"The Importance of Relationships" by Brandon Darby

[nashvillebrook]

Just a quick share in case anyone is needing a heroic dose of irony for the day. Brandon Darby is presenting this workshop at a conservative summit in Orlando later this month:

Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Importance of Relationships (Grassroots Activism Session)
Featuring Brandon Darby & Evan Feinberg (Generation Opportunity)


more on Darby:
BEWARE OF BRANDON DARBY: FBI INFORMANT
http://interoccupy.net/blog/beware-of-b ... informant/

posting the full conference agenda for lulz.

http://new.defendingthedream.org/summit-agenda/

The Defending the American Dream Summit is being held at Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Orlando®.
6300 Hollywood Way, Orlando, Florida
Click here to book your room while they last!

Additional speakers will be added to this page as they are confirmed. Schedule is subject to change. Check back frequently for updates!
**Denotes a session sponsored by our sister organization, Americans for Prosperity.

Thursday, August 29th
Early Arrival Parties occur this evening; join us if you’re in town!

Friday, August 30th
8:45 – 9:45 | Breakout Sessions
Bully on the Playground: Beat Back the Bureaucrats (Policy Session)
Featuring C. Phillip Byers (Challenge Foundation) & Leslie Hiner (the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice)

Coalitions, Costs & Credibility: How to Build Your Organization (Grassroots Activism Session)
Featuring Keith Flaugh (Southwest Florida Citizens Alliance) & Bridgett Wagner (The Heritage Foundation)

10:00-11:00 | Breakout Sessions
Getting Your Accounts in Order: Tax Reform at the State Level (Policy Session)
Featuring Joe Henchman (Tax Foundation), Dr. Christine Ries (Georgia Institute of Technology), & Dallas Woodhouse (AFP Foundation – North Carolina)

#SocialMediaActivistBootcamp (Social Media & Messaging Session)
Featuring Abigail Alger (The Leadership Institute), Melissa Clouthier, & Erik Telford (Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity)

Market Based Management: Applying Free Market Principles to Your Business (Youth Oriented Session)

11:15-12:15 | Breakout Sessions
Medicaid Expansion: Breaking the Bank While Cheating the Poor (Policy Session)**
Featuring Tarren Bragdon (Foundation for Government Accountability)

Get Past the Gotchas: Staying in Control (Social Media & Messaging Session)
Featuring Lars Larson (The Lars Larson Show)

All Star Activism for Rookies: Learning from the Best (Grassroots Activism Session)**
Featuring Jason Moore (2012 Unsung Hero Award Winner)

Putting Your Passion to Work: Staying Active in the Free Market Movement (Youth Oriented Session)
Featuring Patricia Simpson (The Leadership Institute)

12:30-2:00 | Networking Activities
Lunch Break (Provided with your registration)

Conservative Career Fair (Organized by The Leadership Institute; Bring your resume!)

2:00-4:00 | Opening General Session
Featuring Dr. Arthur Brooks, Governor Bobby Jindal, & Senator Marco Rubio

4:00-7:30 | Conference Break (Enjoy dinner with new friends at one of the many restaurants onsite)

7:30-9:00 | Awards Ceremony (Marvel Super Hero Island®)
Featuring Michelle Malkin

9:00-11:00 | Party in the Park (Marvel Super Hero Island®)
Join us for rides, music, networking, & more! (Provided with your registration)

Saturday, August 31st
8:45 – 9:45 | Breakout Sessions
Driving Change from the Bottom Up: Big Wins at the Local Level (Policy Session)**

Waste Watchers: Finding Government Waste & Shedding Light On It (Grassroots Activism Session)
Featuring Susan Combs (Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts) & James O’Keefe (Project Veritas)

10:00-11:00 | Breakout Sessions
Presentation on Federal Spending by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (Policy Session)

Fireside Policy Chats: Telling a Story that Sparks (Social Media & Messaging Session)

Dear Abby: How Do I Write A Good Letter to My Editor? (Grassroots Activism Session)

Freedom in Decline: How Big Government is Ruining Your Future (Youth Oriented Session)
Featuring Dr. Antony Davies (Duquesne University)

11:15-12:15 | Breakout Sessions
The Green Monster: Subsidizing Failure in Renewable Energy (Policy Session)
Featuring Christopher Horner (Competitive Enterprise Institute)

DIY Blog Kit: Arming Yourself For the Digital Age (Social Media & Messaging Session)
Featuring Cord Blomquist (ReadyMadeWeb) & Javier Manjerres (The Shark Tank)

Be the One Who Gets Things Done: Tips for Managing Your Time & Resources (Grassroots Activism Session)

Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Importance of Relationships (Grassroots Activism Session)
Featuring Brandon Darby & Evan Feinberg (Generation Opportunity)

Winning (& Losing) with Humor: Knock Out Punchlines (Youth Oriented Session)
Featuring Greg Gutfeld (Fox News Channel) & Remy Munasifi (GoRemy.com)

12:30-2:00 | Regional Lunches (Provided with your registration)**
(Learn how you can get involved as an activist in your home state! Sponsored by our sister organization, Americans for Prosperity)

2:00-4:00 | Closing General Session
Featuring Senator Ted Cruz, Greg Gutfeld, & Senator Ron Johnson

[elfismiles]

I sure hope someone protests or disrupts his workshop...

[Wombaticus Rex]

"Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty" sure is interesting phrasing, though. Was Darby digging wells in conservative media before he was thirsty?

That's not a trivial question, because it would completely demolish the foundation of his origin story. It would also make a lot more sense than his origin story!

[American Dream]

"Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty" sure is interesting phrasing, though. Was Darby digging wells in conservative media before he was thirsty?

That's not a trivial question, because it would completely demolish the foundation of his origin story. It would also make a lot more sense than his origin story!

And/or how do the FBI and other such groups develop deep cover informants for that matter? How much appeals to greed? How much threats of criminal sanction?

What sorts of psychological profiles should they look for? Psychopaths? Addicts?

What else?

[nashvillebrook]

"Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty" sure is interesting phrasing, though. Was Darby digging wells in conservative media before he was thirsty?

That's not a trivial question, because it would completely demolish the foundation of his origin story. It would also make a lot more sense than his origin story!

Precisely.

[Wombaticus Rex]

That origin story, in technicolor cinematic glory...

Via: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -terrorism

But Common Ground's approach soon began to grate on Darby. He bristled at its consensus-based decision making, its interminable debates over things like whether serving meat to locals was serving oppression. He idolized rugged, iconoclastic populists like Che Guevara—so, in early 2006, he jumped at a chance to go to Venezuela to solicit money for Katrina victims.

Darby was deeply impressed with what he saw, until a state oil exec asked him to go to Colombia and meet with FARC, the communist guerrilla group. "They said they wanted to help me start a guerrilla movement in the swamps of Louisiana," he told "This American Life" reporter Michael May. "And I was like, 'I don't think so.'" It turned out armed revolution wasn't really his thing.

Darby's former friends dispute the Venezuela story as they dispute much that he says. They accuse him of grandstanding, being combative, and even spying on his rivals. In his short-lived tenure as Common Ground's interim director, Darby drove out 30 volunteer coordinators and replaced them with a small band of loyalists. "He could only see what's in it for him," Crow told me. For example, Darby preempted a planned police-harassment hot line by making flyers asking victims to call his personal phone number."

....

By mid-2007, Darby had left the group and become preoccupied with the conflict in Lebanon. Before long, Darby says, he was approached in Austin by a Lebanese-born schoolteacher, Riad Hamad, for help with a vague plan to launder money into the Palestinian territories. Hamad also spoke about smuggling bombs into Israel, he claims.

Darby says he discouraged Hamad at first, and then tipped off Bryson, who put him in touch with the FBI. "I talked," he told me. "And it was the fucking weirdest thing." He knew his friends would hate him for what he'd done. (The FBI raided Hamad's home, and discovered nothing incriminating; he was found dead in Austin's Lady Bird Lake two months later—an apparent suicide.)

[American Dream]

It certainly must be part of a textbook somewhere how handlers can coach their informants who are outed and prepared to testify in court for how to portray their "conversion" in the most flattering light.

I wish we had access to those textbooks...

[MayDay]

"Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty" sure is interesting phrasing, though. Was Darby digging wells in conservative media before he was thirsty?

That's not a trivial question, because it would completely demolish the foundation of his origin story. It would also make a lot more sense than his origin story!

And/or how do the FBI and other such groups develop deep cover informants for that matter? How much appeals to greed? How much threats of criminal sanction?

What sorts of psychological profiles should they look for? Psychopaths? Addicts?

What else?

That's a good question, AD. In the activist and counter cultural circles I navigate, it is said that most informants are being blackmailed to inform on their friends with threats of lengthy incarceration for their suspected involvement in the planning and execution of covert non-violent but illegal methods of resistance. In other words, they are almost always people who share similar ideological and cultural backgrounds with those they are tasked with informing on. The assumption is that we are too 'far out' for the authorities to successfully infiltrate, and anyone viewed as 'not quite right' will be socially ostracized and barred from important discussions by default. That's just a part of security culture. Had someone like Darby appeared in any one of the circles with which I am involved, he would have been called out immediately- not as an informant, but as a person displaying twisted, dominating, bigoted behaviour.

I've always suspected that this generally accepted theory is bogus, and that some sort of training programs exists to train actors to infiltrate the more actively subversive groups. Any such infiltrator would have to be a really damn good actor, and would have to have a good command of the political thought/ writings/ history relevant to the group being infiltrated. We certainly weren't born yesterday. This would be a costly and time consuming program, and the resulting highly trained actor/ agent would most likely be sent to infiltrate only the most 'dangerous' groups. Finding people who are intelligent enough, who have the ability to act, and have such low ethical considerations must be difficult. Perhaps Darby is one example (a bad example, if so). Perhaps his work in Nola post-Katrina was a part of his training.

I never saw blatant and widespread infiltration by obvious agents until working to organize our local Occupy, where I suspected that between 10-30 percent of the original "organizers" were actually agents of some form or another, a suspicion of mine from the beginning that has since been corroborated by ample evidence that can be found all over the web (see the stratfor leaks thread, for one example). I felt the urge to stand up at one of the early meetings and ask the officers and agents present to please reveal themselves, but I restrained myself for fear of the immediate ridicule and eventual harassment that would have undoubtedly followed.

The nature of the occupy movement lent itself to such infiltration- most of us didn't really know each other, and the turnout was diverse enough that one more odd person was not subject to the scrutiny that they would be subjected to within a tight-knit group of activists. It was easy enough to say, "Oh yeah, I'm pissed off about Citizens United! Fuck the bank bailouts!! Get money out of govt!!!" and you were basically in, no questions. We had work to do, and it felt urgent, so we took anyone who displayed an apparent desire to help, even in spite of misgivings.

Darby was a pretty bizarre case. He was tasked with infiltrating one of the most infuriatingly incohesive, shifty, and hypocritical politicalally motivated groups I've ever interacted with- the Austin anarchist scene, circ. mid 2000's. I'm generalizing here, but these kids really didn't embody the caring, co-operative ethos of other anarchist groups I've worked and lived with. They were loud, abrasive, cared only about fucking shit up and attacking the police (Funny thing is, for a big city, the local cops are among the tamest in the nation, imo). Many of them imagined that being an anarchist means blowing shit up, and not much else. That it took him as long as it did to actually entrap a couple of them, to get them to act on their violence, only goes to show how little of a threat this scene actually was. Someone, we assume from this scene, eventually succeded in burning down the governors mansion a few years back without any prompting from Darby. Rick Perry got his place remodeled on the taxpayers dime. So subversive.

Darby was really into his work for the fbi. I've heard first hand accounts from people who knew him (one of them was one of his several girlfriends) that he frequently stalked, harrassed and perhaps even physically attacked men that he somehow, mysteriously knew to be pedophiles. He was said to have joked that if someone from the fbi was listening, wouldn't you rather it be him, a righteous dude, than some total asshole who's really only out to get you all in trouble? By all accounts, he is an egomaniac, bigoted asshole- who could sometimes be a helpful and righteous sweetheart, which endeared him only to those on the very fringe of the scene.

[JackRiddler]

That origin story, in technicolor cinematic glory...

Via: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -terrorism

But Common Ground's approach soon began to grate on Darby. He bristled at its consensus-based decision making, its interminable debates over things like whether serving meat to locals was serving oppression. He idolized rugged, iconoclastic populists like Che Guevara—so, in early 2006, he jumped at a chance to go to Venezuela to solicit money for Katrina victims.

Darby was deeply impressed with what he saw, until a state oil exec asked him to go to Colombia and meet with FARC, the communist guerrilla group. "They said they wanted to help me start a guerrilla movement in the swamps of Louisiana," he told "This American Life" reporter Michael May. "And I was like, 'I don't think so.'" It turned out armed revolution wasn't really his thing.

Darby's former friends dispute the Venezuela story as they dispute much that he says. They accuse him of grandstanding, being combative, and even spying on his rivals. In his short-lived tenure as Common Ground's interim director, Darby drove out 30 volunteer coordinators and replaced them with a small band of loyalists. "He could only see what's in it for him," Crow told me. For example, Darby preempted a planned police-harassment hot line by making flyers asking victims to call his personal phone number."

....

By mid-2007, Darby had left the group and become preoccupied with the conflict in Lebanon. Before long, Darby says, he was approached in Austin by a Lebanese-born schoolteacher, Riad Hamad, for help with a vague plan to launder money into the Palestinian territories. Hamad also spoke about smuggling bombs into Israel, he claims.

Darby says he discouraged Hamad at first, and then tipped off Bryson, who put him in touch with the FBI. "I talked," he told me. "And it was the fucking weirdest thing." He knew his friends would hate him for what he'd done. (The FBI raided Hamad's home, and discovered nothing incriminating; he was found dead in Austin's Lady Bird Lake two months later—an apparent suicide.)

I missed, or forgot, the above. The Venezuelan-FARC-Louisiana angle is hilarious, but waaaaaaaaay too much. Do you think it is intended as "revelation of the method"?

.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I never saw blatant and widespread infiltration by obvious agents until working to organize our local Occupy, where I suspected that between 10-30 percent of the original "organizers" were actually agents of some form or another, a suspicion of mine from the beginning that has since been corroborated by ample evidence that can be found all over the web (see the stratfor leaks thread, for one example). I felt the urge to stand up at one of the early meetings and ask the officers and agents present to please reveal themselves, but I restrained myself for fear of the immediate ridicule and eventual harassment that would have undoubtedly followed.

Just to offer some personal testimony from the other side of that equation: Every local occupy I've been involved with -- constituting 3 different states over 2 years -- I was accused of being an agent. Every time, my accusers had a detailed case against me. It was very instructive stuff, and had a big influence my current apolitics.

[American Dream]

Darby was a pretty bizarre case. He was tasked with infiltrating one of the most infuriatingly incohesive, shifty, and hypocritical politicalally motivated groups I've ever interacted with- the Austin anarchist scene, circ. mid 2000's. I'm generalizing here, but these kids really didn't embody the caring, co-operative ethos of other anarchist groups I've worked and lived with. They were loud, abrasive, cared only about fucking shit up and attacking the police (Funny thing is, for a big city, the local cops are among the tamest in the nation, imo). Many of them imagined that being an anarchist means blowing shit up, and not much else. That it took him as long as it did to actually entrap a couple of them, to get them to act on their violence, only goes to show how little of a threat this scene actually was. Someone, we assume from this scene, eventually succeded in burning down the governors mansion a few years back without any prompting from Darby. Rick Perry got his place remodeled on the taxpayers dime. So subversive.

That leads to another paranoid hunch I have: that it is the Feds and other such bad guys who are doing some/much of the pumping up of the "fuck shit up" ethos, especially where it is individualistic, not strategic, impulsive, over the top, etc.

Could this be? Yes it could.

[nashvillebrook]

Darby was a pretty bizarre case. He was tasked with infiltrating one of the most infuriatingly incohesive, shifty, and hypocritical politicalally motivated groups I've ever interacted with- the Austin anarchist scene, circ. mid 2000's. I'm generalizing here, but these kids really didn't embody the caring, co-operative ethos of other anarchist groups I've worked and lived with. They were loud, abrasive, cared only about fucking shit up and attacking the police (Funny thing is, for a big city, the local cops are among the tamest in the nation, imo). Many of them imagined that being an anarchist means blowing shit up, and not much else. That it took him as long as it did to actually entrap a couple of them, to get them to act on their violence, only goes to show how little of a threat this scene actually was. Someone, we assume from this scene, eventually succeded in burning down the governors mansion a few years back without any prompting from Darby. Rick Perry got his place remodeled on the taxpayers dime. So subversive.

That leads to another paranoid hunch I have: that it is the Feds and other such bad guys who are doing some/much of the pumping up of the "fuck shit up" ethos, especially where it is individualistic, not strategic, impulsive, over the top, etc.

Could this be? Yes it could.

I think it makes sense to consider that *instigation* would be one tactic in an overall strategy that aims to disempower or alienate activist groups in general. I get that the Austin anarchists themselves likely couldn't organize a dinner party, let alone any sort of dreamy "insurrection." But, drawing them into something big and horrible/stupid, could be effective in smearing other organizers especially in a collective group such as Occupy...or even other groups they might associate with in the community outside of Occupy.

Community organizers who saw the potential for this at my Occupy stayed away from it once a Darby-associated wannabe started instigated for the group to "fuck shit up." This knee-capped community organizers who had a rare chance to find sympathetic ears. Predictably when the instigated arrests happened, the Occupy fell apart. Those people were trespassed and couldn't participate any longer, and those who were divided. Community allies took a giant step back, as did the general population of working people who supported Occupy, but couldn't camp out.

It was all too easy for this guy. As soon as this happened the Darby wannabe disappeared. Supposedly off to bigger and better Occupies up north -- leaving the kids who got arrested with legal bills and records. Oh! I nearly forgot...before he left he made sure to drive a wedge between the arrested kids and the legal team. The couple of cases that the legal team took to trial were won. Everyone else pleaded out using his hand-picked attorney, leaving them *in the system* -- saddled with debt, and having to go to probation.

Do I know for sure if this guy's intention was rotten from the start? Given that he bragged of being Darby's BFF, that he used cringe-worthy racial language, and had an odd militarism about him...and given the outcome of his involvement...I'd say he was either really bad at doing Occupy or really good at fucking Occupy.

All he had to do was "pump up the fuck shit up" ethos. Simple as that.

[American Dream]

Darby was a pretty bizarre case. He was tasked with infiltrating one of the most infuriatingly incohesive, shifty, and hypocritical politicalally motivated groups I've ever interacted with- the Austin anarchist scene, circ. mid 2000's. I'm generalizing here, but these kids really didn't embody the caring, co-operative ethos of other anarchist groups I've worked and lived with. They were loud, abrasive, cared only about fucking shit up and attacking the police (Funny thing is, for a big city, the local cops are among the tamest in the nation, imo). Many of them imagined that being an anarchist means blowing shit up, and not much else. That it took him as long as it did to actually entrap a couple of them, to get them to act on their violence, only goes to show how little of a threat this scene actually was. Someone, we assume from this scene, eventually succeded in burning down the governors mansion a few years back without any prompting from Darby. Rick Perry got his place remodeled on the taxpayers dime. So subversive.

That leads to another paranoid hunch I have: that it is the Feds and other such bad guys who are doing some/much of the pumping up of the "fuck shit up" ethos, especially where it is individualistic, not strategic, impulsive, over the top, etc.

Could this be? Yes it could.

I think it makes sense to consider that *instigation* would be one tactic in an overall strategy that aims to disempower or alienate activist groups in general. I get that the Austin anarchists themselves likely couldn't organize a dinner party, let alone any sort of dreamy "insurrection." But, drawing them into something big and horrible/stupid, could be effective in smearing other organizers especially in a collective group such as Occupy...or even other groups they might associate with in the community outside of Occupy.

Community organizers who saw the potential for this at my Occupy stayed away from it once a Darby-associated wannabe started instigated for the group to "fuck shit up." This knee-capped community organizers who had a rare chance to find sympathetic ears. Predictably when the instigated arrests happened, the Occupy fell apart. Those people were trespassed and couldn't participate any longer, and those who were divided. Community allies took a giant step back, as did the general population of working people who supported Occupy, but couldn't camp out.

It was all too easy for this guy. As soon as this happened the Darby wannabe disappeared. Supposedly off to bigger and better Occupies up north -- leaving the kids who got arrested with legal bills and records. Oh! I nearly forgot...before he left he made sure to drive a wedge between the arrested kids and the legal team. The couple of cases that the legal team took to trial were won. Everyone else pleaded out using his hand-picked attorney, leaving them *in the system* -- saddled with debt, and having to go to probation.

Do I know for sure if this guy's intention was rotten from the start? Given that he bragged of being Darby's BFF, that he used cringe-worthy racial language, and had an odd militarism about him...and given the outcome of his involvement...I'd say he was either really bad at doing Occupy or really good at fucking Occupy.

All he had to do was "pump up the fuck shit up" ethos. Simple as that.

A very telling story. And it's usually difficult to criticize the most vocally militant person in the room, when there is a significant group of people who want deep, meaningful change. The response is predictable.

[nashvillebrook]

[quote="

A very telling story. And it's usually difficult to criticize the most vocally militant person in the room, when there is a significant group of people who want deep, meaningful change. The response is predictable.

I'd say too, that the insurrectionist was very focused on "relationship building," but not with people his age, or allies or leaders. He was organizing relentlessly with the youngest, least experienced kids. And that the community organizers were very unfocused on this. Instead of being out with clip boards collecting petitions and email addys for further communication, they took a wait-and-see approach -- likely b/c they didn't want to bring troublemakers into their universe.

[American Dream]

[quote="

A very telling story. And it's usually difficult to criticize the most vocally militant person in the room, when there is a significant group of people who want deep, meaningful change. The response is predictable.

I'd say too, that the insurrectionist was very focused on "relationship building," but not with people his age, or allies or leaders. He was organizing relentlessly with the youngest, least experienced kids. And that the community organizers were very unfocused on this. Instead of being out with clip boards collecting petitions and email addys for further communication, they took a wait-and-see approach -- likely b/c they didn't want to bring troublemakers into their universe.

Yes, another feature of Brandon Darby- and also other suspicious characters I know of- setting themselves up as mentor for the youngest and most confused, the embodiment of all revolutionary ideals, with an endlessly expressed contempt for the wimps and liberals.