Back in March we highlighted current Councilmember Evan Glass’s former employer / non-profit, Gandhi Brigade Youth Media or GB Youth Media. The organization gets thousands in public money each year. In fact, it got a pretty sweet deal back in March 2018, as Mr. Glass was navigating his way through primaries and running for County Council (Councilmember “At Large” of course, which is based on voter dilution):
In March 2018, Evan Glass’s group got $150,000 from the state taxpayer courtesy of ‘bond bills’ pushed by Silver Spring area delegates. From ‘Source of the Spring / Mike Diegel’: Gandhi Brigade signed a 20-year lease (with option to renew) to move into the library’s lower level. The organization plans to begin construction in July and complete the project in late August.
The non-profit also got “advancement grants” in 2020 and an operating grant later on. It also appears to have squeezed some money from the City of Takoma Park, MD recently, per a document outlining ‘FY22 Community Quality of Life Grants’ (see below). And actually, that is fine – the City of Takoma Park is specifically where this non-profit outfit should be getting its funding, not the population of MoCo at-large, as we shall see later.
The money doled out by the City of Takoma Park is supposed to go to free laptops for a select few residents who reside only in a few apartment complexes in the city. It doesn’t seem fair to other poverty-line kids who don’t necessarily live in these apartment complexes, but, fine, if this is what the few thousand taxpayers of Takoma Park want to see their tax dollars spent on, go for it. This kind of granting done at a small local level is far, far preferable to having all one million-plus of us in MoCo chip-in for a partisan, activist non-profit.
Anyways, Gandhi Brigade Youth Media has re-branded as of March, 2023 to ‘Action Youth Media’. But if taxpayers of MoCo thought this was a move to a truly more moderated, focused non-profit mission that simply wants to train the youth on how to use graphic design software, cameras and video technologies, it appears they’d be wrong. The organization’s “our story” page has a lengthy tribute to Social Justice, for example:
Even the description provided recently at idealist.org for a new ‘Board Member’ to Action Youth Media sounds like an audition for a Democrat party-aligned activist 501c4 issue-advocacy organization, or maybe even a 527 PAC… not a 501c3 public charity. And also… underpaid minimum wage jobs? Where? In Montgomery County? The minimum wage is being hiked yet again on July 1, this time to $14.50 for even the tiniest of businesses or start-ups with barely any employees. The youths will sure need it to afford the state gas tax hike to over 47-cents per gallon the same day.
By the way, such regressive energy tax hikes, and labor cost jumps, drive up the costs of living for all of us and ultimately make everyone feel “underpaid” — because the money stretches a lot less far!
GBYM, now doing business as Action Youth Media, has a long history of promoting only certain activist causes through media and video and awards ceremonies. Not causes like transparent government, accountable local government, career politicians, MoCo government waste and fraud, Montgomery County’s regressive tax burden on working families, school choice, the effect of EV tire pollution on MoCo, and so on. Nah, causes like the following:
Or these, awarded by the organization in 2021…
Is the organization truly open to alternative art and political / advocacy perspectives? It doesn’t seem like it so far. Is it about being a public charity that promotes education and charitable work — or a front for something else? And if it wants to be an activist / local MoCo Democrat party aligned group that is all okay – but then it should be 100% privately funded and not sent thousands of tax dollars from the general MoCo public.
More to come.
