[NYTr] Refuting Cointelpro Tactics Against Churchill/Pt 2 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:19:55 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by The Freedom Archives - Feb 15, 2005 Footnotes & complete article are at this site: http://www.americanindianmovement.org/papers/struggle.html# Why do you think we call it struggle? by Faith Attaguile Contributing Editor, Dark Night Field Notes darknight@igc.apc.org part 2... continued from part 1 National AIM Inc. (NAIMI) First, NAIMI is neither national nor a movement. It is a corporation chartered in 1993 under the laws of the State of Minnesota. The signatory on the application's cover page is Vernon Bellecourt and the registered office his house.86 The text is a photocopy of a long-rescinded 70s generic incorporation document. The home addresses listed for the incorporators are all fifteen or more years out of date.87 The same is true of the supposed Board of Directors, which includes people like John Trudell who insists that he was never consulted on the matter, was unaware that his name was used in any capacity, and that he wants nothing at all to do with the organization.88 The Board's main function is to name a three-to-seven person "Central Committee" which, in turn, sets policy and designates NAIMI's "state directors."89 The various chapters NAIMI claims around the country are hardly more than shells. So far as can be determined, Michael Haney is its sole Oklahoma representative.90 In Kansas City, Bellecourt cousin Michael Pierce is another chapter, as Pierce's brother Tom is in Kentucky.91 In the Bay Area, Carole Standing Elk can boast perhaps a half-dozen adherents, as can Fern Matthias in Los Angeles.92 In Portland, Oregon the number stands at about five.93 There are supposedly two chapters in Ohio, one in Toledo which seems to be a woman named Joyce Mulhaney and two others, the other headed by Kenny Irwin in Columbus.94 Mulhaney is principally known as a Northern Ohio powwow circuit trader who occasionally writes letters seeking to establish herself as an authority on Ohio native burial rights issues. The Columbus group, quite active in burial rights and sacred sites issues prior to its adherence to the Minnesota "home office," now confines its leadership to convoking powwows and seeking paid speaking engagements for its leadership. Even in Minneapolis, the National Office can show only about fifteen adults in its "AIM patrol," all of them paid.95 Each of the "chapters" reportedly receives a monthly subsidy to maintain a telephone, letterhead stationery and an "office" (often a postal drop),96 but some have suggested that the remote chapters actually pay monthly tribute to support the Minneapolis "leadership." Based on these figures, by 1997 the organization had about fifty regular members/employees nationwide. At most, there are a hundred. According to its 1993 corporate report and several puff pieces in the Minneapolis press, NAIMI handled approximately $4 million in federal funding and received about $3.3 million from Fortune 500 contributors like Honeywell. An additional half-million came in from individual donations, contributions from church groups and merchandise sales.97 With such a cashflow, it is not surprising to find Vernon driving Cadillacs and sporting $2,500 fringed and beaded leather jackets.98 Clyde drives a similar car adorned with a custom license plate reading "AIM-ONE." He has been seen flashing a roll of bills and dropping hundreds of dollars at a time at blackjack tables in several Minneapolis-range casinos.99 Although both promote themselves as followers of the Midewiwin spiritual way and Clyde is a Sundancer, they also both have reputations as substance abusers in contradiction of the principles and lifestyle of both these traditions.100 Aside from the Bellecourts' personal consumption, NAIMI's ample funds appear to be devoted to maintaining three Minneapolis-based main projects: the Heart of the Earth Survival School, The Red Earth Housing Project, and the American Indian Opportunity Industrialization Center, a job training program.101 Although Churchill acknowledges there's nothing wrong with alternative schools, housing for urban Indians and job training for the unemployed, he finds them wide of AIM's mission. "That's all well and good," he says, "but AIM is supposed to be a national liberation movement, not a social service agency. Suffice it to say that neither the government nor the Honeywell Corporation is in the business of underwriting national liberation movements. Beyond that, I'm not even sure that channeling 17,000 Indians onto the assembly lines of major defense contractors qualifies as a good thing in the end."102 Russell Means concurs: It's been a firm principle of the American Indian Movement since day one that we never accept federal funds to run our programs. The feds never give something for nothing. There's always a trade-off, a quid pro quo. "We'll continue your funding next year, but only if you do this and that for us." The same with the corporations. You end up coopted, working for the government and big business instead of trying to break their power over your people, right? Well, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt are obviously in that bag, working for the feds. That's where their money comes from. The only question is, since neither of them actually holds down a job in these projects they've got, what is it they've agreed to do in order to keep the money rolling in? 103 The answer, Means thinks, may be fairly straightforward: their job is to ensure that AIM as a viable national liberation movement disappears once and for all. The Confederation of Autonomous AIM Chapters (autonomous AIM) Object of intense sustained federal repression during the 1970s, AIM was largely dormant during the 1980s, apart from a few sparks of life like Yellow Thunder Camp and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. Around 1990 in anticipation of the 1992 Quincentennary, however, there were signs of revitalization. This was perhaps most true in Denver, a chapter cofounded by Vernon Bellecourt and Joe Locust (Cherokee) in 1970 but abandoned by Bellecourt in 1972.104 There, Churchill and Morris, who had been drafted by Locust and others to direct a rebuilding of the almost extinct chapter in 1983, had attained an active membership of over a hundred by the end of the decade. Moreover, they were busy crafting a "rainbow coalition" of area groups -53 participating organizations by 1992 -which was beginning to demonstrate real power within the Rocky Mountain region.105 In the Bay Area, Bobby Castillo and AIM veteran George Martin successfully pursued the same strategy, filling a vacuum as old as 1980 or earlier. New or Rreborn" chapters surfaced steadily in the Crow Reservation in Montana, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Corpus Christi (Texas), the Pacific Northwest, Illinois, the Southern Ute Reservation, Albuquerque, northern Florida, eastern Oklahoma and Virginia.106 Added to the existing chapters in Colorado and the Dakotas and potential chapters like Minnesota, these groups offered the prospect of a resurgent AIM -again a force in U.S. opposition politics for the 1990s. This likelihood was further enhanced by overtures for a linkup from the Mohawk Warriors Society in upstate New York and southern Quebec, and Canadian native rights organizations.107 Colorado AIM first truly flexed its muscles in 1992, putting several thousand people into the streets of Denver, making it the only city in the country where a major celebration of the Columbian Quincentennary was prevented.108 However, soon thereafter things began to move quickly in another direction. Within weeks, Vernon Bellecourt, who spent the Quincentennary accumulating a sizable speaker's fee in Ohio, openly launched his intensive campaign to discredit Churchill and Morris. The same phenomenon materialized in the Bay Area, where Castillo and Martin's chapter had also organized large counterdemonstrations on Columbus Day. Carole Standing Elk, who by her own admission had not been politically active in a dozen years, was suddenly anointed in the press as "legitimate head of AIM in northern California," using this new position to publicly and repeatedly denounce Castillo as a "fraud" and a "Mexican taco."109 Soon thereafter, the Bellecourt-run NAIMI was incorporated and, to quote Churchill, unilaterally "began expelling the movement from itself." This is no overstatement. One of the first acts of NAIMI was a September 1993 press circular asserting that ...only those chapters which have been duly authorized and chartered by the National Office should be recognized in the future as legitimate representatives of the American Indian Movement. Questions in this regard can be resolved by calling the National Office at 1-612-721-3914. [Vernon Bellecourt's home phone number] 110 Further attempts to undermine the autonomous chapters sprang up, especially in Colorado. On October 1993, one year after Colorado AIM's spectacular Columbus Day victory, Vernon Bellecourt flew into Denver, and conducted a surprise press conference on the steps of the state capitol building. He told startled and undoubtedly delighted mainstream reporters that the highly visible Glenn Morris and Ward Churchill had been expelled from AIM, and introduced three unknown individuals--Al Bear Ribs, Al "Fast Thunder" Schumacher and "Cahuilla Red Elk" (Margaret Martinez) -as the "new leadership of Colorado AIM."111 With Red Elk/Martinez tagging along, Vernon then met with University President Albino to try having Churchill and Morris fired from their jobs (no investigation of Morris was ever initiated). His mission of disruption thus accomplished, Vernon jetted off, and continues to market the local media "controversy" he manufactured about Morris and Churchill to this day.112 The "legitimate AIM leadership" Bellecourt's appointees gave Denver could have been created by the Marx Brothers. Bear Ribs, having just completed a prison sentence for beating another man to death in a bar, left Colorado less than three months later, fleeing an arrest warrant for domestic violence.113 Schumacher sank from view at about the same time, after a public speech in which he informed his audience that "The main threat we must prepare to meet is an invasion from outer space."114 Martinez/Red Elk was last heard from in mid-1995, working for an upscale Colorado Springs developer who wished to build condominiums in the Garden of the Gods State Park, a site sacred to native people.115 As Glenn Morris put it: Vernon didn't manage to destroy Colorado AIM. Far from it. We're very much alive. But what he did manage to do, and is still trying to do, is create a considerable amount of confusion. He gave a lot of ammunition to anti-AIM and anti-Indian sentiment in this already anti-Indian state, and his "appointees" made the movement a laughingstock in some circles. We came out of Columbus Day '92 with a lot of momentum. It's fair to say that he slowed that momentum a lot, and that damaged morale among our members. After all the work we put in building this chapter, he put us in the position of having to rebuild again. Now, you tell me. Who was the primary beneficiary of his "contribution" here? It's not Indians, and it's not the American Indian Movement.116 Responding to NAIMI's establishment and its disruptive disinformation offensive, sixty representatives of nineteen functioning AIM chapters assembled at Edgewood, New Mexico in December 1993. Together, they issued the Edgewood Declaration, defining themselves as a Confederation of Autonomous Chapters of the American Indian Movement and repudiating any authority claimed by the Bellecourts' national office outside the Minneapolis area.117 "We didn't start anything new at Edgewood," says Russell Means. "All we did was reaffirm the principles which governed AIM all along, especially the 1975 decision by the whole membership to dissolve the national office and dispense with national officers. Each chapter functions in a mutually-supportive, but locally directed and entirely autonomous manner. There's only one valid way the 1975 decision can ever be reversed, and that's through the convening of a national meeting of all active AIM members in which they consent to setting up a national office again. Such a meeting has never happened."118 The AIM Tribunal Contrary to what the Bellecourts would like people to believe, it was they who were "banished for life from AIM," not Churchill and Morris.119 This came about when a group of noted senior native activists, desperate to put an end to the swirling charges and countercharges which they saw impairing the struggle for indigenous rights, opted to establish a Rmovement tribunal" to assess the merits of what was being said. "It was a really difficult situation," says former Bellecourt colleague Joe Locust, who chaired the panel. "I felt that Clyde and Vernon were way out of line, but I frankly didn't believe some of the things the people on the other side were saying about them. As an elder in the movement who's known and worked with most all of the parties involved, I decided it was my responsibility to try and clear the air." Locust's council, convened in March 1994 at San Raphael, California, consisted of a Wounded Knee veteran, Regina Brave; a former IITC delegate and attorney for the Treaty 6 Chiefs in Canada, Sharon Venne; a former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee staffer and Northwest AIM elder, Dian Million; and noted native scholar, Donald A. Grinde, Jr. "I told people it was time to put up or shut up," Locust recalls. "If they had a case, then make it before the tribunal, not in the media. If there was a basis to their charges, we'd uphold them and take appropriate action. If, on the other hand, they couldn't prove what they were saying, they were to stop saying it. That was the deal." Locust found the autonomous AIM chapters "very receptive" to the idea. "They were cooperative," he says. "Russ Means agreed to present their case, and they made a group pledge to stand down on any point they couldn't prove."120 The Bellecourts were another story, however. "Vernon flatly refused to participate under any circumstances," Locust says, "and Clyde showed up only long enough to provoke a big confrontation by insisting that we use his pipe in the opening ceremony. The fact that what he was doing was a desecration of the pipe we'd already loaded for that purpose didn't phase him in the least. It was obvious he'd come just to disrupt, not to engage in anything constructive. It was a real eye-opener for me."121 So was the testimony and other evidence submitted over the next two days, material so extensive and compelling that the panel unanimously entered an "interim finding" banishing the Bellecourts' and scheduling a second set of hearings in Minneapolis the following October (the hearings were ultimately moved to Rapid City, South Dakota).122 Although all this happened over three years ago, the results seemed to have evaporated because of the tribunal's decision at the proceedings' outset to bar non-Indian press.123 "Our idea, based on a lot of experience, was that Indian against Indian disputes invariably get distorted to the advantage of nonIndians by the media," says Joe Locust. "So we decided that reportage should come through Indian papers only."124 This seemed a viable approach when News From Indian Country assigned reporter Shelly Davis, a Cherokee, to cover the tribunal firsthand, from start to finish. (Joe Geshick, an Ojibwe News reporter, also attended throughout, but since he was also a witness, his reportage was discounted.) Davis undertook to write a series of articles on what she learned, but was shortly made aware that her editor, Paul DeMain, considered them "biased." She recalls, It was really weird. I'd quote Vernon Bellecourt, and that was okay. But every time I'd quote somebody from the other side, or cite some of the evidence presented, I'd start getting questions about my "personal relationships." Finally, I said, "Paul, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm going to cover both sides of this thing or I'm not going to cover it at all." He said, "Fine. I'll cover it myself," and he hadn't even been there. About a week later, he fired me for lacking "objectivity and professionalism." What a joke.125 Shortly after her termination, Davis received a Native American Press Association award for the quality of the very articles DeMain found so objectionable. Apart from letters to the editor, neatly flanked by DeMain commentary, from then on only the NAIMI version of reality appeared in News From Indian Country. The content and conclusions of the tribunal were frozen out, while an unending stream of editorials and "news reports" pilloried Churchill and others, none of whom were ever so much as contacted for a comment.126 "It was a rather astonishing turn of events," says Don Grinde. "We didn't expect a rubber stamp of our findings, but we did expect a thorough and fair reporting of them. In the end, we'd have done better to have turned things over to the mainstream media."127 Exactly what prompted DeMain to pursue this course is unclear since he has no known history of connection with the Bellecourts. Churchill suspects a payoff. "I don't know Paul DeMain at all," he says, but I do know he's been running pretty much on a shoestring operation. At the same time, there's a lot of loose cash kicking around in Vernon's coffers. He'd pay a nice price to turn a publication which was in the process of exposing him into what amounts to a personal propaganda vehicle. You put two and two together and what you end up with is some money changing hands. Likely, it was just chump change, but enough to account for DeMain's sleazy behavior since mid '94. It's too bad, really. News From Indian Country used to be a pretty good paper. Now, I'd have to rate its editorial integrity as being lower than that of Spotlight or the National Inquirer."128 The Bellecourts So, what was it that so stunned Joe Locust and his colleagues during the tribunal, and put Paul DeMain in such a frenzy of denial? The tribunal turned up many things sufficiently repellent to create such a strong response, but the sheer cumulative weight of the autonomous AIM chapters' evidence sketching the careers of both Bellecourts over the past quarter-century was itself condemning. Some forty witnesses, hundreds of pages of documentation and videotaped depositions from as far afield as Nicaragua were entered into the record. Although Means withdrew several charges for insufficient evidence and the panel dismissed two for lack of support, what follows is a summary of what was proven to the tribunal's collective satisfaction. While it is true that Clyde Bellecourt was a member of the founding AIM group in Minneapolis in 1968, the same cannot be said of his older brother, Vernon. A Denver wig stylist moonlighting as an insurance salesman, Vernon sat out the opening years of the movement. It was only after AIM had taken root that he traded in his leisure suits for ribbon shirts and started growing braids. "Vernon saw a parade," as one witness aptly put it," and decided to jump in front."129 The sharp divisiveness preventing the movement from ever consolidating its impressive early gains can be reasonably dated from the moment of his entry into its ranks. In 1972, little more than a year after the Denver chapter was formed, Vernon presented himself for election as an AIM officer. After losing the election to Russell Means at the annual membership meeting, Vernon swiftly organized a "protest bloc." He then persuaded intermediaries to propose to Means that he abdicate in favor of Vernon in the interests of unity. Means refused and tension increased until Clyde and AIM-founder Dennis Banks engineered the creation of a new appointed position for Vernon to fill. He was duly appointed to this job, the only national title he would ever hold. Vernon then walked away from the Denver chapter, stationing himself at the movement's national office in Minneapolis.130 This pattern enlarged itself in 1974 when Vernon decided it was time for him to become AIM's national chairperson. Once again, the membership had other ideas, electing Carter Camp, a Ponca from Oklahoma, to the top job. Vernon started a whispering campaign to the effect that Camp was, among other things, "a government infiltrator," a charge familiar to us only from hindsight. He incidentally added to an antagonism so incendiary it resulted in bloodshed.131 At its 1975 meeting, partly to stem the rising factionalism, the membership voted to abolish all titles of national office (except "national spokesperson," a title held by John Trudell until it, too, was discarded in 1979.) The decision not to have a national office or officers was reaffirmed at an "AIM Summit" conducted in San Francisco in September 1982.132 Unfortunately, this did not end Vernon's badjacketing of rivals. During the same 1975 meeting at which the national office was dissolved, he seized the opportunity to start a rumor that Micmac activist Anna Mae Aquash, one of his severest critics, was an FBI informer. He instructed an AIM security team consisting of Leonard Peltier, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau to take her out to interrogate her. According to Robideau, the order was to "bury her where she stands" if they were unsatisfied with her responses.133 While Robideau does not contend that Vernon himself pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Aquash a few months later, he points out that the resulting suspicion and isolation within the movement Vernon's snitch rumor created made Aquash especially vulnerable to her fate. Perhaps to prevent others from coming to the same conclusion, Vernon volunteered to head up AIM's internal investigation of the murder. Interestingly, the "investigation was terminated" soon after.134 What had increasingly upset Aquash and many others was Vernon's growing and pronounced disruption, profiteering and misrepresentation. For instance, although holding no elected office even at chapter level, Vernon consistently portrayed himself as a "foremost AIM leader," insinuating that he was a "veteran" of the spectacular federal siege of AIM members at Wounded Knee in 1973, a misrepresentation he still cultivates.135 Vernon was not at Wounded Knee. During much of that confrontation he was touring Italy "raising funds." On his return, he claimed to have been arrested by federal agents at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and forced to post the $17,000 in proceeds as bond.136 It is on record that Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH posted the bond at Vernon's request, and that the funds were returned to them when Vernon wasn't prosecuted. The Italian donations, however, were never turned over to the movement.137 Similar monetary wrongdoing rears its ugly head before and after Wounded Knee. For instance, at the end the November 1972 AIM occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, DC, the Nixon administration provided $66,650 in cash to underwrite the dissidents' travel home. The money was supposed to be divided up in proportion to the actual transport costs involved.138 However, according to Robert Free, the AIM member assigned to oversee disbursements, Vernon demanded $30,000 and actually received more than $7,000 "for the National Office."139 Consequently, many grassroots participants received nothing at all. Similarly, during the so-called "Wounded Knee Leadership Trials" of 1974-1975, more than $100,000 in defense funds disappeared from accounts to which only Vernon and his cohort, Mike Haney, had access.140 The IITC Hammered to pieces as a direct result of federal repression, AIM was in a state of virtual collapse by the early 80s, fraught with incessant internal discord.141 The Bellecourts were the only AIM "notables" never tried and imprisoned during the period. It was at this point that Vernon announced the reestablishment of the formerly-dissolved National Office and proclaimed Clyde executive director. Whatever his younger brother was doing at the time, Vernon used his new station to assert control over the movement's single untarnished operation, the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC). Labeling Cherokee activist Jimmie Durham, IITC's highly effective founding director, a "white man masquerading as an Indian," Vernon soon accomplished his objective.142 IITC was established in 1974 at the behest of the Lakota elders to represent indigenous interests vis-`-vis nation-states before the United Nations. Under Durham's direction it had succeeded in solid fashion. By 1981, however, the Bellecourts turned IITC completely around as they visited native communities on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, an area where indigenous resistance to state domination was rapidly building.143 As "cousins and allies from the north," the Bellecourts were introduced to local Indian military leaders at the village of Tasbapauni, shown defensive emplacements, weapons caches and so forth. They left, promising they would soon return. What came instead were detachments of Nicaraguan troops who systematically rounded up or killed key leaders, impounded weapons and destroyed exactly those positions the brothers had been shown. Convinced they had been betrayed to the government, the Atlantic Coast Indians issued death warrants against both Bellecourts should they ever come back. IITC was permanently banned from their territory.144 While IITC's relationship to indigenous peoples was steadily deteriorating, its new cast of "leaders" found plenty of time to hang out with Sandinista officials in Managua and Geneva, as well as leftist or simply antiAmerican governments from the USSR and Cuba to Libya and Iran.145 By 1984, Vernon was taking his slide show on the lucrative college lecture circuit touting the "indigenous rights" posture of Nicaragua's Sandinista government and glamorizing the relocation centers into which the government had forced much of Nicaragua's indigenous population. Rapt audiences listened to him explain how the Sandinista revolution's success was more important to Indian rights than the Indians themselves.146 In his talks and interviews, Vernon habitually described the native resistance, especially MISURASATA, Nicaragua's equivalent of AIM, as a "CIA-funded contra organization."147 While the Sandinistas tried to rebut these reports in the pages of Barricada and other journals, Vernon's deliberately simplistic and decidedly anti-Indian "good guys, bad guys" presentations were especially well-received and well-compensated by numerous left organizations and "progressives" eager to romanticize someone else's revolution rather than make their own.148 Almost overnight Vernon became a countercultural celebrity. He had no demonstrable constituent base of his own, yet his picture was emblazoned on the front page of the Socialist Workers Party publication, The Militant, captioned as the "representative Native American radical" of the 80s.149 For several years, the Bellecourts' perspective on Nicaragua was the only "indigenous" view that saw print in The Guardian, the American left's premier "independent radical news weekly," coverage that translated into more lecture invitations and larger honoraria.150 The only problem was that most radical Indians, in or out of AIM, strongly disagreed with the Bellecourts' message. When Russell Means announced that "the business of the American Indian Movement is supporting Indian self-determination, not the governments that seek to prevent it," Vernon quickly drafted a press release in the name of the "Central Governing Council of the American Indian Movement" claiming that Means "does not represent" AIM.151 A few months later, an expulsion was issued on AIM letterhead and both brothers announced at a press conference that they had "totally expelled [Russell Means] from the American Indian Movement."(emphasis added)152 Vernon smeared Means and dozens of others - from Akwesasne Notes editors John Mohawk and Mike Meyers to Clem Chartier, a leader of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples; from Jim Anaya of the National Indian Youth Council to Tim Coulter, director of the Indian Law Resource Center; from Morris and Churchill to Hank Adams, head of American Indian Survival, Inc. - as "either a CIA puppet or an outright operative."153 He used phone calls, faxes and "information packets" in a concerted nationwide campaign similar to that now being run against Churchill to prevent Means from being invited to speak at college campuses and political events.154 Similarly, San Francisco-based "indigenous diplomat" and former IITC director Antonio Gonzales has nearly made a career of insinuating that Churchill - and dozens of others - are "CIA operatives" because of their support of Nicaragua's native peoples against Sandinista assimilation policies in the 1980s.155 AIM's internal fragmentation and external isolation increasing radically in 1986, Colorado AIM agreed to host a meeting in Denver to allow Dennis Banks to bring the principles together in a verbal "cease fire." The Bellecourts boycotted the event.156 A few months later, Dennis Banks tried again, this time asking those concerned to meet at Oglala on Pine Ridge. While Clyde and an IITC representative showed, Vernon again refused. Instead, he used the absence of Morris, Churchill and Locust from Denver as an opportunity to deliver a speech sponsored by the local CISPES, Socialist Workers Party and New Alliance Party chapters. There, and in other radio interviews, he denounced Colorado AIM's support of Means and MISURASATA as being "counterrevolutionary," "CIA-inspired" and "possibly controlled by the U.S. government."157 The elders who had created IITC had had enough. Not only was the organization functioning politically very differently than originally intended, but rumors abounded that it was used for cocaine importation.158 When Vernon tried to stage a symbolic coup at the organization's annual meeting, removing Russell Means from the position of permanent trustee the traditionals had appointed him to in 1974, the old people refused.159 Just like the "expulsions" of Churchill and Morris, this move by Vernon was a moot point since all three had long since left the IITC. Within months, the IITC had dispensed with grassroots oversight by incorporating itself in California, replacing the elders with a handpicked "advisory board."160 Since then, it has lost whatever standing it once possessed to represent indigenous peoples, and has become a funding conduit and employment haven for those aligned with the Bellecourts. While rumors of IITC involvement in narcotic trafficking were never investigated, a possible source for the fire behind the smoke came with Clyde Bellecourt's 1987 arrest for nine counts of peddling drugs to the children living in Minneapolis AIM's Red Earth Housing Project. Outside the courtroom, Clyde cried entrapment, while behind closed doors his attorneys quietly negotiated a plea bargain situating him in a federal prison from which he was released less than two years later, amazingly short time for a dealer sentenced during Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.161 Several tribunal witnesses and the Ojibwe News attested that after his release, he not only resumed the activities which caused his arrest, but branched out into other criminal enterprises, all while billing himself as "Executive Director of the American Indian Movement."162 Other Fronts While Clyde was in prison, and the Sandinistas were collapsing, Vernon was pursuing other income possibilities. The first was to trade on his "famous AIM leader" image by endorsing the 1987-88 presidential campaign of the purported "left alternative" candidate Dr. Lenora Fulani, an African-American.163 However, disturbing information soon surfaced in a series of articles by investigative journalist Ken Lawrence in the Jackson Advocate, Mississippi's oldest black-owned newspaper and a mainstay of progressive organizing in the state. Not only was Fulani's "Rainbow Alliance," a subsidiary of her "New Alliance Party" (NAP), purposely named to make voters confuse it with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition (a deception designed to enhance fundraising prospects), but it was controlled by a white man, Dr. Fred Newman, an outspoken admirer of neofascist Lyndon LaRouche.164 To stem the flow of such information, the NAP filed a libel suit claiming punitive damages steep enough to personally bankrupt Lawrence and publisher Charles Tisdale, as well as put the Advocate out of business165 At trial, Vernon appeared as the star witness for the NAP, not only swearing that Lawrence's allegations were false, but suggesting that the reporter himself was a "federal provocateur" trying to derail a "legitimate African-American candidate who happens to hold left-of-center views."166 Vernon was making headway with the jury until he admitted under cross examination that he was paid $24,000 a year for various "service" to Fulani's organization, including his court appearance, thereby lending AIM's endorsement to her right-wing fraud as a left-wing alternative, without authorization from AIM membership.167 Vernon's exposure as a paid witness had no effect on the trial's outcome because after only one day of defense presentations, the case was dismissed with prejudice. Proceeding on the basis that "the truth is the best defense" against a defamation action, Lawrence quickly established the Fulani/Newman/LaRouche relationship.168 NAP's credibility slipped away. But damage was done: Vernon's maneuverings left strong memories of an "AIM linkage" to the cryptofacist NAP within the African-American community. By this time, however, Vernon found a far greener pasture in Colonel Muammar al Qadaffi's Libya.169 In 1988, after having already enjoyed a number of trips to Tripoli as a "guest of the state," Vernon announced that Qadaffi was preparing to award him a grant of $1 million with which to "pursue the struggle for indigenous liberation in the United States."170 None of these trips had anything to do with AIM, but all of them lent credence to government claims that the movement was "associated with international terrorism." A federal grand jury was convened to determine whether Vernon's defiance of a U.S. travel prohibition to Libya was a legal violation or a breach of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other things. Vernon was jailed briefly for refusing to testify, but suddenly released just as eight members of an Arab students association who had helped arrange his trips went to prison, and the Palestinian manager of the travel agency booking Vernon's tickets fled American jurisdiction.171 Even more striking is that Bellecourt was able to accept Qadaffi's million dollars. Awarded in 1991, Vernon only admits that $250,000 of it was actually handed over.172 Vernon had stated on several occasions that the cash would be dispersed by a board over which he would preside. Native organizations could submit proposals and, if approved, their projects would be funded.173 His grip on the moneybag temporarily accorded Bellecourt his long-sought status as principle arbiter of political correctness in Indian Country. However, so far as is known, nobody else ever actually received any of this money. This includes the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, whom Qadaffi was supposed to have personally designated to receive at least $50,000.174 Amidst the murk of the Bellecourt finances, either Vernon got the money and kept it, or he never had the money at all.175 In either scenario, he deliberately misrepresented a situation to command the kind of subservience and political fealty he's always craved, a cynical manipulation and subterfuge typical of his conduct from start to finish, and typical of the dominant culture. It is almost a clichi that the most respected members of Native American communities are the poorest because they give anything that comes to them to those in need, but it has a basis in truth. Vernon's game with the Libyan money graphically exemplifies the deformation of the indigenous liberation movement's and opposition politics's values he has induced for years. Are the Bellecourts agents provocateurs? The fact that the Bellecourts have long practiced the same disruptive activities for which they've so often branded others as government agents and provocateurs does not mean that they themselves are agents provocateurs. It seems simpler and perhaps more frightening than that. They talk the talk sporadically, but they consistently walk the dominant culture walk. Unless and until we have hard evidence to the contrary, we must, as Churchill comments, place a premium "on establishing the sort of knowledge base and analytical skills among activists that would allow the wheat to be sifted from the chaff..."176 Neither are the Bellecourt brothers interchangeable. Churchill says, comparing Clyde with the late Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party founder and early influence on AIM: Clyde, like Huey, is a guy who started out really strong. He was sincere, he believed, he galvanized people. As a result, both organizations made a lot of headway in their initial stages. It follows that a whole lot of new talent comes flooding in. It also follows that there was incredibly heavy repression in both cases: disinformation in the media, infiltration and internal disruption, bogus charges against everybody in sight, people railroaded into prison, assassinations, the whole bit. So, initially as a legitimate self-defense measure, both men started trying to weed out infiltrators. But that pretty quickly became a cover for getting rid of political competitors as well. One wonders who ultimately bad-jacketed the greater number of people, the feds or Huey. Clyde wasn't as heavyhanded, but then he was always covering for Vernon, who certainly made up for Clyde's restraint. Between the repression and the purges, both the Black Panther Party and AIM began to disintegrate. Before long they were no longer politically viable, had become shells of their former selves as demoralization, depression and paranoia set in. Says Churchill, "they retreated into substance abuse and, to subsidize that, they started converting whatever remained of their original creations into a combination social service program and criminal enterprise. By then, totally cynical, they were using their organizational titles, both the Black Panther Party in the case of Huey, and AIM in the case of Clyde, as a cover for what they were really into. To do that, it was necessary to keep right on bad-jacketing competitors, people who were truly pursuing liberation politics. It had become an endless cycle, the exact opposite of what they'd wanted to accomplish."177 The Huey/Clyde scenario comes off as something of a tragedy, underscoring the maiming effects of both counterintelligence methods and the politics of hierarchy. The scenario concerning Vernon Bellecourt is something else again. "I'd compare Vernon to Lyndon LaRouche," Churchill says. "Not LaRouche today in his out-front fascist incarnation, but the way he was back in the early 1970s when he was still pretending to be a leading left-wing radical. Actually, as we now know, that was always a masquerade, a mask he wore in order to conduct a more effective program of disrupting leftist organizations. Very few people seem to remember any more how he dispatched the cadres of his 'National Council of Labor Caucuses' to conduct what he called 'Operation Mop-Up,' beating up organizers in other groups, breaking up their meetings, publishing all sorts of rubbish about them. This was the outfit Vernon's sometime patron Fred Newman was still describing as 'the hegemonic party of the left,' after LaRouche had dropped all pretenses and announced himself as a fascist."178 While the analogy isn't perfect and Vernon isn't anywhere near as organizationally adept as LaRouche, Vernon's methods and motives are similar. "Not that I think ol' Vern's a closet fascist," says Churchill. "As near as I can tell, he's got insufficient political principle even for that. But LaRouche set out to become a millionaire while he was still playing leftie. So did Vernon. LaRouche succeeded in pumping enough out of his assorted misrepresentations of himself to make it, and I suspect Vernon has, too." The moral here? Talking the talk doesn't necessarily mean walking the walk, and failure to look beyond the surface of things often leads to collaboration with those whose actions directly undermine legitimate activists and sometimes entire movements. Ultimately, the government's counterintelligence operatives and political scavengers like LaRouche, Newmann and the Bellecourts function in much the same way to similar regrettable effect. Learning to distinguish them must be our first line of defense against both. Continuing to insist on lumping them together as "provocateurs" keeps us from dealing with either appropriately, and enhances their effectiveness. As Churchill puts it, "If there is one thing I want to get across at this point, it's that you don't have to be a cop to do a cop's work. The Bellecourts are a classic example of that being true." A Call to Consciousness We've got to pick up on the lessons of our past if we're ever going to be able to act in the present in a way which will allow us to alter our future for the better. -Ward Churchill Some questions Why didn't someone in AIM step in to put a stop to the destructive maneuverings of the Bellecourts at some point over the past quarter-century? Why don't more of us take the steps necessary to insure that the same tactics are not reflected in the work we do today? Some Answers For AIM, hindsight argues rather unsatisfactorily that perhaps nobody, until the AIM Tribunal in 1995, was in a position to put all the information together in a big picture and appreciate the true extent of what was happening. Perhaps a more appropriate explanation is that the desire to be "non-divisive" blinded people to the importance of confronting issues as they arose in a manner that allowed intelligent understanding of the situation by the activists involved. According to Aaron Two Elk, there seemed to be a consensus in AIM that by ignoring the problems and maintaining an artificial appearance of unity, the problems would go away: A lot of us knew things all along. Not everything, but enough to know a lot of wrong stuff was being done. But we always took the approach of trying to ignore it or make excuses, to "keep the peace within the movement."We didn't want to make things worse by acting the same way Vernon did, you know? Looking back, I can see it was a big mistake, that a lot of us defaulted on our responsibilities to fix this before it got completely out of hand. Now, the question is what can be done.179 This is an important lesson for all of us. Today, the "let's not be divisive" argument too often excuses refusing the call to consciousness. It facilitates smear campaigns and cop-like tactics targeting those who take clear and perhaps controversial stands but are willing to argue them, like Churchill. Some say, "I'm not part of AIM; I only work in grassroots organizations," as though AIM weren't grassroots and as if such issues don't arise in grassroots organizations. They do and when they do we must address and discuss them as thinking individuals concerned with the overall goal of human liberation. Avoiding this process does not avoid division, but creates and perpetuates it. By default, our silence places us squarely beside those who are the problem, not the solution. No matter where we are and what work we are doing, silence is implied and effectual consent. Nothing can replace political consciousness and analytical abilities as we proceed down the path of human liberation. As activists we must assume the responsibility of addressing situations from a principled foundation, a foundation that can't be developed without going through the hard work of reading, studying and analyzing other movements and organizations, enabling us to draw our own conclusions. Authoritarian structures such as NAIMI trade upon a high degree of mindless clustering around a few self-designated "leaders." This was sharply evident in Feike's actions in Chicago prior to the Mumia benefit. Feike apparently saw no contradiction between her self-identification as "anti-authoritarian" and her obedient alignment with someone as fundamentally authoritarian as Vernon Bellecourt. She refused to look behind Vernon's carefully contrived "real Indian" persona and as a result willingly placed herself in his hands. Her actions, like those of others equally thoughtless, whether out of ignorance or lack of reflection, directly undermine legitimate activists and movements by attacking genuinely independent thinkers. Such an environment hardly needs payrolled counterintelligence operatives, when our own actions do their work for them. In the name of "ideological purity" and "unity"- however defined within a particular context - denunciations, purges and smear campaigns flourish, and we obviate the need for government disrupters. What may have begun as a principled disagreement deteriorates into "leaders" issuing commands and the rest parroting them, mindlessly acting upon them, or ignoring them. No matter how you look at it the result is the same: you may be talking our talk but you're walking The Man's walk. NAIMI is just one of many movements so fractured. The infiltration and destruction of the Black Panther Party, the Chicano movement and other progressive left organizations make up a palette of depressing colors. The decimation of the Old Left in the 50's could have offered an example to the later groups and the Old Left could no doubt have benefited from the experience of groups before them. Studying them provides lessons in how the process works and how we can prevent it from happening again. But as we make our historical analysis, we must try to see how the internal relations within these organizations created fertile breeding grounds for counterintelligence operations in the past and undermine our present work. We cannot realize human liberation on a large scale if we duplicate the dominant corporate culture's relationships on the small scale. The work of human liberation is hard on both levels, and involves a call to political consciousness many have not yet demonstrated a willingness to make. That makes it all the more imperative that the rest of us do so. In practical terms, this means not rushing to judgment, going to sources, checking rumors out, asking questions. It means doing your best to defuse this kind of behavior in groups you belong to if you are lucky and smart enough to see it starting. Raise unspoken suspicions and rumors and get them cleared or confirmed. Most situations allow time for investigation, primary sources are better than fourth-hand information. Straight up people can answer questions and don't mind doing it, since they are in the business of educating more people like themselves. The odds are that if you are reading this article at all you are one who is easy with books and argument. Not everyone is. Serve those who aren't by explaining how you do this kind of work so they can look for themselves and aren't being asked to blindly trust you. We must ensure that political differences within movements are aired with mutual respect rather than sensational smear campaigns and avoidance of straightforward discussion. We must take responsibility for our own investigation of controversies before passing judgment. We are the ones who must appropriately address those within our ranks who embrace tactics and attributes that weaken our work. Failing this responsibility means directly undermining the multilevel struggles now calling us to action. Some object that "time constraints" prevent them from engaging in such investigations, or that they aren't interested in history but what we can do now. We can't know what to do now without knowing history. I can't help thinking of an indigenous Mexican man who joined the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. For him, the constraints of war, poverty and disease would be excellent alibis for drawing a sum line under his mind. He not only learned Spanish, but how to read so that he could painstakingly work his way over the course of a year and a half through a biography of Zapata. Why? He could not happily call himself a Zapatista without himself knowing what he was naming himself after, what he was fighting for and whether he could stand behind it. He was hungry for knowledge, not soundbites, and acted out of integrity, not attitude. The telling contrast between his situation and ours reveals that our very aversion to knowledge itself is a reflection of the dominant culture's influence on us. He knew he needed to study and find answers to his questions to be of use in the struggle. The tools we need are much more accessible, but study of the past and analysis of the present require discipline and commitment not unlike that of the young Zapatista insurgente.180 As Churchill has noted, There are no exceptions. This kind of self-education is a fundamental obligation for anyone who claims to be a committed activist. There are no real options, and there are no shortcuts. It's the only way to lay the informational/analytical groundwork for your average radical to recognize the sort of thing that's been happening with National AIM Inc. and neutralize it before they end up getting neutralized by it. I don't want to hear that tired old evasion about how there's "more important" stuff to focus on right now. Nothing else you may be into counts at all, once you're neutralized. Get it? Still less do I want to hear that lame shit like "reading is boring," or "it takes too long," or "it's too much work" and "aren't there any movies I could watch on this?" Why do you think we call it struggle? If you're not willing to invest what it takes to develop your own historical and analytical consciousness beyond the level of a parrot, what are you willing to invest to get something done? The answer, I think is self-evident. You're not serious. You're treating your politics like a fashion statement, and it's really irresponsible of you to prattle on as if it were otherwise. The Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 863-9977 http://www.freedomarchives.org * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org =================================================================