George Soros Funded Ferguson Protests

By: Brian Feldt
bizjournals.com

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist George Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support groups that helped spur the protests in Ferguson following the shooting death of Michael Brown in August.

That’s according to The Washington Times, which reported Soros’ funding helped enable grass-roots, on-the-ground protesters in Ferguson.

Those protests garnered international media attention when they turned violent during the days following Brown’s death in August and then again in November, when a grand jury decided not to indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s death.

Soros is founder of the nonprofit Open Society Foundations, a group charged with holding governments accountable to their people.

The Washington Times researched the story by reviewing financial records of Open Society Foundations and interviewing what the newspaper called key players.

Officials with the organization, based in New York City, did not immediately return requests for comment.

“The incidents, whether in Staten Island, Cleveland or Ferguson, were spontaneous protests — we don’t have the ability to control or dictate what others say or choose to say,” Kenneth Zimmerman, director of the foundation, told the Washington Times. “But these circumstances focused people’s attention — and it became increasingly evident to the social justice groups involved that what a particular incident like Ferguson represents is a lack of accountability and a lack of democratic participation.”

While the organization helped mobilize protesters in Ferguson, other Soros-funded groups remotely monitored related incidents they could portray as a conservative missteps, and developed academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive, the report said.
Continue Reading

Soros has been a main funding source for the majority of “left” movements including Occupy Wall Street.