VietRise and ChispaOC are two radical advocacy groups that have been striving mightily during the past few years to shift Orange County local governments – especially Santa Ana – to the hard Left of the political spectrum.
They both played a vocal role in pushing the imposition in 2021 of the most draconian rent control in the state by Santa Ana’s newly-ensconced progressive council majority.
VietRise has been championing the cause of allowing foreigners to vote in Santa Ana municipal elections, and played key behind-the-scenes role in lobbying the city council’s left-wing majority to place Measure DD on the November ballot.
VietRise and ChispaOC aren’t actually independent advocacy groups. In reality, they are arms of Tides Advocacy, a giant San Francisco-based non-profit with tens of millions of dollars at its command.
Tides has been around for decades, functioning as a de facto money laundering service for rich progressives who want fund radical causes without leaving fingerprints (known as Donor Advised Funds).
Tides Advocacy’s politics are on the far, far, far Left.
For example, Tides Advocacy wants to get rid of the police. Not just reduce or “re-prioritize” funding. Tides Advocacy wants to an “end to policing.”
Not just defund the police. End the police.
Check the date on this X.com post: July 9, 2024. So this wasn’t some ideological spasm from the heady days of the summer of 2020 when radical leftists believed themselves at the crux of a world historical moment when they could broadcast – unvarnished, unalloyed and unafraid – their deep-seated hostility to policing. Most have since then retreated from such advocacy once they realized the proletariat wanted more cops on the street and more criminals in prison.
Not Tides Advocacy. Just a few short months ago, the radical funding source is unashamedly proclaiming its intent to get rid of police and prisons. As their post states, Tides thinks abolishing the police is “what people want.” We’d like to know what people they’re talking to.
You can read about the revolutionary radicalism of Tides Advocacy on the group’s website. They don’t hide it. And their front groups are actively trying to advance that radical political agenda in Santa Ana (and Anaheim, Garden Grove and other communities).
Like Tides Advocacy boasts in that X.com post, their “partners” are “fighting for” the end of policing.
VietRise and ChispaOC are partners of Tides Advocacy. The technical term is “fiscal sponsorships” – meaning Tides Advocacy takes care of all the administration, payroll, and back-end office functions so the staffers can focus on being political activists.
VietRise and ChispaOC staffers themselves are actually employees of deep-pocketed Tides Advocacy, which is why those groups are able to offer good salaries, benefits, vacation, 401ks, etc. Radicalism with a retirement plan.
Contrary to the image they strive to present, these aren’t grass-roots, street-based community organizers. They are professional, well-resourced political activists.
Tides Advocacy is part of the Tide Nexus, which InfluenceWatch.com describes as “a collection of center-left pass-through funders and fiscal sponsorship nonprofits grouped around the Tides Foundation.”
In other words, VietRise and ChispaOC are part of an influential and deep-pocketed organization that is intent on getting rid of policing and prisons.
That has consequences for Santa Ana.
The head of VietRise, Tracy La, is a member of the city’s Rental Housing Board. In 2022, she lambasted Garden Grove Councilmember Kim Nguyen for saying it might be a good idea to consider deporting illegal immigrants who are violent criminals. In La’s eyes, protecting the innocent from violence is simply “throwing immigrant communities under the bus for political gain.”
READ: Woke Progressives Attack Kim Nguyen In 2nd Supervisor District Race
La is an employee of Tides Advocacy, a group that wants to get rid of the police.
ChispaOC’s communications director Hector Bustos was elected to the Santa Ana Unified School District in 2022. He got lucky and ran unopposed. Bustos has been focused on implementing a radical ideological agenda that has little to do with improving educational outcomes for SAUSD students.
Bustos is an employee of Tides Advocacy, a group that wants to get rid of the police.
The tentacles go deeper. More to come.
