March For Our Lives holds itself up as a grassroots gun control org, much like Moms Demand Action. And just like the Moms, the (supposedly) student-led March For Our Lives organization gets their funding not from the little people, but from a group of big dollar donors.
While the NRA and other gun rights orgs raise tens of millions each year primarily from everyday Americans, the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex lacks that kind of grassroots support.
Instead of donations from everyday Americans, civilian disarmament operations rely on dark money from the well-healed to keep the lights on.
Moms Demand Action started (as One Million Moms for Gun Control) following Sandy Hook. A sympathetic media compliantly repeated the fake narrative that Shannon Watts was just a stay-at-home mom ironing her husband’s shirts when she decided to do something about so-called “gun violence.”
Then, the story goes, she started Moms Demand Action all by herself.
From the Denver Post:
How a Colorado mother became the National Rifle Association’s worst nightmare
Shannon Watts folded laundry as news of the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 20 children and six adults flashed across her television screen in 2012, rattling something inside the mother of five that couldn’t be stifled. That newfound, burning activism would soon position the Colorado woman to identify herself as the National Rifle Association’s worst nightmare.
Watts scoured Facebook after the Sandy Hook shooting, looking to join a group similar to Mothers Against Drunk Driving but with a focus on ending gun violence. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she made her own.
The only thing missing from the first line of that fake news report: “Once upon a time….”
For anyone willing to do two minutes of Googling, one can quickly find her true background as a corporate communications professional and political operative. Under her maiden name of Shannon Troughton, she served as president and owner of VoxPop Public Relations, a boutique liberal PR firm.
And before that? We’ll let her explain from her press release via PR Newswire:
According to PR Week, “Shannon Troughton recently left a position at the helm of a 30-person corporate communications team at WellPoint, one of the largest health insurers in the US, to start her own healthcare firm, VoxPop Public Relations. She started the firm because she saw a need for boutique agencies that can provide the same service at a lower cost during the recession. At WellPoint, she launched a number of key efforts, such as its Zagats partnership, which allows users to rate their doctors, and the establishment of personalized health records for WellPoint members.”
Troughton has worked in public relations for nearly 20 years, specializing in media relations, product promotion, government affairs, and issues and crisis management.
At WellPoint, Troughton led a team of 40 public relations professionals responsible for implementing communications programs for the 14 states in which the company operates, as well as the company’s business units.
Previously, Ms. Troughton served as director of Global Communications for GE Healthcare, a $15 billion medical diagnostics and device business within General Electric.
Troughton also served as director of Public and Corporate Affairs for Monsanto Company in St. Louis..
Troughton began her career as a communications staffer for the administration of the late Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan in Jefferson City and is a graduate of the University of Missouri.
Just your typical housewife and mom, right?
The dark money behind March for Our Lives
Similarly, after the Parkland shooting, the media promoted the fiction that a retired FBI agent’s son and his merry band of plucky high school student friends started “March for Our Lives” (probably in their garage) after school.
Yes, once upon a time. Again, that was all a lie.
Now we learn that 99.5% all of the nearly $18 million raised in the first year by this new “student-led” group did not come from the $25 donations sent in by everyday Americans who just wanted to keep their children safe.
Instead, almost almost $17 million of the total came from exactly 36 donations of between $100,000 to $3.5 million.
Because millionaires, billionaires and their foundations and trust funds regularly hand over six- and seven-figure checks to brand new organizations run by a bunch of Florida high school kids, right?
To put that into perspective, the median household income in America comes in at $59,000.
Meanwhile, of that $18 million raised, a measly $80,000 came from donations under $5000 according to their IRS Form 990.
Stephen Gutowski at the Washington Free Beacon has the details:
The gun-control group responsible for a 2018 march on Washington, D.C., raised the vast majority of its funds from undisclosed donations over six figures, a recently released tax document shows.
The March For Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization launched in the aftermath of the deadly 2018 shootings at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is bankrolled almost entirely by large donations in excess of $100,000. The group reported $17,879,150 in contributions and grants over the course of 2018, its first year of operations. Ninety-five percent of those contributions came from 36 donations between $100,000 and $3,504,717—a grand total of $16,922,331.
The group’s reliance on a small number of large donations raises questions about its ability to turn rally-goers and supporters into donors. It also provides ammunition to gun-rights activists who have long cast the gun-control movement as driven not by grassroots supporters, but by billionaire benefactors like Michael Bloomberg…
While March For Our Lives is not required to disclose its donors under federal law, some businessmen and Hollywood celebrities vowed to provide generous contributions for the group’s 2018 march on Washington, D.C. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and billionaire businessman Eli Broad both gave $1,000,000, two of six donors to do so. George Clooney and wife Amal Clooney gave $500,000, as did fashion company Gucci.
Of course, you didn’t and won’t read about any of this in the New York Times or see it on the 60 Minutes. It doesn’t fit the fake news narrative that most Americans desperately want more gun control.
Register to vote at https://t.co/SrCltJsrBH
— David Hogg text VOTE to 954-954 (@davidhogg111) January 3, 2020
Once again, this effort to restrict Americans’ gun rights is all a sham. It’s run by experienced political operatives and organizers and papered over by a thin veneer of photogenic teenagers in order to give the effort the appearance of a grass roots origin and support.
And so it goes.
We all know where the big bucks come from. Preying on people’s fears and uninformed anger is what people like Soros and Bloomberg do! Oh, and it helps if the media has been bought and paid for.
I’d like to know if communist Chinese money is being donated to Shannon Watts. Or any gun grabber. Since the Red Chinese for some reason are very interested in making sure American citizens are disarmed.
Since the fires in California the Red Chinese have been buying up much of the destroyed properties in California. It seems the communists do like capitalism when they are making the $$$$.
They’re not really communists at all anymore. Communists end up like Venezuela and the USSR.
Xi Jinping pivoted China to fascism some time ago. They’re the modern embodiment of Mussolini’s “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
I agree. Even the American communists have embraced making money. But they are fooling no one in the age of the independent internet news website.
No I take that back. There still are useful idiots out there!
Calling BS. Not one of those “teens” is photogenic.
This.
In better news, the Virginia Beach City Council voted , after a 4-hour special session, to make VAB a Second Amendment Sanctuary City. The vote was 6-4, with mainly the black members voting against, after their “compromise” measure to table for even more “discussion” (at some unspecified later date) fell short.
They hoped to keep putting the vote off until eventually people stopped coming.
Possibly as many as 50 citizens spoke in favor of the measure, and 5 against. Yeah… this really needs more talking!
There are some interesting Shannon Watts connections, beyond the fact that she’s a former Monsanto lobbyist.
Thank you for the good news!
It is clear that there is no grassroots anti-gun movement. The entire movement is fully dependent upon billionaire donors. Participants do not even have to spend their own money to go rallies; they are given free rides in comfortable buses; free meals and free t-shirts, as well. Without that busing, the anti-gun rallies would fizzle. It is all a paid-for show meant to undermine our Constitution and advance a globalist agenda.
This is not a conspiracy theory. The evidence is right in front of us.
The hundreds of 2A supporters who arrived for lobby day in Pennsylvania’s capitol last summer all arrived at their own expense, no chartered, free buses. We paid for our gasoline, parking, t-shirts, and meals.
We are the grassroots movement!! The anti-gun movement is a well-funded, conspiracy.
No kidding Boch. Anyone paying attention knew all that.
Brought to America by the usual Commie/Leftard suspects,the likes of Soros,Bloomturd and assorted un American lefties.
Until limitations are placed upon how much these organizations receive and from whom they receive them from, this will continue to be a problem. Virginia’s last election is a good example (Colorado’s too for that matter), money outright bought both of those elections (and the bulk of the money came from out of state donors). This is an election/contribution reform that’s been needed for many, many years. Limit the money they can receive, especially the Dark Money, and you’ll limit their reach. The Bloomberg’s of the country need restrained.
Bloomie bought the Va. election, we all know that. So NOW Bloomie wants to buy the big one, he’s putting between 300 to 700 million bucks in the pot BEFORE the first PRIMARY vote is cast. How much will he pay for the presidential run??? At least a billion. His ads are running here in Florida back to back to back in some time periods (prime time) even on “cable” channels like Military history or the science channel or A&E. He’s really going for broke (except he’s goyt56 billion), won’t break him !
Y’all talk like it’s wrong for folks with out of state money to want to be represented in Virginia. (Colorado. Nevada. Illinois. Florida.)
Of course they get big donations of dark money … those eco-friendly yachts don’t sail themselves.
Sorry, wrong issue. I get confused which esistential thread they’re going on about this time.
So, having their purchased PR, agitation and get-out-the-vote rejected by the designated proles, the money for sanction folks have reoriented to buying astro-chads for their “initiatives” in the provinces.
Or am I missing something?
I have confusion.
If the deplorables are so irredeemable, and guns out in the population get the bitter clingers, what’s the problem again? Seems like a solution really.
Well, I understand why the Governor who can’t be trusted with shoe polish or a halloween party wouldn’t trust himself with arms. What this has to do with everybody else, I don’t know.
How’s this:
All the gun restrictions, bans, n registrations they like for people with the abysmal judgment to get photographed in blackfact / KKK drag, or both. If you’re dumb enough to go into politics after that yr not allowed to speak in public, either. Everybody else, gets to do what they want … until they screw up, too.
Here’s another:
Any legis-thing who can’t explain what the folding thing that goes up on a gun is (or similar) is disqualified from acting on gun laws.
Since red flag laws are such a good thing, we get to go to a judge n have them banned if we think they’re gonna say something stupid.
Excellent information yet unsurprising. Has anyone done any similar work with other major gun control orgs out there? It would be interesting to have a spreadsheet of all this information and be able to refer to it. The gun control lobby doesn’t get credit for how big and powerful they actually are before you even consider the sympathetic media.
Then again the sympathetic media is another topic in its own right. It would be interesting to put a rough valuation on all the ‘free’ coverage they get too.
Thanks for exposing these fairy tales.
Turn over any gun control rock and you will find Bloomb@stard, Soros or the Joyce Foundation. Or all three.
An interesting fact to know is who controls the disbursement of MFOL”s $18 million? Is it a bunch of teens or political operatives?
March For Our Lives sounds like a pro-life group.
They paid $2 million in security fees
Also, they say that their “Travel grants” were used to bus in kids to rallies.
*Now pull up Moms Demand Action and see how much Shannon Watts gets paid
Russian oligarchs made big contributions to the NRA for access to lobbying channels, so pots and kettles and such.
Any sort of organization needs money and if they’re not picky about where it comes from you’re going to find shady folks providing it. That’s not an endorsement of the practice, just a reality check.
Thanks for the article https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/the-big-dollar-dark-money-contributions-that-fund-march-for-our-lives/ !
This is a true story that needed to be investigated more and talk more about it because it is a real problem that money that can goes for a help to a people who don’t have a place to stay or even don’t have something to eat just giving to a company that will create weapon and will kill people. It is ok that people will use service like this https://triceloans.com/self-employed-personal-loans/ to get some money for their live but what if they could just write a letter to a government and expect help from them, this sound strange but in 2022 it can be a real life if we will do something about that.
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