travel and logistics.
“People are coming from Montana, Seattle, and other states around the country,” Newkirk told Breitbart News in a phone interview. “They are driving, taking buses, flying, because there are so many people from across the political spectrum that are just tired of the status quo of a democracy that works for the super rich and not for the everyday American. They want to take this stand to say enough.”
Newkirk said he is “confident” that “if Congress doesn’t respond to our demands and they would rather send people to jail, then it will be the largest civil disobedience of the century.”
“We are committed to non-violence,” he stressed. “That is the principle of our campaign.”
Newkirk’s statements were affirmed by Peter James Callahan, communications director for Democracy Spring, who joined Newkirk on the phone for the Breitbart News interview.
Next month’s Democracy Spring chaos is set to begin with a meetup on April 2 at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The group then plans to march across the East Coast and initiate a sit-in in Washington, DC, starting April 11.
Updates to the group’s website stress April 11 as the intended main escalation.
The updated logistics page now states: “We want to make the biggest impact on day one: Monday, April 11th. With massive participation on April 11th, we’ll have the momentum and energy to break through as a national media story and mobilize the support to carry us through the 16th and beyond.”
Newkirk confirmed that the plan is to start with a big splash on April 11.
‘Largest civil disobedience action of the century’
Last week, this reporter penned a widely-read article documenting that with little fanfare and almost no news media attention, some of the same radical groups involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally earlier this month are plotting a mass civil disobedience movement under the banner of Democracy Spring.
They intend to march across the East Coast in order to spark a “fire that transforms the political climate in America.”
Democracy Spring is threatening “drama in Washington” with the “largest civil disobedience action of the century,” replete with the arrest of thousands of their own activists.
“We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail,” the Democracy Spring website declares, channelling rhetoric from the Occupy movement.
The group is backed by numerous organizations, including the George Soros-funded groups MoveOn.org, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Demos.
The pro-Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) MoveOn.org has been playing a prominent role in organizing anti-Trump activism, including in the recent shutdown of the billionaire’s rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion.
Another group endorsing Democracy Spring is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA’s Chicago branch drove protesters to the nixed Chicago Trump event, as this reporter exposed.
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, announced in a press release earlier this month it is “all in behind Democracy Spring,” perhaps indicating significant mobilization.
What do the radicals claim to want?
Despite the fact that many of the main groups endorsing Democracy Spring are funded by billionaire Soros, the group complains that “American elections are dominated by billionaires and big money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.”
But if the status quo goes unchallenged, the 2016 election — already set to be the most billionaire-dominated, secret money-drenched, voter suppression-marred contest in modern American history — will likely yield a President and a Congress more bound to the masters of big money than ever before.
The stage is set for a bold intervention to turn the tinder of passive public frustration into a fire that transforms the political climate in America, that sparks a popular movement that can’t be stopped.
The group continues:
We will demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy. And we won’t leave until they do — or until they send thousands of us to jail, along with the unmistakable message that our country needs a new Congress, one that that will end the legalized corruption of our democracy and ensure that every American has an equal voice in government.
The leaders of the group have already held training sessions, the website says. Democracy Spring states it is requiring “mandatory nonviolent civil disobedience trainings twice a day for those risking arrest from April 11th-16th.”
For those arrested, the group says it has already secured the legal aid of an unnamed lawyer “with decades of experience with civil disobedience cases.”
“He is leading a team of pro-bono lawyers who will provide legal counsel and representation for all participants who risk arrest as part of this campaign,” the website continues.
Democracy Spring is threatening “drama in Washington” that cannot be ignored: “With hundreds of patriotic Americans being sent to jail, day after day for at least a week — simply for sitting in to save our democracy — the drama in Washington will rock the business-as-usual cycle of this election and catapult this critical issue on to center stage.”
The group says that it is not plotting violence.
The website posts the following rules for those engaging in civil disobedience:
We will use no violence, verbal or physical, toward any person.
We will maintain an attitude of openness and respect toward all we encounter in our actions.
We will not destroy or damage any property.
We will carry no weapons or any means of physical defense, including shields.
We will not wear masks or otherwise conceal our faces or identities.
We will exercise personal and collective responsibility to ensure that all participants adhere to this agreement.
Despite the involvement of groups active in opposing Trump, Democracy Spring’s website does not mention Trump by name. In December, Newkirk interrupted Trump at a CNN-hosted GOP debate, saying, “The American people deserve free and fair elections, not billionaire auctions.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ts-next-month/
