Socialist group ‘By Any Means Necessary’ escalates campaign to ‘stop’ Turning Point USA

In a Sunday afternoon meeting called a “tribunal,” Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley, Calif., public school teacher and a local fixture among self-professed “anti-fascist” agitators, joyfully led about 40 members of the socialist organization By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) in an after-action report on the group’s “victory” last week in a bloody battle at the University of California, Berkeley against supporters of Turning Point USA. 

At meeting’s end, Fox News Digital has learned, Felarca, once arrested for inciting a riot, moved for a vote on the next phase of the operation: to “stop” Turning Point USA chapters, not only on college campuses but also in public K–12 schools, beginning with Berkeley High School, where she teaches.

The motion passed unanimously to “stop fascist recruiting in schools” by amplifying the work of “By Any Means Necessary,” which collects tax-deductible donations under the 501(c)(3) nonprofit umbrella of the Detroit-based nonprofit, Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality.

The members closed the 90-minute meeting with one-word salutations.

UC BERKELEY TPUSA MEMBERS NAVIGATE POLARIZED CAMPUS FOLLOWING PROTESTS AND ARRESTS

“Solidarity!” said Felarca.

This year, Democratic activists and far-left groups have increasingly exploited the term “fascist” as a sweeping label to justify denying political opponents their constitutional rights. The word was allegedly scrawled on the bullet casing left by the man arrested for killing Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, in a chilling reminder of how language can be weaponized to rationalize violence.

In November 2019, the Sacramento district attorney dismissed felony assault charges and misdemeanor rioting charges against Felarca and two co-defendants after requiring them to complete 90 hours of volunteer work. A video from a protest showed Felarca hitting and yelling at a man she opposed as a “Nazi” and “white nationalist” until he fell and Felarca’s allies pummeled and kicked him.

At Sunday’s meeting, Felarca told fellow members that her response to Turning Point USA organizing at Berkeley HIgh School was, “What, no, no way.”

Using the “fascist” term to vilify youth, Felarca continued: “And so, you know, I just think it’s super incumbent on us to, like, work, talk to, obviously, other teachers, but also, most importantly, students to really stop this and prevent Turning Point or any fascist organizing to take place.”

The group talked about a protest activated this month against a new youth Turning Point USA chapter at Royal Oak High School in Royal Oak, Mich.

Representatives from Berkeley High School and Berkeley Unified School District didn’t respond to requests for comment.

ANTIFA VIOLENCE EXPOSES UC BERKELEY’S HYPOCRISY ON FREE SPEECH AND TOLERANCE

“I know it’s possible to stop it, and if we take the same approach that we took to protesting Turning Point last week – to not just ignore this, because then they’ll just go away or, you know, but to also use collective action, and it was crazy, like, find ways to express collectively the power of the movement and not just leave it and hope that the administration will take care of it, because they’re clearly not,” Felarca said. “They’ve already approved the group. Then it’s super, super important that we do that.”

The group’s members also voted unanimously to move forward with a plan to “stop and block” law enforcement officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In one plan, they agreed to order “ICE whistles,” increasingly used in neighborhoods in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City to alert residents that ICE officers are in the area. Felarca said they would brand the whistles with the “By Any Means Necessary” name.

The escalation comes at a moment of intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, which has opened a federal investigation into whether “By Any Means Necessary” and allied groups engaged in an organized conspiracy to deny Turning Point USA participants their free speech rights through coercion and disruption at last week’s UC Berkeley event.

Far from a spontaneous gathering, Fox Digital News reporting reveals, the protest was premeditated and coordinated by a network of seven organizations, most of them enjoying tax-free benefits, at least six days before it occurred, signaling advance coordination. 

U.S. Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who flew to Berkeley to lead the civil rights investigation into the case, is well familiar with Felarca and “By Any Means Necessary.” In 2018, her former law practice, Dhillon Law Group, won a lawsuit against Felarca for filing a frivolous restraining order against then-Berkeley College Republican president, Troy Worden, as Felarca led protests on campus against Trump, and an Alameda County Superior Court commissioner ordered Felarca to pay Worden $11,100 in legal fees.

Earlier, in February 2017, “By Any Means Necessary” leaders bragged that they got right-wing provocateur Milo Yionnapolos canceled from a talk on the campus of UC Berkeley. 

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show” and spokesman for Turning Point USA, said the new escalation by Felarca and “By Any Means Necessary” is “fundamentally un-American” and represents a “conspiracy to silence the free speech of others.”

CALIFORNIA WOMAN CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH DISRUPTING APRIL TURNING POINT USA EVENT ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS

“Turning Point USA has grown over the years not because we tried to silence others or that we engaged in some operation to shut the voices of others,” said Kolvet, who was a close friend of Kirk. “We grew because Charlie believed that our ideas were better, and that if more young people heard them they would be convinced and persuaded to believe them too.”

Kolvet directly addressed the campaign by leaders of “By Any Means Necessary” against the constitutional rights of Turning Point USA members, saying, “Any organization formed or animated by a guiding mission to harass, heckle and attack events hosted by other groups — just because they don’t agree with their ideas — is fundamentally un-American and is engaging in a conspiracy to silence the free speech of others. This is especially egregious given that Turning Point USA’s events involve minors. These are young kids being attacked by left wing radicals who are adults! This 100% should be investigated by authorities.”

During the Sunday meeting, Ronald Cruz, an attorney for “By Any Means Necessary,” described moving from classroom to classroom across the UC Berkeley campus, including at a class on environmental racism, to mobilize opposition not just to Turning Point USA’s viewpoints but to the physical presence of Turning Point USA speakers and attendees on university property. 

“We’re ‘By Any Means Necessary.” We’re a militant organization,” Cruz said.

Cruz heralded activists for pivoting quickly as police attempted to contain last week’s demonstration.

“I’m very proud that we were very intelligent about how we approached the day and made it as militant as possible,” he said, congratulating the group for being “unfazed” by the Justice Department’s investigation. “We were able to lead that day,” he said. “We were the unquestionable leadership of the day.”

Felarca did not respond to a request for comment.

INSIDE THE CHAOS OF BLOODY BERKELEY AS PROTESTERS GO WILD DURING TURNING POINT USA EVENT

The escalation by the group “By Any Means Necessary” also reveals a deeper structural concern first surfaced in earlier reporting: the group’s formal financial and legal infrastructure is housed inside the “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund,” a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The metadata on the protest flyers directly identify “United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund” and Cruz as the owners and creators of the posters designed to coordinate the protest and smear Turning Point USA. This relationship raises questions about how the nonprofit sector is being used as a legal shield for activities that appear non-charitable and also potentially unconstitutional, including coordinated attempts to suppress one political viewpoint, intimidate political opponents and interfere with lawful assemblies. 

Federal law grants 501(c)(3) charities tax-exempt status to support education, research and legitimate public benefit, not to wage political operations under the banner of intimidating opponents “by any means necessary.” Experts warn this case highlights a growing vulnerability in the nonprofit regulatory framework: ideological organizations leveraging the credibility and financial protections of charitable status while engaging in conduct that would disqualify traditional nonprofits and undermine core constitutional rights.

The distinction between lawful protest and unconstitutional coercion is central to federal case law. Courts have repeatedly ruled that public institutions — including K–12 schools and universities that receive federal funding — can’t block specific viewpoints outright or allow administrators and staff to encourage or enable mob pressure that suppresses a single perspective. 

If one viewpoint can be suppressed as dangerous, legal scholars note, then all viewpoints are vulnerable to governmental suppression, mob censorship or the “heckler’s veto,” as legal experts call it. 

During the clash, police arrested a protester, Jihad Dphrepaulezz, 25, for allegedly stealing the chain necklace of an attendee wearing a “Freedom” T-shirt, similar to the shirt worn by Kirk when he was assassinated. Authorities say police made multiple arrests of protesters.

The seven organizations involved in the efforts to intimidate ticketholders at the Turning Point USA event come from the world of nonprofit philanthropy, the global socialist network and the international “anti-fascist” network, operating with militant tactics, even if few adopt the Antifa name formally.

UC BERKELEY’S BLOODY PROTEST OF TPUSA ALLEGEDLY FUNDED BY FAR-LEFT NONPROFIT 

The seven groups involved in the coordinated campaign against Turning Point USA are: 

• “By Any Means Necessary,” a far-left initiative operating and collecting donations under the umbrella of a Detroit-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund, tax ID number 38-3626850.
• “Gabriela Berkeley,” a chapter of an international organization, Gabriela: Alliance of Filipino Women, aligned with the communist National Democratic Front of the Philippines, dedicated to removing U.S. military presence in the Philippines and bringing a socialist system to the Philippines; it is listed as a fiscal sponsor of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Tides Foundation, tax ID number 51-0198509, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire Warren Buffett’s Novo Foundation, also a 501(c)(3). 
• “JVP UC Berkeley,” the Berkeley chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that seeks to eliminate the state of Israel and rename it Palestine; the national group last reported about $3.3 million in annual revenues under its nonprofit, with tax ID number 90-0018359.
• “Koreans 4 Decolonization UCB,” a Berkeley student chapter of “Koreans 4 Decolonization,” aligned with organizations that want to expand North Korea’s communism to South Korea and dismantle U.S. military presence in South Korea;
• “Students for Socialism,” the student wing of “Party for Socialism and Liberation,” a self-described Marxist-Leninist group that runs candidates for U.S. president and vice president and leads national protests against the U.S.; its tax status is unclear.
• “Young Democratic Socialists of America,” the youth wing of Democratic Socialists of America, opposing America’s free enterprise system, as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit, with the tax ID number 13-3109557; it last reported $6 million in annual revenues.
• “Students Organizing for Liberation,” a Berkeley student organization that is opaque about its funding, leadership and organizing structure.

Hatem Bazian, a co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel group that has gotten 501(c)(3) tax benefits and tax-deductible donations through a fiscal sponsor, the WESPAC Foundation, took video of the protests, building support among his followers. The organizations didn’t return requests for comment.

Details discussed at the Sunday meeting and a timeline of events reveal a coherent, coordinated strategic campaign behind the bloody Berkeley battle last week, including several elements that federal investigators can investigate as a possible conspiracy: coordinated classroom canvassing on the UC Berkeley campus to get students to the protests; pre-advertised flyers designed to produce confrontation “by any means necessary” and intimidate attendees; and physical intimidation to shape political outcomes. 

Felarca said she plans to make Berkeley High School inhospitable to youth members of Turning Point USA. Felarca immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines at the age of three with her parents, who she said, in a first-person narrative, “left to get away from the authoritarian Marcos regime,” of Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1972, saying that he faced communist and Islamic insurgencies.

In April 2019, a judge ordered Felarca to pay the organization, Judicial Watch, $20,000 in legal fees for challenging a public records request that Judicial Watch had filed in 2017 with Berkeley Unified School District, seeking all emails related to Felaraca and the words “antifa” and “BAMN,” the acronym for “By Any Means Necessary.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

As she took the vote on Sunday, Felarca invited anyone who opposed their escalated campaign against Turning Point USA to speak up. 

She was met with silence.