But let’s just look for one moment at where some of that line of thinking comes from on the other side.  I’ve written previously about the birth of Media Matters as a spawn of Rob Stein’s Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix road show, from which the Democracy Alliance was born.  It’s through this organization from which much of the organization’s funding had come; in recent years, more has been spread out across other progressive organizations, but the funders often remain the same names in most cases.  For instance, The Tides Foundation gave Media Matters and their Action Network over $175,000 just last year.  In earlier years, groups like Montclair, New Jersey-based (hometown of Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert) Schumann Center for Media & Democracy gave the organization $500,000.

The donors’ list is vast and diverse, and we plan to cover that in detail in the future.  So I’ll focus in on one set of donors to Media Matters, which is the Labor Unions.  More specifically, in light of some recent posts regarding the Kenneth Gladney incident, I thought it appropriate to revisit donations made to Media Matters specifically by the Service Employees International Union.

When you look at the timeline of events and the media calendar in general leading up to the Gladney incident last August, it’s difficult not to conclude that there was collaboration amongst White House staff, components of Big Labor, and certain liberal media outlets.  However, we know that all will continue to deny it.

Further, just as the flurry of media activity finally starts to wind down a bit around October last year, this is when SEIU makes three separate donations to Media Matters totaling $50,000, under the classification of “Communications”, according to the SEIU LM-2 report. (In reviewing other LM-2s for several previous years, this appears at least to be the first time that SEIU has donated to Media Matters, and there does not seem to have been another donation recorded since these.)

This is the type of funding that I would question in return to Media Matters.  With their membership being so low and their unfunded pension expenses so high, can the SEIU really afford to be randomly donating funds to an organization like Media Matters?  Perhaps SEIU purchased advertising on Media Matters’ website, but then I’d think it would be categorized as such, as others ad expenses in the LM-2 were.  If not advertising, if not random donations,  then what’s the reason for SEIU having donated these funds?  One could logically conclude that Media Matters performed a service in return.  Only they can answer that.

That said, I can simply present the basic information here and suggest that readers do their own research and draw their own conclusions, in the absence of any explanation from Media Matters.

The timeline follows below.  While it is not all inclusive, it presents a collection of the most pertinent sources at that time.

8/4/2009

• 6:55 AM ET:  White House launchesFlag@whitehouse.gov, its “fishy” snitch program
• 4:45 PM ET:  SEIU Posts the White House snitch program & video in a post titled “Pushing Back on Right-Wing Lies on Reform“
• Margarida Jorge, National Field Director for Health Care for America Now, releases a four page memo instructing members of HCAN to fight “militant right-wing activists” and “teabaggers”.  Even the URL uses the word “fight”:
  http://healthcareforamericanow.org/site/fight

• Back in St. Louis, Congressman Russ Carnahan’s campaign announces Sara Howard as the new director of communications.  Howard was formerly Senior Strategist at Obama for America, National Media Relations Specialist for Anna Burger / SEIU, Communications Director for Senator Mark Dayton, and spokesperson for George Soros funded American Coming Together (ACT).  She also worked with Buffy Wicks while with SEIU on door-to-door campaigns in Missouri.
• 11:09 pm ET:  Media Matters tries to discredit Tea Party protesters by broadly painting the entire movement as “birthers”

8/5/2009

• The DNC releases “Enough of the Mob” ad calling the protesters an “angry mob” and focuses the ad repeatedly on “right-wing birthers” disrupting town hall events.

8/5/2009

12:13 am ET, Media Matters:  Special Report says “public venting” at health care town halls, ignores conservative efforts to pack events

8/6/2009

• 9:53 AM ET, Huffington Post/Sam Stein:  Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Halls; “In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would step up recess activities on health care reform… also uses the specter of the infamous 2000 recount “Brooks Brothers” protest to rally its members to the administration’s side.”
• Richard Trumka, then AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer (now President) issues a statement, slams the town halls, calls the events corporate funded and part of the conservative strategy.
• 12:47 pm ET, Media Matters:  AP reported on town hall disruptions, ignored conservative strategy
• Afternoon:  White House aides give Senate Democrats a recess battle plan; David Axelrod and Jim Messina tell senators, “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” See Politico:  White House to Democrats: ‘Punch back twice as hard’
• Organizing for America sends out mass email for the Bernard Middle School event in St. Louis, MO:

That very evening, the Kenneth Gladney incident happens in St. Louis at the Bernard Middle School event.  A black conservative is beaten by members of SEIU.  I’ll let the guys at 24^th State cover the details of that evening’s outcome.

8/7/2009

7:14 PM ET by Kate Thomas:  Violent tactics at last night’s St. Louis town hall meeting

8/8/2009

10:11 am ET by Media Matters, Eric Boehlert:  Inventing tales of a union ”beating”

And after this date, there are so many more, from SEIU and from Media Matters.  Simply type in this Google search to retrieve a relatively thorough list.

As you’ll see from Google’s timeline, October is when the activity calmed down.

Seems to me that -hypothetically speaking, of course – if there were any sort of service arrangement in place, October would have been the most appropriate time for SEIU to make its payment installments and thank Media Matters for a job well done.  (That’s of course before anyone knew things would be heating up again once the police report would become available in November)

Hm.  I wonder if these types of payment installments are regulated under the financial reform bill?

]]> http://biggovernment.com/libertychick/2010/05/18/did-seiu-pay-media-matters-to-cover-up-the-gladney-beating/feed/ 387 http://biggovernment.com/sright/2009/12/02/anatomy-of-a-beat-down-part-3-why-kenneth-gladney-was-beaten-and-by-whom/ http://biggovernment.com/sright/2009/12/02/anatomy-of-a-beat-down-part-3-why-kenneth-gladney-was-beaten-and-by-whom/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:19:01 +0000 Larry O'Connor http://biggovernment.com/?p=40094 In Part 1 of this series we detailed the events leading up to the assault on Kenneth Gladney on August 6^th and revealed the document written by Margarida Jorge at Health Care for American Now (HCAN) a front group funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which laid a blueprint for the unions to follow that evening at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting.  Yesterday, in Part 2, we exposed a second town hall meeting that occurred the same night in Tampa Bay, FL with Rep. Kathy Castor that followed the same structure and had very similar results.  We also detailed the relationships of key decision makers at HCAN, Rep. Carnahan’s office and the White House and showed how they were all inter-related at SEIU, the Obama for America campaign and the two accused of assaulting Kenneth Gladney that evening.

Margarida Jorge

On the evening of August 6^th hundreds of citizens were shut out of the meeting and not allowed to question their elected official while hundreds of SEIU members were ushered in a side entrance to sit in reserved seats in the front of the hall.  This followed precisely the instructions penned by Margarida Jorge of HCAN.

• We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member…
• Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security

According to eye-witnesses, Elston McCowan and Perry Molens approached Kenneth Gladney and began grabbing the “Don’t Tread on Me” materials that he was distributing.  This also was in line with the instructions laid out in the HCAN memo.

• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside.

The climate of intimidation and frustration created by following HCAN’s rules of “Responding to Right-Wing Attacks” led to the confrontations outside of Rep. Carnahan’s town hall meeting.

The St. Louis Police were dispatched that evening to respond to the assault on Kenneth Gladney and arrests were made.  Big Government has already revealed the 24-page police report detailing the police’s own account of the events as well as eye-witness testimony.  The suspects taken by the police that night were booked on assault charges and last Wednesday, November 25^th, more than three months after the incident, charges were finally brought against the suspects.

Elston McCowan

As anyone who has taken a high school civics class can tell you (or, more likely, anyone who has ever seen an episode of ‘Law and Order’), city and county attorneys are responsible for prosecuting suspects who the police arrest.  The County Prosecuting Attorney has ultimate authority over cases such as the arrest of SEIU senior staff members Elston McCowan and Perry Molens.  And the Prosecuting Attorney is an elected official which by definition makes that person a politician.  Who is the politician ultimately responsible for ensuring the crimes against Kenneth Gladney are brought to justice?

Meet Robert McCulloch .  Robert McCulloch  is the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney in whose jurisdiction these arrests were made.  Last year, during the presidential election, Robert McCulloch was a central figure in something called “The Barack Obama Truth Squad”.  This “truth” squad was created at the request of the Missouri Obama for America campaign.  As KMOV reported at the time:

“They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that violate Missouri’s ethics laws.”

McCulloch himself was quoted in the report saying:

“If they’re not going to tell the truth, somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not true. This is the truth.’”

That is what McCulloch said he would do on “The Barack Obama Truth Squad” in his capacity as Prosecuting Attorney, NOT as a paid employee of the Obama for America Campaign.  Please understand, in September of 2008, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch  took on as his responsibility as a public official, paid for by the good people of Missouri, the role of “Rapid Response” for the Obama Campaign responsible for informing the voters of what is true and what is not, all the time reminding everyone that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year.  I think even the most casual observer can look at this and reach the conclusion that Mr. McCulloch  brings with him a certain level of partisan bias when executing his duties as Prosecuting Attorney.

As the KMOV report stated:

“The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”

“The Barack Obama campaign is asking…”  We have already discussed who was in charge of the Barack Obama campaign in Missouri, but I think it bears repeating:

• Buffy Wicks ran the Obama for America campaign in Missouri, Buffy Wicks now works for Valerie Jarret in the White House Office of Public Engagement and was involved in the NEA Conference Calls.
• Sara Howard worked with Buffy Wicks on the Obama for America Campaign in Missouri and Sarah Howard worked at SEIU in St Louis.  The day before the St. Louis town hall she was hired by Rep. Russ Carnahan.
• Margarida Jorge also worked at SEIU in St. Louis, just like Sara Howard and Margarida wrote the HCAN memo on fighting back against the right.
• Just like Jorge and Howard, Elston McCowan and Perry Molens worked at SEIU in St. Louis.  They have been charged with the bloody assault of Kenneth Gladney.

Now, let’s add THIS one to the mix:

• Robert McCulloch worked on behalf of the Obama for America campaign (Wicks and Howard) by aggressively promoting a pre-emptive strike against negative campaigning against Barack Obama.  McCulloch is the person charged with the duty to bring charges against McCowan and Molens for assaulting Gladney outside the town hall meeting of Carnahan arranged by Howard following the volatile template written by Jorge!  (Follow all that?)

So, how did McCulloch do in executing his duties in the Gladney case?  McCulloch handed the case over to county counselor Patricia Redington and washed his hands from that point on.  It is interesting that McCulloch moved so quickly in using intimidation tactics by wielding the power of his office and the threat of legal ramifications for any negative advertising that may have suggested that candidate Obama might not actually lower taxes on everyone making $250,000 per year (have you gotten your tax cut yet?) but he passed the buck when it came to this case.

Meanwhile, Redington let this case languish for months before finally bringing modest charges against the suspects on the afternoon before Thanksgiving (an obvious attempt to let the story disappear).  One week before the charges were brought, Big Government reported:

• Redington hasn’t spoken to Kenneth Gladney
• Redington hasn’t called any of the witnesses on the police report.
• Redington hasn’t contacted any of the Tea Party members that are seen on video
• Redington hasn’t contacted any of the people who shot video that night and whose YouTube urls are listed on the evidence page

Also, despite the fact that Redington never investigated the injuries Gladney suffered and never interviewed the medical personnel who administered assistance to Gladney, she still felt it best to reduce the charges down to an ordinance violation.  In the words of Judge Anthony Napolitano:  “The moral equivalent of jay walking.”

But, make no mistake; this is happening on McCulloch’s watch.  He has the authority to handle this case and to ensure that proper charges are filed, but he has chosen not to.  It begs the question:  If he jumped through the “Truth Squad” hoops when Buffy Wicks asked him to during the campaign, is it possible he has turned his back on this case for similar reasons?

Tomorrow:  We reveal a document linking the activities of HCAN and SEIU in August at the town hall meetings with the highest levels of the Government.

The meetings hosted by HCAN (like the one on August 6^th in St. Louis) were set up using these rules.  Americans showed up at these meetings thinking that it would be an opportunity to address their elected representatives and talk to them about the single most important piece of legislation our congress has proposed in decades.  Instead, they were pushed to the back of the room and shouted down by the well-trained SEIU members.  Eventually, an American citizen who was distributing “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and buttons was assaulted by a handful of the SEIU members.  His name is Kenneth Gladney.

Let’s look at that memo and how it matches the events of August 6^th:

• One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
• Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign-in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to RSVP or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
• Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
• It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.

According to Harris Himes an eyewitness at the scene of the town hall meeting the evening of the 6^th:

They let in about two hundred of us but had about 120 seats set aside, marked “RSVP,” and these were for Carnahan supporters. These people were let in by a side door for the “handicapped.” Many had purple t-shirts with “Organizing for America” in white letters on the back and large “SEIU,” smaller “Service Employees International Union” on the front. They shut the doors on about 1000 people around 6:30 pm for the 7:00 pm event. After being introduced, Carnahan spoke but was booed frequently while the supporters stood and applauded…. Finally, Carnahan stood for questions. It turned out that the questions had to be written and turned in. The dissenters booed, shouting that they didn’t know this and hadn’t been given a chance to write any. It didn’t make any difference, because he answered a couple of seminar questions and then announced that he had to leave about 8:30 for an “interview”—after most of the time had been taken up by the panel.

Also on the evening of the 6^th, a town hall meeting organized by HCAN and OFA was set up in Tampa Bay, FL with Rep. Kathy Castor.  An eyewitness describes what is seen on this YouTube video:

This is part one of the Tampa Town Hall meeting on August 6. Left Wing organizers are seen passing out Obama Flyers and signs.  Once they see that right wingers have their own sings, they quickly pick them up and hide them. Hundreds of people are outside trying to get in, many of them who had been waiting for hours while others were able to sneak in the back door. Even with all this, there was still many in the audience that booed once Kathy Castor started detailing the Health Care Plan.

And here is a second description on a YouTube video that shows the “marshals” and security forces in action:

Kathy Castor’s union thugs beat up a guy (in the green shirt – evidence 3:21) and shut the doors to prevent the opposing opinions from being heard. She then proceeded leave, not taking any questions, because “she couldn’t hear.

The Tampa Bay meeting and the St. Louis meetings followed the same templates and they were both arranged by HCAN and OFA.  Both ended with pushing and shoving (in both cases the pushing being done by card-carrying members of SEIU) and both ended with the elected official leaving after only answering a few scripted questions put forth by plants in the crowd.

It is hard to not reach the conclusion that the events of August 6^th were a result that could have been expected given the rhetoric from elected officials in the Democratic Party (Speaker Pelosi saying the protesters carries swastikas) and the President’s Advisers (Jim Messina telling Senators “if they hit you, we will punch them back twice as hard”) coupled with the instructions handed down to obedient union members by their union leaders.  If you agree that HCAN and OFA were instrumental in creating the climate for violent confrontation that led to Kenneth Gladney’s assault, then it is important to learn about the leadership of HCAN and the SEIU members who are suspects in the assault and learn who they are and what might have motivated their actions.

Meet Margarida Jorge.  She works for HCAN and is the person who released the memo that served as a template for the meetings in Tampa Bay and St. Louis.  Ms. Jorge worked for SEIU in Missouri prior to her position at HCAN.  She is often featured at the People’s World web page (a direct descendant of the Daily Worker the newspaper of the American Socialist and Marxist Movement).  In fact, Ms. Jorge was honored with an award from People’s World for her work with an organization called Progressive Vote, or Pro-Vote.  Pro-Vote is a coalition of many organizations including SEIU, HCAN and ACORN.  Their mission:  To fight for progressive issues and progressive candidates.

That is Margarida Jorge.  She wrote the HCAN memo.  In the past she worked with Sara Howard.

Meet Sara Howard.  She used to work with SEIU.  She also worked for a group called America Coming Together (ACT).  In the 2004 campaign, ACT was very active in registering voters on behalf of the Kerry Campaign.  ACT was later fined $775,000 for taking illegal donations (including those from SEIU), the largest FEC fine in history.  She also worked as a Senior Strategist for Obama for America.  On August 5^th, the day before the St. Louis town hall meeting featuring Rep. Russ Carnahan, Sara Howard was named the Communications Director for the Missouri Democrat.

That is Sara Howard.  She is Russ Carnahan’s Communication’s Director.  When she was working on the Obama Campaign, she was under the direction of Buffy Wicks.

Meet Buffy Wicks.  Buffy Wicks is the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement directly under Valerie Jarrett.  She was the White House representative on the infamous conference calls involving Yosi Sergant and the NEA which were exposed by Big Hollywood resulting in Mr. Sergant’s forced resignation.  Before her job at the White House Buffy Wicks ran the Obama Campaign operation in Missouri where she was instrumental in get out the vote programs involving SEIU, ACORN and Pro-Vote, where she worked with Sara Howard and Margarida Jorge.

That is Buffy Wicks, Sara Howard and Margarida Jorge.  In their capacities with SEIU and Pro-Vote and HCAN and the Obama Campaigns, they were involved with SEIU Public Service Director and former organizer Elston McCowan and SEIU Business Agent and Organizer Perry Molens.  McCowan and Molens are the men charged with the assault on Kenneth Gladney.

Let me just lay this out once more:

• Margarida Jorge worked at SEIU in St. Louis.  She wrote the HCAN memo on fighting back against the right.
• Sara Howard worked at SEIU in St Louis.  She also worked for Obama For America.  The day before the St. Louis town hall, she was hired by Rep. Russ Carnahan.
• Elston McCowan and Perry Molens worked at SEIU in St. Louis.  They have been charged with the bloody assault of Kenneth Gladney.
• Jorge, Howard, McCowan and Molens were all involved with Buffy Wicks at Obama For America in Missouri.
• Buffy Wicks now works for Valerie Jarret in the White House Office of Public Engagement and was involved in the NEA Conference Calls.

Does your head hurt yet?  If it doesn’t, it will tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will show how this small network of insiders in the leftist political power structure of St. Louis are inter-connected with the very people charged with investigating and prosecuting the individuals responsible for beating Kenneth Gladney.  And, how those same people were also instrumental in the Obama Campaign in Missouri in 2008.  We will show how the three month delay in bringing charges against the assailants appear to be motivated by political and personal relationships in the close-knit family that is the St. Louis Democratic Party.

Much has been said in the past three months about this incident.  Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent.  We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.

Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps?  Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme?  Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6^th.  We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Also involving SEIU and OFA.  Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting.  Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration.  As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.

On June 1, 2009 President Obama enjoyed a 64% Job Approval rating with a disapproval rating of 30%.  As Summer approached, the President began the plans for the roll out of his comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire distribution system for America’s health care services.  As the messaging began, the talking points were clear:  “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it”, “This plan will cover the 40 million Americans who have no insurance”, “This plan will not add to the deficit and not raise taxes”.  It all seemed too good to be true.   The House Committee on Energy and Commerce promptly passed the first version of a reform bill in June.  President Obama planned multiple town hall meetings across the country including an unprecedented event televised live on ABC and everything seemed moving toward a major victory for the President and the Democratic Party.

In late June and through the month of July, members of congress held scattered town hall meetings in their districts to get their constituents’ feedback on the proposed health care bill.  The clusters of semi-organized protesters who had rallied at “Tea Parties” earlier in the Spring took these meetings as opportunities to rejuvenate their energies with passionate opposition to these congressmen.  YouTube videos began circulating showing outraged citizens challenging their representatives and showing those representatives completely unprepared for any legitimate questions about the proposed bill.  It was clear in many cases that the representatives were not well versed on these bills beyond the boiler-plate talking points the administration had handed them.  They were not used to being questioned.

By the beginning of August Sarah Palin had caught headlines by describing certain policy discussions that evaluate a patients “level of productivity in society” and how it relates to the level of prioritized care they would receive as ‘death panels’ , Rep. Michelle Bachmann had delivered a stinging speech on the House floor tearing apart the President’s advisors on health policy, Sen. Arlen Spector was caught flat-footed at a town hall meeting and protests began cropping up all around the country at various town hall meetings of Senators and Congressmen.  President Obama’s job approval rating had now plummeted to  52% with a disapproval rating of 41% (an unbelievable 23% swing in approval loss and disapproval gain combined in 60 days).  The White House had seen enough.  It was time to take action and engage the opposition.

Somewhere between August 2^nd and August 6^th a strategy was devised that put all tools at the administrations disposal in line and firing at the protesters.  August 4^th seems to be an important day in the roll out of this strategy.  The White House famously posted a new aggressive offensive on their blog calling out what they described as “mis-information” about the proposed bill and directed true-believers to report any sources of these “lies” to a special e-mail address:  flag@whitehouse.gov.  Also on the 4^th, an organization called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a document that became a blueprint for intimidation and, ultimately, violence under the guise of confronting the tea party protesters at these town hall meetings.

HCAN is an organization funded by various unions, most significantly SEIU, whose main purpose is to promote and push the effort for government-provided, universal health care.  (To understand the SEIU’s reasons for pushing for this government health care, read this post.)  The National Field Director for HCAN is Margarida Jorge.  Margarida Jorge used to work for the SEIU as an organizing director.

On August 4^th Margarida Jorge released a four page memo instructing members of HCAN on how best to combat the mounting opposition on display at the town hall meetings.  On the HCAN web site, the new tactics were filed on a post under the heading “Fight Back Against the Right”.  A subsequent HCAN call to action on August 5^th was under the benign headline “The Guns of August: A Call to Arms for Progressives and Obama Activists” likening the debate to World War I.

The entire memo can be seen here.

763d952c7bee4c4abe_12m6bxper –

The memo features instructions and tactics for the left on how to dominate the meeting and marginalize the protesters from the right:

• Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics.
• We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member, and we need to stake out the best spots for visibility and signs. Reconnaissance on the venue and an understanding of the staging will be important here. Make sure you do your homework so you can position your folks most effectively.

It features ideas on how to manipulate the media:

• Make sure you have people holding signs in every place where a TV camera is likely to be and that next to every right wing sign, there’s one of your signs with your message.
• Don’t wait for the reporter to approach you. You must approach the reporters and be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write. Have someone assigned to greeting the media or checking in media as they arrive. That way you will know who they are and be able to work with them both during the event and afterwards.

It has ideas about how to dominate the conversation by asking the congressman prepared, rehearsed questions:

• Line up a number of people who feel comfortable interrupting and prepare them with statements like:
  • Excuse me, I came today to listen to Representative XXX explain how this bill is going to make health care more affordable for me and my family. We’re being gouged by insurance companies that just want to make more profits while we struggle to keep up with premiums and co-pays. Representative, how are you going to fix that?”
  • “I’m retired and can’t afford my prescription drugs because I’m on a fixed income. Representative, how is this bill going to affect me?”
  • “I want to hear the Representative speak. He’s the one voting on the bill. Representative, how will this bill help people who already have insurance at work?”
  • “What I’m worried about is how we’re going to keep the insurance companies from continuing to charge people more for being sick and keep them from taking away coverage when we need it most. What’s the plan for that?”

And, on page four of the memo written by Margarida Jorge of HCAN are instructions for hosting a town hall meeting.  These instructions include:

• One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
• Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to rsvp or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
• Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
• It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.

On August 5^th the DNC released a video advertisement calling the protesters an “angry mob” and showing a photo of one alleged protester hanging a congressman in effigy.  Also on August 5^th we had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi derisively calling the protesters “Astro-turf” and claiming that they were carrying signs with swastikas.

By August 6^th liberal web sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos were cheering HCAN’s instructions and the stance taken by Organizing For America (The left-wing volunteer web site evolved from the Obama Campaign) urging liberals to call congress (providing them instructions on how to do this) and then to register the call at the OFA web site.  Huffington Post celebrated the new bold move with a post urging the unions to get more involved (an astounding 11,000 comments appear on this post in just 6 days, many of them from early in the day on August 6^th show that the readers of HuffPo knew exactly what this union engagement meant and what the results would be).

Finally on August 6^th, hours before the Carnahan town hall meeting where Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by members of the SEIU, David Axelrod and Jim Messina gave a pep talk to Senators on Capitol Hill prior to their leaving for the August recess.  According to Politico:

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.  And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

”If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting

Two days after the instructions on how to manage and control protestors at town hall meetings were released by Margarida Jorge at HCAN, one day after the Speaker of the House likened protestors to Nazis and mere hours after President Obama’s top political advisors assured Congressional Democrats that “If you get hit, we will punch them back twice as hard”, Kenneth Gladney lay beaten and bloody on the ground outside Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall meeting.

Tomorrow we will show how the people who are now charged with assaulting him are connected to SEIU and HCAN, how they followed HCAN’s instructions perfectly which inevitably led to the violence, and we will show how St. Louis was not the only meeting that followed HCAN’s template and ended in much the same way.