Political Cults

SF Weekly article

2009-12-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

Charitable Front

Mysterious organizations in the Bay Area profess to be advocating for liberal causes. In truth, they appear to be part of a secretive group with a bizarre radical past.

By Matt Smith

published: December 09, 2009

Frank Gaglione

S.F. attorney Tony Palik says leaders of the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals were more interested in getting him to attend Marxist indoctrination sessions than in improving the lives of farmworkers.
Brian Pinard

The headstone of Gerald Doeden, who created a new identity for himself as revolutionary leader Eugenio Mario Perente-Ramos, Gino Perente for short.
Frank Gaglione

The Physicians Organizing Committee keeps an office downtown at 450 Sutter.
Frank Gaglione

Pastor Schuyler Rhodes agreed to lend his name to the board of advisers of the National Equal Justice Association, unaware of its apparent ties to NatlFed.

Subject(s):

Matt Smith on National Labor Federation

As with any San Francisco dogfight, myriad organizations have piled on to the civic battle to pressure Sutter Health to rebuild St. Luke's Hospital at César Chávez and Valencia streets.

There's the California Nurses Association (CNA), the union pushing to compel Sutter Health to preserve St. Luke's organized labor jobs. There are neighborhood groups fighting to pressure Sutter Health to build its new hospital in a way that won't snarl traffic. And then there's the Physicians Organizing Committee, a self-described group of doctors and medical professionals that seems to be one of the more aggressive on the CNA side of the dispute, with representatives speaking to students at local universities, canvassing merchants, and proposing alliances with nonprofits such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

But somehow, the group has been an enigma to the controversy's main players.

"They've been able to bring physicians to hearings who can bring the authority that physicians have," CNA organizer Nato Green said, but "I don't know where they come from, or what their structure is."

Gillian Gillett is the spokeswoman for the San Jose/Guerrero Coalition to Save Our Streets, which has been lobbying Sutter Health to include a park, a senior center, and traffic calming measures as part of a rebuilt St. Luke's Hospital. Gillett said she doesn't know much about the Physicians Organizing Committee except that it seemed to be aligned with the position of the nurses' union: "There are so many people gaming this whole process that it's hard to know who's who," she says. "They say, 'We're doctors,' and describe the horrors of what's going on at St. Luke's. And people trust them because they're doctors."

Joseph Chan, an East Bay psychiatrist, has appeared at events as a professional spokesman for the group. But even he didn't seem to know much about how it was run, other than that its leaders had asked him to act as their representative.

"They arrange meetings and talks, where I go and talk with students and tell them what's happening," he said. "They are the people who organize things. They have connections with people who teach classes, so we can go and inform the students about the situation. The students are more energetic, and able to do things, because they involve the future."

When I called the committee's office number, representative Brian Tseng said his group had protocols for talking with the media, that he'd have to consult with his board of directors before describing his group's activities, and that he wasn't interested in helping with an article.

Why the seeming secrecy? Knowledgeable sources say that the Physicians Organizing Committee is one of several Bay Area front groups set up to disguise a strange political cult. Although a representative for the committee has denied the link, it has shared personnel with an alleged cult front group, and received a grant from the National Equal Justice Association (NEJA), a nonprofit shell corporation linked to the cult. (The committee's manager, meanwhile, has donated money to NEJA.) Committee representatives also deal with the press using a protocol consistent with rules laid down by the cult.

The cult, an umbrella organization based in New York, goes by names such as the Provisional Communist Party and the National Labor Federation, abbreviated as NatlFed. Historically, the stated goal of NatlFed is one that would likely even discomfit the Bay Area liberals the organization targets for recruiting: the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

NatlFed doesn't fit most people's idea of a cult. There's no religious dogma. Instead, it's best known for preaching leftist revolution. Yet, during its 40 years of existence, it doesn't seem to have performed a single terrorist act. Decade after decade, its members have merely gone about preparing themselves for the possibility of an eventual day of insurrection — like Pentecostals awaiting the rapture.

In the meantime, the group has undertaken charitable works that Palo Alto's Jeff Whitnack, who volunteered for the group in the 1980s until he became disillusioned, refers to as "flypaper" designed to lure young idealists. They maintain what NatlFed insiders refer to as "entities" or "mutual-benefit associations" to do food drives, recruit doctors and attorneys to provide services for low-income people, and give lectures about the need for mental health services in the Mission.

For anyone living in the Bay Area, these apparent front groups are simultaneously invisible and ubiquitous. At a recent Thanksgiving dinner I attended at a San Francisco friend's house, five of the 10 adults present had volunteered for, donated to, or been contacted by NatlFed fronts.

These groups, which the FBI has linked to NatlFed, have names that make them sound like labor unions or professional associations, among them the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals, the California Homemakers Association, and the Western Farm Workers Association.

None of the groups enter into collective bargaining agreements or are registered with the IRS as nonprofits. They do not publicly disclose their finances. They don't form close public alliances with community groups that have similar aims. They do not publish their regular activities, have Web sites, or create any public documentation of how they function. They keep themselves all but invisible — except to those they choose to contact.

"People will become involved in NatlFed, or one of its front groups, and don't even realize the group has a political agenda," cult intervention specialist Rick Ross said. "They simply feel it's a group to help the poor, not understanding the overall thrust of the group."

Former members and volunteers of seemingly NatlFed-linked groups say there's something futile and ultimately embarrassing about having performed good works for an organization that turned out to view charity as a means to a secret end.

Erica Junghans, a Brazilian journalist who now lives in San Francisco, recalls volunteering for the Physicians Organizing Committee in 2004. She initially thought it was akin to the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization dedicated to public awareness. Her impression changed after a trip with one of the group's self-described cadre — NatlFed jargon for group members who have given up outside pursuits to volunteer full-time for the cause — to Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center to recruit a doctor.

Though the group presented itself as a sort of union, the idea wasn't to get the doctor and his colleagues to negotiate better conditions. Instead, the cadre "said we're looking for a few key people that could bring more members, basically," recalled Junghans, who stopped volunteering after just a few outings. "I found it — I don't want to say weird — I found it odd."

Illinois attorney Robin Fahlberg was a NatlFed member for 15 years during the 1980s and '90s, and ran its Eastern Farm Workers Association front group in upper New York state. She came away thinking the organization's leaders were more interested in going through the motions of doing good works in order to attract volunteers than actually achieving success. She recalled one instance where she was poised to reach a settlement in a civil rights case. She considered a settlement offer a victory, but group leaders felt otherwise: "I got a call from the national headquarters saying, 'We're not going to take this settlement.' My jaw dropped."

Perhaps the most significant public accomplishment in NatlFed 's 40-year history came in October 2006, when the California Senate allocated $601,000 to settle Vega v. Mallory, a lawsuit backed by the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals and the Western Farm Workers Association. The suit, won on appeal, alleged that laborers were overcharged for housing in a program overseen by California's Office of Migrant Services.

"That was a good lawsuit, and the volunteer attorneys on it were great," said San Francisco lawyer Tony Palik, an attorney on the case.

In his experience, leaders of the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals seemed more concerned about getting him to attend Marxist indoctrination sessions and using his work on the farmworker litigation case to recruit new volunteers and members than about actually succeeding with the suit: "The organization itself was more of a hindrance than a help." Palik split with the group in 2002.

According to ex-members Whitnack and Fahlberg, professionals such as doctors and lawyers are to NatlFed what movie stars are to Scientology. They're recruited to lend authority to the group, but aren't necessarily informed of its core revolutionary mission, and are not required to endure the isolation and other privations of full-time members.

Notwithstanding, Palik learned enough during his seven years with the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals and the Western Farm Workers Association to look back at his experience with anger. "Their mission, or their objective, is so all encompassing for them, whatever that is," he said. "They were never very forthcoming about it. They were so dedicated to it in a bizarre, cultlike way, that everything, everything for them — it's all a means to an end. And the end is very murky, and weird, and kind of sinister, even."

The mastermind behind NatlFed's bizarre revolutionary philosophy was Gerald Doeden, a man known as a brilliant con man who recited Shakespeare at length and once dodged a bar tab by signing a check as Jesus H. Christ. The former Marysville disc jockey reinvented himself in the '70s as a revolutionary named Gino Perente, who claimed (falsely) to be a comrade of César Chávez and a veteran of worldwide insurrectional movements. He walked with a limp, which he told his followers was the result of a gunshot wound sustained while fighting in Latin American rebel movements (he actually limped because of a old car wreck injury).

In 1970, Perente established a base of operations at the Little Red Bookstore on Mission Street, from which he issued a declaration of war against Northern California. The following year, as part of the armed rebellion, 30 armed individuals were supposed to kidnap city officials in Berkeley and blow up the Bank of America building in San Francisco, according to his FBI file. A San Francisco Examiner article at the time said law enforcement officials considered him harmless and saw his dozen or so followers as kooks.

Perente later moved to New York City and founded another group with a more benign-seeming purpose named the Long Island Farm Workers Association; it was later renamed the Eastern Farm Workers Association. This group eventually evolved into NatlFed and the Provisional Communist Party.

For years, Perente told his Provisional Communist Party members that they were an elite vanguard who would lead a second American revolution. During the early 1980s, he began setting a specific date for armed takeover of the U.S. government, and the FBI infiltrated the group.

An FBI agent put it this way in a report from the time: "This takeover ... is referred to by members as the 'Proscenium Tactic.' The party is divided into several cells, which they call 'fractions,' with one of these fractions being called the 'Military Fraction' (MF). The MF requires a minimum one-year full-time membership, complete with political education, training, and evaluation. Several sources have reported that the MF participates in military drills. It was also reported by sources that weapons were stored at 1107 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, New York."

Although Perente's planned coups never materialized, followers ate up his speeches about revolution, even during his deteriorated, drug-addicted later years.

"He would be sitting, smoking Lucky Strikes, leg withered, in a wheelchair, very skinny and decrepit," said Irene Davidson, who volunteered with the group in the mid-1990s to extricate a daughter who had joined. "He would dress in white suits and cowboy hats to give his talks, but his suits were really filthy. He had no teeth. He didn't make sense. But the group treated him like God."

One woman, who was recruited to the group at age 16 in the 1970s and stayed until 1996, recalls the euphoria associated with believing Perente's rantings to be true.

"There were classes in Marxist-Leninist theory," the former Perente assistant said. "They were called 'arenas' because these were battlegrounds ... because it was supposed to be an armed revolution at some point. The theory being, sooner or later, you're going to have to take up a gun and shoot somebody. I remember having conversations with people saying, 'Okay, you can be in charge of this town, and you can be in charge of the state of New York.'"

A 1984 raid by the FBI produced crates of paperwork — much of which consisted of records documenting the monitoring of recruits — but no proof NatlFed was a legitimate threat.

In 1996, after Perente died, the New York Police Department raided the group's headquarters, prompted by neighbors who thought they had heard children's cries. Police seized a cache of dusty firearms and more boxes of records. Mayor Rudy Giuliani held a press conference exposing what he characterized as a nefarious cult — hoopla that ended with a whimper as the Village Voice, The New York Times, Newsday, and other papers reported that NatlFed seemed to have never actually done anything. Instead, its members had spent a quarter century aggressively recruiting volunteers, some of whom would abandon society so they, too, could recruit more volunteers.

According to news accounts from the time of the 1996 raid, Margaret Ribar — the head of NatlFed's West Coast operations — succeeded Perente as the group's leader. Given the organization's secrecy, obtaining information about how things are currently run at NatlFed is difficult.

Nate Lescovic, now editor of Performer magazine in Boston, infiltrated the NatlFed-linked Eastern Service Workers' Association in 2004 as an independent journalist. "That was the only way I saw getting any information about them," he said. "I went in as a volunteer, and did a couple of events with them, and went door to door with them, and tried to get a sense of how they ran things."

He came away with an impression of an organization obsessed with its own version of Communist doctrine. Despite some accounts that that the group had mellowed under Ribar's leadership — a 1996 Village Voice story said "she loosened some of the restrictions that prevent members from visiting their families" — Lescovic was troubled by the sheltered lives of the group's young volunteers. "These kids had given up all their family and friends. They were living in poverty, working and living at the office, and doing nothing else, and living off food donations. They always had the same clothes on," he recalled. "It's this kind of taking lives away from people. You could argue that, 'Well, that's their decision. They can do what they want with their lives.' But being around these kids, it seemed like there was more to it than that. It seemed like it was not their decision. They were never happy, at all. There was not much laughter, never any smiles, and they were always running around doing work. None of them seemed to have anything to enjoy in their lives."

Ex-volunteers I spoke with who had been involved with NatlFed affiliates in the post-Perente years also indicate the group continues its cultlike behavior.

"Every two weeks they would sit me down and ask me to increase my commitment," said an ex-volunteer from Chicago, who worked for a front group in 2000. "But you can't ratchet up people's commitment too many times, or bad things start happening. You can't afford rent unless you're independently wealthy. They said, 'You can move in with us.' So I moved in with them. But moving in with them means you have no time off. They isolate them from the things you enjoyed, and things that are familiar, so you are easy to manipulate."

Thin, with a beard, ponytail, and elegant diction, this volunteer wanted to help the poor, "but the price they asked me personally was cutting me off from the rest of society, and disallowing the things that had become important to my identity."

Palik also witnessed what he believed was untoward treatment of volunteers. "They have this unbelievable file of every volunteer who's ever signed up with them going back 30 years," the attorney said. "At first, that seemed harmless. But I later found out it's a little bit sinister, because they seem to keep tabs on people."

One woman I spoke with said NatlFed ruined her relationship with her son, who has turned into a Marxism-spouting automaton whom she rarely sees anymore.

"It's going through hell, with lots of blaming myself," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "There's lots of anger, with family members blaming each other. There's anger at him. And there's deep, deep sorrow and depression. I resonated with a woman who said, 'You just have to think of them as dead. To think of them as alive is just so painful.' When a person is dead, you know they're gone ... I cannot think of any other situation that is comparable."

Arthur Elcombe, an Anglican priest who retired with his wife to a Hayes Valley Victorian, presented two distinct faces to the world, both of them gentle, generous, and idealistic. But one of them had a sinister twist.

To most, Elcombe was a tireless community organizer who had founded charities and other public benefit groups. To the world inside NatlFed, he was much more than a mere community organizer. He was the sweet old reverend who had secretly devoted his life to the cause of violent revolution.

"I couldn't believe it," recalls a former core member who asked not to be named. "It was like he was so cute and adorable, and he would talk about overthrowing the government. He was part of the central committee."

According to ex-NatlFed members, Elcombe's San Francisco–based nonprofit, the National Equal Justice Association, has been key to the overall organization because it allowed the group to solicit tax-deductible donations which could later be routed to front groups.

Elcombe died in 2005. His obituary in the San Diego Union noted that "[i]n July 1985, the Rev. Elcombe organized the delivery of relief supplies to a west Philadelphia neighborhood ravaged by fire."

The deeper motive behind the interest in Philadelphia was not charity but opportunism, according to Fahlberg. The fire had been caused when police bombed the headquarters of a radical black power group called MOVE, provoking nationwide liberal outrage. This was a type of opportunity NatlFed was prepared for.

"They had people on the phone full-time from NatlFed headquarters in Brooklyn, making up stories," Davidson said. "They had people cold-calling, and they were notorious for that. If you ever gave a penny, they would never leave you alone."

Fahlberg said NatlFed's leaders saw the bombing as a golden chance to raise money for the cause. "I do know that in New York, they were raising money for our organization, based on the bombing of the MOVE group in Philadelphia," she said. "That money all went right to the national organization."

Fahlberg told me that after leaving NatlFed during the mid-1990s, she contacted law enforcement in Illinois to report her belief that the National Equal Justice Association existed to dupe donors, a practice that, in her mind, was laundering money for a cult.

In my own review of NEJA documents on file with the IRS and the California Registry of Charitable Trusts, I found no evidence that the organization was used to break any laws. However, I did find a very unusual nonprofit that had no discernible public presence; it does not seem to hold public events, and it has no Web site. Yet during the three years of reports to the IRS ending in 2008, the group has attracted more than $500,000 in donations, a pace consistent with previous years. Among those who have made contributions are major corporations: In 2000, when NEJA reported the names of donors on its IRS forms, it declared gifts of $22,500 from Novartis, $27,000 from SmithKline Beecham, and $15,000 from Lipton.

Historically, ex-members and volunteers say, the money has really been raised by a boiler room of NatlFed cold-callers in Brooklyn and through front groups. IRS documents indicate NEJA apparently then gave the money back to NatlFed fronts in the form of grants. Those former insiders say they understood NEJA's role as allowing donors to make tax-deductible gifts that might eventually end up at NatlFed headquarters in New York.

Fahlberg recalled that when she was operations manager of NatlFed's Eastern Farm Workers Association in New York state, she was instructed to ask donors to make checks out to the National Equal Justice Association.

Later, she received a grant check from NEJA, deposited it in the bank, and paid bills for an organizing drive. "Yes, it was money laundering, and that was how they did it," she said. "In my mind, they told supporters that this money they were raising was for a particular purpose, and then the money instead went to support the bills of the national office. They would write a check to one of these other organizations, such as the Eastern Farm Workers Association or the Finger Lakes Equal Justice Association, and then tell them to bring the money back into headquarters to make it look legit."

A former NatlFed assistant to Perente, who didn't want her name published because she doesn't want her former association with the group to become public, said she was also responsible for cashing NEJA checks as part of her work as operations manager of one of the West Coast front groups.

"For the people who were doing really big donations, they were afforded the opportunity to send it to NEJA so they could get the tax break, but then all the money goes to the entities," she said, using NatlFed's term for front groups. "The entities get the check, but they don't keep the money. You're supposed to cash the check, and you send another check to the national office. Or you get the cash, and it's carried to the national office. But you weren't allowed to spend that money, because it wasn't considered yours."

The Chicago ex-volunteer said that he, too, saw transactions involving NEJA that might have skirted the bounds of propriety.

"I've written letters to the IRS saying, by the way, they might be running a money-laundering scam," he said. "When I was a volunteer, they gave me instructions, when I was on the phone soliciting donations, to say, by the way, if someone wants to make a large donation, then you have to make it out to the National Equal Justice Association."

But Sheila Warren, a San Francisco attorney and Golden Gate University adjunct professor who specializes in nonprofit law, said that these transactions do not demonstrate that the organization was violating the law. It would be easy for NEJA to argue that its grants went toward charitable purposes, given that NatlFed's front groups do perform real, socially beneficial work.

"It's certainly unusual, but it's not implausible that they're actually conducting themselves in a manner that complies with the tax laws," she said.

Notwithstanding, it's unlikely that donors and others snared in NEJA's web realize they're involving themselves with an organization that has a stated purpose of overthrowing the U.S. government.

The Reverend Schuyler Rhodes, pastor of Temple United Methodist Church in the Sunset (where I happen to attend), has been on NEJA's board of advisers for five years, a fact I discovered while reporting this article. He was recruited by activist Gail Williamson, NEJA's secretary-treasurer, who subsequently called him every year or so to say, in very general terms, that the group was advancing the cause of equal justice.

Like most volunteers for organizations with apparent links to the National Labor Federation, Rhodes had no inkling of NatlFed's existence, let alone its secret revolutionary goal. "I thought it was a mom-and-pop outfit that did civil rights work," he said. "I certainly don't like being lied to."

When asked whether NEJA had ever donated to a group that was not a NatlFed front, Williamson said she was in a hurry and would call me back. She did not return a subsequent message in which I described the money-laundering allegations.

During Perente's lifetime, his true identity was treated by his organization as a state secret. Paul Rauber reported in a 1984 East Bay Express exposé of the group that Perente once responded to a journalist who revealed he was Gerald Doeden with a menacing, but ultimately baffling diatribe.

"But don't blame it on the cops," Perente told the journalist. "They do it for a living. I started this in '58 —'53, actually; I was born young. Name-calling doesn't do it. Some guy calls him pig, will call you CIA, and some poor bastard will get whacked for it. This is work, dammit."

The odd secrecy continues to this day. It's almost impossible to contact NatlFed. There's no listing of an official headquarters, and efforts to reach Perente's supposed successor, Ribar, were unsuccessful. I was unable to find a number for Ribar, and a known associate of hers — Phyllis Garrett, who was arrested during the 1996 raid in New York — simply told me, "I'm sorry, but there's nobody here who can help you."

Leaders of organizations that seem very much like NatlFed front groups, meanwhile, publicly deny their association with the larger group. However, they share similar protocols for dealing with the press — protocols established by NatlFed, according to investigations by the FBI and other news organizations.

Former volunteer Whitnack has a boilerplate document on handling the media from his days with the group. "It starts off with 'Of course we'll ...' and ends with the journalist having to submit something on letterhead," he said. "Looking back, the document seemed more for internal use — instilling among members that NatlFed is alpha dog over the press."

It may still be official policy, however. When I called two representatives for NatlFed-linked groups, each told me almost identical things — to put my request in writing on SF Weekly's letterhead. I never heard back from them after doing so.

After a month of research, I'm still left with the question: Who are these people? And what is it, really, that they do?

When Whitnack recently wrote on the Physicians Organizing Committee's Yelp page that the group was part of NatlFed, committee member Brian Tseng wrote him a private message via the page. "First of all, POC uses the same method of organizing, systemic organizing, but no, we're not part of the National Labor Federation," he wrote. "You may also note that there are a lot of people who have good things to say about those organizing drives, because they do great work, period."

"Systemic organizing" is NatlFed jargon for methods compiled by Perente during the 1970s in The Essential Organizer, a collection of stapled, photocopied pages ex-members say has been recited as if it were the group's bible.

Although the FBI's investigation did not name the Physicians Organizing Committee as a NatlFed spinoff, it certainly seems to have NatlFed links. Fahlberg says that during her time with the group, she saw documents referring to the committee as a NatlFed entity. A former Perente aide confirmed it was part of the Provisional Communist Party's medical fraction. The Physicians Organizing Committee received a $5,000 grant in 1999 from NEJA, NatlFed's apparent funding arm. In 2005, Geoff Wilson, who was identified as the Physicians Organizing Committee's manager in a Pacific Sun story six years ago, donated more than $20,000 worth of stock to NEJA. And Whitnack, who volunteered with the group in 1984, said he worked alongside Wilson in the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, described in NatlFed's FBI file as a front group.

A few days after speaking with Tseng, I called the Physicians Organizing Committee a second time and left a message saying I wanted to discuss the group's links to NatlFed. Tseng didn't respond, so I visited him in the committee's small 18th-floor office on Sutter Street.

"So is it correct to say you refuse to state whether you are linked to the National Labor Federation?" I asked, after having the door closed in my face twice.

"Look, this is starting to constitute harassment," Tseng said. A young woman at his side added, "We only do interviews with people who submit a letter," and shut the door in my face again.

Academic and Primary Sources of Information on NATLFED

2008-09-04T12:42:00.004-05:00

I am posting the following letter from Robin because she's done some good research in tracking down academic work and primary sources on NATLFED entities.

Rico,

If you feel it is appropriate you are welcom to post the following:

Below is a list of some information sources about Natlfed which I think most people would call neutral viewpoint sources. I put this together as there has been an ongoing dispute over the Natlfed wikipedia article on what sources are neutral. Most firsthand accounts that are available on-line have been dismissed as biased. In addition, information from scholars who are active in writings or groups that oppose and/or expose destructive cults has also been dismissed as biased. Many news articles have been dismissed in the wikipedia discussions as sensationalist. I do not necessarily agree with these characterizations, but none the less think that the following sources should be brought to light as they are written under either academic or journalistic standards, or parts of their content can be argued as objective.

Academic Resources:

“What About Texas? The Forgotten Cause of Antonio Orendain and the Rio Grande Valley Farm Workers 1966-1982”, Timothy Paul Bowman, May 2005, Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History. Available at:

http://www.farmworkermovement.org/essays/essays/Timothy%20Bowman%20Texas%20Essay.pdf

This is a paper that has alot of research behind it. I find it notable in that it does not mention TFWU as ever being part of natlfed and does not mention Gino Perente as ever being an organizer with TFWU.

"The Sociologist Looks at Communit y Organizing, A Field Study with the California Homemakers Association", Joyce Burris Shupe, 1976, Project, Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Sociology, California State University at Sacramento.

If someone has access to databases of university theses and dissertations you can probably get a copy of this. I believe the author is now a professor at Cal State in Sacramento. I emailed her to see if I could get permission to share the dissertation with others and she never replied. Copyright laws prevent me from putting the copy I have on-line. It gives you facts and a flavor of the early days of CHA.

“Families Who Wait for Natlfed Survivors”, Sarah Bollinger, 1996, Supervised by Craig Wolff, Columbia University. Again, I have been unable to contact the author to get permission to share this on-line. In addition, it mentions the names of several families and natlfed cadre so I’m not sure I would even if I could get permission.

“La Causa in the East: Stony Brook University and the Long Island Farmworkers”, Charlotta Beavers, HIS 422 – Dr. Klubock, Spring 2007.

This was shared through the Natlfed Yahoo group by Mitch Cohen who was one of the people interviewed for the paper. I do not have the author’s permission to publish it on-line. It details the history of Stonybrook student's participation in the struggle of farm workers on Long Island and including the beginnings of EFWA as well as the history of the UFWOC boycott. It was also well researched

There are numerous articles in the New York Times during the late 60s and early 70s on UFWOC and farm workers in Long Island. They are perhaps notable in that they do not mention Gino Perente and put other names to acts which Perente claimed credit to. I can provide a list to anyone interested.

There is a site with firsthand participant essays on the work of UFWOC at: http://www.farmworkermovement.org/. There are a number of firsthand accounts of the NYC boycott and work in Texas. They are again notable in that they do not mention Gino Perente or any natlfed cadre.

There are FBI files on Gino Perente and Natlfed available on-line which are notable for what they say about the FBIs involvement or non-involvement and the raid in 1984. The content may not be viewpoint neutral but the fact that they exist and are viewpoint neutral material on what the FBI did and did not do is (in my humble opinion).

Robin Fahlberg

From a Former WSWA Volunteer

2008-08-08T06:14:00.003-05:00

Someone named "Kay" sent in the following note about the Western Service Workers Association. An all too typical story of a volunteer who's trust was abused, I'm afraid, but a nicely written description that is worth sharing.

I was involved with WSWA in Northern Ca recently, and I have first hand knowledge of them being what I would surely consider a cult. Yes, they do actually do some charity in the community, but I can assure you, it is just a front for NATLFED. It's how they recruit members. After a couple meetings with them, they became very manipulative towards me, put more and more pressure on me to buy food for their office, and even volunteer full-time. They mocked my life goals and told me the only way to make a difference was to join them. They even urged me to drop out of college.

I knew that I had to get out before I became sucked in to their cult, but even so, I was still pressured to go to their meetings. After I had resolved myself to leaving for good, I recieved a call from one of the leading volunteers that lasted for 45 minutes, with him continuing to trying to manipulate me into coming back, with a mixture of mockery of my lifestyle, and contempt for other political organiations I was supportive of.

After I had made it clear I wasn't coming back, I felt uneasy for weeks because they had all my personal information. Luckily, nothing ever happened, but I would definitely recommend that people not get involved with this organization.

Natlfed and Money

2008-07-30T12:51:00.003-05:00

Solid contribution from Robin Spellman Fahlberg, presented in its entirety.

Do I fully agree with her evaluation of the entities and their purity of purpose? No.

Worth reading her analysis anyway? Absolutely. Enjoy.

Natlfed and Money

I’ve seen various questions, insinuations, and opinions on sites discussing Natlfed about their finances and handling of money. I thought I would add my two cents in on this subject based on my memories. This information is from the 1979-1994 period, so may be outdated. I would suggest anyone donating to any of the affiliates ask some questions about where the money is going and how those decisions are made. I’ll divide this between the entities and the National Office.

Entities:

None of the entities (E astern Farm Workers, Eastern Service Workers, etc.) that I know of ever had enough money to even cover all expenses. They were always in debt. Even when they would get out of debt, it would only last a short time. In retrospect I suspect the reason is that we were always ordered to do much more than we had the resources to accomplish. There was a general order that whenever a member came in with a benefit request (clothing, food, medical care, etc.) all motion on the floor would stop until it was dealt with. As you can imagine, trying to deal with every need that every low-income member came in the door with will cause an organization to continually spin in place. Add to that the constant orders to canvass, work on this issue, etc., etc.. There was never enough time to really build a base of support for what we thought we were trying to do – build an organization that would provide the resources for low-income workers to organize.

The fundraising plan and the spending of the money that came in was pretty much the sole discretion of the Operations Manager, with varying degrees of involvement by the Political Commissar -- although this always had to be in line with the regular directives from National administration. Usually an Operations Manager tried to operate off some kind of budget that included rent, utilities, car expenses, telephone bills, cadre individual needs, etc.. Money that came in was logged in 2 ways. Checks went on a check receipt runner. Cash went on the Daily Cash Account Sheet. Money out was either logged on the Check register, or the Daily Cash Account Sheet.

Was money mismanaged? I suppose that depends on a person’s point of view. Since it was one or two people’s discretion it probably varied. That in my view is the main problem. There was no oversight or general direction from a Board or other governing body. There was no published accounting so that supporters could decide for themselves whether their money was being well spent or not.

There was one area where I think there is a big question on the management of funds and that is on what was sent to the National administration. The general rule was that 10% of the entity income was supposed to go to national. I don’t know of any entity that ever followed this as no entity ever had the extra money. However, I do know that=2 0we would often send them donated cars, paper, etc.. Large grant donations were also supposed to go to them. The entity I was in never got any large grants so this was never tested, but I do remember one instance where an entity got a large grant from a religious body for a satellite benefits office. The check went to national. They sent back a directive to write the religious body that we would not be accepting the donation because we were against some policy they had. The entity sent the letter and there was a great deal of confusion because national also cashed the check. So, although I don’t know how much of large grants went to national, I know some did. Again, this may have changed as many entities seem now to be getting large grants to buy offices – and many offices have been bought. But, I would be asking many questions before giving them any grants.

National Office

When I knew it, the national office included the apartment buildings on Carroll St. in Brooklyn, a design studio and later the Women’s Press Collective, an apartm ent in lower Manhattan where National Pro was run out of, and a penthouse at 145 W. 55^th St.. As far as I know, the money to run these came from business enterprises, donations from cadre, money from the entities, and money (or other goods) national cadre raised in the name of the entities.

I can only imagine what the expenses were. At one time there were 60 cadre at various national locations. Just to house and feed this many people was a tremendous expense. Then there were rents, car expenses, etc.. A good deal of the food was donated and national cadre made at least 2 runs a week to pick this up. Most of it was donated to the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals on Long Island – or so the donors thought. But, there was also a huge food shopping once a week and daily trips to a local store. Cigarettes must have run into the $1000s each month. I think this made up the bulk of where the money went. From reports some went to feed Gino’s drug habit, pay bribes for people to say Gino was who he said he was, and other obviously unjustified expenses – but I doubt there was much to spare. I remember having some conscience problems with soliciting food for CCMP and then it going to NOC. But, as most I managed to rationalize it. I truly believed we were going to solve all the problems of poor people, and thus it wasn’t really lying to say that was what the people were donating to.

When I first visited NOC, it was only the second floor apartment at 1107 Carroll St.. Natlfed did not own the buildings then but were the Supers. Later Gino told me that we had painted and repaired the first 2 apartments very carefully to get the job as Supers. After that as many corners were cut as possible, including low-cost supplies, while charging the owners the full price. Then there was a court case to get paid which resulted in us getting ownership as payment. I take this with a grain of salt as it was Gino saying it. Later I know we put together a group of investors to buy the whole group of buildings. A sad part of that story includes the investing of an inheritance by an individual cadre. Her parents died and she was an only child so inherited. I remember that right before their deaths and immediately thereafter, she was the recipient of much attention, making regular trips to NOC. She invested the entire inheritance into those buildings.

That brings me to one area of how national got money – through “donations” of cadre. I know of one cadre who signed over an inheritance, and another who was paid for his tenure and donated it. Then there is the letter to MF members in the FBI file where they were solicited for anything of value – as a loan – of course. There was always an effort to get money from any cadre who had assets or income. When I first became a cadre, I remember Gino telling me that the organization did not accept large donations from cadre because we didn’t want this to become a reason for recruitment – obviously a bold-faced lie.

There were several business enterprises the organization ran. When I first started there was a Design Studio. I have no recollection of what happened to that. Then there was the Super job, the law-firm, and I don’t know what other enterprises.

There was a great deal of fundraising through NEJA from NYC and other wealthy donors. This was done through mail solicitations, phone solicitations, and house-meetings in the NYC area. The money was solicited for various projects the entities were running. I can assure you that the entities never saw the money. The rule was that it belonged to who raised it. I’m sure that the donors were not aware of this. I think that the way it came back to NOC was that they wrote a check from NEJA to the entity, and then the entity would transfer that amount of money back to a bank account. The reason I suspect this is that as EFWA Operations Manager I got a $1000 check in the mail from NEJA. I spent it on bills. The next thing I know I got a call telling me to transfer the money to a bank account – and great dismay that it had been spent. Needless to say I never got another check from NEJA. Again, I think that we rationalized this based on what we perceived as the benefit that national provided the entities.

As I said, the entities also sent money or other goods to NOC on occasion. Food and clothing were sent. Cars were sent. Paper was sent. The entities paid NOC for calendars each year as well.

This may be totally out of date. From all recent accounts, the national administration is no longer a top heavy and many in the NYC area are actually running organizations such as CCMP or CCLP out of offices. So, take this with a grain of salt. But, if I were contemplating donating to any Natlfed group – I would be asking a lot of questions.

I feel compelled to go through this one more time...

2008-07-18T05:44:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd bump this up to the top of the blog in case anyone is interested. From the comments section of an article on ESWA.

Cheers.

ANONYMOUS wrote:

I used to volunteer for the one in Philly for about 6 months in '06-'07. Volunteer doctors and dentists reserve a day or two each month of their time and provide their services, open to any member. Being a member was free, and the yearly fee was strictly voluntary.

When I did phone canvassing, I never took any political or religious information, nor ever instructed to. I did take occupation information, which was used for potential volunteering (e.g., in the medical field, could help with the checkups, business owner, could help donate specific type of goods/service, etc.)

At the time I was there, they also achieved some cool stuff outside of the usual food/clothing/health donations, like preventing illegal evictions at the chiefly senior citizen Hawthorne Apts. on 12th and Fitzwater -- something that wouldn't have happened if they didn't do door-to-door canvassing.

However, I did meet one of the heads of the Boston-area group, and he came off as an abrasive, dogmatic jerk. The people in Philly just came off as people who wanted to have people from all strata come together and raise conditions for the working poor, and had minor victories here and there.

July 17, 2008 5:53 PM

I posted the following response:

So I published the above email, even though it is anonymous and even though it was written by someone who is engaging in NATLFED-speak (Really now - using a term like "strata" we know you are either a hardcore NATLFED-member or a geologist. If you are in fact a geologist, my apologies in advance.).

Pretty typical NATLFED dupe-speak. 'I only ever saw them help people', 'sure they are quaint, and a tad quirky, but they are such pure doers of good that i forgive the idiosyncrasies,' and that sort of thing.

Apparently, the postings that preceded Anonymous' post - the anguished cries of parents seeking to reclaim their children from the cult (there are now several strings of postings like this in various places on the blog) - didn't prompt any re-examination of Anonymous' beliefs about ESWA.

So, Dear Readers, make up your own minds. You can go with the journalists, ex-NATLFED cadre, miserable parents, clergy and progressive community leaders who say ESWA and NATLFED is a cult and scam; or you can go with the occasional Anonymous poster, spouting NATLFED-jargon, claiming that the ESWA are just honest, simple people trying to get through life the best they can, while maybe helping out a few downtrodden souls along the way.

Interesting email on CVSA

2008-06-18T13:55:00.006-05:00

Received this from an anonymous emailer. Worth quoting in full. (Also, don't forget to check out the post from Robin Fahlberg in the "Comments" section below.)

Thank you for providing this article. I have been reading about the NATLFED ever since I volunteered for the CVSA a few times. I became very quickly suspicious of them and chose to research them online almost immediately.

I thought they were weird because they were so anti government- a little bit more than any group in America should be. They also repeated the same phrases again and again- which was unusual because the volunteers appeared to be intelligent. There is no point in telling an American that there is starvation in America and that the gas prices are high. Instead of doing valuable work, I was lectured on this for what had to be hours.

These people would repeat the same sentences so many times that it was almost akin to being in grade school detention. Imagine my chagrin when I found out that the CVSA and grade school detention have far more in common than just the repetition.

The older woman who runs the place is nice but she is deeply affiliated with the cult. Apparently she was arrested back in 1996, which would mean that she has dedicated the majority of her life to this sick group. I doubt she could function in the real world at this point. I am curious to learn more about her involvement.

Every person who signs up to volunteer at their table in Union Square or a college career fair has their name, address and profession typed out on an index card- which was bizarre to me because no volunteer group I had ever worked with in the past treats their volunteers in this way or uses so much paperwork.

They also use a social hacking script when they call people- and it was too unusual that a group would find that to be necessary. You have to record whenever you leave a message or whether or not you had a busy signal. The index cards have a lot of useless and invasive information such as what the people do for a living.

They use bizarre vocabulary words like "systemic", and "canvassing." It was all very annoying as if they were using these words to feel more exclusive or special.

What made me the most suspicious of them was how they wanted me to volunteer not only on the weekends for 5 hours minimum (most volunteer groups only need up to 2 hours of your time per week), but during the week immediately after I left work as well. That was not going to happen.

I was to fill out paperwork- and say all sorts of ridiculous sounding things that I know nothing about over the phone. What I was to be doing had nothing to do with the Invest Yourself catalog. I felt like they were just trying to waste my time since I wasn't helping anyone. I also was not helping them with their catalog that is apparently just a front to get money and funds for their shadier organizations.

They took advantage of my willingness to volunteer so that they could further their sick agenda. I had no idea that there were shady people who are so soulless as to use poverty as the bait. UFO cults have more respect from me than these nutjobs- at least their hook is something that you do not see regularly in the street.

As revenge for the attempt to ruin my weekends (and weeks, and etc.), I plan to warn others about this group. Again, thank you for publishing this information on the web.

June 17, 2008 11:45 PM

Air-ball - Advocate Weekly article misses the mark on WMLA

2008-06-16T13:43:00.000-05:00

There is a new article in the Advocate Weekly on Western Massachusetts Labor Action. Let's just say that the reporter didn't uphold the highest journalistic standards. Check out the "comments" section, where some of the big names in NATLFED internet debate - including Jeff Whitnack and Robin Fahlberg - provide a little balance.

http://www.advocateweekly.com/ci_9554281

New article on Eastern Service Workers Association in Boston

2008-04-13T19:12:00.008-05:00

A worthy read on ESWA, from the now defunct studentunderground.com site.

Uncovering the Eastern Service Workers Association
By Nate Leskovic

Fall 2007/Winter 2008

Fall was descending, and as I bundled up and left the Jamaica Plain Harvest Co-op I was greeted with another reminder of the season. “KeySpan made $43 million last year. Do you know how many people in Boston won’t be able to afford heat this winter?”

They told me.

“Are you tired of being burdened by student loans when the companies that provide them make millions?”

Yes!

“Shouldn’t everyone have access to healthcare and the basic necessities of life?”

Of course!

It seemed I was in solidarity with the people at the table on the sidewalk. I read their flyers and chatted some more—and they made sense. They asked me to sign up, which I thought seemed a bit premature. I told them I’d think about it. Then I mentioned I was a writer and thought they might be a good story.

Silence. They turned their back to me. Strange.

They are the Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA), described on their flyer as a “free and voluntary unincorporated membership association joining together service workers, seasonal, temporary, and part-time workers and other low-income workers and their families with students, professionals, homemakers, clergy and business owners to fight to improve living and working conditions.”

According to ESWA, they do not represent workers in negotiation with their employers, but use an 11-Point Benefit Program to “aid members in obtaining what is rightfully theirs in a context that promotes their best interests on all levels.”

During my initial conversation I learned they do not use the Internet, but I decided to check them out online anyways. I wanted to know more, and I sensed something was up. I was immediately inundated by exposes, cult watch lists and a Boston Indymedia thread warning potential recruits to stay away from their “Stalinist” tactics. There was a story here, though perhaps a different one than I initially thought.

For ESWA to have existed in Boston since the 1970s, as they stated, they couldn’t be a complete scam, could they? I did not want to blindly trust the Internet. Unfortunately, what I read claimed they were unreceptive to reporters. Instead of risking a bland interview, some rhetoric and the door, I decided I would volunteer and see firsthand what the group does. I could be seen as a potential recruit, not just someone to impress with public relations tactics.

***

ESWA is a front group for the National Labor Federation (NATLFED). Other ESWA’s exist in cities such as Rochester (NY), Trenton (NJ), and Philadelphia. In addition, there are NATLFED “entities” around the country with different names, such as the Eastern Farm Workers Association, California Homemakers Association, Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals and the Midwest Workers Association. They all basically use the same methods of “strategic organizing,” and they all follow instruction from NATLFED headquarters in Brooklyn.NATLFED began with a man named Gino Perente, whose real name is actually William Doeden. Doeden was a radical, active in San Francisco from the late 1960s through the early 1970s. He organized a group called the Liberation Army of Revolutionary Group Organizations (LARGO) that actually declared war against the state of California in 1970.

After his revolution failed, Doeden disappeared to avoid child support payments and reappeared in 1972 as Gino Perente. He was now in New York, working for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. His stint with Chavez was brief, but with the knowledge gained he founded the Eastern Farm Workers Association in Suffolk County on Long Island. This initial success organizing workers outside of official labor unions still serves as the historical basis for NATLFED’s current activities.

During the 1970s, NATLFED grew and established around 20 entities throughout the country. Under the direction of Perente, it developed a political philosophy based on Marx, Lenin and Stalin and began using a highly structured and centralized power system to ensure control of each entity and its volunteers. The strategy for organizing and recruiting new members is dictated by a copyrighted document compiled in 1973, called “The Essential Organizer.”

NATLFED’s methods never vary from this codified plan. The top leaders of NATLFED in Brooklyn are members of the Provisional Communist Party, which is considered clandestine.
Perente, who died in 1995, was your stereotypical cult leader. Aside from assuming a Latino identity—probably to more easily suggest parallels between him, Chavez and Latin American revolutionaries—he is consistently described as a con-artist, alcoholic, drug addict and sexual predator. He is remembered for delivering rambling speeches late into the night, being constantly surrounded by followers who attended to his needs, as well as abusing his followers mentally, verbally and sometimes physically. In short, he was the stereotypical David Koresh or Jim Jones. In its early history, NATLFED was on a trajectory for revolution and set 1984 for its launch.

Obviously, it never happened. The Brooklyn headquarters was raided by the FBI soon after, followed by some legal problems, but the group survived. They were again raided by the NYPD in 1996, but charges were eventually cleared because of illegal search procedures. It was not a major setback either.

NATLFED is basically harmless in terms of insurrection potential. If discussed at all, the concept of revolution is used mainly to instill a sense of purpose and sincerity among its most hardcore followers. NATLFED is not actively planning rebellion, and would not have the resources to begin.

Since Perente’s death, Margaret Ribar has taken control of NATLFED’s National Office Central in Brooklyn. The power structure has remained intact, the organizing work continues, but observers say the more militant edge provided by the presence of Perente seems to have subsided. NATLFED appears to exist mainly to continue its existence—with a somewhat successful community service mission that never really expands.

I write about NATLFED with a degree of fogginess because of the extreme secrecy inherent in the organization. There is also a pervasive paranoia that limits sources. Jeff Whitnack, former full-time volunteer and author of a 1984 expose, told me at one point he had an entire NATLFED legal team harassing him.

Members were only willing to discuss community service. As a result, description of NATLFED requires a synthesis of writings, recollections from past volunteers who often wish to remain anonymous, and some Internet consensus. Most of these sources describe the more shady side of NATLFED operations—but it does do positive work.

***

Each NATLFED entity sets up what they call a “mutual benefits association” in order to provide services to its members. This is what ESWA does out of their office at 48 Blue Hill Ave. in Roxbury. Benefits distributed include food, dental care, legal advocacy and clothing. They solicit members, local organizations, businesses, lawyers, medical professionals and volunteers to donate services and goods.

I spent three days volunteering with ESWA and took part in some rewarding activity. On my first day, I helped out at a holiday party thrown for its members using donated space in a neighborhood church. I saw families enjoying an enormous meal of donated food, parents grateful to receive donated toys and children dancing to live music and playing with Santa.

During my second day I distributed food. ESWA had secured and sorted items to provide a box or bag for almost 100 families. They had an entire rental truck filled with the goods and I loaded up my car and dropped it off on doorsteps. While I was working, they were able to find a place to stay for a victim of domestic abuse and her child, and got heat turned on for a struggling family.

On my third day I intended to see the advocacy work ESWA was doing for its members, but I soon ended up alone in a room with a full-time volunteer. Surprise! I was being recruited to join ESWA as a full-time, “cadre” member. From my research, I expected this treatment.
ESWA is doing community service work in Boston. Aside from my participation, I spoke with members at the party and they were nothing but grateful. I also spoke with Chris Durkin, Director of Community Relations at Harvest Co-op, and inquired about ESWA recruiting in front of their stores. He sent me even more positive feedback from the community, recommendations he used to justify Harvest’s relationship with ESWA, despite the controversy surrounding it.

However, the service ESWA does is only part of their mission. Some claim it is merely an elaborate NATLFED façade. ESWA and the other NATLFED entities use their benefit program to recruit socially-conscious and charitable young adults into full-time volunteer positions.

***

Former cadre Whitnack believes by maintaining the pretense of the mutual benefit association, NATLFED entities keep their organization alive, retain high profile members and business partners, and appear like a just another service group.

“They have a ton of doctors and lawyers,” says Whitnack. “The bigger fish, they let them have independence. They don’t want to lie to them. It’s all basically flypaper to suck in new members.”

An anonymous, former full-time volunteer who NATLFED convinced to drop out of college about ten years ago – I’ll call him Bob—explained his feelings about this tactic: “It’s my understanding the number one thing they want is not to help poor or increase donations. The number one thing they want is to recruit more members that will allow them to continue their organization, just to keep it going. New organizers come so terribly slowly that they have to reach thousands to get one to be full-time.”

These cadre positions are famous for their 16- to 18-hour work days, demanded seven days a week. The schedule naturally results in loss of contact with family and friends. Recruits are required to quit their jobs and move out of their homes. Cadre do not receive pay and NATLFED provides them with donated food and shelter.

“These are the pushiest people you will ever volunteer for,” warns Bob. “They will take everything that you give them and ask you for more, and if you surrender your independence to them, they will make it very painful for you to reclaim it.”

When Bob became cadre, he was given a memo from NATLFED headquarters. “Participation will only be considered on a full-time basis,” it said. “That means 24 hours/day, 365 days/yr. You may be as religious as you want, but church attendance is not part of the program for professional revolutionary. Visits to close friends/family in the hospital may be permitted on request and with supervision.”

NATLFED recruitment begins with tabling at strategic locations, such as college campuses or summer festivals, or through door-to-door canvassing in low-income neighborhoods. On my first day I participated in a canvass and saw a few people sign up. The pitch is enticing to anyone facing daily hardship or those with a social conscience:

“Too many of us, for too long, have suffered from low-paying jobs with no benefits…We keep finding that minimum wage is our maximum wage…ESWA joins together those who realize that as long as any of us are left behind in poverty, none of us are safe…We know that we need an organization with no strings attached to fight to end our second-class status…ESWA is that organization and invites you to sign-up as a member today!”

To join, you are only asked to pay $0.62 a month! If you can’t afford that (!), you don’t even have to. The fee is symbolic of the hourly wage earned by the first workers organized by Perente. If you agree to join or volunteer, ESWA asks for your phone number. That is what they really want.

Once they have your number, you will continuously receive calls regarding your participation. “Can you volunteer for this event? When are you coming next? Can we set up a more
permanent schedule? We need your help to make a difference!”

***

ESWA refers to this tactic as “arm’s-length systemic organizing,” and it made me extremely thankful to have caller ID on my phone. When I asked about the strategy, they explained they could more easily secure commitments from people by phone. I also discovered getting people within “arm’s length” ensures opportunity for NATLFED philosophy indoctrination.

During my limited time with ESWA, I was constantly bombarded with discussion-less canned rhetoric. The ideas were obviously part of the “party line,” and each cadre used the same lingo and catch phrases. As with the pitch, the orientation and lessons I witnessed were read mostly verbatim from a written text. While talking about potential opponents during one lecture, a full-time volunteer apologized for the language—blaming it on “70s humor”—but still recited, “You better run motherfucker! We’re coming after your mother!”

Another strategy designed specifically to ensnare was the frequent persuading to increase the time you devote to ESWA. Each time I showed up, as well as during each phone call I actually answered, I was always questioned about my participation. Each NATLFED recruit is designated a tabular volunteer or a viable volunteer. This is determined through their analysis of your potential to become full-time, usually done with informal chats and more formal interviews.

Most are set aside as unlikely to become a cadre member, such as those with families and established careers, but people who have neither—like myself at the time—are targeted.

Once you are singled out, cadre members continuously probe you about your opinions on labor issues, economics and politics. As they delicately weave their ideas into the conversation, they challenge you to defend your participation—or lack thereof—in your previous activism.

According to NATLFED cadre, they are the only organization that actually accomplishes anything. They hope you realize you have not been doing enough to make change in this world, and that they have the only effective solution.

“They have the upper hand once they get you in the office,” said Bob. “They try to make you believe there is no plan on the planet that can address the problems of poor people like theirs can…I had a difficult time saying no. When someone says to you, ‘I have given up my job and an ordinary life to pursue the goal of ending world poverty,’ you can’t just look at them in the eye and say no like you can to a salesman…They are genuine, but manipulative to the point that it’s not funny.”

Of course, I was only briefly subjected to these tactics. I had also done my research and could easily spot their subtle techniques. But for someone a bit more naive, a little less confident in their worldview and in a transitional period in their life, I can imagine how the path to full-time NATLFED volunteer unfolds.

The other main technique used to recruit is pure hard work. This involves not only completing the tedious tasks assigned, but continuous busy-work that numbs the mind. By combining a steady stream of rhetoric with never-ending activity, NATLFED attempts to breed pseudo-revolutionary zealot zombies. There was little conversation within ESWA about anything other than ESWA. If you listen constantly to one philosophy, are provided no opportunity to discuss and constantly face a guilt-trip regarding your devotion, you could soon find yourself on the slippery slope towards entrapment.

When distributing food, I chatted with a member I’ll call Joe. He explained that he joined ESWA because he was going through hard times financially and was about to be evicted. Joe hoped ESWA would help and was working hard in return.

“I don’t think they understand the word volunteer. No one ever works enough for them. They keep calling and asking for more,” he said.

Joe told me he had shown up almost every day for the past few months. Except for some food, he hadn’t received much in benefits. “If they don’t find Joe a place to stay, I’m gone,” he said.

During my volunteer time, neither I nor anyone else was ever allowed to be idle. I was sent to the truck more than once to count the number of food boxes inside, when everyone already knew the number. While working at the holiday party I was constantly asked what I was doing and barely had an opportunity to chat with the attendees. In the office I was given paperwork to check and when it was done I had to check it again. I witnessed one cadre member moving swiftly around the office for 15 minutes. However, I saw he was only shuffling the same papers from one binder to another, to a different cabinet, back to another binder, into another cabinet….

***

I was further convinced that their tactics were less than honest when I made my final phone call to ESWA. Phyllis Kornblum, organizing director and one of four full-time cadre, appeared quiet, calm and determined during my volunteer work. She, like the others, was warm, kind, and caring in a somewhat unemotional way. I was expecting some degree of anger when I revealed I was no longer interested in volunteering with the group—and that instead I was planning on writing about them—but I was not prepared for the extreme change in character she displayed.

Nor did I think she would still attempt to recruit me.

I explained to her that I had witnessed some of the community service ESWA does, but that I had spoken with former cadre and done research which led me to believe ESWA—along with NATLFED—was more than just a mutual benefits association. I explained the accusations to her, and I could soon tell she was trained for this situation. Kornblum immediately became hostile and confronted me.

“We’re talking about people whose lives are on the line…If you were really interested and were really concerned, you would spend more time with us…How many canvasses have you been on? How many advocacy sessions have you done?...If you are interested in helping out, I’d be happy to talk with you…What are you doing to help people?”

I reminded her again that I did spend time volunteering, and I saw the good they were doing for the community, but that I wanted to discuss other aspects of the group. Kornblum ignored my request once again and asked me to spend more time volunteering. It was as if she was reading from a script on dealing with anyone who asks too many questions: play the guilt trip; get them to come back; hope they will eventually succumb.

“I know about all the crap that is said about us,” said Kornblum. “It’s from people who aren’t doing jack shit. If you want to take that shit and you want to buy it, go ahead. If you want to talk to real people who are doing things to help others than you can talk to us.”

Along with their recruiting practices, the inherent secrecy and deception of NATLFED raises concern. As my final conversation with Kornblum showed, the cadre of ESWA were unwilling to discuss connections with NATLFED when I asked—let alone any long-term strategies for change beyond the mutual benefits association. They either deflected my questions or gave me some vague, idealistic phrase.

“We’re building a voice to stop poverty conditions,” they said. “Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Communists are all members of ESWA. We’re a collective, organizing for systemic change. We are creating a force to reckon with.”

Why would a group working to improve the lives of the underprivileged withhold their true identity and philosophy from the very people they are organizing to accomplish this? Was this secrecy another form of control?

Former cadre Whitnack sees the leadership as inherently dishonest. “Fidel never lied about his goals,” he says. “NATLFED is not trying to hide from the government, but it is hiding from the public and its own members.”

NATLFED assumes your everyday tabular volunteer has no need to know about revolutionary ideas. In fact it may only serve to alienate them, thereby losing their contributions to the mutual benefits association. However, once a viable volunteer is brought to the full-time cadre level, revealing the secrets and mythical ties to past revolutionary movements NATLFED has could bolster their loyalty. Being an instrumental part of an underground club, especially one that is going to “change the world,” could be very enticing.

“If you never tell people what your real philosophy is until they agree to it,” writes one anonymous former full-time volunteer online, “then you will never have to deal with criticism from people who disagree with you.”

This secrecy also pertains to finances. NATLFED entities are not charities and are therefore not required to report anything publicly. This means no one can have any definitive knowledge of what is donated or distributed. It also means no one knows how much is siphoned off to the cadre, or to NATLFED headquarters.

ESWA has conspicuously stayed under the radar in Boston. For a group that has been in existence since 1977 and claims to have the only proven, effective method of organizing, it has failed to expand beyond its small benefit program. When asked about membership numbers, ESWA can only give a figure of some 20,000 people who have signed up since its inception. They have no idea how many of these are active members.

I did a survey of various neighborhood groups in Boston, such as the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, La Alianza Hispana, the Urban League, Action for Boston Community Development, the Cape Verdean Community UNIDO, and others. The organizations had either no knowledge of ESWA or they had heard limited anecdotes regarding its community service work. City Councilor Chuck Turner knew little and former Councilor Felix Arroyo’s office did not know the group at all. If ESWA was making an impact in Boston’s urban communities, one might suspect they would be better known.

When I asked ESWA what groups they collaborated with, they claimed it was futile to work with or within any existing strategies. Former cadre Bob described their philosophy: “The system cannot be fixed and the only thing you can do is work with us. If you think you know differently, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Perhaps NATLFED desires only enough success to keep itself alive and keep its leaders in power. If NATLFED entities were to enjoy significant accomplishments, it would inevitably result in changes to the power dynamic of its structure. Those who succeed would expect to gain more control over operations, which would dilute the power of the established leadership.

Robin Fahlberg, who volunteered full-time for 14 years beginning in 1979, believes this to be the case. “There is some draw into believing that you are a big revolutionary,” she says. “As long as the methodology never proves you wrong, as long as you never get past step one, you never fail. Here are people who want other people to look at them as if they were gods. It doesn’t matter what they accomplish, as long as they have people following them in admiration.”

Success would ultimately bring NATLFED closer to their purported goal of permanent societal change or—gulp—revolution. Some believe the leadership actually engages in deliberate sabotage to prevent disruption of the status quo.

“I was totally dependent on the national organization for instruction,” says Fahlberg. “As I became more experienced I began to question them, but experienced a lot of mental and verbal abuse. I had to call in to national every night, and if I didn’t do enough or get the right results I would get screamed at…. For one week we would do a canvass campaign. If you kept going on it you could recruit people. Then once it started going, you had to stop and move to a different strategy. There was no continuity in directions.”

“There had to be a party with discipline,” she says. “So you took orders. Eventually they hope you will stop trying or caring, and just accept what comes down from above. After a period of time in a community you should start to build, and that has never happened with any of the NATLFED entities.”

She also described how headquarters would deliberately tell other cadre in her entity conflicting information, essentially pitting one against the other. “At first I thought it was ineffectiveness and bureaucratic problems,” she said. “Then I found out that the whole thing was purposeful.”

This analysis of NATLFED tactics leads to the cult question. What else can you call a self-perpetuating, yet never advancing organization that controls its members through a highly secretive and structured pattern of power? A quick glance at cult watch lists finds NATLFED right up there with the Moonies and the LaRouchies.

But who’s to say one shouldn’t get involved with an organization that does actual community service, however small its impact? Why should one be discouraged from participating if they feel they are helping to make the world a better place?

An anonymous post on Boston Indymedia wrote, “For two years I worked my butt off and was
isolated from my friends and family—but… certainly no harder than the cadre of other organizations who are passionately serious about their agenda. The articles and exposes fail to mention that the Catholic Church has cadre, the Democratic and Republican parties have their cadre who sleep in the office…Stockbrokers work unbelievably long hours.”

The Boston College PULSE Program for Service Learning decided its students should not work with ESWA. Director Dave McMenamin explained that a few students volunteered during the 2004-05 school year, but discontinued their relationship with ESWA the following year.

“I [initially] imposed a condition,” said McMenamin. “If we were going to offer them as a service site, I demanded that [students] would not be pressured for time beyond the time required by our program. I did not want our students canvassing in neighborhoods that weren’t theirs either. They wanted to push the students to canvass. They were asked continually to participate more. They experienced pressure.”

McMenamin mentioned one of his students, who was a local resident, had the sense ESWA did little to benefit the community. “There was just enough to make me wary,” he says. “I didn’t feel like I could trust them.”

Former full-time volunteer Fahlberg says she is still dealing with the effects of NATLFED. Until recently, she had repressed all memories of her time with the group and it took work with a therapist to move on and speak about it. “When I left, even though I knew intellectually that no one would come after me, I still looked over my shoulder,” she says. “The words ‘Communist Party Provisional’ would put me into a physical panic attack.”

Those who oppose NATLFED claim the positives do not outweigh the toll it takes on its volunteers. “Unfortunately it results in burning out people,” says Fahlberg. “They get sucked into a black hole and then they don’t participate in activism even if they get out.”

“I think it’s a real tragedy,” says Whitnack. “The people that join are some of the best humanity has. When you look at all the people and all the years, it does a great harm to the progressive movement and takes away a lot of potential strength.”

“There is a lot to be commended in what they are doing,” says Bob. “But it comes at a cost to the personalities of the volunteers. They need to be crushed to keep the continuance and structure of the organization. I really couldn’t stand it. I just hated my existence and left.”

Chip Berlet, who works for Political Research Associates in Somerville and studies authoritarian movements in the states, also agrees with this analysis: “I continue to feel that the negative aspects [of NATLFED] outweigh the positive aspects. This is a group which continues to misrepresent its history and effectiveness. They never seem to do anything other than parallel the work of existing service organizations, and they have never been able to show seriously that they can provide anything that is different or better. What’s the point? People can be a part of existing effective groups. They are a tiny group with almost no impact and a long history of spending a lot of energy in a relatively nonproductive way. The only point is to continue the existence of a group founded by a charlatan.”

No doubt, ESWA does assist the underprivileged in Boston. You can see it and they will tell you all about it, but there is much more they won’t say.

Author’s note: This piece was written more than a year ago, though never published due to various reasons. While ESWA may have changed its ways since, it is highly doubtful when considering the history of the group. I recently witnessed some of its members outside the J.P. Harvest Co-op spewing their same-old shtick.

Political Cults: Western Service Workers Association Wants You to Stop the Senseless Slaughter of the Uninsured

2008-04-13T19:09:00.002-05:00

Got a good post from a reader on WSWA. Follow the link below and scroll down to the last post.

Political Cults: Western Service Workers Association Wants You to Stop the Senseless Slaughter of the Uninsured

Mailbag: Follow-up Comment from Strident in Sacramento (I presume)

2008-04-04T11:15:00.008-05:00

Got another letter. I think this one is also from Strident in Sacramento (judging from the syntax). That's fine - it saves me from having to come up with another stupid nick-name for the anonymous emailer.

This one starts out with a bang.

Rico: You seem to be a throwback to the 19th Century "Know Nothing" Movement.

I remind you of a nineteenth century political party unified by fears of Catholic immigration? Really? Wow. People have often said to me that I owe my ascendancy to the the collapse of the Whig Party following widespread internal dissatisfaction over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. I could never figure out what they meant...

You throw out scurrilous opinions without really getting to know this organization, its activities, its purposes, its people.

You don't know me. How would you know how much I know about WSWA? Or about the countless activists who've shared their WSWA experiences with me? Or the journalists who have written about WSWA and NATLFED?

Well, wait a minute, I want to be fair. Maybe you have a valid point to make, maybe you have some real information that would put WSWA in a different light, something that would really move our understanding forward...

I don't know them either,

Uhhhh.

but I'm willing to give them a even break.

OK - I am still recovering from "I don't know them either."

I am just going to propose a guideline for future emailers. It is a low standard, but let's see if we can work with it.

In the future, please refrain from sending opinionated, belligerent emails about things that EVEN YOU don't think you know anything about.

Mailbag: March 24, 2008 - Western Service Workers

2008-03-24T08:15:00.004-05:00

If you leave me an "anonymous" post on this blog, I am going to give you a name. And you are probably not going to like it. So, for your own sake, you may want to sign your posts. Thanks.

We just received a letter from an "anonymous" reader, who we will call Strident in Sacramento.
(Here's a link to the original post. Scroll down to find the reader comment.)

Right away, in this letter, I detected a note of criticism.

"maybe it would be better if you didn't comment on things that are more complicated than your scope of current understanding"

Like you, dear readers, I had to reread the sentence a couple of times.

I think Strident in Sacramento meant to say "you should avoid commenting on things you do not understand." But who knows?

Instead we are left to puzzle at the contortions of Strident's first sentence, and wonder whether Strident might have been - at the time of writing this email - agitated, distracted, or perhaps, a chimpanzee.

"you didn't really even check into the organization"

You mean like roach-motel "check-in, never check-out" that sort of thing?

Seriously, I am not a journalist. That's why I post articles written by investigative journalists. And occasionally, I post articles written by journalists duped into thinking some NATLFED entity is legit.

But, since you raised the topic, did you "check into the organization?" Have you seen their books? You do realize that in any legit non-profit, volunteers (and any member of the public) can see clear financial statements of where the money goes, right? When WSWA tells you - as a volunteer - that you can't see their financial statements because they fight the government, that doesn't strike you as odd?

"I hate to tell you, it's a legitimate organization...The reason why we're not a non-profit organization is that we oppose government programs that create economically unstable conditions that make poverty worse. "

I love to tell you... that this excuse for NATLFED/Western Service Workers Association secrecy is not persuasive for anyone outside the NATLFED bubble.

After all, what does filing for non-profit status have to do with government anti-poverty programs?

You are saying that WSWA is scared to maintain financial openness because the government will then target WSWA for persecution?

READER POLL:
Which psychological disorder best characterizes the above statement - paranoia or megalomania? Yes, you can only pick one (that's the challenge).

Anyway, let's say WSWA believes this excuse for financial secrecy vis a vis the government. How then to explain WSWA's unwillingness to open their books to coalition partners in the progressive anti-poverty community? Or to supportive members of the religious community?
Or to its own volunteers?

Same rationale?

"There are plenty of regular volenteers with Western Service Workers Association who can vouch that the organization doesn't meet the criteria for a cult."

Uh huh.

I am just going to assume that if you are volunteering at WSWA, you probably don't realize it is a cult and a scam. If you realized it was a cult and a scam - I am going out on a limb here - you, uh, might stop volunteering there.

So maybe "regular volunteers" is not the full sample of people one ought to be asking. If you include a sprinkle of "former volunteers," "ripped-off donors" and "wary progressive activists" you would get a fuller picture, wouldn't you say?

Great research from a concerned citizen

2007-09-18T12:48:00.000-05:00

Received the following in my Inbox. Great research from a resourceful NATLFED-watcher.

My stomach turned as I compiled this list, typing permutations of "Service Workers Association" and "grant" into the search engine.

The listed grants below account for $287,500 of big-ticket grants from private foundations to NATLFED entities since 2001.

While those people who have run into a NATLFED-affiliate know that they are vocal about accepting no money from the government and accepting only private donations "with no strings attached," it is less well-known that entities compete for grants from private foundations.

The foundation grant offices are probably impressed by the all-volunteer nature of the fronts, and by the seeming beneficence of the benefit programs. They probably don't know that the various "Workers Associations" are part of a nationwide network to recruit and indoctrinate "professional revolutionaries." They probably don't know what fraction of their money is spent locally and what fraction is sent to headquarters. They probably don't know if their grants will actually expand the service programs they were intended to support. And, unless they're on the inside, the grant officers have never seen a balance sheet for the organizations they are supporting, and they probably never will.

Type "Eastern Farm Workers Association grant" into your favorite search engine and find out who some of the big-ticket private supporters of the NATLFED organizations are.

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientsoffunder.php?funderID=29
The John Templeton Foundation gave $6000 to CVSA in 2004 and $6000 in 2005.

http://www.hhf.org/grants.html
The Halcyon Hill Foundation gave $20,000 to ESWA in 2005-2006

http://www.dmjf.org/annual_2004_full.htm
The Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation gave $50,000 to ESWA Rochester in 2004

http://www.isba.org/ibf/grants05.htm
The Illinois Bar foundation gave $7,000 to the Midwest Workers Association
in 2002, and $5,000 in 2003, 2004, and 2005, but nothing in 2006-2007.

www.usbank.com/about/community_relations/pdf/2004StateGrantLists.pdf
U.S. Bancorp Foundation in 2004 gave $(?) to WSWA

http://www.pcusa.org/sdop/downloads/sdopgrantlist2005.pdf
Presbyterian church USA gave $20,000 to ESWA Rochester in 2005

http://slw.org/2007%20Ministry%20Grant%20Awards.htm
Sisters of the Living Word gave $1,000 to Midwest Workers Association in 2007

http://www.dioceselongisland.org/episcopalcharities/Supporting%20Documents/June%202002%20Newsletter.PDF.
The Episcopal Charities Appeal of the Diocese of Long Island
gave $10,000 to EFWA LI in 2002

http://www.licf.org/resources/downloads/grants/liuu_2004.pdf.
The Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund gave $12,500 to EFWA in 2004.

http://www.giffordfd.org/Default.aspx?tabid=559
www.giffordfd.org/Portals/25/PDF/2006%20Annual%20Report.pdf
The Gifford Foundation gave $10,000 to EFWA in 2006

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/grants/content/reports/pdfs/annual2003.pdf.
Parish of Trinity Church in New York $30,000 to EFWA over two years 2003-2004.

https://www.pcusa.org/sdop/projects/usa_west.htm
The Presbyterian Committee on the self-development of people
gave $100,000 to WFWA Hillsboro in 2001.

This is creepy...

2007-09-10T11:33:00.000-05:00

There's a new, pro-NATLFED site on the web. Here's the address: http://www.whatisnatlfed.com

The author is someone who:
1. claims to be neutral, neither pro- nor anti-NATLFED; but
2. parrots the traditional, pro-NATLFED line that "the cult label" is somehow misleading; and
3. interestingly, for someone who claims to be neutral, signs on to edit the wiki site with the self-chosen moniker of (you guessed it) "natlfed". Isn't that like someone with the email address of GoYankees@email.com claiming to be neutral on the issue of Yankees fandom?

I am guessing this is the same knee-jerk NATLFED apologist, also operating with the sign-on name of "natlfed," that used to haunt the yahoogroup discussions held by former cadre.

"Natlfed" claims that she is not actual current cadre (but who knows?). I can't figure out the angle - lots of people hate NATLFED for hurting them or hurting their relatives, but who (besides cadre) would have the motivation to put together a pro-NATLFED web site? Mysterious.

National Equal Justice Association: Money-Laundering, NATLFED-Style

2007-04-16T15:20:00.000-05:00

I am indebted to the emailer who sent me the following information.

In case you didn't know about NATLFED's money laundering arm, the National Equal Justice Association (headed by the late father Arthur Elcombe, Barbara Elcombe, and Gail Williamson) accepts tax-deductible donations form individuals and distributes them to natlfed entities. They handle about $250 000 per year. Their financial statements for 2003-2005 can be found at
http://www.guidestar.org/pqShowGsReport.do?partner=
guidestar&npoId=564715

The information checks out. All the grants from the NEJA went to NATLFED entities, to the tune of about a quarter of a million annually.

So there you have it. A single NATLFED entity that operates as a registered non-profit 501(c)3 organization, and its sole function is to collect funds from people who will give only to a registered non-profit (perhaps for tax reasons) and redistribute the funds to NATLFED entities that maintain no such similar levels of financial openness and accountability.

Going Way Back: East Hampton Star Starts to Scratch the Surface of EFWA Mystery in the Late 1980s

2007-04-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

Opinion Sharply Split On Farm Organization

by Uri Berliner
East Hampton Star, 8/28/86

According to organizers and backers of the Eastern Farm Workers Association, it is a grass roots, self-help organization that reaches out to the poor and disenfranchised of Suffolk County--black and Hispanic migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, domestics and home health aides--at a time of government retrenchment and social conservatism. In the view of its critics, many of whom also work closely with farmworkers, the group is at best a mystery and at worst a political front that does little or nothing for the people it claims to help and whose activities are highly suspicious.

Wherever the truth lies, the presence of the Eastern Farm Workers Association on the South Fork is increasing. It has recruited several notable artists to donate works for a Sept. 20 fundraising auction in Bridgehampton. Its volunteers also have been canvassing largely black areas of East Hampton for new members and have solicited for money and have distributed literature in front of supermarkets.

Founded in 1972, the Association is neither a labor union nor a charity, but rather a "mutual benefits association" with offices in Riverhead and Bellport, said Diane Ramirez, the arena operations manager who has been with the group since its inception. She claims it has upwards of 6,000 members who receive food, clothing, job referrals, and free or reduced-price medical care.

Recent Friends

Critics challenge the group's membership claims. Labor Department figures showed a total of 1,680 migrant or seasonal workers in the County last year at harvest time.

"We're looking in the Hamptons for anyone who falls within the economic bracket of farmworker, who has no access to trade unions for better wages or working conditions," said Ms. Ramirez.

The Association also has directed its efforts at a more affluent and politically influential sector of the community. Among the artists who donated works for auction at the Bridgehampton Community House are Bill King of East Hampton, Robert Dash of Sagaponack, and Willem and Elaine de Kooning of Springs. George Plimpton is cited in the organizations monthly newsletter as "a recent friend of the organizing drive."

Several "recent friends" of the group say they want to do something for the very poor but admit to being in the dark about how the Association operates.

"They're filling a need so I give them $100 a few times a year," said Mr. King. "Whether they're on the up-and-up I don't know, but it doesn't seem like anyone else is doing anything."

Dallas Ernst, the wife of the late artist Jimmy Ernst, also was approached. "They come on very strong in front of the IGA or Supersaver, and they've gotten a good response from people of social conscience. I asked where are the farmworkers? but they assured me they're around.

Support and Questions

"It sounds to me like they're doing the same kind of thing as the fishermen's group," said Mr. Plimpton, referring to the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association. He said he had not contributed but agreed to help organize the auction because "they seem to have a solid footing on things."

Charles Randall, who has been with the County's Migrant Health Program since 1975, has the same questions about the Association as he did his first day of work.

"Are they an open organization or a closed one? Are they providing services for migrants? What do they do with their money and why don't they release financial statements? Before you put down your dollar, get a clear idea of what they're about," he said. He claimed that in his tenure neither he nor any of his outreach workers had encountered any EFWA people at any of the 43 registered or 15 unregistered camps in the County. "Many times I ask migrants, have you seen Eastern Farm Workers? Have they helped you? The answer is always no."

To these charges, Ms. Ramirez said: "I'm floored. We've referred so many people to the County health clinic. But I imagine our members wouldn't tell the County they belong to Eastern Farm Workers."

Open Record

When asked about the group's finances, she said its annual reports and books are "open to the people who participate in our organization. Anyone who does fundraising has regular debriefing sessions." Because the Association is not registered with the Internal Revenue Service or the State as a non-profit tax-exempt corporation it is not required to file financial information with either the Federal or State Governments. Ms. Ramirez said the group chose not to seek non-profit status "in order to create the kind of organization that suits us. I don't think the government is sympathetic to attempts to organize poor people."

In a similar vein, Ms. Ramirez declined to release the names of any doctors or lawyers who volunteer their services because "the principle of a mutual benefits association is based on privacy."

In the labor camps in and around Bridgehampton, the Eastern Farm Workers group remains something of an enigma.

"I hear a lot of words but I don't see them do anything," said Micki Chandler, who, with her in-laws, runs the Gil Feinberg farm camp on Wainscott Harbor Road. Rather than providing help for farmworkers, the group comes around occasionally "wanting us to do something for them. Last week we gave them 100 pounds of potatoes."

The group's membership, she contended, comes from the welfare rolls rather than from the migrant camps. "The guys here usually stay away from them.. And they call themselves a farmworker's group. It makes me think it's a front for something."

New Direction

At the Baldwin State camp on Foster Avenue in Bridgehampton, a group of farmworkers back from grading potatoes were asked about the Association. None were members and none had received any benefits from the group. One woman who asked not to be named said she had seen EFWA organizers last week soliciting money in front of the King Kullen supermarket in Bridgehampton.

"If you want something from them you have to go to Riverhead. But I don't know anyone who does. County Migrant Health gives most of the medical help. I really couldn't say anything about Eastern Farm Workers."

As the number of migrants working in the South Fork potato harvest declines due to real estate development, Eastern Farm Workers had directed more of its attention to Hispanic nursery workers and grape harvesters on the North Fork and in central Suffolk, said Frances Moulder, an organizer in the Riverhead office.

"We're trying to organize the unrecognized worker. Anyone not protected by the dubious benefits of the Federal labor laws."

But because the Association is not registered with the Labor Department as a bona fide labor union it is prohibited from organizing employees in labor disputes about pay or working conditions.

For the Poor

According to organizers and the group's literature, it recruits poor people who then serve the organization in the following way: A member signs a lifelong authorization and pays voluntary dues of 62 cents per month (the average hourly wage of a farmworker in 1972), and in return he or she is entitled to emergency food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal advice, child care, and job referrals.

Members then participate in door-to-door recruitment in poor neighborhoods and in fundraising drives or other activities such as jail visits. Should volunteers decide to work full- time, "they may ask to function in another role or location," says the group's information calendar. A volunteer can be asked to leave the group for "independent revisionism."

What makes Eastern Farm Workers different from charitable organizations or government assistance programs, say its organizers, is that it is a self-help group whose members benefit by joining.

Jaded View

The literature stresses the idea of volunteerism. One flyer depicts a grizzled black man, index finger pointed in the manner of an Uncle Sam poster, with a caption below: "EFWA Needs You."

In the view of Lawrence Stewart of Westhampton Beach, who was the coordinator of the County Migrant Affairs office for 12 years until he was forced off the job by injury in July, the full-time volunteers of EFWA are not farmworkers but rather "poverty pimps" who hustle off the system, and well-intentioned contributors.

"There are no migrant or seasonal workers receiving benefits from Eastern Farm Workers that I know of. At least not in the last five or ten years in the camps I worked with," Mr. Stewart said. He added he had heard of one migrant worker who joined EFWA and was asked to resign when he asked to see a financial statement.

He claimed the Association "tried to shove people through my office who were not farmworkers. They were on social services. It's bullshit what they do. They're just helping themselves develop a cadre they can use for their political purposes.

He said other organizations in Suffolk designed to help the poor such as Catholic Charities and the Council of Churches communicate regularly with the County and are open to public scrutiny, but said Eastern Farmworkers has been consistently evasive.

Had Run-Ins

"They run when they see me," he said. "I'm willing to talk to these individuals in front of the people they're seeking money from. People of conscience can be misled when an agenda is not presented in a straightforward manner. Let's get records of the so-called migrants they're helping. Let's find out what the salaries of their officers are and how much they collect in front of supermarkets."

None of its members receives salaries, according to an EFWA flyer. Contributions go toward office rent, supplies, utilities, and transportation, while medical and legal services, food, and clothing are all donated, said Ms. Ramirez.

She said the group has had run-ins with Mr. Stewart and was once sued by the Justice Department after he made allegations that EFWA officials were pocketing membership dues. In the suit, which the Association eventually won, said Ms. Ramirez, the Justice Department tried unsuccessfully to force the organization to register as a labor union.

Committed and Positive

There are others who believe the work of Eastern Farm Workers is vital and worthwhile. "This is a very committed and positive group," said Angel Campos, the acting dean of the School of Social Work at the State University of Stony Brook. "They are part of the grass roots approach to social work that started with the settlement house movement in Chicago." Mr. Campos added that EFWA recruits regularly on campus and last year enlisted six students in his "social work practice" class as volunteers.

Denyse Reid, a summer resident of Egypt Lane, East Hampton, said she volunteered to work with the Association a month ago after she was approached in front of a supermarket. An environmental commissioner in Princeton, N.J., she said she found the group's platform compelling. "In the environmental field you have very little face-to-face contact with people." With EFWA she makes weekly visits to the County jail in Riverhead to help prisoners get legal or medical assistance. Also, she has participated in canvasses of the predominantly black area in and around Town Lane and Morris Park Lane in East Hampton.

The Star made several requests to observe the canvassing process but each time was told it would not be possible unless this reporter first volunteered as a member.

National Labor Federation

Ms. Ramirez, while noting the policy was adopted to ensure confidentiality, conceded the group has had a troublesome time with the press. She claimed unfavorable publicity had hurt the group and since then it has preferred to work quietly without calling attention to itself.

According to Ms. Moulder the leadership structure of the group is associated with, though independent of, an entity called the National Labor Federation. Though volunteers and brochures claim the National Labor Federation has 41 autonomous affiliates and 635,000 members, it has no telephone listing for its headquarters in New York, nor is it registered as a union or a non-profit corporation.

Although he has kept files on activities of EFWA, Mr. Stewart said he has never heard of the National Labor Federation. Neither has Mr. Dominguez or others in the labor movement.

On Friday, at a "solidarity" dinner given by Eastern Farmworkers for its members at the Lutheran Church in Hampton Bays, a woman named Viola Mitchell was introduced as the head of the National Labor Federation. She arrived late in the evening and made a brief speech about the importance of canvassing and the need to increase membership.

No Political Agenda

After working with an organization called Service Workers of California she said she is "now based in Suffolk," although she did not say where.

She claimed the National Labor Federation had no political ideology or agenda other than "ending the condition that causes poverty." When asked how this was being accomplished she said reporters were welcome to join if they wished to find out more about the National Labor Federation.

About 75 persons came to EFWA's solidarity dinner and ate fried chicken and potato salad, and listened to speeches and the music of Jim Chapin and the Hamptones.

It was a multi-racial group, though predominantly black, with a sprinkling of young Hispanic men. Many in attendance said they were ex-farmworkers who now devote much of their time to organizing. Several volunteers said they recently received medical care through EFWA.

There was Martha Brown, who used to pick string beans, she said, until the bunions on her feet hurt too much. She said she received a free operation on her foot through the efforts of the Association. Until recently, Willis Allen said he worked up and down Suffolk County during potato harvest until he could no long find work. Now, he said, he devotes several days a week to the group, "trying to make a change, trying to help all poor people not making enough money."

Arthur Herron said he is a former crew leader "over in Mattituck and Bridgehampton" who came to the dinner to show his support. "The group will give you something to do every Friday and Saturday. I think they're doing a good job."

None of the persons interviewed at Friday's dinner was presently employed as a migrant or seasonal farmworker. Ms. Moulder said the workers are often too worn out from the days' work to participate in the group's activities, especially if they must travel long distances. Others, she said, have lost jobs due to changes in agriculture.

Mr. Stewart said for years EFWA has had a "cadre" of chronically unemployed followers who are signed into the group as full-time volunteers. "It's like some kind of cult."

Skepticism Expressed

Others who work with farmworkers, though not as vociferous in their criticism of EFWA as Mr. Stewart are skeptical of its effectiveness.

Wayne Cavaliere, coordinator of the Catholic Charities office in Bridgehampton: "I know they exist but I don't know what they do. From time to time people call us up and ask who they are and who runs the show. I can't tell them much." Catholic Charities has a lunch program, job referral, alcoholism counseling, and other services for migrants.

At Rural New York in Riverhead, a Federally-funded group that refers farmworkers for employment training, a spokeswoman said she knew little about Eastern Farm Workers even though its office is only a few blocks away. "We don't come in contact with them to know what they are doing," she said.

Angel Dominguez, a representative of the Farmworkers Support Committee in New Jersey, a group that organizes Hispanic workers in that State and Pennsylvania, said he has seen EFWA literature sporadically.

"It all sounds good on paper, but I don't know what they do. They once claimed to have an office in New Jersey. I checked and they didn't." Mr. Ramirez said EFWA has never had a New Jersey office. There are about a half a dozen unions that organize farmworkers, including United Farmworkers of California, and all share information regularly, said Mr. Dominguez. About the workings of the Association he said he was stumped and would "like to learn more."

Lucille Perlman of Southampton, who is lending a hand in the South Fork recruiting drive, disagreed: "If many of the members are not working on the farms it could be there is not enough work to go around. It seems altogether legitimate to help this large, depressed group of people whether they are working or not."

Organizers' Roles

It is undeniable that the organizers of Eastern Farm Workers are highly committed. Ms. Ramirez said she had remained with the group through difficult times "because I want to see it work." Brought up in a middle-class environment in Michigan, she said she began organizing farmworkers in Texas in the early 1960's and also became involved in the civil rights movement.

Ms. Moulder, a former Rutgers professor with a Ph.D. in sociology, said she joined the group five years ago and before that organized service workers in New Jersey. "I've been a union member and I've worked on farms," she said.

The Association was founded as an offshoot of Cesar Chavez's United Farmworkers under the direction of a leader named Eugenio Perente. Mr. Perente apparently left that union in bad standing after a dispute over policy. In a Newsday article about Eastern Farm Workers in 1976, a spokesman for Mr. Chavez's group said he was "a long way from being sure they're a responsible labor organization." Although he is no longer with EFWA, Mr. Perente is cited in the group's newspaper as an organization specialist with the National Labor Federation.

Good Work Cited

Whatever else is said the group has shown a talent for survival and persistence. Much about it still remains cloaked in mystery. It has "affiliates" called the Long Island Equal Justice Committee and the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, but because EFWA officials decline to release the names of its volunteer doctors, nurses, or lawyers it is impossible to describe the services they allegedly provide. Ms. Ramirez was asked yesterday if she could provide data on how many members received food or clothing but did not return a phone call.

The National Labor Federation, which boasts a membership of over half a million members, has no listed phone number of representative available to the press.

Yet many who have donated time or money to Eastern Farm Workers say these questions pale in comparison to the good the group does for those who might otherwise fall between society's cracks.

Going Way Back: Three Weeks Later, East Hampton Star Paints the Full Picture of EFWA

2007-04-16T15:09:00.000-05:00

Labor Group: Saga of a Cult

by Uri Berliner
East Hampton Star, 9/18/86

On Saturday in Bridgehampton the controversial Eastern Farm Workers Association will profit from an auction of art donated by esteemed painters and sculptors including Elaine and Willem de Kooning and William King. In the view of a wide range of academics, journalists, clergy, and former members interviewed by the Star, the proceeds will not benefit the migrant poor so much as a shadowy cult-like entity whose inner circle talks of imminent world revolution and keeps unknowing volunteers in the dark about the group's true aims.

In an article in the Star several weeks ago, critics of the Farm Workers disputed the group's membership figures (upwards of 6,000), countered claims that it provides medical services and legal assistance to farmworkers, and criticized its refusal to release financial statements. It was also noted that the group is one of 41 "mutual benefit associations" of the National Labor Federation, an organization boasting 635,000 members which reputedly represents the disenfranchised and chronically poor.

Last month, a woman named Viola Mitchell was introduced at a Farm Workers' dinner as the director of the National Labor Federation. She said the organization's goal was to "end the conditions that cause poverty," but refused to answer any other questions from the press, declaring that they were welcome to learn more if they first volunteered to work for the organization.

Declared Revolution

The National Labor Federation was founded in 1972 by a charismatic former Shakespearean actor named Eugenio Perente and it has been tightly under his control ever since. A 1972 article in the Star on the formation of the Eastern Farmworkers quotes one source describing Mr. Perente's "deep, dark eyes that pierced across the room as he talked about the passion and death of the seasonal farmworker on Long Island."

Born Gerald Doeden, Mr. Perente grew up in northern California and was involved in Bay Area radical politics in the 1960s. Out of his Little Red Bookstore in San Francisco he organized a brigade called the Liberation Army Revolutionary Group, which threatened widespread death and destruction and once declared war against the State of California. In one flyer, Mr. Perente announced "All citizens are hereby notified that a state of Revolution shall begin as of March 15, 1970." No attacks were carried out, but, according to those who have followed his career, Mr. Perente has been threatening mass upheavals on the Ides of March ever since.

LaRouche?

After the brigade fizzled out, Mr Perente, claiming to be a Mexican-American and concealing his Norwegian-American parentage, worked in some capacity for Cesar Chavez's United Farmworkers. He left that group in bad standing over an apparent policy dispute.

In 1973, according to an article in Public Eye, a political journal published by the National Lawyers Guild, Mr. Perente became involved in a Lyndon LaRouche front group in Philadelphia called the National Unemployed and Welfare Rights Organization. Like the National Labor Federation, it claimed to represent the dispossessed.

Mr. LaRouche, formerly an avowed Marxist, has in the past decade shifted dramatically to the right, denouncing Walter Mondale as a KGB agent, Queen Elizabeth as a drug smuggler, and most recently forcing a Statewide ballot proposition in California which would mandate quarantine for all persons who test positive for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Mr. LaRouche's finances and visibility have grown considerably in recent years and one of his candidates won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in Illinois last spring.

Committed Followers

Mr. Perente, meanwhile, is apparently living in relative poverty and obscurity at 1107 Carroll Street in Brooklyn, at headquarters nicknamed "The Cave." His National Labor Federation has had success in recruiting scores of college students, professors, and others to work as organizers. Many devote practically every waking hour to the group's inner circle, called the Communist Party Provisional Wing, although it has no connection to the American Communist Party.

On Feb. 17, 1984, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, apparently under the impression that the National Labor Federation was a terrorist unit, raided the Cave looking for weapons. None were found, but the group's files were seized. The raid received little media attention in New York.

Ten days later, Public Eye, while condemning the raid as unconstitutional, distributed a press release claiming the National Labor Federation and Mr. LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee systematically "bilked millions from unsuspecting contributors; and use psychologically manipulative techniques to enforce the loyalty of their members."

Dire Warning

The statement said both organizations had "the potential for disintegrating into armed violence, or a situation similar to that which led to the tragic mass suicide at the People's Temple in Jonestown."

The former Public Eye editor, Chip Berlet, asked to assess the recent history of both groups in an interview last week, said while Mr. LaRouche had become a powerful force, the National Labor Federation was, in his opinion, basically harmless, except for the toll it exacts on its members. As for links between the two groups, Mr. Berlet, who now directs a research group that monitors racist and extremist organizations, said there were some in the 1970s but those appear to have faded.

Dennis King, a freelance journalist who has written about cults and the LaRouche movement for New Republic magazine, said there may still be some trading of information between Mr. Perente and Mr. LaRouche, however, although nothing substantial.

Small Potatoes

He claimed that in 1980 Mr. LaRouche attended a "Communist Party Provisional Wing meeting in California" under the code name Frank, at which he was reported to have spoken about "Fascist organizing techniques."

Still, Mr. King considers the Perente group "small potatoes, like the little Jesus cults." He alleged its members live in a fantasy world where their own importance is blown totally out of proportion.

He compared Mr. Perente to the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Possessed, a brilliant anarchist who recruits six university disciples by making them believe they are capable of organizing a mass revolution.

Cult Strategy

Reg Oliver, the executive director of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network, said his group lists the National Labor Federation as a cult because it employs "classic techniques" used by religious sects such as the Moonies and the Hare Krishna movement.

"Psychological manipulation is essential," said Mr. Oliver. "They use deception to keep members unaware of true goals. Information is purposefully withheld. Under the guise of having a mission they create an authoritarian environment laced with mythical jargon. The purity of their doctrine is under attack by an evil outside world. There are indications of protein deprivation, according to our files," he said.

"Just like the Moonies, but without religion," is how an FBI agent described the group after the raid to Priscilla Cates, the former national director of the Cult Awareness Network.

The most disturbing aspect of life for members of the Federation, Mr. Oliver maintained, is the total absence of privacy. "There is constant intrusion and they split people away from family and friends."

Many Supporters

On the East End, where Eastern Farmworkers does grass roots organizing, it is difficult to gauge Mr. Oliver's allegations. The group has many educated and affluent supporters who say it is the single organization doing the most in this area for the truly needy.

The response to the auction has been generous, with works being offered as well by Robert Dash and other artists. George Plimpton, Robert Gwathmey, Helena Curtis, East Hampton Town Supervisor Judith Hope, and East End County Legislator Tony Bullock are listed as sponsors. In response to the Star's first article, two Southampton residents, Lucille Perlman and Nell Greenfield, wrote letters supporting the organization's work.

Stony Brook Connection

The organization also has had a long-standing relationship with the Social Welfare School at the State University at Stony Brook. The acting dean, Angel Campos, said in an interview last month that six of his student volunteered to work for the group, which he lauded as upholding the "grass roots approach to social work that started with the settlement house movement in Chicago."

Another professor at the Stony Brook School of Social Welfare, Lynne Soine, said the School is supportive of the Farmworkers, although field placements of students have ceased because of inadequate supervision. "There's no serious disagreement," she said. "They're providing assistance to the most oppressed part of the population."

Officials from the County Health Department's Office of Migrant Affairs say they have never encountered Farm Workers organizers in migrant camps, nor have they talked to any migrant workers who have received medical care through its benefits program. Association volunteers and supporters have disputed these charges. Ms. Greenfield's letter, in this issue, is on medical services to children.

Dispute Over Services

The Eastern Farm Workers dinner in Hampton Bays last month drew a largely black and Hispanic crowd of about 75 or 80. Many of those in attendance said they had received assistance through the organization, but none of over a dozen persons interviewed was presently employed as a farmworker.

Professor Richard Cloward of the Columbia University School of Social Work, a specialist in grass roots organizing, said while the group "may do a certain amount of advocacy and health care work, they're not what they say they are. This is largely an underground group." He called the Stony Brook administration "politically naive" not to probe deeply enough to understand the "organization's clandestine elements."

Missing Links

The links between Eastern Farm Workers, which has its offices in Bellport and Riverhead, and the National Labor Federation, are not explicitly explained by organizers. For example, a person handed a flyer in front of an East Hampton supermarket might read about migrant health problems but would have no idea of Mr. Perente's existence or his thoughts on world revolution.

Diane Ramirez is the "arena operations manager" for Eastern Farm Workers and has been a full-time organizer since 1972. Frances Moulder is former sociology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who has been with the group for half a dozen years. They are the two most visible and verbal representatives of the group in the County. When interviewed for the Star's first article neither would openly discuss the National Labor Federation. This reporter, after numerous inquiries, was told for more information he should write to "Dear Sir" at an address he was provided. No telephone number was offered.

Who Gets The Mail?

Nor does the invitation for the art auction make mention of the National Labor Federation. The reply card seeking donations of $10 to $500 lists an entity called the National Equal Justice Association on the return envelope, with a Cadman Plaza Station Post Office box in Brooklyn as an address. EFWA has its offices in Bellport and Riverhead.

One mailing address for the National Labor Federation is also at Cadman Plaza Station, but at a different PO box. The allegations that the organization might intend to use the proceeds, or part of them, to increase the cash flow of Mr. Perente's inner circle could not be checked with Eastern Farm Workers organizers. They did not return phone calls this week. A message left with the National Labor Federation answering service also went unreturned.

Eastern Farm Workers does appear secretive about its finances even with supporters and potential contributors. It is not registered as tax exempt with the State Attorney General's Office or with the Internal Revenue Service and it is not listed as a labor organization with the Federal Justice Department. Last month Ms. Ramirez claimed this was because the group wanted the freedom to "create the type of organization that suits us. I don't think the Government is sympathetic to organize poor people."

Attorney Got Calls

A prominent New York Attorney with a house in East Hampton who has aided in previous fundraising drives said he had received occasional mysterious, urgent appeals from Ms. Ramirez for large sums of money.

"She called and said there was trouble with a rent strike in Brooklyn," said the attorney. "I didn't know what Eastern Farmworkers had to do with Brooklyn."

"It seemed the money that was supposed to be held in escrow by one of the Eastern Farm Workers' lawyers was placed in the wrong account and they bounced the tenants' check. Ramirez asked if I could come up with $20,000 overnight." He did not.

Another time, he said his sister also a supporter of fundraising efforts, received a call seeking $25,000 overnight so that the group could post a bond because it wanted to buy its headquarters in Riverhead.

Party Hierarchy

Although the Communist Party Provisional Wing has no known ties to the small American Communist Party or to the Soviet Union, Mr. Perente considers himself a strict disciple of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.

The bureaucratic organizing techniques are based on the Stalinist model, according to Public Eye. In the outer layer are the members, scattered groups of poor people who are asked to pay 62 cents a month in dues. Next are volunteers, who participate in clothing drives and canvasses of poor neighborhoods.

If volunteers appear promising and respond positively to revolutionary tidbits they may be invited to join "the unit." In the unit there are two levels of "cadre," the first called tabular or blank. A volunteer is blank until making a full-time commitment. After this plunge, he or she is considered cadre "viable."

An example of the organizing strategy can be found in the "Best of the National Labor Federation" calendar.

The viable cadre can at anytime be asked to function in another role or location, the calendar says. "The Federation may also suborn viable volunteers' especially needed skills, and any grouping may nominate a viable volunteer to Federation status, subject to consensus of the existing body . . . or consensus from the nominating loco."

A Volunteer's Story

One who was evidently considered an "independent revisionist" is Mr. Whitnack. While there have been no documented reports of violence against volunteers who try to leave, members live with that fear, Mr. Whitnack wrote for Public Eye in 1984.

"The stick is the physical harm threatened to anyone who would challenge or leave the Provisional Party. . . . Many ex-members go underground and fear for their personal safety." The author himself said he received a direct threat when the Oakland leader warned him, "Whatever you have, you'll lose it." The Provisional Party kept voluminous files not only on its members but on anyone considered a potential enemy, Mr. Whitnack alleged.

Mr. Whitnack, a respiratory therapist who lives in California, said he endured a two-month stint with a National Labor Federation front group in 1981. He had joined the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals in Oakland, impressed by its apparent sincerity and activist approach, he explained. In his enthusiasm he dropped out of school and became a full-time National Labor Federation organizer. "They prey on progressive, idealistic people," said Mr. Whitnack in a phone interview. "Their come-on is that they're helping the poor. Who could be against that? Then once you're in they use guilt and fear to break down your ego." Permitted into the select "viable" cadre, Mr. Whitnack said he was out on a grueling schedule.

"We worked about 18 hours a day. Mostly inane tasks. Endless paperwork, canvassing, reading propaganda. Some people were made to listen to endless tapes of Perente's lectures. It was designed to break you down. You go without sleep--four or five hours a night at most. The food is inadequate."

Felt Duped

After two months, fatigued and near nervous collapse, Mr. Whitnack said he bolted, by slipping out of a cadre car and into a subway station. Feeling duped and angry, he spent the next year and nearly $10,000 in travel and telephone bills hoping to peel away the mysterious layers of the National Labor Federation.

Mr. Whitnack wrote of his ordeal in the Summer, 1984, issue of Public Eye.

"I slowly began to suspect that the whole situation was purposefully set up to create a pressure cooker, boot camp type atmosphere where people had neither the physical nor the emotional energy to question their assignments."

He said that while he expressed skepticism about the deadline for revolution (33 months as of 1981) others took it absolutely seriously. He heard one National leader declare: "the 33 month deadline is real. The leadership of this organization has their theoretical and real necks on the line. . . . So if you're just an irregular volunteer on some half-assed schedule -- get real."

Visiting the Cave

Mr. Whitnack wrote he "began to trust nothing and suspect everything regarding the party. . . . I have since become convinced that deception was used to attract me to the National Labor Federation and cultic techniques were used to keep me in. My welfare and destiny were controlled by a group in New York I really knew nothing about other than the lies I had been told. I resolved to find out."

On the East Coast, a college professor whose closest friend joined the National Labor Federation without warning one afternoon also embarked on a quest to find out more about the organization.

Over the next two years she visited the Cave half a dozen times. The teacher asked not to be identified fearing repercussions for her friend, Jane (not her real name), who still belongs to the organization.

The Cave, in a depressed section of Crown Heights, contains nothing that would identify the National Labor Federation on the mailbox or doorbell, she said.

"I arrived there unannounced one day in 1983. Someone came to the door, asking me what I wanted. Everyone's movements were tightly controlled." She was brought inside to a room where "many people were working, talking, holding meetings, swamped under stacks of paper and file cabinets."

A Changed Friend

"A woman whose eyes were glazed spoke very intently about the organization. She seemed wired on coffee and cigarettes.

"Jane was brought in and we talked to each other in a room full of people. Clearly they didn't want us to be alone. . . . My arrival created some ambivalence for Jane. She had a guilty look on her face. Her manner was like herself yet it wasn't. She was incapable of carrying on a conversation about friends or common interests. All she could talk about was the organization. A woman who was obviously Jane's mentor or big sister kept interrupting and speaking for her."

When it was time to go to the professor asked Jane if she would walk her to her car, hoping for a moment's privacy, but a male organizer accompanied them out.

The volunteers, she said, appeared poorly fed and wore ill- fitting clothes. "Their clothes were very curious, like random objects from a Goodwill bag."

"I think the stuff they get from the clothing drives and food from places like Fulton Fish Market is largely used to sustain themselves."

A Long Spiel

On her next visit the professor and some guests sat through a "four-hour" indoctrination which, she supposed, the organizers considered an act of courtesy. "It had a mesmerizing effect. The language is so fuzzy that it's difficult to follow from one sentence to the next." She said the spiel was largely about the unique work of "mutual benefit associations. They had completely rewritten history to put themselves at the apex of the labor movement."

"At this point I had already been in touch with the Cult Awareness Network. What makes them cultish is their monomania. They have only one way of seeing things," she said.

On this second visit she spent the night with Jane and other organizers in the National Labor Federation's penthouse apartment in the West 50s. It apparently was left to Mr. Perente by an affluent dentist sympathetic to the cause.

Carrying Guns

She said she was allowed to spend the next afternoon unchaperoned with Jane. "She started to loosen up a bit and started talking about the arsenal. She said there were weapons but it wasn't clear if she had very seen them. I was shocked this woman who was a pacifist had changed so drastically. Once she told me, 'It is a luxury in today's society not to carry a gun.'"

When they returned to Brooklyn the professor noticed that the guard standing in front of the second-story bay window with a walkie-talkie also was toting a rifle.

Despite the paramilitary atmosphere and talk of "battle plans" the group does not appear serious about violence, she suggested. "Basically what they do is shuffle paper all day and make phone calls. They expend a tremendous amount of energy to get very little done, she said.

Meeting with Perente

On that same visit she met Mr. Perente, she said. "It was as if I was being prepared for an audience with the Pope." The rest of the building was only minimally finished but Mr. Perente's apartment had the trappings of luxury--a stereo, a bar, a comfortable couch. On a coffee table a pistol lay next to Chairman Mao's Book of Quotations.

"Everything seemed calculated. Still, the overall effect was sad and dingy. He had a broken leg (apparently an injury Mr. Perente suffered during the FBI raid when he tried to escape through an elevator shaft). His appearance was striking. He was very thin and had a long, gaunt face, with heavily tobacco stained teeth. His hair, clearly dyed, was jet black and slicked back. He wore a white suit that was filthy. There were clumps of dirt in different places," she said.

On one hand Mr. Perente wore a black glove. "At first I thought it was ominous but later I noticed it was to cover large sores on his body."

Three attentive women followed Mr. Perente's every move, she said, propping up pillows and offering ashtrays while he chain-smoked. She said Jane and a young male, both obviously neophytes far down in the hierarchy, scribbled down notes as Mr. Perente spoke.

The Vulnerable Type

"Later she said it was for posterity, to preserve what he had to say," the professor said.

Her description of Jane's background parallels the kind of person the Cult Awareness Network says is most vulnerable to a group like the National Labor Federation: upper-middle class, college educated, often Jewish, socially conscious, and sensitive about the privileges he or she possesses. "The saddest thing about this group is they are luring in people who otherwise would be doing a lot of good things," Mr. Berlet remarked.

On her final visit with Jane last summer, she decided there was no way short of kidnapping and deprogramming" to make her leave.

"I think she was brainwashed in a way in the beginning. She didn't receive phone calls or the letters that were sent to her. But eventually these people become their own taskmasters. On a personal level I had to let it go," she said.

"The last time I saw Jane her sense of Judaism and feminism had disappeared. From being a generous person she had become acquisitive in pursuit of the cause. . . . It was always, what can you do for us? Once I flipped and said, 'You're in a cult Jane. I want to help you, but don't ask me to give you money. I don't believe in what this group is doing.' She said she understood."

Money Sought

But the agreement between the friends eroded. Now Jane only writes when the group needs money. "The beginning and end of her letters are warm and personal but the middle parts are pure rhetoric."

The teacher said Jane also phones her mother in the middle of the night asking for money. In exasperation, she said Jane's mother threatened to have her arrested.

In 1978, the Rev. Wilbur Patterson, a Presbyterian minister who works for the Church-affiliated Commission on Voluntary Service action at 475 Riverside Drive in New York, met a young woman named Diane Ramirez.

She spoke compellingly about the Church's responsibility to the poor and impressed the minister with the rolled up shirtsleeves work of the National Labor Federation. "It sounded as if they were doing good things and they wanted to increase their association with church groups," he said.

Mrs. Ramirez was invited to join the Commission's executive board and became involved in its major activity--the publication of a guide to volunteer service projects called Invest Yourself. The National Labor Federation began to list its affiliate groups in the guide, which is distributed to churches and college libraries.

Soon, Rev. Patterson said, he began receiving calls from parents alarmed that their children had joined "tightly controlled groups. . . . I was told they were using the same methods as religious cults--hard work, little privacy, and an unquestioning dependence on leadership."

In the meantime, said Rev. Patterson, the Commission allowed the National Labor Federation to publish Invest Yourself because it produced quality print work for little money.

Troubling Patter

But disturbing questions continued to arise, Rev. Patterson recalled. "Some pastors in New Brunswick wanted to know what one of the groups called Eastern Service Workers did with their funds. That confirmed our suspicions," he said.

By 1982, not only did the National Labor Federation print "Invest Yourself," but one quarter of the listings were affiliates and Ms. Ramirez had become the board's chairwoman. He said Methodist, Lutheran, and Episcopalian groups withdrew their listings from Invest Yourself. Finally, Rev. Patterson and his colleagues asked Ms. Ramirez to leave the board in the fall of 1982. A church newspaper called Christian Century ran a piece on the maneuvers called How the Revolutionaries Conned the Bureaucrats.

As a result of her removal, Ms. Ramirez sued Rev. Patterson, other Commission members, and the National Council of Churches for $20 million, claiming her civil rights had been violated. Rev. Patterson said the suit was dismissed in Manhattan Federal Court. The National Labor Federation has since filed an appeal, but Rev. Patterson is confident the suit is history.

"They infiltrated our organization and took over our publication," he remarked. "We weren't aware of their shadowy way until a lot of damage had been done," he said.

The National Labor Federation still prints Invest Yourself, apparently unbeknownst to some nonprofit groups it lists.

"In the latest issue I saw the Sierra Club had run a large ad," said Ms. Coates. "I was shocked."

When she was the national director of the Cult Awareness Network, Ms. Coates said she would receive calls from parents distressed because their children were in a sect "with a deadline for world revolution." The deadlines were flexible, she said. "The last one I knew about was March 15, 1984, the Ides of March." She assumed Mr. Perente selected the date because of "Julius Caesar," his favorite Shakespeare play.

Going Way Back: East Hampton Star Gloats Over Times Mistaken Obituary, March 23, 1995

2007-04-16T15:08:00.000-05:00

The Real Obituary Unfolds

by Sheridan Sansegundo
East Hampton Star, March 23, 1995

The obscure and convoluted life of Eugenio Perente-Ramos, founder of the Eastern Farm Workers Association, had its end not so much in Monday's New York Times obituary, but in the 12-inch retraction the paper printed the next morning.

Monday's glowing obituary, which painted the picture of a selfless and dedicated labor organizer, had been submitted by two associates of Mr. Perente-Ramos, according to The Times. He was 59 when he died.

If the newspaper was hoodwinked by the Eastern Farm workers Association, which has been characterized as an authoritarian cult, it was not the first victim, as some East Enders who had contacts with the organization in the late 1980s can attest.

Far From it

For a start, "Eugenio" was but the last of a number of false names. He was born Gerald William Doeden of Norwegian-American parentage in Minnesota, not on a small farm in Montana. He claimed to have had no formal education, whereas he actually went through community college in California. The Times obituary stated there were no survivors, but The Star discovered that his mother and daughter survive.

The obituary said Mr. Perente-Ramos was a close associate of Cesar Chavez and an innovative leader who organized cadres of volunteers to aid the poor. Far from it. According to a 1976 story in Newsday, Mr. Perente-Ramos had by then left Mr. Chavez's United Farmworkers Union, in bad standing.

An Art Benefit

On Tuesday, The Times said experts on cult activities and several parents of his followers had informed the paper Mr. Perente-Ramos was a leader of a cult that recruited troubled young people, housed them in communal quarters, and "brainwashed" them into believing they had committed their lives to social justice by collecting food and clothing for the poor.

Mr. Perente-Ramos and the Eastern Farm Workers Association first made the pages of The Star in 1986.

It was announced that summer that an art auction would be held in Bridgehampton to raise money for the organization, which was billed as a grass-roots self-help group that was reaching out to poor black and Hispanic migrant and seasonal agricultural workers and domestics in Suffolk County, during a time of government retrenchment.

Prominent East End artists and sculptors donated works to the auction, Including Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Dash, and William King. George Plimpton, Robert Gwathmey, Judith Hope, and Tony Bullock were listed on the invitation as sponsors.

Eastern Farm Workers had then been operating in Suffolk County for over a decade, but few people seemed to know much about it or how it served farm workers. Nothing had been written about the group, which seemed generally shy of publicity, because there seemed nothing to report.

Unexpected Difficulties

News of the benefit art auction, however, inspired a story in The Star. It was felt the work of the group would make a good human interest feature, and the story was assigned to The Star's senior writer at the time, Uri Berliner.

To his surprise, Mr. Berliner found reporting on the activities of EFWA. extremely difficult. His request to accompany organizers on a drive for members was denied. Simple questions on aid distribution and finances went unanswered. The group claimed a membership of 10,000, which seemed unlikely as there were only 2,000 migrant workers in the county, according to the State Labor Department.

In the first of two long articles about EFWA, church workers, government employees, and labor organizers who worked with migrants all expressed doubts that the group provided any meaningful services for farm workers.

The letters column of The Star received outraged responses. A follow-up seemed to be required, and this article, apparently much more damaging, appeared just two days before the benefit auction.

"Saga Of A Cult"

Under the headline "Labor Group: Saga of a Cult," Mr. Berliner revealed that Mr. Perente-Ramos (or Mr. Parante, as he was then called) was the leader of a group calling itself the National Labor Federation, which was connected with a Lyndon LaRouche-front group in Philadelphia.

In 1984, the magazine Public Eye had claimed that the group, EFWA's parent organization, and Mr. LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee systematically "bilked millions from unsuspecting contributors; and use[d] psychologically manipulative techniques to enforce the loyalty of their members."

Mr. Perente-Ramos, Mr. Berliner wrote, was also the founder of the Liberation Army Revolutionary Group, which at one time declared war on California and had through the years issued repeated "deadlines" for "revolution."

Just hours before the art auction was to take place, Mr. and Mrs. de Kooning, Mr. Dash, and other artist withdrew their works. The auction was "postponed," and in fact never took place.

"Does Anyone Remember?"

For a few weeks The Star printed furious letters from supporters of EFWA attempting to discredit Mr. Berliner's reporting, and letters to the contrary from local readers praising his investigative journalism.

But, as The Star wrote in an editorial when the fuss died down, quoting Thomas Paine, "Such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness."

The Eastern Farm Workers Association is still in existence, with headquarters on Beaver Dam Road in Bellport. Other organizations affiliated with it, asserted an ex-volunteer who preferred not to be named, are the Women's Press Collective in Brooklyn, the Eastern Service Workers of Philadelphia and New Jersey, and the National Equal Justice Association, which has a branch in Stony Brook.

One of the parents of a young adult involved with the group, who also preferred not to be named, said, "People forget so quickly. Mr. Berliner's articles said it all, but does anyone remember?"

CCMP Conversation Continues

2007-03-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

Thanks for answering my question, anonymous. Now let me try to answer your questions as best I can. I know what I know about NATLFED, and some of the east coast entities (Eastern Service Workers Association), from personal experience. Unpleasant personal experience. Since then I've been collecting information about NATLFED and NATLFED entities and posting it on this blog.

I've had suspicions about Students for Comprehensive Medical Care for some time. Your account provides some confirmation.

The Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals is a classic NATLFED entity. They were actually the point of entry into the cult for Jeff Whitnack, who then went on to become the most famous of anti-NATLFED gadflies (http://politicalcults.blogspot.com/2006/12/natlfed-public-eye-1984.html).

I can’t really speculate as to whether or not they were trying to brainwash you, or how many people in the office know the truth of the organization. Some of them certainly know elements of the truth about CCMP and NATLFED. The Operations Manager was NATLFED cadre, and thus also a member of (what is left of) the Provisional Communist Party.

Don't be fooled by the name "Provisional Communist Party." This is not an actual left-wing political organization. Instead it is just the name the self-important NATLFED inner circle gave to themselves.

Currently, I’m not sure that NATLFED entities are having much luck brain-washing people. NATLFED used to (emphasis on USED TO) really take over the lives of recruits, with isolation from family and friends, hardcore psychological pressure and manipulation, group humiliation, the occasional beating, drug addiction, drained bank accounts, the whole messy platter of harms one usually associates with a destructive cult.

But they don’t seem to be doing much of that recently. NATLFED’s charismatic leader has been dead for a dozen years, and most of these entities are just on auto-pilot.

So what do the entities do? They run fraudulent social welfare programs. They take advantage of the big hearts and deep pocket books of people in the philanthropic and charity community. They prey on the good intentions of progressives and people who just want to help the poor, or end injustice. They consume most of the resources they collect. Some of those resources, cash especially, gets funneled back to NATLFED headquarters in Brooklyn, where NATLFED dabbles in the real estate market.

Generally, these entities provide just enough services to the poor to keep up the appearances. But they are corrupt and dishonest to the core. So while they are currently unsuccessful as a cult, they are fairly successful as a scam.

Either way, staying clear is the best bet.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia entry on NATLFED. It is well written and fair.

And also read this article from the New York Times on NATLFED. It’s a little old, but it covers the basics.

And good luck.

Rico

Co-ed Cools to CCMP Con

2007-03-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

Anonymous posted this response to the 1984 East Bay Express article on NATLFED entities.

Thank you for posting this very informative article. I am a Berkeley student who volunteered at CCMP during this past summer. I used to think their tactics were kind of weird, but I thought I was really doing a good thing. I want to work in the Public Health field, and so volunteering with them seemed like it would be good experience. When I found myself mostly doing phoning and office work, the Operations Manager would give me a talk about how the little things fit in the big picture, blah blah... Little did I know... There's actually a thank you banquet coming up that I was invited to. I will probably go only for the free food, but never do anything for them again. Thank you again for this knowledge. I will try to spread the word to other people. A few students and I tried starting up a student group on campus linked to CCMP, but, luckily, it never happened.

Maybe it is street smarts, maybe it is just good instincts, but for some reason some people spend a little time around a NATLFED entity (in this case, the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals) and they start seeing red flags, whilst others toil-on oblivious to the signs.

Here's to this anonymous poster: may your instincts never fail you, may you continue to do your homework, may you spread the word on CCMP and NATLFED to other people.

I can't tell from the post, but I wonder if the "student group" mentioned above was the CCMP shadow organization Students for Comprehensive Medical Care. Anonymous, if you read this, please confirm or deny that guess. Thanks.

Cagey Couple Cans Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals

2007-03-01T13:17:00.000-05:00

Anonymous said...: Thanks for clearing up the CCLP. They approached my husband this afternoon, I guess he was a bit suspicious too so he asked me to research them. I research for a living and was not able to find much on the organization other than a few vague articles when searching Factiva. Definitely something not quite what it seems.

Always glad to help - Another Beneficient Soul Gets Wise to ESWA

2007-02-18T20:27:00.000-05:00

This guy was primed to step-up his volunteering commitment to the Eastern Service Workers in Boston. We asked him to look into ESWA a little more closely.

It seems stupid, in retrospect, not to have searched online for the Eastern Service Workers Association. It didn't occur to me that there is probably a lot more to it than what I've been told. Some anonymous person noticed that I mentioned it the other day and wrote me a comment telling me to beware, so thanks, whoever you are; you have likely saved me a great deal of frustration.

No problem.

http://lightvortex.livejournal.com/67242.html

Bratton On-Line Comes Around on Western Service Workers Association

2007-02-18T20:11:00.000-05:00

From the Santa Cruz community newsletter Bratton Online:

DO IT YOURSELF EXPOSE. Ever wonder about The Western Service Workers Association and their store on Mission near Bay? Ever wonder why you've never heard about their board of directors, why they aren't non profit, why they don't have any website or internet access? I went to their store and dropped off three boxes of clothing because friends said they gave a good talk at the Unitarian Fellowship in Aptos in December. Later I thought it would be a good idea if they came on my radio program so we could all find out about what sounded like a fine organization...and it hit the fan!!! Paranoid, evasive, demanding, suspicious, hostile, the phone call ended very quick. Never had I encountered such an attitude. You should do what I did; look up Western Service Workers Association at Wikipedia. There'll you'll see mentions of National Labor Federation i.e. NATLFED. It says there that NATLFED is an umbrella term for a network of American political cults. From there you'll go to Provisional Communist Party and find more references to cults, and claims that Western Service Workers has no connections with actual labor unions, they are not legally non-profit either. "Part cult-part con-game", questions about how much of their clothing drives and collecting funds go to the poor are there too to think about. WSWA sends representatives to churches and university campuses, leaflet homes in certain neighborhoods, and recruit low income members and charge a symbolic 62cents per month dues. Read links to Public Eye.com, Eastern Farm Workers Association, The National Labor College, California Homemakers Association, The Alaska Workers Association, The Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, the Earth Shock Committee and the Save Our City Campaign Foundation Committees in Watsonville. The editorial in the WSWA Winter 2007 sponsors guide says nothing about the organization, but it does say that "WSWA members who participate in the "Santa Cruz County Workers Benefit Council" etc, etc. What is the "Santa Cruz County Workers Benefit Council" does anybody know? They don't have any telephone listing, nothing on the internet I'm sure it too must be a fine organization, but like the WSWA, what's all the secrecy?

Way to go, Bratton Online. Glad to see you were willing to take a harder look at WSWA and publish a corrective to your earlier dispatch on this subject.

Disorganized Creep Finds Organized Creeps Lacking, But Strangely Irresistible

2007-01-23T06:56:00.000-05:00

Geez, this person is a piece of work.

Her initial observations are quite funny. She facetiously proposes that the Alaska Workers Association (NATLFED front-group) is in fact an

"elaborate, ongoing satirical performance art project"

or possibly a

"top-secret COINTELPRO program aimed at keeping tabs on would-be radicals and distracting them with pointless micromanaging bullshit."

Hey, hey, that's pretty good.

And she keeps rolling with gems like:

"it sounds like all they do at those meetings is try to recruit new members to join them in doing nothing."

But then there is this surprise:

"And yet I'm going back."

Why? Because

"..it seems like most of their cash comes from scamming liberal yuppies, college kids and Unitarians, which I have no problem with."

Hmmm. Who else is on the "OK-to-scam" list? How about poor people and working families?

"I did feel guilty asking low income people for membership dues in exchange for nonexistent 'benefits'."

But not, like, that guilty. Not, like, guilty enough to stop doing it.

Hey, while we're scamming the poor, let's patronize them as well by saying something like

"I got the feeling like the people who bothered to talk to us liked having someone to bitch to about work and paying the bills."

Maybe they liked talking to you about their financial problems because you were promising, on behalf of AWA, to help them with their financial problems. In other words, making promises you know AWA has no intention of keeping.

http://anaisbakunin.livejournal.com/6511.html

Western Service Workers keeps rolling

2007-01-20T07:24:00.000-05:00

From Bratton Online, a newsletter in Santa Cruz.

Note the eldritch last line "Remember that name ...The Western Service Workers Association."

Here's a better suggestion: type "western service workers" and cult or scam into Google. See what comes up.

"WINTER SURVIVAL CAMPAIGN. The Western Service Workers Association has been waging a Winter Survival Campaign for more than 25 years. They collect clothing, blankets and nutritious foods for low income workers and the unemployed. The agricultural season is over, there are more computer industry layoffs, and too many folks have to decide between Heating or Eating. WSWA says "we need both". They also have a program for helping house-bound disabled and elderly with a Winter Watch program. You can help these folks through the tough and cold winter through Easter by donations of cash, volunteering, the use of your car, the use of your phone or dropping off clothing, blankets, warm clothes at The Western Service Workers Association at 1511 Mission Street near Bay close to Donnelly's Chocolates, and Sylvan Music. They'll take clothing from 9 to 9 every day call them at 831 429-6016. Remember that name ...The Western Service Workers Association."

http://www.brattononline.com/index.php?p=202&c=1

Bewilderment

2007-01-12T13:23:00.000-05:00

I will admit to a certain confusion about NATLFED entities, a confusion stoked by the post about Stephanie Magurno.

In general, it seems to me, that when Perente was alive he had the rare mix of sociopathic ambition and charisma necessary to successfully brainwash impressionable college kids, trust-fund babies, and dessicated left-wing authoritarians, into a disciplined cult group of followers that answered only to him.

But after Perente passed away, it does not look like there was anyone left with sufficient force of personality to really take his place. As such, it appeared that the group was slowly losing its capacity to really perpetuate itself as a cult - for who in NATLFED had enough charisma to bring the naifs flocking in?

This was part of the rationale for the switch from cult to scam.

By the time Perente died, the various cadre members, operating in the entities, had figured out that the charity community was filled with people with soft heads and big pocket books. Lenin would have called them "useful idiots," these churches, foundations, universities and assorted do-gooders that mindlessly fund the NATLFED entities.

So the various entities switched their emphasis. Recruiting college kids into a cult was no longer job number one. Instead, the new priority was running these ever more successful financial scams under the cover of their bogus social welfare and community organizing activities.

As such, you would expect that these entities would have a natural life-cycle. The aging cadre members operating the entities can bring in the dollars, but not new cadre members, because there's no one in the entities with enough charisma to indoctrinate even the most gullible of post-adolescent suckers. NATLFED entities would continue to play a parasitic role in what community the infest, but not for much longer. They are aging and dying off.

But then there is the story of Stephanie Magurno, and the disturbing possibility emerges that there are still NATLFED cadre out there capable of recruiting and indoctrinating college kids, perpetuating the core the cult, and creating opportunities for the group to spread.

So maybe NATLFED isn't dying off as fast as one might hope.

Post script: As it relates to the specific case of Stephanie Magurno, there is another possibility to consider, for being a young, female college student doesn't mean she's necessarily a victim. She could be precisely the sort of anti-social personality that NATLFED entities depend on: self-righteous, unconcerned with honesty, internally comfortable with a mixture of self-delusion and misrepresentation to others, all in the service of some self-aggrandizing notions about the faults of liberal society and the necessity of revolution.

You can't write-off that possibility.

Another NATLFED Success Story

2007-01-12T13:07:00.000-05:00

I found this post on a web site called Your True Hero "where you honor ordinary people who do extraordinary things".

The article lauds Stephanie Magurno for her tireless work as an advocate for the needy through the Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers.

Yeah, it's a really inspiring story. A young student at Reed College gets mixed up with a NATLFED cult, drops out of school and becomes a full-time cult leader.

And now our hero is busy sucking in other impressionable people, like the poor guy writing this article: "Now, I'm not the kind of guy to normally volunteer, but I worked nearly seventy hours at FSSW this past summer because of her persuasive powers."

Lovely.

Stephanie Magurno

A lot of people will probably enter this contest with essays written about wonderful, brave people who have risked their lives to save someone�s life. My hero hasn�t put herself in harm�s way However, that doesn�t make her any less heroic.

My true hero is Stephanie Magurno; she lives in Portland, Oregon. She�s a full-time volunteer and head of operations at Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers, or FSSW. FSSW is an all-volunteer community that assists organizations of low-income workers (such as farm workers, domestic workers, and temporary workers) who are fighting to change their living and working conditions. They assist these organizations in building their self-help benefit programs that include food, clothing, preventive medical care, and legal advice.

On a daily basis, they send material supplies to these organizations�supplies that remove the immediate obstacles to lasting solutions tot he problem of poverty that the working poor face. Additionally, they train volunteers in the community (such as myself) in the community organizing skills needed to join together all different sectors of the community together behind the lowest paid in their fight for jobs at living wages.

These folks don�t receive any protection under the Federal Labor Law simply because their work period is less than 180 days. Therefore, they have some of the worst working conditions and lowest pay in the nation.

As one could probably imagine, heading an operation as large and important as this one is an extremely daunting task. Stephanie has been head of operations for over a year, succeeding Barbara, who left for an Alaskan sister office.

Barbara was in her late forties. Stephanie, on the other hand, is just nineteen years old. And FSSW is more successful now than it�s ever been.

After a year at the prestigious Reed College, she left to become a full-time organizer. Stephanie is a person who needs to make change. The professors at Reed, she felt, weren�t encouraging their students to do so, but she knew she already had the knowledge, the tools�and the drive to make change happen.

Had she continued on to graduate from Reed, she could have most certainly obtained a great, well-paying job. But she wouldn�t have been happy. I chose Stephanie as my true hero because she sacrificed so much for the well-being of others. She could�ve had the American dream�husband, two kids, and a house, the whole works. Instead, she skipped that and took the non-paying job that has her working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I simply don�t know anyone who is willing to give up so much for something they believe in. Now, I�m not the kind of guy to normally volunteer, but I worked nearly seventy hours at FSSW this past summer because of her persuasive powers.

On a regular basis, Stephanie and other volunteers drive down to the places where the workers and distribute the donated resources. She sleeps over there, to see that these people receive the care they need.

In conclusion, although her life isn�t flashy or daring, Stephanie has touched the lives of more people than anyone I could ever think of.

Submitted by:
[name removed to honor request of the article's author]

Blogger's Note: I couldn't find a date for this posting, but the posting does mentions someone named "Barbara" who went to Alaska the year before to start the Alaska Workers Association. There's an article on Barbara Sarantitis and the Alaska Workers Association in the Anchorage Daily News, dated April 18, 2003. So, I figure this was posted in 2001 or 2002.

And They Are Lousy Landlords As Well...

2007-01-12T10:47:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 2004, Carroll Street Properties (CSP), a real estate company and NATLFED entity, took legal action to evict a Mr. John Puente and his wife Ms. Keshon Puente from their apartment at 1111 Carroll Street in Brooklyn. John Puente lived in the rent stabilized apartment for 23 years, and his wife was operating a licensed and registered family day care out of the apartment. Though the day care was entirely legal, and - according to court findings - safe and not disruptive to neighbors, CSP sought to evict the Puente's for violating the terms of their lease.

Lucky for the Puentes, a legitimate legal-services organization called the South Brooklyn Legal Services took the case, and their legal team represented the Puentes in court. The judge ruled that the Puentes were not violating the law, nor violating their lease, and were indeed running a perfectly legal and licensed small family day-care operation which served the child care needs of low-income mothers who found it necessary "to work in order to maintain an adequate standard of living or simply to escape poverty." He issued summary judgment in favor of the Puentes.

Let's recap. NATLFED is a substantial landowner in New York City. They recently attempted to evict a working family from their rent stabilized apartment for running a perfectly legal and licensed service that catered to the needs of low-income mothers.

Nice.

Says a lot about NATLFED's commitment to social justice.

California Homemakers Association pops-up in the North Bay.

2007-01-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

Check out this exchange on the California Homemakers Association on this North Bay-area bulletin board.

http://www.waccobb.net

Campus Cults - Western Farm Workers Association - Newsweek Article

2007-01-11T18:59:00.000-05:00

The alarming growth of Campus Cults

Newsweek/Kaplan: How to Get Into College, August 1999.
By Lynette Clemetson

College is a time to embrace new ideas, join communities, discover your place in the world. And that's the problem.

Shannon Townsend was fired up about college. An honor student in high school, she set out for the University of Colorado determined to become a doctor. At the end of her first semester she had a 3.9 GPA and a full social life: she taught Sunday school and worked in a program to feed the homeless on Saturdays. She called her mom back in Lan- ham, Md., every week. They talked about everything from choosing classes to the cool summer internship she had lined up at an organic farm. Then, a week before second-semester finals, she announced she was dropping out. She didn't call on Mother's Day. She disappeared from school without a trace. In June her mother received a postcard with a one-line explanation: "I'm off to follow Jesus.'

The Townsends haven't talked to Shannon since. She ran off with a nomadic cult called the Jim Roberts Group, a band of fundamentalist Christians who disown their families and possessions to live as they believe Jesus did, roaming the land and proselytizing. The group, also called the Brethren or the Garbage Eaters (because members, who eschew education and jobs, forage for food), seldom has more than 100 members. But experts say it is one of the most dangerous cults in existence because of its fanatical isolation from society. "I admire the fact that they want to follow God," says Shannon's mother, Karan, a professor at Washington Bible College. "But the manipulation and rejection of family are unethical. They've got Shannon in a box, and there's no way we can reach her."

There are hundreds of student in similar boxes. Colleges don't like to talk about it--chances are you won't hear about a cult problem during that on-campus visit. But universities are prime recruiting grounds for radical sects like the Jim Roberts Group. Experts say there are more than 3,000 cults operating around the country at any given time, promising everything from spiritual salvation to unlimited wealth to racial domination. Hundreds of college students are wooed into them each year, even by conservative estimates. For most, the experience is just one more undergraduate experiment, a passing flirtation dismissed by semester's end. But for some, exploration leads to a trap that can wreck grades, families and futures.

So what exactly is a cult? Some experts shy away from the word, preferring the term "destructive group,' because they say "cult" conjures up images of saffron-robed chanters in airports or black-clad doomsayers in communes. In fact, cults are not defined by appearance or ideology, but by tactics. Whether groups are driven by religion, business, politics or race, they have some common characteristics. They espouse utter dedication to a philosophy or charismatic leader who wields total authority. They often use deceptive recruitment ploys, hiding their identity or ultimate goal from new members. They use guilt and fear to maintain loyalty. They goad members into long hours of exhausting service, to lessen critical-thinking ability. And they encourage alienation from family, friends and institutions like school and church, pegging them as enemies.

They also prey on vulnerability. And that's why college campuses are favorite haunts. The transition from home to college is often the greatest upheaval in a young adult's life. It is a time of high insecurity and high idealism. Students want to assert their independence, but they also want something to identify with. "They find themselves suddenly separated from parents, friends, pastors or rabbis, and they walk around looking forlorn and distressed," says Ronald Loomis, education director of the American Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that monitors cults. "Cult recruiters know what to look for, and they know what they can exploit."

Among the easiest emotions to manipulate are fear and hate. Authorities suspect Indiana University student Benjamin Nathaniel Smith was acting on behalf of the white-supremacist group World Church of the Creator when he went on an anti- minority shooting spree last July, allegedly killing two and wounding eight before killing himself. Experts are studying the group to determine whether it fits the definition of a cult. So far, the signs suggest that it does.

The groups that don't play on hate often play on love. The International Churches of Christ, a fast-growing evangelical Christian group founded in Boston in 1979, recruits using a technique experts call "love bombing,' latching onto potential members with instant and intense friendship.

The church, which has more than l00,000 members in the United States, has been banned from at least 39 colleges, including Harvard, American University and the University of Southern California, for breaking campus regulations like proselytizing in residence halls and registering as student organizations under front names. At various colleges, students accuse ICC members of following them to class and calling at the crack of dawn with prayers and Bible verses. Church leaders say they don't condone harassment, but they admit that college recruiting is key to their ministry. "We are not operating a cult any more than Jesus was," says ICC spokesperson Al Baird. "But we are trying to be on every campus we can."

For some, the sharing seems more like an ambush. Edwin Rodriguez was hanging out in the student union at the University of Maryland three years ago when, he says, an ICC member invited him to Bible study. Rodriguez said no at first, but the guy was so friendly and persistent he eventually gave in. The once-a-week Bible study quickly turned into a daily commitment. Rodriguez, raised a Christian, was told he needed to be rebaptized because he wasn't truly saved. He was made to confess his past sins to other members, he says, who berated him and told him that without ICC he was damned to hell.

Before he knew what hit him, he lost control of his life. First went his friends -- ICC members dismissed them because they weren't saved. Then went his money, the student-job wages he had been sending to his family, in El Salvador. He says members convinced him it would be better spent on the church. Finally, he almost lost his scholarship: his 3.8 GPA plummeted over two semesters to 1.9. "They put fear in me," says Rodriguez, who broke from the group with the help of a concerned math professor. "They made me feel so bad about myself and so confused that I was afraid to leave."

For many schools, high-pressure groups remain a dirty, little secret, Some administrators worry, that warning students about them is like admitting there is a problem, and that may scare some families away. Also, many schools are hesitant to ban problem groups from registering as student organizations for fear they will be charged with violating First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. Opponents say that's missing the point. "We can't, and don't even want to, criticize or control anyone's faith, says Dennis DiPlacito, a housing director at the University of California, Irvine, who conducts cult-awareness workshops on campus. "But we have a right to criticize and control how groups approach and treat people on our campus." Still, Irvine, a public university, hasn't banned ICC.

Other, nonreligious groups with cultish aspects flourish on campuses. All that differs is the vocabulary. Business cults replace "eternal salvation" with "endless wealth." Political cults swap "spiritual struggle" for "social struggle."

One former cult member, who asked not to be named, spent six years in a political group called the Western Farm Workers' Association. She was recruited when she was a student at UC Berkeley, to write stories about abused farm workers for the group's newspaper. She says that after several indoctrination sessions she learned the group was a front organization for the National Labor Federation. But the cause, organizing workers and feeding the poor, still seemed valid. What she didn't know was that the upper tier of the group was a cultish circle linked to a single leader and under FBI surveillance. Once she was pulled into the inner circle, she says, leaders encouraged her to quit school. "They said, 'What's more important, a meaningless piece of paper or the revolution?'" the former member recalls. She dropped out, and before long she was living communally with other members in tightly guarded warehouses, sleeping on office floors and eating leftover food from homeless-shelter distributions. She says she was prohibited from dating outside the group, and that leaders controlled when she could see friends and family. One Christmas she was granted just four hours to visit her parents. When she finally left the group, she says, members threatened her with physical harm. She hid out in hotels for months.

Once a person joins the life of a cult, getting him or her out is a tricky business. Though movies and books have hyped the arranged kidnapping of cult members, most cult experts agree that the snatch-and-deprogram route is counterproductive. Kidnapped members often return to destructive groups, and many shut out their families completely. Exit counseling is smarter strategy. The process, which takes place over several days, usually in the family home, is conducted by a trained consultant who is often a former cult member. Experts say interventions have a 90 percent success rate.

Of course, you can't make that point if you can't get into the same room with your child. That's why parents like Karan Townsend are seeking systematic changes. Townsend is working with a group of parents in Maryland to make recommendations to the governor -- among them, mandatory cult-awareness programs for incoming students and stricter rules about who can recruit on campus. It may not bring Shannon back, but it may save some other families a lot of pain. "I was counting on having her in my life, for all of my life," says Townsend. "Now I would just cherish a few minutes with her." That's precisely what the cult fears most.

News To Me - Commemoration Committee of the Black Panther Party and the Bay Area Alternative Press

2007-01-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

I'm a little slow sometimes in keeping up with the NATLFED front-groups. Many of you have known about these groups for a while, but I just learned about the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party and the Bay Area Alternative Press. Here's a post from SFIndyMedia from 2003:

The Commemorator
by stop frontin' Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 at 8:51 AM

The Commemorator aka The Black Panther Commemorator is published by the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party (CCBPP), a front group of the National Labor Federation (NATLFED).

The CCBPP operates out of the Bay Area Alternative Press (BAAP) on Alcatraz Ave. BAAP is another front for NATFED that presents itself as an autonomous, coordinating organization for a variety of grass-roots efforts. In fact, all of the organizations that operate out of BAAP are controlled by the NATLFED.

Furthermore, the CCBPP has nothing to do with the Black Panther Party. None of the members are former Panthers and the group uses the Panther name and logo in its attempts to broaden a base of support for NATLFED in Black and low-income communities.

What NATLFED's exact purpose is is unclear. Some view it as a political cult while more conspiracy minded folks view it as a COINTELRPO type operation. Anyone who is an activist should be extremely wary of working with these people or providing them with ANY personal information.

http://sf.indymedia.org/mail.php?id=1638244&comments=yes

NATLFED Jargon

2007-01-10T17:11:00.000-05:00

Interesting glossary from San Francisco IndyMedia site:

Some words are derived from communist vocabulary; others are unique to NATLFED, codified in NATLFED's secret organizational manual, The Essential Organizer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
benefits program: Claimed program or programs for organizing people as members and providing them with medical, dental, legal, food, and clothing.

blister group: Subgroup of an entity. "Think of a blister. It's something that comes out of something else." -- Doorway to a Cult?, City Paper.

blue-sky briefing: Meeting held in an open field to avoid feared electronic eavesdropping.

bucket drive: Begging, sometimes with actual buckets to fill, for food, clothes, and cash.

cadre: A committed, Provisional Communist Party-dedicated member of the cult. "A cadre's life goal and the organization's goal are the same. A cadre's lifestyle is the same as the organization lifestyle." -- The Essential Organizer

canvassing: A term common to all political groups for soliciting support. NATLFED canvassing is unique in its strident demands on front volunteers and cult members to canvass, and for the strident tone of canvassers toward potential donors. NATLFED canvassing can be door-to-door, or it can be street tabling -- if the latter, often in front of banks and supermarkets.

the Cave: see NOC.

CDR: The office supervising committed members, who are called cadre.

Central Committee: Governing body of the Provisional Communist Party.

constitution: Putatively governing document of the cult. The Essential Organizer actually has more day-to-day relevance. The constitution includes a death penalty and says that you may criticize and leave the organization only within your first year, after which either is forbidden.

COSHAAD: West Coast base of national operations for NATLFED. Located in San Francisco. See also NOC.

de-ad: Design and Advertising. Office or person in charge of creating and distributing promotion for an entity.

device: A "superficial tactic . . . used in the case of surprise or phenomena in place of a tactic." -- The Essential Organizer

directing back to the structure: Reporting a fellow member's infraction to a superior.

DOT: The time a NATLFED member has been committed to the inner organization, as distinct from the time the person was simply volunteering.

edu ("ed-yoo"): A lecture.

entity: A front of the national organization. Entities solicit resources for themselves and for the national organization, and recruit volunteers into cult membership. Publicly called a mutual benefit association.

The Essential Organizer: The secret, micromanaging organizational manual of NATLFED.

FIIN: Financial input, a form or system for managing expenses and income. Also a technique to raise money: "A FIIN tactic."

FOP: Friend of the Party. Aware of the Provisional Communist Party and in agreement with its politics, but not ready to join.

fraction: Organizational subdivision. NATLFED is a fraction of the Provisional Communist Party. Another fraction is Military Fraction.

input: Materiel needed and collected by cadre to make an entity or loco function. Example: money, new cadre, cars, documents, etc.

inspiration: "To make data become systemically inductive. Example: a new cadre signs up with the operations unit. The material is inspired to CDR which consults with the cadre and maps out a training program. The data is then inspired to DATA for interior filling. It is then inspired for example to FIIN where the cadre will undergo training in the financial matters of the group." -- The Essential Organizer

labor college: Regular series of lectures, at any location, to one person or to a group, on strata organizing. Sometimes a large gathering with formalities to impress new or potential recruits with NATLFED's sense of revolutionary mission.

line: Political theory or propaganda.

line tape: easily erasable audiocassette copy of national NATLFED speeches, distributed to entities.

loco: Unit of NATLFED activity not limited to an entity. Can also be an area to be targeted for NATLFED activity. For example, an urban rather than rural region is a loco for Western Service Workers Association, not Western Farm Workers Association.

member: NATLFED calls "member" someone who signs up to be part of a mutual benefit organization. Such "members" are little involved: they still have normal lives and are barely indoctrinated with the public goal of the group (to organize without revolution), never mind the secret goal (to organize with revolution). Cult watchers would call "members" people who accept the secret goal of the group and have structured their lives around it. NATLFED calls such people cadre.

MF: see Military Fraction.

Military Fraction: Paramilitary subgroup of inner party; the official soldiers.

mutual benefit organization: Public name for a recruiting entity. MBAs claim to be unionlike groups offering benefits to the needy in exchange for membership of $0.62 a month (said to be the average wage of a farm worker in the early 1970s). MBAs beg donations of cash or supplies from local residents and businesses. The needy receive negligible aid, however, and when they do get aid they are expected to return the favor with exhausting support of the MBA. Most resources are kept by the organization. When aid is given, it is to maintain the illusion of MBAs as charitable to the poor, or to propagandize, as in free mass Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners followed by lectures about strata organizing.

National Labor Federation: the network of local entities. NATLFED is a fraction of the Provisional Communist Party, the central, controlling core of the cult.

NATLFED: See National Labor Federation.

NOC: East Coast base of national operations for NATLFED. Pronounced "knock"; stands for "National Office Central." Located in Brooklyn. Often called the Cave in press reports, but "cave" is a police term for any suspected group's headquarters, and reporters have talked more to police more than to cult members. One room of NOC is indeed called the Cave, though. See also COSHAAD.

the Old: Nickname for late founder Gino Perente.

OPS: Operations manager. Also synonym for "operations" in general.

ordinate: Supervisor of any given, more junior member of the Provisional Communist Party. Fuctions as a mentor and indoctrinator. "Apprenticeship program: You don't use critical analysis. Do it the way you're told, even if you think it's wrong. If it's wrong, go back to the person who issued the orders and say 'I did it the way you said and it came out wrong.' You have one opinion -- that's the one you're told to have by your ordinate." -- internal memo dated 4/15/83

POPS: National headquarters. Could be either COSHAAD or NOC.

position: "An organizational attitude. We regard outside inquiry from a position of distrust. Our position on inside inquiry is to relay usable information. Do not burden with useless information. Never ask to know more than you need to know if you agree with the goals and strategy of the group. It's unfair to burden a comrade with unneeded information and also unprofessional. The standard answer to any question you have not been instructed to answer is 'It's not my department.' Unless you have been instructed to answer . . . no other answer is in order and no other answer is fair. There is a department to answer questions. Shut your fucking mouth unless you are told to impart information to someone as cadre assignment. It is nobody's fucking business, not even yours." -- The Essential Organizer.

pro: Procurement, i.e. obtaining supplies.

pro-phone: Procurement phoning.

process: "The combination of a certain group of tactics brought together [and] designed to care for a certain need. Example: if a building catches fire everyone knows you are supposed to scream . . . jump in the air . . . run in circles . . . piss . . . moan . . . and run out of the door and into the night. Now you may do any of these things by themselves . . . they are independent tactics. But when you do them all together, programmed in that order, that combination of tactics is known as the fire process. . . ." -- The Essential Organizer.

propaganda: "Information released at a time or a manner to sustain, create, or enforce an effect. Example: for us to write in the newsletter nice things about reformist groups is propaganda, because by doing it we hope that the reformists realize we are willing to talk to at least establish polemics . . . even if they are ignorant, self- serving assholes . . . or think we are, whatever the current dialectic of position may be." -- The Essential Organizer.

Provisional Communist Party: The core of the cult. Centrally governs all branches of the greater organization, of which NATLFED is its largest and most active fraction. Only committed, viable party members are officers of an entity, but volunteers of an entity may know nothing of the Party or even of NATLFED. Also known as the Communist Party of the U.S.A, Provisional; Provisional Party of Communists, the Formation, etc.

speg: Speaking engagement.

status: Current level or time frame of importance granted. Can include documents (EXTERIOR, EYES ONLY), people (FULLTIMER, TABULAR), or plans (SUSPENDED, STRATEGY CHANGE)

strata/systemic organization: The putative form of alternative labor organizing by a mutual benefit organization. Claims to focus on groups of people disenfranchised by traditional labor organization.

suspence [sic]: An item in a strategy that requires action at a later date.

systemic: "In reference to work being done within the system or in a manner or pattern insited [sic] by the procedure of the system." -- The Essential Organizer.

tabular: A low degree of committment. A "tab" volunteer is reliable for regular support but has not become a committed NATLFED member. "Tabular is passive practice." -- The Essential Organizer.

tactic: "A method of changing position toward a goal in a strategy. The first tactic in EFWA was to get cadre, the second was to get an office, the third was to run a canvas, the fourth was to hold a meeting of members contacted in the canvass. . . ." -- The Essential Organizer

temporal: Information not in traffic or suspence; concluded business. "Paid bills are temporal." -- The Essential Organizer

trafficking: A system of tight bureaucracy in which members fill forms for every action, even for something as simple as using the downstairs bathroom in the organization's Brooklyn headquarters. "The traffic person sits near the back of the apartment. When you come in, you report to traffic. If you want to leave, you have to get permission from traffic. Everything you do has to go through traffic." -- Service Group Linked to "Cultic" Organization, Williams Record. The Essential Organizer on traffic: "Work that the system must do and the inspiration direction it takes inspirations stops in an input dialectic. Example, new cadre care: OPS file -> cadre file -> cadre file to DATA file -> cadre assignment to suspence directive -> suspence directive to tactical assignment -> assignment to status change. That is the route one [record] card travels as a person joins EFWA, accepts a job, reports the job, is instructed in the job, does the job, and progresses to take on more responsibility on the new knowledge acquired while doing the job."

viable: A high degree of commitment. A viable volunteer comes in on a regular schedule, as opposed to the occasional volunteer, who is called tabular. The more viable a NATLFED member is, the more politically reliable she or he is.

vol: Volunteer.

workers benefit council: Not significantly different from mutual benefit organization.

http://sf.indymedia.org/mail.php?id=1638244&comments=yes

Great advice on helping those in need...

2006-12-30T14:54:00.000-05:00

Great advice from the terrific CharityNavigator.com web-site.

Confirm 501(c) (3) Status
Wise donors don't drop money into canisters at the checkout counter or hand over cash to solicitors outside the supermarket. Situations like these are irresistible to scam artists who wish to take advantage of your goodwill.

Scam artists who wish to take advantage of your goodwill? Does that sound like anyone we know?

Christmas Shocker from the Santa Cruz Sentinel

2006-12-23T07:15:00.000-05:00

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
"CHRISTMAS FOOD AND CLOTHING DONATIONS: 1-800-GOT-JUNK is providing donation drop-boxes and collection service for local businesses willing to supply food and clothing donations before Saturday. All donations will benefit the Western Service Workers Association, a local nonprofit [emphasis added] that provides assistance and networking for low-income workers and their families..."

Could it be that the Western Service Workers Association, a NATLFED front-group, has non-profit status? Do we finally have a NATLFED front group willing to go legit, open its books, and hold itself accountable to its "members" and the donating public?

Nope. I called WSWA. They are not a non-profit, and insist that having non-profit status makes no sense because they "fight the government."

Yeah right.

Amnesty International fights the government. For real. And Amnesty International is a non-profit organization.

Why is WSWA - like all NATLFED front groups - avoiding non-profit status? Could it be because they fear disclosing what they actually do with the donations they receive?

How ESWA and EFWA Hurt the Poor

2006-12-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

How ESWA and EFWA Hurt the Poor

NATLFED apologists commonly claim:
“Sure NATLFED was a cult. But we got into it for the right reasons – to fight injustice and provide necessary services to the poor. And the skills I learned from NATLFED organizers helped me set up [insert NATLFED front-group name here], and for decades we’ve been helping people. So even if NATLFED was a cult, it inspired us to do good work.”

This myth that the front-groups “did and continue to do good work” is persistent. And this assertion represents a strategic attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of NATLFED by those who continue to claim that NATLFED was somehow politically relevant, and that the work they did with a NATLFED front-group was more than deluded, ideological wheel-spinning and a con-job on naïve volunteers.

So let’s be blunt. NATLFED front-groups hurt the poor.

I am most familiar with the New York State experience so I will focus on the Eastern Service Workers Association. ESWA duplicates existing services, competes for limited resources against legitimate organizations, consumes much of those resources themselves to perpetuate the cult, and then inefficiently and unevenly distributes the leftovers.

Here’s one familiar example: ESWA shows up to a food drive organized by a coalition of churches. ESWA crowds in front of Food Not Bombs, Politics of Food Program, Hope House and other progressive organizations.

These other organizations are non-profit 501(c)3 organizations – their finances are transparent and publicly available to anyone who wants to pull their IRS 990 Form. You can rest assured that these organizations – staffed by volunteers dedicated to feeding the hungry – aren’t going to eat the food!

Instead ESWA takes the lion’s share of the food, and their volunteers carry it back to the ESWA offices. There cadre members (a.k.a. “full-time volunteers” and “the executive director”) dig into the groceries and make themselves lunch. And then the volunteers, instead of distributing the food to the needy, waste their time helping the cadre-members fill-out stacks of 3x5 cards and other paper-work. Over the next couple of days, a smattering of poor people trickle by to collect whatever groceries are left.

Had ESWA never participated in the food drive – or coat drive, or medical services fair, or whatever – the resources would have been more efficiently distributed to the indigent by legitimate organizations, and would not have been diverted into perpetuating ESWA.

You can make a similar case about the EFWA. These groups popped up in counties that already had networks of farm worker, seasonal worker and immigrant services, run by legit non-profits, churches and labor unions. And the EFWA has spent decades trying to siphon-off resources that were intended to flow from concerned donors to those who could best help those in need. And siphon EFWA did, well enough to finance the core of “full-time” volunteers, reducing the resources available for farm workers and the community of charity organizations trying to help those farm workers.

These NATLFED apologists are a sad bunch. Imagine dedicating years of your life to something that was part cult, part con-game, all the while deluding yourself into thinking that you were really organizing a revolution that would overthrow capitalism and end injustice. But I guess if you could convince yourself that you were on some revolutionary cutting-edge, when all around there were signs that the whole enterprise was a pathetic sham, it’s not too hard to convince yourself now that – contrary to all evidence – the NATLFED front groups “did and continue to do good work.”

NATLFED - Newsday, November 13, 1996

2006-12-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

Cult of Guns: Cops Find Arsenal in Headquarters of Brooklyn Group

by Graham Rayman
Newsday, 11/13/96

Police last night widened their search of a Brooklyn brownstone where they discovered a large firearms and munitions cache Monday night linked to a radical left-wing cult.

In all, 85 people -- 16 men and 19 women -- were arrested. Yesterday, police charged four women and one man with illegal weapons possession. A fifth woman was arrested on child welfare allegations. An investigation of the others was continuing last night.

Deputy Insp. Michael Collins said earlier that investigators planned to search other apartments at 1107 Carroll St. and two adjacent buildings, owned by a group identified by police as the Provisional Party of Communists.

At about 9 p.m. Monday, police officers were called to the four-story Carroll Street building by state child welfare officials, who had been refused entry while attempting to investigate a child-abuse complaint.

After a delay, police were allowed inside the building. "They wouldn't let us in the door, and we felt the kids were in danger," said Det. Mark Patterson, a police spokesman.

During a search for the children, police found 16 handguns, 26 rifles and six shotguns, including two semi-automatic Tommy guns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition behind a false wall in a closet.

The closet was located in a second-floor apartment which had been converted into an office. Cops also discovered five pounds of gunpowder, eight sets of handcuffs, three jacks and 13 knives. A police source said investigators also found floor plans to the 67th Precinct, but Collins said he had no information about that.

Lisa Ann Burns, 27, of 1111 Carroll St., the apparent target of the child-abuse probe, was arrested for allegedly striking her daughter several days ago. Arrested on the illegal weapons charges were: Ann Ribar, 46, Diane Garrett, 45; Debra Becker, 36, Susan Angus, 45, and Bradford Engle, 39.

Child welfare workers have taken custody of Burns' two children. In February, 1984, FBI agents served search warrants at the same address and recovered several firearms but they made no arrests, said FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette. The case was referred to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. Valiquette declined to comment on the group's background or on what prompted agents to raid the building in 1984.

Based on reports from police and neighbors, the group, which also owned two adjacent buildings, appeared to be in the process of converting the building into a headquarters.

The second-floor office was stuffed with files, documents, desks, typewriters, computers, cabinets, a large meeting table and a commercial cooking stove, Collins said.
A police investigator who asked not to be named said yesterday evening that police were searching additional apartments at 1107 Carroll St.

The basement, which was linked by a courtyard to the other buildings, held storerooms full of food.

The group owned the buildings under the business name Carroll Street Properties, and rented a mailbox at the Post Net outlet on Schermerhorn Street as a business address.

Samuel Ganz of Post Net said someone came every day to pick up the mail. "They are quite friendly on the phone. They lways pay on time," he said. "I'm shocked at the whole idea that they were involved in something like this."

Several residents of the buildings charged that the group had been pressuring nonmembers living in the buildings to move out. "Everybody is afraid of them. You don't know what they are going to do," said one woman, who asked not to be identified.

Tenants said they were forbidden to enter the basement, or go outside in the courtyard.

Mae M. Cheng, Leonard Levitt and Dan Morrison contributed to this story.

Western Service Workers Association Wants You to Stop the Senseless Slaughter of the Uninsured

2006-12-07T12:37:00.000-05:00

Western Service Workers taking up the anti-assisted suicide banner.

The laugh-out loud section of this piece comes at the end when Jennett describes the WSWA as "a free and voluntary unincorporated membership association, organizes low-income workers in Sacramento to negotiate for better living and working conditions--including health care."

"Unincorporated" meaning they don't have non-profit status, no doubt because non-profits have to conform to minimal standards of openness and accountability.

What they mean when they say they organize low-income workers...well, that's anyone's guess.

WSWA organizes churches, schools and businesses into giving WSWA free-stuff, and organizes gullible editors into giving WSWA a platform in newspapers and magazines. And of course they "organize" new recruits to abandon their lives and dedicate themselves to the solely self-perpetuating activities of the WSWA.

No choice for low-wage workers
By Bill Jennett

Bill Jennett is operations manager for the Western Service Workers Association in Sacramento

Assembly Bill 651, which would legalize assisted suicide, is called the “Compassionate Choice” Act. But what service workers and other low-paid and uninsured workers want to know is this: What kind of “choice” is it when millions of Californians can’t choose to get the medical care they need, for lack of financial resources? Even those who have insurance coverage often are denied medical care by their health-maintenance organizations (HMOs) and insurance companies because cost savings and profits are their bottom line. Though the intent of our legislators may be to facilitate greater personal choice, economic and legal circumstances already deny that choice to millions of Californians.

With no universal health-care coverage and a medical system that’s been transformed into an industry, HMOs and insurance companies have made huge profits at the expense of patient care. For example, the employee handbook for Sharp HealthCare of San Diego stated that “all employees have the responsibility to place the interests of the HMO above their own and others”--that is, above the interests of the patients themselves! In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that patients can’t sue their HMOs for malpractice. Today, the average American family spends over 40 percent more on medical care than it did five years ago. More than 50 percent of those who declared bankruptcy in 2005 cited insurmountable medical bills as the reason for seeking debt relief.

This is the economic, political and legal context in which we must examine any move to legalize assisted suicide.

Although the intent of A.B. 651 is to offer an alternative to continued suffering to those at life’s end, how long will it be before it becomes a cost-cutting measure as HMOs and insurance companies try to avoid expensive treatments and therapies? How long before uninsured patients, terrified of mounting medical bills, decide that “assisted suicide” is a better--or at least cheaper--option than indebtedness?

Western Services Workers Association, a free and voluntary unincorporated membership association, organizes low-income workers in Sacramento to negotiate for better living and working conditions--including health care. We ask concerned citizens to join our campaign to disallow assisted suicide as an option to cut health-care costs at the expense of the growing number of people in our society with little or no access to health care. Call (916) 456-1771 to volunteer.

From the Sacramento News and Review, March 9, 2006

CULTS ON CAMPUS

2006-12-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

These colleges and universities currently give NATLFED front-groups school-sanctioned opportunities to recruit on campus. You just have to figure these campus community-service departments don't know what they are getting into...

Eastern Service Workers Association
Boston College
Brockport (State University of New York)
Nazareth College
New Jersey (College of New Jersey)
Northeastern University
Rochester (University of Rochester)
Simmons College

Western Service Workers Association
Davis (University of California, Davis)
Santa Cruz (University of California, Santa Cruz)

ESWA, Mass Media, October 10, 2006

2006-12-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

Dateline: Downtown
I Was a Twenty-something Stalinoid Cultist
Dan Roche
October 10, 2006

Recently a buddy mentioned this cool restaurant in Lower Mills, Dorchester, "Common Ground". All organic, nice people, their restaurant is made out of whole trees! What's not to like?

Well, I said, for one thing, it's run by a religious cult, Twelve Tribes. As a cult enthusiast, I'd done my homework. A communalist, millenarian Christian sect, Twelve Tribes are industrious and seem honest. Not a threat to go Waco. The thing is, they beat "their" wives and children as a doctrinal matter. And they've been booted from England's Reading rock festival for distributing anti-Semitic literature. They're known to wander onto campus here at UMass.

Cults are a presence at colleges nationwide. If someone told you "Don't join a cult", you'd scoff, right? You're too savvy, too street-smart. Suckers join cults. You're no sucker.

Well, neither is my friend. She's smart. But who knows; she could have been a step or two away from joining. I'm sure reading this she rolls her eyes, but cults hook you with the interesting and attractive. You don't know you're dealing with people who have designs on your mind-but soon they're feeding you answers that make sense (saving the more outré ideas for later). The pitch is already working on you.

I didn't think I was a sucker either, but I was-for a day or so. The first time I visited the UMass Boston campus was with a cult. Lemme tell ya a story.

My cult was not religious, but political: the Eastern Service Workers Association, also known as the National Federation of Labor, also known as the Order of Lenin. Real life, no fooling Kom-Yoo-Nists, execute-counter-revolutionaries-for-the-Dictatorship-of-the-Proletariat style.

They didn't tell me that outright. When I got shanghaied it was by "Drew", a well-spoken, Kenny Rogers-looking man I met on Newbury Street. He was handing out flyers. "Help the Poorest Paid Workers in Boston," they said. Drew told me that his group pooled money and resources to help the suffering meet the necessities of life. Why don't you come down to our office, he asks?

Sure, sounds good. I was out of work and had nothing but time-why not?

"Great", Drew said.

I went in for "training". They had posters of Sojourner Truth and Liz Gurley Flynn in their little left-wing waiting room. A small woman who looked like Morey Amsterdam gave me the run down on who they supposedly were and what they supposedly did.

Allegedly they solicited food from the poor to pool it for the use of the poor, but they really just consumed it themselves. Same with clothes. I observed them doing this, and they gave me a not-quite convincing explanation. Something besides the casserole smelled fishy.

The next day I was sent into the "field". I was to help "canvass", i.e. distribute propaganda and collect information. I was to get X amount of signatures, addresses, and phone numbers and report back to Drew, who was now my "director", every half-hour. Precisely. Not a second before or after. Very specific.

The next day Drew drove me to UMass. I had (and have) a lot of friends who go here, and I must have seen every one as I busily embarrassed myself as the something-somthing vanguard of the ESWA something-or-other. It made for awkward conversations the next time I saw these people- "What happened to that group you were with, Dan? Why did they want my name, address, and phone number?"

Why, to record you in their extensive logs, of course. The ESWA kept meticulous records. In their office, drones filed endless paperwork. They lived at a community house in Dorchester, where they filled out more paperwork. And- plotted the revolution!

An ESWA house in Brooklyn was raided in the mid-'90s for hoarding guns. I found this out on the internet-Google Boston Stalinist Cult and see what you come up with. Also, a search on rickross.com for "natlfed" yields interesting results. Ah ha, I told myself, combing through decades-old tales of demagoguery and deceit. These people were dangerous cranks. I decided to stick around, though. They were also an interesting anthropological study.

I met Drew one morning. 8:30, no sooner or later. In front of Ruggles Station, not on Ruggles Street. Very specific! Riding in his "donated" station wagon, I asked about the things I'd seen on the Internet. Lies, all lies, he told me.

Everything? Everything.

From all those different sources?

"See, that's when you know you're winning", he said, evidently to instill me with revolutionary fervor. "When they attack you. The system hates us", he gloated. An anti-cult website run by one man is part of "the system"?

He changed the subject.

I wanted to press, but, fearful of overplaying my hand, I cooled it. I passed twelve hours that day with ESWA busywork in the name of my ethnography. I noted control mechanisms, bullying and intimidation, I spoke with people who had long been separated from their families. What's more, the group was manipulating the very poor people they said they were helping. They paraded a pair of Roxbury locals before me, in order to display just how "solid" they were with "the people".

The speech from the locals sounded canned, coached. Capturing them outside with a free second, I got the skinny: "They haven't given us a damn thing except promises yet", one of them said.

Now convinced these apparatchiks were nogoodniks, I kept up my bluff and filed address after address. I got out late that night by feigning illness, mentally drained. I had to lie and manipulate to let them let me go home- I almost had to use physical force!

I called Drew the next day and let him have it. He tried to slime his way past me with sophistry. Finally, realizing the jig was up he intoned, "I have your address here in front of me", menacingly.

Come and get me, I said, hanging up.

I never heard from them again. The average ESWA member was a sallow husk, all spirit sapped. Spirit is one thing I have in spades. I feel confident I would have been OK. They'd never have broken me, I like to think.

But I don't know. As secure as I feel in myself, who's to say that some day I won't feel secure, that some day when I'm down someone won't use me for their own shadowy ends? It can happen to anybody.

The moral of my story, folks, is "Don't join a cult." Don't laugh! They're out there. No matter how smart you think you are, groups develop sophisticated means of recruitment and elaborate spiels. By the time you find yourself in, it may be too late. Fiercely guard your freedom of thought! No one can take it from you, but you can give it away. And sometimes, quite cheaply.

© Copyright 2006 Mass Media
The Mass Media is the independent student newspaper of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

ESWA, Daily Record, April 14, 2005

2006-12-06T13:55:00.000-05:00

I will reprint without comment except to say that this appears to be a good example of how area businesses can be duped into donated resources to ESWA and other NATLFED front-groups. Do you really think these construction companies would have built ESWA a new building if they knew that ESWA was a cult that poses as a social welfare organization in order to rip-off churches, philanthropists and the progressive community?

Eastern Service Workers Assn. celebrates planned construction of building
Daily Record (Rochester, NY), Apr 14, 2005 by Daily Record Staff

Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) celebrated the planned construction of its new Office Central on the corner of First Street and Bay Street in the City of Rochester with a ground breaking ceremony at the site on Monday, April 11.
An enthusiastic crowd of more than 100 marked the occasion. They included Bill Goodrich, president and COO of LeChase Construction, the construction manager for the new building; Peter R. Romeo, project architect; John Brankacz, project engineer; several contractors and suppliers who are contributing labor and/or supplies to the project, as well as many ESWA members, representatives of supportive churches and labor unions, business owners, professionals and individual community members who have been instrumental in the project's success and throughout ESWA's history.

ESWA Operations Manager Mark Horn told the crowd, This day is a true material demonstration of ESWA's 29-year, past, present and future commitment to be 'Here to Win and Here to Stay!' in the interest of Monroe County's service workers and their families, which is the result of thousands of people's time and resources invested toward ESWA's long-term success since our inception in 1976. ESWA is a self-help, all-volunteer membership association made up of Monroe County's working and unemployed poor. It was founded in Rochester in 1976 by low-income service workers and their families, who banded together with concerned community residents to address survival needs and build permanent solutions to their poverty conditions.

The association's 11-point benefit program of emergency and supplemental food, clothing, legal advice and information, preventive medical care and non emergency dental care, job referral, and other assistance is available to members free of charge.

According to Horn, the new office will be constructed on a now- vacant lot next door to the association's current office, which was obtained from the city at auction in June 2003. It will provide the association with approximately four times the amount of space as the association's current office.

Romeo has guided the project from its inception, donating all of his services as a volunteer. LeChase expects construction to be completed this year.

The new building is a material demonstration of hope through organization in the face of increasing economic hardship in Monroe County and misplaced government priorities and cutbacks, said Horn. We thank all those who are participating in making this project possible, and look forward to the building's completion as a milestone in our determined battle for community betterment from the bottom up.

To join ESWA's efforts or get more information, call (585) 654- 9640.
Copyright 2005 Dolan Media Newswires

ESWA, Boston IMC, May 5, 2004

2006-12-06T13:50:00.000-05:00

Watch out--Stalinist cult in Roxbury!

by mj

Email: commodityform (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified!) 05 May 2004

I was approached by three people from a group called the "Eastern Service Workers Association" at the Wake Up The Earth fest in JP this weekend. They said they were organizing a "mutual-benefits" network for non-union precarious and service workers. But something seemed off. When I asked direct questions about their structure and the size of their organization, they were deflected with totally non sequitur bits of pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric.

I half-assed a commitment to buy time and logged on to the internet. Ten google-seconds later, a bunch of "cult-watch" type sites came up. Turns out the "Eastern Service Workers Association" is a branch of the "National Labor Federation" (NATLFED), in turn a front group for the "Communist Party USA (Provisional)". This is a serious, cut-you-off-from-your-friends, work-you-18-hour-days cult. This may come as old news to folks who've been in the area for a while, but if it's not, spread the word, because this shit is hazardous to our communities.

I was approached by three people from a group called the "Eastern Service Workers Association" at the Wake Up The Earth fest in JP this weekend. They said they were organizing a "mutual-benefits" network for non-union precarious and service workers. Being a class-struggle anarchist who believes in building dual power organizations, and more to the point being a temporary worker, this caught my interest (though I was suspicious from the start--I've been in town for a short time, but long enough that I should've heard of this effort...).

Thinking that they were, at worst, an ISO-type group, crippled by a Leninist belief that they could "represent" a sector of the working class, and at best a little clueless about approach, I made the mistake of giving them my phone number, thinking that I would at least get a better chance to study their organization and take a couple lessons away. After all, they probably had some kind of experience I could apply in the long run to building mutual-aid networks; among their literature was a "sponsors' guide" with the names of local dentists, workers' comp lawyers, exterminators, caterers, etc. who have apparently donated (discounted?) services through their network. While I wouldn't join, I'd talk to the organizers a bit and gain another incomplete fragment of knowledge possibly relevant to class recomposition (or whatever).

But something seemed off. When I asked direct questions about their structure and the size of their organization, they were deflected with totally non sequitur bits of pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric. And the two sunglassed hippies doing most of the talking seemed to not be talking, but rather performing for the third, a middle-aged woman who remained mostly silent but occasionally nodded her approval or steered their answers.

Hmmm.

But it was far, far worse than I guessed. The woman called me back tonight (Monday) to try to get me to agree to "canvass" (!) for them. I tried asking direct questions about their organization, but she again brushed them aside, muttering something about them being of "academic" concern and about how learning while working was better, each one teach one. What?

Uh-oh.

I half-assed a commitment to buy time and logged on to the internet. Ten google-seconds later, a bunch of "cult-watch" type sites came up.

SHIT.

Turns out the "Eastern Service Workers Association" is, like the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association, the National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals, the Women's Press Collective, the California Homemakers Association, etc., etc., a branch of the "National Labor Federation" (NATLFED), in turn a front group for the "Communist Party USA (Provisional)". This is no run-of-the-mill RCP/ISO/ANSWER type group, sustaining itself by recruiting college kids to sell papers for the bureaucracy. This is a serious, cut-you-off-from-your-friends, work-you-18-hour-days cult.

There was a big bust in their headquarters in Brooklyn back in 1996; cops responding to child-abuse complaints happened upon their stash. Fifty guns and a shitload of ammo. I guess the group was all started by one charismatic leader in San Francisco in the early '70s; they were pretty much a failed version of the SLA. There's a collection of articles on them here, but the most informative one is this one.

Those links are all from one site, but tool around on the net a bit and more comes up.

So anyway, I called the woman back and told her on no uncertain terms that I was uninterested and that she did not have permission to call me back. Why? Because your organization is a front for a democratic-centralist Stalinist organization. (Grounds enough for me anyway!) What? what? Where did you hear that? Huh? It's publicly available information. You looked on the internet. Of course I did! Well, there's so much trash on the internet... just anybody can write and, well, I've seen what's on there, I know exactly what's on there. Well, then you know why I'm not interested. I'm sorry you believe that crap. I'm sorry you believe that crap. Don't call me back. I don't know why I would. Good.

Anyway, this is just a "head's up" to anyone out there who might be new to town or just hasn't run across these people. They're worse than they look. I'm positively seething at the idea of them going door-to-door in Roxbury trying to dupe working-class folks into giving them their names and information, and ultimately paying them dues to keep their cult running. Fucking poison, and arguably some of the only living examples of true "red fash" in today's USA.

Fortunately, they mentioned several times that they're in dire need of volunteer labor. Let's make sure they don't get a foothold again--spread the word.

http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/21362/index.php

AWA Suckers Anchorage Reporter, April 18, 2003

2006-12-06T13:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry to pick on George Bryson, but this piece of reporting is an excellent example of how gullible reporters can be suckered by NATLFED front-groups. The reporter even mentions Gino Perente and the AWA's origins with NATLFED. Clearly his AWA contact gave him the regular party-line about NATLFED's proud and apocryphal history of organizing the poor. But Bryson never tried to figure out who Perente was, or questioned the validity of his source?

Maybe reporters figure - this groups says it is helping the poor. They must be alright.

Maybe editors think - another stupid human interest story about do-gooders. It's a slow news-day. What the hell, why not?

Or maybe, Google hadn't yet made its way to Alaska in the spring of 2003.

Working It
Volunteers try to build an independent organization supporting low-paid employees

George Lopez gets a visit from Alaska Workers Association representatives Anna Bays (left), Barbara Sarantitis, Sam Bair and Kim Leavens. (Photo by Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

Operations manager Barbara Sarantitis (Photo by Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

Sarantitis goes over canvassing procedures with volunteers during a lunch break before the group heads to Muldoon on a membership drive. (Photo by Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

Greg Manskie joined the Alaska Workers Association after listening to a pitch from Robert Blalock, Joey Bays and others during an afternoon canvass in Muldoon. (Photo by Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News)

By GEORGE BRYSON
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: April 18, 2003)

Who would answer the door this time? A cranky landlord? A barking dog? A home-alone kid? ... Or another low-paid worker?

Trying to enlist members in the 11/2-year-old Alaska Workers Association, a recruiting party of volunteers met all of the above Saturday while walking door-to-door through a blue-collar neighborhood in northeastern Muldoon.

The recruiters weren't paid for their efforts, so it took either a good sport or a committed labor organizer to walk past some of the no-trespassing signs -- "This property protected by Rottweiler security system" -- and knock on the door.

But knock they did, and with surprising frequency the occupant inside was as willing to talk about Alaska labor conditions as George Lopez, a truck driver

and parent whose paycheck has to stretch each month to make ends meet.

Greeting Lopez, volunteer Sam Bair and AWA operations manager Barbara Sarantitis explained how the organization wants to assist low-income workers in the retail and service trades, many of whom labor without benefits or representation.

"Well, that would be me," Lopez answered dryly. "I'm a commercial driver -- a scale driver -- which doesn't pay. Not up here."

"They're not paying anywhere," Sarantitis said.

"Well, that's true, but there are better opportunities down south than there are up here," Lopez said. "In Anchorage, it's like you're in a big hole. You can take it or leave it -- and move on."

So Bair and Sarantitis explained some of the AWA membership benefits, which include emergency food and clothing to members in need any day of the week. And free, nonemergency dental care. And preventive medical exams. And personal finance counseling. And "know the law" lectures by supportive attorneys.

In exchange, they ask their members to give back to the association as much time and energy as possible, since the AWA depends on volunteers; the organization has no paid staff and accepts no government funding (to avoid government restrictions on spending). All the members are asked to pay is a symbolic fee of 62 cents a month.

"Why not sign up as a member?" Sarantitis suggested.

"I still don't follow it," Lopez said. "What's the purpose? ... Who's going to be the spokesman?"

"First, we're trying to build an organization," Sarantitis said. "Any one person might be able to solve their own problem, but the bigger problems of what's happening to working people and the economy aren't going to be solved unless all of us work together. ... So you can be the spokesman."

"I see," Lopez said. "But -- who's going to be listening?"

BORN OF ECONOMICS

It was a fair question.

The Alaska Labor Association is not a labor union in the legal sense of the word. It doesn't enter into wage and contract negotiations with employers under terms of the National Labor Relations Act. At least not yet.

Then what is the organization for? Where did it come from? Who are its members, and why did they join? Who might they influence? Or as Lopez puts it: "Who's going to be listening?"

Some of the answers could be traced to 44-year-old founding member Sarantitis, who works without pay as the AWA's only full-time staff member. Her desk is in a small office on the second floor of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Building on Denali Street in Midtown. (The IBEW donated the space, but it's only temporary, Sarantitis says; the AWA isn't affiliated with the union.)

Sarantitis is one of 24 members of the AWA's organizing committee, a list that includes local doctors, clergy, teachers, social workers and community activists, including retiring Anchorage School Board member Harriet Drummond.

But the real origins of the group, Sarantitis says, are in local and national economic conditions, a work environment in which an increasing number of Alaskans find it difficult to earn a living wage. In 2000, about a fifth of Alaska's households earned less than $25,000 a year -- the poverty line for a family of five -- and 52,000 Alaskans officially lived in poverty.

"Of course, it's not just here," she says. "It's in L.A. It's in the Bay Area. It's all across the country. ... There are billion-dollar deficits in almost every state in the union, because people are out of work, due to jobs lost in just the last two years. And the corporations that used to pay a fair share of the taxes have gone. Or laws have been passed where they pay fewer and fewer taxes."

Living in Alaska in the early 1990s while working as a government-employed hydrologist, then leaving to live in Oregon and returning in 2000, Sarantitis noticed a dramatic change in the character of Alaska's economy. Gone were a lot of the high-paying jobs in the oil and gas industry, which began to hire more temporary employees on contract. Filling the vacuum were near-minimum-wage jobs in the tourist and retail trades. The rising cost of housing was taking a higher percentage of a worker's salary. Health care costs had risen 68 percent in 10 years (compared to 27 percent nationwide).

Her husband, Tom Murray, had just become scientist-in-charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, based in Anchorage. So Sarantitis decided to become a labor organizer. She'd been one in western Oregon in the mid-1990s, helping to create the all-volunteer Western Farmworkers Association, enlisting laborers from the $1 billion nursery industry around Portland.

East Coast model

Sarantitis says the WFA modeled itself after a similar organization that flourished on the East Coast in the 1970s, partly inspired by a documentary film that had reported the plight of Long Island potato gatherers who worked on profitable farms that catered largely to New Yorkers.

The film showed how the time clock on some of the farms was connected to the conveyor belt where the workers deposited their potatoes. When the belt was turned off, the time clock quit, even though the workers were still working, loading trucks or performing other chores. Calculating their pay on the basis of total time spent on the farm worked out to about 62 cents an hour.

In the publicity backlash that followed the film, the new Eastern Farm Workers Association was born, led by Eugenio Perente (who'd splintered away from the United Farm Workers union led by Caesar Chavez). Perente and the farmworkers decided to commemorate the low pay by charging a nominal EFWA membership fee of just 62 cents a month. The commemorative fare continued as Perente's organizing principles were transferred to Oregon, then Alaska.

Chief among them, Sarantitis says, is the twofold organization of the Alaska Workers Association, which includes "input systems" (rallying volunteers, fund raising, canvassing new members) and "output programs" (providing food and clothing and other benefits, including information, and perhaps, one day working to change public policy).

"But first the important thing is to build a local base of support," Sarantitis says. "We're still really new."

So far, the Alaska Workers Association has signed up about 200 members who are eligible for benefits while recruiting dozens of volunteers who've donated all sorts of services, Sarantitis says.

"We don't have any paid staff, and look what we've built," she says with obvious pride. "We've got volunteer attorneys who are doing 'Know Your Law' sessions, preventing people from getting foreclosures on their homes. ... I've had two cars donated -- or at least offered -- for transportation. The printing resources are donated. We have restaurants that donate food. We have a member of our organizing committee who donates lunches once a month for everyone who goes on the canvass."

GOING DOOR-TO-DOOR

Lunch was being served once again Saturday as about a half-dozen volunteers rendezvoused at the AWA office before launching into a canvassing drive in Muldoon.

Among them were a few University of Alaska Anchorage students Sarantitis had recruited while addressing classes. (Friday, she'd done so again, talking up AWA to about 40 members of professor Darlene Darnell's introductory course in sociology.)

But when you ask people to fork over half of their weekend for some intangible cause, you can expect to lose a few more than you win. And Saturday morning, Sarantitis found herself debating the reason for the canvass drive with potential volunteer George Sterling of Kenai.

He was sympathetic to their cause, Sterling said -- he's a 57-year-old, disabled, fixed-income camper-dweller -- but he just couldn't see how the AWA would ever change the way the world works.

"We've always had poor people, and we're always going to have poor people," Sterling said. "The more that you hand it to people, the more there is going to be people with a hand out to get it."

"I agree," Sarantitis said. "Charity won't solve the problem. ..."

"And that's what this sounds like -- another charitable organization," he continued. "I can go to you for food. I can go to you for clothes. I can go to you for some legal aid. But the state's already offering all that."

"All right," Sarantitis said. "And when you come to us, every step of the way we're going to ask you what are you going to do to make sure it's here for the next person. ... We put faith in working people to build something that's independent of that government money. The benefit program is not a handout, George. It's not going to be here if people don't work to build it."

Sterling remained doubtful and ultimately dropped out. But the other volunteers in the orientation session were willing to join the canvass, including 20-year-old UAA student Sam Bair, a DJ at the campus radio station and a veteran of one prior canvassing effort.

"As far as volunteer activities, this pretty much has been the most rewarding opportunity I've ever had," Bair said during a pause between houses. "The problem is, it's a different group every weekend. So it depends on who you have and how many people you have. But on a sunny day, you can really have fun."

Just as Bair enjoyed signing up truck driver Lopez after lunch. And Wasilla volunteer Joey Bays signed up Anchorage dishwasher Greg Manskie.

Bays had met him just as he was stepping out of a garage with his bike. He lived in another part of town, Manskie said. He was just there to help a disabled friend with chores.

Bays asked if he'd be interested in joining the workers' association. She told him about the emergency food benefits when money runs short.

"That's about what I'm looking at right now," Manskie said. "Right now I've no food in the house to make, at least for two more weeks. I've been munching on crackers. That's all I've been eating (at home)."

Washing dishes at the Village Inn, he makes $7.50 an hour and gets a free breakfast. It's a new job, Manskie said, and it's working out well.

"They're nice people," he said. "They like me, and they like what I do."

Recruiters move on

Sarantitis told Manskie he could pick up food at the AWA offices the very next day -- a Sunday. He didn't have to wait until Monday. Manskie said he'd be there.

And the AWA recruiters moved on.

Before the day was over, they would visit 37 homes, sign up seven new members and reconnect with four current members. (No one was home at 16 residences.)

They would talk to a veteran who works on base for the government and sign him up. They would talk to the foreman of a construction crew and sign him up too.

Then they came to a house with a sign next to the door that clearly said, "No Soliciting."

Bays hesitated. Did that apply to them? Should they knock?

"Sure," Sarantitis said. "We're not selling anything here but hope in the future."

Daily News reporter George Bryson can be reached at gbryson@adn.com.

WMLA, North Adams Transcript, January 10, 2003

2006-12-06T13:00:00.000-05:00

Past cult link dogs aid-for-poor group

North Adams Transcript, Jan. 10, 2003
http://www.thetranscript.com/
By Kevin Moran and Carrie Saldo

NORTH ADAMS — Western Massachusetts Labor Action, a Pittsfield-based group whose connection to one of the country’s most extreme political cult was exposed in the mid-1990s, opened a “benefit office” at the Seventh Day Adventist Church at 45 Chestnut St. in August 2002.

Western Massachusetts Labor Action is “using it as a base for expanded door-to-door canvassing for surrounding low-income neighborhoods to unite the working poor and unemployment in the fight for living wage jobs,” according to its own January 2003 publication, the Western Massachusetts Alliance News. The story runs under the headline, “New WMLA benefit office opens up in North Adams; Provides base for North County membership organizing.”

Light was shed on Western Massachusetts Labor Action in the mid-1990s, when newspaper reports linked it to the National Labor Federation or NATLFED, also known as the Provisional Communist Party. Watchdog groups and government agencies have described NATLFED as one of the country’s most extreme and controlling political cults.

Thursday, WMLA officials denied its cultic associations publicized in the past.

“We’re definitely not a cult,” said Carol Rogers, WMLA administrative assistant and its newspaper’s editor.

Prior to exposure in the Berkshire Eagle, Boston Globe and New York Times in the mid-1990s, WMLA had recruited three Williams College students who left the school and joined on the premise they’d be dedicating their lives to help clothe and feed the poor. A former member of WMLA, who left Williams to join the group in 1994, said she was encouraged to relocate to New York City, where she underwent Marxist indoctrination and had her every move monitored, according to a 1995 report in the Berkshire Eagle. One of the former students still is active in WMLA.

A WMLA flyer obtained Thursday at its Pittsfield office describes the group as a “labor organization of a new type facing a task of tremendous proportion — uniting Berkshire County’s unrecognized workers as well as those on fixed incomes or out of work, along with concerned community residents, business people, professionals, students, clergy and others. Through collective action, WMLA is building strength to eradicate the root causes of poverty.”

***Founded by Readsboro, Vt., resident Peggy Uman, WMLA opened an Adams office in 1975, which has long since closed. But it has continued to operate a Pittsfield office at 298 Columbus Ave. since 1977, and Uman left the group sometime around 1990. Uman was connected to the late Eugenio Perente-Ramos, whom cultic experts say was a notorious cult leader.

WMLA’s apparent renewed interest in North County has alarmed some.

“They are in no way involved with legitimate health and human services agencies that serve people to help them to become independent … but involve [people] to become dependent on them,” said an area health and human services official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Marie Harpin, area director of Community Action-North Adams, a primary food pantry for Northern Berkshire County, said the WMLA came to her attention again last Thanksgiving, when she learned it was giving out food at the Chestnut Street church.

“I remember this group from years ago,” said Harpin.

“I’m totally in the dark” about WMLA’s efforts, she added, saying the group hasn’t made its latest efforts known to agencies like Community Action.

Harpin said Community Action-North Adams, the North Adams Salvation Army and one brown bag lunch program in Adams and another in Williamstown are serving the needs of local people adequately.

“So we really don’t need another group collecting food,” Harpin said.

What appears to make WMLA stand out from the existing food pantry services is its emphasis on recruiting members helped by it. Groups like the Salvation Army and Community Action don’t engage in membership activity.

The group was denied permission Thursday to continue its “bucket drives” at the North Adams Stop ‘N’ Shop and to maintain a staffed table inside. This came after an area resident recalled the WMLA publicity in the 1990s and brought concerns about the group to the attention of the supermarket manager.

Salvation Army Capt. Brian Merchant, who said he was not familiar with WMLA, did notice its literature table at the Stop ‘N’ Shop Wednesday. It struck him as odd that the group was allowed to solicit in the store, according to Merchant. Company policy normally prevents groups like the Salvation Army from soliciting inside the store, according to Merchant. Corporate spokeswoman Kelly O’Connor confirmed that is the company policy.

North Adams Stop ‘N’ Shop Manager Larry Jones said five people staffed the booth from Sunday to Wednesday collecting food items. Jones said a WMLA official told the supermarket the items were to be given to the needy.

***Last fall, Western Massachusetts Labor Action organizers set up a literature table on the sidewalk in front of Martin’s Shoe Store on Main Street. It was shut down once the city realized it didn’t have a permit, according to Rod Bunt of the Mayor’s Office of Travel and Tourism.

Recalling last fall’s encounter on Main Street, Bunt said the man who appeared in charge at the table on Main Street told him the group was representing non-union affiliated workers who needed a voice in Western Massachusetts.

Eileen Clark, owner of Martin’s Shoe Store, Inc., in North Adams, said she was first contacted by Thacher L. Kent, WMLA operations manager, about three years ago.

Kent asked her to donate money for a clothing drive they were having to purchase and distribute clothing in the area. Clark said she told him she could not give money, but would donate two bags of clothing that her son had outgrown. No one from the WMLA office ever picked up the clothes, as they told Clark they would.

Since then Clark said she has paid to advertise in the WMLA newspaper a few times a year, most recently a $50 advertisement in December. Martin’s is one of a number of Berkshire County advertisers in the WMLA newspaper.

Clark said she understood the organization to be an advocacy organization that fills a community need.

“I’ve never had any reason to feel anything was going on besides what they do,” Clark said.

Kent usually called Clark when the WMLA had a specific need, such as money for fuel assistance or to collect coats for a coat drive. She said Kent asked her to become a volunteer, but Clark chose not to get involved. However Clark said she “helps out” by buying advertising.

Clark described Kent as “very sincere and soft spoken.” When she has said no to his request for donations or volunteering, he has always respected that, she said.

In the WMLA newspaper, Kent, who is also listed as the paper’s publisher, is pictured in a photo at the North Adams Stop ‘N’ Shop accompanying a story announcing the opening of the North Adams office. The photo caption explained Kent “signs up a potential volunteer … publicizing the new benefit office.”

Kent is a former Williams College student who dropped out of college after he became involved with the WMLA in the mid-1990s, according to a 1994 report in the Williams Record college newspaper.

Kent lives in the area, but has an unpublished phone number and could not be reached for comment.

***Interviewed Thursday evening at Seventh Day Adventist Church benefit office, Mike Petteys, a WMLA volunteer, denied any truth behind prior published reports on the group and said the group did not engage in cultic activities. He was showed the Berkshire Eagle expose and called it “completely inaccurate.” Petteys said he hadn’t read the report, but had heard about it. He called the story of the Williams College student who claimed she was nearly brainwashed “ridiculous.”

Petteys said the WMLA has operated benefit offices off and on in North Adams for years, sometimes out of private homes.

WMLA is “not a political organization, [and] not tied to anything,” Petteys said. “It is what it is.”

WMLA is trying to offer assistance to local poor by going door-to-door, Petteys said. The only thing they ask of people they assist is to help the next person in whatever way they can, he said.

If low-income people are hurt by their circumstances “we’re going to try to find a real solution,” Petteys said. “And anybody who really cares about poor people will find ways to best solve the problem.”

The benefit office Thursday night was bustling with adults cooking food for the children playing in the church’s main chapel.

“Maybe we’re going to be called names because we’re stepping on toes,” Petteys said.

Its fall 2002 sponsors guide lists numerous prominent businesses, doctors and lawyers throughout Berkshire County.

At the Pittsfield office, WMLA administrative assistant Rogers also denied the group was engaged in cultic activity, when asked of its prior publicity linking it to NATLFED. She said the group merely serves its members by providing free food, clothing, access to doctors and dentists and legal advocates.

“We’re definitely not a cult,” Rogers said. “There’s always people who see the negative side of everything.”

While denying a direct connection to the group, Rogers said WMLA does sell the California-based NATLFED calendars as a fundraiser.

Seventh Day Adventist Church Preacher Matthew Farrar said the church made its space available to WMLA “to help people pitch in and work together,” according to the WMLA newspaper.

WMLA canvassed North Adams neighborhoods last summer and “signed members who, while working as many as three jobs in the tourism industry … were unable to afford school clothing for their children.”

“Many tenants contacted on the membership canvassing have said that the city’s new-found tourist appeal is causing their housing costs to escalate as the demand rises for local properties,” Kent said in the WMLA newspaper article. “A number of service workers and disabled workers have told us about the landlord-tenant difficulties they were facing as a result. In response, we are setting up legal advice sessions at the benefit office.”

Farrar said Thursday night he has seen first-hand and can attest to the help the WMLA has provided for poor people in the local community.

***In the late 1980s and early 1990s, WMLA was active at Williams College, canvassed North County neighborhoods seeking donations, and set up donation spots outside of local supermarkets.

A New York Times article described WMLA’s presence on the Williams campus as a “sort of Salvation Army with a political edge.” Williams eventually tried to restrict WMLA’s activity on campus, where it had apparently curried enough favor with a two professors as to have some of its members lecture in their classes.

At the time, WMLA operated under the premise it sought food and money donations for the needy and operated a wood fuel assistance program for local residents. But a former member told the Berkshire Eagle in 1995 that the group engaged in little community assistance and members ate most of the food donations.

A former member also said WMLA lured its members on the basis of community service, but wound up indoctrinating them with what was described as a far-left and unorthodox brand of Marxism.

The New York City police carried out a raid at NATLFED’s Brooklyn headquarters in November 1996 after suspecting it was harboring bombs. No bombs were ever found, but police did find an arsenal of weapons.

According to cult-watch Web sites, NATLFED has been active for three decades and operates by using dozens of smaller fronts.

Students for Comprehensive Medical Care

2006-12-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know anything about this group?

They appear to be working with Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals (NATLFED front-group) on college campuses in California.

The paragraph below is from a recent UC Berkely newsletter. They want "full-time" organizers? I'll bet. When they say "full-time", they mean full-time.

- Volunteer with the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals (CCMP) and Students for Comprehensive Medical Care CCMP is working to join together medical professionals, small business people, students and low-income workers to completely change our country's priorities. CCMP offers full-time organizer opportunities over Christmas break and in summer that includes housing, meals and transportation. If you are interested in finding out more about full time and part-time organizing opportunities, call Brad at CCMP at (510) 436-8020.

NSWA, Medford (OR) Mail Tribune, December 1996

2006-12-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

Service Groups with Sinister Ties: Cult Watchers Issue Warning About Agencies
Mail Tribune, December 1996
By Alberto Enriquez

Medford, Oregon -- For more than 20 years, they've quietly collected cash, clothing and food. From St. Mark's Episcopal Church, they've received turkeys. From the American Association of University Women, they've received sweaters and other warm hand-me-downs. And from bereaved survivors, they've garnered memorial contributions in obituary notices.

Spokesmen for the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association, Jackson County Fuel Committee, and Ashland Community Service Center said those donations were for the poor or victims of natural disasters.

But members of a national cult-watch organization say the three Rogue Valley groups are one and the same, part of a leftist political cult that has 57 similar fronts in eight states.

In a Nov. 11 raid on the group's Brooklyn headquarters, New York police found an arsenal of 50 guns, rifles and shotguns and components for explosive devices. Five members have since been charged with weapons violations.

New York newspapers reported at the time that the group, known as the National Labor Federation (NATLFED) or Provisional Communist Party among other names, had revolutionary pretensions but in practice amounted to a personality cult founded by the late Gerald Doeden, a northern California con man. He assumed the name Eugene Perente-Ramos and acquired a following from the early 1970s to his death in March 1995.

A spokeswoman for the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association at 203 Oakdale Avenue in Medford declined an interview. She acknowledged that her group is not a nonprofit organization.

Cult-watchers say the group is also active in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. They say that in Oregon, besides the Rogue Valley fronts the group has an office called Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers in Portland.

But exactly what the organization does is unclear.

Irene Davidson, a New York resident and mother of a former NATLFED member, said the group controls its members with heavy workloads, little sleep and veiled threats. Davidson said the best of the goods received, and all of the money taken in, went to support the national organization.

"It's an organization that was founded as a very imaginative man's game, an elaborate and very destructive game which existed to provide absolute power, sex, drugs, everything to Perente," Davidson said.

The alleged diversion of donations to a hidden agenda didn't surprise Father Mark Cach, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Medford.

"That fits exactly into what I had them pegged," Cach said. "We have tried in the past to do some cooperative work with them, but we have always been very cautious."

Cach said his suspicions were aroused years ago when the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association first requested help with a fund-raising drive -- but refused to let him look at its books.

"I mean, I could understand how you don't want to show your books to anyone and everyone, but come on, as a donor I should have access to your books," Cach said. "You see good stuff brought in, and you see basically that they keep the good stuff for themselves -- and I've heard that 100 percent of the money that comes in goes to the organization."

Cach said he recently was contacted by longtime Seasonal Workers spokesman Chris Day seeking free use of copiers, but he agreed only to a meeting.

"Personally, I doubt the poor are being helped that much," Cach said.

"I think also they are very deceptive."

Christian Mathisen, an outreach coordinator at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, said his church has nothing to do with the Seasonal Workers, but provides Thanksgiving baskets to them just as it does all organizations requesting them. The list of recipients includes mainstream nonprofits such as the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul.

"We do take it on faith that they do get it to those in need," Mathisen said.

Although St. Mark's is across the street from the Seasonal Workers' Medford office, Mathisen said the church has had little contact with the organization.

That's not unusual. Although the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association has been active in the Rogue Valley since the early 1970s, other said they too know little of its inner workings.

Wanda Powell, a spokeswoman for the American Association of University Women, said the local AAUW chapter has donated clothes to the group for years.

"I had the impression that they were a nonprofit organization," Powell said. "If this isn't the case, we would probably not be donating."

Jose Arreguin, formerly head of the Convenio de Raices Mexicanas, a farmworker cooperative based in Phoenix, said that the Convenio occasionally agreed to coordinate activities with the Seasonal Workers. Members frequently invited him to meetings, but he declined.

Arreguin said, "I don't understand very well what is their status. I understand that they are not a nonprofit. They don't have a 501c(3). They have individual donors only. I know they have helped some families."

A staffer at the group's Medford office who identified herself only as "Barbara" did not deny connections with the National Labor Federation or Provisional Communist Party, but she said she had not heard of them.

She refused repeated requests by a reporter to speak to a manager, while at the same time insisting on hearing first what the questions would be. Several times, she wrote individual questions onto a piece of paper and carried them into an adjoining room. When asked again if a reporter could speak to the person in the back room, she replied, "Well, she's gone upstairs now."

Finally, she said the organization requires reporters to fill out interview forms before granting interviews, but she could not produce the form. Instead, a form asking the "general purpose" and "specific categories of fact" arrived at the Mail Tribune the next day.

Jeff Whitnack, a former NATLFED member and San Francisco Bay Area freelance investigative reporter, was among the first to document the group's activities, including a 1984 background piece in Public Eye, a publication of Political Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass.

"They don't do formal interviews," Whitnack said. "That's just part of their policy."

Whitnack said the three Rogue Valley organizations are NATLFED fronts, and that he had been in contact with Rogue Valley members while he was briefly involved with NATLFED in Oklahoma.

Whitnack pointed to a March 20, 1995 obituary in which the New York Times was tricked into eulogizing Perente as a legitimate activist with ties to the United Farm Workers. The Times retracted the obit the next day, stating that Dan Fiske and Christopher Day, who provided much of the information for the obituary, had exaggerated Perente's UFW connections and covered up his cult activities.

Christopher Day is the same Chris Day who has long been a local spokesman for the Rogue Valley groups, Whitnack said.

Cult-watcher Irene Davidson said a group of NATLFED ex-members had identified Lon Christiansen among the handcuffed NATLFED members photographed after the raid on the organization's Brooklyn headquarters. Christiansen has been active in the Northwest Seasonal Workers Association in Medford.

Davidson said the group of NATLFED watchers maintains a Web site on the Internet to coordinate information, but parents whose adult children remain in the organization are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals.

She said those reprisals can take the form of punishing assignments and social ostracism for the children, or cutting off communications to the parents, whose correspondence is censored.

NATLFED, Village Voice, November 26, 1996

2006-12-06T09:45:00.000-05:00

Commie Fiends of Brooklyn
The Village Voice, November 26, 1996
By Alisa Solomon

A complete list of the weapons stashed away by the Provisional Communist Party in its Brooklyn headquarters, and a map detailing their hiding places, has been in the hands of the FBI for more than a decade. Nonetheless, the police professed shock at finding the pile of dusty armaments in their raid last week, and Mayor Giuliani fulminated at a press conference, warning that the group's "enormous cache of weapons . . . can be used for mass destruction."

Cult experts and ex-members of the group (commonly known as the National Labor Federation, or NATLFED) have pointed out that the weapons, which have not been fired for decades, served merely as props to impress recruits. The mayor and the tabloids fell for the charade--and then tried to top it by waving their catch before the public as anti-terrorism trophies. "It's all theater," says Jeff Whitnack, who donated his own legally acquired AR-15 to the group when he was a member in the '80s. "Guns are widely available and easy to obtain in this culture. If they didn't have an arsenal and wanted to commit violence, they could go out and get one in no time."

Indeed, ex-members of NATLFED, parents of current and recent members, and experts on cults say that the PCP poses the greatest danger to its own devoted followers, and they can't understand why only guns make a story. "We've been passing information to the press for years, trying to get them to expose the various fronts the group uses to suck people in and the techniques it uses to get them to stay," says Irene Davidson, whose teenage daughter lived at the Carroll Street headquarters for three years, until fleeing last fall. "We've set up lots of interviews between reporters and ex-members, but nothing ever came of it."

Though some former members say they neither saw nor heard about the arsenal, they did see the late charismatic leader of the group, Eugenio (Gino) Perente, flash a pistol tucked into his waistband. "It was part of his costume, just like his beaded turquoise collar and his cowboy boots," explains one woman who was drawn into the PCP through its latest front, the Women's Press Collective. (She requested anonymity, fearing that NATLFED would harass her with menacing phone calls, as they had after she resisted their entreaties to leave her husband and move in with them.)

Though Perente declared war on the state of California in the early '70s, and was arrested on illegal gun possession charges in Long Island a few years later (the charges were dropped because the weapons were found in an illegal search), his group has never committed any acts of violence--at least not outside its own residence. According to Janja Lalich, a West Coast expert on political cults, "We have collected many allegations of physical abuse from members who left, such as people being beaten and assaulted by Gino. But we haven't heard of any in recent years, though of course the verbal and psychological violence has continued."

Since Perente's death in March 1995, Margaret Ribar--a two-decade veteran of NATLFED and leader of its West Coast division--has taken over and instituted some reforms. After arriving unannounced from California last year, and barreling into the Carroll Street headquarters flanked by a pair of bodyguards, she loosened some of the restrictions that prevent members from visiting their families. According to Davidson, who saw her daughter at Carroll Street every few weeks under Perente's rule, signs posted in the headquarters instructed members, "Your feelings have no significance. Keep them to yourself." Ribar has taken them down.

Still, Lalich believes that many of Ribar's reforms are merely tactical responses to outside criticism. After Perente's death, for instance, his grandiose fabrications of a glorious past in the left were exposed, and some members and their relatives began to press for answers. "Letting kids go home a couple of times a year keeps parents quiet as well as helping to convince some wavering members that they're not really in a cult," Lalich says.

A high proportion of the group's most devoted members (including the three arrested on weapons charges last week) are women, but feminist principles don't seem to have infused its identity. "It's a particular kind of cult formation," says Chip Berlet, a well-known expert on totalitarian groups. "You have this strong alpha male surrounded by women. With Perente in particular, you have a guy who had trouble making a distinction between sexuality and armed revolution: he sought sex from women to prove, along with his fantastical history, that he was the most potent political leader in America. Those were penis weapons in the closet."

Once caught like flies in the amber of such a charismatic male, women in cults have the hardest time escaping. The structure plays upon the socially ingrained notion that women's importance is rendered through the male to whom they're attached. Such women have little confidence that they can--or should--function independently. And if they can muster such hopes, they are quickly dashed by fears of failure. "How are you going to get a job?" asks one woman, who tore herself away from the group. "How do you explain that 15-year gap in your resume?"

Some critics suggest that the Women's Press Collective was so named precisely to attract women, though its work had nothing to do with women's issues. Josh Karpf, an editor who wanted to put his book skills to progressive purposes, volunteered at the WPC for more than a year in the early '90s. He recalls printing flyers for the group and, most of all, helping to produce Invest Yourself, a listing of volunteer opportunities NATLFED wrested from unsuspecting church groups and used to promote its fronts.

Like Perente before her, Ribar delivers lengthy, loopy, Leninist lectures. And like any newly promoted bureaucrat, she has surrounded herself with trusted supporters, bringing in people from California to staff Carroll Street while shuffling other personnel around. Many former Brooklyn residents have been sent out to the "entities"--the satellite organizations that purport to provide services for the poor in Long Island, western Massachussetts, Rochester, and elsewhere.

It's not unheard of for a cult formed around a charismatic leader to outlive him, and if any such group could, it would certainly be a one like NATLFED, with its highly bureaucratized Marxist-Leninist structure. And last week's raid could empower the group by feeding its fantasies of being victimized by government vendettas. True, the publicity may destabilize some of the "entities," whose donors and volunteers may think twice about lending their support, but nothing eggs on revolutionaries like a mayor declaring how dangerous they are.

WPC, New York Times, November 20, 1996

2006-12-06T09:39:00.001-05:00

Cutting the Fringe
New York Times, November 20, 1996
By Irene Davidson

I thought we had made it. My daughter had decent grades, good board scores, a successful preliminary interview at the private college of her dreams. The shaved head, purple hair, secret forays to after-hours clubs and failed chemistry Regents exam didn't seem to add up to much after all.

In her senior year, I signed her up, at an information table in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, to volunteer for the Women's Press Collective. Remembering the happy years my sister had given to a feminist printing group, I thought this might be the cure for my 17-year-old's "senioritis" -- and a creative way to complete the community service credits she needed to graduate.

They called her, she went and she hated it. They called and called and when she finally went back something changed. She started going to meetings regularly, coming home exhausted. She began missing morning classes. She answered incoherently about what she did there. She spoke of a famous labor organizer who had lectured, and was surprised none of our leftist friends knew him.

Invited to tour the collective, I asked questions about the money and politics behind the operation. The guide responded blankly. Last week, the woman was one of five people held on weapons charges after New York City police officers raided three buildings in Brooklyn, the headquarters of the so-called Provisional Communist Party, also known as the National Labor Federation.

The raid uncovered not only a cache of arms but the story of the group my daughter joined four years ago. Long headed by a self-styled revolutionary poseur, Eugenio Perente-Ramos, it recruited idealistic young people but promptly isolated them, demanding total commitment. The Women's Press Collective, like the Eastern Farm Workers Association, was one of its front groups.

It was when my daughter starting talking about 2 A.M. classes that I started screaming "cult!" I noticed changes in the way she talked, in the way she held her body. Her cool blue eyes shone with impatient intensity.

We sought help. Experts on cults told us not to alienate her with criticism. We were warned that periods spent in this group were typically long -- often many years. I couldn't believe the group wasn't drugging her. "Believe it," one expert said. "Mind control is powerful."

After Thanksgiving dinner, she ran off to the group's headquarters. After Christmas dinner, her comrades picked her up. And after completing the semester, she slept home less and less. At midnight on the day of her final interview at her dream school, she called to say she did not want to go to college.

The window was closing fast. I begged the experts to intervene before her 18th birthday in February. The plan was to present her with family, former group members and exit counselors to get her to decide to leave the organization. But the meeting didn't happen. The day after her birthday, she slept the whole day. I rushed home early from work, just in time to greet the comrades who had come for her.

It was two and a half years before I could engineer one unmonitored conversation with my daughter, during which I gave her some of the information we had unearthed about the organization and its leader.

Several months later, last Thanksgiving, my daughter called home. She had left the group, shaken by changes after Mr. Perente-Ramos's death last year and, I like to think, by the information we had given her. We were lucky. Others wait, their children still in the grip of people driven by a will to save the world using means that could never achieve that end.

NATLFED, New York Times, November 18, 1996

2006-12-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

Its Leader Dead, Fringe Group Lives on for Its Own Sake
The New York Times,
November 18, 1996
By John Kifner

New York -- Even as a young man -- before he formally declared war on northern California -- Gerald William Doeden was known as a fast-talking con artist who got away with cashing checks in bars signed "Jesus H. Christ" and could quote Shakespeare from memory by the yard.

Jeri Doeden went on to become Field Commander Eugenio Perente-Ramos, an entirely fictitious persona, and would tell his adoring followers that he had been, variously, a guerrilla in Guatemala and Nicaragua, a Cuban revolutionary, a paratrooper, an Alcatraz inmate and above all, a longtime labor organizer and close associate of Cesar Chavez of the farm workers' movement.

Tall, gaunt, clad in with a dashing, wide-brimmed hat, walking with a limp -- an old bullet wound, he said, although in truth it came from a car crash in his hard-drinking, drug-filled youth -- he gathered around him a group of followers who lived quietly in Brooklyn for 20 years, talking of revolution far into the night but mostly filling out and filing mounds of paperwork.

"The Cave," he called his headquarters in a Crown Heights brownstone, where sentries watched from windows, walkie-talkies crackled and every minute, every movement was regimented, including the rambling post-midnight speeches that were a hallmark of his control.

The group, called the National Labor Federation and sometimes the Provisional Communist Party, carried on after Perente-Ramos died at age 59 in March 1995. And last Monday night the police, responding to a complaint of a crying child in the group's headquarters, were stunned to find a cache of 16 pistols, 26 rifles, 5 shotguns and 2 machine guns.

Tenants of the building said Sunday that they had been unnerved, and their children traumatized, to learn that they were living so close to so many weapons. Some tenants met with a psychologists' group to let out their fears about their suddenly notorious neighbors.

But the account that emerged from interviews with former members and their relatives, experts on fringe groups and law enforcement officials, was of a group that carried out virtually no political activities, existing solely to perpetuate itself by raising money and recruiting new members. Indeed, the weapons, the totems of revolution, may well have lain half-forgotten in their secret closet for years.

After the initial sensation of helmeted police officers' surrounding the block, FBI agents and other officials at the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Manhattan seemed more bemused than alarmed. "No one's even talking about it here," a top-ranking law enforcement officer said a few days after the raid. "It's not even on our radar."

Yet in a strange way, the group was a sort of success, managing to attract hundreds of well-meaning young people who, isolated and exhausted by 18 hours a day of make-work, developed a slavish devotion to Perente-Ramos.

Posing as organizers of farm workers and maids, as champions of women's rights, as helpers of people whose heat had been cut off in winter, they talked their way onto college campuses, and got donations of money and food from businesses and even doctors' and lawyers' groups.

The organization eventually took over Invest Yourself, a well-known guide to volunteer agencies and projects that had been published by a committee of mainstream church organizations. The guide, distributed widely on college campuses and in libraries, gave the group an aura of respectability and a valuable recruiting tool.

A Droning Lecturer on Revolution

Even near the end of his life, Perente-Ramos exerted a strange hold on those around him in Brooklyn. In January 1994, sitting in a wheelchair and alternately breathing oxygen from a machine and chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, he gave a lecture to a room packed with devotees, a person who was there recalled. He wore fringed leather and sunglasses -- at 2 in the morning. Women stood around him, crushing out his cigarette stubs and wiping his brow and chin. Some listeners fell asleep.

In a tape recording of the lecture, Perente-Ramos' droning is interrupted by long pauses, disconnected asides and hacking, coughing and spitting.

"This is a continuance in the historical chronology of dislocations, phenomena that deals with the cracks in the floor," the field commander says. "Trotsky in his related writings gives Stalin a next-to-invisible role in the process that was taking place there, saying he was a mere minister of minorities.

"During the civil war . . . there was 24 other armed struggles going on inside what was the Soviet Union," he continues. "Socialism retreated from a single state, single rule of socialism," he says, his coughing breaking the sentence.

"And when I think of war, I think of war again. Those who are for the revolution before . . . from time to time . . . none needed more space in order to actually go and set up administration or leadership in one place or another. They find themselves unrepentant . . . they find themselves revealed and confused."

At the end of the lecture, the person present recalled, he declared "Patria o Muerte!" and his followers jumped to their feet, echoing the shout. Then his wheelchair was rolled away with military precision.

"Gino," said Janja A. Lalich, a California researcher who has studied Perente-Ramos' group and counseled former members, "was a piece of work."

Although he claimed to be a Mexican-American born in Montana, he was actually of Norwegian heritage, born in Minnesota in 1935. His family moved to Marysville, Calif., when he was young; he graduated from high school there and took some classes at Yuba College in Marysville, where he acted in Shakespeare plays and was a disk jockey and ad salesman for a radio station. "I could never figure out how this nice, Norwegian Lutheran boy got transformed into a Hispanic," said Ruth S. Mikkelsen, who was married to him from 1960 to 1962 and is now a high school principal.

"When I met him he was extremely interesting," she said in a telephone interview. "He was very, very bright, probably one of the smartest people I've ever met. He would read piles and piles and piles of books and remember everything he read.

"I think the last time I saw him was when he came over, dressed all up in military regalia, around 1969 or 1970."

In March 1970, when Perente-Ramos was floating around the radical fringes of the San Francisco Bay area, he distributed a proclamation declaring that his Liberation Army of Revolutionary Group Organizations was starting an armed insurrection by a uniformed fighting force (whose members would tie on red armbands in case they did not have time to change).

Even the FBI did not take him seriously. But Perente-Ramos was soon arrested for failing to pay child support for his daughter, disappeared from California and turned up in New York, claiming to be an organizer for Chavez.

People in the Marysville area still remember him, though, recalling such scams as passing fake checks in bars -- figuring a bartender would be too embarrassed to complain that he had cashed a check signed by Christ -- and selling tickets for nonexistent raffles.

"I'll tell you one thing about him," Bill McJunkin, an old drinking buddy, told The Appeal-Democrat, the Marysville-Yuba City paper. "He never did an honest day's work in his life. The guy had a vivid imagination. Give him two words and he could write a novel. The guy was infamous for turning a cup of coffee into an all-night meal."

The vivid imagination created not only Gino Perente-Ramos, but the National Labor Federation, which spun off about 40 front groups. There were names like the Eastern Farm Workers Association, which supposedly organized migrant workers in Long Island's potato fields; the Women's Press Collective; the California Homemakers' Association, and Western Massachusetts Labor Action, all funneling money and fresh volunteers to the headquarters at 1107 Carroll Street and two adjacent apartment buildings.

"This was a very destructive cult group that ensnared young people," said Arnold Markowitz, director of the cult clinic of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, who has worked with a dozen families of group members. "They hid behind some good liberal causes to go after people who are looking for a deeper purpose in life, working for change, working for the downtrodden."

Likely volunteers for the front groups were channeled to Carroll Street for intensive training. Some of the women, researchers and former members said, were also sexual partners of Perente-Ramos until his last, sickly years.

Isolation, Exhaustion and "a Great Spiel"

The indoctrination, Mr. Markowitz, other researchers and former members said, was an intense process of isolation and exhaustion. Members were given vast amounts of make-work, including telephone solicitations, forms to fill out, papers and proposals to write and lectures to attend.

They got little sleep and were rarely allowed to leave. They were told the FBI and CIA were watching them and might swoop down at any moment. At the same time, they were told that their work was urgent, because the revolution was just around the corner.

"They talked all these grand ideas," said Jeff Whitnack, who joined the cult briefly in 1984 and was one of the few former members to allow his name to be used. "It was an international socialist movement that had connections in Nicaragua and was headed in Havana, kind of like the Comintern. It was a great spiel."

Ms. Lalich, the California researcher, said: "This group, I have to say, does pretty much nothing. Its goal isn't really social change; it's just to perpetuate itself. It would be funny if it wasn't for the waste of young people's lives, which is very sad. These were people completely dedicated, working 24 hours a day."

Perhaps the group's greatest coup was taking over Invest Yourself, a guide to volunteer groups published annually since 1946 by church groups operating from the building at 475 Riverside Drive and 119th Street in Manhattan, which houses the National Council of Churches. The group slipped in more than 30 of its own groups among the listings. Its current editor is listed as Susan Angus, one of those arrested last Monday, and it is still in circulation.

Things did not always go so smoothly. On Feb. 17, 1984, the FBI raided three offices of the National Labor Federation, apparently spurred by a widely distributed announcement by Perente-Ramos that the revolution was to begin two days hence. The raid was something of an embarrassment to the authorities, who wound up returning the few weapons they seized and making no arrests. The FBI did, however, seize a vast amount of paperwork, including page after page of military instructions from the Field Commander and elaborate diagrams on the secret hiding places of various weapons.

And in 1986, seven members of the group were convicted of forging $7,700 in checks from the account of Mia Prior, a woman who had fled the group but left her checkbook behind.

After Perente-Ramos died, a struggle emerged between East and West Coast factions of his group, researchers said, and leadership appears to have been assumed by a woman named Margaret Ribar. The main headquarters was moved to the offices of the Western Service Workers' Association, a front group in the San Francisco area.

Less Emphasis On Military Plans

In recent years, there seemed to be less and less mention of the "military fraction," the name in the group's documents, seized in the 1984 raid, for the inner circle that Perente-Ramos emphasized in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and which carried out weapons maintenance and training. A woman who joined the group four years ago and left in disillusionment last year said she had been unaware of the weapons hidden in the closet.

"And if I didn't know that there were guns in there, then I'm sure that the vast majority of people in there didn't know," said the woman, who said she had been a supervisor in the group. "My suspicion is that the guns must have been put there many, many years ago. I honestly can't figure out which closet they might have been hidden behind."

Another young woman, who said she was virtually imprisoned there for five "miserable" months last year until she managed to bolt out the door while others were at a lecture, said: "If there was anything like that, it was not known to the general group. I never saw any evidence of it."

Still, life at 1107 Carroll Street seemed to be going on at the same pressured, bureaucratic pace, although the group was now trying to renovate the building.

"I would have liked to sleep more," the former supervisor said. "There was a lot of pressure to sleep less and work harder. I think I got pretty disillusioned. You find you put so much in and you don't get a lot back."

"I haven't really been able to think about political and social issues," she continued, describing her difficulty in adjusting to life outside the group. "When you're standing on a platform so convinced of what you're saying and then find out it doesn't make a lot of sense, it's hard to figure out where to go."

NATLFED, Newsday, November 17, 1996

2006-12-06T09:37:00.000-05:00

Shadowy Past: Gun Arrests Latest Event in Group's Secretive History
Newsday, November 17, 1996
By Robert E. Kessler

The secretive Brooklyn group at whose Carroll Street headquarters police found a cache of 49 firearms last week has a history of small-time fraud, attempts to infiltrate mainstream social action groups and grandiose claims to be at the forefront of an imminent revolution in the United States.

But the Provisional Party of Communists, as well as its onetime 40 front groups around the country, has never been considered other than a fringe cult, more harmful to its college-educated and professional members than to society, according to court records, federal reports, cult watchers, radical activists and law enforcement officials.

The FBI raided the same headquarters in 1984 acting on a tip that the group was about to launch an armed takeover of the government, but few weapons were found and no charges resulted. "They're all twelve years older and their guns have twelve more years of dust on them, but they still can't shoot them," said one law enforcement official who has investigated the group.

The 28 members who were initially rounded up on gun charges are believed to be the last remnants of a self-styled revolutionary underground that never had more than several hundred members and that was founded on Long Island in the early 1970s by a man who called himself Eugenio Parente-Ramos. Gun charges have been brought against only three.

The group's attorney, Thomas Sheehan, did not return several phone calls from Newsday.

Former followers say Parente-Ramos, who died last year in Brooklyn at the age of 59, adopted the minority sounding name, although he was actually born Gerald William Doeden in Minnesota of Norwegian parents.

Before showing up on Long Island, Parente-Ramos' previous "radical activities" in San Francisco in the late 1960s were considered so bizarre by other left-wing activists in the Bay area that they assumed he was a provocateur paid by law enforcement officials, according to radical activists there.

At one point while running The Little Red Bookstore in San Francisco, Parente-Ramos was said, by law enforcement officials, to have sent a notice in 1970 to various county officials in the name of an organization called LARGO, the Liberation Army Organization, announcing that armed guerrilla groups were about to attack public buildings. Parente-Ramos denied the accusation, and LARGO was never heard from again.

But on college campuses on Long Island and around the country in the early 1970s, Edward R. Murrow's CBS television documentary "Harvest of Shame" had generated outrage about the conditions of migrant farm workers.

This helped Parente-Ramos to enlist a small band of young, college-educated and professional people, initially on Long Island, ostensibly in a combination of social work and revolutionary activity under the name of the Provisional Party of Communists, according to former members.

A charismatic figure claiming ties to Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers of America, Parente-Ramos was active on the campus of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He recruited several members from a less militant group there called the Red Balloon to help migrants under the banner of a group known as the Eastern Farm Workers Association.

Other Parente-Ramos front groups were formed ostensibly to help migrant workers and domestic workers in Ohio, western Massachusetts and New Brunswick, N.J.

Parente-Ramos was able at first to attract a core of several hundred youthful idealists, in part, because his associates had taken over a Protestant group at the Riverside Church Center in Manhattan called the Committee on Voluntary Service and Action that put out a booklet titled Invest Yourself, according to critics of the group and former members. The booklet, which circulated widely on college campuses, listed charitable organizations in which socially concerned college students could become involved. Most of the 180 organizations listed were church-related social action groups, but among them were 40 that were fronts for the secretive Provisional Party.

The idea was that volunteers, once they had been screened and their dedication tested, would be told the group that they had joined to help farm workers or domestic workers was actually just the front for the secretive party, which planned to transform all of society, according to former members and cult experts.

Parente-Ramos was active on Long Island until 1973, mainly trying to organize migrants, when two incidents caused him to retreat to Brooklyn and set up the complex on Carroll Street in Crown Heights, former members said.

First, the Justice Department filed a civil suit against the Eastern Farm Workers alleging that in leading a strike against a Suffolk County potato grading plant, the organization was acting as a union, but had not filed the required reports under federal labor law.

Secondly, the Suffolk Police Department raided the organization's headquarters in Bellport, charging a Parente-Ramos associate with illegal possession of two handguns.

The civil suit was settled by a consent decree, and the gun charges were thrown out on the grounds that the search warrant the police used was obtained illegally.

But the incidents had a profound effect on Parente-Ramos' character. "They really convinced him that the world was out to get him," said one former member. He ordered the organization's core membership to retreat to a fortress-like headquarters in Brooklyn, far from the scene of organizing activity in Suffolk or other sites in the country.

In Brooklyn, the group increasingly became cult-like, using brainwashing to control its members, according to former members and critics.

Lookouts were posted around the clock, members were given little opportunity to sleep and spent much the day filing endless reports, and a small inner circle began to practice with weapons, according to former members.

Members also listened to endless lectures on revolutionary tactics by Parente-Ramos and it was understood that Parente-Ramos could sleep with the women in the group, according to the former members.

Parente-Ramos set up a complicated hierarchy within the group, with newly initiated members being called "viables," according to a 1984 FBI report. "Once elected to the status of viable, the individual is considered to be full-fledged, completely dedicated member of the organization," the FBI report says. "The individual can think only through the frame of reference and dogma of the organization and will never verbally or even internally question the policies or actions of the organization. No complaints are tolerated from the viable. All wordly possessions are assigned over to the organization . . . Constant pressure is placed on increasing commitment to the point where outside life and organization come into conflict."

The group's activities on Carroll Street eventually began to attract the attention of law enforcement officials.

In one complex case, seven members of the group, including four lawyers, were convicted of charges in 1987 brought by the Manhattan District Attorney relating to defrauding a woman of $7,800.

The woman, Mia Prior, a Manhasset heiress and great-granddaughter of the founder of National Cash Register, had fled the group after 10 years in a leadership role, writing Parente-Ramos in a letter, "I concluded that the way the organization was being run made any thought of revolution not only hopeless, but also scary." She could not be reached for comment.

But even the FBI concluded in a 1984 assessment that while it could be dangerous, much of the group's activities bordered on harmless fantasy.

Still, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes wants to make sure that the group is harmless.

Thirty of the party's members have been subpoenaed to appear in two weeks before a grand jury investigating the organization, according to Hynes' spokesman Pat Clark. Speaking of the weapons that were seized at the Carroll Street headquarters, Clark said, "We consider that a possible threat to public safety."

NATLFED, New York Times, November 15, 1996

2006-12-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

College Idealism Was Fertile Soil for Fringe Group
New York Times, November 15, 1996
By Jonathan Rabinovitz

Williamstown, Massachusetts -- Jennifer Kling left Williams College here to join the National Labor Federation in Brooklyn with dreams of organizing the poor to create a more just world.

Instead, Ms. Kling found herself trapped in a cramped, tense apartment building, unable to walk outside. Every second was charted.

During the day, she filed papers, wrote articles and worked a phone bank, selling advertisements in the organization's publications. In the evenings, she was required to attend political lectures that would often go until 4:30 a.m., when she was finally allowed to collapse into a deep slumber in a small room with five other women.

Six hours later, at 10:30, the wake-up call would come over the loudspeaker, and Ms. Kling and about 50 other members of the group, which some have called a cult, would start the cycle all over again.

"They didn't encourage idle chatter," she said. "Time was precious. Every minute was pre-scheduled. They kept you so busy that you didn't have time to think about leaving."

It took a terrified Ms. Kling weeks to build up the courage to sneak out of the building one morning last year and take a bus home to her family in Missouri.

This was the odd world of a fringe group that had remained relatively unknown and hidden until Monday night, when police entered their Brooklyn headquarters, a cluster of buildings that group members called "the Cave," and discovered a small arsenal of guns and explosives.

The group, which at different times called itself the National Labor Federation and the Provisional Communist Party, was established by Eugenio Perente-Ramos, who billed himself as a radical labor organizer, though police and experts on cults have called him a cult leader.

Experts familiar with the group say Perente-Ramos, who died last year, had a following of several hundred in the Brooklyn complex and around the nation in rigidly organized satellite groups, known in his jargon as "entities."

While the group's stated aim was to mobilize the poorest workers to challenge the fundamental economic system, it appears to have achieved little in that arena. What has perhaps drawn the greatest attention to the group is its recruiting efforts among a very different target group: idealistic college students.

Ms. Kling, now 21, was one of many Williams College students who were approached by a front group, Western Massachusetts Labor Action, that had strong ties to the Brooklyn office. And while the group has recruited at other schools in Massachusetts and Vermont, its efforts have come under particular scrutiny at this elite private school of 2,000 students in this small Berkshires town.

For about 20 years, the local group, based nearby in Pittsfield, relied on volunteers from Williams. Although only three students, including Ms. Kling, joined the federation as full-time volunteers, a steady stream of Williams students helped canvass surrounding towns for new members, chopped firewood for the poor and attended meetings, among other tasks.

Indeed, Western Massachusetts Labor Action became almost an institution on campus and enjoyed a reputation as a sort of Salvation Army with a political edge, a place where socially conscious students could go to work with the poor. Its connection to Perente-Ramos was not readily apparent, and the local group's lead organizer was invited to economics and political science classes to lecture on the region's social conditions.

When the school would hold its annual community volunteer fair, Western Massachusetts Labor Action had a table there. One former student, Michelle Kang, noted that a class that involved doing community service included the group as one of the ways to meet the requirement.

"I remember getting phone calls all the time from them, even in my senior year, trying to get me to help," said Ms. Kang, who graduated two years ago. She got on the group's phone list after taking the community service class as a sophomore.

Yet, what the group was doing with this help is unclear.

Dr. Kurt P. Tauber, a retired political science professor who sponsored the group on campus and helped it raise money, said its organizing work had been a disappointment to him. He said the group was obsessed with forms and bureaucratic detail -- with precise instructions about where to put pencils and erasers.

While Dr. Tauber described the group as having a muddled, almost nonexistent political ideology, he noted that its bible was an organizing handbook that gave precise instructions on how to do everything from knock on a door to set up a desk. Dr. Tauber, who met Perente-Ramos in Brooklyn 13 years ago, said he was not impressed by him and did not like how he barked orders at people.

Yet Dr. Tauber, like others at Williams, saw the goals of the organization as admirable and continued to support it. And he admired the dedication of the unpaid organizers, who worked seven days a week, had no homes of their own and appeared to survive on a diet of doughnuts and coffee.

The group's standing, however, plummeted last year when Ms. Kling's experience became known and an expose in the campus newspaper, The Williams Record, publicized the local group's connections to the Brooklyn office, suggesting it was more cult than political group.

Since then, the college has moved to discourage the group from coming onto campus and tried to educate faculty members and students about its questionable background. In the last few months, the group's lead organizer has left, and its presence on campus has diminished.

On campus Wednesday night, a random survey of a dozen people revealed that most had not even heard of the group. Those who were familiar with it regarded it as something of a joke.

"They were a pretty weird bunch," said Yamelin Castillo, who graduated in June and is working here. "No one took them seriously."

The group continues to work from its storefront office in Pittsfield, occasionally distributing leaflets here. A man who answered the group's office phone Thursday denied any connection with the Brooklyn group. "We have nothing to do with that, and have no comment," he said, hanging up the phone when questioned further.

Yet there appears to be little doubt that the groups are linked. Peggy Uman, who started working with Perente-Ramos in the early 1970s, said she moved here in 1975 to establish the group, having first cleared it with him. Then, until she left the group seven years later, she filed daily reports about her activities, she said.

Ms. Kling, despite her experience, remains ambivalent about her break with the group and was upset to read that five of her former comrades hand been arrested on weapons charges, including Diane Garrett, her sponsor. "She's a compassionate, caring person," Ms. Kling said. "She really cares about the poor. She would never use a gun."

Ms. Kling objected to the characterization of the group as a cult, and said that no physical force was ever used to keep her there. But, she said, she does not want to go back.

In the first three months of 1995, Ms. Kling said, she was cloistered in Brooklyn. When her father was visiting from Missouri and wanted to spend the day with her, the group told her that she should not leave. Instead, he came to visit, and they were never left alone, she said.

The building was filled with bright people -- including a number of lawyers -- but it was also a tense place. Some recruits were clearly mentally ill, she said, and screaming arguments erupted regularly.

Dissatisfied with the life she was leading, Ms. Kling spent weeks plotting her escape. On that dark morning in March, alone in New York for the first time in her life, she wandered the streets of Brooklyn and tried to find a subway station.

"It was scary," she said, "but it felt wonderful to breathe the air of New York."

WMLA, The Williams Record, October 3, 1995

2006-12-04T00:50:00.000-05:00

Western Mass. Labor Action: Its Veneer of Good Masks a Hidden Agenda
The Williams Record, October 3, 1995
By Lisi de Bourbon

Williamstown, MA -- When Jennifer Kling signed up last fall at a Williams College community service fair to volunteer part-time with Western Mass. Labor Action on Pittsfield's West Side, the last place she thought she would wind up was in a cramped Brooklyn apartment house, devoting her life to an underground political group.

After accepting an offer from Western Mass. Labor Action to help the poor on a full-time basis, Kling dropped out of the prestigious school shortly before finals during her sophomore year and headed for the Brooklyn headquarters of the National Labor Federation. It is WMLA's leftist parent organization, a group that once pushed for an armed revolution against the United States.

"Kafka-esque Hell"

But instead of helping the working poor, Kling spent her "time listening to mind-numbing lectures that started as late as midnight and lasted as long as 18 hours."

Deprived of sleep and given limited contact with her friends and family, Kling was confined to what one cult expert told The Williams Record was a "Kafka-esque hell of pointless activity." The college newspaper did on investigative report on the situation Oct. 3.

Bored and in need of medical attention, Kling quit the organization two months later, fleeing in the middle of the night when no one could stop her.

Kling is one of three students who have left Williams in the last 10 years to dedicate their lives to WMLA or one of the National Labor Federation's 41 affiliates across the country.

In an investigation this summer, Monica R. Martinez, assistant dean of students, learned that WMLA and the National Labor Federation are creations of the Communist Party USA, Provisional, a peculiar cadre that practices an unorthodox brand of Marxism. It is not affiliated with the regular Communist Party.

"They justified their actions with cultic practices in a way that would horrify most leftists," said one former member who spoke to the Eagle on condition of anonymity.

While the college has no plans to prevent WMLA or its operations maoager, Edward W. Coffin Jr., from coming to campus to recruit volunteers, Martinez said she has spoken to some students who are currently involved to ensure they understand the relationship between the groups.

"It's important to provide the information we have and at that point, [the students] can make their own choice," she said. "We're not saying, 'Don't do this or don't do that.' My concern is that they're not who they say they are." In addition to recruiting members from the ivy-covered halls of Williams, WMLA has been knocking on doors of modest row houses in Adams and working supermarket entrances in North Adams and Pittsfield.

In Pittsfield since 1977

Established in Adams in 1975 by Peggy Uman of Readsboro, Vt., and moved two years later to its present dingy storefront office on Columbus Avenue, WMLA has operated as an alternative to traditional social service agencies and private charities.

The group has attracted members with a promise of food, fuel, clothing and medical and legal assistance in exchange for 62 cents a month and some volunteer work.

Uman said this week that she founded the group because she had been involved with the Eastern Farm Workers Association, formed on Long Island in 1972 by Eugenio Perente-Ramos. The same year, Perente-Ramos, a shadowy figure on the leftist fringe, began the National Labor Federation and served as its leader until his death in March.

"I was sympathetic with people who were working people and I was doing what I thought was the right thing," she said, declining to elaborate.

Despite her conviction, Uman left the group about, five years ago following a series of personal tragedies and became a born-again Christian.

Without being specific, she acknowledged that WMLA was a very structured political organization and said there was a lot of "accountability and reporting." She did not say to whom.

"Sacrificial Thing"

"It was a blood and guts sacrificial thing," she said. "I'm glad to be free of it. But I thought it was doing a lot of good."

Ironically, Uman is still listed as president of the WMLA on the organization's letterhead.

The Eagle could not arrange an interview with Coffin for this article. The Eagle did an expose of the group in 198[4].

"I have been out of the office all day on one thing or another; what with heating season starting, we are jammed with many requests for fuel (wood) and utility advocacy against the relentless WMECO, for folks having trouble making their payments," he said in a faxed note.

Whether or not WMLA has made a substantive dent in poverty in Berkshire County is open to debate among local social service agencies. Many representatives of those organizations said they have heard very little about WMLA and few, if any, have collaborated with the group on projects to help the poor.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one human services professional said that he did not hold WMLA in very high regard.

"I won't refer anyone there and will never refer anyone there because as far as I know, they don't do anything," he said.

Daniel Dillon, president of Central Berkshire United Way, also said he is unfamiliar with WMLA and that he has had only one encounter with the organization.

This May the United Way coordinated a massive food drive with the Pittsfield postal workers, who collected canned goods and other non-perishables from city residents. The food was taken to the post office, where local social service agencies were invited to retrieve it for their clients.

Dillon said Coffin and several members helped themselves to a disproportionate amount of the food.

"I'm not condemning Ed, but he showed up this year and took load after load," he said. "I don't know who they feed or where they distribute that food." According to ex-volunteers, some of the food is given to those who request it. But most of it lies around the office and is eaten by the members themselves.

One ex-volunteer, who asked that her name be withheld, said she was appalled by manner in which the food was handled and the filthy condition of WMLA's quarters.

"I just couldn't take it anymore, the place was just a mess," she said, adding that cats were allowed to roam freely among loaves of Italian bread that were donated to WMLA by local bakeries.

The woman, who lives in Pittsfield, said she became a member when her family was running low on firewood and couldn't afford to buy any. She said she also received some juice and other items. Later that year, she decided to volunteer because WMLA gave her the wood.

In addition to collecting food and clothing, WMLA solicits money from local businesses and residents.

Community Support

Its newsletter, Western Massachusetts Alliance News, is filled with advertisements from auto repair shops, plumbers and other small businesses from a broad spectrum of Northern and Central Berkshire communities.

None of the advertisers interviewed were familiar with WMLA's reputation or its affiliation with the National Labor Federation.

But all of them said the organization struck them as one that genuinely wants to hclp needy people.

"They call me four times a year trying to get extra money or repairs, which I don't do, but I give them $25, $50, $100 a year," said Bill Kirpens, owner of Bill's Automotive on Curtis Street in Pittsfield. "They were not very aggressive; I never felt they wanted me to join. They were no more aggressive than the local fire departments, police departments or the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

But when the recruiters set up a table for a few days this month and last month on Williams' campus seeking money and volunteers, some students objected to their heavy-handed solicitation tactics.

Guilt Trip

Record editor-in-chief Joshua Resnick, author of the Williams article, said the recruiters played on the students' guilt in their efforts to extract their donations and time.

"I encountered people who said the recruiters would yell things like, 'You don't care anymore,' 'You have this unearned privilege,' and 'The plight of the working man is your responsibility,'" Resnick said, adding that they managed to sign up at least 20 students.

Former members and some human service providers say Coffin is dedicated to the cause of helping the poor. One ex-volunteer said he doubted that Coffin receives a paycheck and that he has to skim a portion of the money be collects from donors to eke out a living while sending funds to headquarters.

A couple of volunteers said he does not have his own home and that they think he lives in WMLA's cluttered office.

Resnick said he could understand how students and volunteers could succumb to Coffin's entreaties to join WMLA.

"His rhetoric is unbelievable and his tactics are aggressive. He can talk for hours," Resnick said.

In an editorial in last week's Record, Resnick blasted two faculty members for inviting Coffin into their classrooms to address students, many of whom are freshmen. Bringing him in lent WMLA an air of legitimacy, he argued, and allowing Coffin to pass around a sign-up sheet was "incredibly irresponsible."

Michael Samson, an assistant professor of economics, and Alex W. Willingham, a professor of political science, said in telephone interviews this week they have both asked Coffin to talk to students in their introductory classes about the difficulties of living in the Berkshires on a minimum wage salary. In both classes he passed around sign-up sheets.

Both said they were unfamiliar with WMLA's ties to the National Labor Federation until reading Resnick's article.

Samson contended that any skepticism generated by WMLA stems from a conflict between Coffin's values and those embraced by the mainstream. Coffin, he said, espouses beliefs that do not jibe with the American free market system.

"His values are at odds with that and that's a factor with people calling this a cult," Samson said. "We don't say Wall Street firms shouldn't recruit at Williams because the popular perception is that a job from a Wall Street firm is a good job to take. Yet adopting self-imposed poverty is not prestigious."

Samson said he has canvassed neighborhoods in Adams with Coffin and has seen sign up volunteers and distribute wood and food to the working poor. Last October, he said he attended a Halloween party given by WMLA at the Adams Youth Center on Park Street that was a success and drew about 50.

Although Samson said the event was free to anyone who wished to attend, an Adams woman said this week in a telephone interview that her mother bought four tickets at $2 apiece from an elderly woman who sold them to her a few days before the party.

The woman's mother gave her the tickets so she could bring her three children to the event. But the party turned out to be a total flop, said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

No Costumes, No Games

"I was so uncomfortable, even though it sounded like it could be a great time," she said. "No one was wearing costumes, there were no games, there was no candy and not a lot of people were there. It was definitely not a party."

But Samson insisted it was a great party and that everyone had a good time.

Jordan Tama joined WMLA a year ago after Coffin appeared in one of Samson's classes. Tama, then a freshman, along with three other students, were deployed in the less-affluent neighborhoods of Adams and North Adams and went door to door, offering to lend a helping hand to those who needed one.

Accompanied by Coffin Tama said the students made the pitch about the food, fuel, clothing, and medical and legal assistance to those who opened their doors.

"I liked doing it for a while," said Tama, who is no longer a member. "I enjoyed it because it was a way to get involved with a community other than Williams."

As the year went on, Coffin made more demands on the students' time and finally pressed them to spend a night with him last winter at WMLA's offices to help put out the monthly newsletter.

But instead of writing and editing stories or laying out pages, the students spent most of the night listening to Coffin pontificate about the history of labor in America and the history of his organization.

Indoctrination Session

"He spent most of his time on attempted indoctrination," said Tama. "I had the impression he was Marxist or communist in ideology, but he purposely stayed away from those words for fear of scaring us off because of the stigma attached to them."

He eventually surmised the WMLA wanted him not only to help the poor, but to become part of the National Labor Federation's inner core to revolutionize this country's socioeconomic and political structure. In fact, Tama, a Brooklyn native, said that when he went home for Thanksgiving break last year, he received a phone call on Thanksgiving day from one of the volunteers from the Women's Press Collective. Affiliated with the National Labor Federation, the group also has offices in Brooklyn.

When he was a part-time volunteer, Tama said he saw the poor receive the food, fuel and clothing but never saw them receive the medical or legal services.

"He made promises to people when they'd never get anything out of the organization," Tama said.

Moreover, he said Coffin wasn't necessarily up front about the real mission of WMLA and its parent organization.

"My main feeling is the problem I have with WMLA is not related to WMLA itself, but to the fact it's a front for the national organization and to the fact is that Ed wasn't fully open in terms of telling us what went on down there particularly with Jen [Kling]," he said.

Although Kling, who is living in the Midwest, managed to wrest herself from the National Labor Federation, students from other colleges have not been as lucky. And for their parents, the anguish is unbearable and the pain insurmountable.

Two Mothers' Anguish

Two mothers with students in affiliates of the National Labor Federation were so frightened about losing their daughters forever that they did not want to reveal their names or addresses. Both said they feared that if their daughters found out they spoke publicly about them, the daughter could get so upset they would never return home.

Both women suspect that members of the organization screen the letters they mail to their daughters. Sometimes the daughters don't receive their letters at all. And it's very difficult to get in touch with them by telephone, the women said.

Even more distressing, the mothers are not allowed to be alone with them during visits and the women are not permitted to take their children outside the headquarters.

"It's like having somebody in jail with an intermediate sentence, but hasn't committed any crime," said one of the women.

The Day the NY Times Ran a Correction on an Obituary

2006-12-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

This is a classic. Former United Farm Workers organizer and current Evergreen College faculty member Jose Gomez describes how the NYT wound up running a correction on NATLFED founder Gino Perente's obituary.

"He [Perente] and his followers apparently were so credible that they were able to hoodwink some major donors and even the New York Times, which ran a very positive obituary. After I (and apparently others) called the Times to tell them that the obituary was inaccurate in its glorification of a scam artist and cult leader, they quickly did some research and the next day ran a retraction of the obituary with a story about who he really was. That was the only time that I have known the New York Times to run a retraction of an obituary!" (Political Cults Sources)

Correction: Obituary Omitted Key Facts On Labor Organizer
New York Times, March 21, 1995

An obituary of Eugenio Perente-Ramos yesterday gave an incomplete and partly inaccurate account of his activities and life. The article, based largely on information provided by two associates, noted that he was an organizer of migrant and seasonal labor, but omitted the fact that he was also the leader of a group that has been characterized as a cult.

The article noted that Mr. Perente-Ramos, who died at age 59 on Saturday at his home in Brooklyn, founded the Eastern Farm Workers Association on Long Island in the early 1970's, led migrant workers in a strike against potato processors in Suffolk County in 1972 and helped organize workers and boycotts for the United Farm Workers.

Dan Fiske and Christopher Day, the associates who provided much of the information for the article, also said Mr. Perente-Ramos had earlier helped to organize miners, machinists and other workers in Texas and California and characterized him as a close associate of Cesar Chavez and an innovative leader who organized cadres of volunteers to aid the poor.

But experts on cult activities, a former wife of Mr. Perente-Ramos and several parents of his followers said yesterday that his labor activities and association with Mr. Chavez had been exaggerated, and that for two decades, he had been the leader of a cult that recruited troubled young people, housed them in communal quarters and "brainwashed" them into believing they had committed their lives to social justice by collecting food and clothing for the poor.

Chip Berlet, who has written extensively on cults and is a senior analyst for Political Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass., which studies extremist and authoritarian movements, said that Mr. Perente-Ramos's followers had been "mesmerized into believing they are the true underground," but actually were trapped in a mindless internal bureaucracy of forms, reports and meetings.

Mr. Berlet said the group called itself the National Labor Federation, had many subsidiaries, including the Eastern Farm Workers Association, and operated in New York, Massachusetts and California. The groups have been the subject of numerous articles about cults. The parents of several followers told of losing contact with children after they came under Mr. Perente-Ramos's influence.

Ruth Mikkelsen, who was married to Mr. Perente-Ramos from 1960 to 1962, said he was born Gerald William Doeden, grew up in Idaho and Northern California, attended Yuba College, was a disk jockey and ran a San Francisco book store that sold communist literature in the 1960's. She said he had changed his name several times, and she described him as unstable.

The Offending Obit

2006-12-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

I guess this original obituary is most interesting for containing all the little bits of mythology the surrounded Perente, and to which current NATLFED front-groups still cling.

Eugenio Perente-Ramos Is Dead: Farm Labor Organizer was 59
By Robert D. McFadden
New York Times, 3/20/95

Eugenio Perente-Ramos, an organizer of migrant and seasonal laborers who founded the Eastern Farm Workers Association on Long Island and was a close associate of Cesar Chavez in the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, died at his home in Brooklyn on Saturday. He was 59.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said Dan Fiske, a friend and fellow organizer.

In 37 years as an organizer, Mr. Perente-Ramos signed up machinists, miners and aerospace workers from New York to Texas and California. But his principal efforts were on behalf of those lowest on the economic ladder and hardest to organize: Migrant and seasonal farm workers, domestic help and temporary and part-time workers unprotected by minimum-wage and other Federal labor laws.

Born in 1935 on a rented farm near Butte, Mont., the son of a domestic worker and a man active in the Industrial Workers of the World, Mr. Perente-Ramos trained as a machinist but went to work for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in the 1950's. Later, he helped organize 50,000 machinists and other workers at Boeing, Lockheed and other aerospace companies.

In the 1960's, when his group merged with Mr. Chavez's National Farm Workers Association, he became a member of the general executive board of the United Farm Workers under Mr. Chavez and helped organize farm workers in California and Texas. He also was chairman of the Chavez-for-Governor Committee in California.

In the early 1970's, Mr. Perente-Ramos founded the Eastern Farm Workers Association and led 800 migrant and seasonal workers in a strike against potato processors in Suffolk County. It was the first successful drive--after many failures--to organize farm workers east of the Mississippi, Mr. Fiske said. The group now represents 10,000 workers on Long Island, he said.

Mr. Perente-Ramos, who left no survivors, lectured often on labor organizing and was the author of The Essential Organizer, a 1973 book detailing his theory of systemic organization, in which permanent cadres of volunteers, and not leaders with short-lived charisma, are relied upon to conduct boycotts and other long-term activities on behalf of labor.

Political Cults

SF Weekly article

Charitable Front

Mysterious organizations in the Bay Area profess to be advocating for liberal causes. In truth, they appear to be part of a secretive group with a bizarre radical past.

By Matt Smith

published: December 09, 2009

Frank Gaglione

S.F. attorney Tony Palik says leaders of the Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals were more interested in getting him to attend Marxist indoctrination sessions than in improving the lives of farmworkers.

Brian Pinard

The headstone of Gerald Doeden, who created a new identity for himself as revolutionary leader Eugenio Mario Perente-Ramos, Gino Perente for short.

Frank Gaglione

The Physicians Organizing Committee keeps an office downtown at 450 Sutter.

Frank Gaglione

Pastor Schuyler Rhodes agreed to lend his name to the board of advisers of the National Equal Justice Association, unaware of its apparent ties to NatlFed.

Subject(s):

Academic and Primary Sources of Information on NATLFED

From a Former WSWA Volunteer

Natlfed and Money

I feel compelled to go through this one more time...

Interesting email on CVSA

Air-ball - Advocate Weekly article misses the mark on WMLA

New article on Eastern Service Workers Association in Boston

Political Cults: Western Service Workers Association Wants You to Stop the Senseless Slaughter of the Uninsured

Mailbag: Follow-up Comment from Strident in Sacramento (I presume)

Mailbag: March 24, 2008 - Western Service Workers

Great research from a concerned citizen

This is creepy...

National Equal Justice Association: Money-Laundering, NATLFED-Style

Going Way Back: East Hampton Star Starts to Scratch the Surface of EFWA Mystery in the Late 1980s

Opinion Sharply Split On Farm Organization

Recent Friends

Support and Questions

Open Record

New Direction

For the Poor

Jaded View

Had Run-Ins

Committed and Positive

National Labor Federation

No Political Agenda

Skepticism Expressed

Organizers' Roles

Good Work Cited

Going Way Back: Three Weeks Later, East Hampton Star Paints the Full Picture of EFWA

Labor Group: Saga of a Cult

Declared Revolution

LaRouche?

Committed Followers

Dire Warning

Small Potatoes

Cult Strategy

Many Supporters

Stony Brook Connection

Dispute Over Services

Missing Links

Who Gets The Mail?

Attorney Got Calls

Party Hierarchy

A Volunteer's Story

Felt Duped

Visiting the Cave

A Changed Friend

A Long Spiel

Carrying Guns

Meeting with Perente

The Vulnerable Type

Money Sought

Troubling Patter

Going Way Back: East Hampton Star Gloats Over Times Mistaken Obituary, March 23, 1995

CCMP Conversation Continues

Co-ed Cools to CCMP Con

Cagey Couple Cans Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals

Always glad to help - Another Beneficient Soul Gets Wise to ESWA

Bratton On-Line Comes Around on Western Service Workers Association

Disorganized Creep Finds Organized Creeps Lacking, But Strangely Irresistible

Western Service Workers keeps rolling

Bewilderment

Another NATLFED Success Story

Stephanie Magurno

And They Are Lousy Landlords As Well...

Newsweek/Kaplan: How to Get Into College, August 1999.
By Lynette Clemetson