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Hearing that 45-year-old Byron Williams, the heavily-armed and bulletproof-vested ex-con who got in a shootout this week with the California Highway Patrol after an I-580 traffic stop, was headed to the ACLU and The Tides Center to kill liberals made us wonder: how had this ignorant two-striker from Groveland who lived with his mom (and broke into her gun case to steal her guns for his aborted raid on liberal institutions) ever even heard of Tides?
The Tides Center, located at the Presidio, is essentially an aggregator of wealthy heirs’ money, who want to do good but would rather not be bothered doing the due diligence responsible philanthropy requires nowadays. They do that homework, and meet their donors’ overall goals without bothering them with the specifics of each beneficiary’s every operation.
They also provide spectacular conference center space — I attended great day-long team-building exercises when working for a non-profit San Francisco AIDS service organization, thanks to a colleague’s wife who worked at Tides — with quiet and peaceful views of the Golden Gate bridge. Contemplative, dedicated to social justice, low-profile, but essentially a capacity-building, incubator-providing, infrastructure-enabling clearing house for do-good inherited wealth: here’s Tides’ mission statement, from their website.
Our mission is to partner with philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations across the country and across the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected.
Scary, right?
How does a guy like Byron Williams get motivated to go kill liberals at Tides?
Oliver Willis connected the dots for me this morning.
Byron Williams’ mom was quoted saying she kept her home arsenal "because a revolution is coming" and that her son watched the news and was disturbed by the liberal takeover of America.
According to the suspect’s mother, who spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle, Williams was upset because as an ex-felon he was having trouble securing a job, and was upset at "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items."
I wonder what news he was watching?
Take a look at this screenshot Oliver captured right here.
As another FDL contributor pointed out via email, Byron Williams must have missed Glenn Beck’s wee programme the day he urged his viewers not to kill anyone.
I’m still waiting for the screaming "Terror in The Homeland" headlines, as soon as you’re done paying attention to Andrew Breitbart, So-Called Liberal Media. This is Beck-inspired tea-party terror. It needs to be acknowledged.
58 Comments
Scary shit.
Why aren’t we hearing about this?
Could it be that Andrew Breitbart gave us a “look over there, racism!” moment with his Shirley Sherrod misadventure, just as the tea-party terror story wasn’t breaking in the national media?
And we all know that if this involved a brown-skinned Muslim guy wearing a bulletproof vest shooting at cops, this would be all over the news.
Lots of lives were saved by the quick-thinking CHP, who took lotsa fire from this wahoo. He shot two of troopers and exchanged more than 150 rounds in the ensuing firefight — and Williams planned to lie in wait at the ACLU’s SF office and The Tides Center, picking off employees as they arrived at work that morning.
Wonder where those ideas percolated outside his head?
“Reload” indeed, Mrs Palin.
Well said – totally agree. This guy is beyond scary!
“Why aren’t we hearing about this?”
I don’t think another case of terrorism helps Obama’s agenda. This could then get tied into the Dana Priest story about the bloated/ineffective intelligence, rather than a complete distraction unrelated to terrorism intelligence like Sherrod was. If a federal agency had stopped Williams rather than a state agency, then it would be different as it could be used to counteract the Dana Priest article.
We are hearing about this. You just wrote about it.
Oh, why are we not hearing about this in the agenda-setting-in-DC corporate media?
They don’t want to alarm anyone about a real imminent danger. It’s bad for business. Phony dangers are more important because they last forever.
What an odd story. I would like to know how he knew about the Tides Center. Hired?
Note that “Black Farmers USA” is also on Beck’s board. That’s the group that helped win the lawsuit settlement against USDA, and which also involved Sherrod. So Sherrod and “black farmers” were also made a target for future crazies to hit — and Breitbart hit them through Sherrod. The next step will be to go after the $1.2 billion Congress still needs to authorize to pay the settlement.
Shit, I see that. Shit on a shingle, Beck is not a human being.
I’m wondering how many and what kind of guns mommy had in her gun case? Also wondering if he got the ammo at home? 150 rounds is a lot bullets.
150 bullets = 3 boxes (retail) of ammo. In terms of magazines, that’s about 5 for an AR-15 or a WASR-10 (in TX – I don’t know what capacity restrictions CA has on rifle magazines). It sounds like quite a lot of ammo to carry , but 5 mags isn’t as much as you might think. I know quite a few people who carry that much for an afternoon varmint hunting trip.
150 rounds is NOT a lot of ammo for someone who owns multiple guns. The SF Chron says he had a 9mm pistol, a .308 rifle and a shotgun. Pistol ammo comes 50 to a box, rifle ammo 20/box and shotshells 25/box, so at about $20 per box that’s probably just over $100 for a couple of boxes of each. I know gun nuts who own a dozen guns and would have at least one box for each, probably many boxes for their favorites.
It is a lot of *magazines*. A big 9 mm holds about 15 rounds per magazine, a hunting style rifle only about 5 or a military style rifle 15 or 20 (a .308 could be either), and most shotguns 5 rounds individually loaded (no clip). Most people I know don’t own more than one or two magazines per gun, although the nuts are probably hoarding both ammo and magazines now (I’ve read that magazines have become scarcer and pricier.) So, he probably spent a lot of time reloading after the first minute or two.
Agree with some of what you say, but the AR-15s and WASR-10s have 30-round mags (and higher capacity ones are pretty readily available mail-order). The military used 15-round and 30-round magazines for the M16 when I was in (way too long ago), so I expect that they are still using similar ones now.
Also, many full-size 9mm pistols have 17-round magazines available standard. The Glock G17, for example, holds 17 in the standard magazine and either 19 or 33 in extended magazines.
True, but .308 rounds are significantly heavier than .223, so even if it was an assault rifle, I don’t think huge mags are all that common in that caliber. I could be wrong, though, ’cause I don’t play that game.
I rounded off to “about 15″ since that’s the most common range for a double-stack 9mm. Seriously extended magazines are unwieldy enough that they’re not very popular, in my limited experience.
I’d give good odds that the guy spent about half that time curled up on the seat stuffing cartridges into clips. Just sayin’
It’s probably important to emphasize that the “150 rounds exchanged” includes, I believe, law enforcement rounds. And that the perpetrator’s pickup truck was riddled with bullet holes. As were at least two CHP cruisers; I mean, his rounds pierced the sheet metal, leaving BIG holes.
There is also a nice post on this over at TPM.
The Tides organization is apparently a frequent straw-demon of Beck: He last mentioned them on July 13…
All fun & games until it isn’t, and you get Radio Rwanda effect.
Radio Rwanda effect. Nice turn of phrase.
“Second Amendment Remedies” in action.
I’m afraid there’s going to be more of this type of thing.
To which the teabaggers and their cronies in DC will feign shock and dismay and then outrage that you could possibly accuse them of any nefarious behavior. It’s already old. Shirley Sherrod should be the teaching moment. These people are not benevolent people who simply disagree on policy. They are radicals who will stop at nothing, including murder and terrorism to get their way.
Explain to me again, please, how a Beck benefits in the long run from driving people such as this to self-destructive and movement-discrediting acts such as this? Are there souls for whom this sort of dismal, desperate, deeply destructive and stupid act actually serves as any sort of inspiration to go out and do more of the same? If so, then any moment they might claim can be only a very short one since only an idiot shoots at cops. If not, then even from their distorted perspective there can be no value in the initial violence.
Just deeply stupid. It would also be deeply sad, if it weren’t so very infuriating.
he is an attention queen, the more attention he gets the more he likes it, the more his base likes it
the sponsors used to like it till they faced boycott
these people believe in what Beck is saying. it’s that simple. amazing to see people choosing to “buy” this. they are scared, out and out. think Obama is out to get them. doing “such and such” just for “payback.”
i tell you, it’s amazing and really frightening to listen to otherwise sane appearing people talk and think this way.
True, though, The ROT is complete. a lie repeated over and over becomes true.
scary what is next for Americans
Where is this country where the Liberals are ‘ramming legislation through Congress’?
I wonder how Beck tied it all together in terms of his paranoidal fantasies.
I’m surprised that Williams didn’t plan on attacking the Apollo Alliance offices, as well, since they are located in SF, too. But maybe he realized he couldn’t accomplish all of the “Revolution” on his own…and like the Hutarees believed that others would come to his aid. After all, once the ACLU and Tides was attacked the Beck-heads would know just who the others were on Beck’s flow chart.
I think that it’ll be interesting to see what this guy says during his trial and who supports his legal defense team. Or will they string him out to dry, like they did the Hutarees…by claiming that they are “rogue” and “not what we are about”?
Maybe the ACLU?
Easy enough. My guess is that he Googled ‘ACLU’ and found the closest site that listed a physical, rather than mailing only, address – a great many ACLU sites only list P.O. boxes for exactly the reason of the death threats they receive.
Maybe this is the reason.
I am shocked–SHOCKED!–that you would suggest Glenn Beck’s mouth-foam had any connection to this!
But that is the way to bet.
how is this not now literal incitement on Beck’s part? Where is the attorney to take it on?
Beck’s “speech” is completely “protected”, fuzed, under that sometimes “quaint” document, known as the Constitution, indeed, one expects the Supreme Court, in all their wisdom, to soon expand such protections for the cutting-edge “journalism” so much in favor these days, just as they have encouraged the proliferation of guns and greed …
Good morning, all you rousing rabblers!
DW
speech is not entirely protected, thinking the constitution protects you against irresponsible violence causing speech is a misunderstanding of the protection
of course we all know the old, “you are not free to shout “fire” in a crowded movie theatre”
But can you yell “fire” to a group of militia visiting ACLU headquarters?
Perris, where have you been?
Ah, the fire next time will be in the bellies of those who Oilfieldguy so well described @ 23.
Yelling “fire” on a world-wide and everywhere, “battlefield”, is, to mix metaphors, par for the coarse …
;~DW
been a busy summer, tie that in with the disillusion courtesy of our resident trojan president and I guess it all seems so useless to me
I didn’t know about this, Teddy, and it sounds like sort of a big deal. Rachel pointed out the divisive nature of the right wing wurlitzer, pointing out they view the recession as a zero-sum game. When Democrats win, they lose and the unworthy, pigmentally challenged are taking jobs and benefits away from them.
The cognitive dissonance from the founding principles of conservatism is amazing. The bootstrap philosophy and rags-to-riches tales of overcoming incredible hardships in the pioneering spirit of America is being supplanted by the thought that trying is fruitless, the gubmint and liberals have destroyed all opportunities. Victimology runs rampant with these people, “It’s all about the man, keeping you down,” and the weaker minds defend “liberty” by hunting liberals.
pigmentally challenged?
Yes. Meaning non-whites. I’m following Shakes-Palin lead in creating new werds.
“To be, or not to be, in what respects, Charlie?”
I think it really means the opposite, but no biggie.
Since you were channeling the right wing wurlitzer I knew you were refering to unworthy non-whites. Because that’s the way they all think.
You are, of course, correct. Sometimes I get rather oblique. Wandering around in the mind of Teahadists is an odd experience, but the default setting is white is right and straight is normal. To be anything else is less than, or challenged.
Slight OT: apparently the US State Department is determined to deploy it own army in Iraq after the “regular” troops withdraw …
One imagines that Hillary needs something to do that simply lets her be one of the “guys” … hanging “tough” and all that macho stuff?
One further imagines that “Contractors” (and their revolving-door “patrons”) will have an “endless” (and lucrative) payday?
Presumably, Congress will not have to “sign off” on such clever use of our “resources”, freeing them to deal with import issues … here, in the Homey-wood land?
DW
This story was published in the back pages of the Sacramento Bee and possibly other newspapers in NorCal. Since I don’t listen to the radio or watch tv much, not sure if it got any “play.” Given the Sherrod fiasco and the media’s need to kiss Breitbart’s butt, I doubt it.
Thanks for connecting the dots to Glenn Beck. I figured it must’ve been that POS who tipped this clearly unbalanced individual off to this organization. Why else would someone like that go after this group??
Sarah Palin, who is a big-time national personality (whether we like or not, she’s listened to), will stand up and scream about how gawd-awful it was that the Tea Party was called racist. And Palin’s diatribes will get loads of air time, and the NAACP will be made to look like meanies, at the least.
Yet this dude goes out with an arsneal and a bullet-proof vest intent on killing liberals, and we get: crickets.
Where are the national “liberal” (or at least DINO) figureheads calling out the egregiousness of this action – OR – Breitbart?? Per usual: crickets…
Getting the picture, folks? If you’re perceived to be liberal, you’re toast, and ain’t no one gonna stand up for us. That’s it. Message is quite clear.
All credit for dot-connecting accrues to Oliver Willis, linked in the post.
Will there have to be a full blown racial incident in America with significant loss of life before action is taken against the provocateurs at fox?
Yes, and it will probably have to involve the President.
The constant, repetitive media identifying “targets” is so reminiscent of Rwanda.
On a different note, is anyone else troubled by the horrible grammar and atrociuous editing that seems to be the norm in the printed media thse days? I could barely get through the link to the KTVU online piece about the incident. I’d like to know how some of those writers and editors get away with murder.
Yes, I am also troubled by our much lowered standards for English language and grammar. The positions first cut at most Legacy Media were copy-editors, and it really shows.
But I do wonder why Legacy Media doesn’t hire literate reporters.
Word.
DW
So he was headed for the ACLU of Northern California in SF? shit. I heard about it when it happened on the radio. He was stopped pretty close to the Oakland office. I had the same reaction you did. Tides???? Why Tides???
The Glenn Beck whiteboard makes it understandable. Does Glenn Beck have a comment? I think he needs to start having comments. It happens too often for him to always say he can’t be responsible for every hornet he stirs up by kicking the nests.
Thanks for the piece.
Heaven forbid if we ever lost any of those liberals…or progressives.
That is beyond rude; how vile to wish death.
It’s what some learn from their corporate masters via their mouthpieces, GlennRush.
And then, for reasons which are beginning to be less clear to me, we liberals are always supposed to be “polite” and “mature.” Not sure if that’s getting us anywhere, sad to say.
I tend to obsess on back stories looking for connections, which is why I asked the question about the shooter’s mother and her gun collection. I also wonder if she might have called 911 and tipped off the cops, or if someone else did. Why did they pull him over?
Here’s a few random observations and thoughts about some of the larger issues I see.
1. Byron Williams was living with his mother after getting out of prison. I’m sure he couldn’t find a job, right? So he would have been homeless, if she had refused to let him live with her. Byron probably didn’t have any money either, so he had nothing to do except sit around and listen to hate radio and watch Glen Beck.
2. There are many people in the same situation as Byron Williams because there is very little, if any assistance and support for people who are being released from prison. If they don’t have a significant other, relative, or friend to provide them with a place to live and food to eat, or if that situation doesn’t work out, they will be homeless and hungry.
3. Many of them also will be pissed off and I can assure everyone that they will be more violence prone than they were before they went to prison. It’s no secret that prison does that people.
4. Parole supervision isn’t going to protect anyone because parole officers are overwhelmed by the number of people they have to supervise. About the most we can reasonably expect of them is that they will issue parole violation arrest warrants for people who fail to show-up for their monthly check-in at the parole office. Someone might check a parolee’s listed address, but if he or she isn’t there, there isn’t going to be any follow-up because nobody has time to do that. Hiring new parole officers or police officers to hunt for parole absconders isn’t going to happen because the states don’t have any money to hire more officers. If anything, they’re going to be reducing staff. Obama and Congress aren’t going to bail out the states.
5. We have 1 out of every hundred adults locked up in federal and state prisons and county jails. Many inmates are being released early because prisons are overcrowded. Consider also that 1 in 36 people is on probation or parole.
6. I don’t know if anyone has any idea how many people are homeless and what percentage of them are probation and parole absconders. We can reasonably surmise that the number of homeless people will be increasing by leaps and bounds with a moribund economy, not even enough new jobs to keep pace with the number of new people entering the work force, at least 15 million people unemployed and climbing, a real unemployment rate of 22%, 1 in 8 people on food stamps, more than a million housing foreclosures projected for this year (578,000 through June 30), and a president who with each passing day proves that he doesn’t give a shit about people because his sole focus is doing whatever it takes to please the rich and pursuing his personal fetish, which is to eliminate social security even though it may be the only thing that keeps a roof over the heads of millions and catfood on their tables.
7. In other words we are sitting on a bomb waiting to go off. It’s not a matter of whether; it’s a matter of when, because desperation and armed violence is the natural and probable consequence of the situation in which more and more people are finding themselves.
8. Reckless homicide is generally defined by law as follows: A person commits reckless homicide if he or she (a) engages in conduct that causes the death of another person, (b) while knowing that such conduct created a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to another person.
9. Glen Beck, FOX NOOSE, and all of the hate radio jocks know damn well that they’re tinkering with a bomb and they absolutely get thrills up their legs playong the Rwanda Radio game. The problem is proving causation because a prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they caused someone in their audience to kill someone. They also have the First Amendment defense and the increasing indoctrination of the American public that progressives and liberals threaten freedom and deserve to die. To be honest, I believe many police and prosecutors place considerably less value on our lives than the lives of conservatives and rich people, and I do not believe they will investigate and prosecute people who kill progressives and liberals with the same enthusiasm as they would others.
10. Fortunately, the California Highway Patrol prevented Byron Williams from carrying out his plan. People at the ACLU and the Tides were lucky. As more and more desperate people, incited by Glen Beck and others, take matters into their own hands, sooner or later people are going to die. This already happened at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
11. I know it’s unfashionable to invoke comparisons to what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and I am not suggesting that progressives, liberals, and members of the LGTB community are at risk to be rounded up and slaughtered in concentration camps, but I am alarmed about the threat to our lives caused by the increasing demonization of the left and the lack of concern that is so prevalent in the MSM. Obama’s open hatred and scorn for us does not help.
12. I think we need to be more visible rather than less, and I think we need to practice the Golden Rule doing good deeds for others so that our visibility by word and deed speaks for itself countering the efforts to demonize us. Assisting people like Byron Williams who are being released from prison and the homeless should be a top goal. Maybe Big Brother/Sister programs, street feeds, and converting abandoned buildings into shelters would work so that someone like Byron Williams would turn off scum like Glen Beck instead of listening to him.
13. I also think we need to seize the initiative with massive non-violent demonstrations in Washington, D.C. and large regional urban centers.
You make some very good points. The issue in CA is that rich Republicans (at the encouragement of the prison wardens’ unions) seek to punish and incarcerate as many minorities and poor people as possible via draconian, short-sighted sentencing laws that typically fall hardest on the “least” amongst us.
Republicans voted in very punitive prison sentences basically as unfunded mandates, which the courts reluctantly had to follow. Many a rightwing judge has spoken out about how foolish this is bc, as you indicate, prisons just create more prisoners. People who are incarcerated are much more likely to turn to crime when they get out, esp bc Republicans HATE any kind of programs (don’t waste my hard earned money!!) that might go towards prisoner education, training for jobs, etc.
So what happens? It’s probably mostly as you hypothesize in your post. Priosners get out; have few to no opportunites; sit around getting angry; and then there’s incidents like this. Conservatives, if they even hear about it, *may* wring their hands (or like some here have indicated: celebrate that some dastardly liberals would be attacked; so very nice) and decry it. But they’ll go no further to really figure out what’s causing it.
Bc of CA’s financial crisis – the dog forbid that we fairly tax the super wealthy (of which there are many in this stat) – Schwartenegger has had little choice but to let many prisoners go before their sentences are up (not that it would matter all that much). Plus counties have been laying off workers in the droves, which includes those in Probation & Parole.
Et voila: here you have example #1 of the mess that results.
But the dog forbid we fairly tax the billionaires here making out like bandits. The dog forbid that we provide any worthwhile programs for prisoners to assist them to becoming eligible for employment when they get out. And so on…
But hey, clearly in our nation right now, it’s just fine and jim dandy if it’s a white dood going after liberals. He’s not some sort of “domestic terrorist.” Nope, not at all.
I believe conservatives decided to use criminal laws via the War Against Drugs to do what they could not otherwise do; namely, imprison and disenfranchise minorities and liberals. They certainly never seemed to be bothered by the CIA’s role in distributing heroin from the Golden Triangle in SE Asia and its later partnership with the Nicaraguan Contras in distributing massive amounts of cocaine to the U.S.
The bottom line is the conservatives declared war on minorities and liberals in the 70s and stole the election in 1980 with Bush the Elder’s deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini to delay releasing the U.S. Embassy hostages until after Reagan was elected. That deal permitted Reagan to exploit and credibly attack Carter for incompetence in dealing with the crisis assuring Reagan’s win.
The conservatives have been systematically destroying the economy, the middle class, and our democracy ever since.
Obviously Beck is a total POS, but let’s not forget that above him is an even bigger POS, Murdoch. This is the kind of hatred that he WANTS or Beck wouldn’t be on the air.