BAM-N Launches Organizing Drive in DC

Thought this was interesting. As usual, the issues they talk about are very important. Their usual tactics are another question; hopefully the DC organizers will be more democratic and civil than the Detroit group.

Dear DC Public School Advocates,

I’ve had the privilege of working with many of you in the DC Full Funding Campaign, Save Our Schools, YEA, etc. around the conditions of public schools in DC.

BAMN and our National Co-chair Shanta Driver will be having an organizing meeting *THIS SATURDAY (6/24, 2:00pm, Howard University, Douglass Hall)* about what we need to do here in DC to defend integration in public education and build for a national demonstration when the US Supreme Court hears the lawsuits against the Seattle and Louisville public school integration plans, sometime this fall. BAMN has filed to become co-defendents in these cases, but as we all know, this is a political fight that will be won in the streets.

What is at stake in these two lawsuits is literally the future of public education in this country. In both of these cases, the integration programs have widespread community support from students, teachers and parents of all races. The Louisville public school district is only 34% black but its integration plan is supported by 80% of the white parents whose children attend these public schools. If this nation outlaws the use of race to achieve integrated public education then Brown vs. Board of Education is a dead letter. Losing these cases means permanently relegating black and Latina/o youth to inferior, second-class citizenship with wholly separate and unequal
educational resources and opportunities.

BAMN expects to have a significantly increased presence in the DC area once school starts in late August/early September with our activists doing political organizing in the high schools and colleges in and around DC, building for the demonstration at the Supreme Court. We need to get the ball rolling now, lining up organizational, individual, and financial support. This needs to be an absolutely massive mobilization.

Please consider attending this extremely important meeting! We, as students, teachers, and parents need to be united and determined. This is the time to stand up and fight for our future and the future of public education.

Feel free to forward widely to anyone you think would be interested!

=====
Save Brown vs. Board of Education!
Fight for High Quality, Integrated Public Education!

Saturday 6/24, 2:00 pm.
Douglass Hall, Howard University
======

Contact Ben at xxx-xxx-xxxx for more information. Also see our youthcall-to-action at
http://www.bamn.com/doc/2006/060615-march-dc.asp

Sincerely,

Ben, Dara, and Michael

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Trotskyites

Affirmative Action “victim” from the Gratz v. Bollinger case, Jennifer Gratz is accusing BAMN/Revolutionary Works League organizer Luke Massie with threatening her with a knife. Having failed in the courts, Gratz is currently heading an effort to ban affirmative action through a ballot initiative. Whether or not there’s any truth to the story, it underscores the tendancy of RWL members to engage in tense, direct personal confrontation. Luke’s tried the same intimidation tactics on me and some of my friends, and it’s yet another reason no mainstream political organization should work with him or his organization - physical intimidation and confrontation are not acceptable organizing tactics.

DetNews: “Police investigate alleged threat to affirmative action foe“

Trotskyites On the March

According to media reports, leaders of the Trotskyite organization the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) have been active in Lansing, Michigan, organizing a counter-protest to a Nazi rally there over the weekend. The Lansing State Journal reported about 100 counter-protestors turned up at the peaceful April 22 rally. I found one local blogger, historymike, who posted some information about the event.

The RWL maintains a network of organization names to use for various purposes, recently most commonly representing themselves as members of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) or the National Women’s Rights Organizing Committee (NWROC). Regardless of the organizational name used, the leaders are consistent: Luke Massie is the vocal professional organizer and most likely to be quoted in the media, Shanta Driver is the attorney on the ground, while others remain in the background. The BAM-N speakers’ bureau webpage contains a photo and bios of some of the organization’s more active leaders, including the shadowy figure and alleged RWL founder George Washington.

The RWL subscribes to an unorthodox position on free speech, freely engaging in a variety of tactics not generally used by mainstream political organizations. These include co-opting public comment periods, shouting or otherwise disturbing formal meetings, and encouraging confrontational exchanges designed to radicalize protestors and intimidate opponents. RWL members have also been closely connected to at least several protests which turned violent, including incidents during the Detroit Newspaper Strike of the 1990s and a 1997 Klan Rally in Ann Arbor. Less clear is their relation to the violence which occured in Toledo, Ohio last fall connected to a white supremacist rally there, however an earlier news report about the Lansing rally quotes Massie praising the violence which broke out, declaring, “We’re gonna say to our people, to the young people of the City of Lansing, to the people in the immense majority of black and Latino communities of this city, who do not want the KKK and the Nazis rallying here, we’re gonna say you have the right to defend yourself, you have the right to shut down rallies that push to murder your neighbors and your friends. We don’t accept that.”

Recently I was contacted by an activist in Olympia, Washington who is preparing for a white supremacist rally planned there by the National Socialist Movement for July. (According to this recent news article, a smaller rally held earlier this month ended after officials escorted the neo-Nazis away when the tense but peaceful rally seemed to be getting “out of hand.” ) Although I have heard nothing about RWL members planning to go to Washington, the local activist was troubled by some footage of Massie and wrote seeking more information should they decide to attend:

He first caught my attention as I was watching video about the National Socialist Movement rally in Lansing Michigan. Something about him really bugged me, he seemed to be escalating the possibility of violence, agitating. A little web research shows me that I’m not the only one who sees this. … My main focus in everything is safety and someone like Luke Massie concerns me, my guess is that he doesn’t believe safety for all is important.

I am encouraged that activists are starting their planning now and hope their careful preparations will result in a peaceful counter-protest, regardless of any potential RWL involvement.

Affirmative Action Off 2006 Michigan Ballot?

One United Michigan is reporting in an email that the Michigan Board of Canvassers voted not to add a controversial ballot initiative to the 2006 ballot that would eliminate affirmative action by the government, including at public universities. The board cited concerns about the validity of the signatures collected. Like in many BAM-N controversies, it’s difficult to untangle the politics from the tactics. Here’s one part of the email alert just sent:

In comments to reporters, David Waymire said that while One United Michigan did not support the BAMN tactics, we agreed with its members that there was substantial fraud used to collect the petitions, and that it is unfortunate Michigan law appears to allow fraud in the collection of signatures for a constitutional amendment.

BAM-N Disrupts Board of Canvassers

This, thanks to the Gongwer News Service, a news company that covers Michigan politics. One of the many reasons mainstream groups should not work with them:

Special Update, Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 1:07 pm

PROTEST STOPS CANVASSERS MEETING

What was expected to a be a pro forma meeting of the Board of State Canvassers to comply with a Court of Appeals order became an extended lunch break late this morning after high school students brought to the meeting by By Any Means Necessary brought the meeting to a halt.

A motion by Republican board member Lynn Bankes to certify the proposal by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to end affirmative action in the state was met by loud chants from BAMN supporters. The chants evolved to dancing in the aisles and, eventually, the overturning of the testimony table.

After beating a hasty retreat, with police assistance, to a neighboring meeting room, the board agreed to attempt to reconvene at 2 p.m. to complete its action.

The protesting students and their leaders also vowed to return to the meeting.

My Papers Indexed

It looks like the collection of papers about the University of Michigan I donated to the Bentley Historical Library is now listed in Mirlyn. The small collection includes a variety of papers I collected doing activism, writing for the Michigan Daily, conducting private FOIAs, and in the process of writing my thesis. I’ve also uploaded a PDF copy of the library’s finding aid they provided to me, which will eventually be posted to the library’s online finding aids database.

• Mirlyn: Robert Goodspeed Papers, 2000-2004
• Robert Goodspeed Papers Library Finding Aid
• See my description of the contents of the papers

The collection is available for unrestricted access at the Bentley Historical Library on the University of Michigan North Campus. With all the interest in Michigamua recently it seems worth noting my papers include a directory of every member of the organization through 1997, as well as a variety of other interesting documents.

BAM-N Looking for Trouble in Toledo

The Revolutionary Workers League, a tiny opportunistic Trotskyite organization in Detroit that I first reported on as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan has revived an old organizational facade to apparently attempt to instigate confrontation in Toledo. A number of white supremacists held rally in Toledo this past Saturday, which remained peaceful largely as a result of an assertive police presence. The Toledo Blade has an excellent summary of the events.

The RWL has a long history of attempting to incite violence at political demonstrations including being connected to a rock-throwing incident during the Detroit News and Free Press strike of the 1990s, and a minor skirmish which broke out at a KKK rally in Ann Arbor in 1998. Of course, in every instance RWL leaders were never directly involved in criminal acts, only low-level activists. From this Toledo Blade report it seems that RWL lead organizer Luke Massie has pulled the old name of NWROC out of the closet to attempt to spark a similar confrontation there at a rally held last Saturday by white supremacists:

Luke Massie, of the Detroit-based National Women’s Rights Organizing Coalition, said he was trying to gather a large group to interfere with what he called a recruitment campaign by the National Socialist Movement “by whatever means necessary.”

“We’re going to show a very strong and determined resistance to the attempt to establish a fascist beachhead in Toledo,” he said.

(White supremacist groups instigated a confrontation in October in Toledo through a march through an African American neighborhood.)

Of course, I find Klan just as objectionable as the next thinking person, however the RWL, apparently as a part of their particular Trotskyite ideology attempts to convert political disputes into violent confrontation instead of anything peaceful, constructive, or educational. The best description of the RWL I have found comes from a now-offline website called the “Red Encyclopedia” which I have archived on my site:

Revolutionary Workers League: Formed in 1976 as a split from the Spartacist League, the RWL is a dogmatic and intensely militant Trotskyist group based in Detroit. Little is seen of them outside of Michigan and California state, and (like the Spartacist League) they demand the devotion of all their members. They have set up a network of puppet organizations: the National Women’s Rights Organizing Committee (NWROC, founded 1980’s), the Committee to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN, founded 1995), and others. These front groups are where the RWL’s primary activism takes place. They often practice entryism — entering larger organizations and trying to bend them toward their own ideology. The most recent case of this occurred in Oakland, California (far from their home base), where BAMN supporters tried to take over the local teachers’ union, the OEA.A group that split with the RWL during the Gulf War, the Trotskyist League, would break from the RWL’s traditional entryism and work with Solidarity and other groups, though maintaining their ultra-left stance. No matter what group they enter, RWL will never win many converts to their extreme tactics.

The logo above is from the RWL’s old webpage, www.rwl-us.org, which they have since taken offline (not a good thing to have around when you’re trying to convince people you are NWROC, or BAM-N, or another group. However, the Internet Archive has a long memory and has many copies of the old page available.

ArborUpdate has more coverage of the rally and the Toledo Blade reported that it was peaceful.