Sources tell MS NOW that agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at staff members’ homes.

FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state, three people briefed on the search told MS NOW.

Agents also fanned out across the state, showing up at the homes of the group’s leaders and staff members, carrying some subpoenas and seeking information and electronic devices, according to the three people briefed, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive ongoing investigation. Members of the group contacted lawyers on Thursday to determine their legal options, the people said.

Prentiss Haney, a board member of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told MS NOW Thursday night that agents approached people with connections to the group, including some who had performed basic canvassing and volunteer work, and pressed them for information.

Agents were “basically trying to fish for information,” Haney said.

  • NM_Gringo
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    20 hours ago

    Sad day for a once competent organization. This is just straight up election interference.

    • procrastitron
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      50
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      19 hours ago

      They were never competent; the FBI has always been crooked.

      Remember that this is the same organization that tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide.

      Before that, they were instrumental in the Red Scare, and before that they were involved in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2.

      • synae[he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        16 hours ago

        Am I naive for thinking that due their compartmentelization there are good things happening and bad things happening and we can’t just abolish the whole thing due to some silos that get away with disgusting things?

        To be clear I’m not trying to defend them at all, tying to understand. And I’d err on the side of abolishment personally. But I don’t have solid views or reasoning on the matter.

        So my question to someone with your perspective is, is there any good they do that is worth preserving somehow? If you could reshape their entire mission, power structure, and oversight personally, is there anything good there that you would keep?

        TIA if you spend effort replying.

        • procrastitron
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          13 hours ago

          Any organization that allows inexcusable behavior is fundamentally flawed as an organization even if that behavior is somehow isolated in silos.

          The whole point of having an organization is to align all the people in the org so if subgroups of people are doing horrible things then that means (at best) the org was missing the necessary guardrails to prevent that.

          As for somehow reforming it; don’t bother. It would be better to restart with new organizations that don’t have the baked in, systemic flaws of the original.

        • femtek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          15 hours ago

          As a whole they are rotten from the beginning like all the other agencies. Hell even the army core of engineers poisoned citizens with radiation on purpose in inner cities.