Great Barrington — On Tuesday, October 10, the Berkshire Communists group led a pro-Palestine/Hamas protest in the downtown area. The group protested against Israel in front of Town Hall before marching down Main Street.
A video of the group showed members chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as they marched down Main Street with their signs. Protesters were holding signs that read, “End all U.S. aid to Israel,” “Free Palestine, “Israel and U.S.A. = Terrorists,” and “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.”
The group shared misinformation about Hamas via its Instagram stories. The account the information has been shared from is by James “Fergie” Chambers. In an interview with The Berkshire Edge, Chambers identified himself as one of the leaders of the Berkshire Communists.
According to the Berkshire Communists website, the group’s mission is:
“… to further conversations of class dynamics and contribute to the strengthening of budding class consciousness displayed throughout the county through a variety of educational and agitational methods, the first of which is the development of a political education curriculum to be used as a resource for reading and discussion groups that can be both coordinated by us and adopted for study by other organizations.”
According to its Instagram page, the group operates the Berkshire People’s Gym in Alford. “We are a liberatory training space,” the group said in an Instagram post. “Cops, landlords, chauvinism of any variety, and jock culture are not welcome. If you have means, or are a weekender/second homeowner, you must donate to the project to participate.”
On its Instagram page, the group posted photographs of the gym with multiple communist flags hanging from the ceiling. The Instagram page lists that it is affiliated with the “Cloud Kingdom project.”
According to the town of Alford’s real estate database, Cloud Kingdom LLC owns several properties:
- 10.52 acres on 258 East Rd. According to its property card, the property was first purchased in June, 2010 by Cloud Kingdom LLC for $690,000. It was purchased by Cloud Kingdom 2020 LLC in March 2019 for $857,000.
- Two acres on 260 East Rd. The property was purchased in July 2019 for $430,000 by Cloud Kingdom, LLC.
- 14.68 acres on 262 West Rd. The property was purchased in August 2020 by Cloud Kingdom 2020 LLC for $905,000.
- 2.3 acres on 274 East Rd. The property was purchased in September 2019 for $780,000 by Cloud Kingdom, LLC.
- Three acres on 300 East Rd. The property was purchased in October 2020 for $1,650,000 by Cloud Kingdom 2020, LLC.
- 17.393 acres on 303 East Rd. The property was purchased in April 2021 for $759,000 by Cloud Kingdom 2020, LLC.
According to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s website, both Cloud Kingdom LLC and Cloud Kingdom 2020 LLC are registered in Massachusetts with Chambers as their manager, with the registered address of 4401 Northside Parkway NW, Suite 900, Atlanta, GA. The agent address listed for “Corporation Service Company” is 84 State St. in Boston.
Chambers is listed in several online databases as a former Georgia resident and a current Alford resident. While Chambers is listed as the group’s manager and is responsible for the group’s properties on the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s website, Chambers told The Berkshire Edge that he is the “general secretary” for the organization. “I’m not full-time in the Berkshires, I’m actually in New Hampshire a lot,” Chambers said. “But I am still involved in the organization.”
Chambers told The Berkshire Edge that it’s “hard to define” how many members are in the group. “There are folks who live and work on our ‘compound,’” he said. “And there are folks in the county, maybe on the New York side, or even as far as the Pioneer Valley, who engage with some of the things that we do regularly. Then there are folks all over the country who participate in our study groups or interact with us in some capacity. We are not a political party. And we are not like a nonprofit boardroom. It would be difficult to say exactly how many people are part of the group.”
As for the name “Cloud Kingdom,” “it’s a nickname that we give to the land that we’re on,” Chambers explained. “We’re up high in the mountains, and we have grown non-commercially a decent amount of cannabis over the years,” he said. “We host a number of different sorts of political retreats and schools for the kinds of organizations and comrades that we’re aligned with around the country.”
When asked, Chambers said, “We absolutely unequivocally support the Palestinian resistance and any measures and means that the Palestinian resistance chooses to take. We also understand that Hamas is a seminal piece of the Palestinian resistance, especially from Gaza. But Hamas is not the only group in the resistance. Hamas is an indigenous anti-colonial resistance group. Yes, we do support it. We support any group that is opposing the illegal occupation of Palestine. And we also oppose the enormous wave of propaganda that has come out of the west around the actions taken by Hamas, which, frankly, most of it has been disproven in the last week or so. These claims of 40 beheaded babies, even CNN had to retract that. And so much of that was used as justification for the insane bombardment that’s now going on in Gaza.”
When asked if he supported the attack by Hamas on Israel that took place on October 7, Chambers said, “Yes, the Al-Aqsa Flood was a powerful statement of resistance to genocide. We do not have any compelling evidence that civilians were deliberately targeted. In fact, every piece of evidence we have is to the opposite, which we cannot say for the bombardment of Gaza that has occurred.”
