Thread by @DataRepublican

🧵🚨 THREAD: How 50501 Was Co-Opted By the NGO Protest Industry - And Its Creator Doxxed 🚨🧵

50501, one of the most prominent organizations behind the past year's protests, started as a Reddit post.
“50 states. 50 protests. 1 movement.”

Within months:
• Federal trademark filings
• Competing nonprofits
• Moderator purges
• Social media takeover
• Coalition absorption
• The original creator pushed out

And yes... he was doxxed in the process.

This was structural capture by the NGO establishment.

Here are the receipts. 👇

And as always, patience as I pull this thread together:

Here's the timeline.

On January 27, 2025, Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos registers American Opposition Super PAC with FEC, 9 days before 50501's first protest.

I've had a run-in with Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos before. Nice man, as you can see.

I complied with his request and posted a thread on him to correct the record:

https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1942417665248878730

Anyway, Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos created the PAC just two days after u/Evolved_Fungi created r/50501.

50501 announced their first nationwide protests - on February 5th, 2025 - with a second PAC, Political Revolution.

The domain fiftyfifty dot one was registered just one day before the protests.

50501 and Political Revolution released a press statement announcing the series of nationwide protests.

Separately (?), American Opposition via Carlo Alvarez-Aranyos claimed to be behind the February 5th protests. So that's two PACs behind it: American Revolution and American Opposition.

Alvarez-Aranyos thanked 50501 publicly in a speech:

Parker, an ally of u/Evolved_Fungi (who created 50501) reports he was pressured to reassign trademarks to an outside entity (50501 Inc.). The original founders on Reddit also report pressure to abandon the nonprofit.

Other moderators report u/Evolved_Fungi for misconduct as a moderator, and he steps down. It is framed as "guy started a movement and got in way over his head and got stressed."

By May, Gloriann Sahay of the Political Revolution PAC has taken over media communications for 50501.

Sahay runs Toolbox for Change, which appears to be the actual operational platform for 50501 and lists 50501 staffers:

u/Evolved_Fungi posted about the takeover and how he was pushed out and then doxxed - the nonprofit staffers appear to have framed it as that 50501 was decentralized anyway, that this would be of legal help:

A. P. Dillon has a great Substack writeup about the timeline here: apdillon.substack.com/p/strife-in-th…

By March 4th, Indivisible was already hosting 50501 protests:

After the original February 5th protests, Indivisible has appeared to completely taken over the 50501 infrastructure. Although a few skeleton people remain - like Toolbox for Change - it seems that Indivisible is the main coordinator now for everything 50501.

Later in the year, 50501's Hunter Dunn was appearing in press releases from Indivisible:

The original fiftyfifty dot one website, which was pressurized to transfer to the 50501 Inc. nonprofit as mentioned by u/Evolved_Fungi and friends, now stands mostly as a collection of links going out to establishment and Indivisible affiliated websites.

The story gets more complicated here - 50501 Inc. voluntarily shut down on its own, and what remains is what you see above - a messy coalition of people involved in claiming credit and kicking out u/Evolved_Fungi .

My guess: there isn't actually a truly coherent 50501.

The people who took over accomplished their goal - which was to dissolve anything "grassroots" about 50501 with the goal of subordinating the brand to the main protest industrial complex, currently ran by Indivisible.

But even that raises a more disturbing possibility.

Is it the fate of every actual grassroots movement to be co-opted by the NGO-Administrative Complex?

Looking that way...