Obama Associate Bill Ayers Helped Maoist Revolutionary Group Organize DC Trump Protest Coup Attempt

On the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, Issue #464 of Revolution announced in its headline, “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. . .Rise Up. . .Get Into The Streets. . .Unite With People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can. . .Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate. . .Don’t Accommodate. . .Don’t Collaborate”.

Revolution is an online newspaper published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist group descended from splinters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, RCP founder Bob Avakian and fellow Maoist H. Bruce Franklin had cofounded the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU, later called the Revolutionary Union or RU), a spinoff of the Chinese Communist-controlled Progressive Labor Party (PLP). By 1971, Avakian and Franklin had parted ways because Franklin wanted to immediately begin a violent revolution, whereas Avakian felt that revolutionary violence should wait 15 years instead. Franklin’s associates later went on to align themselves with such groups as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and the remnants of the Charles Manson cult, both of which would attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford in September 1975. The same year, Avakian’s RU faction rechristened itself as the RCP. In 1979, Avakian was arrested for leading a violent protest and assaulting a police officer during a White House visit by Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping. This resulted in 1981 indictments of Avakian and other RCP leaders for illegal entry onto White House grounds, but Avakian avoided trial by fleeing the country. Settling in France, he has continued to direct his followers from abroad for the last 36 years.

The 2016 election issue of Revolution featured special election coverage appearing under the headline, “Trump vs. Clinton: Criminal Choices of a Criminal System We Need to Overthrow, Not Vote For, This System!” Included was an October 21 article posing the question, “The Democrats Have Already Said They Will Accept a Trump Election as Legitimate: What Does That Mean? And What Must We Do?” Reflecting on James Comey’s decision to reopen the investigation of Hillary Clinton, the article advised overthrowing the system rather than voting. The issue also prominently featured a video pairing Avakian with Marxist professor Cornel West, an advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign and a 2016 supporter of Bernie Sanders and subsequently of Jill Stein.

Throughout November, Revolution continued to echo its “refusal” of what it called a “fascist” America, pausing on November 27 to lament the recent death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who “led a just, genuine, and popularly backed anti-imperialist revolution against the United States”. Meanwhile, RCP representatives led by Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor went to Chicago to kick off a national tour “Standing Up to Pigs and Trump-Fascists, Spreading Revolution Everywhere”.

On November 29, 2016, Brea, California Internet service provider New Dream Network, LLC, doing business as DreamHost and operating out of 417 Associated Road #324 in the Brea Mail Center, became the sponsoring registrar for a new website, RefuseFascism.org. On December 19, 2016, a group of speakers gathered in Cooper Union in New York City to officially kick off a movement named after RefuseFascism.org. The event called for a “Month of Resistance to Prevent the Trump/Pence Regime from Taking Power Stop It Before It Starts!” Speakers were led by Sunsara Taylor and Carl Dix. Other featured speakers included hip-hop artist Immortal Technique, University of Minnesota Morris biology professor P.Z. Myers, The Intercept founding senior editor Jeremy Scahill, Revolution Books representative Andy Zee, Salvadoran-American activist Isabel Cardenas, Holy Ghost Upper Room Ministries reverend Doris Johnson, Islamic Leadership Council Imam Ayub Abdul-Baki. Feminist Gloria Steinem sent a supporting statement, Standing Rock Sioux activist and North Dakota Democratic Party Congressional candidate Chase Iron Eyes participated via Skype, and WBAI Pacifica Network radio host Fran Luck also participated. Zee was identified as the initiator of RefuseFascism.org.

Participants also tuned in from other parts of the country. One group of 40 remote participants gathered in Chicago for an “emergency organizing meeting” to watch the New York speakers live stream broadcast and to hear a Call to Action for the Refuse Fascism movement. The Call to Action was distributed online as an invitation to “Read and Sign the Call to Action to STOP Trump and Pence BEFORE they Come to Power”, where users could click to add their name and contact information, opt in to a mailing list, volunteer to donate, and receive a copy of the Call to circulate. The Call’s webpage declared Donald Trump’s Presidency illegitimate on the grounds of Trump’s alleged fascism and on the grounds that, “Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. Not even close, he lost by 2.5 million votes. He won the Electoral College--an institution set up in 1787 to protect slavery.” The Call was undersigned by a list of prominent organizers who signed on to the statement, “We therefore CALL FOR A MONTH OF RESISTANCE beginning on December 19th, reaching a crescendo by the January 20th 2017 Inauguration.” Protests were to begin on December 19 to coincide with the meeting of Electoral College voters. These were to be followed up on Martin Luther King Day weekend by “massive demonstrations of many thousands in key cities, including Washington. D.C., that grow to millions over the next week, protests that don’t stop. . . where people refuse to leave and more and more people stand up with conviction and courage demanding: NO! We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!”

Near the top of the list was “Bill Ayers, activist educator”. Ayers, the son of prominent Chicago Democrat Thomas Ayers, was a former SDS organizer who had founded a terrorist SDS splinter group known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO, aka the Weathermen). In 1968, the future leaders of the WUO visited Cuba to receive training in urban warfare from Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine. The next June, they took over SDS, founding what became the Weathermen. Ayers and other WUO members, including his future wife Bernadine Dohrn, began a wave of bombings and riots. Dohrn also helped found another terrorist group that received training from Cuban intelligence, the Venceremos Brigade (VB), which intersected with Venceremos, a political organization that the RU’s H. Bruce Franklin joined when he split off from Bob Avakian in 1971. Following a bombing attack on the Pentagon in 1972, Ayers and Dohrn became fugitives from the FBI. They emerged from hiding in 1980 following the election of Richard M. Daley as Cook County State’s Attorney, after Ayers’ father used his influence with the Daley machine to arrange a plea bargain for his son and Dohrn. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn rejoined the political system as academics, and they helped found the Committees of Correspondence (CoC, renamed the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism or CCDS in 2000), an offshoot of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) that began forming in 1991 as the Soviet Union broke up. In 1995, Thomas Ayers and Bill Ayers began working with Chicago community organizer Barack Obama, whose career they continued to support into Obama’s Presidential campaign.

Ayers was only one of the more prominent founding members of Refuse Fascism. The full list consisted of the following names, with asterisks indicating affiliations listed for identification purposes only: Imam Aiyub Abdul-Baki, Justice Committee, Islamic Leadership Council of New York; Ashton Applewhite, writer and activist; Ed Asner, actor; Bill Ayers, activist educator; Dawoud Bey, artist; Paul Von Blum, African American Studies Center, UCLA*; Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ, anti-war activist; Herb Boyd, activist, author, journalist and teacher; Karen Brooks, People’s Music Long Hill Farm The Trouble Sisters; Charles Burnett, filmmaker; Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist; Mary Celeste Kearney, Director, Gender Studies, University of Notre Dame*; Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr., son of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., murdered by NYPD; Margaret Cho, comedian, actor; Kia Corthron, playwright; Chuck D, rapper, author; Joe Dante, filmmaker; Shannon Dawdy, MacArthur Fellow, Anthropologist; Carl Dix, Founding member, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA*; Tom F. Driver, Paul J. Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary*; Brian Drolet, Executive Director, Deep Dish TV*; Alex Ebert, musician; Niles Eldredge, evolutionary biologist; Kurt Elling, musician; Eve Ensler, playwright; Chase Iron Eyes, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe*; Everett Iron Eyes, Sr., Water Administrator, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe*; Dorothy Fadiman, filmmaker; Joan Ferrante, Professor Emerita English, Columbia University*; Charles Gaines, visual artist; Merrill Garbus, Founding band member, tUnE-yArDs; Henry Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest*; Pastor Gregg L. Greer, Freedom First International, SCLC*; David Gunn, Jr., son of slain abortion doctor, David Gunn, Sr.; David Harris, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard University*; Lalah Hathaway, singer; Marc Lamont Hill, CNN commentator and professor, Morehouse College*;Bianca Jagger; Phyllis Jackson, Associate Professor Art History, Pomona College*, Former Black Panther; Gregory “Joey” Johnson, defendant in U.S. Supreme Court flag burning case, Texas v. Johnson 1989, Revolution Club*; Erin Aubrey Kaplan, writer and journalist; Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science, MIT*; Robin D.G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA*; Wayne Kramer, musician; John Landis, filmmaker; Fran Luck, Executive Producer of Joy of Resistance Multicultural Feminist Radio, WBAI*; Peter McLaren, Professor Emeritus Education, UCLA*; Julie Mehretu, artist; Vic Mensa, rapper; Debra Messing, actor; jessica Care moore, poet; Thurston Moore, singer, songwriter, guitarist of Sonic Youth; PZ Myers, evolutionary developmental biologist; Rosie O’Donnell, comedian, actor; Arturo O’Farrill, composer and musician; Outernational, band; Amado Padilla, Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education*; Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Ph.D, Catholic Theological Union*; Eric Perl, Chair of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount*; Michelle Phillips, musician; Jean-Pierre Protzen, Professor Emeritus Architecture, UC Berkeley*;Don Rojas, Director of Communications of the Institute of the Black World; Milton Saier, PhD, Professor of Molecular Biology UCSD*; Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five; Dread Scott, visual artist; Michael Shannon, actor; Matthew Shipp, musician; Danny Simmons, visual artist; Ted Sirota, jazz musician; Judith Stacey, sociologist, New York University*; Bob Stein, Institute for the Future of the Book*; David Strathairn; Sunsara Taylor, writer, Revolution Newspaper*; Michelle Tea, poet and author; Alice Walker, author; Naomi Wallace, playwright; Judith Weiss, marine biologist, Rutgers University*; Cornel West, writer and professor; Saul Williams, poet and performer; Allen Wood, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, Stanford*; Michael A. Wood, Jr.; Rev. Frank Wulf, United Methodist minister; Andy Zee, spokesperson, Revolution Books*; David Zeiger, filmmaker.

Refuse Fascism promoted its upcoming January 20 protests by taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times on January 4, 2017. Signed by many of the same names appearing on the group’s Call to Action, including West, Dix, and Ayers, the ad declared, “Our only recourse now is to act together outside normal channels. Every faction within the established power structure must be forced to respond to what we do--creating a situation where the Trump/Pence regime is prevented from ruling.” The ad solicited donations online or payable by check to “Alliance for Global Justice”, with “refusefascism” indicated in the memo, to be mailed to a UPS Store mailing address of 305 West Broadway #185 in New York City. The Alliance for Global Justice (AGJ) is a Tucson, Arizona-based nonprofit anti-capitalist organization that emerged in 1998 as the new parent organization of the Nicaragua Network (NN), a pro-Sandinista organization that had been a target of NSC concern and FBI surveillance as a suspected terrorist group during the 1980s. Financial backers of AGJ include George Soros. The AGJ supports a network of various U.S.-based Latin American solidarity groups through an umbrella organization called Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC), which has supported Marxist and terrorist groups such as Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a group supported by Communist China; and the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, which resisted efforts to end the regime of Hugo Chavez, whose government also had strong ties with China. Another ACJ partner has been Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.), a Stalinist antiwar group formed after the 9/11 attacks to oppose the War on Terror, which has supported terrorist groups and front groups such as Hamas and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Refuse Fascism followed this New York Times ad up with a publicity blitz. The next week, The Washington Post ran a piece. On January 8, Jeanine Pirro invited Carl Dix to appear on FOX News, after seeing him with Cornel West on The O’Reilly Factor. New York Times reporter Marc Santora interviewed Refuse Fascism demonstrator Joan Hirsch during a New York City anti-Trump rally on January 19, just ahead of Trump’s inauguration. Newsweek reporter Emily Cadei interviewed Refuse Fascism cofound Sunsara Taylor in Washington, DC for a piece that ran January 20, mentioning the group’s affiliation with Dix, Ayers, and West.

Meanwhile, as the inauguration neared, Refuse Fascism steadily intensified its calls to action. The January 4 issue of Revolution covered a New York Refuse Fascism meeting, calling for “Making Plans to Get the NO! Out to Millions and Going to and STAYING in DC”. The January 6 issue promoted a caravan to drive protestors in from Los Angeles. On January 10, Refuse Fascism teams gathered in Chicago at the McCormick Place convention center to see Obama’s farewell address and invite others to participate in the upcoming Washington, DC protests. The January 13 edition of Revolution featured former Black Panther members Joe Veale and Terry Cotton calling for all former members to join Refuse Fascism, claiming that Trump’s echoing of Nixon’s call for “Law and Order” was “a code word for Black people”. The January 16 edition of Revolution showcased the Mission and Plan of Refuse Fascism, stating, “Imagine if people, in the tens of millions, filled the streets, powerfully declaring that this regime is illegitimate and demanding that it not be allowed to rule! The whole political landscape would be dramatically transformed, every faction within the established power structure would be forced to respond—and all this could well lead to a situation in which this fascist regime is actually prevented from ruling. This is not some idle dream but something which could be made a reality if all those who hate what is represented by this fascist regime translate their outrage into firm determination and massive mobilization to create the conditions which make this possible.”

On January 18, Revolution ran a post from Andy Zee on behalf of Refuse Fascism’s initiators. The post directed “To all the fighters, artists, scientists, teachers, students. . .to everyone who has signed the Call to Action and taken up the fight to Stop the Trump/Pence Regime from taking power”, calling for “an important adjustment to our plans that essentially call for adjusting and intensifying our work over the next several days” in light of how “Representative John Lewis has made Trump’s illegitimacy a mass question.” Refuse Fascism took credit for “disrupting the Jeff Session’s Hearing in an action seen around the world, marching in the streets of DC with hundreds joining the marches on the Trump International Hotel over the weekend and shutting it down for a period of time, with pictures and video spreading on the web, and on local news in DC.” But, Zee went on, “the masses of people in their thousands and millions have not yet stepped out of business as usual to get in the streets and stay in the streets the way people in South Korea or Tahrir Square in Egypt did several years ago”, the latter alluding to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, which had been supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. Zee concluded “In sum, it is our assessment that we need to go all out and intensify all our efforts over the next days before the inauguration to inspire and move masses of people into active resistance to stop this regime, even as we recognize that the battle may continue for several days after the inauguration if not prevented to stop the Trump-Pence regime from consolidating its power. We are proposing and calling for a change in our plans--to continue to call people to get into and stay the streets on Friday and beyond, calling for resistance and no business as usual next Monday and Tuesday.”

Refuse Fascism’s plans did not escape the attention of authorities and concerned citizens. William F. Jasper of New American reported on January 6, “N.Y. Times Aids Communist-socialist-feminist-LGBT-anarchist Plans for Inauguration Day Mayhem”. Jasper reported on Refuse Fascism’s intentions: “Washington D.C.--Make It Ungovernable! Protest the Presidential Inauguration.”

On January 10, Oath Keepers, an organization of former military members, police officers, and first responders, reported that it had penetrated Refuse Fascism, warning, “Communists Intend to Overthrow the United States before Inauguration Day”. Oath Keepers reported, “This organization is clearly promoting treason against the people and the Constitution of United States of America. Our Operation HYPO team has penetrated this organization, attended their meetings and communicated with their leadership. Their intent is to create a crisis in Washington, D.C. before January 20, 2017. The crisis will manifest thru sustained protests starting on January 14, reaching a crescendo not later than January 19 with supporting ‘direct’ actions including blocking roads, vandalism, and stopping Metro subway service starting on January 17. . . Refuse Fascism is promoting riots as a method to achieve their stated goals, suggesting the need for much larger events than the massively destructive and deadly riots that occurred in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD. . . Clearly this organization has crossed the line and its leadership should be arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit treason, conspiracy to incite violence and other charges as appropriate. If the Obama Justice Department and the FBI does not immediately move to halt their schemes, we will know that they are complicit. One of the demands of this organization will be to stop the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States and hold new elections. We also know that in the past week, the DHS has made the unprecedented move to inject Federal oversight of the election systems. While these items could be a coincidence, it is certainly suspicious timing with President Obama having less than 10 days remaining in office.”

Oath Keepers went on, “The key element of the Refuse Fascism argument for new elections is the CIA sponsored propaganda related to Russian interference in the U.S. Presidential Election. This ‘fake news’ appears to be integrally connected with their overthrow plot and could indicate some level of cooperation. . . The Refuse Fascism leadership is the ‘who’s who’ of Communist and Islamic Revolutionaries. . . All information that our Operation Hypo team has collected, including video, audio, planning documents and personnel rosters will be delivered to the DC Metropolitan Police Department and other authorities as appropriate. . . Inauguration Day will be marred with hundreds of “Direct Action” events. Key roads and bridges into the city will be blocked at least temporarily. The DC Police have decided to just “wait and see” instead of being proactive and arresting those plotting these direct actions. The security entrances into the inauguration viewing areas will be blocked with protesters chained together and chained to the entry portal fences. Protesters will attempt to block the Inauguration Parade following the Inauguration Ceremony at 13th Street. USMC personnel will most likely have to clear them out if they succeed. There are literally hundreds of these actions planned by dozens of organizations. Training for these actions will be taking place at various locations including American University starting on Saturday. It could all be stopped, but it won’t be stopped. You already know why it won’t be stopped. It will be a long day for all of us there. Donald Trump will become our 45th President, but the stain caused by the protests will be permanent. On the evening on the inauguration, three of the major inauguration balls will be disrupted; two in DC and one in Virginia. Authorities and organizers have been informed. Protests will continue until at least January 23.”

Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge similarly warned on January 14 that “Anarchists Plan To ‘Stop The Trump-Pence Regime Of Grave Danger Before It Starts’" by executing a plan to “Bring DC to a Halt!”

On January 16, Project Veritas began releasing undercover footage of plans by protestors Luke Kuhn, Scott Green (Scott Ryan Charney), and Collin Dunn of the DC Anti-Fascist Coalition to disrupt Trump’s inaugural ball with butyric acid. Project Veritas reported that the plan was being organized by DisruptJ20, “a coalition of multiple leftist organizations including Industrial Workers of the World, the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, Refuse Fascism, Smash Racism DC, and the D.C. Anti-Fascist Coalition”. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) date back to 1905. During World War I, they were used by German intelligence to organize sabotage acts in the United States, as meanwhile Lenin was sent by Germany into Russia to take America’s Russian ally out of the war. These efforts transformed IWW into the nucleus of what became the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), controlled by the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991, when members split off with New Left figures such as Bill Ayers to form the Committees of Correspondence. IWW membership declined in the 1920s in the wake of CPUSA’s rivalry and crackdowns from the FBI, but the IWW began regrouping in the 1960s. In recent years, it has organized labor strikes, partnered with the environmental movement and eco-terrorist groups such as Earth First!, joined in demonstrations with U.S. representatives of the Trotskyist Fourth International, participated in international conferences such as the 1990 International Conference of Revolutionary Syndicalists in Sweden, and formed the International Solidarity Commission (ISC) to unite workers in all countries. The IWW is currently headquartered in Chicago.

Project Veritas turned its information over to authorities, who arrested Green, along with over 200 other protestors who blocked streets and turned violent during and after Trump’s Friday inauguration. Meanwhile, Saturday saw national marches organized in coordination with Women’s March on Washington, a coalition of dozens of leftist groups sponsored by Planned Parenthood and cochaired by Obama administration associate Tamika Mallory, Harry Belafonte protege Carmen Perez, Hamas supporter Linda Sarsour, and Manufacture New York founder Bob Bland, whose organization received a $317 million Defense Department grant last year for a project called Advanced Functional Fibers of America; an associated nonprofit, the Manufacture Foundation, has received a $3.5 million grant from the City of New York, the Mayor’s Office, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Refuse Fascism’s social media channels continued to urge protestors to “Stay in the Streets” on Monday in Washington, DC and around the country in places such as Seattle. Troubling questions arise from the associations documented in this article:

Why did the Obama administration fail to direct federal law enforcement to monitor and disrupt this subversive activity?

To what extent was Refuse Fascism’s attempt to prevent Trump from taking power coordinated with the attack on Jeff Sessions led by John Lewis?

To what extent was this coup attempt coordinated with the Obama intelligence community’s disinformation campaign against Trump?

To what extent did foreign powers and terrorist groups support this attempted coup?

Thanks for posting the additional information on Revolutionary Communist Party and Workers World Party's front groups. There is some overlap between the list of supporters for The World Can't Wait and those listed as supporting Refuse Fascism in the original post. Here are some of The World Can't Wait's supporters:

World Can't Wait

A comprehensive list of WCW's individual and organizational endorsers can be viewed on the WCW website. Among these supporters are: the After Downing Street anti-war coalition, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Aris Anagnos, the ANSWER coalition of New York City, Ed Asner, Bill Ayers, Harry Belafonte, Medea Benjamin, Michael Berg, William Blum, Bob Bossie, Ward Churchill, Code Pink, John Conyers, Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Michael Eric Dyson, Keith Ellison, Eve Ensler, Jodie Evans, Ralph Fertig, Jane Fonda, Gold Star Families for Peace, Mara Verhayden-Hilliard, the Islamic Association of America, the Islamic Circle of North America, Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Jr., Mumia Abu Jamal, Ali Khan, C. Clark Kissinger, Frances Kissling, Michael Lerner, Cynthia McKinney, Mark Crispin Miller, the National Lawyers Guild, Armando Navarro, Not In Our Name, Major Owens, Sean Penn, Harold Pinter, Progressive Democrats of America, Michael Ratner, Rep. Bobby Rush, Susan Sarandon, Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Martin Sheen, Gloria Steinem, Lynne Stewart, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Maxine Waters, Leonard Weinglass, Cornel West, and Howard Zinn.

Not in Our Name (NION) was another RCP front from the Bush era.

I went to that website and looked up the address for World Can't Wait's national office:

National Office

305 West Broadway, #185 New York NY 10013

Email: info@worldcantwait.org

Phone: 646-807-3259

http://www.worldcantwait.net/

In the original post, I mentioned:

Refuse Fascism promoted its upcoming January 20 protests by taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times on January 4, 2017. Signed by many of the same names appearing on the group’s Call to Action, including West, Dix, and Ayers, the ad declared, “Our only recourse now is to act together outside normal channels. Every faction within the established power structure must be forced to respond to what we do--creating a situation where the Trump/Pence regime is prevented from ruling.” The ad solicited donations online or payable by check to “Alliance for Global Justice”, with “refusefascism” indicated in the memo, to be mailed to a UPS Store mailing address of 305 West Broadway #185 in New York City.

The reason I bothered including this detail is because when I was researching the VVAW, I noticed a lot of these groups would share addresses.

Good question. The Department of Defense is funding them because they're helping MIT develop high-tech fiber material:

Manufacture NY and FIT partner to bring revolutionary textile innovation to New York

The partnership, named Advanced Functional Fibers of America (AFFOA), has won a national competition for federal funding to create the latest Manufacturing Innovation Institute. It is designed to accelerate innovation in high-tech, U.S.-based manufacturing involving fibers and textiles. This is the eighth Manufacturing Innovation Institute established to date, and the first to be headquartered in the Northeast. The headquarters will be established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in proximity to the MIT campus. . .The new initiative will receive $75 million in federal funding out of a total of $317 million though cost sharing among the Department of Defense, industrial partners, venture capitalists, and state government funding. The funding will cover a five-year period and will be administered through the new, independent, nonprofit organization set up for the purpose. The partnership, which will focus on both developing new technologies and training the workforce needed to operate and maintain these production systems, also includes a network of community colleges and professional development institutes.

Manufacture New York Blossoms in Brooklyn

Last month, MNY became part of the U.S. Department of Defense and Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s sweeping $315 million public-private project called the Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles Manufacturing Innovation Institute aimed at keeping the country at the forefront of fiber and textiles innovation. It will be located at MIT’s Sloan School of Management in Cambridge.

Under the banner Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, the consortium comprises firms from several industries and fields, including fashion groups VF Corp., New Balance and Nike and textile manufacturers Milliken & Co., Buhler Quality Yarns and Inman Mills. The project also encompasses 52 companies and 32 universities, colleges and other schools, including the Fashion Institute of Technology.

This sounds like it may be related to this DoD project:

DoD Announces Award of New Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Manufacturing Innovation Hub in Manchester, New Hampshire

Headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, ARMI is part of continuing efforts to help revitalize American manufacturing and incentivize companies to invest in new technology development in the United States. The highly competitive process resulted in ARMI’s selection to lead the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication (ATB) Manufacturing USA Institute. The award of $80 million in federal funding will be combined with over $214 million contributed by the winning consortium, made up of industry, state and local governments, universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations located across the country. The ATB institute, with founding industrial and academic partners in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, California, Colorado, Washington, Arizona, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, seeks to organize the current fragmented domestic capabilities in tissue biofabrication technology and better position the U.S. relative to global competition.

Biofabrication is an innovative manufacturing industry segment at the intersection of biology-related research, computer science, materials science and engineering that is creating state-of-the-art manufacturing innovations in biomaterial and cell processing, bioprinting, automation and non-destructive testing technologies for critical Department of Defense and novel commercial use. ARMI, Inc. will integrate the diverse and fragmented collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines to realize the potential of a robust biofabrication manufacturing ecosystem. Technologies ripe for significant evolution within the ATB institute include, but are not limited to, high-throughput culture technologies, 3D biofabrication technologies, bioreactors, storage methodologies, non-destructive evaluation, real-time monitoring/sensing, and detection technologies.

ATB joins the Manufacturing USA institute network which is a bipartisan program that brings together industry, academia, and government to co-invest in the development of world-leading manufacturing technologies and capabilities. Each Manufacturing USA institute focuses on a technology area critical to future competitiveness—such as 3D printing, integrated photonics, or smart sensors. Across the Manufacturing USA institutes, the federal government has committed $860 million, which has been matched by $1.8 billion in non-federal investment. Together, the Manufacturing USA institutes are already enhancing U.S. competitiveness in advanced manufacturing—from helping Youngstown, OH attract over $90 million in new manufacturing investments to its region and train 14,000 workers in the fundamentals of 3D printing for businesses, to supporting companies like X-FAB in Lubbock, Texas, upgrade to cost-competitive, next-generation semiconductors and sustain hundreds of jobs.

The ATB Manufacturing USA institute includes:

Forty-seven industrial partners, including Abbott, Autodesk, Becton Dickinson, Celularity, DEKA Research & Development, GenCure, Humacyte, Lonza, Medtronic, Rockwell Automation, and United Therapeutics.

Twenty-six academic and academically affiliated partners, including Arizona State University, Boston University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers, Stanford University, the University of Florida, the University of Minnesota, the University of New Hampshire, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Yale University.

Fourteen government and nonprofit partners, including FIRST, the State of New Hampshire, and manufacturing extension partnerships in multiple states.

So the entity involved in the Manufacture New York project (called the Manufacture Foundation) is a "charity" in the broad sense of being a nonprofit, but the grant they received is oriented towards research and development, to be more precise. Which is fine in itself, but when their CEO organizes this type of protest activity, it raises an eyebrow about whether DoD should be giving money to this type of group.

Dohrn did plant a bomb that killed Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell and wounded several other police officers in San Francisco. Ayers planted some other bombs:

Bill Ayers

In June 1969, the Weathermen took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary.[8] Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket affair confrontation between labor supporters and the Chicago police.[13] The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway.[14] (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970. . .After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers's close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers's girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb being assembled in the house exploded, Ayers and several associates evaded pursuit by law enforcement officials. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.[7] Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days.

He also helped plan various bombings. FBI agent Larry Grathwohl testified that Ayers once complained during a Weathermen meeting that the group needed stronger leadership because they were relying on people like Dohrn to not only plan the bombings but also plant the bombs, when she should only have to plan them, Ayers said. Ayers and Dohrn were part of a core group that planned terrorist activity:

Bill Ayers

According to a federal indictment, a smaller group, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Linda Evans, Erik Mann, Howard Machtinger, Diana Oughton and Mark Rudd, met secretly in Flint on December 30, 1969 at the Parish House of Sacred Heart Convent to set up a central committee. It was modeled after Lenin’s democratic centralism. The Weather central committte was to direct underground bombings nationwide from New York, Chicago, Detroit and Berkeley aimed at police, military, university and commercial targets. There was also talk of assassinations. The Liberation News Service reported, “Part of armed struggle, as Dohrn and others laid it down, is terrorism. Political assassination… and… violence…were put forward as legitimate forms of armed struggle.[4].”

Eric Mann, soon became an SDS defector and a Flint Police informant. He reported a man dressed as a priest distributing 200 sticks of dynamite in the parking lot to drivers of cars with license plates from New York, Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania, including Theodore Gold, New York[5].

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