America's Brave new Astroturfers - Part 1: The Children.

Why does grassroots organizing need an incubator? A shadowy network in Boston is behind several organizations that use the designation "grassroots" as a means to establish legitimacy and attract support. Yet their activities suggest they are less like a wild field of unruly youth, and more like the well-manicured lawn of an intelligent master.

Civic organizing has a long tradition in the United States from the original Founding Fathers to the Knights of Labour in the 19th Century, to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s with numerous examples of varying persuasions in between. Major leaders of these groups like Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and Jimmy Hoffa often had to contend with an unfavourable legal environment, complacency and despair for change within the communities from which they came. Calling a movement "grassroots" only came into usage in the early 20th century, but it alludes to a type of politics where the masses create change by influencing society from the bottom up. Nowadays many movements claim "grassroots" support as a badge of honour, but upon closer scrutiny it becomes clear that their source of power doesn't come from the "roots" but from the "sod" or rather the "AstroTurf" as their critics would say. Astroturfing is the derisive name used for a would-be grassroots movement by skeptics that see an invisible hand behind them. This is an accusation hurled by opponents of US foreign policy at the Ukrainian Euromaidan movement of 2013 as well as by right-wingers against Occupy Wall Street and by left-wingers against the Tea Party.  

No fertilizer without the smell

Founded in 2012, Momentum Community offers training and guidance for young organizers to create new political movements. It defines itself as a "movement incubator", a concept loaned from "business incubators" where young or new entrepreneurs are allotted space in a common building in order to build a clientele and work out the kinks of their model. Momentum does the same thing, only for political activism. Alumni of its programs end up going on to organize mass movements that often create headlines and adorn magazine covers. Yet were it to be featured as a primary mover behind the movements they would be exposed as being not grassroots at all. Among the founders are the radical left-wing writers Mark and Paul Engler (more on Paul later).     

 On its own website Momentum Community claims credit for having "shaped and incubated" three organizations. A video uploaded by the Movimiento Cosecha actually features a presentation completely produced by Momentum on organizing theory including the "structure based" and "mass protester/mass organization" models that they promote. On its webpage Momentum claims to have spawned three different movements, yet it appears to function as a training camp for young activists of those and other movements. The participation of these movements, or indeed their inception under the auspices of the Momentum Community, is a textbook lesson on what the operations of an "AstroTurf" movement.

Movimiento Cosecha

Cosecha appears to be a rather makeshift group meant to resist operations by ICE and Homeland Security to deport illegal aliens and agitate for full legal citizenship for members of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Their Twitter profile shows them appearing in April 2016 and they claim to have been launched publicly in July 2015, prior to the Trump Administration assuming office or even the election of Donald Trump as president. However, their activities do not appear to be in a very advanced state, and even the word "Movimiento" (movement) is misspelled on their website. However, the Movement Community model is outlined on their "Strategy" page showing a four stage plan to their goals: (1) Mass trainings, (2) a "public ultimatum" (petition) of public officials, (3) Boycotts against stores or products and (4) strikes and civil disobedience.

Cosecha does not appear to have had a significant public impact, as they claimed that a disruptive protest at the ArtPrize festival in September 2018 showed the problem with "typical 'West Michigan nice'". According to the author(s), many people simply reacted by saying "you're talking to the wrong person" because they were private citizens not affiliated with law enforcement or local government. The lackluster reception by attendees caused a tantrum among the Cosecha volunteers: "This response both underestimates the political analysis and intelligence of immigrant organizers, and illustrates an underlying assumption of white supremacy: that only big governmental actors or overtly bigoted people are complicit in racism." While they have chapters throughout the country as shown from the video above in Boston, the movement's main center of activities appears to be in Michigan. In a video as part of the SWARM seminar series (see below) Cosecha organizer Carlos Saavedra states in September 2016 (remember this is prior to the election of Trump) that his group has as its goal a general strike that would paralyze the American economy.

IfNotNow

Existing primarily as a college activism group centered around the Israel-Palestine conflict (on the Palestinian side), IfNotNow describes itself as " a vibrant and inclusive movement within the American Jewish community, across generations and organizational affiliations. This movement is open to any who seek to shift the American Jewish public away from the status quo that upholds the Occupation." The Occupation refers to the Israeli government's civil and military control over parts of the West Bank and the naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip, both of which are enclaves that are part of the Palestinian Authority and aspiring to be a new sovereign Palestine. Claiming to have been found in the wake of Israel's 2014 Gaza offensive known as Operation Protective Edge, IfNotNow's 2016 990 form suggests that it was indeed incorporated sometime in the year 2015. Listed on the form as the treasurer is Ethan Miller, a young labour organizer and veteran of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Jobs With Justice (both in Maryland) and currently a senior staff member of the AFL-CIO, the largest labour union in the United States.

IfNotNow's main campaign is "Not Just a Free Trip" are directed against the Birthright Israel program whereby philanthropists led by Jewish-American Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson fund summer excursions to Israel for Jewish youth in order to strengthen the connection between the Diaspora and Israel Jewish communities. Many of IfNotNow's activists are also active supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign to economically and culturally isolate Israel from the international community. In June 2018 members of IfNotNow "accosted" Birthright tourists at the outset of their trip to Israel in an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade them from going. Other groups of activists signed up for Birthright trips and disrupted the programming by demanding that it address the political questions of the Occupation, eventually walking out of the trip entirely in order to meet "alternate hosts". While IfNotNow's protests are well within the bounds of civil disobedience, there is scant evidence that they are engaged in a good faith effort to debate the topic of Israeli-Palestinian affairs with their opponents, preferring instead to protest anywhere that Birthright operates or organizes. 

IfNotNow's agenda and tactics may have not gained traction with the broader public because the Israel-Palestine's importance with it may be inflated by the media. It is in this category, media exposure, where IfNotNow has the most success:

*In April 2017 Peter Beinart wrote a number of pieces in praise of IfNotNow in the left-leaning Jewish publication The Forward. In the most significant first one he labeled them "The Jewish Black Lives Matter". Beinart is himself a far-left journalist with The Atlantic and he omits the fact that while #BLM purports to defend its own African Americans from police violence, IfNotNow conspicuously ignores Jewish casualties of violence in Israel or the United States. In a response that was comically self-auditing to the degree of resembling a Maoist confession, IfNotNow rejected Beinart's comparison causing him to write a response apologizing while calling himself a fan of the movement.

*In July 2018 New York Magazine ran an article profiling a group of five students that engaged in a Birthright walk-off.  

*This June the New York Times featured a profile of a group activist named Risa Nagel, describing her as a "grant writer". 

The media portraits typically highlight the strong "Jewish identity" of the participants in glowing terms, while taking their perspectives of Judaism at face value. However, in many cases they obscure the true affiliations and motives of the members. In Nagle's case it was omitted that she is an activist for a Seattle-area far-left lobbying group called Equity in Education Coalition since 2017. The EEC claims that students of colour are most adversely affected by poverty and homelessness in the state, despite white state residents making up the vast plurality of all homeless programs in the state. Danielle Raskin, one of those mentioned in the New York Magazine article is also a former activist for left-wing activist movements 99Rise, various groups at Occidental College, and the New York Working Families Party (see more on them below). She even published a thesis in 2017 comparing the WFP and the Tea Party Movement.

Yet while its media profile is very strong, IfNotNow does not compare to the burgeoning strength of Momentum's last but most important offshoot.

The Sunrise Movement

Of all the groups that seem to have come out from under the Momentum Community canopy, the Surnrise Movement appears to have accomplished the highest profile success by being the anti-climate change youth activist group identified with the Green New Deal. Formed in 2014 - but incorporated as a 501(c)4 nonprofit in 2017 - the Sunrise Movement benefits from having a message that resonates with a far more universal audience than either Cosecha or IfNotNow: Averting a man-made disaster caused by warming ocean temperatures, what is generally termed as "climate change". The movement has gained a major amount of horsepower through the career advances of one of its alumni, Waleed Shahid. On the website page for its team Shahid appears to have been part of the second generation that joined after the founders Saavedra, Berger, and Belinda Rodriguez. The current Executive Director is Varshini Prakash and the group's Boston Hub was founded in July 2017. 

In the run-up to the 2018 Midterm elections in the US the Sunrise movement made the step of actually endorsing candidates. Of those chosen, the following (all Democrats) were both nominated and elected: 

*US House: Rashida Tlaib (MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Deb Haaland (NM).

*State legislators: Danielle Friel-Otten (PA-House), Katie Muth (PA-Senate), Anna Eskamani (FL-House), Julia Salazar (NY-Senate), Zellnor Myrie (NY-Senate), Alessandra Biaggi (NY-Senate), Elizabeth Fiedler (PA-House), Summer Lee (PA-House), Leanne Krueger-Braneky (PA-House), Greta Neubauer (WI), Chris Lee (HI), Chloe Maxmin (ME).

*Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan

*Defeated candidates that won the Democratic primary included gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum (FL) and Ben Jealous (MD).

*Two more candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams of New York, failed in the Democratic primary but were nominated by the Working Families Party, a third party that is gaining steam in other states like Pennsylvania. 

To put this into perspective, the movement (through Justice Democrats and Waleed Shahid) has an attentive ear among state legislators in six states, congressional representatives in five states, and one state's attorney general. Other candidates like Gillum and Pennsylvania's Kristin Seale came within a whisker of getting elected. The Democrats in most of those states (apart from Hawaii and New York) do not hold the state houses, meaning they would depend on keeping these officeholders happy if they wish to make a play for a majority.

The Sunrise Effect

Given the impressive success of their slate of candidates in the Midterms, the Sunrise Movement saw fit to flex their muscles in response to this success in the autumn. They gathered a group of teens and preteens on February 22, to deliver a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) demanding support for the Green New Deal in what became a viral video. Feinstein rebuffed their demands while two adult volunteers in Sunrise Movement t-shirts observed attentively. While some of the children appeared fully engaged others appeared to be less than ten years old, and it is questionable to what degree they were aware of what the Green New Deal even means. At one point a Sunrise volunteer interjects to tell Feinstein that she was looking into the faces of the people that would be affected by the climate change disaster. One of the children even claims that she voted for Feinstein, which the Senator correctly observed was impossible if she was 16. She then claimed that the adult volunteer had voted for Feinstein, which is improbable since Sunrise had endorsed Feinstein's general election opponent Kevin De León (also a Democrat).

Others reacted more warmly to the Green New Deal. On February 7, two weeks prior to the Feinstein meeting, Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced Senate Resolution 59 "recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal". Although this was not a proposal for a bill to become law, it was effectively a signal of intention for those that would support it. Markey originally had eleven co-sponsors including current presidential candidates Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and even Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) despite her state's position as the iron ore mining leader in the USA. 

While the Green New Deal has a major ways to go before becoming federal policy, the Sunrise Movement has come a long way within one election cycle given that it has twelve senate supporters and up to five dedicated representatives in the House. 

In Part 1 of this research project Momentum Community and its appendage movements are profiled. In Parts 2 and 3 the curtain will be drawn on the organization's leadership, methods, and even some of its finances. 

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