The More Things Change …

I was excited to hear that BAM-N is being confronted for their confrontational and counter-productive tactics. Apparently BAM-N relied on an old tried and true tactic – hijack another meeting to use it as a platform to try to provoke conflict and strife. When I was on MSA we got pretty good at shutting them out.

Although there’s a lot of talk about “revealing” and “stopping” them now, let’s not forget they were struck a blow in 2001 when a broad coalition of student leaders orchestrated a major hearing of our own about BAM-N causing them to write not just one but two op-eds in the Daily in response. The journalistic attacks of 2001 played an important role in clearing the stage for the highly successful Students Supporting Affirmative Action which was the ONLY group speaking to reporters the day the U.S. Supreme Court announced their decision in the Michigan Affirmative Action cases. Although it’s frustrating that career Trotskyites don’t go away, current leaders should remember the past and exactly how easy it is to put them in their place on campus and in politics more generally.

What is missing from the 2001 story is an account of moving testimony at the meeting by MSA Vice President Jim Secreto who spoke of how he (a liberal) was attacked and called “the white devil,” by BAM-N, and by a Residential College student who had been a member who recounted the group’s extreme indoctrination methods which included dictating his personal schedule and forced study groups in Detroit. I also spoke to the group’s leadership and history, much of which is on www.nobamn.com.

Also, Dumi has more information about what’s going on now on campus on his blog.

> THEN: Michigan Daily, Sept. 21, 2001: “BAMN blasted for dominating racial issues”
> NOW: Michgian Daily, Nov. 2, 2005: “Groups clash at student gov’t meeting at MSA meeting“

BAMN Criticized by Campus NAACP Group

Alex Moffett, vice president of the NAACP, said BAMN tokenized and presented black students in a bad light when it bused in hundreds of black middle- and high-school students from Detroit for the Thursday rally on the Diag.

During the rally against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a proposal that could ban the use of affirmative action by the University and the state if it is approved by voters next year, the Detroit students were given microphones and could be heard yelling profanities and slurs at anti-affirmative action protesters at the back of the crowd. Moffett said the students came across as uneducated about affirmative action and faulted BAMN for putting them under the spotlight without preparation.

“Some of them didn’t even know why they were there — they were just there as tokens, so people would see a large number of black students,� Moffett said. “(BAMN was) just perpetuating untruths about young black students. As a community, we find that totally unacceptable.�

> Michigan Daily: “NAACP slams BAMN“

NoBamn.com Updated

I just added some text to NoBamn.com after I heard some conservatives were advertising the URL at the University of Michigan at BAM-N organized events.

BAM-N and the FBI, Part 2

More press on BAM-N’s trouble getting in FBI memos today, this time in the State News at MSU. And BAM-N was spinning it the best they could:

The national leaders of BAMN said they also plan to fight the accusations, not only for themselves, but for every civil rights group throughout the county.

“We feel strongly that the American people have a right to know their government is spying on its citizens,” co-chairman Luke Massie said. “We happen to have been in the wave of attacks on civil liberties.

“This government can’t get away with spying on its own people.”

Notice he said this government. The State News adds this to Luke’s talk of “spying”:

Although the document does not contain how information about the groups was collected, some say they are concerned that illegal surveillance methods could have been utilized.

“How they got that information is an open question,” Moss said. “That is a very important question. It was not clear from their statement.”

Members of the FBI don’t use illegal surveillance methods because it is a violation of federal law, Licht said.

FBI Keeps and Eye on BAM-N

As a number of people have emailed to tell me, the ACLU announced that two peaceful Michigan political groups – BAM-N and Direct Action – were mentioned in an FBI report about domestic terrorism:

The document released today is an FBI report labeled, “Domestic Terrorism Symposium,” and describes a meeting that was intended to “keep the local, state and federal law enforcement agencies apprised of the activities of the various groups and individuals within the state of Michigan who are thought to be involved in terrorist activities.”

Among the groups mentioned are Direct Action, an anti-war group, and BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), a national organization dedicated to defending affirmative action, integration, and other gains of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The FBI acknowledges in the report that the Michigan State Police has information that BAMN has been peaceful in the past.

“Labeling political advocacy as ‘terrorist activity’ is a threat to legitimate dissent which has never been considered a crime in this country,” said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. “Spying on people who simply disagree with our government’s policies is a tremendous waste of police resources.” …

The ACLU launched its nationwide effort last year in response to widespread complaints from students and political activists who said they were questioned by FBI agents in the months leading up to the 2004 political conventions. The FOIAs seek two kinds of information: 1) the actual FBI files of groups and individuals targeted for speaking out or practicing their faith; and, 2) information about how the practices and funding structure of the task forces, known as JTTFs, may be encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying.

I detest BAM-N because they are militant, sectarian Trotskyites (which strongly resembles a cult) whose politics are detrimental to the goals of pragmatic progressive change I advocate, and I personally dislike many of the individuals in BAM-N who are dogmatic bullies. That said, in the course of my extensive research of BAM-N, which includes detailed interviews with former members and a survey of virtually every news story printed about them, I have never found a shred of evidence they have done anything illegal except perhaps encouraging their younger members to get into fights and throw things at political demonstrations. Unless the FBI knows something I don’t, I fear they are barking up the wrong tree.

> See the complete ACLY press release: “FBI Document Labels Michigan Affirmative Action and Peace Groups as Terrorists”
> What’s the deal with BAM-N? Read my archives here.

BAM-N Activist Killed In Detroit

The Ann Arbor News reports that Joe Wagner, a 21-year-old Ann Arbor man who was an organizer for BAM-N in Detroit has been killed. The details surrounding the killing are unclear. (Via)

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Inviting BAM-N To Speak

According to an email I was forwarded, the featured speaker at a fundraiser in for MARAL Pro-Choice Michigan in Ann Arbor Thursday is non other than Miranda Massie.

Miranda
was the lead attorney for one group of student intervenors (the law
students – not the undergrad intervenors) in the Grutter v. Bollinger
affirmative action case. She’s also the sister of Luke Massie, an organizer for the organization Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAM-N).
She’s also one of the core leaders of a Trotskyite sect called the
Revolutionary Workers League which goes by the name BAM-N in public.
RWL was founded by George Washington, an activist attorney who built up
a practice with a small group (Scheff & Washington) in combination
with his efforts to build a revolutionary Trotskyite organization.

This
one is tough: Massie is no doubt an accomplished attorney and the law
firm has certainly litigated a number of worthy cases. In general I
have heard only good things about MARAL, and I trust they simply don’t
know much about BAM-N, but I question their wisdom of inviting Massie
to speak. Despite the slickness of their “Speakers’ Bureau�
webpage, there’s a lot about BAM-N they wouldn’t like you to know.
BAM-N’s recruitment tactics verge on cult-like (One former member was
brought to Detroit to participate in hours-long Marxist study
sessions), and their organizing tactics are always divisive, sometimes
violent, and frequently downright nasty. In his role as organizer for
the group, Luke Massie has physically intimidated friends of mine,
engaged in yelling matches, and called one of my best friends (an ACLU
member and committed progressive) a “white devil.� Nathan Newman, a
well-known journalist and blogger and columnist for the Populist
Progressive, has called BAM-N
a “threat … to the affirmative action and civil rights movement� and
said his research, “In twenty years of political organizing, I have
never seen such violent and thuggish behavior, a step beyond the worst
sectarian acts I had ever imagined.� The Michigan Daily has harshly criticized the organization in an editorial.

So,
I guess I wouldn’t invite a member of the group to come to speak at my
fundraiser. But that’s just me. Here’s the bio they circulated on their
email:

About Miranda Massie
Miranda Massie is a civil rights attorney with Scheff & Washington
in Detroit, and has been actively involved in organizing for women’s
rights and civil rights throughout her education and career. Massie is
currently representing a sixteen-year-old male from Macomb County
charged
with a major felony for trying to assist his girlfriend in terminating
her pregnancy. He is being tried for intentional conduct against a
pregnant individual resulting in miscarriage or stillbirth, a 15-year
felony. Massie argues that it was not assault because the girlfriend
consented to the means of the termination, and that the young girl was
simply exercising her right to an abortion.

Massie
received a B.A magna cum laude from Cornell University, an M.A in
History and American Studies from Yale University, and a J.D. cum laude
from the New York University School of Law in 1996. One of her best
known cases is Grutter v. Bollinger, for which she served as lead
counsel to student defendants in the University of Michigan affirmative
action case.
Massie is also currently a member of the legal team challenging Ward Connerly’s attempts to ban affirmative action in Michigan.

These
days, BAM-N spends their time blowing hot air about MCRI. For
organizing that’s not from a freaky fringe group on MCRI, check out Citizens for a United Michigan. For more info, see my somewhat outdated information page: NoBAMN.com, or if you’re new to all this check out my BAM-N Update post from January 2004.

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