We learned yesterday that plans are afoot to disrupt traditional midnight celebrations of the New Year to protest deaths at the heands of police (deaths of police officers are of no apparent concern to these people).  Lee Cary provides some detective work on who is involved:

The front for the event is at http://www.stopmassincarceration.net/about (Cornel West pictured).

- “The Stop Mass Incarceration Network is a project of the Alliance for Global Justice (AGJ), a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.  The Stop Mass Incarceration Network is building a movement to stop the injustice of mass incarceration and police brutality; and the racially biased policies and practices of the police, the courts and the U.S. legal system; and to support the rights of prisoners and the formerly incarcerated. We call on all to join us.”  The AGJ website is http://afgj.org/3-2 .

-The latest (2012) Form 990 for AGJ show total revenue of $3,308,000 and a surplus (that would be called a profit in a private business) of $754,000.  

-AGL appear to have taken the name of a former organization, the Alliance for Justice, profiled here.

The central hub of AFJ's programs, the Judicial Selection Project, routinely depictsRepublican judicial nominees as “right-wing extremists,” “ultraconservatives,” or racists and sexists whose political views range far outside the boundaries of “mainstream” public opinion; as people who defend only the rights of “the privileged few” and the “powerful corporations” while turning a deaf ear to the needs of “ordinary people”; and as heirs to a conservative tradition that has “eroded our right to privacy and free speech, encouraged discrimination in pay, discouraged communities from integrating their public schools, and insulated large corporations from liability for the harm their products cause.” To keep the public informed about these purported conservative menaces, AFJ produces a continuous stream of updates and fact sheets on issues related to the federal judiciary, including vacancies, nominations, and overall trends.

The first major victory of AFJ’s Judicial Selection Project occurred in 1987, when it helped derail President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately after Bork’s nomination, AFJ sent messages to the editorial offices of every newspaper in the United States, urging the Senate to reject. The day after the nomination was announced, AFJ representatives held closed-door strategy meetings with Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee. “We’re in triple gear,” said Nan Aron, exhorting the American Bar Association to declare Bork unqualified for the post.

AFJ’s efforts had a profound influence on the mainstream media, which produced a multitude of articles caricaturing Bork as a puppet of the radical right. The spirit of this propaganda campaign was articulated in Senator Edward Kennedy’s assertion that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.” In the end, the Bork nomination was scuttled.  

Emboldened by its success in denying Bork a seat on the nation's highest Court, AFJfocused next on attacking other Republican judicial nominees at all levels. Most noteworthy was the Alliance's opposition to President George H.W. Bush's nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Nan Aron, for her part, said that Thomas was opposed to protecting the civil rights of minorities; she claimed that there was “something in [Thomas's] record to offend most everybody”; and she accused him of harboring “a radical philosophy that exalts his own views over the Constitution.” When this first wave of attacks failed to derail Thomas’s nomination, AFJ researchers dredged up his former assistant, Anita Hill, to bring sexual-harassment allegations against him. 

-For a list of their alleged affiliations, see http://afgj.org/tear-down-the-walls/endorsing-andor-participating-organizations (many of the usual suspects).

They often use the blowfish technique of trying to look bigger than they are.  Relying on useful idiots for street soldiers.