[Peace-discuss] My reply to e-mails

[C. G. Estabrook]

You can't be seriously suggesting that the local police and FBI are paying
no attention to AWARE.  We are the best thing that's happened to them
since the drug war.  Perhaps you heard the exchange at the WILL town
meeting over the advice to the police that "terrorists are to be found
among protesters" and the admission from the police representative that of
course they are looking for such things.  And the best way the local FBI
can bid up its appropriation is to have local terrorists to chase -- even
better if they aren't all Middle Eastern students.  If you doubt that,
read the courts records (as I have) on the Weissberg case here in town
last winter and see how much time and energy local FBI people spent on
denying First Amendment rights to a kid who happened to be a Zionist
fanatic and writer of scurrilous letters.  (Begin with the accounts on the
IMC site.)

After the end of the Vietnam war, it became clear that the most paranoid
fantasies of the '60s about police involvement in anti-war work fell short
of the mark.  Since opposition to the present war is so much more
deep-seated than opposition to Vietnam was -- and the attempted crack-down
is more serious (there was no Patriot Act in 1968; torture and
concentration camps were not being defended by the government) -- it
follows that local police activity will be correspondingly vigorous.

The most remarkable people turned out to be police spies.  E.g., the head
of the poor peoples' campaign in urban Boston, who led a well-publicized
takeover of commencement exercises to demand consideration of the poor;
"Tommy the Traveler" in upstate New York, who urged college students to
"join the revolution."  Those are just examples from places I happened to
be at the time; they were repeated around the country.

The police agents were typically those urging more "militant" action,
condemning others in the anti-war movement for a lukewarm commitment to
social change, and attempting to exacerbate contradictions among anti-war
groups.  Obviously, police encourage dissension and putsch-ish actions
that are prosecutable.

As to AWARE's not being the Black Panthers, that is of course in many ways
a good thing, given that the Panthers' errors and ineptitudes were as
notable as their successes.  And remember that the FBI and the local
police murdered Fred Hampton only when he began to make connections
between the Panthers and other, more traditional political groups.

As an example of what the FBI is up to right now, and how it uses Gestapo
tactics and the threat of a long prison sentence (provided by Congress in
its anti-terrorist legislation) to silence a 20-year-old website provider,
see the case of <raisethefist.org>, recently described on Paul
Riismandel's WEFT program and website <medaigeek.org>. --CGE


On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 Tchiguka at aol.com wrote:

> ...Carl, you're right about me: I am an agent provocateur for the FBI.
> We have been keeping a close eye on AWARE since its formation in 2001.
> In fact, AWARE is among the FBI's top ten list of subversive
> organizations seeking to undermine the U.S. government. The FBI, in
> conjunction with the Champaign Police Department, is desperately
> working on destroying this effective political group by having agents
> join AWARE to disintegrate it from within. Surveillance is planted
> throughout the room where AWARE meets every Sunday to keep track of
> its activities…
> 
> I hope you can laugh at this, Carl, and find the inanity and paranoia
> expressed in your e-mail. AWARE is hardly the Black Panthers, so come
> back down the Earth.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Muata
>