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.
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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 HOHB) 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,
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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
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.
Staff trying to avoid police response to silent protests… #UNCAT @HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/ChiCopWatch"ChiCopWatch #HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/hashtag/FergusonToGeneva?src=hash"FergusonToGeneva pic.twitter.com/gbHS67aCH2
— Charles Wade (@akacharleswade) November 13, 2014
The UN called the COPS!
Two police officers presently inside. Appears more will be arriving soon. #UNCAT @HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/ChiCopWatch"ChiCopWatch #HYPERLINK "https://twitter.com/hashtag/FergusonToGeneva?src=hash"FergusonToGeneva pic.twitter.com/WC6K6IZPUl
— 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.
