If there's one thing I learned about the nation-trotting Occupy troll
Paul Carnes (a/k/a Paul Fetch) in profiling him last month, it's that
he's relentless. There's no limit to his schemes, and he seemingly
has no shame (we'll get there in a second, but Carnes is now suing
four individuals aligned with the movement for reasons you'd never
believe). Since being excommunicated from Occupy Boston three weeks
ago, he's been seen playing the perimeter of Dewey Square on a number
of occasions, and hanging on the Red Line underneath the camp. Carnes
also showed his face on the first night of Occupy Harvard, where he
was smoked out of the crowd by a chorus of boos.
As I noted in the final graph of my Fetch feature, his plan after
getting booted from Boston was to visit Occupy Wall Street in
Zuccotti Park. He did, but tells me that his makeshift tent was
dismantled in the middle of the night, while he and his sidekick,
Sydney Sherrell, were told to leave at knifepoint (this, of course, all before Mayor Bloomberg used similar tactics on the rest of the bunch). “When it got
dangerous, we left,” Carnes told me days after. Not like that threat hobbled
his hustle. He was back in stride soon after, creeping around
downtown Boston and elsewhere, and announcing big plans to throw a
free concert for millions of people in Miami (video below). Just when
you think you've caught Carnes, he tells you to go Fetch.
For those unfamiliar with this modern folk tale, Carnes first gained
notoriety three years ago when he declared war on the web hacker
ensemble Anonymous, which promptly erased all dignity from his online
identity (if there was any to begin with). Instead of retreating like
most people would, Carnes – or Mr. Fetch, as he'd presented himself
– announced that he was tapped to lead the collective. Ridiculous
as that sounds, it's kind of become a Carnes routine: the guy likes
to claim that he's a leader of leaderless movements. Not a bad
schtick if you ask me.
I
did as much diligence as possible in researching Carnes – calling
old associates in his native Alabama, digging up newspaper clippings
about his involvement in church and LGBT groups. But investigating a
character like him is tough, since he's apparently fooled countless
people – including me. Though Carnes claims to have helped the
first openly gay politician in his home state get elected – and was
listed as having done so in his bio for Boston Pride's Latino Pride
Committee which he served on – it turns out to be another stretch.
“I can assure you that he did NOT raise a dime, nor did he work in
my campaign,” Representative Patricia Todd wrote me in an email
earlier this week. “I know Paul from his work in LGBT
issues, although to say "work" is really not true. He has a
loud voice and is a lone wolf and not a team player!”
A trail of nonsense in his wake, Carnes dropped a not-so-unexpected
bombshell on the Financial Accountability Working Group (FAWG) – of
which he once belonged – earlier this week, when he served three
members of the group (plus a volunteer mediator) with a complaint and
demand for jury trial in Suffolk Superior Court. The allegations are
a bit complicated, but Carnes and Sherrell are basically saying that
FAWG did not live up to the agreement made, in which the pair would
hand over a “doing business as” certificate and credit union
account that they were holding hostage in exchange for immunity.
The complaint reads: “[Defendants] breached the signed contract by
not retracting defamatory statements about the Plaintiffs on websites
under the Defendants' control . . . [and] did not prevent the
Plaintiffs from being ousted by the Occupy Boston movement and barred
from the encampment in Dewey Square.” There's also some stuff about
emotional distress, defamation, and yadda yadda yadda – you get the
point. I'll be covering the legal side of this further on Friday morning
at Suffolk Superior Court, but that's only half the story.
Back
at camp, occupiers are trying to deal with the public relations side
of this. It shouldn't be difficult – my article more or less spells
it out for anyone who's interested – but naturally some outlets,
whether deliberate or not, are making it look like the camp
is split in half over this, whereas in reality it's Carnes,
Sherrell, and an acolyte or two who have taken on the whole Boston
movement. “We tried to do what we had to do as members of
FAWG,” group member and defendant Greg Murphy (above left) told about 250
supportive occupiers at last night's assembly. To which someone in
the crowd responded: “This whole thing is crazy – god bless you
for dealing with these fuckers.”
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