Nonprofits: Beware the Hand That Feeds

By Auset Marian Lewis, teleSUR

20 January 16

Can we really depend on big money to fund change?

njustice is not happenstance. It’s systemic. Police shoot more unarmed black men than white because the slave system put a target on their backs centuries ago that has never been erased. Racism is in America’s DNA. It is a systemic problem built into the American culture ever since black people were counted as chattel and fed from a pig’s trough. Every American institution from prisons to politics, from Yale to Mizzou is laced with the inextricable venom of the slave system. The American system is so infected with racial injustice that even programs funded to mitigate systemic social and economic problems become fruit of the poisonous tree. The Nonprofit Quarterly said it best: The Nonprofit Industry has a Ferguson problem.

People are familiar with the Military Industrial Complex, war for profit, a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Michelle Alexander in her groundbreaking book, “The New Jim Crow,” gave voice to the Prison Industrial Complex: prison for profit and the incarceration of more black people than were enslaved. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle CEO Adam Jackson in a recent interview had this to say about the Nonprofit Industrial Complex as outlined in the book, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” It is a compilation of essays from activists around the world:

“In the United States there is a structured system set up for white people to profiteer off of the oppression of black folks,” he said. “We call it the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. White corporations make sure that their profits are not taxed because they put profits into nonprofits and foundations and typically they are just extensions of that corporation’s social and political agenda… it’s about systemic inequality and oppression because it insures that you can’t institution build.”

Adam Jackson is native to West Baltimore and leads an independent, community-based organization that accepts no funding from political entities, nonprofits or foundation. They target legislative policy to bring about change. According to Jackson, black people have to build their own institutions so that they can map an agenda accountable to the community they serve. Although the racism in the Prison Industrial Complex is a familiar target for change, the NPIC gets little attention.

The U.S. nonprofit sector of 501c(3) tax-exempt organizations is a 1.3 trillion dollar industry. It is the world’s seventh largest economy funding 1.5 million organizations that range from art museums to think tanks and social justice groups on the right and the left side of the fence.

At least 60 percent of non-profits serve people of color, however 30% of board members are without a single minority representative although minorities are 36 percent of the US population. Eight percent of boards have minority representatives. Chief executives are only seven percent minority and 9.5 of 10 philanthropic agencies are dominated by whites.

According to a Boardsource survey, “63 percent of organizations say that diversity is a core value … the percentage of people of color on nonprofit boards has not changed in 18 years.”

While students from 51 colleges across America protest racist, sexist and homophobic practices, demanding that presidents and professors stand down and dictating courses of action to make schools more representative of minority students, racism in the nonprofit industry flies under the radar. As movements grow and seek funding, they often look to elite foundations to pay their way.

Andrea Smith of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, cautions against building movements on the corporate dole. In “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex,” she writes that a Ford Foundation grant of US$100,000 was pulled from their organization when a board member discovered that they supported the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Smith warns that corporations that offer handouts can compromise social change. They can use funding to mask corporate malfeasance and colonial practices; monitor and control activism; divert public money into their own coffers; manage activist goals to attack symptoms rather than systemic problems; lead social movements to aspire to a capitalistic model that benefits their own agenda.

With dissent bent and compromised to fit a corporate 501c(3) model, the cry for change can be muted and misdirected. To that extent nonprofit models can coopt social justice movements who depend on them for support.

Can we ever depend on big money to fund change?

Increasingly young people are finding money from other sources. In 2014 a group of social activists, We Charge Genocide (WCG), modeled off an earlier group of the same name, brought racial injustice to the United Nations and made a formal charge of genocide against the United States on the world stage. In the ‘50s the charges included lynching, police brutality and social and economic inequities. The 21st century WCG activists were out of Chicago responding to the fact that in 2014 23 of 27 police shooting victims were African American. The case of Dominique “Damo” Franklin ignited the organization to action when he was Tasered to death after an alleged petty theft. In Chicago 92% of Taser victims are black or Latino. They took the police brutality crimes of the United States to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva, Switzerland.

WCG did not petition deep pockets to fund their trip. They raised over $21,000 from online donations of ordinary people to fund their UN youth representatives.

This is a difficult time for nonprofits and people taking social action. The industry is still reeling from recession, with increased needs for shrinking funds. In the book, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” they make the point that right wing organizations spend top dollars on funding think tanks. Those think tanks shape the social and political conversations that mold public opinion. Progressive organizations tend to be more issue oriented.

Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner applauded American Billionaire Richarad Mellon Scaife saying, "Right -wing victories started more than twenty years ago when Dick Scaife had the vision to see the need for a conservative intellectual movement in America.... These organizations built the intellectual case that was necessary before political leaders like Newt Gingrich could translate their ideas into practical political alternatives."

Adam Jackson of LBS has the right idea, creating a think tank to map a course while living in the community that he serves. In order to change racist institutions, people of vision need to build systems that can serve real needs for on the ground problems. When funding sources come from elite billionaires operating in rarefied air out of their own capitalistic and political agendas, they will always protect the systems that they created. We should expect nothing less.

The "Natural" Presence of US Armed Forces in Latin America

By Silvina M. Romano, Upside Down World

20 January 16

he discourse on freedom, democracy, diplomatic contacts and friendly relations with Latin America, so characteristic of the Obama administration in their eagerness to reinforce the "soft power" of his foreign policy, finds its real limits in the need for "order" and "stability" (watchwords that were familiar during the implementation of the National Security Doctrine in Latin America). Currently, the US Armed Forces in the Hemisphere are present not only in more than 70 military bases, but also through various multi- and bilateral security agreements: Plan Colombia, the Andean Regional Initiative, the Mérida Initiative, the Initiative for Regional Security of Central America, among others. These pacts include training programmes, capacity building courses, the sale of arms and equipment involving the companies providing these materials and US security agencies such as the DEA and the FBI, as well as the governments, companies and police forces of Latin American countries.

The reason for this presence is the "security of the United States", that implies by definition security and "stability" in territories that could constitute a threat to the United States. In the training manuals of the end of the 1960s, one can clearly read the link between them: "The lack of political stability and socio-economic order in a Latin American country puts in check US national security. Consequently, in matters of training and programs of military aid, the United States should adopt tactics destined to avoid the risks of such instability, through economic development and the imposition of order".

Thus the search for "stability" is part of the discourse that strongly penetrates the region from the beginnings of the Cold War and operates to legitimate interventions over the national sovereignty of States. Currently, in the web page of the Southern Command one can read that one of the objectives of operations such as UNITAS "Southern Seas 2015" is the continuation of “our commitment to the region and is being conducted to enhance regional partnerships and promote hemispheric stability”. It is clear that this common work is carried out with countries and governments that are aligned with the political, economic and security guidelines, that do not alter the precepts of Washington, such as Peru, Chile, Colombia and Panama. The training exercises even reach Brazil: UNITAS trains the armed forces of this country for combat in the field of electronic warfare, in air and submarine warfare, in operations of interdiction, and they also undertake various joint exercises.

In general terms, the Southern Command has as its mission to provide friendly nations with training courses, mechanisms for "sharing information", technological equipment and assistance, as well as assistance in infrastructure (note that this mainly benefits US businesses dedicated to security). In addition, it advises especially in matters of intelligence and in operations to combat drug trafficking and terrorism, always "respecting Human Rights". It is worth noting how little all of this has been disseminated in public opinion; it is as if this presence of co-opted armed forces were a "natural" component of the sovereignty of the countries of the region even in the context of a reconstruction of memory with respect to counterinsurgency, the forced disappearances, paramilitary operations,, etc., between the decade of the 1950s and the end of the 1980s. Precisely, during the Cold War, the training of Latin American troops in US academies was described as technical training, with no "political-ideological" content. This affirmation was subsequently proven false by what happened in Chile and later in Argentina, when the armed forces occupied the formal political sphere.

Today it is alarming to see the following news item: "Sub-officers of Colombia receive leadership lessons in the United States (...) they will receive instruction in shared leadership, conflict resolution, organizational leadership and behaviour and emotional training, during ten days in the installation of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, from personnel of the US Southern Army".

Some figures illustrate the degree of dependency of the Latin American Armed Forces: the sale of US arms to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2014 amounted to 1,606’861,326 dollars and in 2012 was 2,408’527,664 dollars. The Latin American military who received training in 2013 were 12,157 effectives, while in 2014 they were 14,600.

The "standardization of the armed forces" according to the needs of the US has been a constant since the beginnings of the Cold War and continues at the present time. The internal and external enemy to be combatted may change in name, but is always there to justify the promotion/imposition of Hemispheric Security guaranteeing minimal stability for business (legal, illegal, local, transnational). We therefore never hear the notion of "the end of a cycle" from the empire, but rather "renovation of strategies".