With a heavy heart and great disappointment, I must inform my community of friends and associates of the following unfortunate facts.
What On Earth Is Happening has dissolved our affiliation and association with The State Of Anarchy, currently comprised of Carmen Carangi and Sonny Mazzone.
I participated in the Anarchadelphia 2019 Conference, September 13-16, 2019 in Philadelphia, where I presented an original presentation The Sacred Gift Of Anger, a documentary rough-cut Mark Passio & The Science Of Natural Law, participated in an Occult Panel Discussion with Max Igan and Derrick Broze, and held an all-day workshop Teaching Natural Law With Mark Passio a day after the conference.
I was informed the week following the event that the funds that were donated to me by workshop attendees to attend my Teaching Natural Law workshop (collected in advance and held in trust for me by The State Of Anarchy) were used by The State Of Anarchy to fund their conference without my permission. I made an agreement with Carmen Carangi to forgo any speaking stipend in exchange for the proceeds from my workshop. Other members of The State Of Anarchy were not made aware by Carmen that he had made this agreement with me, an agreement that was witnessed by my assistant Leiha Boone.
A short time after my workshop, the misappropriation of my workshop funds was disclosed to me at lunch by members of The State Of Anarchy, and I was offered $1,000 as a settlement. I refused this offer, as this was not the agreement made with me for my participation in, and promotion of, their event.
To this date, I have not received the agreed-upon funds for my participation in Anarchadelphia 2019. I am currently owed a total of $13,520 by Carmen Carangi and Sonny Mazzone of The State Of Anarchy.
Patrick Leach made a payment to The State Of Anarchy to honor his portion of the agreement in full, and has since disassociated with The State Of Anarchy, shortly after he found out that Carmen had made an agreement that he was not privy to. The funds that Patrick Leach provided were used by The State Of Anarchy to pay back a loan, an action that was meant to secure another loan to pay me in full. This second loan was denied, and despite almost two and a half months of attempting to communicate and resolve this issue, I am now releasing this information publicly in an attempt to briefly explain my position and inform the community of the events that transpired.
As a side note, What On Earth Is Happening is still on good terms with Patrick Leach and we consider him a valuable colleague and hope to work with him again in the future.
Carmen and Sonny have not demonstrated to me that they are taking this situation seriously enough. They have thus far failed to come up with an acceptable remedy for what amounts to embezzling a large sum of money with which they were entrusted. To date, their most recent offer to “fix” this situation was to ask me to participate in a multi-level-marketing (MLM) program with them.
I have become aware that Carmen and Sonny are working with some of my associates, and I am communicating this information in the hope that something like this does not happen to anyone else.
My assistant, my colleagues, and I worked for months to prepare the material that was featured at Anarchadelphia 2019. Funds raised from this conference were meant to help me continue my work for at least the next six months. Currently, we are unable to proceed with any work whatsoever with this devastating setback. We are now working to regroup and move forward producing content, working on the documentary, and restarting the What On Earth Is Happening weekly show in early 2020.
I will be doing a full show to explain this situation in depth when I am able to restart the WOEIH Show.
Thank you all for your continued support and thank you for your patience and kind thoughts as we work our way back up to speed.
I Testify To The Truth Of The Above Statements.
Mark Passio
Mark,
Thank you for inviting me on the show, however, I’ve chosen to respectfully decline your offer and provide this written statement. I have said nothing publicly about this situation until now in an attempt to mask my frustration.
Ironically while I was in Philadelphia contributing to The State of Anarchy, two of your friends Barb and Steve were in a theatrical vegan activism video I shot and edited. They saw my work and passed it on and you requested to meet the videographer.
This led to us producing several videos from your home studio to raise awareness about What on Earth is Happening and the project seeking external help. You allowed me to upload these videos to The State of Anarchy YouTube channel which significantly impacted the viewer and subscription rate.
I’d been made aware that your Natural Law documentary was in the hands of a few Temple University Students. We had a look at some of the footage which was sub-quality and then discussed the scope of the project’s undertaking with respect to being redone.
I sought out Mike Martin to donate to my time to produce your documentary. I received a total of $1,600 for four days of shooting at your house, on Temple University Campus and at Ritenhouse Square. I generously paid Carmen $800 for capturing audio and canvasing by-standards with me. Mike has expressed that this was money well spent.
In addition to the content I produced, Leiah provided a 2TB hard drive with a large collection of categorized data and the project was ready for post.
We came to a standstill when you were firm about co-editing in person as I was leaving Philadelphia. I suggested providing you draft edits online in exchange for notes until we completed a polished edit, though you preferred an in person situation.
I feel terribly guilty for getting Carmen further involved with editing the documentary and leaving the project in his hands. This seemed like a plausible situation at the time being that you live three blocks away from each other and he’s a capable editor.
I introduced Mike to Carmen and left Philadelphia in November. Mike stepped away from the project in March due to Carmen’s performance. Since then, I have offered to edit the documentary for free if you were open to working together remotely.
I met Carmen and Sonny at Anarchapulco 2018. They had an idea called The State of Anarchy which was supposed to be a documentary. This interested me because I’m degreed in Film and Video Production and shortly after I became their 11th YouTube subscriber. They published two short videos in late March and there was zero channel activity until I relocated to Philadelphia in late July. I started the channel and came up with the idea for the conference.
Within the scope of this project I took on the overwhelming majority workload.
I designed and developed the logo and brand identity, designed and managed the website, applied a strategic pathway for producing a conference, chose the date and designed the Full Moon numerological theme, produced several promotional graphics, videos and animations, designed the speaker list and schedule within my hyper networking, loaded up social media with content, set up every interview, managed speaker graphics and promotional content directly.. flights, accommodations, and endless website edits, set up all the payment processes and paywalls, managed the cryptocurrency, raised all the sponsorship money, scrutinized revenue and spending while having to combat embezzlement.. lastly having to vote NO against a $2,000 request from Carmen for months of unpaid rent.
I was constantly demanding for more participation from Sonny and Carmen, doing my best to apply structure to a crumbling partnership.
The conference came to fruition at the expense of a few, namely you.
I dedicated a tremendous amount of time and energy to this project and am proud of my performance, yet at the same time I find it very difficult to use Anarchadelphia as a reference in respect to my work. That being said I would use anyone involved as a personal reference, including you.
For me, this project is tainted and for an outcome like this to occur is disgraceful, embarrassing and out of my control. Carmen offered you $1,000 at our post conference lunch as a final payment, with reservations to use the documentary as some sort of leveraging tool to reduce your total bill. I want nothing to do with that mindset. I’m not sure if he was referring to the $1,000 PayPal payment I facilitated to you on August 27th from Mike Martin, which was ultimately a donation and to this date is the only money you’ve received regarding your involvement of the conference.
There was roughly $6,000 left in the company accounts when it was made clear that I was leaving The State of Anarchy and the company owed you $13,520. We established that I would send Carmen and Sonny one third of the remaining balance, $2,500, so they could prepare one full payment per your request. I suggested against that and wanted to send you my money directly. I protectively sent them the money with a signed and notarized letter of resignation in exchange for a signed and notarized letter of indemnity. I refuse to be held responsible for their irresponsibilities and sketchy business practices.
To further address the irresponsibilities of The State of Anarchy, the Alpha Omega Anarchy Logo I designed for the project was undergoing an extensive and expensive trademarking process. There was one more requirement to finalize the trademark, and I made this very clear to them that there was a deadline. A $175 office action was due on December 17th 2019, which they did not follow through with and the trademark was abandoned.
Sadly, part of my terms and conditions of leaving The State of Anarchy were that I was not allowed to edit and publish any of the conference footage, that I shot, with my gear.. after telling every speaker that I would edit their lectures, making me feel like a fool. After spending all that time to get this info out.. shutdown, Meanwhile, it’s been 4 months and they’ve published 1 video from the conference…
Since my disassociation, I had repeatedly asked them to return thousands of dollars worth of my production gear with no response. I attempted to file an insurance claim for missing property, though to move forward with that case required filing a police report.. Fuck the police, and Fuck Sonny and Carmen.. I’ve changed my phone number and have not spoken to either of them since.
It would not surprise me at all to see them at Anarchapulco, with my gear, on our dime…
Over the last few months I have witnessed outright lies being written publicly on social media from Carmen and Sonny in an attempt to cover up their recklessness. Not to mention that Mike Nimetz, a member of the wider community, wrote the manipulative 700 word description for their recent ‘The State of Anarchy Responds to Mark Passio Controversy’ video, signed “ With Love and Appreciation - Carmen Carangi and Sonny Mazzone”. I did not listen to this podcast, they deserve zero more of my time.
I find it incredibly distasteful that someone else would step into this intimate situation with no understanding of the events that occurred over the last two years.
This just shows how naive and disillusioned the community is regarding this situation.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile, give them a mile and you’ll build them a company.. I can only ask myself why I was willing to give so much.
This journey has certainly taught me a lot more about myself and the lessons learned will be applied in full force.
I do not consider these crooks Carmen and Sonny friends nor colleagues and I will never work with them or any of their partners again.
Pat Leach