Part II: History of Infiltration of Progressive Organizations

Infiltration of Political Movements Is the Norm, Not the Exception in the United States

Thursday 15 March 2012
by: Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Occupy Washington, DC | News Analysis

Downloaded March 15, 2011 from https://www.truth-out.org/infiltrati...tes/1331833946


On March 6 members of an off-shoot of Anonymous, Lulzsec, were arrested as a result of an FBI informant, Sabu, who the media describes as a Lulzsec leader. The six arrests were for people allegedly involved with Lulzsec which became known for targeting Sony, the CIA, the U.S. Senate, and FBI, as well as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Exactly one year ago to the day of the arrests, The Guardian published an article headlined, “One in four US hackers 'is an FBI informer.'” The article described how the FBI had used the threat of long sentences to turn some members of Anonymous and similar groups into informants. It also described how the group was open to infiltration. On Democracy Now, Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University who is an expert on digital media, hackers and the law, said: “There had been rumors of infiltration or informants. At some level, Anonymous is quite easy to infiltrate, because anyone can sort of join and participate. And so, there had been rumors of this sort of activity happening for quite a long time.”

In Part I of this series, Infiltration to Disrupt, Divide and Mis-direct are Widespread in Occupy, we described reports of widespread infiltration of the Occupy. In this article we will describe the history of infiltration of political movements in the United States and the goals of infiltration. Part III of this series will describe behavior of infiltrators, how other movements have countered infiltrators and what Occupy can do to minimize the damage from infiltrators.

Infiltration is the Norm, not the Exception, of U.S. Political Movements
When the long history of political infiltration is reviewed, the Occupy Movement should be surprised if it is not infiltrated. Almost every movement in modern history has been infiltrated by police and others using many of the same tactics we are now seeing in Occupy.

Also Read: Part One - Infiltration to Disrupt, Divide and Misdirect Is Widespread in Occupy

Virtually every movement has been the target of police surveillance and disruption activities. The most famous surveillance program was the FBI’s COINTELPRO which according to COINTELPRO Documents targeted the women’s rights, Civil Rights, anti-war and peace movements, the New Left, socialists, communists and independence movement for Puerto Rico, among others. Among the groups infiltrated were the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, Congress for Racial Equality, the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Significant leaders from Albert Einstein to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who are both memorialized in Washington, were monitored. The rule in the United States is to be infiltrated; the exception is not to be.

The Church Committee documented a history of use of the FBI for purposes of political repression. They described infiltration efforts going back to World War I, including the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up “anarchists and revolutionaries” for deportation. The Church Committee found infiltration efforts growing from 1936 through 1976, with COINTELPRO as the major program. While these domestic political spying and disruption programs were supposed to stop in 1976, in fact they have continued. As reported in “The Price of Dissent,” Federal Magistrate Joan Lefkow found in 1991, the record “shows that despite regulations, orders and consent decrees prohibiting such activities, the FBI had continued to collect information concerning only the exercise of free speech.”


How many agents or infiltrators can we expect to see inside a movement? One of the most notorious “police riots” was the 1968 Democratic Party Convention. Independent journalist Yasha Levine writes: “During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. That’s right, 1/6th of the total protesting population was made up of spooks drawn from various federal agencies. That’s roughly 1,600 people! The stat came from an Army document obtained by CBS News in 1978, a full decade after the protest took place. According to CBS, the infiltrators were not passive observers, monitoring and relaying information to central command, but were involved in violent confrontations with the police.” [Emphasis in original.]


Peter Camejo, who ran for Governor of California in 2003 as a Green and as Ralph Nader’s vice president in 2004, often told the story about his 1976 presidential campaign. Camejo able to get the FBI in court after finding their offices broken into and suing them over COINTELPRO activities. The judge asked the Special Agent in Charge how many FBI agents worked in Camejo’s presidential campaign; the answer was 66 agents. Camejo estimated he had a campaign staff of about 400 across the country. Once again that would be an infiltration rate of 1 out of 6 people. Camejo discovered that among the agents was his campaign co-chair. He also discovered eavesdropping equipment in his campaign office and documents showing the FBI had followed him since he was a student activist at 18 years old.


The federal infiltration is buttressed by local and state police. Local police infiltrators have a long tradition dating back to the Haymarket riots of 1886 and the 1904 “Italian Squad in New York City. In addition to political activity they were also involved in infiltrations of unions especially around strikes. Common throughout the United States were the so-called “Red Squads” a 1963 report estimated 300,000 officers were involved in surveillance of political activities. These were local police focused on the same types of people as the FBI. Some of their activities included assassinations of political activists.


In fact, a predecessor to the modern Occupy, the Bonus March of 1932 was infiltrated by federal agents. Their focus was on radicals, anarchists and Communists who might be in the movement. The infiltration resulted in greatly exaggerated reports about radicals inside the Bonus encampments, which were primarily made up of veterans and their families that were used to help justify their removal by President Herbert Hoover with military troops acting against veterans under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, assisted by then-colonels Eisenhower and Patton.


Another predecessor to the Occupy, Resurrection City of 1968, a “community of love and brotherhood,” that occupied the Washington, DC mall for four months was organized by the Poor People’s Campaign fulfilling a plan made prior to the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Resurrection City was heavily infiltrated by layers of police including the FBI, military, Park Police, Secret Service and Metropolitan DC police. FBI director Hoover had agents go to press conferences with false media identification, stationed FBI agents around the perimeter of the encampment and authorized an expensive informant program. After the FBI, the most expensive infiltration of Resurrection City was military intelligence which conducted an unlawful surveillance program, intercepting radio transmissions, monitoring radio traffic and intercepting all communications which were then passed on to the FBI, Secret Service, DC police and Park Police. The military also sent fictitious media to press conferences. The Metropolitan DC police “red squad” sent undercover officers into the camp and took mug shots of its members.


Infiltration tactics continue, perhaps have even escalated today. In a recent report the ACLU writes: “Today the government is spying on Americans in ways the founders of our country never could have imagined. The FBI, federal intelligence agencies, the military, state and local police, private companies, and even firemen and emergency medical technicians are gathering incredible amounts of personal information about ordinary Americans that can be used to construct vast dossiers that can be widely shared with a simple mouse-click through new institutions like Joint Terrorism Task Forces, fusion centers, and public-private partnerships. The fear of terrorism has led to a new era of overzealous police intelligence activity directed, as in the past, against political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrants.” There have also multiple reports of the CIA working with New York City police for years, an activity that is almost certainly illegal.


Not only have budgets increased in the post-911 world, but restrictions on spying have been weakened and court review has become rarer. The government, often with corporate interests, are gathering huge amounts of data on Americans and targeting a wide range of groups and individuals for intelligence gathering and infiltration. The extent of spying is so widespread that it is more than this brief article can examine, but the ACLU provides a state-by-state review.


We will not know the extent of current infiltration and the activities of government agents for quite some time, but in the post-911 world, with record intelligence budgets and a massive new homeland security bureaucracy, spying is very likely more extensive than ever. Add to that the private security of corporations and political organizations tied to the two political parties and the extent of Occupy infiltration is very likely quite extensive.


What Have Been the Goals, Strategies and Tactics of Past Infiltration?
The most common purpose of infiltration is the intelligence function of gathering information, but the goals are commonly more aggressive. Herbert Hoover ordered FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of these movements and their leaders according to COINTELPRO Documents.


According to, Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, the goal of COINTELPRO was also to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups. FBI field operatives were directed to:

1. Create a negative public image for target groups by surveiling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public.
2. Break down internal organization by creating conflicts by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts.
3. Create dissension between groups by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money.
4. Restrict access to public resources by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support.
5. Restrict the ability to organize protests through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests.
6. Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance.

The COINTELPRO documents disclose numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to stop the mass protest against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish the assignment. The documents state: “These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations.”


Infiltration to gather intelligence and intentionally disrupt and break up social movements is common in the United States. At this point in history when the degree of wealth inequality has reached such staggering proportions that the richest 400 people have the same wealth as the bottom 154,000,000 people, when unemployment and foreclosures rates are high, when tens of millions can’t afford health care and students can’t afford to go to college, those in power are fearful that the people will rise up. Events of the past year, particularly the Occupy, reveal that this uprising has begun. It is likely that the powerful will use the tools available to stop Occupy, including infiltration to disrupt, divide and misdirect.


In Part III, we will describe common behaviors of infiltrators and how other social movements have tried to minimize the impact of infiltration. We will then examine the basic structure of the Occupy and analyze its strengths and weaknesses in the context of infiltration. Our hope is that this series will lead to a broader discussion within the movement so that efforts can be made to balance the strengths of Occupy with actions necessary to protect the movement from disruption and division.
* * * * * * *
Here is the best summary I have read of the history of government infiltration of progressive movements. I ask Mr. Miles and anyone else who believes the government did not infiltrate the Green Party and contribute to its demise to notice that Peter Camejo provides personal evidence of the infiltration of his campaign. He notes that 66 of the 400 workers on his campaign were paid informants including his co-chair. Hello?!? Can you hear the Black Helicopters now? So, while I do not have personal knowledge myself of infiltration of the Green Party, I trust Mr. Camejo's personal knowledge.

I believe the only hope for progressivism is to form local movements that are not organizationally connected with national movements. I believe in the 12-Step model started by AA, whose Sixth Tradition states: An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose." Government gets very upset at the thought that someone could organize and take power. AA would have failed long ago if it had proposed a political movement to elect officials to close bars and shut down distilleries. I believe the goal of progressivism should be to change society from the bottom up, one person at a time. Just the way that AA does it. I believe the Community Supported Agriculture movement exemplifies this approach, as does the Transition movement.

Star Man

Star Man,

Camejo's account, is about his '76 campaign as a Socialist candidate (I think the SWP). Not about his run in '04 as a Green. So, what evidence have you presented that modern Cointelpro destroyed the GP after 2000? I still see zip, nada, none.

Now, I have no doubt that surveillance and perhaps some disruption occurred in '96, '00, '04 and '08 of GP efforts. Also many other times and places and groups. I have no doubt that it's happening this very second. I addressed that in my previous reply on this a couple of weeks or three ago. I even gave a primer in how to handle the threat.

But your claim, that the GP was destroyed by covert police interference after the 2000 election, is just not true. There is no evidence for it. You have presented none. And I was there, I was reading the email traffic. I was paying close attention.

There was a complicated faction fight. No doubt. It was painful and hurt us. Devastating? How come Jill Stein is running?

But even if aspects of the internal conflict were manipulated from outside, which is entirely possible, the main reasons for it were honest differences of opinion, and ego. We don't need the cops to do any of that for us!

Plus, to say the Green Party has been "destroyed" is, pardon my expression, utter unmitigated B.S.. And it's damaging to the GP. If naive and fearful people give your claim credence. Hopefully they'll use critical reason and ask for some solid evidence. But we all know how that goes.

I find many things you say, and forward, to be reasonable and politically astute. But your penchent for hyperbole, and your alarmist claims unsupported by evidence? Well, it doesn't just hurt your reputation, it discredits our movement.

Details matter. Facts matter. Evidence matters. As outsiders we're held to a higher standard, by the skeptics and our enemies. Don't feed them the ammunition to fire at us. We're going to get it anyway, but we can avoid helping them!

Cheers Brother,

Keep up the good fight.

But please, fight smart and not just hard.

Just want to add (hours later) that the article is right on, accurate and contains important information for anyone concerned about freedom in our society. I have a disagreement with Kevin Zeese, in regard to the Libya intervention. But in this matter, we are muy simpatico!

[QUOTE="Mad" Miles;149373][SIZE=3][FONT=times new roman]

Plus, to say the Green Party has been "destroyed" is, pardon my expression, utter unmitigated B.S.. And it's damaging to the GP. If naive and fearful people give your claim credence. Hopefully they'll use critical reason and ask for some solid evidence. But we all know how that goes.

[/FONT][/SIZE][/QUOTE]

Mr. Miles,

I hear you saying that my statement that the Green Party has been destroyed is ... "utter unmitigated B.S." You ask for solid evidence and then snarkily say "But we all know how that goes." OK, try this:

Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke, the Green Party candidates in 1996 received 685,297 votes or 0.71%

Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke, the candidates again in 2000 received 2,883,105 votes or 2.73%.

Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo, running as Independent in the 2004 election received 463,655 votes or 0.38%.

In 2004 the Green Party ran David Cobb and Pat LaMarche who received 119,859 votes

Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate for president, received 161,603 votes or 0.12% of all votes in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election

Wikipedia's article on the Green Party states:

"Internal divisions arose between members who saw electoral politics as ultimately corrupting and supported the notion of an "anti-party party" formed by [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Kelly"]Petra Kelly[/URL] and other leaders of Die Grünen in Germany,^[8] vs. those who saw electoral strategies as a crucial engine of social change (organized as The Green Politics Network in 1990 and The National Association of Statewide Green Parties by 1994). A struggle for the direction of the organization culminated a "compromise agreement," ratified in 1991 at the Greens National Congress in Elkins, West Virginia – in which both strategies would be accommodated within the same organization under a 527 political organization renamed The Greens/Green Party USA.


"The compromise agreement subsequently collapsed and two Green Party organizations have co-existed in the United States since the mid-1990s, now operating independently as The Green Party USA and the U.S. Green Party."

"Internal divisions" destroyed the Green Party. As the Zeese and Flowers article states, COINTELPRO instructed FBI agents to
"2. Break down internal organization" and
"3. Create dissension between groups"

with the goal of neutralizing groups.

I may not have been "reading the email traffic" as you were, and I was not there as you were, but I was paying close attention. Perhaps you were too close to the action to see what was happening, Mr. Miles. As you say, "Details matter. Facts matter. Evidence matters." I have presented evidence, facts, and details. Let me summarize:

1. The decline of the percentage of the popular vote received by the Green Party from 2.73% in 2000 to 0.12% in 2008 represents the destruction of the Green Party;

2. The "internal divisions" that caused the Green Party to fragment represent the destruction of the Green Party;

3. The FOIA documents received by Peter Camejo showing one in six of his campaign workers was an FBI agent demonstrate that the government ran a program of neutralizing the Green Party (and yes, those numbers refer to a 1976 campaign, and it is logical to infer that if the FBI infiltrated Camejo's campaign in 1976 -- recall they'd been tracking him since he was 18 -- then they infiltrated any campaign or organization he was involved with in 2000 or 2004);

4. The COINTELPRO document clearly describes the objectives guiding the FBI in neutralizing the Green Party or any third party;

5. The Wikipedia article shows just how the FBI agents must have worked. They picked up on the division between the Petra Kelly faction that saw electoral politics as corrupting and the faction that saw electoral politics as essential. I can easily imagine a meeting at FBI headquarters in which agents were assigned to take one or the other side of the argument and to exacerbate the division. The fact that where there was once one effective, growing organization that was able to garner 2.73% of the vote and now there are two ineffective organizations (The Green Party USA and the U.S. Green Party) demonstrates that the strategy and tactics worked.

Mr. Miles, I dislike that you accuse me of "alarmist claims." I dislike that you patronize me by suggesting that I "fight smart." These are not alarmist claims as the history demonstrates. I am fighting smart by warning progressives of the constant threat from infiltrators. Someone should have confronted the factionalists in the Green Party and called them out as agents provocateurs. Apparently no one did. I have offered a "smart" alternative to electoral politics in my suggestion that progressives use the 12-Step model to create change from the bottom up by changing one citizen at a time.

Star Man

Star Homme,

There are a number of identifiable factors that are well known that account for the decline in voter registration and presidential vote totals for Green Party candidates in the last decade. None mainly due to internal conflict. No matter the source of the conflict. (infiltration/disruption, or honest differences of opinion, or what was actually a complex interaction of many factors)

Internal conflict was a response to events during and after 2000. Events that discouraged newly registered Green who had "flocked" to the 2000 Nader campaign, granted. But there were larger factors, that happened openly, publicly.

Definitely Nader's failure in 2000 to get the 5% to qualify for federal matching funds, which was the only real goal veteran Green Party activists considered possible (aside from getting the word out about our proposals for real and sorely needed political change) was a huge disappointment. Combine that with many new Greens who were enthusiastic about Nader and who naively believed that he actually had a chance to win the Presidency. They were deeply disappointed when he didn't.

New Greens that were also influenced by the false claim that Nader "spoiled" it for Gore in Florida. And as a result Gore "lost" to Bush.

(Why that is not true, in great detail, was debated by Mark Green and myself here in late 2003 and early 2004. Just search for Democrats vs. Greens in the waccobb archive. Enjoy!)

That Spoiler Myth was promoted far and wide by the leadership of the Democratic Party. It is still widely held. "Just look at the numbers! Gore lost by 500 votes in Florida!!" The details and Reason do not support that, but good luck convincing the convinced to change their minds.

This Myth never takes into account Gore's role in his own "defeat". (The election was stolen!!! In plain sight in front of all of our eyes.) This Spoiler Myth caused many people who registered Green and voted Green in 2000, to register and vote Democrat in 2004. For all the good it did Kerry.

Also in 2004 there were two "Green" candidates. Nader/Camejo ran as independents. Cobb/LaMarche as the nominated Greens. The fighting that led up to that was Byzantine. I won't even try to summarize the blow by blow. Nader and Camejo had great responsibility in that debacle.

That was the fight that nearly tore the party to smithereens. But it didn't.

And then in 2008, all of the analysis shows that the desperation of the Peace movement and many others, plus a slick campaign that won the best ad campaign of the year, gave The Obamanator the support that resulted in his victory. Support among regular Democratic Party voters, an upsurge in the youth vote, and other factors,

I fail to see how FBI plants had anything to do with any of that. And other than straight out assertion, you have produced no evidence that they did. Other than emphasizing known facts from the wiki.

You repeat the info from Camejo's memoir of the '76 campaign, implying that somehow it relates to '04. Peter Camejo was not the GP Vice Presidential candidate in '04, LaMarche was!

If the spooks had disrupted his efforts, that would have helped the GP campaign! I don't think they did, not in any significant way (I was not active in the Cobb/LaMarche campaign, I advocated, endorsed, relayed info and everything else I could do from my desk, but I was not centrally involved actively, not even close, as I was in 2000.

In 2000 I was the Secretary/Treasurer of the Green Party of Sonoma County / Nader 2000 campaign headquarters in Santa Rosa. Where I held too many roles to fully recount. I was the volunteer coordinator, mail room, internet communications, chief clerk and general behind the scenes coordinator. In the evenings and on weekends. I worked my day job at the Red Cross. 8:30 - 5:00 M-F

Internal conflict in the lead-up to November 2004 was due to several factors. Fallout from 2000. Diehard Nader fans who insisted he be our candidate for the third time. Nader did not ask to be the GP nominee (he was "waiting to be invited" sort of like a reluctant, blushing bride). He rather viciously slagged off the GP in the late summer/early fall of 2003. There were a host of other complex factors. All openly expressed by various actors, in the internal communications. By email listserv, culminating in our nominating convention in June, 2004. It was nasty, but it was because the discussion leading up to the convention, and the fixed positions held by the two main camps. As I said, byzantine.

(The only way one could reduce all that to conscious covert disruption, is to claim that hundreds of active Greens were paid agents of the government. People who had been active in the party for over a decade, or at least five years. I know the CIA budget is a huge Black Box, but, really?

Hundreds of sleeper agents devoting countless volunteer hours to Green Party organizing, just to f*&% things up five to ten years later? Do you really have any idea how cointelpro works? Have you read or listened to the first hand accounts from the targets? I have. The idea is ludicrous. Good for a movie script. Reality is far more complicated and interesting, while mostly being pedestrian.)

GP registrations had dropped significantly in the fallout after 2000. And the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) had been maintaining a full court press propaganda war against the GP. There were dirty tricks against the GP in the '04 campaign. Both from the Republican Party, supposedly donating to the GP, which turned out to be bogus. (Yet as consensed agreement, aka urban myth, it's still trotted out like the loyal old stalking horse of a lie, that it is. Most repeating it, think it's true. That's how this stuff works.) Plus Democratic Party apparatciks sabotaged various aspects of both Cobb and Nader campaigns. Debate access denial was the most upfront tactic. Everybody knows about the law suit Ralph won, right?.

Then there was/is the unrelenting blanket message about "Don't Waste Your Vote!" A local Left/Liberal pol who I like and know, repeated it to me last night as he left the pub. He was too tipsy to argue with. And I doubt anything I have to say will change his mind.

(Everybody knows that in California the Democratic Party nominee is pretty much locked in to win all of our states electoral college votes? Especially as long as our GP registrations and votes are in the low percentages? I dream of the day when we actually present a challenge to both major parties. But as things stand, this is what Greens and others call a "Safe State". You can send a message. You can vote your conscience, not your fears. And do so while not worrying that you're "spoiling" or "taking away" votes for Democrats. In swing states it's a whole different calculation.

I won't delve into the false and odious assumptions behind the "stealing" votes line. Suffice it to say it's deeply anti-democratic and insulting to conscious and informed voters. Using it to frighten people, actually hurts the cause of those throwing it out into others faces. Long discussion. Check the archive.)

Please keep in mind that the "split" Green campaigns (Nader/Camejo were not Green Party candidates. And that was their call. That they chose to run anyway, well that's on them and their supporters.) took place in the context of Swiftboating Kerry and the rest of what the duopoly gets up to pretending they are competing between the left and the right hands. Most attention was on the Ballgame. The GP and other Third Parties were small potatoes.

The Libertarians were gaining momentum. And I don't have a clear memory, but I think they out-registered us and got more aggregate presidential votes that year. For, guess who? R.P.!!!

S.M., what you present as a simple picture based on gross totals, was a far more nuanced and complex reality.

As for the fight between the ASGP and GP/USA. That's another novel. I was in the middle of it. Cause when I moved in '97 from Chicago to Sebastopol, with six months interim in Taipei. I went from the Chicago Greens, which were GP/GPUSA affiliated to California where the ASGP was cock of the walk. (Green Party / Green Party USA Association of State Green Parties)

The conflict was over centralism vs. local autonomy. Ironically the centralizers were the ASGP, and the autonomists were the GP/GPUSA. Counter-intuitive, I know! Must be intentional wrecking!!!??

It also had to do with cultural differences. Plus frustration with GP/GPUSA formations that were not putting enough effort into running candidates in actual elections. There's/ours was more of a focus on being a protest social and environmental movement.

Versus the ASGP centered in California (especially in L.A. where the first U.S. GP effort started) which wanted the GP, based on state parties, to focus on actual electoral politics. (It's also U.S. electoral law.) Those disagreements had been percolating away since the original U.S. GP organizing efforts that started in the late eighties. I met the proto-Green organizers from L.A. in Orange County at a meeting of my DSA chapter in 1983? (I think? '82?)

Both sides ASGP and GP/GPUSA had good points, many Greens were neutral, it got nasty. Essentially the ASGP walked away from the GP/GPUSA and formed parallel ASGP state parties that followed the more centralized (still democratic, still using consensus and all the other good green stuff) model adopted by ASGP in the early to mid-nineties.

It was a very painful conflict for me, cause I was caught in the middle due to my relationships back in Chicago and throughout the mid-west because of conferences I'd attended. And my membership in the GP of Sonoma County, which, small as we were at the time, was part of the ASGP formation. While all that may seem complex, I assure you, I've only relayed the tip of the iceberg.

Basically, the GP (whatever formation it was called and focused through) slowly grew starting in the late eighties, radiating out from LA and inspired by Die Gruenen. Started to gain momentum in '96, peaked in 2000, suffered losses for the reasons I summarize above and you listed the basic stats in Post # 1 here, and, while severely reduced since 2001, still exists. Has a structure. Runs candidates and will persevere.

Was the fallout from 2000 a major setback? No doubt. Can that setback be reduced to disruption from federal, state and local police agents? I'm sure they kept track, but the reasons for the infighting and people leaving cannot be understood in terms of covert disruption from the outside.

Yes, infighting drives people away, and discourages new ones, but that happens whether the fights are genuine differences of opinion, or djinned up differences.

I paid attention. I actively participated all through the nineties up until the spring of 2001. Then our own local infighting and my need to find work, start the credential program at SSU and other political projects (GJDANSC, NSAN, Living Wage Coalition) led me to step back from active participation. That and 2000 fallout got heavy and once I was "the identified asshole" I felt it was better to remove the scapegoat, so the business of organizing could be attended to by those not so centrally involved with the conflict.

The arguments were genuine. Good people on both sides. Many on the sidelines fed up with the bickering. Gee, how unusual is that? I wonder if waccobb is being disrupted intentionally by all the arguments here!?

That's a JOKE.

Yes, Alarmist. Exaggerating what happened with no evidence other than speculation and extrapolation from superficial facts that have better explanations. (Superficial to your argument. Certainly not superficial to the struggle of Greens to overcome obstacles.) Explanations which were documented in the internal discussions and arguments. Guilt by association.

I'm sure you think you're right Star Man. I'm sure there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. But you're wrong.

While surveillance surely happens. And some interference may have occurred. The reasons for decreases in votes and registration for the GP cannot be understood in terms of provocation. The sides were sincere. It was obvious from the arguments made and who made them.

Stubborn, well informed, articulate and passionate people, get into conflicts where nobody wants to compromise. That's what happened. It's a very old story.

Exaggerations and slime campaigns by entrenched interests, have an affect on those who lack deep political educations and just flock to the alternative flavor of the moment. When the miracle, they thought possible, didn't happen, and they were loudly and widely told their vote served to help George Bush steal the election (notice the logical disconnect?) they got second thoughts, re-registered Democrat and voted for Kerry. For all the good it did anybody. Was the FBI responsible for that?

I've spoken with many people who followed the pattern I just summarized. I'm willing to bet that some reading this, did the same.

Stuff happens, things are complicated. Any simple, reductive and totalizing account, is bound to be wrong. Especially when it comes to things regarding The Social.

Exaggerations and unfounded falsehoods that dismiss the hard work of thousands of well intentioned people, no matter how convinced the sender is, are insulting and destructive. They're the very tactics that provocateurs use, to disrupt movements and organizations.

Not all de facto agents have to be paid, many are willing to do it for free, and don't even know it, cause they're just insisting on what they believe to be the right thing. And anybody who disagrees, is the enemy.

I'll leave it for others to decide who they think fits the description of an unwitting disruptor. But, a key sign, is who is saying, "it's over, we're finished, nothing can be done, they screwed us, this is a waste of time."

Those who are not unwitting wreckers, tend to say, "hey, this is important, we need to regroup and redouble our efforts, hope is not lost, keep on keeping on, yes, we have problems, so let's face them and try to fix or eliminate the sources of those problems, lets use good process and facilitation, lets get along, we can work this out, I may criticize your ideas and actions, but that doesn't mean you're the enemy, and neither am I!!!"

"The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss." - X (The band from L.A.)

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by "Mad" Miles:

It was a very painful conflict for me ......

I'm sure you think you're right Star Man. I'm sure there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. But you're wrong.
.........
Stubborn, well informed, articulate and passionate people, get into conflicts where nobody wants to compromise. That's what happened.

---

Mr. Miles,

We have come to the end of this discussion.
What I love about the 12-Step, mutual self-help approach that I advocate is the commitment to serving the primary purpose and to having no opinion on outside issues "...lest problems of .... prestige divert us from our primary purpose." Arguments like the ones the Greens had diverted them. This discussion is diverting me from my primary purpose. I think of my primary purpose as achieving personal and social sobriety. This discussion is interfering with my personal and social sobriety.
For my part, Mr. Miles, I commit to never "rattling your cage" again (which I admit to having done) regarding the Green Party or the influence of surveillance and infiltration on the fate of the Party.

Star Man