> On 7/11/05, Chuck0 <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
>
> When we outed several undercovers in Washington, DC several years ago, one was an undercover cop from the vice squad who had been active in several anti-globalization groups. Another undercover had been active in the Mobilization for Global Justice for several years. She had been a quiet member of the housing working group, which gave her, and the police, access to a database of local activists and sympathizers.
>> I didn't know anyone "outed" the undercover cops; I thought their cover was blown when they showed up in court to testify against some ACC activists who had been arrested. I personally was shocked to find out "Donna" was a cop; I had always thought she was a member of the ISO. :)
Technically you are right. Their cover was blown when a friend of mine found them in another courtroom with their uniforms on. They weren't really "outed" but the process of divulging this information to the DC activists was pretty much like outing them.
The funny thing was that when my friend told me which fake activists these people were, I realized that I had been suspicious of all three and only those three. One of them had been suspected as an undercover for some time by activists.
Mark Rickling wrote:
> Chuck, you're being disingenuous when you paint a picture of Adams-Morgan
> as a homogenously yuppie enclave. It's true it's rapidly gentrifying, and
> that bars on 18th St. cater to Washington's version of the bridge and tunnel
> crowd, but the stores on Columbia Rd. between 18th and 16th streets are
> still overwhelmingly working-class and Latino. No self-respecting young
> urban professional would be caught dead in the KFC or the McDonald's on
> Columbia, two targets of the protest [sic] march. I was at the
> counter-inaugrual show which preceded the march, and declined to march down
> to the Hinkley Hilton because I was put off by the juvenile "let's fuck shit
> up" mentality and the self-preening radicalism of the whole affair.
Adams Morgan is not a homogenous yuppie enclave, but it was more or less gentrified years ago. The existence of working class people living and shopping on a few streets is not a refutation that the neighborhood has been totally gentrified. The Mission District in San Francisco is considered to be gentrified, yet it contains many streets that are full of Latino stores, bodegas, and residences.
I live in Kansas City now and have some perspective on Washington's gentrification situation. I think that Mark, like other activists in DC, doesn't want to face up to the fact that Adams Morgan is basically an outpost of Vienna. As I understand it, the frontlines of gentrification in DC have moved east now to North Capitol street and beyond. When I visit DC next month I'll check out those neighborhoods for myself. I'd like to see how H St. NE is doing.
Chuck