Showing posts with label Brandon Darby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brandon Darby. Show all posts

12 April 2010

To Catch a Spy : The Story of George the Snitch

Dennis the Menace from The Comics Curmudgeon.

To catch a spy II:
A short history of one snitch

By Richard Lee / The Rag Blog / April 12, 2010

[The Rag Blog published an article by Lisa Fithian about acknowledged FBI informant Brandon Darby, on March 22, 2010. Lisa's piece received thousands of hits, and was reposted all over the Internet. And for Richard, it brought to mind another story from another time. For links to Rag Blog material about Brandon Darby and the infiltration of community groups by law enforcement agencies, see below.]

This is the story of George, not his whole story, just the part I know about.

San Diego, 1972. Nixon is coming here. We have been planning his welcome since Chicago four years ago. Not heavy planning at first, but as time passed we worked on the Republican Convention ’72 with increasing intensity, and as we left Washington after the huge MAYDAY demo in May of ’71 we said our goodbyes to our tribes with the phrase, “See ya next year in San Diego.”

The San Diego Convention Coalition in the spring of that year was made up of dozens of groups from across the country. Our affinity group arrived in March to help organize. In that time, one of the strongest groups that planned to attend was Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW.)

Two of us from our little affinity group were veterans. I had participated in some VVAW actions back in Boston, and we began to attend meetings of the San Diego chapter. Our thinking at the time was that, counting vets and their families, VVAW would bring about 50,000 demonstrators.

We met in public, open meetings once a week, and each week we would have two or three more vets than the last week.

One week a new guy came. His name was George. He was a vet; he had been in the Army for about a year, before he took the honorable way out with a Bad Conduct Discharge. My partner and I thought he might be the kinda guy we could relate to, and decided to get to know him better.

That VVAW meeting was the first time he had ever been to an anti-war gathering. George had no politics, neither left nor right, Republican or Democrat, he said he was against the war, but knew very little about it. He took notes, we stole them from him, and those notes consisted of little more than names, most misspelled.

We talked it over with some of the others in the chapter and decided that George needed a closer look. A week after the meeting, we invited George to go to out for a couple of beers. Instead, we drove to an isolated part of a park and started asking George some sharp questions. He didn’t put up much resistance, and after a couple minutes he ‘fessed up and began to tell us his story.

George was not only a vet, he was an ex-con, he had done nearly two years on a heroin conviction and was still on parole. Recently he'd been caught with a dirty spike by the SDPD. Instead of violating him, the SD pigs turned him over to the FBI. The feds told George they could make his bust go away if he would do a little something for them. VVAW was that something. And that was how George came to show up at the weekly meeting.

We spent an hour or so debriefing George. He told us that after the last meeting he went two blocks up the street where his handler was waiting in a car. They drove around while the feebee asked him questions; the Man was pissed that he had lost his notes (the ones we had stolen) and he couldn’t remember names. FBI man showed him pictures and when he recognized one, they wanted to know what the pictured vet had said.

I felt sorry for George. He was a loser, he had never won anything in his life and he never expected to. He hadn’t really hurt us at all, it was a public meeting of 20 or so people, we talked mostly about where we were going to camp the brothers and how we were going to feed them. But then again we couldn’t let him hang around, maybe to plant a wire, maybe to later tell lies at some trial. So, we told him it was over and not to come back. I wanted to give him a hug when we parted, but refrained.

The next week we reported what had happened to the membership. As we finished, the door opened and there was George again. He had given it some thought and seen that we were the right side to be on, and asked to be let back in. We put it to a vote, and it was surprisingly close, but he lost his bid. I knew his handler had put him up to it. George left and I never saw him again.

George didn’t become a snitch because of his politics, he had none. He didn’t do it for money, they didn’t pay him. George was only a junkie, a poor one, and he didn’t want to go back to the joint.

It leaves me with the question. What about Brandon Darby? Was it politics? Was it money? Was he jammed up? Blackmailed? Was he simply used, like poor George, or is he really just a snitch from that layer of scum that lies just above the scabs?

Also see:
  • To catch a spy by OneLove (now revealed to be Richard Lee) / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2009
And, Rag Blog articles about Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:For more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

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22 March 2010

Lisa Fithian: FBI Informant Brandon Darby : Sexism, Egos, and Lies

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Brandon. Darby. Still from a video / videochannels.com.

Sexism, egos, and lies:
Sometimes you wake up and it is not different

By Lisa Fithian / The Rag Blog / March 22, 2010
Community organizer and nonviolent activist/trainer Lisa Fithian will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Tuesday, March 23, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.
[The Rag Blog has reported extensively on FBI informant Brandon Darby and the Texas 2. We have also dealt with the larger issues related to governmental use of espionage and informants. Please see links to all of our previous material at the end of this article.]

On December 31, 2008, the Austin Informant Working Group released a statement titled: “Sometimes You Wake Up and It's Different: Statement on Brandon Darby, the 'Unnamed' Informant/Provocateur in the 'Texas 2.'” It’s been over a year since then and here is my long-overdue version of that story.

It was on December 18, 2008, that I learned unquestionably that Brandon Michael Darby, an Austin activist, was an FBI informant leading up to the 2008 Republican National Convention protests in St. Paul, MN. He was the key witness in the case of two young men from Midland, TX, Bradley Crowder (23) and David McKay (22) who, thanks to Brandon’s involvement, have been convicted of manufacturing Molotov cocktails.

They are now serving two and four years, respectively, in federal prison. In 2010, Brandon will be a key witness in another important case to the Government -- the case of the RNC 8, Minneapolis organizers who are facing state conspiracy charges.

The case of the “Texas 2” gained national media attention as a result of Brandon’s unique blend of egomania, the media’s attraction to charismatic and controversial men, and the persistence of the U.S. government to criminalize and crush a growing anti-authoritarian movement. I found myself strangely entwined in the story -- past, present and future.

I knew Brandon, and I was given a set of the FBI documents because, as it became apparent from reading them, I was one of the primary people he was reporting on to the FBI. (I, like many others engaged in political protest, am suspect because of my politics not my actions.) Now all of us who knew Brandon and worked closely with him, have been coming to terms with what he did, how he was able to do it, how we were used and abused in the process, and what we might do differently next time.

The Texas 2: David McKay and Bradley Crowder.


Waking up

Some of us were more surprised than others when Brandon revealed himself as an informant. My first reaction was deep sadness. I then went through a range of emotions: disbelief, shock, anger, outrage, and at times vindication. I am still hurt and angry, not just with Brandon, but with the whole system that supports and enables him.

I am still struggling with forgiveness for choices made in activist communities and by some of my friends. I understand how difficult it was; Brandon, at times, was also my friend. In the end we must examine the behavior we experienced, reflect on the array of choices we had, and explore what we could do differently to insure this does not happen again.

Brandon’s behavior was problematic long before 2008. Whether or not he was actually working for the state, he was doing their job for them by breeding discord within our politically active communities. I raised my concerns about Brandon’s behavior in New Orleans, in Austin, and also in Minneapolis.

The news story broke on Thursday, December 29, when Brandon published an open letter to the community admitting he worked with the FBI. He knew we were about to blow the whistle, so he successfully preempted our headline. His initial words, however, were lies.

When asked why he got involved with the FBI, Darby said it was because he discovered that people he knew were planning violence. "Somebody had asked me to do something that would've resulted in hurting people, and I said no," he said. "So they started asking other people. At that point, that's when I went forward and contacted somebody in law enforcement."

Darby had been involved with a group of young people from Texas who traveled together to the RNC. Their journey has become part of the fodder in the legal and media frenzy since September 2008. The trip proved to be a disaster. David and Brad ended up in jail, and the rest of the group was served Grand Jury subpoenas. The subpoenas were eventually dropped. While preparing for their trials, David and Brad both said Brandon was an informant and the community refused to heed their warnings. They felt like they knew Brandon, he’d been around for years.

Scott Crow (left) and Brandon Darby were photographed together on Nov. 3, 2007, at a party in Austin hosted by KUT Radio. Photo from bestofneworleans.com.

In November an article appeared in the St. Paul Press asserting that Brandon Darby was an informant. This, unfortunately, was based on false evidence. Scott Crow, a friend of mine, and Brandon’s main ally in the activist community, defended Brandon calling the accusation a “COINTELPRO lie.” Little did Scott know how right he was - this whole damn thing is COINTELPRO shit.

The documents we got in December 2009 were clear -- Brandon began working for the FBI in November 2007. In November 2007 Brandon had no relationship with David or Brad and could not have known their plans for the St. Paul Republican Conventions. Their plans didn’t develop until after Brandon had become an informant and after he established himself as their ally and mentor.

Furthermore, Brandon has never been squeamish about violence. He owned guns and cultivated his reputation as a hotheaded, militant revolutionary. At least a half a dozen people were prepared to testify, under oath and with some risk to them, that Brandon had approached them with proposals to commit robbery or arson. Ultimately Brandon admitted that he turned informant for the money.

Brad, David, and their families’ lives have been changed forever because these two young men were seduced and influenced by a paid FBI informant. In his early memos to the FBI, Brandon referred to them as “collateral damage.” Now these two men are spending several years of their young lives in Federal Prison.

There are many people in the activist community who have crossed Brandon’s path and have been hurt, demoralized, alienated, frightened, or run off by him. Those of us who were lied to or lied about, spied on, bullied, must deal with the trauma of his abusive behavior. We must also come to terms with the behavior of those who supported and enabled Brandon. And, as a community, we must deal with those parts of ourselves that were seduced, manipulated, and marginalized by Brandon so that we can defend each other, our political work, and ourselves.

Background

I met Brandon through his relationship with another organizer, after I moved to Austin in February 2002. Over time I learned that it was a tumultuous and abusive relationship. When it ended in 2004 Brandon moved to New Orleans for about six months. Years later Brandon told me that he had turned himself in to the New Orleans Office of the FBI when he lived there during that time. He apparently told them that he knew they were looking for him, so here he was.

It was early 2003 around the U.S. invasion of Iraq, that Brandon inserted himself in the anti-war community and gained a reputation as a paranoid guy who got himself into unusual situations with police.

During the protests on the first day of the war, Brandon was supposedly arrested for photographing undercover cops. After that action he was, mysteriously, the only person who did not want legal support. The arrest apparently does not show up in any legal records. For more on this, go here.

During this time, Brandon began showing up regularly at anti-war rallies, trainings, and other events. The anti-war community had started to use civil disobedience as a protest tactic. In the first training I did following Brandon’s supposed arrest, Brandon insisted that one of the participants was an undercover cop and demanded that I ask that person to leave. High drama around other people being undercover is behavior I’ve learned to associate with informants as a way to divert attention from them. It also breeds distrust and is destabilizing of collective efforts.

In another intense protest when UT students attempted to block an intersection with a tripod, the police unfortunately were waiting near the intersection and quickly pulled out the legs of a tri-pod, and dropped the person about 15 feet onto the pavement. Brandon who had helped bring props to the site became erratic and started yelling at the police resulting in even more people being arrested, including people who were not intending to risk arrest. Several students left the anti-war movement as a result of this action.

At this time, it became very clear that a key local organizer was being intensely targeted. Her home was broken into repeatedly. She found her vehicle tampered with, was fired from her job, and her cat was poisoned. Coincidentally, also at this time, Brandon began to court her as a mentor, asking her to teach him what she knew about organizing.

The first time she recalled meeting Brandon was the day he was arrested, when he ran up to her yelling that there were undercover cops in the crowd. Following his arrest, Brandon consistently called her, wanting to talk about his arrest and aftermath but rejecting the legal support she was helping organize. Recently, when the Austin Informant Working Group did an open records request on this organizer, the FBI found 600 documents with her name in them (they have not been relinquished by the FBI to date).

Brandon also participated in a protest at the Halliburton shareolders' meeting in Houston. He unexpectedly joined the group intending to commit nonviolent civil disobedience. The group was on edge the night before, and now I understand why. In the planning session the night before the action, Brandon argued strongly that provoking and fighting the police was a tactic to open the eyes of the masses to police brutality, and bring more people into our cause.

He held his ground even when the group strongly disagreed and told him that under no circumstances would the group agree to him provoking or fighting the police. Brandon was a loose cannon and a bully. Even when he said he would agree to nonviolence in the action, it was clear that in his mind his agreement was contingent on the police not “provoking” him. Going into the action the next day was like sitting on a tinderbox waiting to explode.

At some actions, Brandon would show up, all masked up, with a video camera and take a lot of footage. He has continued to do this over the years, including in Minneapolis. I don’t believe he has ever posted or published any of it.

Brandon also befriended a local Palestinian activist, a man named Riad Hamad. In the spring of 2008 his house was raided by the FBI. In April Riad was found bound, gagged, and drowned in Town Lake. The death was ruled a suicide and the FBI is not releasing any information, but it was made clear in David McKay’s trial that Brandon was also involved as an FBI informant on that case.

It was in the fall of 2005 that my path became more intertwined with Brandon's.



New Orleans and Common Ground Relief

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a post-apocalyptic state. The whole social order had collapsed. A military occupation was underway and vigilantes were literally shooting Black men in the streets. It was in the midst of this chaos that Common Ground Relief was born. The organization grew from a driveway operation into a massive grassroots response to the Katrina disaster. With ex-Black Panther Malik Rahim at the helm, it was outside of government or charity organizations, and based in direct action, mutual aid, and solidarity.

Within the first year Common Ground Relief hosted over 12,000 volunteers and established an effective grassroots relief network in New Orleans following Katrina: CG moved millions of dollars in goods and resources; set up a free medical clinic; cleaned and gutted over 1,500 homes, churches and schools; organized a free legal services, media and computer centers; revived community gardens, planted thousands of acres of wetlands and did numerous bioremediation projects.

This work was done by an incredible group of long-term organizers who committed their lives for months if not years to the work. Brandon, was part of this team of volunteers but he held a great deal of power because of efforts he and Scott Crow made in the early days of the storm to rescue a friend, Robert King Wilkerson, and to defend Malik’s home in Algiers from the white vigilantes. It was during their second trip to New Orleans that Common Ground was born.

Despite all the good accomplished by Common Ground, there was discord with other local groups and organizers who were struggling to come home. Much of the discord involved Brandon. Brandon had strong authoritarian tendencies but his lack of organizing skills and experience and his resistance to working horizontally or collectively created discord and challenges.

He insisted on being the person in charge. He demanded a chain of command with him at the top. At one point he tried to create a central committee to insure that only a select few would be in any position of power. This style put him out front whether it was the media or a group of volunteers who would be doing the heavy lifting while he talked.

For example, in the Bywater area, Brandon insisted on being the liaison to the activist community. But he treated them with such disrespect and patronization that Common Ground lost an important ally base in the local community. In another example, a local organizer was talking about putting together a women’s space and clinic. Instead of supporting that process, Brandon just moved ahead and set up a space separate from that effort, further alienating local activists.

Brandon actively agitated against any relationship between Common Ground and the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF). He and Scott Crow, one of the co-founders of Common Ground, took a particularly hard-line position against certain members of leadership within the PHRF.

In December 2005 Brandon goaded Scott Crow to write a public letter accusing PHRF of corruption. The letter was very destructive. I had never before or since seen Malik so angry. He understood the danger of this letter and the negative impact it could have on Common Ground and the community, and he moved quickly to limit the damage.

With Common Ground Relief as his platform Brandon attempted to extend his influence internationally. He pushed for a trip to Venezuela, which made little sense and raised even more questions about Brandon, especially for those who traveled with him. In the summer of 2006 Brandon tried to initiate another emergency response and relief effort only this time in Lebanon. It was called Critical Response and was going to save the people of Lebanon from the Israeli attacks in the war with Hezebollah. Fortunately this effort never happened.

Sexism, egos and…

Brandon was a master of manipulation, and worked both women and men. He would draw them into his sometimes-twisted perspective by cultivating them through coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, revolutionary rhetoric, emotional neediness, or his physical presence -- either seductive or intimidating.

Young women are often attracted to Brandon. At Common Ground, his unrestrained sexual engagement with volunteers was a problem. His “love for sex” became part of the organizational culture. His leadership role set a tone that led to systemic problems of sexual harassment and abuse at Common Ground.

When a group of the women in leadership challenged his behavior and asked that he stop sleeping with volunteers, he said “I like to fuck women, so what.” Our concerns were disregarded. The abuse became so rampant that Common Ground had to issue a public statement in May of 2006 acknowledging problems of sexual harassment in the organization.

Brandon left for a while but returned in November 2006 when he was asked to become the Interim Director of CG. His first focus was to dismantle the primarily women and queer leadership team at the St. Mary’s volunteer site. He then started recruiting men for the security team, trained them in martial arts, and asked if they were willing to carry guns, despite the fact that Common Ground had an explicit policy against weapons at our sites.

Offices of Common Ground Relief in New Orleans. Photo from BigGovernment.com.

Brandon picked fights in the community, increasingly drawing police into the area and to Common Ground. He initiated action to kick down the door of the Women’s Center at two in the morning, to get rid of a man who was staying there. Brandon also kicked in the door of a trailer and pointed weapons at a group of volunteers who were hanging out with someone whom Brandon had asked to leave CG. As the Interim Director, Brandon felt he could do what he wanted without the consent of or accountability to the volunteers, the communities CG served, or other leadership.

In another incident, Brandon was arrested in a car chase. He was so angry about being arrested that Brandon once again trumped other work being done by deciding that he was going to personally clean up the New Orleans Police Department. He printed up hundreds of yard signs and put them around New Orleans, with a phone number saying that if you had a problem with NOPD, call Brandon Darby, Interim Director of Common Ground.

Brandon’s ego was getting more and more inflated making him even more dangerous. He covered his megalomania with a practiced humility and drawl. He became increasingly reckless and kept everybody in defensive and reactive postures.

Sexism, like racism, affects all of us. Brandon was allowed to assume leadership and authority at Common Ground because he was a strong, good-looking, charismatic, straight white male who was willing to take risks, even if reckless. As Malik’s favored son he did pretty much whatever he wanted. Yet, the work of activists who were women or queer or busy doing relief remained relatively invisible. Those activists were only given power where it didn’t challenge Brandon’s and he made sure of it.

During the first year of Common Ground, Brandon decided that I was an obstacle to his authority, and he worked to undermine me. He successfully diverted attention from my challenges to his sexist, abusive, unethical, and unaccountable behavior by framing them as a “power struggle”. Where he wasn’t able to convince others in the organization, he silenced them with fear of his retribution.

Brandon attacked me in public and spread disinformation about my work. He built a small group of dedicated followers that were willing to do his dirty work. They would tape record people, including myself and report back to him. He snitch-jacketed me -- accused me of being an FBI agent. When I reached out to others, particularly men in New Orleans to intervene, I received little support. None of them were willing or able to challenge Brandon’s clearly destructive behavior. Those who backed his authority contributed to the organizational divisions that allowed his continued abuse of power.

In January 2007 I drove to New Orleans to pick up a friend who was kicked out of Common Ground by Brandon because she was a friend of mine. She was one of the coordinators at the St. Mary’s site. Other relief work coordinators were leaving the organization and because of this Brandon accused me of coming to town to wage a coup against him.

Early the next morning one of his “assistants” called me, threatening me with lawsuits. Then I get a call telling me that Brandon told them that King told him that Scott and I were conspiring against him. Crazy shit, crazy COINTELPRO shit. At the same time Brandon began a purge of three long-time coordinators by demanding they turn in the keys and leave the premises. But this time even Brandon went too far. Malik intervened and stopped the purge.

Lies

Brandon lies. He lied at Common Ground. He lied to the FBI. He lied in his open letter. He lied to his friends. He lied to the media. He lied to the judge and jury.

The government and the FBI lie, too. There is a long history of government infiltration and violence to disrupt social movements, a history that they have lied about in the past and they continue lie about today. It is documented that the government infiltrated and disrupted protests at the Republican National Conventions (2000 in Philly and 2004 in New York City). But in St. Paul they took it to a whole new level and they were more than willing to use Brandon to do it.

The government’s efforts to break the grassroots direct action anti-capitalist movement led to one of the most fascist operations I have experienced in the U.S. During the RNC -- between knocking down doors, confiscating organizing materials, raiding homes, snatching people on the streets, impounding the skills training bus, and even surrounding my car with guns, they also arrested hundreds of innocent people and are continuing to prosecute the RNC 8, who are facing state conspiracy charges.

To this day it is my firm belief that the government set up both Brad and David, and another young man named Matt DePalma, in order to legitimize their acts of repression and to taint the environment in the case of the RNC 8. There were only two instances of Molotov cocktails in St. Paul and both of them had an FBI informant involved. In the case of Matt, the informant brought him to the library to learn how to make them, brought him to a store to buy the stuff and then made and tested them together!

In the case of David and Brad, Brandon had been goading them into a destructive mindset from the very first meeting and he continued to goad them throughout. Brandon created the environment in which they made some very bad decisions. I do not believe that those Molotov cocktails would have been made if Brandon had not been a part of that group.

One year later

At the time of this writing, Brad and David are both serving time in federal prison. Brad plea-bargained and was sentenced to two years. David went to trial and the first jury could not reach a verdict. Awaiting his second trial, prosecutors threatened to bring additional charges against Brad and to call Brad as a witness to testify against David.

Rather than force his friend to choose between self-interest and defending him, David made a decision to plea out. Instead of leniency, the judge doubled David’s sentence to four years without parole as punishment for the first trial.

Kate Kibby, who was previously arrested dressed as a zombie in a demonstration in Minneapolis.

Then in November 2009 the FBI unsuccessfully prosecuted a young woman, named Kate Kibby, for allegedly threatening Brandon in an email. Fortunately, the jury delivered a unanimous not guilty verdict. One of the many interesting things we learned in that case is that Brandon had actually drafted his open letter near the end of October and posted it against the FBI’s wishes.

We also learned that one of the FBI’s motivations in pursuing this case was the hope of finding a new informant. In their interrogation of this woman, they asked if she was working with me or Scott Crow. They told her she could be facing 20 years, but more likely 2-4. If she wanted to become an informant in the Austin and New York City anarchist scenes, they could work something out.

Fortunately, this woman had integrity and principles, and refused to be threatened or bullied. Because of this, she had to endure an FBI invasion into her life, and a terrifying trial. As her father said afterwards, “I knew if we could get 12 adults to sit down and look at this, they would see how absurd it is…”

I wish that this trial could be the end of any damage that Brandon might do, but we know that Brandon is likely to be a main witness in the trial against the RNC 8, organizers from Minneapolis who are facing conspiracy charges. Who knows how many other people he will concoct stories or fabricate lies about? Or how his brain twists the facts.

After Kate’s trial he sent an email to Scott, saying that Scott and I were responsible for David being in jail. He said:
I feel that you and Lisa bear some moral (not legal) responsibility for two of the years that David McKay is serving. Y'all let your dogma and your personal resentments guide you in the advice and encouragement you gave him. He did wrong and he would be free soon had he just been honest.

Y'all somehow convinced him that he had to "fight the man" and that his being honest was somehow unfair to the oppressed peoples of the world. Thankfully, Mrs. Kibby did not take y'alls guidance or drink your koolaid- and she's free.

A few years ago, I began to feel that you guys were similiar to radical Imams in that y'all spout hatred (not all hatred, good things too) and young activists get in trouble all around y'all, but never y'all. I feel that y'all did that with my youthful anger as well.

Though I'm sure you don't appreciate receiving an email from me, I think you can deduce some of my motivations from its words.
I am sorry; I have worked with thousands of young people over the years and none of them are in the situation that people find themselves in after working around Brandon. I have no time for his twisted logic, vague threats and destructive behavior. Instead, let us vanquish him and learn from this to insure that he, or people like him, can never do this again. To that end…

Behaviors of Brandon’s or others that enabled this kind of damage to be done.
  1. Deferring or listening to men, as opposed to women and/or attacking women in leadership positions. Our patriarchal society has taught us this and we need to deconstruct it.
  2. Charisma and confidence enabled him to assume leadership and control -- people deferred even though he had little experience. He cultivated a handful of women and men to become personal assistants who did a lot of his work for him.
  3. Assuming credibility by his associations -- Brandon tried to associate himself with other high profile organizers in the activist community.
  4. Preying on and exploiting people’s vulnerabilities and insecurities, particularly using alcohol or other addictions. He liked to “play with people's minds."
  5. Bullying. All bullies abuse their power and people let them do what they want because they are afraid of what will happen if they do not go along. They use their physical prowess to intimidate both women and men.
  6. Disrupting group process in meetings, derailing agendas, questioning process, challenging others, or not coming to meetings at all to avoid accountability. Or using secrecy and sub-groups to divide the whole.
  7. Pointing fingers at and ‘snitch-jacketing’ other people, accusing them of being cops, FBI agents, etc. This kept everyone on guard, and created an environment of suspicion and distrust.
  8. Seducing people using power or sex, leaving a lot of pain and destabilized situations in his wake or provoking people to do acts they would not do on their own.
  9. Being persistent and pursuing people, by calling them repeatedly or showing up at their homes, inviting them for coffee, he would wear you down, or find other ways back into important relationships.
  10. Being an emotional/physical wreck, becoming very needy and seducing people into taking care of him. Then people would defend him because of his emotional vulnerabilities or physical needs.
  11. Time and energy suck. Talk endlessly, consuming hours of time and energy -- confusing, exhausting, and indoctrinating.
  12. Being helpful or useful -- showing up when you most needed support. Brandon would arrive with tools, money, or whatever was needed at just the right time.
  13. Documenting through videotaping or photographing actions but never using it or working on communications systems which he attempted at the RNC.

Brandon Darby at work. Image from New Orleans Indymedia.


Some day I hope to wake up and find things different

Brandon’s behavior over the years makes it clear that he is a misogynist, an egomaniac, and a liar. Unfortunately, many in our broader community bought into the illusion that he was a great radical self-described "revolutionary." They defended him again and again. He repaid their support with betrayal. He continues to make a mockery of our work and supports the FBI in their efforts to crush our struggle for justice.

Some day I hope to wake up and find things different. I hope to see our communities deepen our understanding and commitment to uprooting all the “isms.” I would like to see a community where we create agreements and structures of accountability that will not allow behaviors like those highlighted above to continue, and if they do continue, that men will listen to women, and stand up to each other when someone is clearly abusing their power and authority.

In the end, I do not know what other choices I could have made short of leaving Common Ground earlier. I actually believe I tried to interrupt, make visible, warn and mitigate the damage of Brandon, but it was the people around me that continued to support Brandon despite the obvious problems.

Some of the lessons I have learned are that if someone is continually engaging in a pattern of disruptive behavior, like those mentioned above, that people must make clear agreements about what kind of behavior is OK and not OK and then collectively hold each other to those agreements.

If people/women are continually raising an issue about a particular person I will pay more attention, do some research, and if questions or problems continue to arise about that person, I will work together with others to ask that person to leave. Whether they are infiltrators or not, the behaviors that they are exhibiting are counterproductive to a world rooted in justice and equality. They are also, by their very nature, putting all of us at risk of unjust government action and imprisonment by their reckless and provocative behavior.

I also hope that someday when I wake up that I will live in a world where people do not use the threat of or use of violence to get their way or impose their will. That if we have such people in our movement that we will not be intimidated but instead will work together to end those abuses of power, for they mirror the abuses the Government in their efforts to exploit and control.

I also hope more people will chose nonviolent action since such action prefigures our future, can be strategically effective, and minimizes our movement's vulnerability -- and because I do not believe we can make lasting real radical change through violent means in this country.

Some day when I wake up, I hope to find an end to the systemic oppression and repression that unjustly locks up so many innocent people, while destroying and thwarting the dreams of so many others. Perhaps if we built our communities based on just agreements and real accountability, prisons would become obsolete.

Until we wake up in that world, let us remember that no one is free until we all are free. No day will be different until we make it so. Let us begin today.

Here is a link to a story about a long-time informant in New Zealand that also made the news in December 2008. It is uncanny how many similarities there are and lots of good lessons for us…http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/76563/index.php

A great deal has been written about the case of the Texas 2 and can be found at www.freethetexas2.org

Many thanks to the following for their editorial support: James Clark, Lauren Ross, Ted German, Casey Pritchett, Scott Crow, and Missy Benavidez.

[Lisa Fithian has been organizing for 35 years -- working with peace, labor, student/youth, immigrant and global, environmental and racial justice organizations and movements. Much of her work has been focused on using creative nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience in strategic campaigns. She is a member of the Alliance of Community Trainers, a small collective working to empower communities for collective transformation.

Lisa has worked with Common Ground Relief, the post-Katrina New Orleans collective; the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); United for Peace and Justice; and environmental groups like Save our Springs -- and she helped Cindy Sheehan coordinate activities at Camp Casey. Check out Lisa’s websites: www.organizingforpower.org and www.trainersalliance.org.]

Top: Lauren Ross, center, is comforted by her friend Lisa Fithian after they were arrested during a protest in New York Sept. 2, 2004. Photo by Bebeto Matthews / AP. Image from CommonDreams. Below: Lisa Fithian and Ken Butigan at a National Assembly of United for Peace and Justice in Chicago, 2007. Photo by Diane Greene Lent / dianelent.com.

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:Go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life. [The Darby segment starts 13 minutes in.]

Also, read this remarkable piece of reporting: The Informant: Revolutionary to rat: The uneasy journey of Brandon Darby by Diana Welch / Austin Chronicle / Jan. 23, 2009

For more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog

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26 May 2009

James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants

The Texas 2: David McKay and Bradley Crowder.

The Texas 2: Intrigue, Provocation, and Betrayal
The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul.
By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

The steel door of the United States federal criminal justice system has slammed shut on the cases of the so-called Texas 2. Amidst courtroom drama replete with extraordinary plot twists, the linked stories of Austin activist pals Bradley Neal Crowder and David Guy McKay interweave tumultuous boy-to-manhood coming-of-age themes with the bitter taste of betrayal. Far more disquieting, looming above the northland Minnesota stage, larger, darker questions emerge concerning the role of informers and agents provocateur within activist movements.

On Thursday, May 21, David McKay, a 22-year-old Austin resident accused of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, was sentenced to four years in federal prison. One week earlier his friend and co-defendant, Brad Crowder, 23 and also from Austin, was sentenced to 24 months on firebomb possession charges.

Crowder and McKay were charged Sept. 3, 2008, after federal authorities, acting on information provided by Brandon Darby, a paid informer who had been highly visible in Austin progressive circles for several years, found eight Molotov cocktails hidden in the basement of a St. Paul apartment building where the two were staying during the convention.

From the outset, the cases against Crowder and McKay were clouded by Darby’s brazen revelation that he was on the FBI payroll. Given his history of bizarre and provocative behavior in Austin and New Orleans, many local activists immediately suspected Darby of manipulating the younger men into a criminal adventure and then busting them.

Indeed, when McKay’s case went to trial in late January, his attorney, Jeff DeGree, staged an aggressive defense around the entrapment argument. Darby’s past statements, such as his stated advocacy of using firebombs to “fight against gentrification,” provided DeGree with a provocateur “quote fest,” and as many as six jurors found Darby’s actions to be over the line. The trial ended in a hung jury.


McKay’s courtroom success was to be short-lived. From the outset, the McKay and Crowder defense teams had no unity of purpose and common courtroom strategy. The government exploited the disunity between the two friends and fellow defendants with great success.

While McKay’s lawyer was planning an aggressive case to put Darby and his FBI handlers on trial, Crowder’s attorney, federal public defender Andrew Mohring -- with what appears to be considerable support from Crowder’s family -- persuaded the young Austinite to accept a plea bargain on a single charge of possession.

Crowder’s deal was signed in early January, several weeks before McKay was scheduled to go on trial. The government, however, delayed Crowder’s sentencing until after the McKay case was resolved. Though prosecutors did not call Crowder to testify in the McKay trial, they still held his admission of guilt as a trump card that ultimately would become the key factor in McKay’s eventual decision to change his plea to guilty.

Earlier this month, as McKay’s second trial date approached, federal prosecutors announced that this time they would put Crowder on the stand to testify against his friend. They also told Crowder that if he did not co-operate, they would tack two years onto his sentence.

Crowder’s public defender argued that because Crowder had not yet been sentenced, he could not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony. The government countered by filing a request to grant Crowder immunity, thus compelling his testimony.

In his plea bargain, Crowder had stipulated that, though Darby had become “very influential” in his life and that he looked up to him, the FBI informant had not participated in the firebomb plan “in a direct way.” On the other hand, McKay’s defense had claimed that Darby’s prints were all over the alleged plot. "Brandon Darby created the idea that we, as an affinity group, create multiple Molotov cocktails," McKay stated on the witness stand in his own defense.

The contradiction between the two defendants’ statements would continue to be a factor as McKay attempted to negotiate a plea bargain earlier this month. District Judge Michael Davis, the same judge who presided over the Crowder case and would pass sentence on both defendants, at first refused to accept McKay’s guilty plea because McKay, in his statement to the judge, did not withdraw his entrapment allegations by repudiating his earlier insistence that Darby unduly influenced his decision to make bombs. With a panel of prospective jurors waiting outside the courtroom, Judge Davis told McKay to think about it and come back the next day.

Among the things McKay and his attorney had to think about was the problem of withdrawing the entrapment argument without exposing McKay to new charges -- perjury -- for his court testimony.

McKay returned to court the next day and told Judge Davis that he may have misremembered who first brought up the idea of making and using Molotov cocktails. Satisfied that the entrapment defense had been taken off the table voluntarily by McKay, the judge accepted the guilty plea.
Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

But there is a far-more-important backstory at play, and that is the question of the scope and credibility of the government’s massive infiltration of peace and environmental activist groups and the incredibility of the Justice Department’s use of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws against American political dissidents.

The government likes its moles to burrow in deep and avoid the light. Darby turned out to be more moth than mole -- he has a penchant for gravitating toward the spotlight. Another key RNC informant, Andrew (Panda) Darst, also wandered too close to the flame.

In a case unrelated to the Texas 2, 23-year-old Matthew Bradley DePalma of Flint, MI, in early March quietly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 months in prison on the charge of possessing Molotov cocktails. The case against DePalma began at a CrimeThinc Convergence in Wisconsin in July 2008 when an FBI informant first met DePalma and reported that DePalma had talked about traveling to the RNC to “make some bombs” and “blow shit up.”

The informant met up with DePalma in Minneapolis in mid-August and helped him procure bomb-making materials and how-to manuals, let him use his residence to manufacture as many as five firebombs, and even drove DePalma to a remote location to test the devices. That FBI informant was Andy Panda Darst.

In addition, Darst is a key government witness in the high-profile case of the RNC 8, Minneapolis area members of the RNC Welcoming Committee who in early September 2008 were indicted on four felony conspiracy and terrorism charges under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.

Just two weeks before the McKay trial, Darst seriously damaged his value as a creditable witness when he broke down a door and assaulted several people in a house where his wife had sought refuge after a domestic dispute. He was arrested and charged with burglary and assault. Later he was found guilty of felony burglary and assault and on May 18 was sentenced to 180 days in the workhouse with 160 days set aside.

Panda was on the government’s witness list for the McKay trial, but the prosecution did not put him on the stand. The damage to Darst’s credibility as a witness is also believed to have influenced county prosecutor (and Minnesota Democrat gubernatorial candidate) Susan Gaertner’s decision to drop the two terrorism charges against the eight Minneapolis activists -- conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism. All eight still face felony charges of conspiracy to commit riot and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.

Seven of the RNC 8 marched behind a banner reading "Our Common Treasury. Dig It!" at the Minneapolis May Day parade.

The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul. Gone are the secret COINTELPRO operatives lurking in the shadows in the years before the Church Committee’s voluminous 1975-76 exposé of illegal domestic spying conducted by the FBI, CIA, NSA, Department of Defense, and intelligence services within the military against American citizens. Since the fear-mongered passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the Bush-Cheney program to extend executive privilege beyond any and all constraints inconveniently imposed by rule of law, domestic spying is no longer illegal. No need to hide in the dark.

The Church Committee’s findings did not simply linger on the extent of the spying -- for example, 215,000 pieces of mail secretly opened by the FBI and CIA before 1973 -- or the hundreds of thousands of Americans on various “watch lists.” Far more revealing -- and appalling -- were the excesses. Near the top of that list stands the 1969 murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his bed after he had been drugged by a police informant. Though years later details of a conspiracy to assassinate the charismatic young Panther implicated the FBI, the Illinois State's Attorney's Office tactical unit, and the Chicago Police, no one has been brought to justice.

Two recent studies -- the Center for Democracy and Technology’s 2002 Analysis of New FBI Guidelines and a 2005 Justice Department Inspector General Report -- suggest that relaxed investigative ground rules and failure to properly oversee the activities of confidential informants once again may be leading to investigative excesses and dismantling of the Bill of Rights.

Eric Lichtblau reported in the May 6, 2009, New York Times that the FBI presently maintains a consolidated watch list of 400,000 “terrorism suspects.” According to Lichtblau, the DOJ inspector general discovered in a recent statistical sampling study that at least 24,000 people were incorrectly kept on the terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated and sometimes irrelevant information. Because of the limited scope of the study, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Lichtblau continues:
People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for political reasons.
The CDT study of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s 2002 revision of FBI investigative guidelines reached the following conclusions:
  • The changes mean that the FBI, which has failed to manage the ocean of information it already collects, will be gathering yet more information in situations completely unconnected to any suspicion of criminal conduct, and will be continuing for longer periods of time investigations that are producing nothing.

  • The expanded surveillance and use of data mining could be written off as just a waste of money, but for two paramount problems: the changes are likely to make the FBI less efficient in preventing terrorism, by diverting resources down rat-holes of fruitless investigations; and the DOJ has proven its determination since September 11 to arrest people based on the kinds of innocent coincidences that data mining may flag and hold them in jail even after concluding that they were unrelated to any terrorism and in some cases (the material witnesses) had committed no legal violation at all.

  • The FBI was never prohibited from surfing the Internet or using commercial data mining services -- the FBI has long been a major customer of many private information systems. But in the past, searches of databases had to be related to some investigation. The threshold was very low -- under the old guidelines, the FBI could maintain a preliminary inquiry for 90 days using data mining, undercover operations, photo surveillance, informants, etc, whenever it had "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny." In fact, the FBI could open preliminary inquiries solely for the purpose of data mining. But it had to be looking for some criminal conduct. The new changes allow the data mining technique -- who has changed apartments three times in the past two years? who has been making a lot of international phone calls? -- as the basis for generating the suspicion of criminal conduct in the first place.

  • The FBI was never prohibited in the past from going to mosques, political rallies and other “public” places, to observe and record what was said, but, again, in the past it had to be guided by the criminal nexus -- in deciding what mosques to go to and what political meetings to record, it had to have some reason to believe that terrorism might be discussed. Under the new guidelines, even before opening a preliminary inquiry, the FBI can go to mosques and political meetings. How will it decide which ones to go to? -- we fear it will be on the basis of politics.

  • The DOJ is using the terrorism crisis as a cover for a range of changes, some of which have nothing to do with terrorism.

The online surfing provisions, for example, relate not only to terrorism cases, but to all other investigations -- drugs, white collar crime, public corruption, and copyright infringement. Other changes affect how the FBI conducts investigations under RICO, the racketeering and organized crime law, allowing the FBI to use the heavy weaponry of RICO (forfeiture, enhanced penalties) against crimes that are not committed for monetary gain.

Regarding the FBI’s handling of its confidential informants, the DOJ inspector general found that in nearly nine out every 10 cases reviewed, bureau guidelines were violated in ways that risked compromising investigations.

While the guidelines sometimes permit informants such as drug dealers or gang members to commit crimes in order to further an investigation, the review found that F.B.I. agents allowed criminal informants to engage in criminal activities without getting needed approval from supervisors or lawyers for such operations, failed to report unauthorized illegal activity, or approved such illegal activity only retroactively.

Beyond the problems in managing confidential informants, the inspector general's review looked at the effect of a number of changes ordered by Mr. Ashcroft in his 2002 revamping of the bureau's investigative guidelines. According to The New York Times, “The new guidelines relaxed restrictions put in place in the 1970s as a result of F.B.I. abuses in the monitoring of political dissidents.”
Critics charged last year that the F.B.I. had abused its expanded powers by monitoring, interviewing and sometimes subpoenaing antiwar protesters and political protesters in advance of the political conventions last summer. The inspector general's office disclosed in its report Monday that it was conducting a separate investigation to determine whether the F.B.I. interrogations of protesters were in fact improper.

The 1990 Judi Bari-Darryl Cherney case may have been an early warning signal that the FBI had found an opportunity to recommission its Vietnam-era bag of dirty tricks. After she almost died when a motion-triggered pipe bomb wrapped with nails exploded under her car seat, Earth First activist Bari and her companion Darryl Cherney were charged by the FBI with knowingly transporting the bomb as part of an eco-terrorism plot.

Before Bari’s death in 1997, Bari and Cherney launched an aggressive lawsuit against the bureau and local police and uncovered evidence of collusion between the FBI and the lumber industry to blame the victims and cover up investigative leads that might have linked the bomber to an FBI bomb school run by the agency’s top expert -- the very “expert” who insisted that forensic evidence proved that the environmental activists had placed the device behind the drivers seat to transport it to their intended target.

"Anna" -- aka: Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani.

The plot thickened in 2007 when the FBI persuaded a 17-year-old Florida college student identified as “Anna” in court documents (also known in activist circles as Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani) to spend four years undercover -- apparently often literally so -- building a case against Earth Liberation Front member Eric McDavid on charges of conspiring to damage and destroy property, including government facilities, by means of fire and explosives.

The subsequent trial produced a sordid tale of sexual manipulation and obsession as “Anna” provided McDavid and the two other members of the group with money to buy materials, transportation, and a remote cabin -- fully equipped with audio and video surveillance equipment -- in which to work. According to McDavid’s attorney, Mark Reichel, Anna was always pushing McDavid and the two other members of the group to do something criminal, taught them how to make the bombs, supervised their activities, and repeatedly threatened to leave them if they didn't start doing "something." Friends of the ELF activist say that “Anna” used the promise of sex to manipulate and eventually snare McDavid into a bomb plot concocted and financed by her handlers at the Department of Justice.

After the two co-defendants were pressured into testifying against McDavid, he was found guilty and sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.

In the past few days news channels have been abuzz with the story of the Bronx terrorist bomb plot, four dead-enders with histories of drug addiction, mental illness, and a petty crime (such as purse-snatching) as well as big plans to blow up a New York City synagogue and shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles.

Noted the Los Angeles Times: “Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11. ‘It's hard to envision a more chilling plot,’ Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as ‘eager to bring death to Jews.’"

To which Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation on May 23, retorts:
“Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for.”

Lurking in the shadows of this sensationalized story is another FBI confidential informant, a man arrested for identity theft in 2002 and given five years probation on the condition that he become an FBI informer.

According to Michael Wilson’s May 21 report in the New York Times, the mole began to show up at a mosque in Newburgh, NY, in 2007, telling prospective targets that he was a recruiter for Jaish-e-Mohammed (the Army of Mohammed), an Islamic mujahadeen organization based in Pakistan. The iman of the Newburgh mosque said that one of his congregants was offered a substantial amount of money to join the informant’s terrorist “team.”

As Dreyfuss emphatically notes:
So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Preying on these losers, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.

The informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course. …

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

Is the Bill of Rights under attack? It would seem so in Minnesota where 34 RNC protest cases have come to trial with one conviction.

Correction: zero convictions.

On May 19 a street medic was convicted of public assembly without a permit, but the trial judge himself, in an extraordinary move, overturned the verdict, and the prosecutor has declined to retry the case.

Therefore the murky firebomb conspiracy pleas of DePalma, Crowder, and McKay are the only prosecutorial “successes” to date. Indeed, after the McKay sentence was handed down, the feds must have heaved a collective sigh of relief. Their improperly supervised, out-of-control informants provided just enough to intimidate three young men, two of whom were represented by public defenders, into copping pleas and saving the Justice Department from the sorry spectacle of more public trials -- and more revelations about how FBI snitches play fast and loose with the rule of law.

Also see Brandon Darby in New Orleans : FBI Informant Was Egotistical Sexist by Victoria Welle / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:Also go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life.” [The Darby segment starts 13 minutes in.]

Also, read this remarkable piece of reporting: The Informant: Revolutionary to rat: The uneasy journey of Brandon Darby by Diana Welch / Austin Chronicle / Jan. 23, 2009

For more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog

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Brandon Darby in New Orleans : FBI Informant Was Egotistical Sexist


This Activist Life:

FBI snitch was also a sexist, authoritarian, provocative fraud
By Victoria Welle

[Victoria Welle worked with Brandon Darby at the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans. Common Ground is a community-run relief organization that played a major role in post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. Darby has since been revealed to have been an FBI informant who allegedly played the part of provocateur in the recent “Texas 2” case in which two defendants were convicted of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN. This article was first published at (hasta la) Victoria on May 21, 2009.]
“not sure when you last spoke to [x] or how much she told you about all the common ground drama, but it’s pretty chaotic here, and not in a good way. [a founder] and the fiscal sponsor turned over all directing responsibility of cg to brandon darby, and, well, let’s just say that any lingering notion that common ground is a collective has been completely shattered. darby might be anti-racist, but he’s got a lot to learn as far as male privilege is concerned. there are days when i feel like i’d rather be back working in a formal Catholic institution b/c at least I’d know to expect the blatant sexism and hierarchy. if it wasn’t for all the other amazing folks struggling alongside me with the day to day work i’d be long gone.” -- from an email sent [by Victoria Welle] 10 Feb 07
This weekend the public radio show This American Life is going to do a story on Brandon Darby, an activist who became an informant for the FBI. [The story was aired on May 12, 2009, and can be downloaded online.]

I’m very curious to hear how the story gets told, but they probably won’t tell the side of the story I’m most familiar with. I worked with Darby in 2007, when both of us were part of Common Ground, an organization doing relief work in post-Katrina New Orleans.

As the above excerpt from a personal email I sent shows, I have a definite bias, based on my less than positive interactions with him. But my experiences with Darby have also given me a lot to think about when it comes to how we as activists work together, how we hold one another accountable, and how we go about not making the same mistakes as the culture we’re critiquing.

When the rumors of Darby’s involvement with the FBI were confirmed, there was a lot of speculation about when exactly he began informing. Was it just in the months before the 2008 Republican National Convention protests, or did it go back further? Was he working for the feds when he was in New Orleans? It might sound ridiculous and paranoid to consider this, but it’s not hard to see how many came to that conclusion.

Common Ground was political as well as social service oriented, formed in large part to counter the ineffective relief efforts attempted by FEMA and other government agencies. Common Ground routinely criticized government officials (often via an active grassroots media team), it refused any federal funds, and one of its founders was a former Black Panther, an organization that itself saw a great deal of harmful (and deadly) government infiltration throughout its history. Common Ground at that point in time fit the profile of an organization that would likely be under some sort of surveillance.

Then there was Darby’s sometimes erratic behavior and seemingly inexplicable actions that would make more sense if understood as being done to deliberately sabotage the organization. Like ousting two long-term workers simply because they publicly disagreed with him in a meeting. Or, in a burst of anger, canceling the cell phone account used as the central hotline for the hugely successful (and much needed) legal aid program; or the matter of thousands of dollars wasted on an ill-conceived and poorly planned “police accountability” project that went nowhere. Most harmful of all was the loss of many allies in organizations throughout the city who were alienated by Darby’s arrogant bravado and no longer wanted to work with the organization.

All of this said, I think dwelling on the was-he or wasn’t-he questions of when his involvement with the FBI began detracted from the bigger and more difficult questions and issues that we anti-oppression activists need to be focused on. There will always be government interference with our work, and much of that is beyond our control.


The biggest problem I have with Brandon Darby isn’t that he snitched. What still angers me to this day is how his unchecked sexism, authoritarian leadership style, and stubborn refusal to take advice or criticism caused a great deal of disruption to the organization’s relief and justice work in New Orleans. The fact that someone with so much unexamined privilege was able to maintain leadership in our organization as long as he did says a lot about us as well: we as activists have to do a better job of calling out oppressive behavior within our organizing culture.

It means being truly democratic in how we structure ourselves, and being clear that top-down power imbalances are not effective, even if done with supposedly good intentions. It means being willing to have difficult conversations when it’s not convenient, when there’s “not enough time” because we have so much “real” work to do. It means continuing to do our own internal anti-oppression work, especially when it comes to examining the intersection of differing oppressions, and being willing to take constructive criticism.

Common Ground was right to be explicitly anti-racist in its work, but that wasn’t enough. By failing to critically examine and confront other oppressions at work in our organization (such as sexism, ageism, authoritarianism), we allowed highly dysfunctional behavior to go unchecked, which ultimately lessened our ability to do effective work for the people of New Orleans. Sadly, Darby was not the only one at fault when it comes to this lack of critical reflection, and I think this festering of multiple “isms” within the group laid the groundwork for someone as problematic as him to be placed in such an influential position.

Could we have done things differently? Many people in Common Ground had problems with Darby’s actions from the outset, but it was also made clear from early on that disagreement with him would not be tolerated (such as the examples mentioned above). Some long term workers decided to leave the organization rather than continue to work under him. Many of us chose instead to try to work around him, avoiding interactions and further fruitless arguments we felt we could not win with him.

When it was necessary to deal with Darby or one of his (all male) team, I often sent a male co-worker, knowing that he could successfully navigate Darby’s good ol’ boys network. I chose the “easy” way of avoiding conflict by retreating into traditionally female roles: running the office behind the scenes and even (literally) getting coffee for the men when they came by for meetings.

I rationalized my experiences by telling myself that what I was dealing with was minimal compared to what the residents of New Orleans were going through, and my issues needed to take a back seat. But the stress of working in such a dysfunctional setting took its toll on me, and I think I was a less effective relief worker in the long run because of that stress. I’m convinced that many others experienced a similar type of burnout.

If we had dealt more effectively with Darby in New Orleans, would he have been in less of a position of prominence when he returned to Texas, and therefore less able to influence the younger activists who became caught in the web of government surveillance and entrapment? It’s hard to say for sure, and probably not a productive line of reasoning.

What I do know is that we will always be dealing with people like Brandon Darby, and while we are right to be angry about what he did, it can’t detract us from the essential anti-oppression work we each have to do. In the case of Common Ground, making Darby the scapegoat for all that went wrong lets the rest of us off the hook, and distracts us from continuing to ask the hard questions of how each of us is also complicit in oppressive actions.

I’m guessing that if I didn’t have a personal tie to the story, the upcoming episode of This American Life would be, as usual, good radio entertainment. But I have a feeling I’ll instead find myself muttering epithets back at the radio when I hear Darby once again try to portray himself as nothing more than an earnest, ethical activist who couldn’t bear the thought of violence happening, and so he took it upon himself to Do the Right Thing and become an informant. I’ll think back to the behavior I witnessed in New Orleans and wish he’d never been given the mike. Then I hope to turn off the radio and get back to work.

Source / (hasta la) Victoria

Also see James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants by James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

Previous Rag Blog articles on Brandon Darby and the Texas 2:Also go to the Support the Texas 2 website.

And listen to “Turncoat,” a story about Brandon Darby on Chicago Public Radio’s "This American Life.”

And, for more background on this issue, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

And see the entire "Hamilton Files" of former UT-Austin police chief Allen Hamilton that served as documentation for Dreyer's story, here.

The Rag Blog / Posted May 26, 2009

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11 January 2009

A Special to the Rag Blog from OneLove, Our Foreign Correspondent


To Catch a Spy
By OneLove / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2009

Ahh, ain't it a bitch. Your friend, buddy, Lover, comrade, comrade in arms, Brother, Sister, Affinity group member, long time associate, trusted mentor, favorite protege, You know who I mean. The ones you need to form the fist that will represent you and strike the blow in the grand struggle.

Every struggle has many fronts, yours deserves an opportunity. We have a right to assemble, to offer our solutions, to demonstrate, picket, march, write letters, communicate amongst ourselves, defend ourselves and to act against our common enemies. The enemy, our enemy, has no right to spy on us. In fact our enemy has no rights at all. That doesn't stop them. So, What is to be done?

Be pro-active. Don't just trust anyone, check them out. First the gut-check, get down with them, find out what they really believe, which side they are really on, where they are coming from, their class, class background, and class stand. Dig deep, where did they grow up, how did they grow up, what is it about them and their
experience that draws them to your particular struggle at this time. Sometimes there seems to be no rational reason for them to be on your side. No one acts without reason, what is their reason to organize or join an organization?

There have always been spies, traitors to the cause, and some are heartbreaking. Dovey Greenglass sent his sister to the electric chair. David Kazinsky sent his brother up for life. George Demmerly sent Sam Melville to his death sentence in D yard. A rat sent Lee Otis Johnson up for 40 years, and ruined his life. Now this latest rat plans to send the Texas 2 to prison. Security is important, you can't
let them exist in your community or organization. In Chicago '68, a pig disguised as a biker was allowed to hang out with people, many people spotted him as a pig, but didn't takes appropriate action on the theory that "every one knows he's a pig, let him hang with us and don't tell him nada." Later at a trial he came to the stand, with pictures of himself hanging with the some of the defendants, and then invented tales of what was discussed, all lies, but the fact that he could show he was there was enough to convince some on the jury that he had knowledge. By the way, even that jury had a spy on it.

Years ago checking someone out was difficult, but not impossible. At one time we had a connection in a large Insurance company, the company had a computer that listed every insurance policy held by anyone in the U.S. Life, health, car. homeowners, whatever, we used that to uncover a couple of pigs. Now-a-days we have our own computers. We can easily find out about anybody, court appearances, property owned, work records, driving records, tax records, marriage and divorce records, are all at our finger-tips. Use them. Will it cost you or your group a few dollars? Yes it will. Is it worth the expense? Compare to the legal and political costs of Brandon Darby's spy-provocateur act.

Someone like Darby is much more of a problem. Someone already on the inside, then later turned out by the man. Not everyone trusted him; they should have done their homework, not just avoided him or the issue. I recommend the LSD test, but that's not for everyone, remember the first cosmic commandment, "Thou shall not alter another's consciousness." That means No Dosing. However, group or family travel presents ample opportunities. Create unnerving situations and ask sharp questions.

In the current case, it would be interesting for some journalists to make a Freedom of Information Act request about any case numbers the lawyers can uncover. The initial FBI interview with Darby will tell you a lot. Where was the interview held? Did they twist his arm? They once twisted mine on a street in Washington, D.C. Did they offer him $$$? Colin Nyburger was once offered $200,000 for a secret. Did they chase him up the street shouting, "We don't want to hassle you?" They did that to me, also, in Eugene, OR. Did they threaten to expose some dirty deed about him? Like they did to the in-the-closet gay FIFTH ESTATE snitch? The answer would be revealing. Maybe they jammed the guy up in some way, and he couldn't help it, more or less. But to be in a position where the only alternative is to rat out your brothers and sisters is not often achieved overnight. My guess is that he walked into the FBI office in San Antonio and offered to be a snitch.

Activists, just because you are not and are not intending to do anything wrong or illegal doesn't mean you won't be targeted! The more your contribution furthers the struggle, the better chance you will be targeted for neutralization. But don't be paranoid, be smart! They tried many ways to neutralize the original RAG, but we were smart and we fought back. Don't you think that now they would be happy to neutralize the ragblog, and groups like Common Ground? The day they recruited that spy, they began to recruit his replacement.

Right now we can neutralize their strike by freeing the Texas 2....Then FREE MARILYN BUCK!!

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Posted by richard jehn at 8:24 PM
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