No, I was giving it as an example. You did basically say that ChuckO was saving the gov't money by attacking WWP. But that would only be true if his criticisms were, in fact, wrong, wouldn't it?
>>The other way is to say, yeah, it's a problem, and although
>> people knowing that we may be infiltrated might scare people off, it's
>> also a fact o' life in the USA, and because it's a general problem in the
>> movement we shouldn't go around saying specific people are agents when they
>> criticize us, it's divisive and paralyzing.
>
>I honestly don't think WWP is very infiltrated, because we don't grow that
>fast or have all that many new faces (yet) (here). Of course you have
>to assume that all your phone conversations and e-mails can be going into
>the database, but that's another matter. ANSWER has a lot of new faces and
>some might be agents, I suppose, but if you play 'spot the agent' all the
time
>you drive yourself nuts to no purpose, meanwhile defeating your whole
>purpose
Right, saving the government money. (On the up side, it's our money.)
> of going among people and sharing the message and making new
>relationships. No, the idea is to keep busy so that even if the agent
>is there, he/she has to help build the movement in order to stay there.
A VVAW leader here says that in the early 70s, because most the real vets were somewhere between unreliable and dysfunctional, a lot of the work of the chapter was done by agents. He figured out later that in some meetings, he was the only person not paid to be there. Gives a whole new meaning to the question 'how many paid staff does your group have?'
>In any case, my understanding of the work of agents is that they don't
>infiltrate you and then pick fights with other tendencies. When the Feds
>want to start a fight with another tendency, they forge papers and stuff.
>The agents stay dutiful and inconspicuous and collect data, or else they
>pick fights within your own organization, or else they try to lure you
>into lunatic criminal adventures. The corollary is that if someone is
>criticizing or slandering you, the chances are 99 to 1 that he or she is
>not an agent, but just some irritating sincere person.
>
>LP
Which was the point I made in an earlier post. So, the group's supposed to be famous for discipline, reports are there's an agent-baiter in DC, find 'em and, if true, tell 'em to cut it out. And if you don't have a policy on this you should create one, explaining why it is bad to call those you disagree with agents. Centralization should be good for something.
Lance Murdoch wrote:
> I think the idea that it's dangerous to have an internal debate on the left
because the >right might pick up on it is thoroughly ridiculous.
Obviously so.
Jenny Brown