You're Not In Kansas Anymore, Continued...
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THE LIBERALS VS. THE RADICALS
As the summer kickoff date for the IMPACT training camp approached, a split developed between the leaders of the NEA and the Action Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, a much more radical group led by members of the Twin Cities Anarchist Federation, the Progressive Student Organization, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (a Marxist-Leninist group). It was basically a dispute over tactics. The liberals wanted to keep things nice and orderly—no chanting or screaming, hence the slogan—while the radicals believed in confronting anti-abortion activists (“the antis”) face-to-face. When Operation Rescue showed up, the radicals sang songs and called them dirty names. The liberals wanted nothing to do with them.(50)
Hoping to appeal to the ever-elusive “Soccer Moms,” the NEA had tried to portray the anti-abortion forces as a bunch of outside agitators “who don’t respect our Minnesota values.” But “Minnesota Nice” had a double meaning in the local parlance: it was originally a term for passive-aggressive behavior masquerading as politeness.(51)
Joel Olson, an assistant professor of Political Science at Northern Arizona University, was a member of the Action Coalition and an editor of the Twin Cities anarcho-punk zine Profane Existence.
Joel Olson:
[The NEA] trained a whole bunch of people in nonviolent clinic defense. We all went through the training and volunteered. And then they didn’t mobilize their people. I remember the very first day, when Operation Rescue were coming to the Robbinsdale Clinic, the fucking liberals held a rally with all the people that they’d trained, [and the rally was] two miles away! How the fuck are you going to protect the clinic if you’re two-three miles away?
Indeed, the NEA’s most visible activity was nighttime rally on June 14, 1993 that drew 4,000 people to Minneapolis’ Loring Park. Here, too, the message was one of obsequiousness, rather than self-reliance, as “Minneapolis mayoral candidates worked the crowd.”(52)
Joel Olson:
Basically, the radical principle was: WE GO WHERE THEY GO. And when they go to church, they are not worshipping God. They are organizing. And therefore, we have a right, and a strategic necessity, to confront them where they organize and plan.
So we organized a big kiss-in at the church. The men dressed in drag, and basically had a queer kiss-in to gross-out all those folks as much as possible.
Gabe Zeck:
We did do some marching through the ranks of OR in front of the clinics. We also staged a couple protests. One in particular involved more direct civil disobedience. It was a protest in front of the church that served as the base of their local operation… We sort of took over the street. There was a queer kiss-in, some guerilla theater, and speakers.
Now the city of St. Louis Park (which is where the church was), had agreed to allow this protest, and the speaker as well, as long as a certain decibel level wasn't exceeded. The organizers were told that a megaphone would be within those acceptable levels.
The police were certainly a presence! And as we sat and watched speakers, they seemed to be moving closer and closer to us. They walked around the edge of our group, grabbed the speaker from behind, and arrested him.
At that point, all hell broke loose! It’s what any good radical would like to call “a police riot.” Many arrests were made. Tear gas sprayed. And what was worse was the coverage of the protest in the papers the next day. To paraphrase: “There were people at the rally DRESSED IN DRAG! KISSING MEMBERS OF THE SAME SEX! AND SOME EVEN HAD PURPLE HAIR!” –exclamation point.
People were arrested for ‘resisting arrest.’ That was the pretext. Which basically allowed the police to take everybody down to the station and let them go. It was done as a disruptive measure.
Seven people were arrested during the July 11th protest outside Calvary Temple, including a photographer from the Associated Press.(53)
Erik Farseth:
I remember sitting at the lunch counter at Motor Oil while everyone gathered-around the morning paper. There was photo on the front page of all our friends getting maced.
On July 15th, Randall Terry arrived in Minnesota, part of a whirlwind tour of all seven “Cities of Refuge.” The Rev. Gordon Peterson served as his personal chauffeur.(54) After delivering an impassioned anti-abortion speech in front of the Robbinsdale Clinic, Terry held a press conference –in an unofficial capacity, of course.
Speaking before a crowd of 900 people at the Crystal Evangelical Free Church in New Hope (a Twin Cities suburb), Terry warned that, "We've got to get rid of the neopagans that are destroying this country.”(55) According to Randall Terry, the AIDS epidemic, Hurricane Andrew, and killer floods were all a sign of God’s wrath –a charge that he repeated a few nights later in San Jose, CA(56) and Cleveland, OH(57) (“The floods are the judgment of God, the hurricanes are the judgment of God, AIDS is the judgment of God.")(58)
Joel Olson:
I don’t know my suburbs very well. But in any case, we went to that event. It was this little church in the suburbs in a cul-de-sac. So we held this huge kiss-in. We were all dressed up. And then the cops went bonkers and started spraying people.
We were un-arresting people, pulling people out. I got maced square in the eye trying to un-arrest Liza. Me and this guy Greg from Detroit both got maced. Greg just ran to one of these suburban homes, grabbed the hose from the front lawn, and started washing his eyes out (which is not the right thing to do, ‘cause it’s oil based). There’s a picture of him in the Star Tribune, where he’s trying to rinse his eyes out in a dress. Then he got nabbed. Some people grabbed me, and got me out of there, so I didn’t get arrested.
But that kind of started the whole mess… the whole week. And I think we put [Operation Rescue] on their heels from that moment on. We were ready for them.
The Network to Ensure Access wasn’t happy. Protesting outside of churches? What about Freedom of Religion? How would this be perceived? It might play badly somewhere—elsewhere—in Middle America.(59) Erica Strohl, a spokeswoman for the NEA, denounced such tactics in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.(60) Making fun of religious zealots wasn’t “nice.”
Gabe Zeck:
The liberal group that was supposed to be on the same side as us constantly bad-mouthed us to the press.
The radicals were also concerned by what they saw as an over-reliance on police. Police could not be trusted, they said. The only way to keep the clinics open was to make sure that they were adequately defended.
The anarchists had good reason to be suspicious: among the first people to be charged under the state’s new anti-stalking law were three legal observers from the Network to Ensure Access and an Assistant State Attorney General.(61) The four women were arrested in August for “tailing a caravan of Operation Rescue activists en route to the homes of abortion providers.”(62) The criminal charges were akin to arresting someone for interfering with a drug deal.
Having gone through all of the appropriate legal channels, the liberals seemed genuinely taken aback when the leaders of Operation Rescue openly flouted the law –and they did so, time and time again, with apparent impunity.
Already a wanted man in Florida, the Rev. Keith Tucci breezed through the Twin Cities. On Monday, July 12th, Tucci spoke at a church in Brooklyn Center. The next day Tucci picketed in front of the Meadowbrook Women’s Clinic. Though a warrant had been issued for Tucci’s arrest, and local police departments had been notified, the Executive Director of Operation Rescue was allowed to escape. Tucci checked into the Twin Cities International Airport, and flew to Cleveland on the evening of July 13th.(63)
Likewise, when Randall Terry arrived in Minnesota, he was immediately served with a subpoena. Terry refused to accept it, saying: "I don't know who you are. I don't know anything about your subpoenas. So leave me alone, homeboy."(64) The co-founder of Operation Rescue repeatedly failed to appear for a court hearing in Minneapolis, but “no arrest warrant was issued and he was not held in contempt.”(65)
Gabe Zeck:
What seemed awfully suspicious to us was the fact that OR was always allowed to protest on the same side of the street as the clinic, but we were instructed to stay on the other side of the street. It almost seemed that there was some sort of complicity between Operation Rescue and the police.
Joel Olson:
I think we were right to defend the clinics. We went wherever [Operation Rescue] went –and I think a lot of the liberals had to admit that privately. But they denounced us. They were fucking lame!
A third point of contention between the liberals and the radicals was the legal strategy pursued by the National Organization for Women (NOW).
Arguing that blocking the entrances to abortion clinics amounted to criminal extortion in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, NOW filed a class action lawsuit against the leaders of Operation Rescue, the Pro-Life Direct Action League, and the Pro-Life Action League. As the case made its way through the Federal courts, the plaintiffs sought to have a permanent injunction placed on the leaders of Operation Rescue. In 1998, following a lengthy series of appeals, a lower court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Two women’s health clinics were awarded monetary damages.
But in their eagerness to put an end to the protests, NOW had trampled on the Constitutional rights of every American citizen. The use of Federal racketeering laws had set a dangerous precedent: if Operation Rescue was successfully sued for racketeering, would Greenpeace and the Longshoremen’s Union be next?
Plenty of existing state and federal laws can be used to punish protesters who engage in assault, destruction of property and other illegal activity. But if any plaintiff can use RICO to silence protests, then it won't be long before labor unions, churches and other groups that use aggressive demonstrations to make a point will be targeted.(66)
- The Las Vegas Review-Journal
In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that anti-abortion groups were not liable for damages under the Federal anti-racketeering laws.(67) The court’s decision rested on the fact that violence was not being used for the purposes of theft or extortion (Operation Rescue had not “obtained property” from women entering the clinics). While the so-called “rescue missions” were clearly a violation of the FACE Statute (Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances), the “rescues” failed to meet the definition of racketeering (Scheidler et al. v. National Organization for Women, Inc.,).(68)
TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE
Another dynamic that the NEA hadn’t counted on was the reaction from the local punk scene. These kids were pissed—Minneapolis was their home turf! —and they were spoiling for a fight. The Anarchist Hotline at the Emma Center gave daily updates on counterdemonstrations, and other activities. Punks “were encouraged to mobilize at a clinic where Operation Rescue was rallying.”(69)
In early June, the Profane Existence collective printed 5,000 copies of a militant abortion rights poster, which was included as an insert in the summer issue of Profane Existence Magazine (#19/20), and distributed for free. (“Of course, ‘we can’t be [held] responsible for what other people do with the posters that we print!’”)(70) Over the next few weeks, the posters were wheat-pasted all over town.
Parishioners at a St. Louis Park church set to host Operation Rescue this summer spent Friday afternoon peeling obscene posters off their church…
At the Emma Anarchist Center in Minneapolis, a member who would identify himself only as ‘Joel’ confirmed on Friday that the posters were a reproduction from ‘Profane Existence,’ a publication of the Twin Cities Anarchist Federation.(71)
- Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 12, 1993
Joel Olson:
Operation Rescue had been successful in shutting down some clinics in Buffalo and other places. And it said: “We’re coming to Minneapolis,” and made a big public announcement that it was planning to shut down all the clinics. And we were like: “No, you’re not!”
I was working with Profane Existence –in fact, it was my last issue. We did a big double-issue. The cover had a picture of someone wearing a Randall Terry mask getting attacked by a woman with a knife… We made a poster that says: “Operation Rescue come to our town, we’ll lock you in a church, and burn the fucker down” –and it had a picture of me holding a fake Molotov cocktail with the Basilica in the background.
We got a lot of shit for that! –from anarchists, as well as others. But, the posters proved quite popular. And then one night, a bunch of us went out to the main church where Operation Rescue was meeting, and we pasted a bunch of those posters all over the church doors, on the church sign—fucking all over—we pasted it! And the next, day there was a media shit-storm.
Erik Farseth:
I saw some of those posters at a nightclub in the Czech Republic. It was a very popular design.
Joel Olson:
Some of us had already down a little bit of clinic defense out at the Robbinsdale Clinic. I’d been out a couple of times. And one of [the members of our collective]—Erin—was planning to go to medical school. I think she was working at Planned Parenthood as an employee, so we kind of had some ins on the liberal wing of the reproductive rights milieu.
So, basically, we organized a committee to protect the clinics. We tried very hard to work with the liberals. And it became a clear liberal / radical split. We formed an organization called the Action Coalition. There were various independent radicals, but the two main organizing tendencies were Freedom Road [Freedom Road Socialist Organization] and the anarchists –Love and Rage, AWOL… So we formed that coalition, and we reached out to the liberals. We appointed Erin [“Sister Erin Immaculate”] to be our spokesperson to say: ‘We want to work with you. We’re gonna defend the clinics, we’d like your support. What can we do?’ And they basically told us to fuck off –in a very Minnesota way, of course.
Gabe Zeck:
At that time, in ’93, Operation Rescue was doing their wonderful tour of the country—Cities of Refuge—so they were hitting several major cities that summer. And it just happened that they were attacking Minneapolis. And I got involved with a coalition that was cooperatively run, mostly made up of anarchists and communists. It was meant to be the radical response to O.R. There were quite a large number of liberals involved directly with the clinics who took part in clinic defense, and passive protest. Whereas our catch phrase (ala Malcolm X) was: “by all means necessary.”
Erik Farseth:
I literally had friends on both sides of the fence: the official red-shirted clinic defenders (who were milling-around in front of Planned Parenthood), and the "unruly" anarchist contingent who were forced to stand on the other side of the street.
I had gone through the official Planned Parenthood training, and had been issued a pass to come through the gate. I thought that "Keep Minnesota Nice" was a really horrible slogan, but the stuff they were saying made a lot of sense: that we were there at the request of the clinics, and we should abide by their rules out of respect for the patients and staff. A visit to the abortion clinic was already a stressful situation, and the last thing that the patients needed was to be surrounded by dozens of angry people getting into a shouting match.
But once we arrived at the clinic, it became clear that I could no longer work with the liberals in good conscience. There were anti-abortion protesters massing just outside the gates, and the NEA made no attempt to confront them. The woman standing next to me was saying that she hoped the cops would “go beat up some anarchists” –just to break the monotony.
Joel Olson:
I think one of the great things that we did for that ten days, or so, when Operation Rescue was there was to have nightly mass meetings, where we could hash out strategy, work out problems. One of the main tensions between us and the communists was: how do we organize this? We wanted to be anarchist –everything had to be affinity groups. To me, this seems silly now. But at the time, it was a big deal that we had a fight over. I remember, at a certain point, Freedom Road almost backed out.
Gabe Zeck:
Those were two very taxing weeks! Clinic defense generally began around 5:00 or 6:00 AM, and we'd spend the day out at the clinics, and at nights we’d go to meetings. There happened to be more anarchists in the coalition than anybody else (or people who were leaning in that direction), which is how it came to be collectively run. And as anyonewho has been involved with any sort of radical direct action knows, there’s always a few idiots that come and try to spoil it for everyone.
We already had enough to deal with, confronting Operation Rescue and the police, without having to deal with Trotskyites.
Joel Olson:
The other dynamic was that there was a problem with an outside group called NWROC –the Revolutionary Workers’ League. Of course, they were nut balls! And they kind of decided that this was “their action.” So there was a lot of conflict.
