[R-G] Repression and Quakers and FOR and Mine-Mill and Mississippi etc

[Hunter Gray]

I have a couple of things to say about the vicious Denver [etc] attacks on
Left radicals, peace people, civil righters and other dissidents and freedom
fighters -- and  very good words for such outfits as the Quaker-grounded
American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

If I recall correctly, I was the first person to post on our "local
discussion lists" [RedBadBear, ASDnet, etc] the initial newspaper story on
the most recent phase of revelations regarding repressive spying at Denver:
"Wed Mar 13, 2002  11:14 am  Subject:  Police 'spy files' assailed [Denver
Post]."

Soon thereafter, there were a number of timely posts by others -- which
indicated that pacifist groups -- e.g., American Friends Service
Committee -- were among the target victims.

I was quick to spot the mention of the Denver situation.  We -- our family
and several others here in Pocatello, Idaho -- have experienced this
continual surveillance [and obviously related and frequently very crude
harassment] for years.  In this setting [and this has gradually surfaced in
various other parts of the country], it's coming [in addition to the usual
openly racist outfits] from  much more than simply the local cops.

FBI-managed "task forces" -- involving FBI, state and local "lawmen," postal
authorities, etc et al. -- have been a key foundational/repressive context
in the United States since at least the passage of Clinton's so-called
"Anti-Terrorism Act" of 1996 [which also facilitates implementation of the
death penalty].  I strongly suspect this is the basic structure poisoning
freedom at Denver.

["Red Scare Repression" stuff never really ends.  What I was able to recover
of my FBI files via FOIA over years in the 1980s -- 3,000 plus pages not
counting several hundred they won't release at all -- runs from the
mid-1950s to 1979.  I can only imagine the new mountain peaks of spy data
that have developed via the Federal [and other] finks -- and am preparing to
file a whole new round of FOIA demands shortly [though recognizing that,
with Ashcroft on the throne, it may take into what might be my next physical
incarnation -- if there is anything to reincarnation -- and I do plan to
live in this present form for a long, long time!]

Anyway, anyone who thinks all of this began with Bush/Ashcroft is someone to
whom I could sell the Grand Canyon.  It's obvious that Clinton/Gore were in
this sort of repressive spy thing for years -- which is only one reason that
I don't think Gore's ascendancy would have made any basic difference  at all
in the twin and currently on-going dimensions of War and Repression [and
economic deprivation.]

We were in North Dakota for sixteen years before we came to Idaho in 1997.
In that setting, I was -- at University of North Dakota -- a full professor,
departmental chair, some-time chair of Honors, member of the graduate
faculty etc  -- and, over the years, won a number of awards for social
justice activities including the state's annual Martin Luther King, Jr.
Award in 1989.  I had also been chair of the reform-activist Grand Forks
Mayor's Committee on Police Policy for many years and also, from the
beginning of the 1990s, was Chair of the city's  new Community Relations
Board.  More to the point, I had very solid grassroots backing for our many
social justice and human rights endeavours throughout the entire region.

But there were obviously repressive things -- especially around mail and
telephones -- that happened there with frequency.  We always attributed that
stuff to the FBI at one level and  to John Birchers and comparable creatures
at another.

When we came here to Pocatello almost five years ago,  very open police
surveillance began virtually immediately -- as did blatant interference with
our mail, telephones, and -- in due course some time later -- constant
hacking attacks on our computers. There is evidence of both city and state
involvement -- and certainly much of a Federal nature.

The continual postal thing indicates a very clear Federal relationship.  As
one of a myriad of examples, early in 1999  my son in the Fargo/Moorhead
area sent several publications to me via Priority Mail.  They reached us ten
days later in a package which had holes punched into it. I made, over a long
period, three formal, major complaints to the regional postal inspectors --
and,  with one, I attached almost a hundred envelopes and packages that
provided clear evidence of blatant interference with our mail -- felony
crimes, by the way.  Not one of those three major, formal complaints was
even acknowledged by the Postal Inspection division.  That was during the
Clinton epoch.

About a year ago, with the new regime settling into the old policies and
expanding them, a very well wrapped Priority Mail package was sent to me by
the excellent, New York-based Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and
Democracy, which contained ten copies of one of its publications, The
Corresponder, and ten copies of its other journal, Dialogue and Initiative.
This took many days to reach us and, when I opened it here, everything
inside the outwardly dry package had been very freshly and thoroughly
water-soaked and functionally ruined.  CCDS immediately filed complaints
with the very top postal authorities.  That was a year ago and, as of a few
days ago, there had still been no response.  That, of course, is in the
context of the Bush/Ashcroft epoch.  [It's hard for me to see much
difference here -- but, as yet at least, I haven't been incarcerated in a
United States concentration camp, sans any formal charges,  like about 2,000
other souls.]

As  we have always, everywhere over many decades, we've continued our social
justice efforts:  here in Idaho and also regionally and beyond.  We
developed our very large social justice website www.hunterbear.org and,
among  all of the other vital issues, we've explicitly and to-the-fore
publicized all of these things via website. And then we've also done this on
various discussion lists.  In time, well before Bush/Ashcroft, we began
hearing of similarly repressive  FBI-managed Task Force goings-on around the
country:  e.g., Portland, Oregon and more indeed.

For anyone interested, here is a full and reasonably up-to-date page on our
website that covers the basics of our Idaho experiences:
http://www.hunterbear.org/hostility_and_harassment_in_idah.htm

I have only the highest regard for the American Friends Service Committee
and for the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  Although not a pacifist -- I do
vigorously support, however, tactically non-violent direct action -- I have
worked with them congenially for decades.  They're brave and committed and
thoroughly admirable people.  That the whole array of Finkdom would go after
them [as it has for generations]  is not at all surprising:  AFSC and FOR
are can be as immovable as Pike's Peak.

I have, by the way, just received via a good friend who heads the national
Indian desk of AFSC, a fine and very timely pamphlet from that organization:
"Whose Land?  An Introduction to the Iroquois Land Claims in New York
State."  [ American Friends Service Committee, Upper New York State Area
Office, 410 1/2 Gifford Street, Syracuse, New York 13204  Tel: 315/4754822
Fax: 315/4750304 ]

I should add that 'way back, AFSC was giving invaluable assistance to the
then-long forgotten Abenaki nations of Maine -- assisting them, among other
things, in providing the basic foundation for the ultimately relatively
successful and precedent setting Maine Indian Land Claims Case
[Passamaquoddy v. Morton] and in securing critical Federal recognition.

American Friends Service Committee staffers were working with the Navajo in
the late 1940s and 1950s -- much to the concern of, say, the Flagstaff AZ
American Legion -- and often stayed at our out-on-the-edges home when they
were in Flag. To our house there also came frequently the admirable Wilson
Riles, then principal of the small Black elementary school -- the first FOR
member I ever met.  After the 1954 Brown desegregation decision, that school
was closed and Wilson Riles went on to the West Coast to become regional
director of FOR in that setting [where he worked closely with then very
young Dave McReynolds --  also our quite good friend indeed in this current
epoch of struggle. Dave, of course, is a major figure in the War Resisters
League and the Socialist Party USA -- as well as in other fine causes.]

>From the late 1940s especially and onward deep into the 1960s, the metal
mining bosses, the Federal government, various state authorities, thugs and
vigilantes -- and then right-wing unions like United Steelworkers --
savagely attacked the always commendably radical and thoroughly democratic
and unyieldingly egalitarian and consistently militant International Union
of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.  Those waves  made up a hideously
repressive complex -- very similar to that visited against the I.W.W. in the
World War I and Red Scare epochs. There is a page on our website discussing
this which is drawn from a long 1960 article of mine in Mainstream --
"IUMMSW:  The Good, Tough Fight" -- and to which I've added updating notes:
http://www.hunterbear.org/repression.htm

Mine-Mill, as it had since its founding in the Coeur d'Alenes in 1892-93 as
the Western Federation of Miners, fought back very effectively on all
fronts:  collective bargaining, labor defense, civil rights and civil
liberties.  And  eventually, over the years, it won every single Federal
case brought against it.  A major struggle was the so-called phony "
Mine-Mill conspiracy case" -- involving the spurious "non-Communist
Taft-Hartley affidavits" -- which was initially brought by the Feds late in
1956, and which lay quiescent until the Great Copper Strike of 1959 into
early 1960.  As the hard-fought strike began to take shape, the Federals and
the copper bosses --in an obvious union-busting and strike-breaking
attack -- then suddenly activated the so-called "Conspiracy Case" in such a
fashion that much of the top leadership of the Union was tied up in the
on-going Federal trial at Denver: thus doing double-duty on both strike and
legal defense fronts.  Mine-Mill eventually won this very hard-fought strike
that stretched from the Montana copper towns to the Mexican border -- and
into some other geographical areas as well.  In June, 1966, the U.S. Supreme
Court threw out the entire "Mine-Mill Conspiracy Case" once and for all. [In
addition to the always very effective Mine-Mill general counsel, Nat Witt,
the Union was also represented all the way through in the "conspiracy case"
by General Telford Taylor, who had prosecuted at Nuremberg.]

As this savage "conspiracy case" became activated  in the context of the
bitter copper strike, there came to the aid of Mine-Mill  a number of
leaders of major AFL-CIO unions -- breaking ranks with the Federation -- and
also Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party and the very fine labor writer,
Sid Lens.

And they were joined -- very openly and publicly and courageously -- by
Stewart Meacham, a major figure in the Quakers, the pacifist movements, and
the American Friends Service Committee.  And that, like the involvement  of
Sid Lens and Norman Thomas and the several AFL-CI0ers, meant a great deal
indeed in those dark days.

For a discussion of that particular case, see our recent website addition:
http://www.hunterbear.org/Mine-Millconspiracycase.htm


In the spring of 1961, I was preparing to marry Eldri [ now we are almost 41
years together].  We both wanted to go Deep South for the struggle.  I
contacted a very good friend, the Rev. Glenn Smiley, then field director of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation who, I knew, worked closely with Martin
Luther King -- and who had assisted us in our fight against Arizona's
compulsory college/university ROTC [a battle in which I, a veteran and thus
exempt, was most active.]

 Glenn immediately made the mutual connection between Eldri and me on the
one hand, and, on the other, Dr A.D. Beittel, president of  the embattled
Black and private Tougaloo Southern Christian College just north of Jackson
[supported by northern churches and by UNCF].  Dan Beittel, an active FOR
member, immediately hired us: I as a prof and Eldri for the business office.
I recall that the cheerful Glenn Smiley remarked to me that, "when you go
down there, it'll be as rough as it can ever get."  We went happily --that
ominous Summer of '61 -- and our Great Southern Adventure [which lasted
continuously into the Summer of '67] -- began and in many ways still
continues.  Glenn was Dave McReynold's FOR supervisor 'way back on the West
Coast and, if I recall Dave's recent account of this to me, Glenn was
followed by Wilson Riles [our old Flagstaff colleague.]

And, on one of the several occasions that I  was pretty thoroughly and
bloodily beaten by Mississippi "lawmen," a photo of that taken by a national
wire service and sent around the world also wound up on the front cover of
the FOR magazine.

Anyway, for the Quakers and AFSC and FOR etc et al., I have only the kindest
and most supportive words.  Of course, they -- like all effective fighters
for social justice and human rights -- are going to be seen as subversive
and threatening by the usual gaggle and rabble of "cops" and Red-baiters.
And that collection of unsavoury entities -- that never really varies over
the eons --  is simply and sadly an inevitable part of the poisonous
geography when Humanity marches ever and onward across the Rivers and over
the Ranges toward the Sun.

But they can't stop us.  They never will.

Yours, Hunter Gray [Hunterbear]   Micmac / St Francis Abenaki / St Regis
Mohawk -- and DSA / SPUSA / CCDS -- and three labor unions




Hunter Gray  [ Hunterbear ]
www.hunterbear.org  ( social justice )