Founder Carl Gibson Purpose political activism | Founded at USA Website usuncut.com | |
Formation February 2011; 6 years ago (2011-02) | ||
US Uncut was a decentralized direct action group in the United States established in February 2011 to draw attention to corporate tax avoidance, cuts to social spending, and public sector jobs.
Contents
History
US Uncut was founded in 2011 by Carl Gibson. The US-based organization draws its name, organizing structure, and tactics from UK Uncut, a movement that had begun only four months earlier in London, England.
The group's first action occurred simultaneously in 50 cities across the United States, mostly at Bank of America branches. Bank of America was chosen for its role in the financial crisis and the fact that it paid no income taxes in 2009 or 2010. By May 2011, over 100 cities had had Uncut sponsored actions.
In April 2011, in political action to highlight corporate tax avoidance, US Uncut published a news story based on a fake press release that said General Electric was returning its 3.2 billion dollar tax refund to the U.S. Treasury. The hoax was done in collaboration with The Yes Men. The Associated Press distributed the story through its web site, before taking it down 35 minutes after publishing it.
In addition to its protests directed towards Bank of America, US Uncut has organized protests at Verizon stores, BP stations, FedEx stores, Target stores, British Petroleum and Apple Stores.
In August 2016, US Uncut's Facebook page, with 1.5 million followers, was hijacked and began posting articles from an impostor site mockingly named US Uncut.news.
On Mar 2, 2017, or Mar 3, 2017 their site was shut down with the message "Sorry, we had to shut down the site.Thank you for reading our articles all these years."
Criticisms
US Uncut's web site has been criticized as being a partisan liberal site. The organization's web site has been accused of deceiving readers and of publishing inaccurate news stories. Another article had used 2 year old photos.