Most of those guys probably weren’t informants. Which is a pity because it means they are not getting paid a dime for all the destructive work they do. We might think of these misogynists as inadvertent agents of the state. Regardless of whether they are actually informants or not, the work that they do supports the state’s ongoing campaign of terror against social movements and the people who create them. When queer organizers are humiliated and their political struggles sidelined, that is part of an ongoing state project of violence against radicals. When women are knowingly given STIs, physically abused, dismissed in meetings, pushed aside, and forced out of radical organizing spaces while our allies defend known misogynists, organizers collude in the state’s efforts to destroy us.
The state has already understood a fact that the Left has struggled to accept: misogynists make great informants. Before or regardless of whether they are ever recruited by the state to disrupt a movement or destabilize an organization, they’ve likely become well versed in practices of disruptive behavior. They require almost no training and can start the work immediately. What’s more paralyzing to our work than when women and/or queer folks leave our movements because they have been repeatedly lied to, humiliated, physically/verbally/emotionally/sexually abused? Or when you have to postpone conversations about the work so that you can devote group meetings to addressing an individual member’s most recent offense? Or when that person spreads misinformation, creating confusion and friction among radical groups? Nothing slows down movement building like a misogynist.

— Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence in Movements Enables State Violence

It lets me know that the individual(s) that have done this have too much free time. They aren’t involved in the community and it lets me know one of two things: 1. that just some kids have come through and did it or 2. that they are individuals that actually support this group that want to scare tactic me and so on to try and get us from the viewpoints that we hold that or and (sic) they just don’t like anybody that’s against it. I really don’t know,

—

Pastor Joe Gutierrez of the Church on Fire, quoted in Bash Back! Strikes queer-hating church — Fort Wayne, IN

Seriously, “someone must have a lot of free time” as a way of minimizing someone else’s opinion/action is so obnoxious. And so what? Why is the idea of having free time such an insult anyway? I wish I made better use of my free time, and had more of it.

I ask you, ‘What does reasonable suspicion mean?” Letona said through a megaphone. “It means not looking white. It means not sounding white. It means those who do not conform to a certain idea of what Americans should look like.

— Boston: Activists denounce Arizona immigration law [via]  

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

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

I just didn’t want to spend my life arguing with the people I thought should have my back.

— Why I Broke Up with the Anarchist Community

The desperation is ever present in Maricopa County. Local activists devoted to challenging the racism oozing from the local state legislature and county sheriff are exhausted. The years of symbolic protest and moral appeals to the white citizen majority have failed. Even when Arpaio’s numbers slipped in the polls (he currently is seeing some of his highest poll numbers state wide), support for anti-immigrant ballot initiatives remained at 80%. Other activists and lawyers have sought the intervention of the federal government, and while the Department of Justice has sent a handful of observers to the county to little affect during their 20 month stay. The situation has only grown worse, more families are broken up by MCSO workplace raids, more immigrant workers have been deported, and even more have “self-deported,” fleeing the state that was their home.
Was it just four years ago that we saw the “huelga general,” a real general strike happened here in Maricopa County? In downtown Phoenix hundreds of thousands of workers marched and rallied for protection from the coming onslaught of anti-immigrant legislation and popular white hysteria that was reaching a fever pitch. Now we’re lucky to see a few thousand marching for immigrants and calling for the end of the era of racialized policing. The dwindling numbers are of no surprise to many of us, for years organizers have stonewalled and marginalized radical voices and tactics, preferring symbolic and moral appeals to power, especially as the demands of the movement are in retreat. Gone are the “somos America, we are America” slogans, now the signs read “We are human,” a plea to the white citizenry to recognize, at the very least, that immigrants are also human beings.

— Arizona: A State of Emergency

COMRADES – CHEAP BEER FOR THE WORKERS AND SUPPORTING INDUSTRIAL ACTION – IT WILL BE OUR CLEAR REVOLUTIONARY DUTY TO DRINK OURSELVES FUCKING STUPID. This could be the most popular industrial action ever. No standing outside warming yourselves on picket line braziers – just the warm slap of the beer on your belly showing solidarity with mein host!

— PUB REVOLUTION STRIKE WILL LOWER BEER PRICES

The intelligence which transforms any commodity we may come in contact with into a device of insurrection must be learned. Moreover, the capacity to inflict psychological or emotional harm to an enemy force must be experimented with beyond the practices of passive shaming. This can be advanced either by the development of our own “less than lethal” weapons which counteract the police’s rubber bullets, pepper spray and bean bags, and which perhaps make the molotov obsolete, and/or by means of a different strategy to combat, in which the heart is both the weapon and target.

— What if They Threw a Black Bloc and the Police Arrested Everyone? [via]

Macho posturing can take many forms. From masking up in counter-productive situations, to throwing things without aim and mission, boasting about criminal records - or worse, criminal activities, or being the person down the tunnel the longest. These activities often operate at a level of competitiveness within the network rather than co-operation and suggest that activism is for the adrenaline and the recognition rather than the daily effort toward building mass resistance. Wanting to be seen to engage in heroic or hardcore activity relies on others’ failure to do the same, and instead of these activities inspiring others to take action they alienate - hence the problem of some people (“activists”) being asked to take action on behalf of other people; e.g.: people being asked to pie someone, or ‘save’ some land from road building. (Why does everyone need to take action when superman can do it for us?) Rather than using the most effective tactics available, macho activists need the most visual; hanging from harnesses is, in our ‘movement’, a more popular approach than mass direct action, and media stunts are seen as ‘worthwhile’ activity despite such an obviously problematic relationship with the media.

— Let Patriarchy Burn! (Do or Die) [via]