Another vocal tentacle in the octopus that is Orange County’s non-profit Left is Chispa-OC (not to be confused with the Latino dating app).
According to Chispa’s bills itself as “an organizing, political home for young Latinxs building power and community in Orange County.” References to “power” and the “building” of it suffuse the left-wing group’s website, while mentions of liberty or freedom are absent.
A few days ago, Chispa attacked property owner groups for informing voters about Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez’s history as an obstreperous deadbeat tenant.
OC Independent broke that story three years ago. Lopez never responded to requests for comment, and never denied or refuted the story.
Now, Lopez is running for the state Assembly. And the young radicals at Chispa are upset that the property owners and housing providers whom Lopez has spent her brief political career attacking are spending money to inform voters about Lopez’s dishonesty and lack of integrity regarding her landlord.
This is a con. It’s hypocrisy. Dishonesty.
What Chispa is criticizing is a a free association of property owners – citizens – utilizing their 1st Amendment rights to defend themselves and other property owners against a politician who has based her career on using government to advance a failed policy (rent control) that is ultimately a form of government-enforced theft.
Chispa is trying to manufacture fear and alarm about the amount they are spending, insinuating it is immoral and “too much.”
This from a group that spent a similar amount of money in the 2024 elections through its own political action committee. Apparently, that’s OK for the Chispa-istas because they’re “Latinx” who build power and care about social justice, etc.
Chispa here is also employing a narrative tactic common to left-wing non-profits: they and their endorsed politicians are standing up to powerful special interests.
This is not only nonsense, but base hypocrisy.
Chispa Is A Latinx Front For The Powerful, Rich, San Francisco-based Tides Advocacy
Chispa endeavors to present itself as a young, hip, group of grassroots, street-level progressives fighting against rich, shadowy, powerful special interests and structural injustice.
The reality is something else entirely.
Chispa is a front. It is a “fiscal sponsorship” of the Tides Advocacy – which really is a rich, shadowy powerful special interest.
Chispa staffers are, in reality, salaried employees of Tides Advocacy (which now goes by the moniker “Beyond Impact”). They make at least high five-figure salaries, get health and vacation benefits – even a 401K plan.
Think of Chispa as revolutionaries with a retirement plan.
Being a fiscal sponsee of Tides Advocacy means Tides takes care of all the ”back office” stuff – payroll, administration, funding – so Chispa staff can focus on being political activists and pushing their political agendas.
Tides Advocacy is part of the Tides Nexus – which InfluenceWatch.com describes as “a collection of center-left pass-through funding entities and nonprofit fiscal sponsors associated with the Tides Foundation.”
San Francisco-based Tides Advocacy had revenues of $92.5 million in 2024 – up from $65.8 million the year before. Tides Advocacy commands enormous financial resources. It funds and/or controls scores of left-wing political non-profits across the nation, sing them to push a broad progressive-Left political agenda.
Chispa OC is Tides’ Latinx-flavored front group in Orange County.
Chispa’s Dishonesty
In the above Instagram post, someone asks if the mailer attacking Lopez is truthful (which it is)
Whichever Chispa staffer wrote the response – presumably the group’s communications director Hector Bustos – lied by omission, saying only that the judgment against Lopez has been vacated because her landlord missed a document submittal — failing to note that the landlord simply a homeowner and acting as his own attorney – as if this vindicated Lopez.
The Chispa staffer then tried to dismiss the issue by attacking the messenger, noting the OC Independent has received very modest grant support from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association. This is not a secret and pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars at the disposal of Chispa’s controller, Tides Advocacy.
We rebutted Chispa’s spin in comments on the Instagram post. We would share them here – except the fearless folks at Chispa have deleted them. Apparently, they think censorship and fear of debate are ways to “build power.”
