Does “dropped manual” prove May 2020 protests organised? Fact Check

Photos are spreading across social media that claim to show a manual “dropped by a protestor” that purports to prove that protestors demonstrating across the United States following the death of George Floyd have been planned by an organisation.

Most popularly, one page of the “manual” has been spreading across social media that uses terms such as AOEC, GAMMA PRIME and 328BG. However, in other instances, multiple pages from the same “manual” (including the one we referenced) are circulating social media. One such page includes the logo of the Friends of Democracy PAC founded by Jonathan Soros (son of George Soros.)

Hence the wider claim here is that the protests happening across the US in May 2020 are actually tied to George Soros, a frequent target for conspiracy theories.

Other instances of the photo claim it proves the protests have been organised by the Antifa movement.

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Whether or not you believe the May 2020 protests happening in the US have been organised or structured in a particular way, this document does not prove anything. And that is because it actually dates back to 2015, when, according to online claims at the time, it was apparently dropped by a protestor during the Baltimore protests that happened in April of that year. The title of the document, BWI0418’15, likely refers to Baltimore and April 18th 2015, when the protests occurred. Pages of the document also contain a map of Baltimore.

As such, it has nothing to do with protests happening in May 2020. The PAC listed on the header of the first page, Friends of Democracy, had previously merged with other entities to create the political advocacy group Every Voice many years before the May 2020 protests occurred.

The legitimacy of the document and its relevance to the 2015 Baltimore riots has also been disputed. It was has never been demonstrated the document was genuine or tied to a specific group. Many have (justly) questioned the likelihood of a political action group creating a top secret “confidential” document adorned with their own logo directly linking them to illegal organised violent protests while simultaneously handing out said document to hundreds of protestors, with only one such protestor having to leak (or in this case, drop) the document for the operation to be exposed to the general public.

Whatever the case of the document, it’s from 2015 and contains information in it specific to Baltimore. As such, it doesn’t relate to the May 2020 protests, so we rank the claim false.