Socialists, Billionaires Back LA’s Minimum Wage Hike Proposal
Bre Payton /
An activist group is pushing to raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles to $15 an hour with the help of philanthropic billionaires, tax dollars and a socialist workers party.
Armed with cash flowing from public coffers as well as the likes of George Soros, the Los Angeles Workers Assembly submitted a proposal to the city clerk last week to raise the local minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Media coverage, which bills the workers group only as a “new labor activist coalition,” leaves out a few hard facts about the group, including its history of organizing and support from hard-left groups.
A Google search for the Los Angeles Workers Assembly reveals a Facebook group page and a crowd-funding page, but no official website. The Go Fund Me page asks sympathetic donors for $6,250 to pay for costs associated with rallying, such as printing signs and hiring youth organizers.
The crowd-funding, though, tells little about the bulk of the group’s cash flow.
In the “About” section of its Facebook page, a link directs readers to thePeople’s Power Assembly, which is the activism arm of theInternational Action Center, an“anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist” group with local chapters in 16 cities across the U.S.
IAC has been active in Los Angeles as far back as 1998, and is currently located in the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles.
LAWA and PPA are not recognized nonprofits, so tax-deductible donations to these organizations have to go to the People’s Rights Fund, a nonprofit education fund based in New York.
The People’s Rights Fund collected $609,000 in 2012, and gave the International Action Center $35,661 for its Boston, Los Angeles and New York chapters.
PRF is headquartered in the Solidarity Center, which shares an address and phone number with the IAC, and theWorkers World Party, a group that fights for a socialist society.
They are linked as business entities, according to the legal database LexisNexis.
WWP regards Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea in 1948, as an “amazing revolutionary.”
WWP has several youth outreach arms including Revolutionary Socialist Youth and Fight Imperialism Stand Together. It also organizes Occupy for Jobs, which fights for guaranteed jobs and income.
The People’s Rights Fund has received donations from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation, a donor-advised grant-making organization that has been granted $79 million in taxpayer funds since 1997.
Many nonprofits, including Watchdog.org’s parent organization, Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, receive funds from donor-advised groups.
But Franklin’s mission is education-based, in line with its IRS nonprofit designation, and Tides uses its massive budget with the intent of shaping legislation with a left-leaning agenda,Watchdog.org reported in the past.