Progress Ohio caught lying about relationship to Occupy movement

Progress Ohio is an extreme far-left organization of liberals in Ohio. Headed by Brian Rothenberg, these people have zero shame and will do anything to impose their statist views of the world onto Ohio and America. In March, we told you about their disgusting scam where they set up a false website for people to send prayers and condolences to the victims of the Chardon school shooting. In reality, they used the submissions to sign the well wishers up for anti-gun propaganda.

So, it should come as no surprise that Progress Ohio is involved with the nakedly communist Occupy movement. Occupy has been involved in thousands of arrests, millions in property damage, and they crossed over into terrorism last week when Occupy Cleveland members tried to kill innocent commuters by blowing up a bridge in Northeast Ohio.

That prompted Rothenberg to back away from the movement, and claim that Progress Ohio has nothing to do with them.

Zawistowski's group provided documentation to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in April indicating that it was likely that the Occupy Movement would be orchestrating violence in Ohio before this year's elections, including plans to attack TEA Party groups throughout Ohio.

"We believe that the Occupy Movement is being funded by the UAW and the SEIU and is being managed by groups like Progress Ohio. These groups may be encouraging this type of criminal activity by the type of people they are recruiting and the training they are providing," he said.

Progress Ohio executive director Brian Rothenberg denied the allegations saying they have nothing to do with the Occupy movement.

Rothenberg is a liar. As Jesse Hathaway from Media Trackers Ohio reports, ProgressOhio was intimately involved with Occupy.

In addition to hosting “General Assembly” meetings for Occupy Columbus, ProgressOhio staff have frequently attended and promoted Occupy events. Photo galleries from Occupy protests are hosted on the official ProgressOhio Flickr account, Occupy events are advertised on the ProgressOhio blog, and ProgressOhio staff pen glowing reviews of Occupy rallies.

ProgressOhio representatives attended Gov. Kasich’s State of the State address with Occupy Columbus members, and ProgressOhio provided a “free community luncheon” at a December 2011 Occupy Columbus event. ProgressOhio even allowed an “emergency” meeting of Occupy Columbus at ProgressOhio’s Columbus office on December 23, 2011.

Media Trackers also reveals that an article on Progress Ohio's own website talks about a coordinated event between the two groups. Additionally, Occupy Columbus' website shows that they held weekly meetings at Progress Ohio headquarters.

What was Rothenberg's response to all of this evidence proving that he lied about the involvement with Occupy? The same response we got when we asked them for comment about setting up the fake website:

Silence.

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