You're Not In Kansas Anymore, Continued... Page - 1 | 2 | 3 |

WHEN WINGNUTS ATTACK

   

        Originally formed in the mid-1980’s, NWROC (National Women’s Rights Organizing Coalition) is a front group for the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), a Trotskyist Committee based in Detroit, Michigan.(72) In Ann Arbor, MI they are also known as BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary).(73) Most of the members are between the ages of 15 and 25.(74) According to their literature:

NWROC is the most effective, most dynamic, most militant, most integrated, and most youthful activist organization on the American progressive political scene today.(75)

 

            NWROC were well known in activist circles for their obnoxious behavior and their aggressive attempts to take over the leadership of other groups. In 1992, NWROC (pronounced “en-rock”) dispatched 100 militants to Buffalo, NY, where local activists refused to meet with them.(76) “They're troublemakers,” said Marilynn Buckham of the Buffalo GYN Womenservices clinic, “I wish they’d go home.”(77)

            As “the most effective” organization in America, NWROC had little interest in local struggles. Their principle organizing strategy was to stack public meetings (possibly overturning a few tables and chairs), denouncing local forces as “bourgeois white feminists”(78) and “Uncle Toms” –a strategy designed to sow dissension and confusion within the ranks of the wider left. In 2001, NWROC successfully infiltrated the Oakland Education Association, a union representing 3,700 teachers in Oakland, CA.(79) In Ann Arbor, Michigan, NWROC’s battles with the Black Student Union proved so divisive that even the Maoists thought that the RWL was giving sectarianism a bad name.(80)

Gordon Edgar:

That’s what sectarian groups do! Their whole purpose is entrism, which means they enter a coalition of people who are working on a political issue. They enter the group, they disrupt it in a way that will polarize the group, and they pick off the most militant people to join their group –and that way, the Party is built. Because the community groups don’t mean anything (according to their theory). That’s their basic way of operating.

 

Joel Olson:

NWROC presumed that they were the leadership, that they had the right to lead this struggle –even though they were from Detroit, not from Minneapolis!

 

 

            Arriving in the Twin Cities, NWROC immediately set out to discredit the local pro-choice groups. Their erratic behavior would prove to be a constant source of irritation for members of the Action Coalition, who wanted to nothing to do with them. Yet the media tended to lump the two groups together, perhaps believing NWROC’s repeated assertions that they were “leading a mass movement.” It was the anarchists who had to deal with the fallout.

Joel Olson:

The question was: “How the fuck do we neutralize NWROC -as well as destroy Operation Rescue?” So, really, we were fighting from two flanks.

We couldn’t totally eliminate NWROC—they were there the whole time—but we sidelined them. They weren’t able to destroy the campaign.  

 

            Ostensibly a revolutionary organization made up of “working class” women (and girls), NWROC appeared to be very well funded. Their cadre was equipped with all the latest high tech gadgets. This led some to question the source of NWROC’s funding.

Gabe Zeck:

So this group of communists based in Michigan had flown to Minneapolis for the protests. They stayed in nice hotels, and carried around cell phones. They were extremely disruptive. And they tried to assert some authority –despite the wishes of the coalition. There was a lot of talk that they might be Federal Agents.

 

Joel Olson:

Back then, cell phones were very rare –and they all had cell phones. So they had better communication than us. They had walkie-talkies, they had rent-a-cars…

 

Gabe Zeck:

We really didn't want to deal with them. Lucky for the rest of us, NWROC decided to bum rush Operation Rescue, and they got arrested. Of course, they probably had the bail money...

  

          On Monday, July 12, 1993, four members of NWROC were arrested in front of the Midwest Health Center for Women.(81)

Joel Olson:

They were a cult. They were all quite young –cute, hip twenty-somethings.The rumor was that they recruited through Ecstasy parties.

 

Gordon Edgar:

I had a co-worker who was in NWROC –she was so embarrassed!

 

Erik Farseth:

At the St. Paul Planned Parenthood, the members of Operation Rescue engaged in a shouting match with members of the Action Coalition, while the NEA supporters hid behind a newly erected eight-foot fence. NWROC were stationed just up the street, where they spent most of the afternoon hanging out at Burger King. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there were NWROC members standing in the Burger King parking lot speaking into walkie-talkies.

They must have finally gotten the signal to move out, ‘cause all the NWROC people marched down to the front of the Planned Parenthood clinic, where they unfurled a banner that said: “Free the Minnesota Eight!”

  

          The “Eight” in question were a group of young African-American men, allegedly members of the Vice Lords gang, who’d been arrested for the 1992 murder of police officer Jerry Haaf, and the subsequent murder of a gang member named Ed Harris (who they suspected, wrongly as it turns out, of being an informant).(82) Their sympathizers believed that these men were innocent, that “the Minnesota Eight” had been arrested, and—with one exception—ultimately convicted (or forced to accept a plea bargain) based on the cultural biases of anonymous all-white juries.(83) By the time the case went to trial in 1995, one of the defendants, Montery Willis, was already serving a 35-year sentence for a separate murder in Chicago.(84)

            The eight purported Vice Lords are not to be confused with the Vietnam-era “Minnesota 8” (who were imprisoned for draft resistance).

            Needless to say, the NWROC banner (“Free the Minnesota Eight!”) had nothing to do with the abortion debate. NWROC appeared to be grasping at straws, hoping to find a local issue to latch-onto.

Joel Olson:

That was funny! Because, basically what happened is midway through this Operation Rescue stuff, they had been so sidelined that they were like “Let’s try something else.” So they went to an event, and unfurled a banner that said: “Free the Minnesota Eight.”

They didn’t have any connection to the Committee Seeking Justice for the Minnesota Eight! And if they had, they would have known that that committee was primarily a combination of African-American women and white anarchists! So it came across as really crass opportunism. It wasn’t well received.

 

Gordon Edgar:

NWROC –they’re even worse than most sectarians, because they just flat out race bait. I had a friend who was union organizer down in New Orleans. [The union] was trying to do this abortion rights thing. And NWROC basically came in and got people of color to call her a racist… And people didn’t necessarily believe them, but it was enough to fuck with her credibility. It was just flat-out, strategic race bating.

The ugliness of the ugly, ugly Left.

 

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

 

            The final confrontation occurred at the Robbinsdale Clinic, where Operation Rescue brought out “the youth crew.”

            To avoid lengthy jail terms, Operation Rescue had begun using children as shock troops, while their parents remained outside the perimeters of court-ordered buffer zones.(85) As minors, the children could not be prosecuted. This was a tactic that had proven to be quite effective in cities such as Melbourne, FL. Clinic defenders didn’t know how to react. Nor did the cops (who were somewhat hesitant to manhandle a ten-year-old). According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, “...this backfired when parents, convicted of contributing to the delinquency of minors, began losing custody of their children.”(86)

The 10-year-old boy was frightened, he told the television cameras. "But I'll do it again. I have to. They're killing babies in there."

- The Orlando Sentinel, July 16, 1993

   

         At Robbinsdale, the youth crew were mostly high school kids, with a couple of older men dressed like members of the Hell’s Angels for added muscle. This made them especially dangerous. The 17-year-olds were big enough to do some serious physical damage, while the bikers had a reputation for violence.

Erik Farseth:

We’d been warned to keep an eye out for one man in particular: the folks who led the Clinic Defense teams called him “Thumper.” Thumper had made a habit of “accidentally” whacking people over the head with a wooden picket sign. He must have weighed over 250 pounds.

 

            The hallmark of the Action Coalition’s strategy was “the Church Ladies” –men dressed in drag, singing political parodies of patriotic tunes. Most of their tactics involved some sort of street theater or humor –poking fun of the religious sensibilities of “the antis.” They distributed lyrics sheets, and cardboard cutouts shaped like the word bubbles in comic strips, which were used for humorous effect.

Erik Farseth:

I have a photograph of Joel Hippiecore (as he was known at the time) standing next to a member of Operation Rescue, holding up a cardboard sign that says: “If I only had a brain.”

We spent most of the morning singing songs like “God is a Lesbian,” which was sung to the tune of “My Country Tis of Thee.”

The antis didn’t appreciate it. As we were walking past a group of Catholics praying the Rosary, one of them turned around and punched MichelleMoskowitz. 

 

¡NO PASARáN!

   

         By this time, there were four groups gathered in front of the Robbinsdale Clinic: the NEA, Operation Rescue, the Action Coalition for Reproductive Freedom, and about a dozen police (NWROC was nowhere to be seen).

Erik Farseth:

The police had warned us that if we didn’t clear out soon, we would all be arrested. Fine, we said, but they’re not going to shut down the clinic. As the youth crew started massing on the sidewalk, everyone linked arms. A low rumble started—who killed Doctor Gunn?—and the entire crowd took up the chant: “Who killed Doctor Gunn? You killed Doctor Gunn!” The chanting kept getting louder and louder, and the voices got lower and lower.

We were all hopped up on adrenaline, knowing that at any moment the antis might try rush the doors and we would all be going to jail. No one made a move, but there was an unspoken assumption that if they hit us, we were prepared to defend ourselves.

And then it was all over: Operation Rescue had backed down.

 

Joel Olson:

It all kind of culminated with the final day at Robbinsdale, when they brought the youth crew. We thought that they were really going to attack us. They brought in a coffin, and they had some biker guys to protect the students. But they never tried to attack any of the clinics, and they never shut down anything. And the clinic workers applauded us after that action. So I think by the end, we earned some grudging respect.

 

Erik Farseth:

The Network to Ensure Access had lost control of their own forces. A lot of the red shirts were sympathetic to what we were doing –we’d been talking to their people all day long through the chain link fence. I think a lot of the NEA volunteers (and even some of their handlers) were feeling frustrated that they weren’t allowed to express themselves.

At the end of the demonstration, the volunteers thanked us, and gave us a round of applause.

 

AFTERMATH

     

       By all accounts, Cities of Refuge was an utter failure.

            “I think they came into the state in error,” said Thomas P. Webber, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. “It was a monumental screw-up.”(87)

            Compared to previous rescue missions, turnout was low. Few were willing to risk arrest when the penalty for blockading health clinics was increased to one year in prison.(88) The IMPACT team went into hiding, refusing to speak to reporters.(89)

            “If your objective is to win the war, but that [opponent] is so heavily guarded that any attack on it is going to be complete suicide, the thing to do is not run up there and get shot,'' the Rev. Keith Tucci told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “The thing to do is to launch guerrilla warfare, which is essentially what we're doing.”(90)

            On September 3, 1993, Dr. John Britton and James Barret were murdered outside a clinic in Pensacola, FL. The following year, 12 doctors were shot, and five of them were killed. Jeff White, the leader of Operation Rescue California signed a petition calling for the “justifiable homicide” of abortion doctors.(91) The author of that petition, Paul Hill, was executed for murder in 2003.

            A guerrilla war, indeed.

            The Rev. Keith Tucci resigned from Operation Rescue in 1994, after local leaders refused to commit to nonviolence.(92) The passage of the Federal Freedom to Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in May of 1994 effectively put an end to the era of mass blockades.

            In 2000, Randall Terry left his wife of 19 years, and ran off with a younger woman. Terry was denounced by the director of Operation Rescue, the Rev. Flip Benham, and formally “separated” from the Landmark Church. According to the Baltimore Sun: “Terry's pastor of 15 years wrote an open letter of ‘censure’ to him, citing his plans to dissolve his marriage, his failure to repent and a ‘pattern of repeated sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women.’”(93)

            Though the Action Coalition for Reproductive Freedom was heavily criticized for using “vulgar tactics,” none of its opponents was ever harmed. The same cannot be said for Operation Rescue.

Joel Olson:

I think I have three things in my Twin Cities experience that I can define as a success, politically… And of those three, Operation Rescue was the only true victory. But we were too exhausted by the end of it to realize the significance of that struggle.