Sunday, January 18, 2015

OperationHelporHush Charles Wade AKA(@akacharleswade)

Many of you might remember the old blog story that was done on Mr. Wade.  We had received a ton of flack. It appeared to many people that we were being soft on Mr. Wade and his organization.

However, I will remind people.  We did call out for information, no one presented any true info that could be verified.  It is also true that his "Mission Statement" on paper looked fantastic.  However, in reality its just not a perfect as I was lead to believe. 

Before I begin I would like to thank the people who did come forward who had collected, and delivered a wealth of information that is relevant to this new conversation.  I would also like to thank the other members of the team who organized and collected additional information. 

Here is a bit of background on Wade and how he claims to have become involved.

Wade, the Austin stylist, who had not been particularly active in social causes before Ferguson. Wade’s life had been a whirlwind of fashion-magazine shoots and flights to Los Angeles. But he became concerned about the recent spate of African Americans shot by police and vigilantes, and the night of Brown’s shooting noticed a troubling deluge of tweets about Ferguson.

He decided it was time to drop everything and join this cause.

"At a certain point, this problem will get worse if I don’t step in and do something," he recalls thinking.

Eager to help from his perch in Texas, he tried to raise some money through his following on Twitter. His fundraising pitch was retweeted by actress Amber Riley from the TV show "Glee" and by the singer Estelle, and within 10 days, he raised $25,000. Today, he spends much of his time in Ferguson, living out of a budget hotel by the airport and raising money to provide rations to the protesters.

Every Sunday, he co-hosts a dinner at the tire lot across from the Ferguson Police Department. On a recent evening, the menu was chicken-and-vegetable soup with a side of cornbread — enough for 75 people.





A few select parts from the last blog.
********************************************************************************

4. If this is for community, how do you legally limit the people eligible for housing to just protesters?  What charitable class are they.

The housing is not limited to "protesters." Those we are housing first are young people moving full-time into organizing work including work to raise the minimum wage. We currently also house a non-protester and will house another non-protester family in one of the nine units we've secured. 

6. IRS lists qualified non profit categories in Pub 526 Which of these does "housing for protesters" fall into?
Some would say based on your mission statement that they are working for you, I would argue that the protesters or community services would be considered employees based on.

A) The are working for HOH
B) They get housing in return for the work the perform.
The easiest way to look at our program is similar to residency included in a fellowship. Because of the training aspect of the program and the community service portion, we do not consider them employees of OHOH and we do not consider community service to be "work." They are not limited to perform community service with OHOH and are actually encouraged to do their community service with a variety of organizations and across a variety of causes. 

Again to clarify, this is not housing for "protesters." It's housing for activists, organizers, and protesters that we identified as needing help. And to be honest, many probably also needed help before protesting. A clear sign of the economic disadvantage many face in St. Louis. A clear sign of the economic disadvantage many young people of color face in America. We just had in-roads in the "protester" or "activist" community here and started there and will mushroom out.

Long-term, we will greatly expand our housing offerings but our free housing will ALWAYS have a training and community service component. The community service component is simply paying forward the generosity shown to those housed with us as a result of donations from the community-at-large. 

Now, I do have a few things that don't seem to match exactly what Mr. Wade presented in this exchange.  Let me point out these minor details.

The mission statement he briefly outlined here does not match some of the information on the website.  I can attribute that to an organization that is trying to define itself.  I would personally prefer that it is better defined, takes the mystery out of it.

http://operationhelporhush.org/funding-priorities/ is the page that I take exception with, the funding priorities do not match.  We intermingle the words organizer and protesters. This makes many people stop and think, yet lets move on.

http://operationhelporhush.org/category/blog/ is the page where we first see anything about this housing. When we look at IRS documents it is clear that you can not single a person out for housing,

********************************************************************************

Let me be clear, people who live and care about Ferguson are very upset and concerned about this transient housing that will be going up in locations.  The people described by Mr. Wade are transient people who in most cases, became outside agitators and in my opinion paid protesters. 

You can mask this payment however you like.  Once you provide food, shelter, clothing for people who will then go out on the streets and break the law. They are trained, and they are encouraged to protest illegally.  I take issue that an organization like this will attempt to seek out tax payer assistance in the future. 

Illegal protesting by these people has been happing, they have been getting material and financial support to break laws, this is fact.  Anyone who argues this point clearly supports this type of madness.

We also raise a few more questions to consider.

1. Who is paying for the utilities for the protesters and outside agitators?
2. Any of the residents receiving government assistance?
3. Are any felons living or will be living in the house with each other?  If so, are people aware of a law saying felons can not live with each other?

The missions statement Mr. Wade presented do not match what is presented on the organization's website.  It still interchanges protester and organizer.  I will also have to comment that many of the people that Wade associates with advocate and call for increased tensions and hostilities.

As a matter of fact, Wade himself has been guilty of stirring the flames and encouraging hostility.

Everything I have seen indicates that this organization is nothing more then a MORE shell, that is designed to foster hostility, and provide material and financial aid to outside protesters.  I see nothing more then an attempt to destabilize a community with housing for transient people who may or may not be involved in illegal activities under the guise of protesting.

As you will see, even Wades own history in this protest is suspect and sees him calling for civil unrest and disruption of citizens.
Lets examine some history now.

In this article Wade, who is from Texas was quoted in.

"You have people grasping for a crumb of justice," protester Charles Wade, 31, of Austin, Texas, said Friday near a canopy across the street from the police station where protesters have regularly gathered since shortly after Brown's death. "There's a circle of trauma that keeps happening."


As you will see from this set of tweets and photos, Wade has been active on the ground, I have to ask, why did he rush here from Texas to be part of Ferguson?

Wade has been removing tweets that show him in a very unfavorable light.  Many of the tweets mentions here have been deleted.





Do not blame protesters if #STL streets run with blood. Do not blame protesters if #STL goes up in flames. Blame #HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/hashtag/BobMcCulloch?src=hash"BobMcCulloch.

— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) October 22, 2014
Retweeted Charles Wade (@akacharleswade):

A flurry of "Olive branch" donations just came in. Me and @bellebutters are like "WTF?!" This is unreal.

It is time for people to get out in the streets and send a message that we will not tolerate these injustices by the police state any longer. If there is no justice, there will be no peace.

Please know, there will be civil disobedience & unrest in this country until police officers can no longer wrongly kill w/o consequences.

— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) December 3, 2014

We arrived at the scene to find many streets blocked off with police checkpoints setup.  The officers were asking for identification from those entering the area, including legal observers.

We just took our legal observer hats off to get pass police. It's not a game tonight. Neon hats? Dead giveaway #Shaw pic.twitter.com/TIb1mO0xNb


— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) October 12, 2014

 



Disruption of the UN and blatant disrespect.

They stood until the US delegation was finished with their response.

Protesters are committed. Silent protest will end once the US is done with their response. #UNCAT #HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/hashtag/FergusonToGeneva?src=hash"FergusonToGeneva pic.twitter.com/1uthO6dZXa


— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014

It gets better…
The UN staff didn’t know how to handle the interference.



— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014



The UN called the COPS!



— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014


Even the America haters at the UN are calling the cops on this bunch.

UN police are asking not to be photographed. Actually, I was the only asked not to photograph them. Interesting. #UNCAT #HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/hashtag/FergusonToGeneva?src=hash"FergusonToGeneva


— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014

At least FIVE COPS were called in!


There are 5 police officers in this session now. Thought I'd give an update on that.

— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014






We also would like to point out that all check donations made to this orginization are made out to Wade, personally.  We would also like to point out they like to use GIFT registries that seem to circumvent tax reporting.
















6 comments:

  1. Shine the light on these people. The "movement" is a cash cow for those willing to manipulate the ignorant and an ego boost for most of the new "leaders".
    Gee, sounds a lot like politics/politicians doesn't it?
    Thank you for the research & article.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where are these houses?!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Twitter seems be experiencing "cannot retrieve tweet at this time" quite a bit more than usual. hmm?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Twitter seems be experiencing "cannot retrieve tweet at this time" quite a bit more than usual. hmm?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Twitter seems be experiencing "cannot retrieve tweet at this time" quite a bit more than usual. hmm?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, the same protesters who accuse anti-protesters of removing tweets are and have been doing it for some time.

    ReplyDelete