ASRA NOMANI: Woke army retreats in D.C. protest, pivots to ‘FIGHT BACK’ for Gaza
On the eve of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, a multi-million dollar network of socialist and Islamist organizations scaled back its plans for a massive citywide "resistance," retreating to a quiet park in a corner of Washington, D.C., called Meridian Hill. They now predict a crowd of 2,000, a far cry from the 50,000 originally planned for the National Mall, Washington Monument and Constitution Avenue NW.
But the network of well-funded organizations, which I call the Woke Army, is pressing ahead with protests in 84 cities, rebranded in emails sent Sunday afternoon to supporters with the message, "STAND WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. WE FIGHT BACK," following Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas. In the nation’s capital, the ANSWER Coalition, a self-declared Marxist organization based in D.C., secured a permit, which I obtained, for the smaller Meridian Hill protest after withdrawing its application for the larger citywide demonstration.
THE PROFESSIONAL PROTEST MACHINE BEHIND THE ANTI-TRUMP ‘PEOPLE’S MARCH'
Despite media portrayals of these protests as grassroots movements, they are anything but. The ANSWER Coalition’s operations are highly coordinated and funded by professional activism networks, much like Saturday’s "People’s March," which my reporting revealed was organized by a for-profit professional protest logistics company, Movement Catalyst LLC, which executes events with military precision.
These professional organizers create a polished veneer of "grassroots" spontaneity for protests that are, in reality, meticulously engineered political theater and not grassroots but rather AstroTurf. They churned out near identical emails around 4 p.m. on Sunday, summoning followers to their Monday protests.
For years now, I’ve been tracking these organizations as part of my reporting for the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative named for Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002 in the name of identity politics and sectarianism. Democracy thrives on transparency, and the public deserves to know when protests are driven by ideological agendas masquerading as grassroots movements.
Members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation created the ANSWER Coalition, short for "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism," after 9/11. It has consistently championed authoritarian regimes, including socialist governments in Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba. Brian Becker, the ANSWER Coalition leader who got the permit for the Meridian Hill protest, is a vocal proponent of Marxism and socialism.
The organization’s history includes inflammatory anti-American incidents, such as a protest this past summer against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where Zaid Mohammed Mahdawi, president of the Richmond chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, spray-painted "HAMAS IS COMIN" on a statue at Union Station. The National Park Service pulled ANSWER Coalition’s permit after the protest turned violent, with demonstrators burning U.S. flags and clashing with police.
Michael Litterst, a spokesman for the U.S. National Park Service, told me today that the ANSWER Coalition "canceled" its application for the citywide protest. He directed questions to the ANSWER Coalition about why it canceled its application. The ANSWER Coalition didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The permit reveals the intricate planning behind this supposed "grassroots" protest that the media will likely cast as spontaneous:
The equipment list reveals the professionalism behind these protests: one stage, 20 tables, 40 chairs, 200 handheld signs, banners, a sound system, podium, and propaganda materials, including literature and bumper stickers. The ANSWER Coalition permit said it plans to bring an "opaque secure bucket for collecting donations."
The Park Service permit reminded organizers in bold text: "It is prohibited to climb, remove, or in any way injure any statue, seat, wall, fountain, light poles, elevator towers, or other architectural feature" within the park.
The ANSWER Coalition’s history raises questions about its ability to maintain order. But Litterst, the U.S. National Park Service spokesman, told me: "DC courts have previously indicated that denial of or limitations on permits for First Amendment demonstrations based on contemplated acts of violence are appropriate only when and where the threat is real, substantial and beyond the reasonable control of law enforcement."
Last week, on a website created just days after Trump’s election, protest organizers said they had about 50 "endorsing" groups. Now, that number has increased to 205 groups, and it’s clear from the names on the growing list that their origins are far from grassroots. I’ve added the new names to a public Pearl Project public database, and, according to my new analysis, 58 of the groups are self-described socialist organizations, 25 are Islamist, Muslim, Arab or Palestinian, and the remaining 122 are socialist and Islamist adjacent. They consistently seek to destroy Israel as a state.
The "red" in tomorrow’s alliance includes well-funded protesters: the ANSWER Coalition; Code Pink, an anti-Israel group funded by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American billionaire tied to China’s Communist Party, according to the New York Times; the Party for Socialism and Liberation, advocating for dismantling capitalism and aligning the U.S. with socialist regimes; the People’s Forum, a socialist group that serves as a proxy for Singham’s pro-China agenda, as also documented by The New York Times; and Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the U.S.
It also now includes the "Project for a Revolutionary Marxist International."
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The "green" of this axis includes: Students for Justice in Palestine, founded by University of California at Berkeley academic Hatem Bazian, and now fomenting many of the anti-Jew campus protests, banned now on many campuses; Palestinian Feminist Collective, committed to "Palestinian liberation & beyond"; Palestinian Youth Movement, dedicated to a "strategy of mobilization, agitation and confrontation"; the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, which organized days of protests in Chicago to disrupt the Democratic Party’s convention; and the Muslim American Society, which created a "Survive Pack" with a resource from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose co-founder, Nihad Awad, said he was "happy" about the Oct. 7 incursions by Hamas into Israel.
The ANSWER Coalition’s stated purpose for the protest in Washington is to "present a popular resistance to the Trump Administration," but its true agenda is more insidious: dismantling American democracy and promoting authoritarian socialist ideologies. From Beijing to Caracas, the ANSWER Coalition and its Woke Army allies draw inspiration from regimes, like Hamas, that suppress dissent and curtail freedoms.
As the Woke Army marches from Meridian Hill Park to Black Lives Matter Plaza, it’s crucial for Americans to remain vigilant. Behind the banners and bullhorns lies a well-funded operation intent on reshaping the narrative of grassroots resistance into one that serves its own ideological goals. Understanding these forces is the first step toward safeguarding democracy.