How a Capitalist Foundation Has Come to Fund Antifa Groups
The great paradox of the Ford Foundation
Fifty Republican House lawmakers recently asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate individuals or groups “responsible for funding, organizing, inciting, and participating in the destructive riots taking place in cities across the country.”
We can hope that the Justice Department will follow up on this request, but in the meantime, we could make a useful contribution to the fifty GOP lawmakers by throwing out at least one name in the basket: the Ford Foundation, which is funding radical groups drawn from the slums of communism and terrorism.
Supports Neo-Marxist Thugs
It all started in 1966 at the height of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. With McGeorge Bundy propelled to its presidency, the Ford Foundation switched from research to action mode, Bundy insisting on turning his organization’s primary focus to issues of racial equality. The foundation thus set out to bankroll “Black Power” groups, some of which were quite radical. Since then, it “has become the Exchequer and Command Post for the entire American Left”, to quote Pat Buchanan.
Among today’s recipients of the Ford Foundation is the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which defended the rioters who tore down the Confederate Soldiers Monument in Durham, North Carolina, in 2017. Another one, The Southern Vision Alliance, received $1.2M from the foundation between 2016 and 2019. The Southern Vision Alliance believes that “current conditions are rooted in the legacies of colonialism, slavery, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalist exploitation.”
In 2006, the foundation donated $100,000 to Latino Justice PRLDEF, an organization that claims to be “committed to justice and leadership”. Yet, Latino Justice PRLDEF once called for the release of the convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera, who used to be one of the leaders of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a Marxist-Leninist organization that wanted to make Puerto Rico an independent country in the 70s.
The FALN was involved in more than 100 bombings in New York, Chicago and other cities, including the 1975 bombing at Fraunces Tavern, in Manhattan, which left four people dead and 60 wounded. In 1981, Oscar Lopez Rivera was arrested and convicted for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government. Despite him being described as an “unrepentant terrorist”, he had his sentence commuted by Barack Obama in 2017.
One more example: between 2007 and 2015, the Ford Foundation gave $1.9 million to the Labor Community Strategy Center, an organization that openly promotes the communist ideology as well as a radical green agenda.
Neo-Marxist Tendencies, but Capitalist Privileges
It is rather ironic that the Ford Foundation is pouring millions into groups aspiring to overthrow capitalism, even as its employees and managers earn salaries well above the national average.
According to Future of Capitalism, Luis Ubinas, who was the foundation’s president from 2008 to 2013, was given “$1,891,441 in compensation and $109,294 in benefits for his final year, a sum that ‘includes [a] salary of $898,571 [from January to September 2013], [a] post-employment compensation of $954,622 paid in 2013 and a previously untaxed deferred compensation of $ 38,248 paid in 2013’.”
The current foundation’s president, Darren Walker, was earning $789,000 in 2015, and between $275,000 and $418,000 to sit on the board of PepsiCo. The “foundation’s staff also included a $1.3 million a year director of investment administration, a $927,148 a year director of private equity, an $889,992 a year director of asset allocation, and a $723,728 a year director of hedge funds, according to the tax return.”
And as shown by the Comparably website, today’s “most compensated executive [at the Ford Foundation] makes $490,000 annually, and the lowest compensated makes $61,000.” The “average estimated annual salary, including base and bonus, is $118,372.”
Judging by Ford’s penchant for neo-Marxism, most members of its staff will likely support the Democrats next November. After all, Kamala Harris’s sister and former campaign chair, Maya Harris, served as the foundation’s vice president alongside Joe Biden’s current senior advisor, Cristóbal Alex.
In addition, Taara Rangarajan, now chief of staff at the foundation, served under President Obama from 2008 to 2016 on the National Security Council; Xavier de Souza Briggs, another Ford executive, served as President Obama’s associate director of the Office of Management and Budget; Barack Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetero, worked as a program manager for the foundation in Indonesia; Peter Geithner, the father of Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, worked for the foundation for 28 years.
So, if the Justice Department is serious, it could start its investigation by looking into this case.
Sources: Activist Facts, Comparably #1, #2, Future of Capitalism, Jacobin, New America, New Boston Post, Southern Vision Alliance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Federalist, The Hayride, Twitter, Wikipedia
