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I attended the NYC October 27 protest, and many things struck me. One of them involved which Democrat protesters were supporting. There were lots of signs supporting Dennis Kucinich, but I didn't see even one sign during the march supporting another Democratic candidate for president. Obama supporters set up an impromptu table at the peace fair after the march, but they got very little interest, facing a similar circumstance to the late arriving Ron Paul table that was set up by a couple of his devotees.
The Kucinich table in the fair was bustling. The Kucinich campaign took the time and effort to get their table in as part of the official fair, and with good reason. Liberal Democrats are quite open to Democrats who listen and take their constitutional responsibilities seriously.
The majority of the protesters were liberal Democrats. There were the usual handfuls of socialists and communists handing out newspapers. Something different happened than usual, though. A significant plurality of the protesters were actually taking the newspapers, which had been a rare occurrence at previous mass mobilizations I had attended.
It would be silly to think that liberal Democrats are suddenly becoming Marxists. However, the behavior did show a greater openness to political ideas and organizations in the face of unrelenting hostility to liberal ideas and values in the Democratic Party.
The change in attitudes towards the Democratic Party is far from limited to street protests. The blog This Can't Be Happening has organized a petition drive to get people to quit the Democratic Party. So far, over 1300 war opponents have switched to independent.
It is clear that the reason Democrats won control of House and Senate in November 2006 is that they campaigned on a promise to protect civil liberties and to end the war. That promise brought independents in record numbers across to the Democratic side. But Democratic election strategists don't get this. They still harbor the illusion that unaffiliated voters are middle-of-the-road or conservative-leaning people who only care about so-called wedge issues, not the big issues of our day. In fact, my travels across this country have taught me that the unaffiliated voter is usually someone who is cynical about politics, believes that there is little difference between the two parties, and that he or she is being screwed, by corporations, by government, and by his or her own political leaders.
The sad truth is that the current Democratic Party deserves that opinion. They briefly managed to convince these skeptics that they were better than that, but in office, they have reverted to form, and these voters will not be back in '06.
Although I prefer to retain my ability to vote against particularly repugnant "Democrats" in the primaries, and to vote for the handful of real Democrats like Dennis Kucinich in those primaries, I cannot help note that the exit of over 1300 highly involved liberal Democrats is a sign of a larger problem for the party in the 2008 elections and beyond.
The response to the peace movement from Nancy Pelosi has been to unilaterally declare that eliminating funding for the Iraq war is "off the table." Other Democratic Party leaders have used less confrontational language to push the same pro-war agenda.
The only House campaign that is generating much excitement among anti-war liberals this time out is Cindy Sheehan's. An independent candidate running against the "Democratic" House Speaker is doing more to capture the imagination of the anti-war movement than any other House Candidate.
Pelosi's mentality is most strongly expressed in a now infamous quote circulating anti-war blogs:
“I’ve had, for four or five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering my neighbors, hanging their clothes from the trees, building all kinds of things-Buddhas, I don’t know what they are-couches, sofas, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk. You can imagine my neighbors’ reaction to all of this. And if they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering. But because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it’s the First Amendment, four or five months into that. So I’m well aware of the unhappiness of the base.”
Pelosi managed to get a trifecta in terms of showing her true contempt for war opponents, the homeless, and the poor. Pelosi may be aware of the anger of the Democratic Party's base, but she is far from understanding it or the values behind it.
Democratic politicians should be worried.
Hi. Found your post interesting and I think the issues you're raising regarding "what do progressives in the DP do?" important - check out www.independentvoting.org.
colbert gravel kucinich paul nader carter [conyers?] united for truth elicit fear smear blacklist.
honesty compassion intelligence guts...
Godless: I agree that the Democratic Party should be worried. There are many grassroots Dems throughout the country who remain registered in the party so they can vote in the primary (in states where independents are excluded from voting in the primaries) but who are far from being party loyalists. And let's not forget that some 80% of the Dem convention delegates voted against the war. We are looking at a much stronger split between the entrenched clubhouse structured leadership of the party and the base. I see a growing important relationship between independents and progressives who see the Dems failing them. That's a good start towards People Power instead of Party Power.
Thanks for you post -- linked to The Hankster.
Nancy
I am a gay male leftist, active in Democratic Socialists of America (the
anti-Leninists among the socialist sects ;-) but, I find the antics of Code Pink here stupid,
http://www.zombietime.com/
Topless protest at Hillary Clinton campaign party -- San Francisco, July 23, 2007
menshevik: I strongly admire Code Pink and their tactics. The more trouble they can cause for pro-war politicians, the better.
Its facinating to see that a republican ie Ron Paul can fund raise what four fookin mil in a day while the outsider Kucinich or the progressives just cannot seem to congeal around this guy who does encompasss most of our values. I do wish Dennis would run independent. and Nancy, I enjoyed your profile and what it says about political parties. The longer we stay in this stale corrupt two party system..the longer we languish..
OMFG Feinstein is leaning towards giving telecoms immunity who are these people ? No wonder there is SO MUCH anger with the Dems from the DEMS..they have become Rethug lite. There is no opposition no matter how much we try to psychology "project" onto them what we think they believe. I have lost count of the betrayals ...
I am looking forward to going back to Green or Independent. All third parties should be able in all states to vote in the primaries. Fact is i don't think the politicians really want the people to vote....its a sham nowadays.
Great series libhom ..i gotta say i too am proud of code pink , and others that get into those hearings , and stir up a fuss, get arrested. They put us to shame..with their activism and yet..somehow because of our countries meme the loony left OUR progressive values get marginalized.
Its been this way since the 60's and the police state has been building steadily (during clinton too) since Nixon. Never Forget Kent State. or the more recent NYC rethug convention. And the fuckin Patriot Act. The founders are spinning in their graves.
Proud Progressive: Ron Paul, except for the Iraq war, supports the corporate agenda in an uncompromising fashion. Of course he is getting more money than Kucinich.
Libhom on Bluebloggin they are starting a discussion on Ron Paul. I think that he is not for corporations at much as we think. I went to his website and was amazed. really! There was way way more GREAT then bad, check it out. I think that i myself have a lot of misinformation about the albotrosses of the liberatarians ie their fringes, and that they are really selfish BUT i think Paul puts people ahead of corporatation. His platform is remarkably like Kucinichs...seriously check it out.
my little mind got blown. Realizing too, there are no perfect candidate.
go look at what he wants to do - seriously i wanna know what you think ! Its idea time. Oh and his dough came from individuals and according to opensecrets.com..lots and lots of liberal gave to him. Go progressives..??!!
go figure. anyhow. Its good to be open minded and i like to try on ideas..think about stuff out of the box.
SMILE.
No more extortion blackmail bribery division.
proudprogressive: are you the same PP who I co-blogged with during the Kos convention when Hillary appeared???
Nancy
PS - thanks for your note! The national org I work with CUIP has been in close contact with Kucinich not only this election, but also in 2004. We should continue to support him and other insurgent voices like Mike Gravel to speak out. Obviously the Dem elite will not support them.
CUIP? You mean the Lenora Fulani/Fred Newman totalitarian cult?
Committee for a Unified Independent Party, Inc.
http://www.publiceye.org/newman/cloudsblur.html
Clouds Blur the Rainbow
How Fred Newman & Lenora Fulani Use Totalitarian Deception to Manipulate Social and Political Activists
By Chip Berlet
* Introduction
* Marina Ortiz Explains Why She Resigned from the NAP
* NAP Activities in the Mid 1980's
* Fred Newman and the Historical Roots of the Newmanites
* The International Workers Party
* Institutes for Social Therapy and Totalitarian Cultism
* Opportunism & Deception
* Support for Minister Farrakhan
See also:
The Newmanites and Lenora Fulani
Lenora Fulani and the Politics of Opportunism
Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, & the Reform Party
More on the sinister CUIP supported by N. Hanks.
http://www.publiceye.org/newman/nap7.html
Opportunism & Deception
One example of what critics call the political opportunism of the Newmanites and the New Alliance Party is their continuing effort to imply a connection with Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition. For instance the Newmanites have established in Washington, D.C. the "Rainbow Lobby" billed as "The Lobbying Office of the Rainbow Alliance." The Rainbow Lobby has offices at 236 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., and lists Nancy Ross as Executive Director and Tamara Weinstein as Assistant Director.
The Rainbow Lobby office has been frequently mistaken for the Washington office of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, a mistake that in the past, NAP leadership seems to have gone out of its way not to clarify. Newspaper articles have appeared about NAP's Rainbow Lobby in which throughout, the reporter assumes the Rainbow Lobby represents Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition--a circumstance NAP leadership could have easily avoided by explaining upfront that the two groups are unrelated.
Jackson has had to publicly distance himself and the Rainbow Coalition from NAP and its Rainbow Alliance and Rainbow Lobby on several occasions. Most recently Jackson told Chicago Sun-Times reporter Basil Talbot that "we have no relationship at all."
In the June 21, 1985 issue of the National Alliance, an article on the Rainbow Alliance shows how artfully the question of a relationship has been dodged in the past: "Hostile critics and curious allies are forever saying to Nancy Ross, `Does Jesse Jackson support what you're doing?'"
"Ross, who heads the Washington office of the Rainbow Alliance Confederation's lobbying arm, has learned how to respond to such inquiries." "`The point is not whether Jesse Jackson supports me, but whether I support Jesse Jackson,' says Ross, a founder of the sixyear-old independent New Alliance Party, and candidate for Jackson delegate in Harlem in 1984. `And I support Jesse completely because of the social vision he has articulated on behalf of the Rainbow movement. Yes, I have real differences with Jesse--he thinks independent politics is "prophetic" whereas I believe its time has come right now--but I won't allow anyone to sever the historic ties between Jesse and myself, because I am committed to see that his vision of a just society be brought about today.'"
While admittedly clever, the above explanation is essentially a dishonest misrepresentation of the facts, designed to confuse the issue and suggest a connection where none exists. The confusion over support from Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition is exacerbated by how the New Alliance Party describes itself. The February 13, 1987 edition of the National Alliance newspaper contained a centerfold spread with the multi-color slogan "The Real Rainbow" spanning the two pages. A letter on New Alliance Party stationery to gay activists on the west coast had the slogan "The Party of the Rainbow." A petition calling for an independent Black Presidential campaign was titled "An Open Letter To Reverend Jesse Jackson."
Ironically, in a 1983 issue of the Newmanite theoretical journal Practice, Newman attacked Jesse Jackson and Jackson's progressive supporters in strong terms:
"The U.S. ultra-Left has traditionally suffered very badly from a mental disorder perhaps best identified as premature vanguardulation. There has, over the past few years, been a positive attempt by some to rectify this problem (called by some friendly left critics `wrecktification') which, however, has dealt mainly with the symptoms of the disease by essentially helping the `client' to feel more comfortable masturbating. Hence, some of the rectified ultra-left--for example supporters of `Jesse Jackson, Democrat'--are smilingly convincing themselves these days that it is alright to unite with Jackson's `progressive aspects'. Many have raised questions as to which part of Jackson's political anatomy embodies his `progressive aspects.' "
At the end of 1987 the National Alliance newspaper column by Rainbow Lobby Executive Director Nancy Ross began to include a disclaimer which reads:
"The Rainbow Lobby is an independent citizens' lobby based in Washington, D.C. which supports important legislation that affects civil, human, voting and democratic rights at home and abroad. For more information on the Lobby, please contact Nancy Ross at 236 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Suite 409, Washington, D.C. 20002 (202) 543-8324."
"The Rainbow Lobby, Inc. is an independent lobby, not affiliated with the Rainbow Coalition, Inc."
The disclaimer began appearing during the same time period that NAP launched the campaign of Lenora Fulani for President. During 1987 the NAP began to publicly attack the Rainbow Coalition and in the National Alliance Lenora Fulani was quoted as saying "With all due respect to Brother Jesse Jackson, almost everyone knows he hasn't built a real Rainbow. He might have incorporated something called the National Rainbow Coalition, Inc., but he hasn't built a Rainbow. We've built a real Rainbow."
Despite the criticisms and disclaimers, there is still much public confusion concerning the relationship of NAP to the Rainbow Coalition, and Jackson's Presidential candidacy. This confusion is not alleviated by NAP public statements. For instance in the November 20, 1987 issue of the National Alliance, William Pleasant attacks the Rainbow Coalition as "the Democratic Party's phony left wing", but then writes that "Fulani, under her `Two Roads Are Better Than One' plan, backs Reverend Jesse Jackson in the Democratic Party primaries. But she has done everything possible to ensure that the progressive Rainbow agenda will be carried through to the general election in November...."
Smearing Critics
Among the most persistent critics of the New Alliance Party are freelance writer Dennis King of New York, the author of this study, Chip Berlet (and other members of the Public Eye Network), and two researchers who often work closely together, Ken Lawrence of Mississippi and Dan Stern of Illinois. In 1985 Ken Lawrence and Dan Stern provided information on NAP to Charles Tisdale, publisher of the Jackson Advocate newspaper in Mississippi. Tisdale ran a series of articles critical of Newman and NAP in the Advocate, which for many years has served as a voice for Black residents in the area.
In response to the Advocate articles, NAP embarked on a smear campaign against its critics--a tactic it frequently employs. An article by William Pleasant in NAP's National Alliance newspaper attacked Tisdale, Lawrence, Stern and Berlet. A photograph of Tisdale (who is Black) is accompanied by a bold headline which reads: "Jackson Advocate publisher Charles Tisdale: The Advocate has come to play the role of a Black front for a national network that is a nesting place for agents."
The same article claims that Dennis King and Chip Berlet have shown "a willingness to relent on their earlier false and sectarian charges of LaRouche affiliation or cultism." (In fact, both Berlet and King still stand by their earlier charges.) Ken Lawrence and Dan Stern are described as "absorbed in another agenda, beyond sectarianism, bordering on straight out provocateurism." NAP organizers also began circulating charges that Ken Lawrence was a government agent.
When Tisdale refused to back down from his criticisms of NAP, and continued to detail the charges of other NAP critics, NAP chairwoman Emily Carter responded by filing a defamation lawsuit against Tisdale, the Jackson Advocate and Ken Lawrence. (A judge subsequently ordered Lawrence dropped from the lawsuit). After the lawsuit was filed, when well-known organizer Flo Kennedy accepted an invitation to speak at a banquet sponsored by the Jackson Advocate, a self-described NAP member disrupted a press conference with her by shouting "You're a very stupid woman." Other critics of NAP are frequently ridiculed or attacked in an unprincipled manner.
Penetration and Disruption of Rival Groups
Critics of the Newmanites claim one of the tactics used by the group is to penetrate a progressive organization and seek to take it over or recruit away its membership. One of the themes in the Jackson Advocate series on NAP was the frequency with which NAP engaged in what critics considered disruptive tactics. Lily Mae Irwin, a well-known welfare rights activist told the Advocate how, in 1985, NAP tried to merge with the group she was leading, the Mississippi Welfare Rights Organization. After she refused the merger idea, she soon discovered NAP was scheduling their meetings with her key organizers opposite the regular monthly Welfare Rights Organization meetings. "Yes Siree," said Irwin, "they were trying to hold meetings at the same time we were; they were trying to mess us up."
Eddie Sandifer, a well-known Mississippi Gay rights activist, told the Advocate he resented the claim by NAP that it is the party of gays, lesbians, Blacks and dispossessed people in general. In particular, Sandifer was angry that NAP contacted several members of the Mississippi Gay Alliance and invited them to NAP meetings, but did not contact him, the group's leader." I think their purpose is to divide and conquer," said Sandifer." I'm very suspicious of them....I'm worried about what they are doing in Mississippi."
A long-time gay activist in California voiced similar concerns to the author after NAP sponsored a gay rights conference in that state. He feared the NAP wanted to duplicate the work of existing gay organizations as a way to build credibility and recruit new members for the NAP.
A woman activist in New York told the author of a call she received from a friend in England complaining of disruptive activities by a NAP organizer who attended functions of a women's peace group. Disruption has been a hallmark of NAP organizing for years, and reports of this nature have been consistently surfaced over the years from a wide variety of sources.
One early example of a Newmanite attempt to penetrate and manipulate a progressive organization involved the now-defunct People's Party, a multi-racial progressive electoral party which once ran Dr. Benjamin Spock for President. In early 1978, according to a former People's Party organizer, the People's Party "expelled the Newmanites when it was uncovered that they were operating within the party as a secret faction with an undisclosed agenda as to their intentions and plans."
The Newmanites had told members of the People's Party that Newman's International Workers Party had been disbanded, but the People's Party stumbled across a secret Newmanite newsletter marked "confidential internal bulletin" and bearing the name Party Building. According to Party Building, the Newmanites were recruiting inside the People's Party and other progressive groups to build a secret "pre-party formation." The confidential Newmanite newsletter explained it was being published to function as intelligence and communications networks, reporting on the social movement of various strata in particular areas.
Even though the IWP was supposed to have dissolved, plans were sketched out in Party Building for its "Fourth Party Plenary" held in Gary, Indiana in early 1977. The meeting brought together representatives from various Newmanite front groups organized under the public banner of the "Council of Independent Organizers."
Depth of Black Leadership
The New Alliance Party does engage in activities which support Black candidates, as the following excerpt from a letter by NAP supporters points out:
"In 1984, after campaigning for Reverend Jesse Jackson and witnessing his public rejection at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, NAP moved ahead with its independent Presidential campaign for the Afro-American candidate Dennis L. Serrette in a record-breaking 33 states where the party had managed to secure access to the ballot."
What the letter fails to mention is that Serrette left the New Alliance Party after unsuccessfully struggling for a meaningful leadership role for Black NAP officials who he felt had organizational titles but no real influence or control. At first, Serrette, as a point of personal and political principle, refused to openly criticize NAP, but when it became obvious NAP leaders were characterizing his reasons for leaving as primarily personal, and implying that Serrette continued to support NAP, Serrette went public with his charges in Mississippi's Jackson Advocate newspaper.
"I left the party because it continued to claim it was Black-led--I knew better," Serrette is quoted as saying in the Jackson Advocate." I mean no harm to these powerful Black women, Emily Carter, Lenora Fulani and Barbara Taylor, when I say that....I knew from being there that they were not leading Fred Newman--he was leading them--that's why I left....I don't feel they can use `Black-led' continuously without falling on their faces-falsehoods just won't hold up under close scrutiny."
According to Serrette, NAP had no real commitment to Black-led independent politics." I had to think about my reputation then--of people who continue to believe in me." After raising his criticisms internally, Serrette said he was cut off from the flow of information within the party." It got so I didn't know when they were holding meetings or anything," said Serrette.
In the course of the lawsuit by Emily Carter against the Jackson Advocate, Dennis Serrette was called by Carter's attorney to answer questions in a deposition. Serrette thoroughly denounced Newman and his followers as running a racist, sexist "therapy cult" that put people of color in public leadership positions merely as window dressing. Regarding the New Alliance Party, Serrette said:
"...I don't believe that it's organic...in terms of it being a working-class movement...Black, white and Latino. I think it's an elitist organization. It certainly serves the purposes of its leader....it was a lie, it was clearly a tactical ...a racist scheme of using Black and Latino and Asian people to do the bidding of one man, namely Fred Newman, that's my opinion, and to use other whites as well, you know through the therapy practices."
"No one challenges Fred Newman. I have seen people maybe raise a few polite questions in...planning sessions...but Fred Newman's word is the word. There is no such thing as opposition within that organization, or principled opposition, that in my opinion could demonstrate a different will or challenge to power, a different political position of a major order, unless he agreed with it in some way."
Serrette said he came to believe the promise that the organization would eventually be turned over to Black people was a lie, and he challenged Newman on the point:
"And I stated to him, "turned over" means, you know, resources, it means making policy, it means running personnel...that's Black control to me. I don't understand it as just having a Black face in a high place. That's nothing more than racism and nothing more than window dressing."
"It's no different from the system we seem to fight in this case. So I raised those questions to Fred and we had ... a very heated meeting. It was a meeting in which many of the Black leadership was there."
"It was very intense. We had Lenora [Fulani] making criticisms...Emily [Carter] making criticisms, there was a lot of folks making criticisms of some of the racism that they heretofore hadn't mentioned to Fred, but had told me and told other Blacks in a whisper type kind of way, the times that we were together...and they came forward."
Shortly after that meeting, according to Serrette, his stature and treatment by other NAP leaders changed dramatically. Serrette said he was not opposed to therapy on principle since he believed many people are helped by other forms of therapy. But therapy played a different role inside NAP according to Serrette:
"...therapy was a way of getting people to not only operate in an organizational way, but also a way of controlling every aspect of their lives...you certainly couldn't straighten anybody out. But it was certainly effective in terms of controlling a lot of people to do the kinds of things that were asked of them...they would do anything, just about, that he would ask them to do."
"I wouldn't even be surprised if they'd turn from a so-called left organization to a rightwing organization with a blink of an eye. I think that the ideological question that is supposedly the thrust of who they call themselves, International Workers' Party, there's nothing more than a front itself."
"I certainly believe that [of] the New Alliance Party, and when I say "front," I just mean it's the cover to cover, possibly the ego of Fred Newman and the control of so many individuals in terms of power."
Serrette also said the therapy was not voluntary and that one Newman associate made this clear:
"She said that it was an order that if you wanted to be part of this organization, you will have to take therapy because it is the backbone of our tendency...she says that comes as an order...from the governing body."
Next: Support for Minister Farrakhan-->
The New Alliance Party: Parasites in Drag
Part One
By Marina Ortiz
(The NY Planet, March 31, 1993)
via http://www.publiceye.org/newman/critics/NY-Planet-1993.html
or http://tinyurl.com/yobt3l
...As for those who did receive salaries, the disparaging figures tell a tale of commissions and misguided priorities. “Star” fundraisers Jeffrey Aaron, Linda Curtis, Joyce Dattner, Kathy Fiess, Sandy Friedman, Nancy Hanks, Julie Kinnett and Joe Spirito, for example, averaged $250-300 per week – plus expenses – while African Americans such as Emily Carter (NAP’s former chair), Vera Hill (a former welfare rights activist and Alliance columnist), and Robert Clay of Harlem made only $125 per week – with no reimbursements. Many of these staff members and other “volunteers” were also listed as regular contributors to the campaign. Moreover, dozens of New York City-based supporters were listed in expenditure reports as having been reimbursed thousands of dollars for out-of-pocket purchases of office supplies, Xeroxing and other such items, despite the fact that there were open accounts with companies such as Staples and Kinko’s.
Hit a nerve, did we? Please say more! Your point being that....???
The New Alliance Party: Parasites in Drag
Part One
By Marina Ortiz
(The NY Planet, March 31, 1993)
Why critique a party, ask progressives, whose chair made history in 1988 as the first woman and the first African American to appear on the presidential ballot in all 50 states; a party credited by New York Newsday columnist Gail Collins with “exposing the slimy underside of our local politics,” and which bills itself as fiercely independent, women-of-color led, multi-racial, pro-gay, and pro-socialist, while maintaining an ostensibly progressive outlook toward women’s and minority empowerment, electoral reform, labor and the economy, censorship, the environment, and, yes, even animal rights? Or, why bother, groan “in-the-know” pundits and politicos, when the NAP has already been exposed as an irrelevant cult whose purported objective of smashing America’s two-party system has been thoroughly invalidated by its founder’s self-centered ideology, groundless aggressions against progressives, and bizarre attraction to right-wing figures such as Lyndon LaRouche and H. Ross Perot? Because, to quote journalist Bruce Shapiro, “[i]n twenty years on the political map, the NAP has used contributions and the labor of volunteers not to redistribute political power but to bankroll its own intertwined enterprises. It is, in fact, more parasitical than political; diverting the energy and funds of often well-intentioned supporters and poisoning the efforts of those it can’t deceive.”
Dr. Lenora Fulani: NAP’s $4.3MM Woman Who Collapsed at the Polls
Since its official founding in 1979, the party’s greatest claim to fame lies in the monsterish transformation of 43-year-old Lenora Fulani, NAP’s chair and its 1988 and 1992 presidential candidate (described by her mentor, Dr. Fred Newman, as his “greatest creation”), from an otherwise obscure Black nationalist (cum developmental psychologist) into “the preeminent leader of independent politics.”
Fulani has indeed “soared” since her days as a rag-tag candidate for Lt. Governor (1982), Mayor (1985) and Governor (1986). The no-longer Afroed and dashikied Fulani now graces the covers of dozens of Black publications and the pomp has been further circumstanced by a steady diet of student-sponsored speaking engagements, a nationally syndicated weekly cable program, and occasional talk show appearances. NAP propaganda aside, what was supposed to be a party to empower the poor and disenfranchised has instead fulfilled its true mandate of providing a haven (and a pension) for a handful of Upper West Side cultists, with Fulani as their mantelpiece.
In 1988, Fulani received approximately 211,742 votes (only .003% of the turnout), while her “Committee for Fair Elections” raised over $2.5 million dollars ($938,798 of which was federally matched), and collected more than 1.5 million petition signatures. The campaign also pulled no punches in demanding media coverage and ballot access reforms, but these were only paper fights which were ultimately rejected, as were dozens of minority and community activists briefly inspired by the NAP mirage (the campaign’s smoke-screen support of local chapters was abandoned soon after 1988, while new-found pigeons flocked to New York to serve in the cult’s one-year “training program”).
In 1992, Fulani appeared on the ballot in only 39 states and the District of Columbia (rather than acknowledge their dwindling base, the party maintained that completing the ballot-access endeavor was now a “moot point”). Despite this setback, campaign revenues increased by almost two-fold. The 1992 operation raised over $4.3 million dollars, almost half of which was federally funded. This fiscal growth was not due to any increased grassroots support (indeed, there was much less appeal after 1988 – most activists had by then been warned away while pristine supporters eventually fled in droves), but rather the conning of hundreds of contributors who were sold a “pro-democracy” dream by sophisticated, quota-driven fundraisers.
And what did the public get for its money? – a turnout which averaged less than .001% of the total at an estimated cost of $43.50 per vote (more than triple 1988’s $11.80 per vote). According to the NAP’s newspaper, The National Alliance, Fulani received a grand total of 80,411 votes. This figure was later contradicted by The New York Times’ estimate of 73,707 (no matter – both figures show Fulani received less than half the votes she did in 1988). NAP’s spokeswoman, Madelyn Chapman, now maintains that the turnout was “closer to 100,000,” a claim for which she provided no evidence, and insists that Fulani’s plunge in the polls was due to Perot’s campaign (for more on NAP and Perot, see “Old Dogs Turn New Tricks,” Planet, Vol. 1, No.2).
But, did the Texas billionaire, in fact, influence the turnout of other independents? According to figures provided by the Committee to Study the American Electorate, the Libertarian Party’s candidate, Andre Marrou, earned 291,612 votes – 40,000 more than his party received in 1988 (Marrou, by the way, ran in all 50 states with less than half the funds as Fulani). Moreover, although he appeared on the ballot in only nine states, independent Ron Daniels garnered 27,575 votes on a budget of less than $100,000 (had he run in 39 states, estimates show, Daniels would have beaten Fulani by more than 40,000 votes). James MacWarren, the Socialist Workers Party candidate, meanwhile, defeated the NAPer in her own native New York (MacWarren’s overall total was 21,729).
NAP’s “Inside/Outside” Tactic: “Two Roads” Being More Profitable
Than One
In line with the NAP’s pesky “inside-outside” approach, Fulani ran as a Democrat until she was forced to drop out in order to maintain her matching funds status (the Federal Election Commission disqualifies candidates who fail to win at least 10% of the votes in two consecutive primaries). The campaign had by then raised almost $2 million dollars, approximately $142,162 of which was spent on the February 18, 1992 New Hampshire primary. Among the FEC expenditures listed for that period were first-class airfare and luxury accommodations for NAP honchos, the hiring of the Manchester Police Department as security for events attended by the likes of Guardian Angels leader, Lisa Sliwa, and thousands of dollars in advertisements published in a conservative Manchester newspaper).
Although a good time was had by most (of the upper echelon, that is, while the “grunts,” most likely, did all the work and slept on floors), in the end, Fulani netted less than 500 votes (about $354 dollars a vote), with little influence on the major candidates (except, perhaps, Governor Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who dropped out of the race soon after acquiescing to Fulani’s demand to speak at a debate). One of the more “positive” outcomes of the New Hampshire primary, however, was the chance union formed between Fulani and Larry Agran, a Californian insurgent who had also been locked out of the process and was quickly adopted as the NAP’s pet Democrat (Agran was later provided free petitioning services and squired around by the NAP until he eventually dropped out after the April 7 New York State primary).
The NAP then got around to the “outside” part of the plan by attempting to knock Democrats Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown off of the New York State primary ballot by claiming insufficient petition signatures and other irregularities (Fulani sheepishly cried “wolf” when a judge later dismissed the suit because the NAP had made its own “technical error” in not serving procedural papers to Tsongas and Brown).
“Slick Willie,” Fulani & the DNC: Dogging the Democrats
Fulani’s “impact” on the Democratic contenders was more felt last March when then primary candidate Bill Clinton attempted to give a health care speech at Harlem Hospital and was instead shouted-down by Fulani, who called him “an insult to the Black community.” Despite the overwhelmingly negative response from the African American audience, Fulani proceeded to jump up on a seat and demand that Clinton allow Agran into the primary debates. “This is not about democracy,” Clinton retorted, “this is about whether I will be an instrument of your will” (Fulani went on to brag how she had “chased him out of Harlem”).
NAP’s newspaper then charged Clinton with the sexual exploitation and intimidation of an alleged former lover, Sally Perdue. The Alliance next arranged an equally manipulative, all-expense-paid media tour for the Arkansas Republican, replete with coverage in such prestigious publications as The National Enquirer (a bizarre and untimely double standard, considering the cult’s strategic placement of posters with nude women for Newman’s play, “Dead as a Jew,” along Times Square’s red light district that summer).
The Alliance then criticized the Democratic National Committee’s selection of minority contractors for its convention by charging that a Chilean businessman was a poor choice as he was not “representative of the majority of American Latinos” (i.e., Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Mexican-Americans), nor had he invested in those communities. Yet another hollow charge, as such accusations of racism and rigged bidding are also often made about the NAP – a party whose expenditures are generally contracted out to subsidiaries owned and/or controlled by whites. The NAP then went back “inside” to exploit the very system it claims to despise by running a slate of Democratic primary candidates.
The Local Challenge
The NAP pounced when petition requirements were reduced in New York last year and ran over a dozen candidates in assembly, congressional, and councilmanic primaries – among them Newman (who was then either kicked off the general election ballot or wisely decided against running after his dismal primary turnout: less than 5%), and artist Judith (“Red Sex”) Penzer (who spent most of the campaign season painting a mural in Philadelphia for which she received $75,000). Not surprisingly, most of the lesser-known NAPers fared better than their perennial counterparts (although, aside from Brooklyn Assemblyman Roger Green, all NAP votes combined did not surpass the total of any one Democrat). General election results for the remaining NAP candidates were as follows:
District
Candidate
Percentage
Total
68th A.D.
Ada Vasquez
5%
1,086
8th C.D.
Arthur Block, Esq.
1
1,119
70th A.D.
Barbara Taylor
0
59
44th A.D.
Christine LaCerva
1
216
64th A.D.
Daniel Friedman
2
593
72nd A.D.
Doris Kelly, R.N.
1
108
12th C.D.
Dr. Rafael Mendez
0
0
15th C.D.
Dr. Jessie Fields
1
1,427
62nd A.D.
George Spears
1
264
67th A.D.
Harry Kresky, Esq.
1
268
69th A.D.
Judith Jorrisch
1
434
57th A.D.
Lorraine Stevens
5
511
66th A.D.
Mary Fridley
1
391
20th C.D.
Yvonne Murray
2
842
Totals
1.6%
7,318
Many of these campaigns were lodged against gay, minority and insurgent incumbents whom the NAP charged as “not progressive enough” while conveniently ignoring other races such as those in the Bronx where former Congressman-turned-federal-inmate, Mario Biaggi, was fresh out of jail and vying for power, and where Pedro Espada, a former NAP candidate turned Democrat ran successfully for State Senator. (In 1989, Espada received 42% of the vote as the NAP’s candidate against incumbent City Councilman, Rafael Castaneira Colon. The ductile dissident was then thrown off the ballot on residency grounds when he ran as a Democrat in 1991, but eventually cut a deal with Bronx District leader George Friedman for the machine’s endorsement.).
The NAP’s litmus test was instead applied to progressive Democrats such as Roger Green, who was kicked off the ballot by Lorraine Stevens, a 51-year-old social worker and veteran NAP candidate (Stevens’ lawyers also sought to overturn legislation introduced to allow Perot to retain control over – and prevent NAPers from appearing on – his “No Party” ballot line). Green then ran (and won) on a “Children First” line, while NAP crowed that they had made him “go independent,” and about the fact that no candidate appeared on the Democratic ballot in the 57th A.D.
The 8th C.D.: Arthur Block’s Dead Zone
After insisting that Congressman Ted Weiss’ sudden fatal heart attack days before the primary last September “should not be used as a political football by anyone,” NAP’s attorney and 8th congressional district candidate, Arthur Block, did just that by pursuing legal action against New York State Democratic Party Chairman, John Marino, who was charged with conspiracy for keeping the decedent’s name on the ballot. After questioning insightful figures such as Weiss’ barber, the Alliance then hinted that Marino and others may have knowingly contributed to Weiss’ death by allowing him to run while in poor health as “everyone knew” that the incumbent would not live long enough to serve.
Although Block, a “Social Therapy” patient of Newman’s since the late 70s (more on that later), never indicated whether he was as enlightened when he decided to run, he did hold several grand-standing press conferences in front of Fulani’s Upper West Side headquarters at 72nd Street and Broadway wherein he charged Marino with having “participated in committing a fraud on the voters of the 8th C.D. [and] violat[ing] their voting rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Block was eventually beaten in the primary by the dead man (88% to 12%), while the seat itself was turned over to former West Side Assemblyman Jerold Nadler (Block then ran on the NAP line in the general election, where he received all of 1%).
Rafael Mendez: The Puerto Rican Culebra
The NAP also chose to run Dr. Rafael Mendez, an assistant professor of psychology at Bronx Community College, in the hotly contested race for the 12th congressional district (instead of in the South Bronx where he had an office – since closed – and where the machine was running at full force). After filing his petitions, Mendez attended a Brooklyn candidates’ forum and demanded an endorsement of Fulani as a condition for his withdrawal. Despite the fact that the insurgents (including winner Nydia Velazquez), were all Latino, NAP’s token then maintained that only he could save the community from the clutches of the racist Democratic Party. And so, Mendez was forced to run for control of a district where he was neither known nor welcomed (and where, according to Newsday, he received zero votes).
Mendez – who was also criticized during the presidential primary for leading a group of homeless men, often fronted at various marches and demonstrations for $5 and $10 a shot, into a volatile confrontation at a Jerry Brown rally in Union Square, as well as for his attempted cooptation of a student demonstration held outside a presidential debate at Lehman College – is described by Richard Perez of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights as a “carpetbagger” having “no interest in involving himself in the day-to-day struggles such as the ongoing fight against Bronx Lebanon Hospital’s proposed medical waste treatment center and the Parkchester tenants’ strike. His main activity,” Perez adds, “is to pop in and out of press events, demand endorsements and contributions, and, in effect, bleed our community” (Mendez has since slithered back up to the Bronx where he intends to run for City Council against fellow reptilian Castaneira Colon, while Upper West Side NAPers have launched campaigns for local school board seats).
The Case of Baltimore’s Morning Sunday
NAP’s commitment to grassroots minority empowerment was also challenged by African-American activist Morning Sunday, NAP’s former Maryland chair who, after breaking away from the party last spring, was legally charged with theft and sabotage for withholding 12,000 petition signatures – an action which Sunday maintains was dictated by her “moral conscience [against] the exploitation of the Black Baltimore community by a flim-flam campaign motivated strictly by greed and engaging in the political process for the sole purpose of making money” (see The Shadow No. 26, September 1992).
Sunday and her ally, Annie Chambers, were eventually cleared of all charges when their case was appealed before Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Martin Welch last November. During the six-day jury trial, NAP attorney Arthur Block admitted that, in the process of preparing a civil suit to “recover damages,” he had, indeed, contacted Sunday’s in-laws and inquired into her property (“irreprehensible behavior,” according to Welch, who also condemned Block’s “New York attitude”). The question of actual damages, meanwhile, remains a murky one as Sunday maintains that the lower-strata Baltimore residents who did most of the legwork in gathering signatures were only paid $15 per day (in addition, a request for verification of the relation to this case of receipts filed by attorneys on behalf of NAP’s Philadelphia-based Mid-Atlantic regional staff was denied).
For all of her efforts, Fulani received a total of 2,682 votes in Maryland. And, while NAPer Sherry Wormser did replace Sunday as the new state chair when she filed the official Statement of Intent to Form a Political Party, Sunday’s court victory nonetheless set a precedent for other state representatives whom the NAP may seek to threaten (Sunday was found to have borne equal liability and, therefore, equal entitlement to the petitions). Recognition may vary from state to state, however and so, volunteers beware: the year or so you dedicate to building this party may mean nothing in the eyes of the law (let alone the NAP).
The New Alliance Party
Parasites in Drag (Part Two)
By Marina Ortiz
(The NY Planet, April 21, 1993)
(The following is the second part of an exclusive Planet exposé on the New Alliance Party. In the last issue, the author reported on the activities of the party and its chair and 1992 presidential candidate, Dr. Lenora Fulani (including sectarian attempts to wreck havoc on local and national Democratic Party candidates, and a comparison of Fulani’s disastrous electoral average – less than 1% – with the amount of campaign money raised – $4.3 million). The author concludes with a report on the party “s alleged ties to minority activists, and details on Dr. Fred Newman – the mastermind behind the NAP and its internal cult apparatus).
The Tailing Factor
One of the more humorous highlights of the New Alliance Party “s 1992 campaign was an excerpt published in the party “s National Alliance newspaper from Dr. Lenora Fulani’s book, “The Making of a Fringe Candidate 1992,” which certainly lived up to its titillating title with an overly personalized and prurient description of Fulani’s premeditated encounters with the Rev. Jesse Jackson (whom the cult has stalked since the early 80s). Equally absurd was the group’s bizarre tailing of would-be Black power-broker, the Rev. Al Sharpton.
1992 also saw a tear in the delicate coalitional fabric between the NAP and Sharpton (an alleged sports-and-music-industry grafter turned FBI informant also known for his civil rights activism in the Michael Griffith, Tawana Brawley and Yusef Hawkins cases). According to an internal source, the rift occurred when Fulani’s “mentor,” Dr. Fred Newman, learned that “the hustler he “d been subsidizing for more than a year [with, among other things, weekly marches into Bensonhurst] had chosen to run in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate without consulting him.”
Soon after, Sharpton was reportedly threatened with eviction from Newman’s 57 Street offices. Newman eventually relented and even formed a committee called “White People for Sharpton,” although Sharpton had by then begun to distance himself from the NAP with media statements which likened the group to leeches (“They had attached themselves to me, but that ride is over,” Sharpton told the New York Post). Sharpton also blocked his name from being used on petitions gathered by NAPers, and refused to run on their independent line against incumbent Alfonse D “Amato, whom Sharpton had endorsed in 1986 in exchange for a $500,000 housing grant which D “Amato never delivered (NAP eventually ran Dr. Mohammad Mehdi, President of the Arab-American Relations Committee and secretary-general of the National Council on Islamic Affairs, who received over 50,000 votes – primarily from his own existent base).
More disturbing than the fact that Sharpton refused to discuss what really happened or even acknowledge the party “s disingenuous attitude towards minority empowerment (as was also the case with Sharpton’s new-found “advisor,” Michael Hardy, an Alliance attorney, who quietly jumped the sinking “Newmanite” dinghy in favor of Sharpton’s frigate), however, was his sudden pledge of allegiance to the Democrats.
Sharpton’s adoption by the NAP (and the dismissal of his role in FBI investigations as a “conscientious act”) had, by then, already cost him the support of some of the more radical sectors of the supposedly “dead” Black movement, while others who stayed looked on in horror as the man who once personified civil disobedience (and had called African-American Democrats “cocktail-sipping Uncle Toms” (an ironic statement considering Sharpton’s own lavish dinner meetings with Newman), was suddenly attending gala ceremonies and rubbing elbows with the likes of New York City Mayor David Dinkins and filmmaker Spike Lee (Sharpton’s explanation was that he had “matured” as a result of his near-death experience during a 1991 stabbing in Bensonhurst).
Having won the hearts of African-American clergymen and politicos such as Congressmen Floyd Rake and Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson and former Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch (who helped Sharpton bypass primary ballot requirements and even hired him for a stint during the Clinton campaign), Sharpton next received endorsements from the New York Amsterdam News and El Diario (The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and other media now adore the new Sharpton, while prominent African- American theoreticians such as Princeton Professor Cornet West tout him as a “work in progress”).
Sharpton, meanwhile, persisted in his two-tone way – delivering the usual Black nationalist, anti-establishment rhetoric whenever addressing African-Americans, while taking a much more diplomatic approach in mixed company (as was the case during the primary when he chastised opponents Attorney General Robert Abrams, Comptroller Liz Holtzman, and former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, for focusing on “credibility and character” instead of more important issues). “We don’t want to send someone to Washington who “s going to break into closets to look for dirty linen,” he groaned. Of course, Sharpton had reason to distance himself from the muck because it would have raised his own excrement, including charges made by his cronies that Abrams had once masturbated before Tawana Brawley “s photo and that his 1990 indictment of Sharpton on 67 counts of tax evasion was merely an act of revenge for Sharpton’s lack of cooperation in the Brawley case, which Abrams had overseen.
Sharpton then proceeded to soft-peddle his connection to the NAP. “[O]verplay,” he told New York Newsday, “[t]here is no formal relationship between us. I don’t have anything to do with the party,” a claim challenged by reporter George Jordan, who revealed that Sharpton had, in fact, been paid $1,000 by Fulani’s 1988 campaign and had been reimbursed $725 (through his promotions business, Raw Talent), for travel expenses incurred during the 1992 New Hampshire primary (“For Alliance, the System Works –Newsday, April 6, 1992).
Journalist Bruce Shapiro then revealed that Sharpton still held a $12,000 dollar, one-year “consultant contract” with the group’s All Stars Talent Show Network” (“Dr. Fulani’s Snake-Oil Show,” The Nation, May 4, 1992). Fulani, meanwhile, was quoted by Shapiro bragging “We knew the ‘Rev.’ before the media found him” (a reflection, perhaps, on the many times that she and Sharpton stood alone in street corner demonstrations and marches during the early-to mid-80s – ignored by the media because they had not yet acquired enough capital to afford charter buses or to hire out (and disorganize) homeless men to inflate their “rank-n-file” support).
But, is Sharpton, in fact, still slopping from both troughs? His campaign, for example, reportedly spent less than $100,000 – a figure that would seem to prohibit items such as the extravagant, bright-green, NAP-like, bumper stickers and custom-made sweatshirts which made the rounds (let alone campaign offices in Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo). NAP’s Madelyn Chapman will only acknowledge that Sharpton is still being booked for paid speaking engagements and that the car he tools around in is, indeed, registered to an unnamed Newmanite.
As long as Sharpton continues to remain silent about these (and other matters such as the Newmanites’ continued profiting from sales of a “Yusef Hawkins” videotape, his own dispute over Newman’s 1991 production of “Malcolm, Yusef and Billie,” and the fate of Yusef’s father, Moses Stewart – a former employee of the cult who has since defected), whilst tap-dancing between Democratic haunts and NAP meetings and issuing misleading statements of solidarity such as was published in the Amsterdam News, Sharpton’s attempt to parlay his 16% primary turnout into an effective bartering whip (enough of a “base,” he now believes, with which to unseat U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1994), will fall flat on its opportunistic countenance.
The International Perspective
During its coverage of the NAP’s nominating convention last summer, the Alliance featured a picture of Luis Fernando Jaramillo and quoted a statement of support from Jaime Perea, two factional representatives of the Colombian M-19 Democratic Alliance (this was, presumably, to demonstrate the group’s solidarity with the struggles of “third-world” people). But, the hollow flaunting was exposed as such, when El Diario reported that NAP’s Rafael Mendez had failed to address, or even attend, an election forum held in the Colombian section of Elmhurst, Queens (an event wherein Jaramillo himself expressed concern with the candidates’ “lack of concrete strategies to include Colombians in the electoral process”).
No surprise then, that Jaramillo and Perea never again adorned the pages of the Alliance (the cult’s “affiliation” with the M-19 most likely ended just as suddenly as did their connection to Spanish, Portuguese and Zimbabwe forces during the mid-70s, New York City-based welfare recipients and black nationalists during the mid-80s, progressive Chileans and the American Indian Movement in 1988, Mexican and Central American radicals in 1991, and their ultimate abandonment of African progressives such as the Congolese Workers and Peasants Party of Zaire.
NAP and the Guardian Angels
Even more inconsistent has been the group’s oscillating outlook on the Guardian Angels, which the NAP had previously denounced as “fascist thugs” for its members’ actions in the Tompkins Square Park/homeless polemic and their hindrance of the NAP’s subway newspaper sales, but which they now consider a “working-class youth organization.” Why the turn around? Probably because they were one of the few groups willing to acknowledge Fulani during the New Hampshire primary (Angel Lisa Sliwa has since addressed a Harlem NAP meeting).
NAP’s Bill of Anti-Rights
During the NAP’s federally mandated presidential nominating convention last August, the party’s only nominee was, once again, Fulani. In addition to his hand-picked protégé, most local NAP candidates are likewise selected and/or approved by Newman. While there are some genuine grassroots types among them, most are simply die-hard Newmanites assigned to run. “Outsiders,” on the other hand, are often ignored, as was the case with Michael Stephen Levinson, a Buffalo-based independent denied a request to challenge Fulani for NAP’s presidential nomination in 1988. Levinson was instead dismissed as, of all things, a “kook” and his proposal was never discussed in any public NAP meetings, while subsequent protest letters submitted by him to the Alliance were rejected for publication.
And, while the party continues to promote freedom of speech (fundraisers know this issue sells), Newman’s internal attitude tells a different story. For example, when former media columnist Mary Fridley’s saucy declarations were published in the Alliance’s March 19, 1992 issue, Newman, sources say, did not at all appreciate the tone. Newman then reportedly “pulled the rest of the run from distribution [and] the paper was reprinted and redistributed without the column.” The following issue contained a “corrected” version of the same article with no public explanation (Fridley, sadly, later addressed a campaign fundraiser in Philadelphia in which the theme was censorship).
Equally ludicrous has been the party’s schizophrenic treatise on women s empowerment. For example, Fulani now likens former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown’s struggles against sexism to her own confuted fights with former NAPers such as Dennis Serrette (the party’s 1984 presidential candidate). “1 decided when I was fairly young that I didn’t want to be the ‘Black bitch’ of the top man who didn’t have the guts to stand up to the sexism of other Black men, claims the obtuse puppet, while praising Fred “he’s-no-guru-he’s-my- brother” Newman as a “feminist revolutionary who happens to be a Jewish man,” and dismissing charges of sexual harassment made about Los Angeles City’ Councilman Nate Holden as “a racist double standard [of] fake feminists.”
What’s the Bottom Line? Why, Mo’ Money, Honey
In the 14 years since the NAP was founded, the party’s general election averages have lingered at less than five percent. Despite this dismal figure, Fulani still postulates about the building of a “women-of-color-led” coalition, whilst ignoring the attack on Morning Sunday and her failure to back two long-time supporters, Kwaku Duren and Elizabeth Gilchrist, in their 1992 independent congressional campaigns in California and Mississippi. Gone are the NAP’s Harlem, South Bronx, and Oakland offices, and any and all pretense that it’s anything more than a money-making scheme. And, as campaign workers now feverishly target members of Ross Perot’s United We Stand and other factional elements of the black and white middle class, the party’s true “success” is revealed.
So, where did the money go? While some of it went to wage pretentious legal battles for electoral reform (i.e., attempts to revoke the tax-exempt status of the League of Women Voters and other such groups), quite a bit also went to challenging progressives. Thousands of dollars were raised in California – most of it spent on efforts to secure the independent Peace & Freedom Party nomination for Fulani through an attempted takeover of the party’s central committee (and lots of propaganda describing P&F affiliates as “cops”). Despite this endeavor, Fulani never appeared on the ballot in that state – she lost the nomination to independent Ron Daniels and never bothered to run as a NAP candidate (moreover, the Peace & Freedom Party received no report on monies raised by NAPers under its banner).
In addition, Shapiro wrote, “at least 35% of the campaign expenditures during 1991 went to NAP-related businesses.’’ According lit the FEC, diverting campaign funds to businesses run by member of a political party is perfectly legal “so long as the e expenditures are for actual services that arc reasonable and customary.” But, were they? Fred Newman Productions, Inc., New Alliance Productions, Inc., Ilene Advertising, Castillo Communications, and other NAP subsidiaries, for example, billed the campaign almost one million dollars for advertising, public relations and consultation services. However, aside from, perhaps, one or two salaried employees (who averaged $300 a week), much of the actual labor provided by these businesses was borne by unpaid “volunteers.”
Descriptions of services rendered are equally dubious. Automated Business Services, for example, was paid thousands of dollars for “payroll and accounting services,” while the owner himself was then listed under a “clerical services,” heading as were dozens of other supporters – including the late Steve Rose (by then an AIDS-stricken invalid). Quite a few, however, including Kellie Gasink, William Harris and William Pleasant (who were listed as having been paid $450 each – a figure which shelters companies from payroll taxes), maintain that they never received any money from the campaign,
As for those who did receive salaries, the disparaging figures tell a tale of commissions and misguided priorities. “Star” fundraisers Jeffrey Aaron, Linda Curtis, Joyce Dattner, Kathy Fiess, Sandy Friedman, Nancy Hanks, Julie Kinnett and Joe Spirito, for example, averaged $250-300 per week – plus expenses – while African Americans such as Emily Carter (NAP’s former chair), Vera Hill (a former welfare rights activist and Alliance columnist), and Robert Clay of Harlem made only $125 per week – with no reimbursements. Many of these staff members and other “volunteers” were also listed as regular contributors to the campaign. Moreover, dozens of New York City-based supporters were listed in expenditure reports as having been reimbursed thousands of dollars for out-of-pocket purchases of office supplies, Xeroxing and other such items, despite the fact that there were open accounts with companies such as Staples and Kinko’s.
And, while hundreds of thousands of dollars spent (on office renovations and rental fees, complex alarm systems, mobile phones and calling cards, Federal Express mailings, parking garage fees and taxi-cab rides, first-class accommodations and Deer Park water) may be “standard fate” for most Democrats and Republicans, when it comes to a party which garnered less than 75,000 votes and which has produced nothing in the way of broad-based empowerment, it becomes a disgrace. But then again, “[t]he more you give, the more you grow,” claims Fulani. “Take it out of your rent. It feels very, very good.”
What’s Behind the New Alliance Party?
The NAP is the political brainchild of Dr. Fred Newman, who oversees every strategic move and public statement which the party makes and who, through a combination of demagogic charisma and totalitarian coercion, maintains control over a sophisticated, multi-million dollar network of front groups, among them the NAP, the Community Literacy Research Project, Inc., the East Side Center for Social Therapy, the All Stars Talent Show Network, the Castillo Cultural Center, the Barbara Taylor School, and Ross & Green, Inc. (formerly the Rainbow Lobby).
The NAP and its sister entities are ephemeral “mass tactics” developed by Newman specifically to maximize his own financial, ideological and political leverage. The pseudo Marxist-Leninist, in fact, has absolutely no commitment to democracy, nor any concrete, tong-term agenda aside from that of his internal cult apparatus, the International Workers Party, whose totalitarian character belies its purported revolutionary goal of self- determination and minority empowerment.
In addition to exploiting (and crushing) aspirations for progressive social change, Newman’s front groups (dozens upon dozens of which have fallen by the wayside since the cult first surfaced in 1968), have also served to function in competition with, and at the expense of, existent independent parties such as the Peace and Freedom Party, the Harold Washington Party, the Vermont Liberty Union, the Philadelphia Consumers Party, the Wisconsin Labor and Farm Party, and progressive groups such as the Summerhill Society, New Jewish Agenda, the Rainbow Coalition, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Gay & Lesbian Taskforce, Local 1199 and the National Organization fur Women.
Social Therapy
Newman is also the founder of Social Therapy (also used, in various forms, since 1968). While often billed as a progressive alternative to traditional therapies, Social Therapy is, in fact, a sophisticated indoctrination methodology which impairs critical thinking skills and which uses repression, dependency and guilt-inducing techniques to control and lure patients into political activity and, ultimately, into blind allegiance to Newman. These same seductive/coercive techniques are also used at NAI’ rallies and many of its leaders, including Fulani, are trained Social Therapists.
Once indoctrinated, most IWIP cadre are immediately divested of their assets and assigned mandatory fundraising quotas and bi-weekly dues. Lower echelon members are often urged 10 moved into cramped apartments (“It’ll be good for your political development”), and ordered to work 12- to 16-hour days for no little or no pay. Inculcates are also told that their cult activity takes priority over all else (including familial relationships), are continually “counseled” on all personal and political matters by superiors and therapists (whom often consult with one another), and kept in check by the cult’s “need-to-know” hypothesis.
And, in line with the group’s “progressive” lifestyle, cadre are often ridiculed for engaging in monogamous relationships (a “bourgeois” impediment to the cult’s “collective” mindset), while sonic – whose history had put them at risk – are counseled against being tested for some – whose history had put them at risk -are counseled against being tested for AIDS by the cult’s physician, Dr. Susan Massad. Similar criticism has also been made of her “holistic” approach to this and other medical disorders, as the cull’s insistence that homosexuality is neither a biological precondition nor a lifestyle preference, but rather an overt political statement (a claim disputed by most gays, many of whom took offense at Fulani’s outlandish declaration during last year’s Gay Pride March that supporting her candidacy was itself “a sexual preference”).
Party Leadership: It’s Not Who You Know, But Who “Knows” You
And, as in “bourgeois, capitalist” society, success within Newman’s cult is always measured by the Boss’s personal predilections. While Fulani says that she measures how “close” she is to Newman by the amount of work he demands (i.e., the more orders you are willing to follow, the closer to his “inner circle” you’ll be), her rule has not been the case for other long-time adherents who linger in relatively low-scale fundraising and administrative positions (some of whom, despite years of devotion, also remain poor and uneducated – even by the group’s Barbara Taylor School standards). Still others have been reduced to cleaning Newmanite homes for a living or been allowed to indulge in abusive and self-destructive behavior and alcohol and drug abuse while Dr. “Addiction-is-a-Myth” Newman looks the other way).
In contrast, several women (all young, middle-class and white), have managed to bypass the cult’s “rank-n-file” to “middle-management” to “central committee” ladder altogether – elevated to positions of “leadership” solely by virtue of their sexual relationship to Newman (often associated with an act known as “wanting” – a bogus [phrase] first induced by the mid-life- crisis-haunted charlatan back in 1989). And, while most slave away for a dream that was long ago sold out (from the get-go, to be precise), Newman and his cohorts enjoy incomes supplemented by an inexhaustible cash supply and perks such as 1992 Lincoln Town cars (replete with tinted windows, mobile telephones, and a personal chauffeur-bodyguard-attendant), and cruises to Europe and the Caribbean).
Ms. Ortiz is a former member of Newman’s cult who hopes this article will encourage other individuals formerly or currently involved to join her in speaking out.
* International Workers Party (1974)
* New Alliance Party (1979)
* People’s Independent Democratic Club (1989)
* East Side Center for Social Therapy
* Crisis Normalization (1989)
* Summer Institute
* Newman & Braun
* Atlanta Center for Short-Term Psychotherapy
* Boston Center for Social Therapy
* Brooklyn Center for Social Therapy
* Fulani, Silverman & Young
* Philadelphia Center for Social Therapy
* West Coast Center for Social Therapy
* Castillo Cultural Center (1989)
* Castillo Communications (1989)
* Castillo International, Inc. (1989)
* Community Literacy Research Project (1981)
* All Stars Talent Show Network (1984)
* Barbara Taylor School (1985)
* Stop Abusive Behavior Syndrome (1986)
* C.H.E.A.T. (1991)
* International People’s Law Institution (1989)
* Ross & Green (1992)
* Americans United With the Congolese People (AUCP)
* New Alliance Productions (1984)
* All Stars Talent Show Network (1984)
* Fred Newman Productions, Inc. (1990)
* Screw Hollywood Productions, Inc. (1993)
* Automated Business Services (1985)
* Explanation by Description (Newman, 1966)
* Power and Authority: The Inside View of Class Struggle (Newman, 1974)
* A Manifesto on Method (H. Daren & F. Newman, August, 1974)
* Games the New Alliance Party Won’t Play (1981)
* National Alliance Newspaper (1984)
* Practice: The Magazine of Psychology & Political Economy
* History is the Cure: A Social Therapy Reader (Practice Press, 1988)
* The Honorable Louis Farrakhan: A Minister For Progress (Practice Press, 1987)
* Sharpton: The Man Behind the Sound Bite (Castillo International, 1991)
* Independent Black Leadership in America (Castillo International, 1991)
* The Myth of Psychology (Castillo International, 1992)
* The Making of a Fringe Candidate 1992 (Castillo International, 1993)
We Want a JOB. So we Can EAT. (1978 ABC documentary on the NYCUWC)
* A More Perfect Democracy (Practice Press, 1987)
* Fulani! (national weekly cable show) (1990)
* The Police Sell Drugs Too: Larry Davis (Global Village, 1990)
* Yusef’s Movement (Castillo International, 1991)
* Let’s Get Bizzee (FN Productions/National Black Theater, 1993)
Inside the New Alliance Party
(aka Rainbow Alliance aka Rainbow Lobby aka the Organization a/k/a)
by Dennis L. Serrette
I write after much thought and some distance from the New Alliance Party (NAP). When I broke ties with NAP after my 1984 presidential race, I felt I needed some time to evaluate the hodgepodge of contradictions, racism, sexism, and cultism that so revealed itself during the course of my campaign.
I knew when I joined NAP that it was not black-led, and I knew when I left it was not black-led. It took longer to understand that NAP was not even a progressive organization as it also pretends.
Be that as it may, I probably still would not take the time to write about the organization. However, as a long-time activist who made the mistake of joining NAP, and who served on the organization’s “Central Committee,” I believe I have a responsibility to reveal the intense psychological control and millions of dollars Fred Newman employs to get well-meaning individuals in our communities (they target the black community), to viciously attack black leaders, black institutions, and progressive organizations for purposes of building Newman’s power base.
What follows is a relatively brief narrative on Fred Newman’s operations, NAP being but one front.’ I have interchangeably used the names NAP, the organization, the International Workers Party (IWP), etc., for they are all run by, and consist of the same people. NAP is Newman’s public electoral tactic, so it has many “members” (mostly people who have been stopped on the street who paid a dollar for a paper, or some other come-on, who rarely actively participate, and often don’t even know they joined (who are not a part of “the organization/IWP,” i.e., Newman’s followers.
At the outset, I want to answer the frequently asked question: “Is Newman associated with LaRouche?” I simply do not know. I understand that Newman originally completely denied having joined with LaRouche, claiming, instead, that it was his followers who had, but that he was forced to retract the denial in the face of overwhelming evidence. The story told to all organization members who were not with Newman at the time was that Newman and his followers were with LaRouche when he was “a leftist.” ‘‘a split from SDS,’’ pre-Operation Mop-up. I have since learned that this was a lie, that they joined after LaRouche had made a decisive right shift, and participated in the campaign to destroy the Left. I did not see any direct evidence of a LaRouche connection while I was in NAP. But, I was never privy to what was going on at the top—Newman’s household. Newman often bragged about how much he learned from LaRouche, and, as noted below, the reported organizational operations of LaRouche’s group are frighteningly similar to those of Newman’s group.
Like LaRouche’s National Caucus of Labor Committees, Newman runs a very tightly controlled organization. Like LaRouche, Newman has created numerous organizations (most only paper) with divergent names; some to attract particular individuals, some solely to make money, many with names so similar to true left organizations that unknowing individuals are often fooled (e.g., Rainbow Alliance and Rainbow Lobby, which have no connection to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition; the Unemployed and Welfare Council, which attacked the National Welfare Rights Organization, etc.).
Newman controlled all the resources, personnel, and policies of the organizations. When I left in 1984, he was living with three “wives.” One was in charge of all the organization’s finances, which Newman boasted well-surpassed $1 million; another controlled all personnel/members; and the third was in charge of all “national operations.”
The organization has set up its own internal caste system. Rank and file members worked 14-plus hours a day, often out on street corners, raising money. Newman, on the other hand, spent most mornings reading in his large upper Westside apartment and jogging in Riverside Park. His workday began with his afternoon therapy sessions in his luxury Westside offices.
Newman and his chosen lieutenants often met and relaxed at his seaside mansion. The mansion was supported by a mandatory tax placed on members of the organization. Rank and file members were always taken along on trips to the mansion for the “honor” of cooking for and cleaning up after Newman and his chosen ones.
Newman’s/NAP’s political positions vary according to what he believes he can best capitalize on at the time. I personally witnessed this opportunism on a number of occasions. Quite notably, before it became obvious that Jesse Jackson’s campaign would move grassroots folks nationwide, Newman harshly attacked Jackson. When it seemed as though Newman could exploit Jackson’s movement, he used Jesse’s name endlessly, in literature and elsewhere, and created the “Rainbow Alliance” and “Rainbow Lobby.” Similarly, Newman strongly maintained that Louis Farrakhan was an insignificant right-winger. When it looked as though he could opportunize from Minister Farrakhan’s popularity in the black community, Newman’s line took a 180-degree turn.
When progressive newspapers and individuals fail to support Newman, they become legitimate targets for destruction, even those he previously acclaimed. In my particular case, when I was promoting NAP, both the public and internal presentation of me was that of the leading black progressive. When I raised issues of Newman~ s racism and exploitation of blacks, I was labeled a nationalist (i.e., not a leftist). When I spoke honestly about NAP to persons outside the organization, articles began to appear in the National Alliance that would have made J. Edgar Hoover proud. I even received calls from friends that NAP was calling up women friends of mine from years past to see if they could contribute “sexual” dirt to a paper about me. When they couldn’t find the dirt, Lenora Fulani authored the article under the auspices of the ‘‘Women’s Caucus, another paper committee. Theodore (Ted) Taylor, who NAP vociferously praised as a leading black trade unionist when he associated with NAP, was attacked as a rank opportunist when he joined with SEIU. Gerena Valentine was lauded as New York’s premier progressive elected official when he ran with a NAP affiliation, and harshly criticized when he broke with NAP.
Newman has brought a million-dollar-plus lawsuit against The Jackson Advocate, Jackson, Mississippi’s only black newspaper, and its black activist editor, Charles Tisdale. Why? When Newman saw the broad support Jesse Jackson received in the South, he decided to target some resources there. He assigned several New Yorkers to Mississippi. Tisdale, having knowledge about the Alliance, did not support NAP’s claim on his community. Knowing the time and resources required to publish a newspaper, and the time and resources required to defend a law suit, Newman had his lawyer slap a major law suit on Tisdale. It does not matter if NAP loses the case. NAP almost always loses. The suit serves its purpose of inflicting injury.
NAP had the audacity to ask me to testify against Tisdale. I told them that their request was outrageous. Next thing I knew, I too was in court, and receiving calls threatening to have the Sheriff come to my home at night to arrest me. (The Court dismissed their action against me.)
The Main Enemy
In short, Newman operates in total Opposition to the movement. Both “the Left” and “the movement” are considered enemies by Newman. Newman has labeled his suit against Tisdale a suit against the Left, as though attacks on progressive institutions are a good thing. In fact, a review of the National ~4Iliance will reveal far more venomous assaults on progressives than on reactionaries.
Newman uses left rhetoric well, and organizes with a left front. He appeals to what is good and progressive in people, and uses that to build his base. He will as quickly embrace as he will attack a movement, a progressive, an organization, a principle – based on how he can best opportunize from it. His [members], almost all of whom have absolutely no history in the movement, have few other ways to see the issues.
Most members join “the organization~~ via politics or therapy. Once an individual has been drawn close, s/he is met by two lieutenants and told that there is a secret underground organization, the International Working Party (IWP), allegedly a left party organization. Membership in the organization requires that you reveal all your resources, and that you turn over everything to the organization. (Even personal relationships are said to belong to the organization, so it is common for a member to report on his/her partner.) Mandatory bimonthly dues are assessed, and anything may be demanded at any time.
The IWP has been chaired by Newman since its inception. As far as I know, no one else has ever been considered as an alternative. The Central Committee members are all chosen by Newman. During the entire 2½ years I sat on the Central Committee, there was never a single policy debate by the CC once Newman made his position known.
There is an enormous amount of secret ritual surrounding the IWP which, like most rituals, entices the members. Unlike most left organizations where the party is public and the membership is underground, Newman has created the reverse, and has used it as one of many isolating factors that maintain the membership.
Social therapy, Newman’s creation, is considered the “backbone of the tendency.” Every member is required to attend at least one social therapy (i.e., psychotherapy) session weekly, led by Newman’s hand-picked, hand-trained therapists. (In most cases, Newman’s top therapists are also his top spokespersons.) Although the therapy is mandatory, members must still pay for the sessions.
What is Therapy
Therapy, NAP style, is a method for recruiting innocent, vulnerable people, exploiting their vulnerabilities, and controlling their behavior.
As noted earlier, all members were required to attend therapy at least once a week. Some attend twice a week or, at times, even daily. Particular ‘patients” were targeted in sessions. The entire group then generally converged on the victim who generally broke down in tears. They are then forgiven, accepted, and praised. Topics range from the most personal aspects of one’s life to the failure to give enough of oneself to the organization.
According to the tenets of ‘‘social therapy,~~ private time, private thoughts, “critical faculties” are all bourgeois. One can only be cured of their bourgeois ideology in social therapy. If you disagree at all with one of Newman’s black lieutenants, the entire therapy group attacks you for being racist. If you disagree with a woman therapist, the entire group attacks you for being sexist, If you question the opinions of the therapist, you are resorting to your bourgeois critical faculties.
Members are kept busy from sun-up, way past sun-down. Members no longer have time to call family, to visit, even to attend funerals, holidays, or other special events. When members do visit their families, more often than not another IWP member accompanies them. (Generally, members have alienated themselves from all their other friends and all their close relationships are with fellow lWPers.) Members generally share apartments, living communally, and often invite new recruits to move in with them. Members and potential members were often encouraged to quit their pre-IWP job, unless their job position could be exploited.
Any problems that arose from this extreme regimentation were dealt with in therapy. Bourgeois thinking, problems with “giving it all for the revolution” were dealt with by the group that had become the member’s entire world; that knew their every vulnerability; that shaped their thinking and understanding of people, events, history.
Conclusion
These few pages offer but an overview of a complex, and, in my opinion, dangerous organization. Dangerous, not only to the innocent, well-intentioned people who are caught in its grasp, but to the many it will try to exploit. Dangerous, because it uses a very progressive line, and untold millions of dollars, to prey on black communities, to attack black leaders and institutions, and to assault progressive organizations at whim. Dangerous because it can lie outright—lie about being black-led when blacks do not sit on the top, do not control the resources, do not control personnel; lie to its members about its participation with LaRouche; lie about Charles Tisdale; lie about me; lie about whatever serves Newman’s interests, and put forth spokespersons who come to believe these lies. Dangerous because many members will do whatever they are told to do without ever evaluating what they have been told.
In conclusion, while I believe it is important that NAP be exposed for what it truly is, it is our job not to dwell on the organization, which craves controversy, but to concentrate our energies in our communities and organize, organize, organize. It is a vacuum that has been left open that allows NAP and other oppressive organizations to abuse our communities. We must fill that vacuum with genuinely progressive, community-controlled organizations.
Footnotes
1. Others include New York Institute of Social Therapy and Research, Rainbow Alliance, East Side Center for Short Term Therapy, the Harlem Institute, Association of Better Communities, the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council, George Jackson-Rosa Luxemberg Cultural Center, the National Alliance Newspaper, the New Black Alliance, Coalition of Grass Roots Women, the International Workers Party, and more. All are created and put to rest by Newman, according to the group or person he is targeting (e.g., when they decide to go after me, they created the New Black Alliance (NBA)). Once I agreed to be the presidential candidate, the NBA was disbanded. Similarly, Newman created the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council to pull in some welfare activists and attack the National Welfare Rights Organization. When Newman decided to switch the focus to electoral politics, he disbanded the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council, deeply disappointing many of the “leaders who had no say in the matter. James Scott, Alma Brooks, and Neter Brooks, whose names Newman continues to use, all left the organization. Newman creates the organization, chooses who among the inner circle will ‘‘lead’’ it, how it will run, what it will do, and when it is no longer needed.
2. It is relatively common for Newman’s people to attack black newspapers wherever they go if NAP isn’t given extensive coverage.
Dennis Serrette is an ex-member of NAP and, in 1984, was their presidential candidate.
He is now a black activist working and writing in Maryland.
(This Article Was Originally Published in Radical America, Vol. 21, No. 5)
Nancy to answer your question, no i was not that person. though i was in a chat room on the sm group that was video casting during Yrly Kos. I was not there. I
and by the way i do not have a clue wtf this guy is talking about - the point is obscurred, Menshevik - its seems you are trying to communicate something...but honestly what ever it is ..is quite lost. Try to be more direct , and simplify. There is something that troubles you ? No organizations are perfect. All the info you offer is just overwelming and causes people to shut down. I do not wish to side track this original topic any further. There are many "scarey" stances within all groups outside the status quo..thats about all i know.
in peace and wanting to move forward and on - PP
well, yes the history is complicated
(as one who did a dissertation on Trotskyism lemme tell 'ya the US Far Left is hella' complex in its shifting, turning, messy glory), my point is that the org. that Nancy Hanks is affiliated with, has a loooong history well known to socialist and communist cadre active in the multitude of orgs. found to the Left of the Democrats which like her CUIP organize for an independent political force to the left of the DP. Start reading the material from Political Research associates, just the Intro. if you feel I overwhelmed 'ya. The Nation and other left magazines have published other material which exposes the totalitarian, internal practices of the CUIP/New Alliance Party/IWP. Having been active in The Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson the 80's (which had to fend off the Lenora Fulani/Fred Newman cultists that Nancy Hanks works with...along with various Maoist, yes Maoist nuts from a sect named the League for Revolutionary Struggle), I blanched when I saw N.H. say they worked with Kucinich.
Finally, look at the material on the Political research Associates website on Lyndon LaRouche and the Fulani/Newman org. If you recall, LaRouche is a vicious homophobe who put an initiative on the California ballot in the 80's to quarantine HIV/AIDS patients. LaRouche,
PublicEye.org - Lyndon LaRouche: Fascist Demagogue
proudprogressive: unfortunately i DO know wtf he's talking about. It's about a 30+ year fight that NY independents have had with the progressive wing of the Dems. They don't like NY independents because we won't tow the Dem party line. We've had this fight with Dem insurgents here since 1981. And because we're so organized an strong (we did afterall elect Mayor Bloomberg in 2001 and took 47% of the black vote OUT of the Dem party in favor of a nonpartisan mayor) the Dem elite are actually worried here in NYC. Good work, I say!
Nancy
menschevik: "blanched" at the relationship with Dennis Kucinich? sorry -- what? Kucinich is a progressive presidential candidate who is looking to get his message out to as many people as possible in an election where we are served with Bush-surrogate and Clinton-surrogate.... Personally I welcome any strong anti-war voice: Kucinnich, Gravel or Ron Paul!
This is fortunately still America!
NH
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/whatsnew.htm
Latest news on the Fred Newman-Lenora Fulani cult and its enabler Michael Bloomberg
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# Bloomberg-Hagel ticket could prove a disaster...for Hagel. Dennis King (blog, June 26) argues that the Nebraska senator should back away from a partnership with Bloomberg unless the mayor severs all ties with Newman and Fulani and renounces "social therapy and all its works."
# Comments by Queens County Independence Party chairman (and Fred Newman acolyte) Jerry Everett, June 25, 2007. Everett basically gives the "Salit" line (see below) on Mayor Bloomberg's possible presidential bid.
# Thirteen Newman-Fulani cohorts are expelled from Independence Party state committee--here's why! On June 10, 2007, key members of the IP's Newman-Fulani faction, including the Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island county chairpersons, were removed from the party's state committee by a vote of over two-thirds of the committee's 200-plus members. The official Removal Report, based on research by Manhattan State Executive Committee member Michael Zumbluskas and others, lays out the allegations of election and fundraising fraud on which the decision was based. (The misconduct outlined in the report has been going on for years and years, and has been pointed out in numerous election law cases. Where are the New York City DA's? The State Attorney General? And why do the city and state boards of elections always look the other way?)
# Newman-Fulani attorney Harry Kresky urges State Attorney General to launch an investigation of IP state leadership (June 7, 2007). Is Harry losing it? By reversing the IP State Committee's arguments and urging an investigation of the State Committee itself, and its investigator Michael Zumbluskas, for the same misdeeds of which Kresky's Newmanite comrades stand accused, the longtime legal shield of the cult is virtually begging for a probe of both sides in this dispute--a probe that Newman, Fulani and their followers cannot possibly withstand. As to Michael Zumbluskas, he says he welcomes an investigation, "the sooner and more comprehensive the better."
# Bloomberg's latest favor to his friendosexual NAMBLA-defending cult friends: He's allowing a privately funded Newman-Fulani teacher fellowship program to use social therapy techniques in the city's primary schools. According to this WNYC report (June 20), the Newman-Fulani cult is paying eleven city teachers $2,500 each to learn Newman's quack "improv" methods--and our city's primary school kids are their guinea pigs! Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says that although he doesn't condone the program, he doesn't want to "micromanage" the teachers. In other words, Klein is unwilling to jeopardize the fat private bonuses he hopes to receive from our billionaire mayor at a future date, even though he knows full well that the Mayor's favorite cult is a menace to the health and well-being both of the teachers being indoctrinated and of their innocent young charges. Note: When the fellowship program was announced last year on the social therapy website, the claim was made that it would include classroom supervision by the trainers. Is Newmanite classroom supervision in fact being conducted today in the NYC public schools? And how many of the fellowship teachers are now undergoing social therapy? How many have become active in the Newman faction of the Independence Party? And when will the cowards on the City Council finally begin to raise their voices about Bloomberg's willful support of a variety of Newmanite programs (including the All Stars Project, the "Let's Talk About It" group therapy program at Erasmus High, and now this latest "improv" fellowship dodge) that can only prove harmful to New York City's children and teens?
# Leading Newmanite speaks of Michael Bloomberg as if he were just another of the cult's lowly therapy patients to be pressured for ever-greater commitment to guru Fred Newman. Jacqueline Salit (chief strategist for the Newman-Fulani wing of the New York State Independence Party), in this May 30, 2007 letter to her associates, provides juicy details of how Bloomberg has helped them over the years and complains that now he's not doing enough to support them publicly against the IP's state leadership. (To the insatiable Newman cult, the $12.8 million in public financing Bloomberg gave them last fall for their All Stars youth charity--and from which money can easily be transferred to other cult entities to fund the fight against the state party--apparently wasn't enough.) Writes Salit (re Bloomberg's Presidential campaign) in this strange, strange letter: "We should be prepared to place certain demands on [Bloomberg]...including that he recognize and respect the movement, the people and the organizations...that introduced him to independent politics and put him in office in the first place." Any politician with an ounce of self-respect would instantly dump these folks and denounce them, but Bloomberg has been locked in a masochistic, social-therapy-patient-type relationship with Newman & Co. for the past seven years (at least). If he's still too weak-minded to stand up to them, how can we expect him to stand up to the Newman of North Korea and other dangerous enemies of America in the unlikely event that he manages to buy his way into the White House?
# Why has the New York Sun become the unofficial campaign newspaper of MIchael Bloomberg when his politics and those of the Sun have almost nothing in common? Dennis King asks the hard question on his newly reactivated blog site, comments on Eric Alterman's critique of the Sun in the June 18 issue of The Nation.
# Bloomberg may spend as much as one billion dollars to win the White House (Washington Times, May 15). How much of this money will go to Newman and Fulani to brainwash more kids into their totalitarian "friendosexual" cult? Reporters and New York political leaders should (but won't) pressure Bloomberg to issue a pledge that he will stop giving money to this poisonous duo or to their followers for political, "charitable" or any other purpose.
# Democrats (and possibly Republicans) have reason to fear a Bloomberg campaign (Washington Times, May 16). Each major party will want Bloomberg to be its spoiler against the other; thus neither will be willing to do anything that might anger him.This means that if he chooses to give more money to Newman and Fulani either for electoral help or for their sinister "youth charity," he will continue to enjoy the embarrassed silence of the entire political establishment in New York.
# Bloomberg's aides meet with Newman's Independence Party opponents (Daily Telegraph, London, May 11). If this deal goes through, Bloomberg will essentially control both wings of the IP. Will he insist that the anti-Newman wing acquiesce in Newman's continued control of the New York City organization? Or will he just pay Newman's Marxist-Leninist cadre to run petition drives in other states?
# Fulani's upset because Barack Obama won't give her the time of day (Web article, Feb. 10, 2007). The sense of entitlement of this woman (Fred Newman's "greatest creation," as he calls her) is truly breathtaking: She has publicly refused to repudiate her statement that "Jews are mass murderers of people of color" but believes that America's political class should uncritically accept her as an important public figure anyway (as her anti-Semitic white comrades in the International Workers Party do) simply because of her ethnicity.
# Bloomberg blasts Scientology (but not Newman and Fulani) (New York Post, April 19). Once again we see the hypocrisy of Bloomberg, attacking Scientology in order to divert attention from his ongoing alliance with Newman and Fulani. Scientology is certainly a controversial group, but they don't support Farrakhan or Gadhafi, don't call Jews "mass murderers of people of color" and don't defend NAMBLA. When the mayor made Scientology a diversionary target in 2005, the media rebuked him for it. This time, he's receiving a free ride.
# All signs point to a Bloomberg Presidential run (New York Daily News, May 14). This article misses one intriguing sign: the closing down, one by one (with no good reason provided), of official investigations of Newman and Fulani-run social therapy programs around the country.
# Senator Chuck Hagel suggests he might become Bloomberg's running mate (New York Daily News, May 14). But does the distinguised Nebraska Republican and two-time Purple Heart winner know about the New York mayor's ongoing relationship with the Newman-Fulani cult? For commentary on this, see Dennis King's blog (June 26}.
# Bloomberg to take away the gun carry permits of New Yorkers (New York Post, Nov. 1, 2006, with reply by D. King). The mayor had earlier crafted his anti-gun initiatives as an attempt to keep guns out of the hands of violent felons. Now we see the truth: Bloomberg is not just worried about criminals having guns; he's also opposed to ordinary law-abiding citizens owning guns for self-defense purposes. Meanwhile the mayor himself has plenty of armed protection around his East Side townhouse, while his Marxist cult allies in the IWP have long possessed semiautomatic rifles for supposed defense against plots by Jewish militants. Will Bloomberg ask Newman and Fulani to turn in the IWP's gun collection? Don't hold your breath.
The comments above are not summaries of the cited news articles but reflect Dennis KIng's opinion based on the facts as reported.
MAYOR BLOOMBERG GRANTS $12.7 MILLION BOND TO HELP FRIENDOSEX CULT BRAINWASH CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS FIVE
And this weird, anything-goes billionaire wants to be our President???
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/
or http://tinyurl.com/2x6w89
menshevik: have you checked out The Hankster? It's the news blog for independents. You might find a more progressive strand of news here....
Thanks,
NH
nancy..."blanched" at the relationship with Dennis Kucinich?
your org. has no productive role with any politico on the Left like DK
and for the marxist-leninist origins of your cult, you should know how to spell and who were the Mensheviks.
Guffaw.
So Nancy how about the time when your org. worked with the Pat Buchanan Nativist, anti-Immigrant racists to take over the Perotian Reform Party. One of Jim Mangia's greatest moments, eh?! In Marxist-Leninist jargon that is, "Right Opportunism." FAR RIGHT OPPORTUNISM.
Godless: please forgive me for all the responses! This was quite a "dialogue"!
mensevik -- sorry if I misspelled your moniker...
But actually, Dennis Kucinich has been meeting with our LA affiliate recently to strategize about reaching out to independents, has met here in NY with some of our leadership and in fact attended the CUIP Independent Debate Watch in 2004. I know, I was there. So there!
Loosen up!!!
NH
Mensch: don't understand the question. Are you referring to the moment when Lenora Fulani received 43% of the vote as Vice Chair of the Reform Party and the point at which we were insisting on the inclusion of the black community within the independent movement?
http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/08/27/dennis-kucinich-announces-plan-to-woo-voters-who-arent-major-party-members/
Dennis Kucinich Announces Plan to Woo Voters Who Aren’t Major Party Members
# David Gaines Says:
August 28th, 2007 at 6:33 am
This is not good news at all. The Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP) is a cultish, LaRouche-like affair run by Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman (Google those names if you don’t know who they are), who became infamous in the 3rd party world with their New Alliance Party many years ago. If Dennis Kucinich is too naive to know what this group is all about, and if his staff doesn’t have the good sense to keep him from further solidifying his kooky public image, then he deserves his solid lock on 1% in the polls. Finally, if he really thinks that his hobnobbing with CUIP is going to bring swarms of non-affiliated voters to the primary polls to vote Kucinich, he is really out to lunch. I was very disappointed to see Ralph Nader work with this outfit back in 2004 as well. He should know better.
Rich Winger is a supporter of Lenora Fulani and our 30-year fight for fair ballot access for independent candidates (that's what the Rainbow Lobby was all about, with a piece of legislation introduced in 1988 by an outstanding Dem Rep. John Conyers called the Fair Elections Bill).
Squirm, Mensch, but you will find that CUIP has worked with the most progressive Dems in the country for over 30 years. We have also worked with Repubs. We have indeed worked with any politician who we feel will advance the fight for democracy for ordinary people. But most of all we have organized the unorganized, the left-out, the marginalized, the poor, the voiceless.
It's a continuation of the American Revolution. And as George Washington said, beware of the parties!
And as we learned in the 1950s -- beware of the red-baiters. They're standing in the way of progress for all people.
Nancy
And as we learned in the 1950s -- beware of the red-baiters. They're standing in the way of progress for all people.
Nancy
Funny how only those with Stalinoid politics ever use that phrase. I've heard CPUSA'ers call Trotskyists, "red-baiters." You heard of Rosa Luxemburg, the anti-Leninist revolutionary socialist killed in the WWI era? I read passages of Red Rosa to a CPUSA acquitance and he said that was , "Red-Baiting.'
OK thanks for the stroll down memory lane , i lived in New York close to the city about 25 yrs ago. Was an activist. Loved always getting the socialist newspapers etc. I loved it actually - we got to think outside the box and let begones be bygones..realize that people often do have gone intentions for change..stuff happens. Face we are the fringe anyhow. so why get our panties in a bunch. (maybe i am missing something - i didn't like larouche at all - i got it he was a crack pot soo rest easy) Buchanan is now on every channel every night, hell for a long time fuckin falwell was too. Its bizaree but it happens.
Independent party organizing will always be difficult. There will be real right wing nut jobs - and there will be the left where most of our sentiments certainly lie. who many think are nut jobs..such is our political world. Gawd forbid we get health care without a profit for the middle man and people scream socialism. Its all rediculous.
What is most important to me is that we end the status quo and that will not happen without some "nutty" shit going down. Thats where the constitution and a good congress comes in ..No one would be King or Queen.
Ron Paul got this money bomb - Ron Paul is considered by many just out of the question because he is pro life mostly - and takes money from some corporations , granted some of his voting record is many do consider him just a dangerous right wing little quiet lunatic fringe..BUT BUT ..
BUT ! He would repeal the patriot act
End the federal reserve
End the drug war and other stuff ..controversial stuff like end anchor baby status which does have its basis in the 14th amendement so that is not gonna happen. There may be some trade offs before we get the real fascists out of washington.
.BUT BEFORE the knees kick and jerk - think about it ...THE CONGRESS would never let this all happen. In other words we have checks and balances when the 3 co equal branches of gov. Sooo really people have less to fear when they think about any big change. the sysem is designed against it. Big time.
We have a freakin fascist dictator now - and the whole country is playing along like we are free.
I wish Paul/Kucinch would run on an INDEPENDENT TICKET. There are no perfect politicians. All people and groups will seek to exploit the other. The main trouble is that - people seek perfection and its just not out there. Yeah i and knew larouche was a scarey dude but he also must have had some good ideas. Too bad more people do not have SOME good ideas. I know its always been a struggle to have people of color join with leftie groups because usually it was being run be well meaning bouchy whites...thats just history on the East Coast especially..as i recall.
Now i do not know the current details there in NYC of course. BUT if an Independent race would help either Kucinich or Paul yes Paul ! i would be happy - cause we may get real change. Trouble is MANY states INDEPENDENTS DO HAVE TROUBLE gettting on the ballots. as do the greens which i am ..gawd talk about being hated..poor fookin Nader..every side hates him. He must be doing something right !!
see that is a bad problem - and to vote in the primaries..many states make you be in that party vs. letting everyone just fookin vote. Voting is the biggest sham of all.
anyhow , this is pretty interesting now that i remember and know wtf you all are talking about. But i remind us all - we have a right wing dictator already - in the BushCo crime family and we are about to have a dynasty
IF we cannot rally the vote to one real radical. bush clinton bush clinton. Its enough to make me think about Ron Paul. dispite the fact i have never EVER cast a republican vote in my life !!! Even the thought gives me the willies..
But look at the platform and think about the fact that WE may need to tear some gov. shit down before it gets better again. Poor Dennis just gets laughed at. I am still waiting for my dennis gear to get here. i mean honest to gawd.
Its all so rigged if Dennis or Ron got too far their own parties would take em out. As it is they ignore them both. Some democracy eh ?
re; ron paul and the 14th amendment...the neo-nazis and the birchers and the militia movement and the "christian identity" (neo-nazi xtians) movements want to repeal it becuse of their racist ideology and neo-Confederate pov.
LaRouche, some good ideas? Jeesh, tell that to the socialists and communists his thugs assaulted in operation mop-up, see the photos at the LaRouche webpg. at Political Research associates.
And google, Ron Paul Neo-Nazis Adam Holland, " and see the neo-Nazi campaign contributions he gets. Known for weeks via Huffington Post and other blogs, the Paul campaign still has refused to say whether they wopuld return that Stormfront Nazi dollars.
Menshevik i do understand what you are saying.AND THANK YOU That story i would have never really known
THANK YOU !
. i did re read everything carefully and appreciate the information. People are often deceptive. And i remember all of it pretty well now - how Jackson was undermined. The crazy therapy cults and YES THAT IS A CULT the NAP. for sure.
and that confusion and misinformation..Nowadays its more then flyers..misinformation is on steroids even for middle america IN fact its the status quo.
Kucinich Paul - i just want the war over, and the Patriot act repealed. everything else can be battled out after that. imho I do honestly the values of my beloved left to someday somehow emerge in this country. We are undermined at every turn. Your articles case in point - so thank you dear one for laying it all out there. It is highly unlikely that i will ever vote for ron paul unless it was by some fluke him against clinton.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2u55gv
November 14, 2007
The Ron Paul Campaign and its Neo-Nazi Supporters
By Andrew Walden
Bloomberg is doing that Holy fuck !
Manshevik thank you for exposing these divisive undermining NUTS.
THANK YOU SIR ! I do understand now, my memory is stirred and the present day current crap is exposed. I too hope Kucinich stays far away from this bunch.
sorry nance but the the facts are the facts.
I was trying to do some research on a friend of mine who unfortunately ended up in NAP....this post kept coming up in my googling.
Anyway, I realize this whole discussion is two years old but you might be interested in my friend's story.
http://thecahokian.blogspot.com/2009/11/steve-rose-gay-hero.html
peace