http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/lisa-fithian-fbi-informant-brandon.html

It’s worth reading! Here is an especially valuable list from her article:

“Behaviors of Brandon’s or others that enabled this kind of damage to be done”

-Deferring or listening to men, as opposed to women and/or attacking women in leadership positions. Our patriarchal society has taught us this and we need to deconstruct it.

-Charisma and confidence enabled him to assume leadership and control — people deferred even though he had little experience. He cultivated a handful of women and men to become personal assistants who did a lot of his work for him.

-Assuming credibility by his associations — Brandon tried to associate himself with other high profile organizers in the activist community.

-Preying on and exploiting people’s vulnerabilities and insecurities, particularly using alcohol or other addictions. He liked to “play with people’s minds.”

-Bullying. All bullies abuse their power and people let them do what they want because they are afraid of what will happen if they do not go along. They use their physical prowess to intimidate both women and men.

-Disrupting group process in meetings, derailing agendas, questioning process, challenging others, or not coming to meetings at all to avoid accountability. Or using secrecy and sub-groups to divide the whole.

-Pointing fingers at and ‘snitch-jacketing’ other people, accusing them of being cops, FBI agents, etc. This kept everyone on guard, and created an environment of suspicion and distrust.

-Seducing people using power or sex, leaving a lot of pain and destabilized situations in his wake or provoking people to do acts they would not do on their own.

-Being persistent and pursuing people, by calling them repeatedly or showing up at their homes, inviting them for coffee, he would wear you down, or find other ways back into important relationships.

-Being an emotional/physical wreck, becoming very needy and seducing people into taking care of him. Then people would defend him because of his emotional vulnerabilities or physical needs.

-Time and energy suck. Talk endlessly, consuming hours of time and energy — confusing, exhausting, and indoctrinating.

-Being helpful or useful — showing up when you most needed support. Brandon would arrive with tools, money, or whatever was needed at just the right time.

-Documenting through videotaping or photographing actions but never using it or working on communications systems which he attempted at the RNC.

It’s true that new comers sometimes are more vulnerable to saying something inappropriate, but it works the other way too. It’s also sometimes common for people who are new to these ideas and activities to speculate about others’ intentions and motivations–not to mention the outright arrogant and aggressive attitudes that are definitely prevalent in our communities and often times accepted as of form of weird, radical self-righteousness.

Personally I feel that to build any sort of collective security culture, we must first address how we treat others who are new and inexperienced–making them feel comfortable and giving them appropriate, safe outlets to learn and grow.

1) If everyone already knew darby was a borderline authoritarian
misogynist asshole (I met the man one time, and this was the first thing I was told about him) why was he still allowed to participate in our circles? Are there problems with our culture (not just security culture) that allow Brandon Darbies to exist. Obviously, some would say that he should have been excluded from the social scene entirely for his past behaviour. This may be true, but what I’m mostly interested in, is what would have caused folks to continue including him. The radio program talked about darby having a “get shit done” attitude. I have sympathies toward this, and I know others do to. Honestly, the bureaucracy can be so much sometimes one just wants to step out of the community to do what needs to be done. I’m reminded of working on a community center project in a city I used to live in. There were so many meetings happening in which no one was being held accountable to the decisions made that finally a few friends and I decided to stop attending. Instead, whenever there was a meeting we went and worked in the garden. At the time I thought that this was an appropriate course of action, and it certainly produced more results. In retrospect though, it really represented the failure of our consensus process. We need to have social systems and decision making processes that allow us to make reasonable decisions in a timely manner and actually act upon them. It should be seen as a failure if the only folks able to get stuff done are those that abrogate the system and make unilateral (or authoritarian) decisions. Of course this is not to say that we shouldn’t all retain the ability to act on our own accord, but a group *should* be able to do much more than any individual. And most importantly it should be able to make much *better* decisions. Isn’t that supposed to be the point?

2) What attracted these young men to get in with Brandon in the first
place? In the radio program they stated that Brandon had these activist
credentials which gave them credibility. In some ways it made me think
that maybe the rest of the community wasn’t as inviting to them. I don’t
know for sure that this was true in the case of Crowder and McKay, but sometimes what passes as security culture borders on elitism. If the broader community excludes new comers (for example because they say stupid dangerous things) then it seems that they could be pushed to sketchier situations; like entering into an abusive authoritarian relationship with an FBI informant.