ex-iwp

Ex-IWP Website Hacked, But We're Not Going to Be Disappeared by Cult Members!

2011-08-09T16:58:00.001-07:00

BREAKING NEWS

The EX-IWP website was hacked soon after the death of cult leader Fred Newman. We have every intention of restoring the website as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please visit one of our new BLOGS which contain LOTS and LOTS of archive materials that many would like to see disappeared. Please also visit our new FORUM where former members can freely express their thoughts and communicate with others about their IWP experience. Stay tuned for more information.

RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE

The Strange Life of the Late Fred Newman (Pajamas Media, July 12, 2011)

Fred Newman, Writer and Political Figure, Dies at 76 (The New York Times, July 9, 2011)

NYC Independence Party Founder Newman Dead At 76! ‎ (NY1, July 5, 2011)

Former Leaders of New Alliance Party Have Become Leading Opponents of Ballot Access Reform (Ballot Access News, December 30, 2010)

Bloomberg and the Not-So-Independent Independence Party

Mating Game: Bloomy Loves Fred Newman, All Over Again (Village Voice, February 19, 2009)

Bloomberg's Therapist (Village Voice, June 14, 2005)

ARE YOU UNFAMILIAR WITH FRED NEWMAN AND THE IWP?

Political Research Associates (Extensive Information on the IWP)

Steve Hassan's IWP Web Page

"Psychopolitics": Inside The Independence Party Of Fred Newman (NY 1 News, November 2005)

Mayor Defends Financing for Fulani Group (2006)

2011-08-09T16:56:00.001-07:00

By Jill Gardiner
The New York Sun, September 14, 2006

Mayor Bloomberg is defending the city's decision to approve more than $12 million in tax-free financing for a nonprofit group founded by a political leader who has been accused of making anti-Semitic comments.

Mr. Bloomberg said the approval of the tax-free financing for the All Stars Project, a performing arts group, was based solely on the substance of the group and had nothing to do with its founding member, Lenora Fulani, who is no longer affiliated with the group.

The city's Industrial Development Agency gave the green light to the arrangement earlier this week over objections from several leading elected officials, who said the organization's relationship with Ms. Fulani should disqualify it.

"We don't look at the politics or the personal philosophies or the first amendment rights of what people say who are not involved with a project," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters.

"If they have a problem with other people they should express it to other people, but we are not going to hurt the kids at the All Star Project," he added referring to the opponents.

Ms. Fulani, a former leader of the Independence Party, backed Mr. Bloomberg when he was running for mayor in 2001 and then again in 2005, giving him crucial support and an alternative party line for New Yorkers who wanted to vote for him but didn't want to pull the lever for the Republican Party. He has distanced himself from her positions, but they repeatedly come back to haunt him.

Ms. Fulani's most divisive words came in 1989, when she wrote: "Jews had to sell their souls to acquire Israel." This week, the state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, the public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler wrote to the head of the IDA urging him to block the financing request. Others who hold power on the IDA board directed their proxies to reject it.

But Mr. Bloomberg contended that there was nothing wrong with the deal: "We're trying to do what's right for our children and we certainly do not want to run a city where everybody's got to pass a litmus test of agreeing with those people running for office," he said.

Bloomy's 'All Stars': City arranges new multi-million-dollar financing for Fulani's crew (2006)

2011-08-09T16:54:00.001-07:00

By Tom Robbins
The Village Voice, August 22, 2006

City arranges new multi-million-dollar financing for Fulani's crew

Even though he was the odds-on favorite to win re-election last year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg took no chances. In addition to running as the Republican Party's nominee, the billionaire media mogul sought and accepted the nomination of the Independence Party, thus providing an alternative for those true-blue Democrats who could never pull the GOP lever, even while holding their noses in the privacy of the voting booth. It was the same strategy that had worked so well for him in 2001, when the 59,000 votes he polled as the Independence candidate put him over the top in that razor-close race.

But the second time around, Bloomberg took a fair amount of heat for the tactic: Reporters asked him why he was still associating with the zany crowd that controlled the city's Independence Party, which included Lenora Fulani, prone to tossing occasional anti-Semitic barbs, and her oddball therapy guru, Fred Newman, who openly approved of sex between shrinks and patients. Those questions increased in volume after Fulani publicly refused to disavow her own earlier comments, in a NY1 TV interview, that Jews are "mass murderers" and had "sold their souls to acquire Israel."

But Bloomberg's strategy was to be better safe than sorry, banking on the hope that most voters wouldn't notice and the rest wouldn't hold it against him. And he was right. The CEO-turned-politician scored an overwhelming 750,000-vote tally against Democrat Fernando Ferrer, with more than 74,000 cast for him on the Independence Party line.

Now, nine months after the little third party helped him achieve that crushing victory, Bloomberg's administration is poised to provide Fulani and Newman with new $12 million tax-free bond financing for a controversial nonprofit organization they have long controlled. The bond deal, due to be approved by the city's Industrial Development Agency next month, would allow a youth program called the All Stars Project to refinance $8.3 million in outstanding city bonds and add an additional $4.2 million to allow the group to make improvements at its headquarters on West 42nd Street—a space it acquired in 2002 with an earlier IDA bond deal from Bloomberg's administration.

Tax-free bonds for private businesses and nonprofit groups are awarded frequently by the city, but applicants have to show that the subsidies will benefit the public. All Stars has been the subject of repeated complaints and investigations concerning allegations that it is used to lure unwary people into Newman's so-called "social therapy" practice and into political activities like the Independence Party. The group has always denied it, and a probe last year by the office of state attorney general Eliot Spitzer did not result in charges of wrongdoing.

The financing deal is clearly attractive. The bonds would save All Stars several hundred thousand dollars in costs and mortgage-recording taxes, according to Good Jobs New York, which monitors city projects. So far, however, few specifics have been provided. The only information made public is a one-paragraph advertisement published in the New York Daily News on August 8. A spokesperson for the city's Economic Development Corporation, which oversees the IDA, confirmed the deal and said only that some of the new $4 million plus would go for new heating and ventilation systems for the All Stars headquarters, adding that more details will be available before a September 7 hearing on the matter.

Bloomberg spokesperson Stu Loeser said the mayor played "no role" in the bond deal, adding that Newman and Fulani have distanced themselves from the project. In February, Newman resigned from posts he held there, although he and Fulani remain leading figures in the group.

An All Stars spokesman confirmed the bonds will be used to "finance necessary renovations and improvements."

Whatever the details, the project appears to be a kind of consolation prize for the group, which had a decidedly unhappy experience in its most recent dealings with city government. In March, in a caustic letter, the group announced it was dropping its application for a $230,000 contract to provide after-school training to city schoolkids through the Department of Youth and Community Development. The move came after a 10-month-long inquiry that began shortly after a Voice story on the matter ("Fulani's City Hall Push," June 7, 2005). At the time, the Voice reported that Fulani and Newman had been invited into Bloomberg's inner sanctum at City Hall, where they had met with top city officials, including schools chancellor Joel Klein. Part of their pitch was to provide theater and music activities to schoolchildren. Bloomberg's aides were receptive to the idea. But All Stars officials confirmed that they were more interested in receiving the stamp of approval from City Hall than the cash. "It would be the city validating all of our work in this field," Gabrielle Kurlander, who lives with Newman and receives $200,000 as president of the group, told the Voice last year.

But the contract negotiations came just as the mayor was agreeing to take the Independence Party line, and the coincidence helped spark a spate of additional stories in the New York Post and on NY1. In the face of that publicity, the city's youth department announced that All Stars would get careful scrutiny before any contracts were awarded.

That investigation, along with a parallel one by Spitzer's office, put the after-school grant on hold. City officials never completed their probe, but on March 6, All Stars president Kurlander fired off an angry four-page letter to city youth department officials saying they'd had enough. The letter offered—in remarkably frank language—Kurlander's version of her group's dealings with the youth agency and City Hall.

According to Kurlander, the after-school activities application started with the suggestion of a Bloomberg policy aide, Ester Fuchs, who "urged us to apply for a grant." (Fuchs told the Voice last year that the idea was broached by an All Stars lobbyist.) Kurlander said she "expressed concern" that the application "might fall victim to various forms of political gamesmanship" given the media attention to the group.

Despite city assurances that wouldn't happen, Kurlander wrote, the youth department's general counsel began contacting All Stars board members and supporters as far away as California "to inquire about their political affiliations." After a protest to Fuchs, Kurlander said, those inquiries were halted. But as the mayoral race heated up, NY1 broadcast a multi-part series by reporter Rita Nissan, prompting a new series of inquiries.

The youth department's new questions, Kurlander wrote, "read like an inquisition from Senator Joseph McCarthy." She said the queries included questions about who on the board was "in therapy, about living and personal financial arrangements of principals associated with the program, and other intrusive and abusive lines of questioning."

All Stars again complained, Kurlander wrote, this time to both Fuchs and Bloomberg campaign director Kevin Sheekey (now a deputy mayor). Kurlander said City Hall aides "disingenuously" told her that it was out of their hands. She said that even after Spitzer dropped his own separate inquiry, the city's probe continued. The last straw apparently came when the Voice reported, several days before Kurlander's irate letter, that city sources were telling it the contract wouldn't be awarded.

The All Stars executive wrote that the city's inquiry had "degenerated into the worst form of 'policy by politics' " and a "corruption of governmental responsibility."

"Finally," Kurlander concluded, "while it is the case that some individuals in the All Stars community worked hard for Mayor Bloomberg's re-election, All Stars has always made it plain that it neither sought nor expected any special treatment or favors." At the bottom of the letter, Kurlander cc'd Fuchs, Sheekey, and Mayor Bloomberg.

"Psychopolitics": Inside The Independence Party Of Fred Newman, Part One

2011-08-09T16:52:00.001-07:00

By Rita Nissan, NY1 News, October 30, 2005

The New York Independence Party has grown to 325,000 members statewide, 90,000 members in the city. It's become a powerful voice in politics, but there are some who say the leaders of the Manhattan party should be silenced. NY1’s Rita Nissan has more in part one of her special series, "Psychopolitics."

To say Lenora Fulani is vocal would be an understatement. As a leader of the Manhattan Independence Party, Fulani has been outspoken in her support for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg is running on her party's line. But while Fulani comes off as an in-charge and in-command leader, people who used to be aligned with her say a man you probably never heard of calls the shots - Fulani's mentor and psychotherapist, Fred Newman.

“Fulani is 100 percent subservient to Fred, 100 percent subservient to Fred, and when Fulani says something it's with Fred's blessing and by his design,” says Frank MacKay, Chairman of the state Independence Party.

Newman controls a web of organizations: The Manhattan Independence Party, a youth charity, and therapy clinics that practice his self-invented field of psychology, Social Therapy.

Newman has controversial views on politics, Jews and psychology. Newman lives with several former patients and says he has no problem if patients have sex with their therapists.

“I think that people’s sexual relationship should be something very personal between the people who are engaging in it, and I think if people love each other, care for each other and are attracted to each other, and decide - together - that they want to have sex, they should,” Newman recently told NY1.

Yet politicians like Bloomberg have been quick to seek Newman’s support. MacKay says it was Newman's decision to let Bloomberg run as an Independent in 2001.

As a Republican, Bloomberg benefited from a second ballot line because it made some Democrats more comfortable voting for him.

MacKay says Bloomberg's name first surfaced when a prominent Republican called him.

“He said, "There's a billionaire. He's looking to run for office. He's a Democrat and he’s switching into the Republican Party,’” says MacKay.

MacKay says he reached out to the party's Manhattan chapter and spoke to its chairwoman, Cathy Stewart.

“She said, "You’ve got to talk to Fred about this.’ And I did and I discussed it,” says MacKay. “He knew a little something about Bloomberg. Fred’s very in touch with what’s going on out there. I guess he understood.

MacKay says Newman and Bloomberg met, and an alliance was formed. “I thought it was a good idea to support Bloomberg. Why? Because I thought he was more independent with relatively traditional liberal values, but without having all the kinds of connections to the kind of Democratic Party machine and the clubhouse structure, which I thought would be a plus,” says Newman. “I thought he was an intelligent guy who knew how to manage. I thought he’d make a good mayor.”

The Independence Party can claim credit for Bloomberg's victory. It delivered 59,000 votes, more than his winning margin.

It appears the relationship has paid off for Newman, with high level City Hall meetings, Bloomberg's push for non-partisan elections, and tax-free bonds for his charity, the All Stars Project. Bloomberg has donated tens of thousands of dollars to All Stars.

The mayor's office claims these were not special favors, but critics say Bloomberg's actions have given Newman and his associate's credibility they don't deserve.

“I would warn anyone that would consider being involved in an organization somehow connected to Fred Newman to really investigate the history of the group,” says Rick Ross, a cult expert.

Over the course of this week, NY1 will do just that. We'll take a closer look at Fred Newman, and you'll hear from him in a rare interview.

We also spoke to more than three dozen people with knowledge of Newman and his groups. You'll hear why they say this behind the scenes organizer is the force behind a massive empire that runs largely on private donations.

- Rita Nissan

"Psychopolitics": Inside The Independence Party Of Fred Newman, Part Two

2011-08-09T16:41:00.001-07:00

By Rita Nissan
NY1 News, November 1, 2005

On Monday, NY1 introduced you to the Independence Party's Fred Newman, a major player in city politics. In part two of her special series, "Psychopolitics," NY1’s Rita Nissan takes a look at Newman's colorful past.

Fred Newman may be the most powerful political leader you never heard of. His followers have been dubbed "Newmanites" and they liken him to Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

“I met Dr. Newman 30 years ago. One of the things we did, not just the therapy, [but] one of the things I recognized was that I knew he had a vision for the African-American community and he could help us do something besides feel sorry for ourselves,” says Lorraine Stevens, a Newman supporter.

Critics call him to a cult leader.

“He is the man, the guru,” says Nanette Harris, a former Social Therapy patient. “Everybody aspires to be like Fred or to have Fred's approval. It's ridiculous.”

Born and raised in the South Bronx, Fred Newman received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford in 1963. But psychology and politics became his passion.

In the early 70's Newman developed a small group of followers, and they lived in a communal apartment on the Upper West Side. Members took part in the group therapy Newman created, Social Therapy. They also did political work. Newman called it, "A Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization."

“I now often refer myself to a post-modern Marxist because I think Marx is very antiquated,” says Newman.

His group morphed into the International Workers Party, the IWP. Former members say the IWP did, and still does, serve as the backbone of Newman's causes.

They say members live together and are expected to quit their jobs, turn over their assets to Newman and raise money for him on the street, while undergoing his therapy.

By the late '70s, former members say the IWP went underground and Newman started operating several front groups, including the New Alliance Party. Critics called the party a fringe group, with shady politics, operated by a cult-like core.

“It slowly dawned on me that I had been part of a cult,” says M. Ortiz, who was a loyal follower from 1985 to 1990.

Ortiz says she went to Social Therapy to treat her anxiety and depression. “Therapy at the institute isn't just therapy,” she says.

Ortiz says she was recruited to work for the New Alliance Party during her weekly sessions. She was told society was to blame for her emotional problems and her recovery would be helped by doing political work for Newman.

Not long into her involvement, Ortiz says she was invited to join the IWP, which also became known as the "inner core" and the "tendency."

“I found myself a member of an underground, Leninist, Marxist tendency whose ambition was to overthrow [or] take over the U.S. government through fair elections and third party elections,” she says.

To join, Ortiz says she filled out a form stating her income and assets, and that she had to turn those assets over to the IWP. She says she had to contribute money to fund Newman's various causes, including the 1988 presidential campaign of his protege, Lenora Fulani.

Ortiz says she and her fellow comrades also had to attend secret meetings at different places in the city, to avoid being spotted by the FBI. In 1988, the FBI called members of the New Alliance Party "armed and dangerous."

“As Marxist-Leninist cadre, we would have secret bi-weekly meetings with a cell leader in small groups of between four and six people,” says Ortiz. “We were given orders to read, information like, ÎSo and so has joined the tendency, so and so has left the tendency.’ We would also give at those meetings bi-weekly dues, which ranged anywhere from 10-50 percent of your income.”

Ortiz says she devoted her life to the organization. She says she even agreed to live with other so-called cadres. Ortiz says they took turns caring for each other's children so they could devote more time to the revolution.

But slowly, she says she realized she was in a cult. Ortiz says the final straw came when she was told to give up her daughter.

“It was strongly suggested that I consider putting my daughter up for foster care because she was, "getting in the way of my work as a revolutionary.’ And that was it,” she says.

After five years of what she describes as slave labor, and thousands of dollars in debt, Ortiz said goodbye to Fred Newman in 1990.

Now, at age 70, Newman is frail and is said to be suffering from diabetes. He dismisses the claim that he leads a cult.

“I don't think there are such things as cults,” he says. “I think there are human beings who decide to come together in various ways and sometimes the ways in which they come together turn out to be pretty destructive — witness Jonestown - and sometimes they come together in ways that are relatively innocuous, and sometimes they come together in ways that turn out to be quite positive.”

Newman says he's a positive force. “Our therapeutic work has brought more families together than any kind of therapy that I know of,” he says.

Ortiz has gone to great lengths to document her story. She launched a website, www.exiwp.org, that's become a sanctuary for former IWP members.

“I want to give people the chance to find out as much about them, their entire history,” she says. “They have a tendency to hide information, to deny information, to shred information, and to just lie. I don't want to give them that chance anymore.”

Ortiz says she's outraged that 15 years since she parted ways, Newman is still practicing Social Therapy and his political power has grown.

Newman now runs the Independence Party in Manhattan and largely controls the other four boroughs. He also has considerable influence over the state party.

His followers dominate some upstate counties. That has given Newman and his allies access to politicians like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor George Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Senator Charles Schumer. They have all sought the Independence Party's endorsement.

- Rita Nissan

"Psychopolitics": Inside The Independence Party Of Fred Newman, Part Three

2011-08-09T16:24:00.001-07:00

By Rita Nissan
NY1 News, November 2, 2005

Fred Newman, the leader of the Manhattan Independence Party, wants to have a say in how your children are educated. But his views on sex and marriage may leave some parents wary. NY1’s Rita Nissan has more in part three of her special series, "Psychopolitics."

Fred Newman lives by his own rules. He says monogamy and marriage aren’t for him.
“I don't think it's any of the state's business who my dearest loves are and how I relate to another human being and give to them and receive from them,” he says.

Newman calls them his dearest loves, the women he lives with in his West Village
townhouse. He admits some of the women initially came to him for psychological help.

Newman treats patients in Social Therapy, his self-created field of psychology.

“Some of them were in therapy, yeah,” he says.

But mainstream psychologists say it's unethical for therapists to have sex with their patients because it violates personal boundaries and trust.

Newman is not held to any ethical codes. As a psychotherapist, he doesn’t need a license to practice in New York State, although the laws have changed and he’ll need one by the end of the year.

“I think that people’s sexual relationships should be something very personal between the people who are engaging in it, and I think if people love each other, care for each other, are attracted to each other and decide together that they want to have sex, they should,” he says. “[Does it matter that it's a patient and a therapist?] I think sexual relationships are between human beings, not human beings under certain descriptions or in certain categories. I believe that people should fall in love as they so desire, and if they want to include in that sexuality, they should include that.”

Newman controls several organizations that appear to be intertwined: Social Therapy clinics, the Manhattan Independence Party, and his youth charity the All Stars Project. All Stars introduces children and teens to Newman’s ideas.

At All Stars headquarters, Newman writes and directs plays at the Castillo Theatre. His books are everywhere, and volunteers have been invited to social therapy related events.

“It’s cool,” says Loretta Martin.

NY1 met Martin at a campaign rally for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She works for Newman’s Independence Party and volunteers for All Stars.

“We hear it all over the place, Social Therapy,” Martin says.

A 2003 evaluation of All Stars shows some high school students read his book, "Let's
Develop." In it, Newman explains what he calls "friendosexuality." He writes that sex is best when "performed" the same way children play, with friends as equals.

Former patients say they were advised to have sex with their friends, without forming
emotional bonds. Mainstream psychologists say that leads to unhealthy relationships.

Here's how former patient M. Ortiz describes what happened when she went to Newman
for help with a relationship: “Fred Newman in therapy suggested that maybe I should go have a relationship with someone else and bring it back to the therapy group and see if there were any problems and then we could discuss it. That was his advice to me regarding a personal relationship. He said I should go sleep around.”

Ortiz says Newman’s views on sex were well known among his followers.

“It was a joke in the media and even in the community that Fred has four wives, Gabrielle [Kurlander], Hazel - the late Hazel Daren, who was his first cult relationship - and two other wives, Gail Elberg and Deborah Green,” she says.

Some of those women now have plush jobs with All Stars.

Gabrielle Kurlander earns $200,000 a year as its president. In the 1980’s she was a therapy patient. Newman fell in love with her. He once wrote, "Gabrielle Kurlander, my dearest love, made my life."

Gail Elberg is another All Stars official that Newman lives with. Elberg oversees the volunteer program. She’s been with Newman for more than 30 years.

Newman doesn't call these women his wives. He doesn’t think marriage is a good thing.

“I don't consider any woman my wife. I think that's a highly troublesome and complex
relationship,” he says. “I no longer participate in it. I have some very dear friends of mine, women friends of mine, who I relate to in all kinds of ways. But I don’t collect wives.”

All of this doesn’t sit well with the people who have spent decades tracking Newman. Critics say his unorthodox views make it questionable whether he should work with children, and they say Mayor Bloomberg should be held accountable for helping All Stars grow.

Since he took office, All Stars has moved into a massive new headquarters thanks to tax free bonds from the city, and its been awarded a three-year contract to operate after-school programs. But that contract is on hold because of various investigations.

We have spoken to some All Stars participants who say it's a wonderful program that gives underprivileged children and teens a place to go. They praise Fred Newman and the work that he is doing.

Independence Party chief says guru Newman OK’d Bloomberg endorsement (2005)

2011-08-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

By Tom Robbins
Village Voice, September 27, 2005

Speaking out: Independence Party chairman Frank MacKay

In the six years that Frank MacKay has been chairman of the state’s Independence Party the influential holder of Row C on New York’s ballot he says he never had a substantive conversation with Lenora Fulani, the party’s most famous and controversial member.

“It’s never been more than ‘Hi’ and ‘Goodbye,’ “ MacKay told the Voice.

On the other hand, MacKay said that he spent many hours in discussion about tactics and party activities with Fred Newman, the guru style figure hailed by Fulani and others as the inspiration for their various enterprises, including therapy clinics and the All Stars Project, a city subsidized nonprofit organization with a multimillion dollar budget.

MacKay said that when he had important party business to discuss including the initial recommendation that the party’s city chapter endorse Michael Bloomberg for mayor he was told to talk to Newman, and Newman alone. He said that he was often summoned to meetings at Newman’s Greenwich Village townhouse, attended by a coterie of longtime followers.

“There would be this little circle grouped around Newman, hanging on his every word,” MacKay said. The group included Cathy Stewart, the chairwoman of the New York County Independence Party; attorneys Harry Kresky and Gary Sinawski; political consultant Jackie Salit; All Stars president Gabrielle Kurlander; and Fulani. MacKay said that he attended some 20 such sessions, and that Newman did most of the talking.

“The meetings would go on for two hours, and the only two talking are me and Newman,” MacKay said. “The others only chimed in to agree with Fred.”

Newman, 70, has long been a political fringe player, allied at different times with Lyndon LaRouche, Louis Farrakhan, and Pat Buchanan. But he has largely kept in the background, allowing Fulani (whom he once called his “greatest accomplishment”) to take the lead. A playwright, Newman also claims authorship of what he describes as “a new science of human development” called “social therapy.” But therapists using Newman’s teachings have been accused of recruiting patients to their political efforts.

“He’s like a Svengali,” MacKay said. “He is the one and only decision maker.”

MacKay, a former nightclub owner from Suffolk County, was originally elected state party chairman in 2000 with the support of Newman’s group. But MacKay ended the alliance this month when he and upstate party officials concluded that Fulani’s refusal to disavow past anti Semitic statements, and her continued self identification as the party’s leader, were hurting the organization.

Why had he worked so long with Newman’s group? “The party is about building coalitions,” he said. “They seemed cultlike, but not on a Jonestown type level. You could say we used each other.”

The break came September 18 at a crowded meeting near Albany where state committee members voted overwhelmingly to remove Fulani and five allies, including Stewart, Kresky, and Sinawski, from their executive panel. Fulani later dismissed the vote, saying it wouldn’t affect her status as a leader in the “Black community.” She also noted that her group still holds the reins of the party’s autonomous city chapter, which boasts Bloomberg as its mayoral candidate in November. “God bless the mayor,” Fulani said during the debate, “he voiced his disagreement with me, and then kept right on going.”

Indeed, that same day Bloomberg refused to comment on Fulani’s removal, saying he didn’t want to get involved in another party’s affairs. But he had good reason to avoid offending her. The 59,000 votes he received on the Independence line in 2001 was almost double his narrow margin of victory over Democrat Mark Green. This year, Bloomberg originally ducked comment on Fulani’s anti Semitic statements, saying he hadn’t heard them. He later called her views “despicable,” but still agreed to take the party’s nomination in June. So far in this election, he has pumped $270,000 into the party’s city committees.

But when Bloomberg’s name originally surfaced as a potential Independence Party candidate in late 2000, MacKay said he was told to discuss it first with Newman.

MacKay said that in December that year he received a call from “a major Republican leader” whom he declined to name on the record asking about the party’s intentions for the 2001 mayoral election. “He said, ‘What are your crazies down in New York doing next year in the mayoral race?’ “ said MacKay.

The GOP figure went on to say that he had “a bona fide billionaire” who was switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party, MacKay said. The would be candidate “is a long shot, but his only chance is with a second line,” MacKay said he was told.

MacKay, who has no role in the Independence Party’s city committees, said he quickly called Stewart, the city chairwoman. But when he started to tell her the news, Stewart cut him off.

“She said she couldn’t talk to me about it, that I had to talk to Fred. She said someone would reach out to me.” A few minutes later, MacKay said he got a call from Newman’s personal assistant, who put Newman on the phone.

“I asked Fred what their plans were for the race. He said, ‘We are going to see if [Reverend Al] Sharpton grows a pair of balls and starts standing up for himself against the Democrats.’ Otherwise, Newman said, ‘we’re going to run Fulani.’ “ MacKay said Newman told him he wanted to take advantage of matching funds available under the city’s public campaign finance law. “He said, ‘We can raise $200,000 and make $1 million,’ “ according to MacKay.

When MacKay raised Bloomberg’s name, Newman responded immediately. “He knew all about him. He said, ‘We’re very interested.’ So I put them in touch. Obviously, they made beautiful music together,” said MacKay.

Bill Cunningham, a Bloomberg campaign adviser, said several state Republicans originally recommended that Bloomberg should seek the Independence Party nod for the 2001 race, among them state senate majority leader Joe Bruno. “I can’t say Bruno was the first, but many times he has talked about them as a good ally to have in politics,” Cunningham said.

Newman was present both times that Bloomberg met with Independence Party leaders to seek their endorsement, he said, adding that Stewart and Salit appeared to be the “political operatives” for the group.

Cunningham defended Bloomberg’s decision to take the party’s endorsement. “There are some 20 to 30 Democrats who have done so, including Schumer and Spitzer,” he said.

But most Democrats backed away from the party after Fulani, in an appearance on NY1 in April, defended past statements she’d made that Jews “had to sell their soul to acquire Israel,” and “function as mass murderers of people of color.”

“What is anti Semitic about that?” Fulani told host Dominick Carter.

Two days before Fulani’s remarks, Bloomberg spoke at a benefit dinner that Fulani and Newman held at Lincoln Center for the All Stars Project. There, MacKay said Stewart excitedly told him that the event had raised $1 million, and that Fulani had been invited onto the NY1 show.

MacKay said that when he heard about Fulani’s comments and the ensuing media controversy, he sent a critical statement to members. He didn’t make a bigger commotion at the time, he said, because he “didn’t want to interfere with the Bloomberg nomination.”

He called Stewart, however, and insisted on a meeting with Newman. “When I got there, all of them, Salit, Kresky, Sinawski, were laughing. Newman said, ‘Oh, here’s our chairman, you’re just in time. We’ve been strategizing about how to use this wonderful publicity we’re getting.’ “

MacKay said he responded angrily. “I said, ‘You are the only ones laughing. This is serious. This is a disaster.’ “ MacKay said Newman then asked to meet with him alone. “He told me, ‘We could have done better on this.’ “

Despite the admission, MacKay said he believed Newman was delighted with the uproar. “He knows how to create controversy. He believes any press is good press, and that Fulani can only get press if it looks like she has power.”

A spokeswoman for the city’s Independence Party, Sara Lyons, refused comment on behalf of its leaders. “We’re not interested in being interviewed by you,” said Lyons, who heads the party’s Staten Island chapter. “You’re not doing serious journalism.”

Bloomberg's Therapist (2005)

2011-08-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

By Tom Robbins
The Village Voice, June 21, 2005

Mayor Mike's independence party friends can put him on the couch

There was a post-stadium dip in the polls for Michael Bloomberg last week. But the Republican mayor still has a potential job-saving ace in the hole, the same one he had in 2001: a jowly, white-bearded fellow named Fred Newman.

Fred who? That would be Dr. Fred Newman, of course, renowned founder of Social Therapy, the psychological practice dedicated to "a new science of human development," as he modestly proclaims it. Still lost? Well, you must have heard of Fred Newman, author of half a dozen books, and considered by many (OK, by many of his followers) to be the philosophical heir to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lev Vygotsky (you know, Vygotsky, the great Soviet constructivist psychologist).

Utterly lost? What about Fred Newman the well-known playwright, whose works include Lenin's Breakdown, Risky Revolutionary, and the hilarious All My Cadre, not to mention The Therapy Plays: Newman's Postmodern Follies? That one just finished a successful month-long run at the Castillo Theatre (founded by Newman), which is partners with the All Stars Project (co-founded by Newman), which is the nonprofit youth performance organization housed in a glittering new West 42nd Street headquarters purchased and built with $8.35 million in tax-free bonds provided by the administration of, yes, Michael Bloomberg.

Which brings us to that other important hat worn by Dr. Newman, that of state committee member of the Independence Party, the political group that holds Row C on the ballot and which provided Bloomberg 59,000 votes and his 2001 margin of victory. This month, the party announced it would once again be proud to carry the mayor's name for re-election.

Lenora Fulani, whose past anti-Semitic comments got her in hot water this spring, gets most of the ink and the airtime where the Independence Party is concerned. But she is a longtime and loyal disciple of Fred Newman.

"She is one of my life's proudest accomplishments," Newman told an interviewer a few years ago. "This man is someone I love dearly," Fulani said in turn of her mentor.

After years spent on the political fringes, the two orchestrated a takeover of the Independence Party in the mid 1990s. They promptly found themselves courted by people like Bloomberg, George Pataki, and Charles Schumer in search of a second ballot line.

The party announced its latest Bloomberg endorsement at a reception held on June 5 at City Hall restaurant on Duane Street, attended by some 150 party faithful and a throng of media. Newman, 69, briefly addressed the troops, but his logic and sentence structure are sometimes hard to follow, and the press kept its focus on Fulani, asking her one more time if she regretted saying a few years back that Jews "function as mass murderers of people of color."

Fulani's comments were actually a slightly softer echo of Newman's own words, uttered in 1985, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which has long watchdogged his efforts: "The Jew, the dirty Jew . . . ," Newman said then, "a self-righteous dehumanizer and murderer of people of color."

Bloomberg has denounced Fulani's words as "despicable." But he's otherwise stuck by Fulani and Newman, appearing at their fundraising events and donating $250,000 of his own money last year to the Independence Party. The mayor has also had an open-door policy for Fulani et al. at City Hall, and the All Stars Project is now seeking a city contract to provide after-school care ("Fulani's City Hall Push," Voice, June 8).

The Anti-Defamation League thinks that's a bad idea, as do many others who have witnessed Newman's theories at work. They say that while his neo-Marxist philosophizing and zany plays appear comical from the outside, there's very little amusing about his rigid orthodoxy when viewed up close, with the occasional anti-Semitic outburst being only part of the problem.

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One of those who has recently made her complaints public is a Los Angeles-based theatrical producer named Molly Hardy, who was hired last year by a neighborhood clinic in L.A. run by a longtime Newman associate. Hardy thought she was being hired to produce neighborhood theater but soon discovered that her job was to produce youth talent shows on the West Coast like those currently promoted by Newman and Fulani's city-subsidized All Stars Project.

The talent shows date back to the early 1980s, when Newman's political organization, then called the International Workers Party, decided that providing venues for kids to sing and dance could aid its other organizing. The shows are not aimed at developing talent so much as getting kids to "perform"—an all-important buzzword in Newman's theories.

Last June, Hardy was flown to New York to receive training at the All Stars Project about how to put together a talent show. "It was more like controlling me than training me," said Hardy.

She received a 12-page "Licensing and Policy Manual." It spells out, in minute detail, how All Stars talent shows must be conducted. Each licensee must undergo two to three years of training by national All Stars staff, including trips to the New York headquarters. It also lists the minimum number of seats for each show (500), number of volunteers (45-50), clipboards (75), rubber gloves (two boxes), and tubes of Super Glue (two), along with a couple dozen other must-have items.

More troubling to Hardy were the provisions listed under "All Stars Talent Show Network Tenets" that said all participants and audience members were required to pay admission fees. That was Newman's Social Therapy peeping through—you gotta pay for what you want. Hardy was sent to observe a talent show on June 26, 2004, at Walton High School in the Bronx, where she saw the rules put into practice. There, a mother with three young girls in tow arrived at the school after taking the subway from their home in Queens, eager to participate. The All Stars organizers told the mother that she had to pay $22—a $5 fee for each of her daughters, and $7 for her to sit in the audience. "The mother didn't have the money, and they wouldn't let her in," Hardy told the Voice. She said she watched as an All Stars representative approached the woman and said, "What did you hear the person on the phone tell you to do?"

The mother answered that she heard the figure $5, but that she thought that was the price for the whole family. According to Hardy, the All Stars representative, a white woman with a lengthy association with Newman, responded, "You need to listen so you don't perform like a poor, uneducated black woman."

"The woman got real mad," Hardy said. "She said, 'I am going to report you.' The kids were crying. I turned to two of the volunteers with me and said, 'I could never do that.' One of the volunteers said, 'I know. It is really hard at first. You get used to it.' "

What made the scene more unreal, Hardy said, was that only 11 kids showed up for the show. "They had 50 volunteers, all with these red vests on, and only 11 kids in a theater that holds 500."

Back in Los Angeles, Hardy filed complaints with state officials and the FBI, charging that the clinic that employed her had improperly funneled money it received from the government to All Stars. She also relayed her criticisms to the office of New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer. The office, which said it had reviewed past complaints about All Stars without finding violations, said it had yet to receive Hardy's information.

All Stars officials refused to discuss Hardy's allegations or any other matters. "We'll have no comment for your story," a spokesman for the group said late Friday. He gave his name as Bill O'Reilly. Wait a minute, he was asked, is that your real name? "Honest. We just don't talk to The Village Voice," he said.

Unsafe On Any Ballot (2004)

2011-08-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

By Christopher Hitchens
Vanity Fair, May 2004

Democrats are furious that Ralph Nader, whose last presidential bid helped put George W. Bush in office, is running again. Equally dismaying, the author finds, is Nader’s backing from a crackpot group with ties to Pat Buchanan, Lyndon LaRouche, and Louis Farrakhan

For me, it was all over as soon as it began. The day after he announced himself as a candidate for president on Meet the Press, Ralph Nader held a press conference at which he said, “I think this may be the only candidacy in our memory that is opposed overwhelmingly by people who agree with us on the issues.”

Hold it right there, Ralph. First, don’t you realize that politicians who start to refer to themselves in the plural, as in the royal “we,” are often manifesting an alarming symptom? (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher started to employ this distressing locution shortly before the members of her own Cabinet began to stir nervously and finally decided to call for the men in white coats.) Second, if by “we” and “us” you really meant to say yourself and your allies in this enterprise, then you should not complain if it’s pointed out who those allies actually turn out to be. Third, by stating that your campaign is “opposed overwhelmingly by people who agree with us on the issues,” do you mean to imply the corollary, which is that you will appeal to those who don’t agree with you on the issues?

Nader’s answer to that third question, astonishingly enough, does appear to be in the affirmative, since he had told Tim Russert just the day before that he expected to reap votes from “conservatives who are furious with Bush over the deficit,” as well as “liberal Republicans who see their party taken away from them.” The job of reconciling these opposed factions of the G.O.P will be hard enough for Bush himself. But the idea that either group would rally to a Nader banner, this year or any other, is a non sequitur of hallucinatory proportions.

The psychedelic effect is only intensified when one examines the forces that might allow Nader to speak in the plural. A short while before announcing his candidacy, he had been the featured attraction at a conference of third-party “independents” in Bedford, New Hampshire. The word “independent” can conceal more than it reveals, as anyone with any savvy in American “alternative” politics can tell you, but in this case it only barely masked the influence of Fred Newman, Lenora Fulani, and the former New Alliance Party (NAP), whose latest front organized the New Hampshire hootenanny.

Not to mince words, the Newman-Fulani group is a fascistic zombie cult outfit, based on the eternal principle that it is a finer and nobler thing for the members to transfer their liquid assets to the leadership. It’s where you would turn when you had exhausted all the possibilities of a better life with Lyndon LaRouche, or Jim Jones, or any of the other alliterative crackpot or quasi-redemptive formations (K.K.K., A.A.…).

The Newman-Fulani faction is protean and sinister in one way, and pathetically obvious and transparent in another. In New York City, for example, it sometimes calls itself the Independence Party, which also controlled the rump and letterhead of the Reform Party—Ross Perot’s gift to American pluralism. Indeed, Lenora Fulani, a black woman who, like her mentor Fred Newman, professes to be a shrink of some sort, was a prominent co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party candidacy in 2000. That must have made a soothing change from being a Louis Farrakhan fan in her two presidential election bids.

“Try anything once” would seem to be the motto here. And now she’s endorsing Ralph Nader. “I think it’s pretty cool,” she breathes. “I think Nader is a distinguished independent and he needs to be supported.” A fabulous detail about Fulani, incidentally, is the hold that she seems to exert on the cast of The Sopranos. Dominic Chianese, who plays Uncle Junior, is a regular at the All Stars Project, co-founded by Fulani and Newman, which puts on Newman’s unwatchable dramas, and has taken along other members of the team, including James Gandolfini, for photo ops. Analyze that, if you dare.

Am I asserting guilt by association here? After all, a candidate needn’t necessarily be judged by his disciples. And at “third party” events in previous campaigns there was certainly a fair sprinkling of people with propeller beanies, the fillings in their teeth wired for instant Martian dial up access. (You get these people at mainstream gatherings, also; be in no doubt of it.) No, the difference in this case is that the Newman-Fulani cult more or less is the Nader campaign. Through its network of shell organizations and front groups, and given its batteries of living dead petition drive robot artists, it has arrived at the point where it can at least guarantee ballot access in many, many states. All you have to do is agree to run on its ballot line.

Even Michael Bloomberg, princeling of opportunists, was willing to take out this Newman-Fulani insurance in his campaign for mayor. This, you may say, is partly the fault of restrictive ballot access laws, riveted into place by the Democratic-Republican duopoly in many jurisdictions—an offense to the spirit and letter of the United States Constitution.

But Nader kept people guessing, in a rather irritating way, about whether he would run at all or whether he might deign again to accept the Green Party nomination (which he has suddenly decided he won’t anymore). So, having come down from his Sinai, he finds it’s the loonies or nothing. Is this politics? And if it is, is it clean politics? Does it “empower” the average voter, who is so often taken for a ride by the party machines, or does it empower clusters of well financed, marginal nut bags with whom, behind closed doors, the party machines can and do frequently make deals?

Nothing is more difficult to write than a “more in sorrow than in anger” letter. Sentimentality swirls around your feet like a swamp, tempting you to become even more moist and runny yourself. But if this were an open letter to Ralph Nader, it would begin by being genuinely soft.

We don’t have enough heroes. (We have replaced them with “role models” and don’t even know what we have lost.) We do not have many candidates of whom it could be said that, if they were caught on video seeming to accept a bribe or kickback, we would automatically assume that the video had been faked. Washington, as a community, and Washington, as a federal city, would be a very much worse place without Ralph Nader.

He stood up against the rotten bureaucracy and mayoralty of the town itself, while unsettling the folks who live on Capitol Hill. Some of the story is known by everyone, including people who have never heard Nader’s name, the exploding car that the manufacturers lied about; the lead in the water; the non-regulation of the meat and mining industries.

It really wouldn’t be too much to say that there are many people now living who would be dead without Ralph. It certainly wouldn’t be too much to say that successive generations of reforming lawyers and legislators got their start and their continuing encouragement from him.

In writing, about him, therefore, one need not declare an interest. “Sea-green incorruptible” was. Carlyle’s sardonic description of Robespierre, but it recurs to my mind as an almost frighteningly apt phrase, in this case.

Why frightening? Well, I first met Nader 22 years ago, when he took me to lunch on my arrival as a columnist in Washington. We had what I thought was a great time, and he later telephoned to say that he was worried, about my smoking. He would, he said with perfect gravity, pay me the oddly exact figure of four and a half thousand dollars, and cover any therapy bills I might incur, if I would quit the habit and thus save myself for the nation (or The Nation, as he may possibly have thought of it).

On every occasion that we have met since, he has renewed this offer, adjusted for inflation and other variables. I once really needed the money, and considered calling him up and claiming to have sworn off, before realizing that the very idea of exploiting his innocence and concern was profane. Of course, there is something paternalistic in such a gesture (if he could be the father I never had, I could be among the many, many children that he never had). Indeed, his whole crusade for greater “safety” and regulation could be described as paternal in character.

And a slight secret about Ralph Nader is the extent of his conservatism. The last time I saw him up close, he was the guest at Grover Norquist’s now famous “Wednesday Morning” gathering, where Washington’s disparate conservative groups meet—by invitation only, and off the record—under one ceiling. He gave them a sincere talking-to, pointing out that their favorite system—free market capitalism—was undermining their professedly favorite values. I remember particularly how he listed the businessmen who make money by piping cable porn into hotel rooms. (He rolled this out again on Meet the Press.)

Nader was the only serious candidate in the last presidential election who had favored the impeachment, on moral and ethical grounds, of Bill Clinton. When asked about his stand on gay and transgender rights and all that, he responds gruffly that he isn’t much interested in “gonadal politics.”

He has often made a united front with conservatives like Norquist, and even more right-wing individuals like Paul Weyrich, on matters such as term limits and congressional pay raises. When I asked Grover about Ralph’s prospects of attracting Republicans, incidentally, he told me that he thought a Nader campaign just might appeal to some of the former Buchanan wing—anti-trade and anti-interventionist (not to forget anti-immigrant). So Nader and Buchanan might as well run for each other’s votes, or skip all that and just take in each other’s washing.

Nader’s puritanism and austerity—he lives in a rooming house with a shared pay phone in the hall and doesn’t own a car—have been his shield since 1966, when the clever people at General Motors admitted to putting private dicks on their most scathing critic.

Nader was followed, and his friends were questioned, on the assumption that an unmarried guy of Lebanese parentage must be up to something. But no: no drinks and no drugs and no carnality and no terrorism. Nader testified, a congressional subcommittee saw Bobby Kennedy trashing G.M.’s president, and an all-American star was born, one who rejected the affluent part of the American Dream.

Ralph could have gone on being an uneasy conscience for Washington, as he was all through the Nixon and Carter and Reagan years (after all, you don’t need to campaign for office to do that), but he seems finally to have found a temptation he cannot resist.

By running for president in 2000 and accidentally changing history, he has at last imbibed a draft of something addictive. Someone should tell him that the next bender will bring diminishing returns. In 2000, no matter how much he claimed to be above such distinctions, Nader clearly ran from the left. He also repudiated one of the center left’s favorite mantras, concerning the “lesser evil,” scornfully pointing out that this meant giving in to evil without a fight.

In most of his speeches he maintained that he didn’t care which of the two main candidates won, because it made no difference. But when pressed, he would sometimes try to have this both ways, saying that his candidacy energized liberal Democrats and even helped get out their vote. His less conspicuously intellectual supporters, such as Michael Moore, assured the faithful crowds that Bush couldn’t get elected anyway, so there was no need to worry.

At that point, a certain intellectual corruption crept in. You must accept the logical and probable consequences of what you propose. Nader could not quite be honest and admit that, given the national arithmetic, he was very much more likely to help Bush than Gore. There are 10 toss-up states, with 106 electoral votes among them (and everybody now knows about the electoral college). They are Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, New Mexico, and Wisconsin.

Once you understand the arithmetic, you cannot really claim that any consequences are unintended. For example, we have it on Gore’s own word that if he had been elected, Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

Nader is currently the only recognizable candidate who wants the United States to withdraw from Iraq. This discrepancy is not exactly a detail. It is, in fact, too big a contradiction to be explained away. But could it explain why Nader this time seems to be running from the right? He is spouting the rhetoric of social and fiscal conservatism, and pitching for allegedly disillusioned Republicans who would have nothing to be disillusioned about if he hadn’t helped squeak their man past the post in the first place.

The NAP could also probably be described as a right-wing force even if, as befitted a party run by a couple of shrinks, it suffered from chronic schizophrenia. It began as a Maoist splinter group and mutated through LaRoucheism to Buchananism. Guru Fred Newman characterizes Jews as “storm troopers,” and Fulani calls them “mass murderers of people of color,” positions which have a nice, demented ring to them.

Nader seems, to his credit, a touch sensitive on the point. When Doug Ireland, one of the country’s toughest and brightest radical columnists (and a two-time Nader endorser), called attention to the unholy alliance he got a call from Ralph, who shouted at him for being “a McCarthyite bully” and repeatedly asked, about Newman, “Has he committed any crime?”

I had better luck when Ralph called me back late one night and nearly persuaded me to argue against myself. It’s a pleasure to debate with him. But he told me, when I asked about the NAP, that “I never saw Fulani at the meeting,” which I suppose could be technically true as long as he was looking away. (She was a prominent member of the platform committee.)

He maintained that the Newmanites were no different, in principle, than, say, the Mountain Party in West Virginia: “They’re recognized as ‘on the ballot’ by the Federal Election Commission, so you can ‘jump on.’” He said that the Green Party wasn’t going to decide until its June convention, and that it still might vote not to campaign in swing states, so there was no purpose in delaying.

In the very rational and seductive tone of voice that he can bring to bear, Ralph insisted that there is no bad time at which to challenge the gerrymandering of one party districts, the fixing and front loading of primaries, the rigging of party conventions, and the exclusion of third-party candidates from the “presidential debates.” The liberal intellectuals who take these deformities for granted and then turn on him are, as he put it, “incarnate autocrats.”

And whose fault is Gore’s defeat? “He slipped on 18 banana peels, of which I was only one. Anyway, he won the election, didn’t he?” This is quite funny and also quite shrewd, as regards Democratic self pity, but it shows again that tendency to have everything both ways. “I’m going to take more votes from Bush this time—no doubt about it.” (By the way, at least one exit poll suggests that this was true in 2000, if only in New Hampshire.)

But on the other hand, and only moments later, he says, “I’ll show Kerry how to take Bush down; we’ll be a free consulting firm for the Democrats; be our guest—take our issues.”

Since one of the main “issues” is the pressing need to demolish the Democratic Party, my head began to swim a little, and I told him as much.

He made a friendly inquiry, renewing his smoke-ending offer. We chatted about a heroic Israeli dissident we had both known. He recommended a good comrade of his who was deeply involved in the rebuilding of Afghanistan. There are not enough people like Nader running for office, even at the local level, let alone the national one. I hung up with a truly bad case of the blues.

When Nader says “corporate” he really means corporate, and not just Halliburton. When he says that politics should not be a “zero-sum” game, he articulates a truth. When he says that Americans ought to be able to vote “No,” rather than being compelled to say “Yes,” he asserts something morally important.

But when he proposes to help elect a corporate Democrat by outbidding a conservative Republican, he is building a bridge from the middle of the river, and ends up not by combating the many absurdities of our electoral system but rather by illustrating them.

Social Therapy at APA: Not Very Sociable! (2003)

2011-08-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

By Cathleen A. Mann, Ph.D., 2003

I attended the APA (American Psychological Association) annual conference recently in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The convention had its share of problems before it even convened the week of August 6, 2003. One item of interest to me was the willingness of the APA Board to allow Dr. Lois Holzman and her various underlings to speak 4 times this year at the convention. Last year in Chicago, the APA only allowed Dr. Holzman and crew to speak once.
a
Dr. Holzman is affiliated with Fred Newman, and inhabits various incarnations, such as Social Therapy, All Stars Project, Inc., East Side Institute for Social Therapy (in New York City), Castillo Cultural Project, New Alliance Party, and sometimes, just plain International Workers Party (IWP). Many past members, including professional counselors/therapists and former patients, report abuses, deceit, and manipulation at the hands of Social Therapy and its various offshoots. There have been allegations of psychotherapeutic manipulation, lack of ethical integrity, boundary violations from professionals to students to staff to clients, financial improprieties, and various other problematic behaviors.

Many ex-members of Social Therapy say they've been subject to a mind control cult operating under the guise of a legitimate psychological movement. Individuals formerly involved with Social Therapy emphatically claim that they were deceived into a pseudo-postmodernistic social influence political movement. One useful model to assist in understanding how a destructive cult operates is Hassan’s BITE model (Hassan, 1988, 1998). Using social psychological principles, a destructive cult deliberately and deceitfully wrestles control of an individual’s behavior (B), information (I), thought (T), and emotions (E) through subtle processes (see http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/articles/BITE.htm). Many other psychologists have also discussed the cult phenomena, including Drs. Margaret Singer, Phil Zimbardo, Stephen Kent, Steve Dubrow, and Michael Langone, just to name a few.

When word got around to concerned individuals that the APA had rewarded Social Therapy and Dr. Lois Holzman with four separate presentations this year at the APA conference, a small email campaign was launched with complaints about Social Therapy’s presence at the APA, and their seemingly transparent pretensions to science.

When word reached Dr. L. Michael Honaker, COO/Deputy CEO of the American Psychological Association that all was not bliss with Social Therapy’s presence at the convention, he responded:

“Thank you for your recent email concerning the participation of Drs. Lois Holzman and Fred Newman in our upcoming conference in Toronto. The APA Convention is a large 4-day meeting with over 4,000 presenters. It provides a forum for a wide variety of speakers and presentations. Dr. Holzman will participate in four convention sessions. She was invited to participate in those sessions after a review of her program proposals by peer committees that deemed the presentation appropriate for an APA convention.

Furthermore, Dr. Holzman has participated in APA conventions in the past and we have not received any complaints about the content of those presentations. However, the issues you raise are serious. We will monitor those sessions in which Dr. Holzman participates to hear what is said. We are also confident that if Dr. Holzman or anyone else were to express views that were prejudiced or potentially harmful to psychotherapy patients their APA colleagues would challenge those views. (emphasis added). Dr. Newman will not be participating in the meeting. Thank you again for bringing your concerns to our attention.”

L. Michael Holanker, Ph.D.
Chief Operating Officer/Deputy CEO
American Psychological Association
Executive Office
Email: mhonaker@apa.org

It should be noted that by the time the email campaign was initiated, Social Therapy was already on the APA convention program. It may have been difficult for the APA to completely remove them the program; thus, the presentations were allowed to go forward.

I personally attended Dr. Holzman’s first presentation on Saturday morning, August 9, 2003 (session #3079), entitled “Symposium: Impact of Participatory Youth Programs on Youth and Communities.” In addition to Dr. Holzman, in attendance were Barbara Silverman, who spoke on the broad subject of crises in education; Diann Eley, who spoke on the use of sports to aid “disaffected young people,” and Gloria Strickland, who spoke on the All Stars Project in New Jersey, wherein she uses theatre and the performing arts to “aid hundreds of inner city young people.” There were no APA staff or board members in attendance at this presentation.

The presence of APA board members at this session would have done a great deal to see the subtle nature of Social Therapy in action. Much of the presentation was geared toward mutual admiration of the panel’s “contributions to society,” with little opportunity for scholarly interaction with psychologists and others in the audience. An APA board member should have been there to document the one-sided nature of the presentation, and the impression that Dr. Holzman and company were merely pushing an agenda.

Arriving just as the presentation was to begin was Columbia University professor, Dr. Edmund Gordon, who quickly and adroitly turned the discussion into a left-right political debate complete with comments on the “social causes” of racism and poverty. Dr. Gordon was ostensibly inducted to be the discussant of the presentation.

However, Dr. Holzman spoke first with some interesting opening comments. She acknowledged that she had “been recently informed that complaints have been made about this presentation.” She asked if any “complainers” were in the audience, which may seem an odd question as there were a range of 12 to 16 people in the audience at various times in the presentation. Dr. Holzman nobly stated, “I encourage challenges and debates. I want to create together our psychology. I am from a passionate group of individuals with new approaches to community development.” She also stated that she had been presenting at APA conferences for “over 20 years” and “had heard no complaints before.”

This is not a true statement, or Dr. Holzman and the APA have an exceedingly short memory. At the APA conference in Chicago last year, I also attended one of Dr. Holzman’s presentations on the legacy of Fred Newman, among other topics. When she asked for questions of the audience, I asked her, “There have been newspaper reports and ex-member accounts that you operate a psychotherapeutic cult. Could you please respond to this allegation including your definition of what a cult is and what it is not?” Dr. Holzman refused to answer the question, and either would not or could not tell me what a cult was, but she was certain her group was not one. She refused to address the issue of ex-member complaints, and sat silently as I asked her the same question three times. I did bring this to the attention of then-APA president, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, but I don’t know if any action was ever initiated.

After 70 minutes of a 90-minute presentation, Dr. Holzman acknowledged my raised hand in pursuit of a question. I asked her a simple question; a question that every member of APA, and certainly every presenter at an APA conference, should be able and willing to answer. I asked Dr. Holzman, “As an APA member, do you ascribe to and uphold the APA Ethical Principles for Psychologists at your East Side Institute for Social Therapy?” Dr. Holzman replied, “That is not relevant to this discussion here.” I responded back. “You are speaking at a professional conference. You represent several organizations. You show yourself as the representative of these organizations in order to obtain permission to speak here today. Again, I ask you, do you ascribe to and uphold the APA Ethical Principles for Psychologists at your East Side Institute for Social Therapy?” Dr. Holzman again replied, “The question is not relevant.” I replied, “Do you refuse to answer?” Dr. Holzman replied, “The question is not relevant.”

Then, quick as a flash, Dr. Gordon jumped to Dr. Holzman’s rescue. He stated that the controversy with Social Therapy came from the “old Freudian thinking at APA” and from the “political right.” I responded by informing him that he knew nothing of the extent of the lie and the extent of the controversy. I asked permission from Dr. Gordon to leave a flyer so members of the audience could consider another side of Social Therapy (see http://www.ex-iwp.org ). While Dr. Holzman sat silent, Dr. Gordon provided permission for me to leave the flyer. Presenting alternative views is the essence of critical thinking (at least that’s what they taught us in graduate school). Dr. Holzman’s refusal is not keeping with the best pursuits of science. I and some of my colleagues have been concerned that some destructive cults may use professional and scientific platforms to gain credibility and respectability. I don’t want to see this happen to the APA.

It is appalling that Dr. Holzman cannot identify herself and her organizations as subscribing to the APA Ethical Standards for Psychologists regardless of her designated “agenda” and “topic.” I think the APA should take note of this refusal, and place it in context of the desire of psychology to have open debate, not refusal at an APA annual conference. If the APA is concerned about these questions, perhaps a deeper investigation should be made before Social Therapy and its various offshoots are again allowed to present at another APA conference. It is vital that the premier organization of psychology, the APA, look more closely at this matters in order to assure its membership that convention presenters have committed themselves to the highest standards of science, scholarship, openness, and respectful dialogue with other professionals.

Letter to Michael Bloomberg (2003)

2011-08-09T16:13:00.002-07:00

The Honorable Michael Bloomberg
Mayor of the City of New York
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

The Democratic Party machine and the Working Families Party recently mobilized 63
elected officials to sign on to a letter asking you to abandon your commitment to nonpartisan
elections. Did you note that their letter fails to mention that nonpartisans would not be enacted
by you, but by the voters? Democratic Party leaders love to substitute themselves for the people,
claiming (as always) that they know best.

Your promise on nonpartisans was to give the voters the right to decide the issue. We
presume that your commitment remains intact. The not-so-veiled threat made in the letter signed
by the Comptroller, the Public Advocate, three Borough Presidents, 19 members of the City
Council (with 37 Albany legislators and two members of Congress thrown in for good measure)
should be related to as what it is – a bullying tactic designed to deprive the voters of their right to
decide.

A few comments on their arguments against nonpartisans. They say party labels offset
“information and resource disadvantages” for poor, of-color and immigrant communities.
English translation: the above mentioned people are too stupid to choose a candidate on the
merits. In other words, if they don’t have party labels to guide them, they won’t know what to
think. We have more respect for the voters than that – not to mention the fact that many, many
New Yorkers ignored party labels altogether when they voted for you.

The opponents of nonpartisans argue that this reform will depress turnout. It’s hard to
imagine a more depressed level of participation than the one we currently have under a partisan
system. (A quick note here: in the special elections just conducted in February, the turnout rate in
the nonpartisan city council races was significantly higher than that of the partisan assembly
races.) Does a shift to nonpartisans guarantee a high turnout? No. Communities will have to
mobilize themselves under these changed conditions, but the changes create more incentive to do
so. Do partisan elections guarantee a continuation of low turnout? Yes.

Finally, your antagonists urge that you abandon nonpartisans because of the “rancor that
would inevitably accompany a charter amendment campaign.” At the Charter Revision
Commission hearings in Brooklyn last year the authors of the letter staged a major disruption, forcing their way into a filled-to-capacity room, shouting at the Commissioners and injuring a
security guard. This, apparently, is their idea of democratic public dialogue on the issue. Rancor?
The only rancor in the debate has come from them.

I imagine that what motivates the Working Families Party’s hysterical opposition to
nonpartisans is that it takes away the ballot line they have to wheel and deal within city politics.
As you recall from our discussions on this, the Independence Party supports nonpartisans (which
would similarly affect us) because we place the interests of the voters and the health of the
democratic process ahead of our own narrow interests. That’s what it means to be an independent
party.

I’ve seen the news reports that you’re moving ahead with a Commission. That’s great!
Let’s get the question before the voters and let the people decide.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Salit
The Independence Party
225 Broadway, Suite 2010 ~ New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 962-1699 Fax (212) 803-1899

Speech to the Reform Party National Convention (2000)

2011-08-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Lenora Fulani, August 11, 2000

It's great to be here. Thank you all for that beautiful welcome last night. It's great to have a credential you can count on. As you know, I've been a political independent for a long time. I first ran for office as an independent almost 20 years ago, in the days when, if you told people you were an independent, they looked at you as if you had just come from Mars.

Today, the American independent is the new force in national politics. We're the wild card. And it certainly has been wild. And it looks like that's going to continue. I like that feature of our movement.

Since the very start I've been something of a conatroversial figure myself. Some people have objected to me on the grounds that I am too radical that I am a left winger, a progressive, a revolutionary and that a storm of controversy follows my every move. I want to address that reputation today. I want to address it because I believe it is at the very heart of the issues and the choices that face us, the Reform Party and the entire independent movement.

Let me get right to the point. The issue that we face is whether or not we are a revolutionary movement. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a revolutionary movement in the year 2000? Here's what it means to me. It means being a movement dedicated to completing the first American Revolution by challenging the basic formula that is contemporary America a formula in which corporate interests rule and democracy takes a back seat. I believe we are a revolutionary movement. I believe we must be. American politics is too corrupt for us to be anything but. And let me tell you something more. If our Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and Tom Paine, and if you'll grant me historical license, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were in this room with us today, they'd be standing up here with me. They'd be saying to all of you Fellow Citizens, aren't you ready to stand up to tyranny? Don't you love freedom and liberty sufficiently to challenge the old order? Do you not understand that to be a patriot is to be a revolutionary?

Fellow Reformers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would not be on the side of the nay sayers who counsel us to avoid controversy, to appear moderate and to walk the straight and narrow. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be on my side because I am like them. I am cut from the same cloth.

Some people like to call me names and believe me, I've been called plenty. There's nothing I haven't been called: Left wing, Right wing, Nigger, Jew lover, Jew hater, Pervert, Provocateur, Opportunist. I've heard it all. And then some. But General Washington and Mr. Jefferson slave owners though they might have been were also revolutionaries. And I am certain, if they could rise from the dead this morning, they'd join me at this podium and say, Lenora Fulani? We know her. She's with us. She's an American Revolutionary. Aren't you?

But what does it really mean to be a revolutionary in this new and high tech and frightening millennium? It means continuing the revolutionary process not violently but powerfully such that we can engage the fundamental contradiction of the American experience. What is that contradiction? It's that while we believe with all our heart in democracy, we have been willing to compromise it for the good of the economy.

The deepest conflict among the Founding Fathers let us not forget was the issue of slavery. While virtually everyone knew it to be morally wrong, the institution was allowed to exist because it made the economy thrive. And so the democratic rights of a whole race of people were abrogated because slavery enriched the U.S. economy.

It is not altogether different from the circumstances we face today. The globalists argue that NAFTA, the WTO and a general trade policy that unleashes multi-national corporations around the globe are good for the economy. The negative impact on Americans workers, on the environment and on long term economic development is supposed to be considered negligible. We don't believe it is negligible. But there is a far more profound problem at hand. For the globalist special interests have stolen our government so that they can prioritize their economic interests over all else. Some argue that the problem with the two parties is that they are captive to the special interests. I disagree. They are not captive to the special interests. They are the special interests. And they rule unequivocally on behalf of the globalists.

That's why Ross Perot told the American people, when he first ran for President, that we had to take our government back. That we, the people, had to set the terms on which business does business. We're not anti business. We're pro democracy and we believe this is our country and we have the right to run it.

Sometimes people will say to us, "Oh, that political reform stuff very interesting. But what do you stand for?" Here's our answer: We stand for the democratic right of the people of this country all the people of this country to collectively and democratically determine our economic, social, cultural, and policy priorities. The two parties have usurped that right. And we must re assert it.

The Reform Party has been through tremendous turmoil in the last year. I don't have to recapitulate it for all of you, because you lived it we lived it, together. Some people have said to me that they have been beaten down by it. They feel demoralized, angered, and despairing. I can understand those feelings. I have felt them myself. I was, after all, a supporter of Pat Buchanan, before he betrayed his commitment to build this party on a pro democracy, left/center/right foundation. But, I want to thank Pat Buchanan. Yes, I want to thank him. Here's why. I think Pat, by his presence and his neo reactionary takeover attempt of our party, has taught us a very important lesson. A lesson we needed to learn. He taught us that we you and I and millions of liberty loving Americans across the country, built something of extraordinary value, something he wanted so badly that he was willing to commit fraud to try to get.

We belittle ourselves if we think it's just the $13 million. Yes, Pat wants the money. And John Hagelin will hopefully prevent him from getting his hands on it. But this party, if it remains honest and uncorrupted, and this movement this revolutionary movement are things of extraordinary value to ordinary people. But there's another lesson to be learned here, too. It's a harder one to learn. It's a lesson about building building from the bottom up. A lot of people are angry at Pat Buchanan. They're angry because he came in and tried to take over our party. But if we're serious independents, and genuine revolutionaries, we have to ask ourselves how that happened. I think it happened because in many states, the party had simply not been built at the grassroots. When Pat Buchanan came in with 25 followers here and 70 followers.

There, he could make a power grab. How did that happen? How did a movement, which attracted 20 million Americans in 1992 and 8 1/2 million Americans in 1996, find itself with a political party in the year 2000 that was so vulnerable to being overrun by 300 Buchanan Brigadiers?

We find ourselves in this situation, fellow Reformers, because we failed to build the party from the bottom up. We remained too dependent on a top down model for party building, and that simply will not work. We were created by the 8/1/2 million votes cast for Ross Perot in 1996. We honor and respect Mr. Perot for that catalytic contribution. But we will not succeed in our historic mission if we rely on a model of party building that rests solely on big names and big money.

In New York, we have a state party that was created by a millionaire independent Tom Golisano, who spent $8 million on a run for governor in 1994 to poll 217,000 votes which won ballot status for the Independence Party. But in New York, hundreds of party activists believed that we had to take the gift we had been given and make it our own. And so we went out and built that party so that it now has 175,000 members and vibrant broad based democratic structures making it the largest and most significant state party organization in the Reform Party and an increasingly pivotal force in New York State politics.

In my view, we have paid too little attention to the New York model and too much attention to waiting for the next big name or big money to come along. That has hurt the party and hurt the movement. We have paid a price for that error. How big of a price we do not yet know.

But we must move on. And we will. And I must say that one of the things I like best about John Hagelin is that he is not a big name and he has no big money. But he's been out there building and organizing and getting on the ballot and bringing new blood into the Reform Party and into independent politics. That's who I think deserves the nomination of the Reform Party.

If you watched any of the Republican National Convention, as I did, you may have been astounded as I was, by the seeming transformation of that party. I was deeply touched by Colin Powell. I was thrilled to see John McCain. But if you look closely at that party, in spite of its new openness and inclusivity you can see that while Colin Powell and John McCain are permitted to speak, they will not be permitted to lead. It is not a revolutionary party. It's a special interest party. That's why, in my opinion, they both ultimately belong with us in the independent movement.

And we must carry on building our movement. The destructive divisions and unhealthy fractiousness in Reform did not begin on the day Pat Buchanan arrived. They will not be overcome merely by our shared opposition to his effort to transform us into a party of social conservatism. Nor will they be overcome by our trying to recreate ourselves as some bland and non controversial element hoping to survive the election and somehow, magically, get 5% of the vote.

Controversy is our business. We're the people who want to bring down the two party system. We're the people who want to open up the debates, close down the FEC and throw the corrupt politicians and their globalist benefactors out of office. If that ain't controversial, I don't know what is.

I am proud to be with all of you today. I fully expected that our New York delegation would be de credentialed by the Buchanan convention because democracy is out the window over there and so is election law and the constitution. I want to take a moment to acknowledge those delegates, our state chairman Frank MacKay, our most able delegation organizer Cathy Stewart, and our brilliant attorney Harry Kresky. They are some serious party builders and serious fighters. We're fighting hard for the heart and

soul of our movement. And we are proud to be fighting alongside John Hagelin, soon to be our Presidential nominee. John Hagelin is a good and decent and highly intelligent and articulate spokesman for our cause. You all know that.

And you know, of course, that when we turned to him to champion the fight to preserve democracy in our party, he responded with enthusiasm and wit and grace. But let me tell you something else about John Hagelin that you may not have fully grasped. He's got real guts. There were a lot of people out there in the media, in the two parties, on the right and on the left who couldn't wait to attack Pat Buchanan. It was sound bite heaven for every would be, has been, wannabee political type across the spectrum, including some people who like to think of themselves as independents. But you know something? None of them, not one, was willing to come out and get into the Reform Party primary to have the fight the fight for the heart and soul of not just the Reform Party but of our revolutionary independent movement. None, except John Hagelin.

Let me leave you with this. If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass were here today, do you know what they'd be doing? They'd be standing up with the American Revolutionary, John Hagelin. And do you know who else would be up here? The great Revolutionary War naval commander and hero, John Paul Jones. In a critical naval battle in 1779, under constant fire from the better armed and better equipped British Navy, Jones rallied his forces with words that inspire us today. "We have not yet begun to fight," he cried. Several hours later, the British ship Serapis was forced to surrender to Jones and the revolutionary forces. And so, in the great tradition of our American Revolution which continues to this day I send this message to all who would try to denigrate or derail our independent populist revolution: We have not yet begun to fight!

Fred Newman: Lenin as Therapist (2000)

2011-08-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

[Chapter 7 of "On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left"]
By Dennis Tourish & Tim Wohlforth, 2000

Let Hitler take office-he will soon be bankrupt, and then it will be our day.
-H. Remmele, Communist member of the Reichstag, 1933

Pat Buchanan and That Woman

In the fall of 1999 Pat Buchanan sat down to lunch with Dr. Lenora Fulani. A pretty, light-skinned African American woman, conservatively dressed, with close-cropped hair, Fulani was by no means a novice to politics. She had been the 1992 presidential candidate of the New Alliance Party (NAP). The party qualified for more than $1 million in federal matching funds and was on the ballot in nearly all fifty states. In the past Fulani had supported Jesse Jackson and had been a close confidante of Louis Farrakhan and the Reverend Al Sharpton. She had a reputation as an outspoken lesbian and a defender of abortion rights. Buchanan was on a tour promoting a book in which he expressed the view that the United States should not have interfered with Hitler, his subjugation of Europe, and the Holocaust. Some eyebrows were raised in the mainstream press corps.

During an interview later that day, Buchanan was asked about his relations with the "black-nationalist Marxist." His eyes narrowed and he answered: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Lenora Fulani."1 Political relations, however, were a different matter. Fulani was about to launch her latest grand political maneuver, promoting Buchanan as the presidential candidate of the Reform Party.

Fred Newman runs the cult, which fuses politics seamlessly with psychotherapy. While Newman is little known, Dr. Lenora Fulani is a national media figure. The Newmanites prove that cults can affect mainstream politics in the United States in a dangerous way. At the same time Newman's distinctive method of cadre recruitment gives us an insight into the psychology of cult organization in general.

The Cult's Obscure Origins

Fred Newman, a Korean War veteran, was awarded a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from Stanford University.2 He has had no formal training in any branch of psychology. He turned to a Maoist version of Marxism in the mid-1960s. In 1970 Newman gathered together a tiny collective, which shared a communal apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This was a moment when the left was searching for a road forward after the collapse of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the New Left generally, while a cultural revolution was in full swing. Newman's collective, much like Harvey Jackins' reevaluation counseling (see chapter 6), combined the radical politics of the sixties with the New Age therapy of the seventies. The result was a potent mixture of cultic consequences.

They named their collective "If . Then."3 While Jackins stressed techniques of co-counseling in which therapist and patient exchange places, Newman developed a group version of radical therapy led by a therapist, which he called "social therapy" or "crisis normalization."4 All members underwent therapy while they, at the same time, carried out political activity. By 1973 the group was called Centers for Change (CFC). "CFC is," Newman explained, "a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organization."4

The origins of the group in a communal setting gave it a cult-like character from the very beginning. This aspect of Newman's operation did not change. Its core members have lived in shared facilities or are closely linked to such communes. Core members are expected to quit their jobs, sell their private possessions, and earn a meager living through such activities as soliciting funds on street corners.

In Bed with Lyndon LaRouche

For approximately one year, from the middle of 1973 until the end of August in 1974, Newman's group was under the influence of Lyndon LaRouche (see chapter 5). The "United Front," was formed, consisting of LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), Newman's Center for Change, and a third group led by Eugenio Perente-Ramos (this later became another cult, the Communist Party U.S.A. (Provisional) (CPUSA [P])-see chapter 12). Joint forums were held and activities coordinated. On June 1, 1974, Newman wrote, "We have traveled from a community based storefront, to a health-service collective, to a cadre socialist organization. We have traveled from non-existence to existence and finally back to non-existence at a higher level. For CFC is disbanded. We move, not as a collective, but as self- conscious human beings into the National Caucus of Labor Committees."6

Fred Newman's comment about moving into the NCLC "not as a collective" proved to be a bit disingenuous. Then again, a cultist like LaRouche should have been sharp enough to spot another cultist. The group had been formed around the personality of Fred Newman, they all underwent continuous group therapy under his guidance, and they shared common living quarters. The Newman group continued to operate in lockstep while within the NCLC. It should therefore come as no shock that the fusion did not work out. The two gurus inevitably clashed. In late August 1974 Newman and thirty-eight followers walked out of the NCLC to form the International Workers Party (IWP). Newman announced that his tiny group had "now become the vanguard of the working class." Newman declared: "The organization of the vanguard party is, as Marx makes clear, the organization of the class. The formation of the IWP had grown from our attempt to organize the [NCLC] from within that it might move from a position of left hegemony to a position of leadership of the class."7

Newman's period of association with LaRouche was to have a major impact on his thinking and future development. It is significant that he joined up with LaRouche precisely at the moment when the NCLC was moving from left to right and engaging in some rather bizarre conduct. Newman contacted LaRouche within weeks of the conclusion of his "Operation Mop- Up," involving physical attacks on the left.

Newman declared in 1974 that "the former workers of CFC will organize in the spirit outlined by Marcus [Lyndon LaRouche]."8 He wrote a book that contained extensive quotations from LaRouche. He echoed LaRouche's catastrophism, seeing the United States as facing "the grim reality of cannibalization and encroaching fascism."9 He agreed with LaRouche that a "massive fascist brainwashing" was taking place. Like LaRouche, he dismissed most of the left: "Black nationalism, community control, feminism, the petty bourgeois movement, gay pride, worker participation programs, trade union parochialism, and so on, are concepts devised by the fascists to locate a group's identity in something other than the working class." 10

In 1974 Newman declared that "Liberalism is fascism. The liberal do-gooders are the fascists."11 And, "'The Left Movement' or 'The Radical Movement' or 'The Movement' . is the CIA-developed deterrent to the development of a vanguard party... Fortunately there are some around working to destroy the CIA controlled left movement. Lyn Marcus and the NCLC are such a group."12

While Newman never again publicly referred to the left in such terms, he was never really part of the left. His relationship was more that of a predator: from time to time running in Democratic primaries, moving into existing leftist organizations with the aim of taking them over, and utilizing prominent black leaders to advance his own aims.

Just as important, there was a concurrence between LaRouche and Newman on the critical questions of the role of leadership, cadre formation, and the mental manipulation of the membership. LaRouche brought to the "United Front" a far more developed distortion of Marxism than anything Newman had been able to extract from Mao Tse-Tung. Crucial was the linking of an apocalyptic crisis theory with the necessity of creating an elite cadre.

Newman contributed his knowledge of psychotherapy and experience gained in transforming his followers through these techniques into political operators. We suspect that LaRouche's rantings about impotency and his ego-stripping sessions were at least partially inspired by Newman, who claimed that "all psychic problems are correctly diagnosed as impotency." 13

After parting, the political evolution of the two gurus was, on the surface, quite different. LaRouche transformed his hostility toward the left and its constituents into a new rightist ideology with links to fascism. Newman continued to function politically on the left until 1994, when he began to move into the right-centrist Perot movement. Yet both leaders shared a common disdain for ordinary citizens, who were to be manipulated; for their members, who were transformed into robots to be used to do the manipulation; and for the democratic norms of a pluralistic society.

The Theory of Proletarian Psychotherapy

Fred Newman developed, in his 1974 book Power and Authority, a theory of the mind and its relation to society that has served him well as a justification for the existence of his cult and has aided him in controlling his followers. Newman saw revolution as a two-level process: the external overthrow of the bourgeoisie and its state and the internal overthrow of the "Bourgeois ego."

We must learn, he insisted, to see "in both directions-inside and outside."14 "Proletarian or revolutionary psychotherapy is . the overthrow of the rulers of the mind by the workers of the mind."15 "Revolutionary therapy," he stated, "involves an act of insurrection; of overthrow."16 Through this act the "bourgeois ego" is replaced by the "proletarian ego." "The proletarian or revolutionary therapist is . a leader."17 This internal revolution is followed by "a long period of the withering away of the proletarian ego."18

Newman viewed the "bourgeois ego" as the automatic product of the capitalist system. Drawing from Marx via Lenin and LaRouche, he concluded that "the self-interested, rational individual is guided by a ruling class imposed conscience (or super ego) which she or he transforms into a self controlling bourgeois ego." 19

This view could be interpreted as a reasonable distillation of Marx's concept of alienation. Capitalism tends to atomize people. People then relate to each other in the belief that they are acting autonomously in their own self-interest. Actually their relations are being determined by market forces and their thinking is influenced by the dominant capitalist culture and institutions.

Marx, however, noted countervailing effects of capitalist relations upon the worker. The very organization of the production process brought workers together collectively, creating the conditions for their common action, such as trade union organization and the formation of workers' parties. Newman, following upon Lenin and LaRouche, dismissed such processes as expressions of "trade union parochialism" and therefore reactionary. He proposed "therapy" as a substitute.

A difficulty arises out of Newman's efforts to "overthrow" the individual's "bourgeois" ego through a therapeutic act while the capitalist system remains intact and functioning. The discarded ego is actually the only individual identity a person is capable of developing and sustaining within a capitalist society. Its dissolution creates a vacuum that is filled by the ego of the therapist. The therapist's ego is no less shaped by the society within which he functions. The guru therapist's desire to control others, manipulate others, and drive others to carry out his wishes represents a demented form of the worse features of personality in contemporary capitalist society.

Newman developed a critique of Freudian and all other forms of psychotherapy, labeling them "bourgeois." Bourgeois psychology (read "all therapies excluding Newman's") "entails an act of transference (making the therapist into a substitute conscience and, at the same time, into a 'temporary' oppressive ruler) and eventually this transferential act itself must be analyzed and undone.. The bourgeois authoritarian leader allows a temporary and controlled regression to the bourgeois id and then leads the patient back again to her or his bourgeois ego."20

These therapies, in Newman's view, take a patient with a wounded ego; pass her or him through a process of transference; and, ending the transference, rebuild a healthy independent ego in the person. However, Newman believed, this process simply strengthened the "bourgeois ego," that is the mind control of a sick society. He believed the very concept of a "self-interested rational individual" was reactionary.

What then is to be done? As part of a group therapy practice, the "leadership" of the therapist is required to carry through an insurrection against individual egoism. Once the "proletarian ego" is installed, the therapy is by no means at an end. It continues and is coordinated with revolutionary activity. "Revolutionary therapy becomes more and more indistinguishable from revolutionary organizing."21 The victory of the "proletarian ego" over the "bourgeois ego" is thus expressed in the patient's complete devotion to the political causes espoused by Fred Newman.

Normal therapy is designed to be completed during a limited time period. The patient may be emotionally bound through the transference process to his or her therapist for a period of time. However, health comes through the ending of the transference process and the restoration of the patient's own sense of self and emotional independence. Not so in Newman's "social therapy." The process of transference, and therefore dependence upon the therapist, is never ending!

The difficulty is that the "proletarian ego"-read "emotional dependence on Newman"-withers away only when the proletarian state withers away. Since the creation of a proletarian state does not appear to be imminent in the United States or any other advanced country, and further, since all attempts to create such states have so far led to growth rather than withering away, the patient must remain dependent on Newman indefinitely. In the case of Newman's oldest adherents, this dependency has persisted for more than twenty-five years!

The doctrines explicitly developed in this book continued to guide Newman's practice right up to the current period. Dr. Lenora Fulani, the group's spokesperson, wrote in 1989: "One of the earliest statements on the foundations of Social Therapy is contained in a book written by Newman in 1974 entitled Power and Authority. It states that psychic and emotional life in contemporary society reflects the political and economic degeneration of capitalism."22

The International Workers Party and the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Having founded the IWP, Fred Newman was not quite sure what to do with it. For a brief period he sought unification with various small Trotskyist groups as well as Marlene Dixon's Democratic Workers Party (see chapter 9). In June 1975 the Newmanites were admitted into the Peoples Party, a forerunner of the Citizens Party that ran Barry Commoner for president in 1980. A bitter internal struggle ensued, which almost destroyed the small party. The group was expelled in March 1978.23

It was in this period that Fred Newman developed a curious relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In April 1974 Jim Retherford left the therapy cult. He had had a child with Ann Green, a devoted member who stayed with Newman. After Newman took his followers into the NCLC, Retherford, not wanting his son to be raised by people he viewed as crazy, took him away without the mother's permission and left town. Green appealed to Newman who enlisted the help of two young lawyers, one named Harry Kresky, who were cult members. Together they developed a strategy that they hoped would enlist the aid of the federal government in finding Retherford and the child.

The lawyers contacted the FBI and arranged a meeting between Green and its agents. Green told them that Retherford was a former member of the Weather Underground and maintained relations with Jane Alpert, at that time a fugitive. Kresky met with representatives of the U.S. attorney in New York, giving them the same information.

The matter was brought out into the open in 1976. A meeting was held at St. Gregory's Church on the Upper West Side to form the New York State Working Peoples Party, a forerunner of the New Alliance Party. A group called the Communist Cadre, which had recently split from Newman's IWP, issued a statement primarily devoted to the Retherford matter.24 They accused Newman of working with the FBI. The IWP, in an answer to the charges, admitted that the events had occurred but held three members, not Newman, responsible.25 King, however, believes that it is "unthinkable" that Kresky and Green, loyal followers, could have acted without Newman's full knowledge and approval.26

This incident raises a question fairly early on in Newman's political evolution about the seriousness of his commitment to the left and its causes. Our study of political cults complements the conclusions reached by those who have studied a broader array of cult types: they operate in the interest of their leaders rather than for the purposes they are purportedly created to promote.

A West Side Story

In 1977 Fred Newman turned his attention to the politics of New York City's Upper West Side. The area was and is among the most sophisticated liberal political strongholds in the nation. His activities caused concern among political activists. Newman's group had resurfaced as the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council.

He caused a stir when he ran a key follower, Nancy Ross, for local school board and actually won. The startled liberal politicos decided to look a bit deeper at Newman, his past, and his current practices. Dennis King, who was later to write a book about Lyndon LaRouche,27 conducted an investigation of the group, interviewing over thirty people, including many former members. For the first time Fred Newman found himself publicly accused of leading a "therapy cult."

There are about 35 individuals in the inner circle of the cult, most living in semi-communal apartments on the Upper West Side. Through the years, a combination of group pressure and Newman's directive therapy had induced most of them to give up their jobs and to break off all meaningful personal ties outside the group. Likewise they have been induced to turn over all personal property and savings to the cult. They regard themselves as full-time organizers for the cult's front groups, operating under tight discipline and secrecy. They eat and pay their rent through a variety of parasitical activities, such as street corner solicitations, the practice of amateur psychotherapy, the dunning of past and present patients for "political contributions," and the occasional plucking of an inheritance or trust fund from a patient.28

Newman acted as a "benevolent despot," to use his own words. "Fred's veneer of compassion and his deep-set Rasputin-type eyes created strong transference feelings in . [his] patients."29

"His groupies," King explained, "cut off from the outside world and with almost every waking hour spent either in 'busywork' or interminable meetings (so that independent thought could be kept at a minimum), had no feedback from reality."30

When Nancy Ross campaigned for the school board, she insisted that the IWP had been disbanded. Newman's front organization, the New York City Unemployed and Welfare Council, issued a statement that the party had disbanded shortly after the factional struggle in 1976. However, Jack Finn, another reporter for Heights and Valley News, discovered that the IWP continued to exist in a "clandestine" fashion. It issued at least a dozen issues of an internal bulletin, "Party Building." These bulletins referred to the ongoing work of a "central committee" and of "chairman Fred Newman." There were mention of the "Party" and the "work of the Party," while the IWP was called the "apparatus."31

We believe Fred Newman concluded from his brief experience attempting to build the IWP that he had no need for an open vanguard formation. He recruited new members through therapy and gained political influence by working within other groups or creating broad front organizations. However, he did have need for a clandestine vanguard formation, based on the Leninist model and made up of core therapy patients. As we will see, there is considerable evidence that the IWP continues to exist up to the present time.

The 1977 period of activism on the Upper West Side was a learning experience for Newman and his followers. They became skilled at operating within politically ill-defined front organizations and raising funds from guilt-ridden middle-class liberals. Most of all Newman got a taste for electoral activity. This would shape the rest of his political life.

The New Alliance Party

Sometime in the late l970s Newman had the great good fortune of running into Lenora Fulani, an attractive black woman who had been raised in Pennsylvania and was earning a Ph.D. in psychology at the City University of New York. She heard Newman lecture and "was very intrigued by the progressiveness of the politics guiding his thought." She dropped her black lesbian Gestalt therapist and joined a Newmanite social therapy clinic full time.32

In 1979 Newman and Fulani formed the New Alliance Party (NAP). While the politics of the new party were purposely vague, they generally reflected a progressive agenda similar to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Fulani ran as the NAP candidate for lieutenant governor of New York in 1982.

In 1984 the NAP ran Dennis Serrette, a black socialist and NAP member, for president. The party was on the ballot in thirty-three states and received 35,000 votes. A year later Serrette broke from the NAP, accusing it of having an all-white leadership that manipulated him. He took his charges to the Jackson Advocate, the only black newspaper in Mississippi. The NAP sued the paper in 1986 and lost.33

In May 1985 the NAP held its founding convention in Chicago, even though it had been formed six years earlier. Emily Carter, a black woman from Jackson, Mississippi, who called herself a "former organizer, now therapist," was elected chairperson.34 In 1988 Fulani ran for the office of president of the United States. The party qualified for ballot status in all fifty states and received nearly $1 million in federal matching funds and a respectable 217,219 votes.35

Fulani's tactics in 1992 became increasingly complicated. She began the year by entering the New Hampshire primary on the Democratic Party line. Then the Newmanites in California joined the Peace and Freedom Party and battled to capture it. While Newman lost that factional struggle, he nearly destroyed the small leftist party in the process. That spring Newman and Fulani turned their attention to the growing movement around Ross Perot, the right centrist billionaire curmudgeon. When Perot withdrew from the race in July, Fulani commented that "we've been stabbed in the back." Fulani revived her presidential bid under the NAP label. Walter Sheasby has noted:

Fulani offered herself and the Presidential campaign as the vehicle of a Perotism sans Perot.. Fulani claimed to represent "my base-the old 'New Deal' coalition base of African Americans, labor, Latinos, women and gays." And she said to the Perot followers "and there you are. In the radical and independent Perot base lies the potential for a new majority coalition."36

The NAP once again qualified for ballot status in all fifty states, and this time it received $2 million in federal matching funds. Fulani received 73,708 votes, a considerable decline from 1988 and no doubt part of the reason Newman turned toward Perot.

A Washington, D.C., newspaper has exposed the complexity of Newman's financial maneuvers that year. This involved running in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, where Fulani received only 402 votes out of 167,900 cast. She then switched tactics, running in several small party primaries, including California's Peace and Freedom. Finally she ran on the NAP ticket. The total budget for primary activity alone was $4,161,495, which included the matching funds.

Interestingly, some $901,495 of this money "went to organizations that share offices, phones, and leadership with the NAP." This permitted a process of "double-dipping," whereby members of the NAP, working for various front organizations, were paid with campaign funds and in turn made campaign contributions that qualified for federal matching funds. While campaign funds are required by law to be spent on campaigning or returned to donors, the NAP, by spending a large portion of its funds on individuals and organizations associated with Newman, saw to it that the core group prospered. For example, "Fred Newman Productions received $68,925 in retainers for Newman's services as campaign manager."37

Life Among the Newmanites

Loren Redwood, a lesbian who fell in love with a Newmanite, told her story in a letter to a gay newspaper in San Francisco:

My experience with NAP was a nightmare. I am a white, working class lesbian and met NAP in Indiana where I was living at the time. NAP was in Indiana petitioning to put Fulani's name on the ballot there. I was so excited and so moved to find that a black woman was running for president that I immediately began working for the campaign. I also fell in love with a woman working on the campaign. When it came time for NAP to leave Indiana, she asked me to go with them, and I did.. I was given 48 hours to prepare. I quit my job, left my home, my friends, put my belongings in storage, found a home for my pet, and gave the use of my car to NAP in exchange for their taking over the payments..

As a working class lesbian, I thought I had finally found a political movement which included me. What I found instead was an oppressive, disempowering, misogynistic machine. All my decisions were made for me by someone else. I was told where to go, and who to go with. I worked seven days a week-sixteen to twenty hours a day (I had two days off in two and a half months). There was an incredible urgency which overrode any personal needs or considerations, an urgency that meant complete self-sacrifice.. I felt totally powerless over my life, forced into a very submissive role where all control of my life belonged to someone else. I had given up everything for the campaign, my job, my home and my support system, I felt desperate.

Another strange aspect of NAP is what they call social therapy. This is political therapy founded by Fred Newman.. [I]t was expected that I enter social therapy and I did attend a few sessions.. My position on political issues was dictated to me by NAP-independent thought was discouraged. We were all part of something bigger than ourselves and were of one mind. I felt personally threatened, like I was being absorbed into something and was losing myself.. I was completely exhausted, so tired I was unable to work well. Being unable to work I had no income, as I was expected to raise my salary myself in addition to raising money for the campaign.. I was very frightened. I was in a strange city, I knew no one really except my lover, who couldn't help me: I had no job, no home and no money. At this point I was feeling very suicidal.

It's been four months since I left the campaign and I am putting my life back together piece by piece.38

This report is interesting in a number of respects. First, it documents one method of recruitment to the Newmanite cult: a person is attracted to one of the political projects sponsored by Newman, in this case the NAP, and is then urged to take group therapy. Only those who combine political activism with therapy are considered solid core members of the group.

Second, we are given a picture of the intensity and time-consuming nature of the group's political activity. Loren Redwood felt "an incredible sense of urgency which overrode any personal needs." This in turn has a disorienting and numbing effect upon the recruit. Her feelings and experience is identical to that reported to us by members of such groups as the Workers Revolutionary Party, the Militant Group, the Democratic Workers Party, and the LaRoucheites. It helps explain how a politically oriented cult can produce the same degree of total control over members as religious cults.

Third, the Newmanites carry out a practice that is common among religious cults but not used as extensively by political cults. This is having members quit their jobs, move into common quarters with other members, and solicit funds from the public to support the organization as well as themselves. This increases the recruit's isolation from civil society as well as his or her dependence upon the group for survival. We have found this practice among the LaRoucheites (chapter 5), NATLFED (chapter 12), and Synanon (chapter 8).

Not all recruits have joined the cult through political activity and been steered toward social therapy. Many seek out therapy because of emotional disturbances, only to find themselves sucked into Newmanite political groups. Berlet reported this experience of an East Coast Latina activist:

I first came into contact with the Social Therapy Institutes through a friend who said there was a group that offered therapy for people with progressive views so I went to see what they offered..

Before and after the therapy session, they would say "why not sell the newspaper" or "maybe you could do us a favor and hand out those leaflets." The therapy offices were full of their political propaganda. In the group therapy sometimes we discussed politics and their political party.

Some people get involved because they think the political work will help them get better emotionally. They told us societal problems are making people ill and the New Alliance Party is going to change things so people get better.39

M. Ortiz, a single mother living in the Bronx, became involved in social therapy in 1985 in a similar fashion.

The trouble wasn't "in our head," but "in the world," we learned.. Through Social Therapy, I was conditioned to relate to my personal history in exclusively political terms. My family's problems and subsequent poverty-and all my suffering-were all the result of the government's imperialist invasion of Puerto Rico.. But consciousness-raising in itself was not enough. Our individual development and growth, we were told, was dependent upon the group's.

Only by embracing this psycho-therapeutic doctrine could I hope to change what it meant to be a "poor, working-class Puerto-Rican woman.." [T]he "cure" for my depression and anxiety was ultimately conditional upon my becoming a serious political activist.

When I finally left the cult in July of 1990-after finally becoming disgusted with the totalitarian internal structure which, in my opinion, basically relies on slave labor for profit in the name of justice and empowerment-I had to literally rebuild my life.40

Individual distress is manipulated to transform the patient into a political activist under the total control of the therapist or the revolutionary leader. The new "family" of fellow cultists replaces the traditional family and friends. The followers become completely dependent upon Newman for their sense of self-esteem. "When Newman was happy, everyone was happy," commented one former member. "When he was angry, everyone was terrified."41

Organic Leaders: Jackson, Farrakhan, Sharpton

Antonio Gramsci originated the concept of the "organic intellectual." In contrast to "traditional intellectuals," such as clerics, teachers, and other professionals, Gramsci believed each social class created organically out of its own members a stratum capable of generalizing that class's historic mission and projecting its hegemony over society as a whole. Since he believed that the capability of being an intellectual is in all human beings, he was convinced that the working class could and would develop its own organic intellectuals. This aspect of his thinking could be interpreted as more democratic than Lenin's approach.

Lenin-particularly in What Is to Be Done?-advocated building a party composed exclusively of full-time professional revolutionaries drawn from the traditional intellectuals. This vanguard would bring socialism from "outside" the working class into the proletarian milieu. It matters little the degree to which Lenin may or may not have modified this view in a later period. What is critical is that so many on the left, including virtually all cultists, have been influenced by this vanguardist "from the outside" theory. Newman learned his Lenin from LaRouche.42

Fred Newman operated on the basis of both concepts of leadership. He viewed his core group as a vanguard formation, made up overwhelmingly of white, middle-class, traditional intellectuals. His elite members were professionals in two ways: They largely worked full time for Newmanite fronts, and, in many cases, they were professional therapists.

Newman's concept of "organic leaders," borrowed from Gramsci, was given a decidedly undemocratic twist. For Newman the term "organic" became a code word meaning "people of color." Organic leaders were therefore prominent black spokespersons with real bases of support in the black community and wide media recognition. He embraced these "organic leaders" uncritically, but they were just so much window dressing to be used as a way of advancing the interests of the secretive vanguard made up of white traditional intellectuals. The result was a manipulative and undemocratic relationship.

The Newmanites' first major foray into organizing around an "organic leader" involved support of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and his 1984 and 1988 Democratic Party presidential bids. Declaring "Two Roads Are Better Than One," Lenora Fulani announced support of Jackson while at the same time fielding her own independent candidacy under the New Alliance Party banner.43 Then, in an interesting and self-serving twist, the Newmanites organized the Rainbow Lobby. The group, headed by Nancy Ross, had almost the same name as Jackson's organization and an identical program. However, it was not authorized by Jackson, was totally controlled by Newman, and raised its own independent funds to the tune of more than $1 million a year.44 In 1992 the Lobby was closed down and the lobbying firm Ross and Green was formed. The "Ross" of Ross and Green is the very same Nancy Ross, former school board member from the Upper West Side and head of the Rainbow Lobby.45 The "Green" was Ann Green, whom we met earlier working with the FBI. [Correction: Deborah Greene co-founded Ross & Green, it was not Ann Green.]

The next "Organic Leader" to catch Newman and Fulani's attention was Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, noted for his anti-Semitic rantings. This is particularly interesting because, in the LaRouche cohabitation period, Newman shared NCLC's extremely hostile (bordering on racist) attitude toward black nationalists. The NAP moved its national headquarters to Chicago in order to be closer to Farrakhan. In 1995, after Newman's dissolution of the NAP and turn toward Perot, he ran a full page advertisement in the Village Voice entitled "Never Again! A New Pledge for the Jewish Community," saluting the Million Man March. It featured a photo of Newman, Farrakhan, and Fulani, and was signed "Dr. Fred Newman, Convenor, Jews for Farrakhan."46

Soon Newman added the Reverend Al Sharpton to the organic roster. Sharpton developed a particularly close relationship to the Newmanites during the period he was conducting confrontational marches through Howard Beach and promoting Tawana Brawley, whose tale of rape by white assailants has been proved to be a fabrication. Sharpton has developed a reputation as an anti-white demagogue and has clashed with New York City's Jewish community. The Newmanites even rented office space to Sharpton and put him on their payroll as a $12,000 a year consultant.47

Noting the connections with Farrakhan and Sharpton, Dennis King wrote in 1992 that the NAP has "unsevered ties to anti-Semitism." Newman is Jewish but this did not prevent him from saying that "Jews 'as a people' have made a pact with 'the devil' to serve as the 'storm-troopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over.'"48

Overall the Newmanites gained a high profile and significant membership growth in the decade between 1982 and 1992. Newman expanded his base beyond the Upper West Side with therapy centers throughout New York City, as well as in Boston; Chicago; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Pennsylvania; New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Jackson, Mississippi; and elsewhere. During its first ten years of operations Newman's core group numbered between thirty and forty people. By the end of the next decade, Newman had several hundred core followers and significant political influence. In 1992 NAP-related businesses employed fifty-six people and brought in at least $3.5 million a year. The East Side Institute for Social Therapy alone reported sales in excess of $400,000 a year.49

Lenora Fulani was a popular, media-savvy spokesperson who received considerable, and largely favorable, press attention. The potent combination of the NAP election campaigns with high-profile identification with Jackson, Farrakhan, and Sharpton made Lenora Fulani a well-known public figure. However, the political winds were shifting to the right. Discontent in America was finding a new path for expression: Ross Perot. Was this tiny white billionaire with his folksy manners and Texan twang a new "organic leader?" If so, of what class?

A Pact with Ross Perot

Beginning in 1992 Ross Perot developed a movement around his quixotic personality. He drew almost exclusively from whites, was particularly popular with small businessmen and people who lived in smaller cities and towns, and pulled support almost equally from the Democratic and Republican parties. His politics were generally right of center. He was anti-government, strongly against political action committees (PACs), and for electoral reform; he favored a balanced budget and welfare reform. Perhaps his most popular position was his strong stance against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). His economic nationalism gained him some support among workers hurt by job competition from south of the border. Many voted for him because he was very rich and therefore beholden to no special interests (except, of course, himself). The Perot movement definitely represented a radical departure from the traditional two-party system. However, there is no evidence that this departure was in a left direction.

In 1993, immediately after the 1992 elections, Fulani met with Nicholas Sabatine III, a small-town Pennsylvania attorney, and helped form the Patriot Party. In April 1994 the NAP officially dissolved into the Patriot Party. The National Patriot Party was formed with Sabatine as national chair and Fulani as chair for New York State. The apparatus of the Patriot Party was, for all intents and purposes, controlled by the Newmanites.50 The Patriot Party was, to quote Fulani, "based on the principles of democracy, fiscal responsibility, government accountability and a deep commitment to inclusivity and diversity." Many on the left view "fiscal responsibility" as a code meaning cuts in benefits to the poor. According to Sabatine the party supported privatization of Social Security and a flat tax, hardly progressive positions.51

In 1994 Fulani ran in the New York State Democratic primary against Governor Mario Cuomo. She received 142,000 votes, or 21 percent of the vote. She then switched her support to businessman Tom Golisano, helping to create the Independence Party. That party received 217,000 votes.52 The Independence Party, like the Patriot Party, was a forerunner of the Reform Party.

In 1996, Ross Perot, who had resisted forming a third party, preferring to run as an independent, permitted the formation of the Reform Party. The problem facing Perot was how to get his party on the ballot in all fifty states in order to qualify for federal matching funds. His supporters were, by and large, enthusiastic but disorganized and politically untrained. Newman came to the rescue, throwing his cultists once again into a grueling nationwide ballot drive. Russell J. Verney, national coordinator of the Reform Party and a Perot confidante, stated to the New York Times in 1996 that "Mr. Perot was aware and appreciative of the role Ms. Fulani and Dr. Newman have played in helping the Reform Party. 'They are just one voice in a very big group of individuals.'"53

At Newman's and Fulani's urging, the Patriot Party and the New York Independence Party affiliated with the Reform Party. Verney recalled that, faced with the need to get 90,000 voters registered in the Reform Party in California, he called Jim Mangia, the chairman of that state's Patriot Party. Mangia was formerly a member of the New Alliance Party. Having succeeded in registering 120,000 voters, Mangia was made secretary of the state Reform Party.54 In 1999 he assumed the same post in the national party.

In 1997 Richard Lamb, who was defeated by Ross Perot in his effort to become the Reform Party's presidential candidate, split away to form the American Reform Party. "They resented what they said was autocratic management of the party from Dallas," the Chicago Tribune reported. "In Illinois, additional resentment had grown over the presence in the party's governing structure of former supporters of Lenora Fulani and the largely defunct New Alliance Party."55

In 1998 Lenora Fulani organized the Democracy Slate of candidates for the State Committee of the Independence Party. Both Fulani and Newman were on that slate. She took over control of the party and then ran as the party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor.56 The Independence Party's platform calls for "fiscal conservatism." It states, "Wherever possible, we prefer to minimize the role of government, transferring needed activities into the private sector through privatization." It favors an alteration of civil service requirements to make it easier to discharge government workers, a one-year New York residency requirement for welfare benefits, no welfare for illegal aliens, public funding for private schools, and more cops.57

From early on Newman has displayed little interest in the political programs of the parties he participated in, such as the Democratic Party; or set up and controlled, as in the case of the NAP; or supported, like Farrakhan and Sharpton. Still, until 1994, all his political machinations involved figures and parties generally considered to be on the left of American politics. Since there is nothing even faintly liberal or progressive, not to mention socialist, about the politics of the Reform Party and affiliates, what trick of dialectics did Newman employ to justify his moving into the Perot movement?

Bill Lynch, an aide to former New York City Mayor David Dinkins came up with a cynical answer: "We could never figure out what the New Alliance agenda was. The one common thread was that they were always trying to move in and take over someone else's political operation."58

Alliance with Pat Buchanan

Political relations between the Newmanites and Pat Buchanan date back to 1996. In an article entitled "Black Empowerment: What Does the New Populism Mean for African-Americans?" Fulani claimed that Buchanan was being "demonized," comparing him to Louis Farrakhan, Ross Perot, and Jesse Jackson. Buchanan's views were characterized as "anti-government, anti-big business, pro-people." Fulani saw the Reform Party as "populist, not centrist," a populism that "cuts across the traditional labels of right, center and left."59 She and Newman had already prepared the theoretical groundwork (read: rationalization) for embracing Buchanan as a candidate for president on the Reform Party ticket.

Chip Berlet is one of the few political commentators to note Fulani's shift to the right and to begin to develop a theoretical understanding of its broader implications. He notes that the extreme right wing has developed a "producerist narrative" which pits "hard-working productive middle-class and working-class" people against a rich elite and a socially parasitic welfare class. This movement is sometimes called "Middle American Nationalism" or the "Radical Center" or "Middle American Radicals." It is narrowly nationalist and isolationist, opposes free trade, and is against big government and business. However, it also tends to be homophobic, racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic.60 Some leftists have become confused by the "anti-war" and anti-globalist demagogy of these rightists. Fulani and Newman are contributing to that confusion.

Buchanan's interest in Newman and Fulani stems from their power within the Reform Party as well as from the proven ability of their cult followers to put the party on state ballots. At the 1999 Dearborn Convention of the Reform Party, Lenora Fulani received 45 percent of the vote for the position of vice-chair.61 They dominate the New York, Illinois, and California parties, and have extensive influence elsewhere.

Fulani and Newman have thrown their considerable support behind Pat Buchanan's primary campaign. On November 11, 1999, Fulani announced that she would serve as co-chair of Buchanan's campaign. "In traditional political terms, Pat Buchanan stands for all things that black progressives such as myself revile," Fulani stated. "So how can we get to be standing here together with me endorsing his candidacy? Because we have a common interest in overthrowing the traditional political terms."62 We are reminded of the German Communist Party in the early 1930s, which campaigned using the slogan "Hitler First, Then Us." There never was a second.

Fulani has framed Buchanan as "a mighty powerful spokesperson for issues of political reform" whose appeal goes "beyond ideology ... beyond issues of left, center and right."63 When asked on Cable News Network (CNN) about Buchanan's views on gay rights and abortion, she said that she could overlook them because Buchanan "can play a role as a unifier, bring everybody together."64 In another interview Fulani said "We're hoping he gets 10 to 15 percent of the vote." Newman added that such a result "keeps the dollars coming in, and it keeps us as America's major minor party." When asked what would happen if Buchanan actually won the presidency, Newman cynically answered "Then we're all in trouble."65

It seems quite clear from the above that the Newmanite support for Buchanan is rooted more in opportunism than in ideology. This fits with a pattern of political opportunism that goes back for decades. Their past support for Farrakhan despite his anti-Semitism prepared them for their current role in Buchanan's camp. Hard as it is to believe, the core members of this group, believing themselves to be progressives, even Marxists, will carry out Newman's instructions to advance the agenda of a man whose most recent book claims it was a mistake to oppose Hitler.

The Clandestine Party

We have noted that in 1976 Newman claimed to have dissolved the International Workers Party. However, a reporter on the Upper West Side discovered that the party was never actually dissolved. The evidence suggests that the IWP continues to exist today. Cathy Hollandberg-Serrette, who left the NAP in 1985 with Dennis Serrette, reported that, at the time she left, "the IWP was alive and well with about 150 members in NAP." Sheila McCue, who was associated with Serrette, also confirmed the existence of the IWP.66 M. Ortiz reported that in the period between 1985 and 1990: "I was drawn in the group's underground web of pseudo-revolutionary cult activity-The International Workers Party.. Once indoctrinated, most IWP cadre are immediately divested of all assets and assigned mandatory fundraising quotas (ranging from $75-300 per week), and bi-weekly IWP 'dues,' which combined with Social Therapy fees, ranges from 15-30% of their income."67 Wittes referred in 1994 to "a sub-rosa political core made up of the underground remnants of a self-declared Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization." He stated that "at least five ex-members confirmed the continued existence of the IWP.."68

The New York Times interviewed Newman in 1996, describing him as "a 61-year-old white-bearded man who looks like Santa Claus after a bohemian makeover." The interview took place in a loft in downtown Manhattan "scattered with mementos of Ché Guevara." Newman came up with an interesting explanation for his support of the Reform Party: "It's like the left going into unions controlled by gangsters. You have a chance to make a statement to the rank and file, and then maybe you can do something about the gangsters."69

This indicates that Newman still thinks like the Leninist operator he was in the days of LaRouche. His cadres, his comment suggests, sustain a long- term "left" goal. The route has turned out to be more circuitous than it had originally appeared to be in his "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" days. Yet they believe that, someday and somehow, world progress is being served. In the meantime his therapeutically enslaved minions operate within the Reform Party and, in some places, control its apparatus. Political influence and power clearly please Newman and Fulani, while activism keeps the client/organizers busy, their minds empty, and their loyalties guaranteed.

The potential danger in this situation is not to be ignored. After all, Jesse Ventura, a wrestler, ran on the Reform Party ticket in Minnesota in 1998 and won, becoming governor. Considering the public's disgust with the two major parties, it is not to be excluded that the Reform Party can win again. That could place parasitic Newmanites into positions of influence. Once in power, their allegiance would not be to the voters but to their guru Fred Newman. The Newmanites' support for Pat Buchanan has already had the negative and dangerous effect of assisting a right-wing demagogue in channeling legitimate dissatisfaction in a fascistic direction.

Today, in addition to his secretive political activities, Fred Newman considers himself a playwright. He is also the artistic director of the Castillo Theater, an "interactive growth theater," which is a form of therapy directed toward people of color. He is the director of training at the East Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy and has written several books that are featured at his Castillo Bookstore. He operates the West Coast Center for Social Therapy in San Francisco and similar centers in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities. He describes these centers as "a unique 'laboratory'-the 25-year-old development community of thousands of people who are living more developmental and joyous lives and helping thousands more to do so."70

For all the deprivations he has demanded over the years from his followers, he, like other gurus, is not living that badly himself. In the fall of 1993 he purchased, together with long-time member Susan Massad, a large Greenwich Village brownstone at 60 Bank Street for $928,000. Revolution combined with therapy can be profitable.

Conclusion: New Age Leninism

It should come as no surprise that Fred Newman, Lenora Fulani, and other spokespeople for the group do not share our assessment that they run a cult. In fact in 1993 they took legal action against the FBI for characterizing them as a "political/cult organization."71 Lenora Fulani stated that "the word 'cult' is a weapon, a murderously vicious, anti-democratic weapon used to attack people who are different in any way: religiously, politically, culturally or otherwise.. There is no such thing as a cult [emphasis in original]."72 At the time Fulani and Newman's lobbying arm, Ross and Green, was running a campaign in defense of the Branch Davidians after the Waco disaster.

Of course, if cults do not exist, then the Newmanites could not possibly be a cult. The difficulty with this position comes when we confront events like the Jonestown massacre or the more recent Heaven's Gate suicides. Are we dealing in these cases simply with people who are "different," or is there something more sinister involved, which requires serious inquiry?

Fulani and Newman's defense of religious cults like the Branch Davjdians,73 is a recognition of a commonality with them. In other words, if Fulani is wrong and cults do exist, then her statement represents a form of identification with the world of cults. What she is really saying is that these groups are just "different" like us.

A study of the Newmanites deepens our understanding of other political cults as well as the cult phenomenon as a whole. This is because Fred Newman's therapeutic approach exposes the essential mechanisms of mind control utilized, though not necessarily admitted to, by all cults. The Newmanites display another interesting feature. Their preservation, though in clandestine fashion, of a Leninist cadre organization, suggests the usefulness of vanguard ideology to political cults. LaRouche, for example, has sustained this side of his thinking during his travel to the extreme right of the political spectrum (see chapter 5).

This outlook has contributed to the manipulative nature of their political activity. Newman, particularly after his LaRouchian period, has been relatively unconcerned with the content of politics, while becoming extremely adept at its practice. This has permitted him to support anti-Semitic black leaders, build a vaguely defined left party, run in Democratic Party primaries, support the right centrist Reform Party, and finally assist Pat Buchanan in his presidential bid. Politics is conceived as something to be practiced to achieve influence and power as well as to lead to growth of his core group.

Newman has become a New Age Leninist. While his group has been wildly successful when we look at its meager beginnings in a West Side apartment, it does have its limits. The Newmanites have learned better than most political cults how to successfully manipulate the American political arena and the media. Yet they remain a small group. One estimate does not give them more than a hundred core members today.74 However, these members are highly skilled political operatives, hard-working and motivated, and they function with lockstep discipline. Newman has done considerable political damage in the past. Given the state of politics in the United States, he may emerge as a serious threat to democratic processes in the future.

Notes

1.      B. Shapiro, "Buchanan-Fulani: New Team?" Nation, November 1, 1999, P. 21.

2.      D. King, "West Side 'Therapy Cult' Conceals Its True Aims," Heights and Valley News, November 1977, p. 14.

3.      C. Berlet, Clouds Blue the Rainbow: The Other Side of the New Alliance Party (Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates. December 1987).

4.      F. Newman, Power and Authority: The Inside View of Class Struggle (New York: Centers for Change, 1974), p. 1.

5.      Berlet, Clouds, p. 3.

6.      Newman, Power, p. vi.

7.      Berlet, Clouds, p. 3.

8.      Newman, Power, p. xvi.

9.      Ibid., p. xii.

10.    Ibid., p. xii-xii.

11.    Right on Time, May II, 1974. This was the publication of Newman's Center for Change.

12.    Right on Time, March 7, 1974.

13.    Newman, Power, p. 113.

14.    Ibid., p. 3.

15.    Ibid., before p. 1.

16.    Ibid., p. 113

17.    Ibid., p. 112.

18.    Ibid.

19.    Ibid., p. 74.

20.    Ibid., p. 112.

21.    Ibid., p. 123.

22.    Z Magazine, May 1989.

23.    W.C. Sheasby, A Brief History of Coalition: Third Parties and the Rocky Road to the White House (Sierra Madre, CA, 1996). Sheasby was a Green Party congressional candidate in California's twenty-seventh district.

24.    Press release issued by Workers and Oppressed Unite, dated May 2, 1976.

25.    "IWP Admits Snitching To FBI!" undated statement issued by the above group sometime shortly after May 5, 1976.

26.    King, "West Side 'Therapy Cult,'" p. 16.

27.    D. King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism (New York: Doubleday, 1989).

28.    King, "West Side 'Therapy Cult,'" p. 14.

29.    Ibid.

30.    Ibid., pp. 14-18.

31.    J. Finn, "Proof: Therapy Cultists Lied to Community," Heights and Valley News (New York), holiday season, 1977, p. 18.

32.    B. Shapiro, "Dr. Fulani's Snake-Oil Show," Nation, May 4, 1992, p. 586.

33.    Ibid., 587.

34.    Berlet, Clouds, p. 1.

35.    L. Fulani, Lenora s Political History, http://www.fulani.org.

36.    Sheasby, Brief, p. 4.

37.    B. Wittes, "Lenora and the Money-Go-Round," Washington City Paper (Washington, DC), July 8, 1994.

38.    Coming Up! (San Francisco), January 1989.

39.    Berlet, Clouds, p. 7.

40.    "Statement Issued by M. Ortiz" (Cult Awareness Network Meeting, New York, June 16, 1993).

41.    Shapiro, "Snake Oil," p. 592.

42.    A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International, 1957), pp. 118-125; G. Vacca, "Intellectuals and the Marxist State," in Approaches to Gramsci, ed. Anne Showstack Sassoon (London: Writers and Readers, 1982) pp. 63-67.

43.    Berlet, Clouds, p. 7.

44.    Ibid., p. 9.

45.    J. and T. R. Goldman Cohen, "Controversial Lobbyists Stirring Up Waco Fight," Legal Times (Washington, DC), May 2, 1994.

46.    "Never Again!" Village Voice (New York): November 5, 1995, p. 5.

47.    Shapiro, "Snake Oil," p. 587.

48.    D. King, letter to the editor, New York Times, August 13, 1992.

49.    Shapiro, "Snake Oil," p. 587.

50.    Sheasby, Brief History, p. 2.

51.    F. Bruni, "Perot and Populist Group See Benefits in an Alliance," New York Times, August 21, 1996.

52.    Fulani, History, p. 2.

53.    Bruni, "Perot."

54.    Ibid.

55.    R. Worthington, "Ex-Perot Stalwarts Establish New Party," Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1997.

56.    L. Fulani, The Democracy Slate, http://www.fulani.org.

57.    The Platform of the Independence Party of New York, http://www.fulani.org.

58.    Bruni, "Perot."

59.    Originally posted online circa February 1996 by the Committee for a Unified Independent Party. See http://www.publiceye.org.

60.    Buchanan, Fulani, Perot and the Reform Party, http://www.publiceye.org.

61.    Shapiro, "Buchanan."

62.    S. McCaffrey, "Lenora Fulani Endorses Buchanan," Associated Press, November 12, 1999.

63.    Ibid.

64.    "Reform Party Warming to Buchanan," Washington Post, September 20, 1999.

65.    J. Bennet, "The Cable Guys," New York Times Magazine, October 24, 1999, p. 79.

66.    T. Kingston, "The Seedy Side of the Rainbow," in Coming Up! (San Francisco), November 1988.

67.    See note 40.

68.    Wittes, "Money Go Round."

69.    Bruni, "Perot."

70.    Posted on the Internet at http://webpsych and at http://www.pond.com.

71.    Ross and Green, What Is the Cult Awareness Network and What Role Did It Play in Waco? (Washington, DC: WRS, 1993), p. 10.

72.    L. Fulani, We Must Stand Up for Democracy! (New York: Castillo Communications, May 23, 1993).

73.    M. Breault, and M. King, Inside the Cult (New York: Signet, 1993); B. Bailey and B. Darden, Mad Man in Waco (Waco, TX: WRS, 1993).

74.    Shapiro, "Buchanan," p. 22.

For more information, go to: http://www.timwohlforth.com/edge.html.

Black Folk, Reject Fulani and Buchanan! (1999)

2011-08-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

By Charles Barron
Black Radical Congress News, November 15, 1999

They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is getting ridiculous. Where ever you find rich white males in the political mix, you'll find Dr. Lenora Fulani. It doesn't matter if they are left, right, wrong or racist. She has pushed Fred Newman, Tom Galisano, Abe Herschfield, Ross Perot, and now arch racist conservative Pat Buchanan for President. I guess it's pragmatism over principles for Dr. Fulani. It matters not that these men have done nothing for the Black community and as for Buchanan, his repugnant, vile views are diametrically opposed to any radical, progressive or civil rights agenda we've ever had. Buchanan, a defender of the pre-civil war south, the good ol' days for racist white folk, a staunch supporter of Reaganomics, a supporter of closing borders and stopping immigrants of color from reuniting with their families, is considered by many a racist, fascist bigot.

Dr. Fulani, who has considered herself a progressive independent, has spent years criticizing Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton for delivering the Black vote to the Democratic Party, and now she has the nerve to try to deliver Black folk to a racist backward thinking political misfit like Pat Buchanan. This is madness!

Buchanan Coming to Harlem

According to an article in the Friday, November 12, 1999 edition of the New York Daily News, Dr. Fulani, in her endorsement of Buchanan's attempt to win the Reform Party nomination for the White House, stated that, "I'm going to take Pat Buchanan to 125th Street in Harlem. We're going to have lunch at Sylvia's, I'm going to take him to speak at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network." She further stated that, "he is not a racist or a fascist or a bigot. He is not a hater." Nothing can be further from the truth.

Beware of Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Black Folk! Harlem! Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing!! "Everything Black ain't really Black!" We must not allow Black leaders to peddle political views to us that will turn back the hands of time. I'll be the first to agree with Dr. Fulani that we need an alternative to the two party system of Democrats and Republicans, however, we don't want to go from the frying pan into the fire. Pat Buchanan and the Reform Party is not the answer. As Chairperson of the newly formed Black led multi-racial Unity Party, I firmly believe in independent radical politics. But how could you call yourself a progressive and support a regressive like Buchanan? Fortunately, I don't believe Black Folks are going to believe Fulani's hype on Buchanan. And fortunately, Dr. Fulani does not have much influence in the Black community. Lets stay politically vigilant and be critical analytical thinkers. When Buchanan comes to Harlem, lets hope he leaves with Dr. Fulani all by her lonesome and is not welcomed at the National Action Network's House of Justice. The House of Justice should not be contaminated with the stench of Buchanan. We should not give a platform to a man like Buchanan. Lest we forget, Buchanan was a columnist for Rupert Murdock's racist rage sheet called the New York Post. Anybody that Murdock gives a column to can't be for us. Buchanan regularly castigated Blacks and Latinos in his column. From affirmative action to welfare reform to supporting the Confederate flag, he has dissed us badly. This is war. We need not provide a forum for a man whose views are well known and clearly anti-Black and anti-Latino.

Support Reparations

The new millennium will usher in election years 2000 and 20001. Black leaders will be cutting all kinds of deals with white led parties and their white candidates. Unfortunately, these deals will gain only them access and favor with these parties and candidates. Nothing will trickle down to the "hood" and make life better for us folk on a grassroots level. Let's not give them our votes so easily. Let's be intelligent voters. Political candidates should be given a Black political litmus test. That test should start with this question. Will you support Reparations for people of African ancestry in America and the worldwide African diaspora? We certainly deserve it. Everybody else is getting paid for America's and Europe's "Crimes Against Humanity." Why not us!

In 1990, the USA paid Japanese Americans 1.2 billion dollars or $20,000 each for their containment in concentration camps during the WWII years, and the Congressional Black Caucus supported the Japanese. In 1952, Germany paid $822 million to Jewish holocaust survivors. America is paying the indigenous people, whose land they stole, millions in Reparations. No one deserves it more than they do. But why not us? We were enslaved from 1619 to 1863, the date of the so-called Emancipation Proclamation. That's 244 years of free labor for them and "pure-de-hell" for us. Then from 1863 to 1965, the date of Civil Rights legislation, represents 102 years of legal Jim Crow apartheid like racism. From 1965 to the present we still suffer from economic, political and social oppression. They owe us big time. Here's how they can pay us. How about no taxes for us to pay for the next 20 years? How about free education for our people from kindergarten to graduated school? How some land? How about a $50 billion down payment? That's for starters. They can take the $50 billion from the $260 billion bloated military budget, during this time of so-called peace. Where there's a will, there's a way. We certainly deserve it. No support for Reparations, no Black vote! Wouldn't it be great if we all united around that proposition? Congressman John Conyers and the Congressional Black Caucus has had a bill, HR40, stuck in Committee since 1989, on Reparations. Let's force Congress to deal with it. This is a serious "doable" issue.

We Need New Leadership

We should choose candidates based upon their positions on issues, not because a self-proclaimed Black leader is promoting and parading them among us. From supporting the KKK's right to march, to supporting Pat Buchanan for President and providing a forum for him in Harlem, Black leaders mut not be allowed to continue to confuse the masses.

We need new leadership, principled-centered, visionary, radical progressive leadership that supports the people over the party, principles over opportunistic egocentric pragmatism, that is honest, trustworthy and does not compromise the integrity and intelligence of the Black community. Let's bring back "Power to the People." Black folk, in the name of Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., reject Pat Buchanan and Dr. Lenora Fulani for her political hypocrisy. Let's keep it real, and remember, "the struggle may be long, but our victory is certain."

Charles Barron is the President and CEO of Dynamics of Leadership, Inc., a national leadership training firm and Chairperson of the Unity Party.

Fred Newman: "Communism is Dead, I Killed It!"

2011-08-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Destruction of the International Workers Party (IWP)
By Lumpen Thunder and the AK-47s (William Pleasant, 1993)

The IWP was the premiere political combat organization in the U.S. from 1984 thru 1990. It achieved a relatively fused relationship with the lower-strata and working class elements of the Black, Latino and gay communities through its electoral political tactic; [the] New Alliance Party. In a like manner, the IWP succeeded in building a primarily white, petit-bourgeois (political and financial) base organization in support of its working class tactics; this was the Rainbow Lobby. The party organ, The National Alliance newspaper was read throughout the U.S. by tens of thousands of people weekly. It became the radical paper of note, particularly in the Black community. Moreover, the party's cultural work gained international recognition. The IWP was seen as a leader in the debate over the relationship of culture to politics. The success of the IWP attracted scores of young leftists, though it was immediately clear that the party had many serious internal flaws. They were generally overlooked or seen as incomplete organizational development, i.e., in time they would work themselves out.

These achievements must be noted in order to deeply appreciate what has happened to the IWP. For all practical. purposes, the party has been systematically liquidated as a political combat organization and its financial resources looted by Fred Newman and his followers--from here on referred to as The Cult. The International Workers Party no longer exists. It has been replaced by The Cult and brainwashed periphery., led and exploited by Newman.

Newman's destruction of the IWP began in August 1989. It was completed by January 1993. This paper will, explore the ways in which the IWP was sold out, and in the process shed some light on Newman's real motivations. Newman's liquidation of the IWP must be understood as an attack on the working class and Marxism-Leninism. It was fundamentally anti-communist. In the act of destroying the IWP, Newman effectively politically disarmed working and oppressed peoples in the U.S. and beyond. He has carried out his betrayal at a time when people are crying out for opposition organizations and politics, and also at a time when the right and the neo-fascist tendencies are consolidating and growing around the world. Fred Newman is now a political criminal.

What follows will be an analysis of the various IWP tactics (NAP, Rainbow Lobby and ublications/Culture) and the ways in which Newman liquidated them.

FRED NEWMAN: COMRADE DICTATOR

In order to understand how Newman could get away with his heist, it is necessary to review the nature and structure of the IWP. There was really no way that Newman could have been stopped without bloodshed.

The IWP was an underground Marxist-Leninist combat organization. It was a communist party with the mission of overthrowing the bourgeois state and establishing a socialist order. It was founded in 1975, in New York City by Fred Newman and his Cult (40 therapy patients) along with dissident members of Sam Marcy's Workers World Party. The IWP existed above-ground until 1976 when Newman moved to base the party structure on a secret cell model. Party meetings and business were conducted covertly. Likewise, internal political communication between cadre was managed on a "need-to-know" basis. In short, rank-and-file party members only knew what Newman and The Cult wanted them to know about party policy, finances and political strategy. Newman had a monopoly on setting policy, distributing financial resources and assigning jobs to party members. His decrees were dutifully communicated to the membership by a body known as the Secretariat, the cell leaders. They collected party dues and doled out internal communications--usually a notice of who had joined or quit the IWP, The Secretariat was composed of the more rabidly pro-Newman and politically underdeveloped cadre. Generally, they are not members of the inner-core, The Cult.

In some respects, there were actually two IWPs, or more aptly, there was Newman's Cult and a body of genuine political activists who believed that they were actually members of a communist party. They were fond of referring to non-party supporters as "the periphery," while, ironically, they themselves were the periphery of their own political party! The only people who were really "in" were Newman and his Cult. Everyone else was simply a disposable worker or trophy.

In a political organization of the IWP's type, the power of the top leadership is always regulated by the Central Committee. The CC is supposed to represent the various social constituencies and political trends that exist within the party. No such body existed within the IWP.

The IWP had a Central Committee mainly composed of The Cult and a handful of genuine activists. The Central Committee was a rubber-stamp body for Newman's ideological meanderings. Seating on the CC was totally controlled by Newman. Though on rare occasions, rank-and-file members made nominations of their number to the CC, Newman simply picked and chose who he would allow to be elected. Central Committee elections were conducted at the party's plenum, held in secret until 1991. The election amounted to little more than the unanimous vote for Newman's slate. Election (selection) to the CC was purely honorific, a reward for donating large sums of money, slavish obedience to Newman or a ploy to further organize for-the-moment valuable leftists. The CC had no power to override Newman's decrees. Central Committee meetings--held increasingly infrequently after 1989--tended to be day-long lectures by Newman, punctuated by questions from the floor designed to support Newman. There was no political debate, nor was debate tolerated. Any CC member who dared to cross Newman was immediately attacked by The Cult and its supporters as oppositional, sexist, competitive with Fred, anti-Semitic, etc., ad nauseum.

The IWP has a constitution, but not only is it a "secret" document--99% of the cadre have never heard of it--but it is also constantly violated by Newman whenever the spirit moves him. The IWP was ruled by a single dictator, Fred Newman. Like the CC, project organizations like NAP and Castillo Center were operated in the same manner, except Newman's oracles were delivered by his flunkies or members of The Cult. Newman was absolutely unaccountable to the membership and "leadership" of the IWP.

This made it possible for Newman to liquidate the party without any public debate among the membership. The act was simply a product of his all-powerful will. It was a fait accompli.

NEWMAN'S EUROPEAN LIE

Many IWP members believe that Newman's decision to destroy the party developed in the summer of 1989. At that time, he slipped out of the country with his new bride, Gabrielle Kurlander--the wife of National Alliance staffer David Nackman--in the company of NA Executive Editor Jackie Salit and Castillo Center activist [name deleted]--a former member of the Greek Communist Party and a major Newman contributor.

At the same time, Newman ordered William Pleasant--NA Senior Editor--and [name deleted]--an Austrian IWP member and Castillo activist--to go to Europe and arrange a series of meetings between Newman and European leftists. They were told by Salit that their mission was so secret that the IWP could not finance the trip. They were commanded to raise funds from the so-called periphery under the guise of a recruiting trip for artist to participate in the so-called FESTIVAL OF REVOLUTION; Castillo Center s inaugural season at its 500 Greenwich St. location. Pleasant and [name deleted], with great difficulty, raised the funds and went to Europe. There they arranged a series of meetings with leftists in Austria, Germany, East Germany, France and Belgium.

While in Europe, there was never any direct communication between Newman and Pleasant and [name deleted]. Pleasant and [name deleted] had to literally telephone NYC and then wait for a call from Newman or one of his entourage. Nonetheless, the meetings were arranged. Newman appeared in Vienna, Austria for ONLY ONE OF THE MEETINGS--June 8th, 1989.

The next stop after Vienna would have been East Berlin for a meeting with cultural and political leaders involved in the growing communist opposition to the Stalinist Eric Honnecker regime. Newman refused to leave Vienna, claiming that he was too ill to travel to Berlin by car--the motorcade was painstakingly arranged under Newman's orders, because he was deathly afraid of flying. [name deleted] and Pleasant went to Berlin and made excuses for Newman, under the expressed instructions that Newman would soon arrive after he overcame his minor illness. Newman never arrived! Instead, Salit and [name deleted] came into town with no explanation. They attempted to cover for Newman in the Berlin meetings. This was a major sabotage of the work that [name deleted] and Pleasant did in East and West Germany to promote the IWP and Newman's political line. We lost our credibility.

Salit and [name deleted] exited Berlin as mysteriously as they had arrived. Pleasant and [name deleted] never received another order from Newman to move forward with the program. He had vanished, and they were stranded in Berlin with dwindling funds. (Pleasant survived in Berlin only because he was taken in by a sympathetic renegade STASSI agent.) The series of meetings in France and Belgium collapsed. [name deleted] returned to her home in Vienna.

Pleasant remained in Berlin waiting for a telephone call from Newman. The call never came. Instead, Peasant's wife, [name deleted]--an Iranian IWP member and Castillo activist--called to tell him that Newman was not in Europe at all, but back in NYC demanding that the membership of the IWP "want" him in the way that his new girlfriend, Kurlander (age 24) wanted him. His decree was based upon his experience in Europe and his many meetings with European leftists. They had convinced him that "Communism Was Dead."

Newman's introduction to the European Left had taken place on a single evening in [name deleted]'s mother's Viennese living room. On his Athens honeymoon, he had stood in the antechamber of the Greek Communist Party, urging it to form an alliance with the right-wing to oust the Social Dem Popandreou regime. The rightist eventually accomplished that without the CP and initiated a campaign of purging all leftists from the government! Another brilliant political strategy from the brow of Newman--eh?

In short, Newman lied about the content of his European trip. He did no political work in Europe. The trip was simply a wedding trip financed by the IWP treasury to the tune of more than $30,000! That money was spent on 5-star hotels, cruise ship fares, a Mercedes Benz and the other incidental accessories of an upper-class white man on tour with his new bride. Meanwhile, Pleasant and [name deleted] slept on the floors of IWP supporters and scrounged for lunch money. At one point in Berlin, they resorted to outright thievery to survive, as they waited for a call from Fred.

When Pleasant and [name deleted] cornered Newman back in NYC and demanded an explanation of his betrayal In Europe, he whined that he couldn't leave Vienna because Kurlander was afflicted with an ectopic pregnancy, and he had to rush her back to NYC. Newman remained in Vienna for at least four days after Pleasant and [name deleted] left for Berlin. Also, an ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening situation, requiring immediate medical attention.

Upon hearing Newman's excuse for leaving her high and dry, [name deleted] became very upset because (1) Newman had lied to [name deleted] and Pleasant in the first place; and (2) if Kurlander had been really ill, then she had access to the best medical facilities in the world in Vienna. Moreover, given that [name deleted]'s father had been the equivalent to the President of the AMA in Austria, Kurlander's treatment would have been even better and more or less free! Newman had no explanation for his moves. [Name deleted] resigned from the IWP in October 1989.

Newman's so-called trip to Europe was a farce. It amounted to little more than a pleasure cruise. There were no high-level meetings with the Left. [Name deleted] and Pleasant were employed as political covers to divert the criticisms of IWP militants who would have raised some objections to Newman's lavish honeymoon. When Newman returned to NYC, he complained that he felt discomfort in Europe as a Jew. Maybe that was true, but he was ultimately a white man in a Mercedes Benz, with a group of other white people, with a pocket full of money! Pleasant was arrested and body-searched twice in West Germany!

Newman's discomfort made the headlines of The National Alliance, Pleasant--a Black communist--had a nervous breakdown!

"WANT FRED, WANT THE REVOLUTION!"

Newman returned to NYC demanding that the cadre of the IWP want him. He declared that he was the last hope of the revolution on earth. The demand was that all revolutionary politics be located in him and him alone. The IWP, euphemistically termed the "Organization" was replaced with the "Tendency." Newman decreed that he was the leader and sole repository of the Tendency. He threatened that if his primacy was not recognized, then he would "leave" with his new girlfriend--i.e., he and The Cult would exit with the bank accounts. He also threatened anyone who would think about attacking his new bride. Everyone was ordered to worship Newman's relationship with "Rie" or get out.

Lawfully, a number of female cadre had a reaction to the fact that Newman had promoted Kurlander to virtual co-chairman simply because she had had sex with him. Kurlander, a political unsophisticate and a mediocre administrative aide to the 1988 Fulani Presidential campaign was viewed as no more than a gold-digging whore. Her motis-operandi had always been to exchange sex for status in the IWP; she had always been in search of the "powerful man" in the organization who would punch her ticket out of the drudge work. Like a warming bottle of beer, she had been passed around by the high status males in the IWP. Newman, an aging man, was captivated by the white, middle-class nymphet, though he already lorded over a harem of three women, including Hazel Daren, his ostensible first follower. Kurlander's husband, David Nackman, was a grunt. When Newman took Kurlander as a bride, Nackman was rewarded with high status and seat on the CC. He was paid off.

Daren, an emotional wreck who rejected Newman's Social Therapy to the extent that she sought counseling from a Greenwich Village shrink, was organized by Newman to provide the feminist cover to his pimp action. Daren authored the "Clubs of Sexism," an attack on the IWP's lesbian and male-dominated factions, who knew a whore when they saw one. Suddenly, Daren became the spokeswoman of lower-status females. It must be said that Daren had always occupied the location as Newman's queen bee. She had never related to other women except as her inferiors. Her status and privilege--vis-à-vis other IWP females--was secure for no other reason than she had the goods on Newman. But the inclusion of Kurlander into the harem, a woman who had "paid no dues whatsoever" further undermined Daren.

In response and in support of her lover Newman, she launched a campaign that defined all IWP women as Kurlanders, i.e., outside women who were kept on the fringes by male "rapists" and lesbian/middle-class women. Their only salvation could be in "Wanting Fred," meaning that they could make candidacy for The Cult by virtue of their sexual attraction to Newman. Newman was defined as a sort of god, who had "developed" beyond sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. He was "more than a man." The lesbian faction of the IWP was destroyed by this. Freda Rosen, its chief spokeswoman was driven out of the National Alliance. Her sex advice column was killed and she was forced to acknowledge Newman--an ultra-straight, white, middle-aged male--as the authority on sexual liberation.

In a like manner, the Black and Latino male IWP members and their supporters were branded as sexist and anti-Semitic, because they had profound reactions to the "New Order." Men, particularly men of color, were branded as rapists. Newman became obsessed with Black and Latino men who were abusing--"raping"--young Jewish women in the organization. Needless to say, there were only a handful of Black and Latino male heterosexuals in the IWP at any point in its development. Interracial relationships were actually attacked in the IWP, because non-white males tended to be an oppositional faction to Newman and they challenged him for the allegiance of white females who provided the moneymaking labor for The Cult! Black male/Jewish female relationships were very rare in the organization. Newman was really obsessed with who had been the "niggers" who had screwed Kurlander. There had actually been many in her search for a political sugar daddy.

An atmosphere of terror developed in all IWP projects. Meetings were called in which members were routinely denounced by Newman's new stooges, i.e., politically backwards women who proclaimed their "wanting" of Newman and his concubine. Physical attacks on oppositional members were also common. Declaring that sexism arose from the fact that men, particularly men of color, were "big and intimidating," goon squads of white males were formed to support the new women's leadership. Pleasant was attacked in this manger, so was NA photography editors [names deleted]. They walked away from the party as a result. Similar episodes happened in other projects.

At one memorable Castillo Center meeting (August 1989), Newman commanded that everyone sit in silence as his harem--Kurlander, Daren, Deborah Green--and Dr. Lenora Fulani give a lesson on "how to want Fred." As Newman and his girlfriends sat in silence, Fulani confessed to being anti-Semitic, and not "wanting" Newman and Kurlander. She was guilty of high crimes against Newman--the revolution. In short, she humiliated herself. When some IWP cadre attempted to question Newman at this meeting, they were screamed into silence by Newman and his goons. Fulani, the most successful and most respected IWP activist, was effectively overthrown, and the last pocket of possible opposition destroyed. What followed was the I WANT FRED FEST--Castillo Center's Festival of Revolution.

The Festival of Revolution was the brainchild of Pleasant and [name deleted]. It was envisioned as an international arts project featuring the works of cultural activists from around the world in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. The tactic was designed to locate Castillo in the international. Pleasant and [name deleted] had managed to get the program adopted as an official celebration by the French Government. In the name of the Tendency "taking over," Newman threw out [name deleted] and Pleasant as the leaders of the festival and installed his chief stooge Emmy Gay, the new director of Castillo Center.

Gay, a failed actress and political imbecile became Newman's willing tool. Like Kurlander, she had been promoted by virtue of her passionate "wanting" and nothing more. Newman then proceeded to turn the festival into a showcase for his "message," i.e., communism is dead, Jews are dead and he is the messiah to save the genocide-bound darker folks. Castillo Center activists were worked into a frenzy of fundraising. The workable fund raising campaign designed by [name deleted] and Pleasant almost six months before the October 1989 festival was dumped by Newman. He intentionally created a funding crisis for the festival. It was his way of further breaking the back of the remaining opposition. People were simply being worked into a stupor.

Newman convinced them that his self-promoting plays and bad paintings were the revolution. The festival was transformed into a sort of Newman showcase. What resulted was a barbaric production model and a hostile environment in which the international participants in the festival were effectively disorganized. The festival was a flop in terms of its original goals, but it was a stunning victory for Newman. From that point on, he was enthroned at Castillo Center.

What had been envisioned as a Marxist cultural facility was now a sort of high temple dedicated to Newman and his bad tastes. All pretense to a collective leadership at the Center was dropped. Newman ruled supreme. Arrogantly, Newman urged that IWP members write letters to him. Taking their cue from Kurlander's published love poems to her new benefactor, IWP cadre began to write love poems to Newman. This was one of most sickening episodes in the whole period. Meanwhile, with his purge accomplished, Newman dumped Daren's "Clubs of Sexism" line. The grunts had been given the license to attack their project leaders--people who tended to be suspicious or opposed to Newman and his new orders with the leaders whipped into line or replaced by flunkies, criticism could no longer be tolerated. Former cadre were unceremoniously put back in their place.

In the summer of 1989, the stage was set in this way for the liquidation of the IWP as a communist party. The question remains that, given the success of the party, why would Newman move to destroy it? The collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe didn't mark the end of communism. Moreover, the IWP's vision of revolution had never been based upon a tactical nor strategic relationship to Moscow-led socialism. We never counted on them to support us. Trotsky had predicted 50 years ago, that the Stalinists would fall and be replaced by right-wing nationalist/capitalists, if a non-revisionist communist movement didn't overthrow them first. That's exactly what happened. There was no crisis in that for the IWP.

There are at least three current explanations for why Newman made the break in 1989. One assumes that Newman was in fact a Marxist-Leninist who lost his nerve. Others believe that Newman was approached by the State and coerced into destroying the IWP. Finally, one school of thought holds that Newman was never a Marxist-Leninist, but simply a cult leader who used leftist politics as a marketing strategy for building his cult.

What is clear is that Newman's 1989 declaration that he was the red messiah in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism was in fact his final ideological break with Marxism-Leninism. It was a fundamentally anti-communist statement. Scientific socialism is not a messianic movement, but an application of political principles, tactics and strategies to the task of building a communist order. There are no saviors in communism, there is only history and the will of the working class to transform it. At some point in 1989, Newman ceased to be a revolutionary, he chickened out. He came to reject revolution as a possibility or a desirable solution to class oppression. Newman simply substituted his ego for political principle. The IWP became merely a tool for the gratification of that ego. The stage had been set for Newman to "take his shot." Unfortunately, his shot had nothing to do with communism or revolution, and everything to do with aggrandizing himself and The Cult. A communist combat organization was not necessary to accomplish that goal, hence, the IWP was liquidated.

THE ROTTING CORPSE

With the IWP destroyed as a communist party, Newman set out to convert the party's more successful political projects into businesses that would provide hefty incomes for he and The Cult. Communist revolution can't be marketed for the simple reason that at some point the salesman has to produce the product. And that would definitely be bad for the business environment. For that reason, Newman had to depoliticize his holdings. Newman was faced with two problems: (1) how to maintain the husk of the IWP with its corps of highly motivated activist willing to work long hours for next to no pay? They had been told that they were working for a revolution, but Newman was no longer interested in that; and (2) how to take his little company into the mainstream of American business?

Newman answered the first question by eliminating communists from the IWP. That process began in August 1989 and is near completion in 1993. Along with the purge, Newman began to construct a new ideology around himself as the leader of a "humanistic" movement. This movement was based on a rejection of the leadership of the proletariat. Revolution was supplanted with a call for more bourgeois democracy! Newman reasoned that the inclusion of the oppressed in the institution of bourgeois democracy would in some way mark the beginning of the millennium. Electoral politics would be the means through which the working class would achieve it historical mission of making the policy for the bourgeois state. As silly as this sounds, it was a very successful ploy.

Given that the cadre who remained in the dead IWP were usually of such low political caliber and were actually discouraged from seeking Marxist training besides Newman's new catechism, Newman easily got away with creating a virtual ideology for a virtual revolution. The IWP's successful electoral political project was turned on its ear. What had been a combat tactic for disrupting the New Deal Coalition of the Democratic Party and the construction of a leftist mass party in its ashes, was stripped of its class content and declared a strategy. This produced nonsense slogans like "Democratize Democracy." The only reason why Newman bothered with the ideology at all was to string along what was left of the IWP which, though moribund, still harbored some shards of class political sentiments. His objective was never to make a genuine theoretical advance on the electoral tactic, but only to make it marketable. Who would turn down a chance to buy democracy if its packaged right?

With democracy wrapped in red-white-and-blue class-neutral ribbons, Newman set out to use the New Alliance Party as his sales team. NAP had been reeling since 1989. Though the party's base of support had grown almost ten-fold since its 1984 Presidential campaign, Newman decreed that the national apparatus of NAP be gutted. Party offices were closed and the personnel ordered to NYC for "training." NAP literally disappeared across the country. It's organizers were "redeployed" as fundraisers in the NYC area. The money that they raised went into Newman's personal slush fund, never into building the party structure, even in NYC, Though the party's activists worked day and night canvassing, they never seemed to have enough funds to pay their office rent and telephone bills. NAP organizers were among the most personally impoverished in the IWP.

At the same time, NAP was switched from a combat formation into a coalitional organization. This was a recipe for disaster from the start. It ceased to do grassroots organizing in the Black and Latino communities. Fulani, the leader of the project, was recreated as a Black nationalist leader and ordered to tail any Black activist who would return her phone calls. Meanwhile, Newman sought out headlines by attempting to latch on to every cause celebre he could find, from Larry Davis to Yusef Hawkins. In the case of Davis, NAP was kicked out of the coalition because it refused to allow the Black community supporters to manage the money that was raised in support of the case. This led to the suspicions that Newman was simply using the case as a fundraising ploy. The suspicion was well-grounded. In respect to Yusef Hawkins, Newman managed to buy out Moses Stewart, Hawkins' father. Stewart, a crack-head, became alarmed when he recognized that Newman was using his son's death as a marketing ploy for not only a video tape, but also the Rainbow Lobby. He demanded a bigger share of the action and ended his "relationship" to Newman with a crowbar-wielding rampage through Castillo Center.

This type of strategy inevitably led to Newman's alliance with the hustler Al Sharpton. A shrewd entertainment shark and admitted FBI informer, Sharpton peeped Newman's game from the outset. He saw Newman as a liberal-talking, white businessman attempting to muscle in on the outrage concession. Sharpton reasoned that since Newman was politically bankrupt enough to have to seek out his patronage--Sharpton had nothing going for him but his notorious mouth--then Newman would pay dearly for even the smallest crumbs of an endorsement. Newman believed that "Sharpton would give Fulani (him) legitimacy in the Black community."

Sharpton was determined to give Fulani and Newman as little as possible for as much money as he could get for his troubles. Newman courted Sharpton with abandon, supplying demonstrators for his street actions, chartering buses for Sharpton, even supplying him with a column in the National Alliance. Sharpton wisely kept his distance and cashed the checks. All the while, Newman trumpeted his love for Sharpton in every issue of the NA. He even went as far as to declare a fusion between NAP and Sharpton's United African Movement. The problem was that UAM forbade white people in its meetings and NAP was a multi-racial party! But that didn't faze Newman.

The story of the Newman-Sharpton tryst is well-known by many, so further description is not necessary to the thrust of this paper. But the Sharpton-Newman alliance was the first clear-cut example of the new NAP strategy for self liquidation. The expression of its political bankruptcy was manifest in the 1989 NYC mayoral race and the 1990 NY State gubernatorial campaign.

In 1989, Fulani courted David Dinkins, going as far as to collect nominating petition signatures for him. (Dinkins repaid her by publicly repudiating Fulani's support.) She then began a dogging Dinkins campaign, showing up at his events with a handful of IWP cadre employed as hecklers. This politically impotent gesture not only failed to capture any headlines, but it failed to generate any grassroots political support. After the primary, though she was on the ballot as an independent, Fulani liquidated her campaign and supported Dinkins. The idiocy of these tactics is self-apparent.

NAP was supposed to be an opposition leftist party. It was supposed to attack both Dinkins and the Republican Giuliani! That's why the party received support from the Black and Latino communities. These people actually wanted to vote for communist candidates! The status of the party would have gone through the ceiling if Fulani had cost Dinkins the election. Only a few thousand votes separated him from the Republican. If Fulani had campaigned and received as few as 30,000 votes, then she would have made history. But Newman didn't want to make history, he wanted to make money!

The 1990 gubernatorial campaign was an even bigger fiasco. Under the slogan of "Youth And Democracy," IWP canvassers raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars--dwarfing the resources that had been available for Fulani's 1986 bid for ballot status. With Sharpton in tow and a useless endorsement from Louis Farrakhan, Newman set out a strategy based on harnessing the Black community for the 50,000 votes needed for ballot status.

He went so far as to deep-six Fulani's Puerto Rican running mate Yvonne Vasquez! The only problem with that strategy was that NAP's electoral base included the Latino community. No effort was made to get Latino votes. This slight oversight cost Fulani ballot status in 1990. But the 1990 gubernatorial was also a harbinger of things to come. It was the first time that a campaign was used primarily as a fundraising tactic. A small fraction (15% to 20%) of the money collected ever went into the Fulani campaign. The rest went into Newman's coffers. Meanwhile, NAP's local candidates went virtually penniless. The combination of the 1989 and 1990 campaigns effectively crushed NAP's political credibility in NYC:

The corruption of Fulani's 1992 Presidential campaign has been well documented in M. Ortiz's series in the New York Planet (See "Parasites In Drag"). Needless to say, the campaign was a smoke and mirrors trick. Newman pocketed over four million dollars! And the working class responded to Newman's arrogant contempt by walking away from Fulani at the polls.

At the end of 1992, the New Alliance Party lay in ruins, destroyed by Newman. By changing the strategy of the party, Newman broke its back. NAP was never meant to be a coalitional formation. It's a working-class oppositional organization. To ally with the Democratic Party at any point destroyed the party's raison de^tre. To fuse with Sharpton or Farrakhan--in his case, there wasn't much to fuse with--also obliterated the class content of the party. Working class means all oppressed peoples. Communists organize and lead the working class! We are not nationalists nor separatists, yet Newman put the IWP in the stupid position of trying to sell nationalists and separatists to its base, a pro-communist base!

It is apparent that Newman is no longer interested in base building. He is, in fact, interested in market building. Political principles simply get in the way of that activity. The demise of the Rainbow Lobby is a good example of the "new politics" in action. The Rainbow Lobby was the most successful tactic. It produced a financial and political support base of well over 200,000 people. The Marxist-Leninist objective of the Rainbow Lobby was to build a support network among the primarily white middle class for the IWP's other more overtly pro-working class tactics. It was also designed to establish the IWP as a player in the legislative arena. Later on, Rainbow Lobby also took on the job as the liaison between the IWP and the international left. Rainbow Lobby was a living expression of Lenin's command to go out and organize all strata of society for the revolution.

The Rainbow Lobby turned out to be Newman's cash cow. Day in and day out IWP militants went door to door enrolling people into the Rainbow Lobby. Millions of person-hours were spent on the project. Canvassers worked for peanuts and literally starved when they failed to meet their fundraising quotas. Meanwhile, the leadership of the Lobby lived high on the hog.

Yet it became clear over time that Newman had no intention of allowing the Lobby to be effective. From the AIDS Bill of Rights to the Indian Treaty Rights to Fair Elections legislation, he commanded the Rainbow Lobby to flip and flop. It failed at every turn to deliver the legislation that its constituency supported.

On the international front, the Rainbow Lobby was never politically equipped to deal with revolutionary forces. Stupidly, Newman instructed the leadership to sell his democracy canard to people who were involved in armed insurrections! Contacts with the FSLN, FMLN, POLISARIO, Cuba, Algeria, Libya, etc., were sabotaged by Newman. In revolutionary political circles, Rainbow Lobby was looked upon with suspicion, as a possible front of the CIA.

Newman's love affair with the Zairian butcher Etienne Tshishekedi drove a stake through the heart of IWP's credibility in the international arena. Tshishekedi had been a CIA operative since the early 1960s. He was one of the plotters in the assassination of Lumumba. He was Mobutu's Minister of Interior and Justice Minister, meaning that he orchestrated the murders of thousands of Congolese communists and progressives. That fact was not lost on the International Left, nor on the Congolese people. But Newman, recognizing that Tshishekedi was the State Department's boy to replace Mobutu, jumped on his coattails in hope of winning a lucrative foreign agent contract with the next Zairian dictator. Of course, Tshishekedi and the State Department already had their PR men picked out. Newman's Tshishekedi game was carried out at the expense of support for the armed Congolese left!

The Rainbow Lobby was literally run into the dirt as a communist tactic. In January 1993, it was liquidated and transformed into a business for the aggrandizement of Deborah Green and Nancy Ross, two members of The Cult. Newman no longer needed middle-class support for communism, since he was no longer a communist. Poor IWP militants had slaved for seven years across the U.S. to now supply Newman with a database for direct marketing and for sale to other businesses. They got nothing, just as poor and oppressed people got nothing in the end.

LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD

The destruction of the IWP, as flawed as it was, stands as a vicious crime against the oppressed and the progressive movement in the U.S. There will be justice for Newman. The question is where do we go from here?

Attempts to reanimate the IWP are doomed to failure. There is a lawful tendency to want to rescue the many good friends and comrades who remain tied to the rotting corpse of the IWP. But we must take into consideration the political and emotional flaws in these people that keep them under Newman's spell. Politically speaking, many of them have simply given up on class politics. They have sacrificed everything for the party--marriages, health, jobs, bank accounts, children, etc., and they have powerlessly watched Newman tear up the red flag that they believed in. They, like many of us, also believed in Newman as a genuine Marxist. There has been a double betrayal, and the response of many of the remaining IWP has been one of cynicism and quiet mourning. They have made their peace with the bourgeoisie. They can no longer be politically motivated, they only respond to Newman's psychological and financial coercion. They are defeated, dependent slaves.

Emotionally, these folks are balls of rage. They are furious at Newman, but completely cowered by his manipulative skills. They can't bite the hand that feeds them. Their outlet for anger tends to be self-destructive behaviors like alcoholism and drug abuse, degrading sex and self humiliation. It is not likely that they can even hear someone tell them that they have, for all practical purposes, squandered their youths and idealism on a money-grubbing swine. They are terrified by the prospect that in order to carry on with their political lives--if they may even chose to do that--requires that they start over from scratch. There is probably no way to convince them that they need to cut their losses and get away from the clutches of The Cult. There are old people in the CPUSA who recognized that their party had sold out 50 years ago, but they remained. They lived with the pain and the hope that somehow things could be turned around. Eventually, that way of living became an unbreakable habit. Meanwhile, the world simply passed them by. That is the fate of most of our dear comrades and worse, Newman will dump them altogether in the near future. They will have nothing, except their bitterness.

If we are successful in carrying out our future political projects, then some of our comrades will come out and join us. Some of them will just come out. Even that would be a powerful progressive statement about the humanity and intelligence of our people.

A TENDENCY TOWARD MEGALOMANIA

Newman is fond of describing himself as the "organizer of organizers." Many decent, well-meaning, but initially nonpolitical people looked up to him and followed him. Likewise, he was able to draw a number of dedicated Marxists-Leninists into his circle, as well as grassroots community organizers. In many respects, the cadre of the IWP were among the best educated and most competent grouping of political activists in the U.S. Fools were few and far between. As a rule, IWP cadre sacrificed everything for the party--jobs, families, children, money, etc.

Yet, the practice and structure of the party prohibited these people from politically developing, so much so that they had no power to stop Newman's mad dash to destroy the organization. They were unable to conceive of the party without the very man who was methodically running the IWP into the dirt before their eyes! Did they lose their critical faculties? Were they brainwashed? Were they simply psychotic?

The answer to these questions is YES, but the reason why it is yes has very little to do with psychology [or] some collective innate personality flaw. The cadre of IWP were brainwashed, rendered infantile and driven mad through a sophisticated process carried out by Newman. He "produced" the IWP and the consciousnesses of its members. And that consciousness was a direct product of the nature of the practice and structure of an evolving cult.

The IWP was not a cult, but a political organization that was designed to become a cult, with Newman as its master. This position is in opposition of other analysts who believe that the party always was a cult, that Newman used the political aspects of the organization's activity as a vehicle to expand his social influence and fund his lifestyle. This, of course, implies that the cadre of the IWP were simply duped by Newman.

Indeed, Newman is a manipulative liar. But to say that almost 300 people were tricked by their ostensible leader avoids the fact that they also consciously participated in the sham. They knew that they were being b.s.'ed. Moreover, the more outrageous Newman's lies and corruption became, the more they clung to him, emotionally and politically! The evolution of the IWP into a cult had effectively stripped away their capacities to make sense of the world. This was convenient because they no longer lived in the world. They lived in their devotion and labor for Newman.

As Newman's rantings and political opportunism became increasingly rejected by not only other progressive people, but regular people in the streets, the IWP cadre became more and more isolated in a sort of virtual world created and controlled by Newman. In NEWMANWORLD, all of their needs--sex, money, friendship, sense of relevance--were taken care of. And those needs that were not satisfied were simply dismissed as "oppositional to the Tendency" and/ or the product of "political underdevelopment." Newman always determined what was good for the Tendency, i.e., himself, and what was politically developed.

Newman founded the IWP because he wanted a bigger and better cult than the one that he initially created at City College in 1968. He had tried several other ways to get to messiah status--If ... Then..., sex, CFC, LaRouche, Social Therapy, etc. Newman's vision of power has always been patently nonpolitical. It is grounded in his notion that people are moved by the exercise of his singular will--expressed through the appropriately manipulative technique, of course. Like Wittgenstein's questioner who asks, "Do I create the world when I open my eyes and destroy it when I close them to sleep?," Newman envisions himself as the maker and breaker of worlds for his followers. Newman never wanted a revolution or socialism--he identified himself as the revolution and the working class, the object of labor and adoration. And after all, he had already arrived! He wanted a cult. He wanted a grouping who would satisfy his TENDENCY TOWARD MEGALOMANIA, his need to feel attractive and potent. And he was willing to get it by any means necessary. The IWP was simply the high quality putty out of which he would carefully fashion his new and improved cult.

TO LOSE ONESELF; TO FIND FRED

The vast majority of members of the IWP started off as reasonable and reflective people. Yet, they were transformed by their experience in the party to become unquestioning drones in service to Newman's fancy. How could that have happened? Some writers claim that Social Therapy was the means through which people were brainwashed. Indeed, Social Therapy is a brainwashing technique, as are most forms of existential group therapy currently practiced. But Social Therapy was not the only means through which cultists were made. It had two very limited roles in Newman's program. Firstly, Social Therapy was designed to normalize the negative reactions that IWP members were having to their lousy working conditions and degraded lifestyles, created by Newman. Cadre members were regularly urged to enroll in Social Therapy groups. It was sold as a way in which they would be "politically developed." They were also forced to pay for their therapy from their scandalously low salaries. It was the way that Newman fleeced them again. (More on that topic later.)

Social Therapy sessions were places where political revolt was crushed by a process of manipulation. The therapist (leader, usually a member of Newman's inner circle) "pushes" individual patients to expose their feelings. If those feelings are oppositional, i.e., call into question the righteousness of Social Therapy or the NEWMANWORLD, then the therapist leads the other members to support him/her in attacking the rebel. Since the therapist is familiar with the histories of the patients, then she/he can easily attack the vulnerabilities of the rebel.

For example: A group member voices that she is feeling guilty about t the fact that she is not spending enough time with her child. But of course, spending time with a child is time not spent serving Newman. That's a no-no! In response, the therapist charges that the woman is organized by motherhood and not the Tendency. Motherhood is bourgeois! Her relationship with her child has to be organized around supporting her very, very important "political" work. The therapist will then employ the rest of the group in the attack on the rebel, who proceed to "kick her ass" around not supporting the therapist's position. Fearing ostracism from the group, the rebel capitulates. She has "gotten some help" with her "emotional issues." In short, her objections to how her time is being used by Newman are silenced. Social therapy was critical to Newman's need to uncover opposition in the IWP and to smash it.

Secondly, Social Therapy was an effective con game on the white middle class. Its patients forked over massive amounts of money to get help with their emotional problems. The master therapist, Newman--he has no training in psychotherapy whatsoever, not to mention simple counseling--cultivated a following of patients whom he milked for money with abandon. Usually upper-middle-class, middle-aged women, Newman charmed them blind with a combination of sexual seduction and declarations of the obvious.

There is a rather comical report that one well-heeled patient complained that she was feeling depressed in a therapy session. In response, Newman flew into a rage and told the woman that after 15 years of his therapy, she was saying and feeling "the same old shit since you first walked in the door!" Realizing that he had just indicted Social Therapy as being utterly useless, Newman excused himself from the session and disappeared for the evening. Newman is personally very cynical about the effectiveness of his "practice." In fact, the IWP--the biggest therapy-going group--is laced with chronic manics, drug and alcohol abusers and assorted other psychopaths! While making money for Newman, Social Therapy also fed his pool of possible new IWP members. (A separate paper will discuss the experiences of ex-therapy patients in more detail.)

"Becoming political"--joining the IWP or supporting one or more of its tactics--was deemed a critical part of "the cure" he was selling. As Newman dismantled the politics of the IWP, he relied more and more on recruiting members from therapy groups. By 1991, therapy was the near-exclusive portal to IWP membership.

With Social Therapy placed in its proper context within Newman's program for developing a cult, then other destructive practices in the IWP come into focus. It is sometimes argued that the positive political developments achieved by the IWP could not have been possible without cultism. In examining this statement against the historical record, this position has little weight.

There have been numerous political organizations in the U.S. alone that succeeded to heights far beyond the IWP. The old Populist Party was the first multiracial mass opposition formation. The Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World were Marxist-influenced, anarcho-syndicalist movements that enjoyed widespread support at the beginning of the century. The CPUSA literally built the industrial labor union movement in this country. During the 1960s, the Young Lords and Black Panther parties electrified the country. These organizations were not cults! They were successful and they were persecuted out of existence by the State.

Politically speaking, the IWP's success stemmed from its historical location created by the decline of the so-called New Left and the destruction of the Panthers and Lords, not Fred Newman's "brilliance." Armed with a corrected Marxist understanding of the relationship between vanguard and mass organizations--an understanding crystallized but in no way "created" by Newman--the IWP was able locate its program for revolution and growth. But that was not Newman's program. In fact, a successful IWP got in the way of building a cult. The dynamic of political combat created constant challenges to "leadership," a central one being the emergence of new leaders. Rule number one in cult-making is that there can be only one MESSIAH.

By 1989, several non-white IWP cadre had come to the fore, among them Lenora Fulani. Newman feared a challenge to his primacy over the IWP. They had to be purged or brought under his thumb. In a like manner, grassroots supporters began to demand that the New Alliance Party actually become a mass party instead of a remote-controlled electoral vehicle.

Do not forget that the major criticism of people like Rev. Calvin Peterson of Atlanta, Helen Oxidine of North Carolina, Dianne Ragsdale of Texas and others was that they were not being supported in building local NAP operations, though their regions were being bled dry by IWP fundraisers. These NAP supporters and activists--"the periphery"--were simply being given instructions from NYC, with a demand for tribute tacked on. These people broke with NAP, declaring that Newman wasn't serious. Newman really was serious about sabotaging any power centers beyond his bedroom! The development of NAP would have forced Newman to do politics instead of business. He wasn't interested in politics in the long run. The IWP was successful IN SPITE of Newman's treachery!

In examining the evolving cultism of the IWP, we are observing a deliberate program of de-politicization orchestrated by Newman. Not only did IWP members have to be transformed into cultists, but their activities had to be cultish too. Public work could no longer be oriented toward concrete political goals--winning an election, building an oppositional party, mobilizing people for mass action--but instead around gratifying the LEADER, who rationalized its significance in his virtual world.

For example: Lenora Fulani ran in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic Party Presidential primary. She spent close to $200,000 and received less than 400 votes. The actor Tom Laughlin--Billy Jack--did ten times better at the polls and never spent a cent, nor did he bother to campaign! The IWP cadre who trudged through the bitter New England winter to organize for Fulani were told that Fulani's showing was a "victory."

Why? Because in Newman's virtual world, the nonparty endorsed candidates received 10% of the vote in the primary, and Fulani was the leader of that "independent" pack--inside the DP! He neglected to add that independent voters make up 1/3 of the New Hampshire electorate and they could have voted in either the DP or Republican primaries! They were supposed to have been Fulani's electoral base. She never touched them. In other words, Fulani had spent approximately $600 per vote to lead the progressive opposition within the DP. Yet, her progressive hegemony was endorsed by 0.07% of the electorate. Such a leader! The vast majority of IWP cadre swallowed Newman's b.s., hook line and sinker. Those who didn't got drunk.

This is in no way saying that cultish tendencies within the party didn't exist prior to 1989. They did! They were a result of the fact that Newman was very reluctant to delegate any authority--the power to spend money independently--to anyone who was not a member of his original cult--the 40 or so early followers who came out of Centers for Change. It's simply difficult to teach old dogs new tricks! As he had done when he "fused" with Lyndon LaRouche in 1974 (the subject of another paper), Newman maintained his small circle of cultists intact. Within the subsequent IWP, he installed them as overseers and money handlers. Their strategic location in the structure of the organization assured Newman a near-dictatorship over the party.

Prior to 1989, communists and The Cult existed simultaneously within the IWP. In fact, in late 1988, the communists and their supporters made an attempt to challenge Newman and The Cult, which was denounced as the "Aryan Nation" within the party. This was the period of the so-called "secret meetings" of an oppositional faction--despite the fact that the meetings were publicized. Even Newman's wife Hazel Daren showed up to one! Newman shrewdly responded by bribing off and dividing the opposition.

What is being said here is that in 1989 Newman--The Cult--gained hegemony over the IWP. Remember The National Alliance headline? "THE TENDENCY TAKES OVER!" Well, Newman took over.

The question remains, how did relatively intelligent political activists let Newman destroy the organization as a communist combat formation? The authoritarian structure of the IWP [has already been] described. But the de jure character of the IWP in no way accounts for the political paralysis of its members in the face of what amounted to a hostile take over. A distinction has to be made between the formal structure of the party and its operative existence, and how that operative existence, along with Social Therapy, produced a politically passive base for Newman's transition to cultism.

MOBE'D TO MADNESS

The key feature of the operative character of the IWP was destabilization. IWP cadre always lived on the brink of personal disaster. Members of the IWP were expected to answer Newman's call to action 24 hours a day, and at any cost to their families, relationships, jobs, health, etc. Given the combined and uneven political education of the cadre, Newman opted to supplant political motivation--explaining the objectives of any given tactic and strategy--with crisis motivation. The lives of IWP cadre were organized around responding to emergencies created by Newman. Since information was very closely managed, cadre had no way of evaluating for themselves what needed to be or could be done to respond to a political confrontation or opportunity. There was never any "collective" decisions made about political policy and activity. That was all decreed by 110th Street--Newman's boudoir!

IWP MEMBERS NEVER KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON, WHY IT WAS HAPPENING, AND WHO WAS IT BENEFITING?

The IWP existed in a state of constant "mobilization"--mobe--whether in respect to conducting an electoral campaign or fundraising. This meant that every action of the party was equivalent to manning the barricades. Every action relied on party "discipline," i.e., the willingness of the cadre to unquestionably do as they were told by their leadership. Any question of the value or course of an action was denounced as oppositional to the "revolution."

In effect, IWP cadre were kept in a sort of political limbo. They only had a vague notion that the activities they were engaged in had something to do with making a revolution. After the 1989 takeover, their activities were explicitly defined as "supporting" Newman. Terms like socialism, revolutionary politics, communist tactics and strategy were dropped from the IWP lexicon. They were replaced with "wanting Fred," "humanism," "democracy movement," etc. Political discussions within the IWP were virtually phased out. The party's plenums--the ultimate forum where the tactics and strategies of the organization were to be debated--became theatrically produced affairs, orgies of self-congratulation, featuring Newman as the Father-Prophet-Hero.

GETTING WHAT YOU NEED

Assuming the role of Newman's devoted hand servants, inevitably led to IWP members living in poverty. Only a fraction of the cadre received salaries for their labor. The amount of these salaries depended on the status of the member in the Cult, not the volume and quality of their work. For example, the staff writers of The National Alliance received salaries ranging from $250 to $325 per week, with no health insurance whatsoever. That means that they lived on salaries lower than the average McDonald's worker. And these people were actually the privileged class within the party! NAP activists and most fundraisers fared worse.

For this pay, NA staffers were expected to labor around the clock if necessary to produce the newspaper and all of the party's literature. They got what they needed to carry out "The Work." Though IWP cadre were paid salaries at times, most of their money--besides what was required for food, rent and clothing when possible--was funneled back to Newman through payments for Social Therapy, party dues and fees for often mandatory participation in party cultural events. Moreover, cadre were commanded to turn over their tax returns and any other monies from investments or trust funds. For example: IWP Attorney Harry Kresky received $35,000 per year payment from his mother's estate. Kresky is reported to have turned that entire amount over to Newman. Needless to say, Newman provided no accounting whatsoever to party members for any of this money. He "spent it on the revolution." Case closed!

On the other hand, Alvaader Frazier--a non-practicing attorney--the titular head of the now-defunct International People's Law Institution (IPLI) is reported to have received a salary from the profits of Attorney Harry Kresky's Harlem law practice--closed since 1992 due to lack of funds!--to the tune of $4,000 per month! Moreover, she was provided with a free apartment, automobile and maid service--an IWP member was literally given the "political" job of cleaning Frazier's house! Frazier, a dipsomaniac, did little more than lay around her apartment all day. She styled herself as the "Spokesperson for the Tendency," meaning that she was used to attack and intimidate recalcitrant, white, female IWP cadre on Newman's command.

Newman and his inner circle didn't need salaries, since they had unhindered access to all of the party's seemingly bottomless supply of funds--held mainly in small bills. After all, "The money belonged to Fred." They simply dipped their hands into the till whenever they fancied a nice vacation, a meal in an expensive cafe or some fancy new duds. Not surprisingly, as Newman politically liquidated the party, he simultaneously closed out the party's projects. He also commanded that the cadre get jobs and supply their labor to him on a "voluntary" basis! In short, he reduced his overhead to the minimum required to administrate a cult.

Rank-and-file party members, many well-educated and skilled people, tended to live rather degraded lives. Due to the high costs of Manhattan rentals, most were forced to share apartments with three or more fellow activists. Often, people who were entirely incompatible were jammed into shabby housing, sometimes two to a bedroom. Naturally, these conditions produced a high degree of personal conflict between cadre.

Open violence was not uncommon. Lower status cadre--generally, the most impoverished--were completely at the mercy of Newman and his henchmen, who dictated the living arrangements for most households. This meant that a new cadre member or a person who had been "re-deployed" from out of town could be literally dumped on an already overcrowded apartment. The lawful negative reactions of the original tenants were usually "reorganized" by a combination of Social Therapy brainwashing and outright coercion. In the realm of housing, food and income, self degradation and humiliation reigned supreme for IWP members. Newman used that to build a dependency relationship between himself and the cadre, especially those on salary. To raise opposition as a salaried activist meant compromising a pay check--even a paltry one. Newman punched the lunch tickets. Everyone eventually came to fear him and his power for that.

Not all IWP cadre were poverty-stricken. A few were very wealthy, and they bought their freedom of action-punking-out on demonstrations and other party activities, vacations and other emblems of their status--by paying extra tribute to Newman and The Cult. The wealthy members of the party tended to be the least politically motivated stratum. They were essentially Social Therapy patients who had been conned into taking the next step in their "cures," i.e., divesting to Newman.

RED SEX

The sexual lives of cadre members were also degraded. Like most figures who arose from the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Newman preached free sex. With a few half-digested quotes from Engels' writings on the bourgeois family and a little feminism thrown in, he fashioned a moral line within the IWP that attacked couplings--heterosexual or gay--as "oppositional" to the Tendency. Marriages of new cadre were regularly broken up through "couples counseling."

IWP members were encouraged to have sex, but to avoid forming lasting emotional relationships. The pressure was placed upon cadre to live as sexual atoms, seeking physical gratification whenever desired and convenient. Given the fact that IWP rank-and-filers tended to work around-the-clock, the recreational component of their lives was often reduced to past-midnight drinking binges and occasional rushed bedroom romps. For the most part, they didn't have much fun, and it showed in their relationships with each other.

Not surprisingly, one of the main topics of Social Therapy sessions was cadre members' sexual deprivation and frustration. They simply weren't getting any and what they got, they weren't satisfied with! So much for Newman's revolutionary sexual liberation!

When ongoing relationships were allowed to exist, they had to constantly pass the litmus test of whether or not they were "supportive of the Tendency" and/or "politically developmental." A supportive relationship was one in which both partners slaved for and adored Newman. A politically developmental relationship was one in which the less "organized" member of the partnership followed the political "leadership" of the true believer.

Newman was keenly aware that emotional relationships outside of his control quickly became nests of opposition--"parties of two." Unmanaged emotional relationships had the propensity to become "oppositional" for no other reason than two people could come together in an atmosphere of relative trust and talk. This talk inevitably led to questioning of Newman's "philosophy" and schemes. In the paranoiac atmosphere of the cult-bound IWP, discussions had to always be "supportive" of the Tendency. Public criticism of Newman was forbidden! And the bedroom, by Newman's decree, was also a public place.

Sex was also used as a means of recruiting new cadre and gaining influence over high status males--particularly men-of-color. For example, NAP'S 1984 Presidential candidate Dennis Serrette was recruited by a team of IWP women in 1982. Seduction became a chief tactic in the Rainbow Lobby's international liaison work with progressive foreign government officials and revolutionary representatives. For lower status males and females, sex was a viewed as a tool for rising in the party hierarchy. By copulating with the appropriate high status cadre, they could get "closer to Fred." Their role models were the women who serviced Newman.

Though "Red Sex" Newman (age 58) railed against the bourgeois institution of marriage, he, in fact, had FOUR WIVES (Hazel Daren, Deborah Green, Gail Elberg and his newest bride, Gabrielle Kurlander) whom he pampered at the party's expense and elevated to near-regal status. They were his plenipotentiaries. Elberg, always the bottom woman in Newman's stable, has been recently ejected from his Westside love nest.

While the sexual lives of cadre were monitored through Social Therapy and outright spying, the nature of Newman's relationship to his live-in harem was off-limits to criticism, no less simple discussion. Newman's bedroom was his private affair.

FRED NEWMAN: "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CULT."

The general picture of an IWP member is one of an overworked, impoverished devotee to Fred Newman. Stripped of individuality and the capacity to function outside of Newman's virtual world, they are dependent on his will. Actually, a minority of cadre split with Newman for clear-cut political reasons. The vast majority left because of some particular personal betrayal by the Chairman or his flunkies. These ranged from being "deployed" out of NYC to do some organizing/fundraising mission, only to later discover later that their salaries have been cut off, to having their savings ravished as a loan to a campaign or project, and being given a letter stating that their loans have been converted into gifts never to be repaid.

Many leave because they have simply been ripped off. Others leave out of a feeling of fatigue. They have been worked to the bone, and Newman's rationalizations fail to justify their sacrifices. These people generally split with the notion that they didn't have what it took to be a "revolutionary," i.e., a Newman cultist. They remain "supportive," meaning that they seek to win Newman's approval by paying him money. The "supportive" ex-IWP cadre are generally the most pathetic. They understand their opposition as a failure. They are locked into a scene where they must somehow make up for their "political" shortcomings. Newman laughs at them and rides their guilt to the bank.

An IWP member who may choose to leave the party is often faced with unemployment, homelessness and loneliness. Their sense of relevance and purpose evaporates. In the process of their incorporation into the party, they have often smashed their relationships with families and friends. They have also alienated themselves from their communities. An IWP member believes, often correctly, that he/she has nothing.

To add insult to injury, ex-cadre are shunned by their former comrades, people who were supposed to be their friends and, sometimes, even their lovers. Since 1992, oppositional cadre have been expelled from the party. Since the IWP is a clandestine organization, cadre are dependent upon their cell meetings for information about party business and meetings. Even Central Committee members are dependent upon communications from Newman's so-called Secretariat. Newman's way of dumping his political opposition now takes the form of informing the Secretariat to refuse to inform rebellious cadre of the time and place of cell meetings. They are effectively locked out of the party! When that fails, goons are placed at the doors of party gatherings to keep out the opposition. That was the case of the 1993 IWP Plenum.

If Newman puts the word out that a certain ex-cadre is "hostile," this further creates a sense of abandonment, degradation and hopelessness. It also fosters self-hatred. Eventually, ex-cadre comes to realize that they have been conned out of their money, labor and self-respect by Newman. They despise themselves for allowing that to happen. It is for this reason that the people who remain in the politically dead IWP are there because it is the only place that they can be. They are the weakest. Taking advantage of their vulnerability, Newman basks in the glow of conquest. He finally has what he always wanted.

In the May 6, 1993 edition of the once-popular National Alliance--now reduced to an internal IWP newsletter/ advertising circular for Fred Newman-brand goods--the Chairman attacks the Cult Awareness Network as a front for the FBI, part of a "post-modern, post-political" conspiracy to destroy "extremist of all kind who threaten them." The article conveniently uses the fiasco in Waco, Texas to paint a picture of things to come for "NAP." Newman is telling his followers that any description of him and his followers as cultists is "tantamount to an invitation to kill members of the New Alliance Party before they [make] other people 'casualties' of their alleged cultism."

Newman's new cosmic conspiracy theory has little to do with what happened in Waco and everything to do with the fact that several high profile ex-cadre and dissident party members have launched a campaign to "out" him as a political fraud and a cultist. Afraid of directly confronting his political adversaries, for fear that in doing so he would give their charges credibility--charges that many IWP members know to be true--Newman has had to cook up a monster to spook his devotees into line. Neither the Cult Awareness Network nor the FBI are the targets of his agent-baiting, but the people inside and outside of the IWP who have recognized that they have been the "casualties" of his cultism. He must paint them as state operatives, bent on destroying his righteous virtual world. Sadly, most of his followers will buy this madness.

When Newman declares in the May 6 Alliance, that "[T]here's no such thing as a cult," he speaks with arrogant confidence. He knows his audience well. For only a CULT LEADER can get away with telling his CULT such a transparent lie.

Why I'm Backing Patrick Buchanan (1999)

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By Lenora Fulani
WorldNetDaily.com (1999)

My endorsement last week of Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party presidential nomination set up a news cycle of incredulity over our political alliance. In some cases, the disbelief was so extreme as to make it appear that Buchanan and I are from different planets, rather than different ideological backgrounds. We are not, however, from different planets. We're from the same one, and it's facing a set of economic problems and challenges so great that the left/right differential can seem like a hill of beans in comparison.

"Aha!" you say. Just as I thought! She's an economic determinist. A classic socialist! In some respects I suppose I am. But Pat Buchanan? Hardly. Yet, he pointed out at our joint press conference, "The great goal of social justice is not being served in America today by this economy and the way it is functioning. I don't believe we ought to take away the money or the wealth of those who have earned it legitimately. But I do believe the disparities in income in this country are becoming too great. They're becoming outrageous, and that is not healthy. They are far greater in this society than any other democracy or democratic republic on earth. That is not healthy."

Those disparities are unhealthy. Ten percent of America's households own 80 percent of the country's private wealth, leaving 20 percent of the nation's wealth distributed among the bottom 90 percent of the population. But worse than unhealthy, they are intrinsic to the current course of globalization and financialization of the world economy as long as special interests control U.S. economic and trade policy. Pat Buchanan and I are not the only right/left partners to observe this.

The anti-NAFTA movement was propelled by a "strange bedfellows" coalition of conservative, centrist, and progressive economic populists. So was the anti-Fast Track movement which muscled Congress into rejecting the process (authorizing the president to negotiate trade deals with only an up or down vote by Congress) along with its predatory product (trade deals that boosted the profiteering of multinational corporations at the expense of American jobs and international labor and environmental standards).

But what exactly is the solution? Conservative economic nationalists like Buchanan believe we need "tax and trade policies that put America before the global economy." On the other end of the political spectrum progressive economists, who see the corrosive effects of globalism much in the way conservatives do, argue for a different approach. William Greider wrote in The Nation that globalization "has to be slowed down, not stopped, and redirected on a new course of development that is more moderate and progressive, that promises broader benefits to almost everyone." Greider comments on the wide disparity in wealth adding, "When rising incomes are broadly distributed, it creates mass purchasing power -- fueling a virtuous cycle of growth, savings and new investment. When incomes are narrowly distributed, as they are now, the economic system feeds upon itself, eroding its own energies for expansion, burying consumers and business, even governments, in impossible accumulations of debt."

How to address what Greider calls this "pathological" state of the U.S. economy and what Buchanan calls the "betrayal" of the American worker? Progressives argue for shifting the tax burden from labor to capital, restructuring trade terms to balance the flow of commerce, raising wages at the low end of the pay scale, forgiving the bad debts of poorer nations, reforming the mission of central banks to support growth rather than "thwarting" it and refocusing national priorities on creating jobs and improving wages -- rather than on multi-national competitiveness as the key to prosperity. Greider, in particular, appeals to the liberal notion that government must act responsibly to cure the pathology.

Buchanan's view of the issues are not altogether different, though he does not concede the inevitability of globalization. He favors a fairer tax code that relies on a national sales tax rather than income tax, a 15 percent tariff on foreign products that compete with U.S. goods and a "wage equalization tariff on manufactures from low wage countries." He supports an increase in the minimum wage and his goals include "full employment, with our working people as well compensated and rewarded as any on earth," and "a wider, deeper distribution of property and prosperity."

Buchanan does not, however, appeal directly to a notion of the innate responsibility of government. He projects that he wants to play hardball with our trading partners to eliminate the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit. He often uses China, or as Pat likes to emphasize, "Communist China," as an example. Beijing imposes on average a 22 percent tariff on U.S. imports (just reduced to 17 percent by the new trade pact) while Washington imposes none in return. But the problem isn't what China is up to. They're doing what any nation -- communist or capitalist -- must do to gain advantage in the highly competitive global marketplace. The problem for the American people is that U.S. Big Business wants access to a billion Chinese consumers whose spending power is being enhanced by China's trade surplus. And business is willing to have us endure the downsides of a trade deficit in order to get it.

The American people currently have no way to bring the U.S.-based transnationals to heel. Right now these special interests control the two parties that control our government. Labor pipes up every now and then -- usually at election time -- to demand things like restrictions on the import of foreign steel. But the AFL-CIO hooked its wagon to capital over 50 years ago, and consequently will not buck its two-party duopoly.

The rank and file, the unorganized (85 percent of the workforce) and the unemployed are not automatically so inclined. This is Buchanan's and my constituency. It is multi-racial, male and female, urban and rural, and it is significantly disempowered under the current political arrangement. Buchanan hopes to sell them on the need to play hardball. I do, too. My difference with Buchanan, however, is that I think they need to play hardball -- not with China, per se -- but with the two parties and with special interest politics. How? By insisting on participating more directly in the policy-making and governmental process. How do we accomplish that? By a surgical reform of America's electoral and political process that brings voter participation up, incumbency advantage down, and shifts decision making to the grassroots through the use of democratic forms like initiative and referendum and national town hall meetings.

The American people need more political capital. They should have the power to more directly set the terms for trade, taxes, and national economic priorities.

Buchanan's decision to leave the Republican Party and join up with the Reform Party and me is one indicator that he is now willing to turn the tables on the special interests.

Turning the decision-making over to the American people is the next step. If we do something about the democracy disparity between the elites and ordinary citizens, the country will be on its way to effecting policies which close the gap between rich and poor as well.

The Strange Career of Dr. Lenora Fulani (1999)

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By Ron Daniels
Black Radical Congress News, 23 December 1999

Dr. Lenora Fulani, former presidential candidate of the now defunct New Alliance Party, and "critic" of the two party monopoly on politics in this country, recently stunned many observers by endorsing Pat Buchanan's campaign to become the Reform Party's candidate for President in the 2000 election. In rationalizing her decision to endorse one of the most rabid, racist, sexist, homophobic, right wing political figures on the political scene today, Dr. Fulani suggested that Buchanan's candidacy would be good for "independent" politics and the political fortunes of Black people.

Indeed, Dr. Fulani promised to bring Pat Buchanan to the heart of Harlem, the Capital of Black America, to dine at Sylvia's restaurant and speak at the House of Justice, the headquarter of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network. How could Dr. Fulani who claims to be a Marxist and a champion of Black causes endorse an arch adversary of Black people? From my vantage point no one should be surprised that Dr. Fulani could commit such a deplorable act. For some time, at the direction of her mentor and master Dr. Fred Newman, it appears that Dr. Fulani's services as a political operative have been for sale to the highest bidder.

As a veteran of the progressive independent political movement, when I ran for President in 1992, 1 did so in part to protect the Black community against political interlopers and pretenders like Dr. Lenora Fulani. A cursory examination of the principal Black independent political movements in the last quarter century reveal that Dr. Lenora Fulani was nowhere to be found in any of them. From the National Black Political Assembly, the National Black Independent Political Party to the National Black United Fund, there is no evidence that Dr. Fulani played any significant role in the independent Black political movement. So how did Dr. Lenora Fulani become a "prominent" Black political leader purporting to represent the interests of Black people? The Fulani phenomenon is but the latest example of a predominantly White organization utilizing a Black face, and in this instance a Black female face, to establish a base in the Black community to carry out its own political agenda.

This scheme has been aided and abetted by well meaning but gullible Black people who arc understandably so fed up with many of the current crowd of Black "leaders" and the two establishment parties that they will give an audience to anyone who offers the appearance of an alternative. Many Black women are also understandably eager to see Black women break out of the mold of simply being followers in male dominated organizations and movements to becoming leaders in political organizations and movements. Dr. Fred Newman has cleverly attempted to exploit these legitimate aspirations within the Black community.

Most knowledgeable activists have always known that Dr. Fulani's claim that the New Alliance Party (the political formation Newman created to carry out his machinations) was a Black led party was a fraudulent assertion. Fred Newman, a one-time associate of Lyndon LaRouche, has always been the headmaster of a predominantly White cult like operation, which included the New Alliance Party (NAP). Using a concept called "social therapy," which essentially proclaims that people with mental disorders can be cured through service to the movement," many of the patients of Newman's social therapy clinics became the foot soldiers of NAP. It was these foot soldiers who largely comprised the army of volunteers who successfully labored to get NAP on the ballot in all fifty states during Fulani's presidential campaigns; campaigns which may have been calculated to raise money for Newman's operations by exploiting the matching fund provisions of the federal election laws more than to promote the interests of Black people and the oppressed.

Through it all, Fulani has never been the leader of anything. She has functioned as a devout servant of Fred Newman, who once said something to the effect that, "I made her, she is my proudest accomplishment." For her part, Fulani is so mesmerized by Newman that she has praised him as a leader "who has done more for Black people than any Black leader alive." Together this odd couple has been pimping and prostituting Black folks to promote their own agenda, which mostly appears to be enriching Newman and his associates. A few years ago, Newman abruptly declared that NAP had outlived its usefulness and disbanded it. If NAP was so successful then why did Newman shut it down? Shortly after the demise NAP Fulani popped up in the camp of the billionaire right wing populist Ross Perot. Apparently Perot was eager to use Newman's foot soldiers to secure ballot status for his presidential campaign. Since that time Fulani has been deployed to mind the right wing independent movement founded by Perot. It was out of this movement and Perot's presidential campaigns that the Reform Party was founded.

Noticeably quiet for the past few years, now Newman and Fulani have resurfaced as allies and co-partners of the right wing demagogue Patrick Buchanan, political bounty hunters whose only leverage is their purported ability to field an army of foot soldiers and the claim that they can deliver Black folks to the Reform Party and Buchanan. Such is the strange career of one Lenora Fulani. Now that we know the real deal, the sham, there is no reason for Black folks to be duped by Fred Newman and his "proudest accomplishment."

Invasion of the body snatchers (1999)

2011-08-09T16:00:00.001-07:00

By Joe Conason
Salon Magazine, November 16, 1999

When Pat Buchanan made his unholy alliance with Lenora Fulani, it wasn't the "left" he embraced but a strange, secretive group of disrupters known as the "Newmanites."

The oddest political story of the past week -- "Lenora Fulani endorses Patrick Buchanan" -- fit quite neatly into that venerable old news category known as man-bites-dog. But it was better than a mere news story, because this Reform Party love fest was so far out, so high-concept that it sounds like the synopsis for a sitcom: She's a black leftist, he's a white rightist, and now they're taking on the Establishment -- together. Fabulous!

This story line has a promising subplot, too. Dr. Fulani, as she prefers to be called, is a psychologist and one of the foremost practitioners of a controversial discipline known as "social therapy." Pat Buchanan, with his blustering manner and tendency toward bigoted wisecracks, is clearly deeply in need of counseling. Every week, the show could open in Lenora's office, with Pat stretched out on the couch, muttering about his uptight boyhood and his nostalgia for Joe McCarthy and General Franco.

Working through his hang-ups about gays, Jews, immigrants and other minorities is truly liberating for him, while his black female therapist strips away his benighted prejudices to reveal the core of humanity within him. It's sort of a '90s update of "All in the Family." Beautiful!

Yeah, the "Lenora and Pat Show" has just the right combination of humor and pathos to make wonderful American entertainment. Best of all, it's pure fantasy.

The truth about Fulani and her faction within the Reform Party is actually far more interesting than the version served up by the national media last week. The sharp-tongued therapist and her sheeplike followers have come a long way from their weird origins on Manhattan's Upper West Side, but some things haven't changed. They are as opportunistic and unprincipled as ever, and they have no real connection with "the left."

However disorganized, disunited and difficult-to-define the American left may be, virtually all of its constituencies have had at least one thing in common during the past two decades: an unfortunate encounter with the Fulani faction, which has traveled under a variety of names and disguises since it first appeared in New York during the 1970s.

Liberal and left-wing Democratic clubs, gay rights groups, black community organizations and many others have been infiltrated, disrupted and denounced by the "social therapists," who have then moved on to their next project.

Before Fulani's outfit merged themselves into the Reform Party several years ago, they were known as the New Alliance Party, but their murky origins stretch all the way back to the early '70s. That was when a philosophy teacher at City College named Fred Newman, who at age 64 is still believed to control the group, began to formulate his own theory of politically-tinged psychotherapy.

Among his small group of acolytes, Newman developed a guru status that apparently permitted him to build what is now a substantial network therapy centers and related cultural and political institutions. Therapy patients were encouraged, and some say coerced, into giving time and money to whatever political formation Newman and his fellow "therapists" were operating at the time.

Lenora Fulani joined up in the late '70s and was soon elevated to a leadership position. Given the quasi-Marxist and feminist pretensions of Newman and his colleagues, a black female like Fulani provided the perfect public face. But the secret inner leadership of the organization remained wholly under Newman's control, with many of its members taking their mandated "therapy" directly from him. Because they have changed their organizational moniker so many times, those who follow their antics refer to them as "the Newmanites."

From the beginning, the nominally left-wing Newmanites had an antagonistic relationship with their comrades in other groups. For a tumultuous period in the early '70s, Newman brought his followers into the even more cult-like National Caucus of Labor Committees, where Lyndon LaRouche was engaged in his own peculiar exercises in therapy and thought control.

At the time, LaRouche's NCLC was notorious for attacking left groups not only with propaganda but physical violence. After a few months, Newman grew tired of taking orders from LaRouche and withdrew to create his own organization again. And ever since, in New York and elsewhere, the Newmanites have clashed with various leftists and liberals, usually over charges that they had attempted to take over some organization or campaign for their own purposes.

During the late '70s and early '80s, they pursued a strategy of simultaneously joining and attacking Democratic clubs in New York City. They were subsequently expelled from a short-lived New York leftist effort called the Unity Party. Then for a time they sought a coalition with the Nation of Islam, defending Louis Farrakhan against charges of homophobia and anti-Semitism (with Newman giving one speech in which he denounced Jews as "the storm troopers of decadent capitalism").

After the 1988 presidential campaign, the Newmanites had a tense relationship with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, which they first infiltrated and then mimicked by setting up a front called the "Rainbow Lobby." The resulting confusion led Jackson to publicly dissociate himself from them on more than one occasion, while they repudiated him as a "sellout."

And then in 1992, when they perceived a potential for new mischief in the Reform Party, they disbanded the New Alliance Party altogether and allied themselves with conservative billionaire Ross Perot.

Throughout these permutations, Fulani has always articulated a leftish perspective on such topics as gay rights, affirmative action and economic justice. Her high-minded rhetoric, combined with a corps of dedicated activists, lawyers and writers drawn from the "social therapy" clientele, has afforded her group significant leverage within the Reform Party, particularly in New York, where Perot's supporters are known as the Independence Party.

In a fledgling party that attracts thousands of inexperienced newcomers, the organizing muscle and political skill of the Newmanites provides them with influence disproportionate to their actual size. Moderate and conservative activists in the Reform Party have, not surprisingly, viewed the rise of this internal faction with undisguised dismay. Buchanan's embrace of Fulani won't endear him to them. And it is probably safe to predict that before the campaign is over, or soon afterward, the Newmanites will be denouncing Buchanan as a fascist, a racist and an enemy of independent politics.

Despite the media spin, nobody who has observed the Newmanites during their long and tortured history was shocked when they joined forces with the hero of the ultra-right. Repeatedly rejected by every element of the left, they finally took their tactics and therapy to another venue. Their quest for power has taken them from LaRouche to Farrakhan to Buchanan -- a long, strange trip into the wilderness, with no left turns anywhere along the way.

Guru Fred Newman Enchants Loyal Followers and Pat Buchanan (1999)

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By George Gurley
The New York Observer, December 6, 1999

Right now, Fred Newman is best known as the man behind Lenora Fulani, an African-American psychologist and two-time Presidential candidate who is a major force in the Reform Party. Recently, Mr. Newman and Ms. Fulani had lunch at the Essex House with Pat Buchanan, who is hoping to be the Reform Party's candidate for President. Ms. Fulani ended up endorsing him and is now his campaign co-chair. All this resulted in jeers, derision, comparisons to the Hitler-Stalin pact, a lot of publicity for Ms. Fulani & and a few mentions in the press of that character in the shadows, Mr. Newman.

Mr. Newman, 64, is a psychotherapist, playwright and self-styled Marxist revolutionary whose organization has its headquarters at 500 Greenwich Street. Every few years, journalists take him apart and repeat accusations (he's an anti-Semite, he runs a cult, he brainwashes people, etc.), but somehow he survives and prospers.

He presides over what he calls "a development community." It's made up of a small clique of members who've been following Mr. Newman for decades and a couple hundred worker bees who have joined more recently. Together, Mr. Newman and his followers run therapy centers around the country, as well as a theater and a talent show network for inner-city kids.

As you get off the elevator at the Greenwich Street headquarters, to the left is the East Side Center for Short-Term Social Therapy, to the right is the Castillo Theater (most recent production: Mr. Newman's musical comedy, The Last Temptation of William Jefferson) and beyond that is a telemarketing room, where volunteers raise money every evening.

It doesn't feel like New York City in there, but more like a community arts center in the Midwest. You see beaming faces, normal faces and a few blank ones, too.

On a Friday afternoon, Gabrielle Kurlander, 36, was sitting on a couch in her office. She acts in and directs Mr. Newman's plays. Since 1990, she has run the All-Stars Talent Show Network.

Ms. Kurlander was wearing a Giorgio Armani pinstripe jacket, black sweater, black skirt. Behind her were some of Mr. Newman's books - among them, Let's Develop!, in which he lays out his philosophy and offers handy exercises like: "Do something wrong just for the sake of saying 'I was completely wrong!'"

Ms. Kurlander said she moved to Manhattan from Ithaca, N.Y., to be an actress. She soon found a place in the community and began pounding nails, sweeping floors, recruiting and attending group therapy sessions led by Mr. Newman, who became her boyfriend 11 years ago.

"He's somebody that I'm very, very close to and have tremendous respect for," Ms. Kurlander said. "I think he's very, very smart." She laughed. "He's not a guru, he's not a cult leader, he's just someone who people follow," Ms. Kurlander said. "There is a grouping of us who've given our lives to this. I get paid now. I didn't used to get paid, and probably if I wasn't paid tomorrow, I'd still be doing this."

Roger Grunwald, the publicist for the Newman group, was present for the interview with Ms. Kurlander, taking notes on a yellow pad.

Enter Mr. Newman, wearing a leather jacket over a button-down shirt, green slacks and New Balance running shoes. Early on, he talked about Pat Buchanan: "I hardly know him," Mr. Newman said. "He seems like a decent man. Pat, when he was a kid, he was a tough Irish working-class kid who beat everyone up."

Ms. Kurlander howled at the remark.

Mr. Newman said he likes Mr. Buchanan's "smarts" and doesn't think he's an anti-Semite: "I'm a Jew, a Jew all my life, and I can smell anti-Semites. He doesn't smell like an anti-Semite."

Mr. Newman, who has long supported the Palestine Liberation Organization and criticized the American Jewish establishment, has also been called an anti-Semite. In 1985, he told a convention that Jews "are the stormtroopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over."

"I'm hardly an anti-Semite, which is what I've been charged with," he said. "But it's been played up and it plays well for political purposes in some people's hands and people make use of it and I'm not complaining."

Mr. Newman then held forth on a number of subjects, including Donald Trump's "soak the rich" plan. (Doesn't go far enough, he said.) Ms. Kurlander laughed when appropriate; Mr. Grunwald was silent for the 45-minute session.

I suggested that Mr. Newman and I might be left alone, which Ms. Kurlander found very amusing: "Would you prefer that? Ha-ha-ha-ha! Have a private interview?"

Mr. Newman put Karl Marx at the top of his list of thinkers. "Marx's thought has so permeated all of sociology," he said. "And Bill Clinton is a Marxist. It's taught in all the schools, whether it's called that or not."

Will his own work survive?

"History will let us know whether it's worth anything or nothing, and we say that to each other constantly & Yes! I think it will survive."

Fred Newman, whatever he is, has had an amazing New York life. He was born in 1935. His father, a salesman, died when he was 9. His mother raised five kids on welfare and ran serious poker games and rented out rooms in their house a half-block from Yankee Stadium. Mr. Newman sold baseball stuff there and his mother would talk to players like Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra as they walked by; the players called her Grandma Sadie.

He hated school, but tested well enough to get into Stuyvesant High School. At 19, he volunteered to serve in Korea, partly to escape a painful love affair. Back home, he attended City College of New York, majored in philosophy, married at 22, lost his virginity and got into Stanford University, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy.

Then he started teaching at City College. In 1966, one of his students asked for an A to avoid the draft. Professor Newman said O.K., started giving A's to everyone, and was eventually fired from six more schools around the country.

By this time, he and his wife had two kids. (His son was severely brain damaged at birth and has spent his life in an institution.) In 1967, Mr. Newman moved to Reno, Nev., for divorce purposes. He took long naps, watched the sun set, listened to the Beatles, drank a little bit, didn't smoke pot and tried to be a writer.

He would wake up at 5:30 A.M. to work on a novel based on his mother, In the Purple Roses of Her Dying Years. Somehow it got into the hands of family members and they hated it.

Back in New York, Mr. Newman went to protests, started a political collective called "If & Then." He read Karl Marx, Mao Zedong and Leon Trotsky, saw a therapist, became a drug rehabilitation counselor at a Queens clinic, which fired him after he organized a work stoppage. In 1970, he started up a therapy practice of his own. And that's when it all started really happening for him.

"Suddenly, I was making money again, more than I'd ever made in my life," he said. He and some comrades created a therapeutic community on the Upper West Side, Centers for Change. They put out two newspapers, Unite and Right on Time, and started a free school for kids and a dental clinic.

"It's probably fair to say I was the dominant leader," Mr. Newman said. "& It's probably fair to say it was my followingpeople were following me. I hope I wasn't an authoritarian oppressor, but I think that's probably accurate to say that."

He and his "following" joined up with Lyndon LaRouche, but pulled out in 1974 to form the International Workers Party, which aimed to organize welfare recipients. Party members raised money on the sidewalks of the Upper West Side.

In 1979, his group evolved into the New Alliance Party; in 1984, it ran a candidate for President. That was Dennis Serrette, a black activist and trade union leader from Harlem.

"Fred was introduced to me at a party," said Mr. Serrette, 59, from his Maryland home. "His persona is a warm, sensitive, sort of jolly, twinkly Santa Claus kind of guy, one that seems always to be a good listener. Then you start figuring out that this thing is not so loose as it looks, it's a lot tighter. Then, when you try to look under the skirt of what's happening, you begin to look a little sharper and you hear the name Fred Newman, Fred this and Fred that, and then you start to say, Well, is this guy the messiah or what?"

Mr. Serrette said he was badgered into Mr. Newman's brand of "social therapy."

"It was like a piranha attack and they all take a bite out of you," he said. "It's like a police interrogation but not with two - you got 10 bad guys biting at you, until they sort of break your spirit or break you down. The women around Newman who carry out his bidding are the ones that really are the lieutenants, they'll smile at you but they kick ass. But he never gets his hands dirty "he always manages to stay just beyond the fray of the fight. He will never engage you in hard discussions. The reality is he's a shrewd tactician who runs the cult through his mistresses."

According to Mr. Newman's spokesman, Roger Grunwald, "Dennis Serrette ended his association with Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani 15 years ago, after his personal relationship with Dr. Fulani broke up. Since then he periodically pops up to be interviewed and to grind a very old ax."

In 1988, Ms. Fulani ran for President and got on the ballot in all 50 states in the race. "I am your sexual preference," went one slogan. That got the Party some attention, as did its embrace of Louis Farrakhan.

On a Thursday evening, 30 or so people were gathered in the center's "telemarketing room" to call "old friends" for money. They were buzzing about over takeout dinners and bottled water. "Volunteer of the Month" plaques were up on a wall.

At 6:30, as the spokesman Mr. Grunwald looked on, three middle-aged women answered questions. They'd all been through Mr. Newman's brand of therapy and said they worked the phones four times a week. One of them, Phyllis Goldberg, said someone handed her a flier on the street and she'd been there for 21 years.

"He's hilariously funny," Ms. Goldberg said of Mr. Newman. "He's probably the kindest person I ever met. He's shy. He's very, very, very smart."

The telemarketers got into their "performance spaces" and got their three-page scripts ready.

Doug Balder, an architect, said he does four or five shifts a week and raises up to $100,000 a year for the Newman group. He has been there 16 years.

Mr. Grunwald said to me after a while: "George, ever done something like this?" he said, smiling, headset on. "You can come back another time, we'll train you." Soon, he led me to the elevator. "There are a lot of people around here who don't make phone calls," he said. "But for the people who do it, they've been organized in such a way that they relate to it in the way that a person would relate to theatrical activity as a member of an ensemble. They're all working collectively."

"They would embrace Adolf Hitler if it would give them credibility," said ex-Newman follower Judi Miller, a writer. Feeling "very lonely" and "isolated," she said she joined the community in 1984 at the suggestion of her dentist. She stuffed envelopes, attended therapy sessions, sold ad space for the New Alliance newspaper. She also agreed to pay a "tithe" and reduce her lithium dosage. Over all, she lasted four years.

"I was one of the only ones not to give up my apartment, and I didn't, because it's rent-controlled, so that would be stupid," she said.

(According to Mr. Grunwald, "These allegations are ridiculous, untrue and politically motivated.")

What did Ms. Miller think of Dr. Newman?

"Don't say doctor," Ms. Miller said. "It's just Fred Newman or Fred. He's not anything to be respected, he's a bullshit artist & You know how you realize things and you have little signals that something's wrong here? Like, well, he's not our lord and master. There's something wrong with this man. It was ridiculous. It was just so dumb. I'm ashamed that I belonged to that group and I was duped."

One of the people who helped in her two-year "detox" was Chip Berlet, of the Boston-based Political Research Associates. Mr. Berlet has studied and condemned Mr. Newman and his group: "He thinks of himself as being one of the great left thinkers of our age," he said. "He's actually kind of a pompous egomaniac. He's surrounded himself with people who constantly are telling him how smart he is, which is the classic aspect of a totalitarian organization."

Mr. Grunwald was ready for that charge: "Chip Berlet works for a left wing think tank that has received substantial funding from major Democratic Party donors," he said. "His charges have long been discredited as partisan `dirty tricks' directed against the independent political movement."

Fred Newman has been ill for the last five years, with diabetes, hypertension and kidney failure. Before undergoing three hours of dialysis, he met me for lunch at the Manatus Restaurant on Bleecker Street. His large blue eyes have a dizzying effect behind the wire-rimmed glasses. "Our work is, I don't want to misrepresent it, it's not Freud," he said. "But it's been accepted by a lot of very, very mainstream, good people."

He said he rejects the idea of the self, along with addiction, victimization and Freud's notion of the human being as fundamentally abnormal. He thinks people are "super-alienated" these days.

"Most of the people I see in therapy," he said, "they have good jobs, they're doing well, they're respectable people. They're the people who, you're walking down the street you're walking by. They're not weirdos, they're not in Bellevue, they're desperately unhappy."

When he's not working, Mr. Newman watches sports and political shows, PBS, and Charlie Rose and watches videos at home. His favorite movie ever is Marcel Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis.

"The character who plays the mime, I don't relate to it," he said. "Like I don't think it's me, but I feel an empathy for the tragedy of his life. By the fact that he's this brilliant, extraordinarily gifted performer but his life is so openly unfulfilling. He can't live in the real world. In some ways he can only fully live in his world of fantasy and I wouldn't say I see that as how I am, but I feel close to that."

Mr. Newman rents a place in the Hamptons every summer and writes out there. He has an assistant who drives him around in a rented Lincoln Town car. He said he once took Al Sharpton to the hospital after he was stabbed and met with Louis Farrakhan twice.

"I found him a very personable, decent man," he said. "I didn't have any sense at all of him being anti-Semitic."

Mr. Newman ordered a piece of rye toast and a mint tea with lemon. "I can't really eat anymore," he said. "I used to be bigger and much heavier. I barely eat now."

He never wears coats in the winter. He's social, likes people coming over, but doesn't like getting dressed up.

"Gabrielle wanted to put some gel in my hair, so I look better, and I still find that unpleasant," he said.

Mr. Newman likes bluegrass music, plays a little piano and guitar. Carousel may be his favorite musical. He doesn't like Mayor Giuliani.

"I think he's taken too much credit and he's been racially divisive," he said. "I don't think he's a particularly good man."

He wishes the Giants and Dodgers were still in New York. And he's always loved sex: "I've always enjoyed it and always had an appetite. I wouldn't describe it as in any way abnormal. I think I've had sex as often as the situation called for and the other person wanted it and I wanted it, ha-ha! I think of myself as a sexual person. I like to think I'm not as abusive as men [can be]. Maybe that's not true, not for me to say. I work hard not to be abusive toward women, I have a high regard for women. Women have played a really important role in my life. A lot of the good work in the creating of the community has been done by brilliant and powerful women."

In American history, he admires Eugene B. Debs and is "a little partial" to Thomas Paine. He hopes the American people pick up the issue of political reform.

"I live well," he said. But he claimed he wasn't even sure if he has a bank account, and said he doesn't know what an A.T.M. is. His assistant gives him money. He said he has made a fair amount from therapy, but put his personal net worth at less than a million. In fact, it's "nothing," he said.

He lives in an ivy-covered brownstone in Greenwich Village, which he co-purchased with a female friend for $920,000 in 1993. Mr. Newman lives in a unit with Ms. Kurlander. The rest of the place is occupied by two men and nine women, some of whom Mr. Newman has been involved with over the years.

"I feel very good and proud about it," he said. "I think it's disgraceful the way people who have intimate relationships break up and then hate each other for life. I find that very offensive."

I said his living arrangements sounded like every man's dream.

"These are my dearest, dearest friends and colleges, co-workers," he said, "who've invested millions of hours to build the All-Stars Talent Show Network. That's who we're talking about here, and many of these people are women, and in the case of some of them, but not all of them, we've been close in all kinds of ways, including physically, and I feel thrilled about that."

He continued: "It's not a harem of people, it's a collection of human beings, some of whom are brilliant psychologists, heads of medical services of Long Island community hospital, vice presidents of major companies. That's who they are, and they have an integrity as that. They're not just women to have sex with."

After we'd been talking about an hour, Mr. Newman told me he cries fairly often.

"I cry every time I see movies," he said. "I'm a movie crier, I cry all the time. I certainly cried during Gods and Monsters. I thought that was very touching, their relationship. I'm kind of a sucker for romantic kind of things. When movies get touching and romantic, I cry. There's a movie with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, their comeback movie."

It was time for a nap before dialysis.

"It's been a good life," he said. "I've been very fortunate and I don't mind talking about it."

Needed: A New Approach to U.S. Violence (1997)

2011-08-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

By Gabrielle Kurlander
Christian Science Monitor, November 7, 1997

Violence in America is not new. Nor is it an aberration. From the revolution that founded our country to "Beavis and Butt-Head," violence is as American as apple pie.

Still, many Americans feel strongly that somehow violence is not the same thing it has always been. It has taken a new place in our daily lives. Some people point to the fact that children are bringing guns and and knives to school; others cite the proliferation of violence on television and in the movies.

There is, I think, another important difference in what violence is today and in how we are experiencing it.

Historically, violence arose in the context of an America that was growing, prospering, progressing, and developing - economically, politically, and culturally. Consequently, violence generally occurred in the context of an overall constructive thrust to American life.

We can't just 'stop the violence' by throwing more tax dollars into the pot. Similarly, harsh 'tough on crime' legislation has had little impact.

That is no longer the case. This is not to suggest that the violence of times gone by can be justified as having served a purpose. Violence was, and is, brutal and destructive. In a world that has in some respects all but stopped developing, however, violence takes on a different significance - in the lives of individuals and in the life of America itself.

This is particularly true of poor inner-city communities where, with economic and social development at a standstill, violence is often all that is happening.

Decades of liberal failure have shown us that you can't just "stop the violence" by throwing more tax dollars into the pot. Similarly, the evidence suggests that even the harshest "tough on crime" legislation has had little impact. According to "The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission," for example, "academic research has shown little or no correlation between rates of crime and the number of people in prison."

Traditional solutions to violence, whether liberal or conservative, have simply not been effective.

The Senate is scheduled to take action soon on The Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Act of 1997, part of a package of proposed juvenile justice legislation. The debate, which is taking place along the old political fault line, ignores the historical changes in American violence.

Violence is the bad news. The good news is a new kind of development. Innovative programs - independent of government funding and politicking - are making use of cutting-edge research in human development to reinitiate the constructive development of tens of thousands of inner-city youngsters in some of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. These same neighborhoods recently have witnessed an unprecedented downturn in crime and violence.

While the professional politicians continue to invoke traditional solutions to mobilize the shrinking pool of voters who keep them in office, these independent programs are developing the lives of young people and the future of America.

Gabrielle Kurlander is president of the nonprofit Community Literacy Research Project Inc., which sponsors the All-Stars Talent Show Network, a New York City anti-violence program for youth.

The American People Want Reform. How Are We Going To Get It For Them? (1997)

2011-08-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

by Jacqueline Salit (1997)

On March 15, 1997 the National Committee of the Patriot Party met in Washington, DC. We had several hours of discussion on a range of issues having to do with the building of the Reform Party that I wanted to communicate to all of you. These discussions were about the vision and design of Reform and how to make it most relevant and useful to the American people. We discussed the issue of whether the party would be developed as a populist and inclusionary party or whether it would be built along centrist and/or ideological lines.

Some in the Reform movement have mistakenly identified the Patriot Party with the so-called Schaumburg group. This is ironic, since some in the Schaumburg group identify the Patriot Party as under the control of "Dallas." Neither is accurate. The true story is important, however, as it has very direct bearing on some of the circumstances inside the Reform Party now, and on the emerging debate on the political choice between populism and centrism.

Some Working Definitions

Different people have different definitions. Here are some of ours. Centrism, or the model of building a party "at the center" is basically a term that reflects a particular political strategy. Sometimes it is confused with "moderation" or being a moderate on particular issues. But centrism is not so much an ideology as a "real-politic" approach. Centrists (in the current moment) see the Democratic and Republican parties as so distinct and far apart from one another, that there exists the opportunity to create a new party in between them. Its a way of positioning and making an appeal to voters on the basis of that positioning.

Populists, on the other hand, see the Democratic and Republican parties as pretty much the same and, in order to win elections, at the center. Consequently, there is not enough "space" between them to build a winning party there. Populism is a model of party-building that is more vertical, more bottom (the American people) versus top (the two parties and the government) than a horizontal model based on the left/center/right paradigm of centrism. Many populists (like most Americans) are moderates who don't agree with the extreme positions taken by either the ideological right-wing of the Republican Party or the ideological left-wing of the Democratic Party. At the same time, populism is an inclusive grassroots approach that is tolerant of divergent views, which often differs from centrism which tends to want to include only those ideologically "at the center." But centrism is not an ideological position. Its more of a political compass than an ideology. Hence, the equation between "centrist" and "moderate" is a confusion. After all, most who vote for the Democrats and Republicans are also moderate. Yet many are dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of the two parties which has to do, not with the failure to be moderate but, with their fixation on winning even at the cost of their effectiveness to govern, i.e., their centrism.

The Truth About the Patriot Party

More on this debate later. Now for the true story of the Patriot Party. The Patriot Party, founded in April 1994, was, in essence, an experiment. Pro-third partyists who had become politically active through the Perot â92 campaign and independents based among what have been traditionally Democratic Party and liberal constituencies -- African Americans, Hispanics, gays and progressives -- came together in hopes of creating a new party. We set out to create something unique and specifically suited to this moment in American political life -- a moment in which the vast majority of Americans, from different walks of life, are deeply alienated from and distrustful of our government and its two party rule. Ross Perot's 1992 campaign had thoroughly exposed this. And the Patriot Party wanted to create a political instrument that was responsive. The Patriot Party was a party that was not based on any ideology -- not conservative, not moderate, not liberal-- but had a vision of including all Americans, regardless of ideology, in a new kind of party oriented toward political and fiscal reform and government accountability.

This unique Patriot format, governed by democratic and inclusionary rules and a set of ten principles -- rather than a "social issues" platform -- was not established without a protracted fight. One entire wing -- led by Lenora Fulani -- of what would ultimately become the Patriot Party was barred from attending the Kansas City meeting in the fall of 1993 that laid the groundwork for the founding of Patriot. Significantly, that meeting was convened and shaped by several people who are now significant influences on the so-called Schaumburg group including pollster and author Gordon Black, former Governor Lowell Weicker and Dick Lamm's 1996 campaign manager Tom D'Amore. In spite of the fact that this process got off on a very exclusionary foot, the group adopted rules for a founding convention that were open, grassroots-oriented and which, through its Congressional District representation structure, allowed for the inclusion and participation of all Americans who wanted to be a part of this fledgling effort. Much of the work to create, adopt and apply these rules was led by Nicholas Sabatine, who went on to become Patriot Party National Chair and Tom McLaughlin, a Patriot Party leader who is now the chairman of the Reform Party Rules Committee.

At Patriot's April 1994 founding convention, where 110 delegates from more than 20 states were credentialed, a fierce floor fight broke out over whether the term "centrist" should be incorporated into the party's principles. Among those advocating that it should were Gordon Black, who believed strongly in the concept of a party that was "centrist" (and "moderate," confusing the two in our opinion) and Laureen Oliver, a New York delegate. When the majority of delegates opposed the use of the term on the grounds that it was exclusionary to define the party along such lines, because it meant that people who did not define themselves as such were unwelcome, Oliver, Black and several others stormed out of the convention and immediately undertook to find ways to try to either destroy or take over the Patriot Party. (One of their methods, by the way, was to circulate false charges of anti-Semitism and extremism against Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, taken from materials prepared by the Anti-Defamation League. Oliver herself was interviewed by the ADL for an anti-Fulani pamphlet released the following year which is now being aggressively distributed throughout Reform by Schaumburg activists and other Lamm supporters.)

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. The process that the Reform Party is now going through has some very similar characteristics. It even has some of the same characters!

The "Democracy" Gambit

It was for this reason that the Patriot Party, which had aggressively lobbied Ross Perot and the members of United We Stand, America to make the move to initiate the Reform Party and then actively supported and participated in the building process that began on September 25, 1995 in California, convened a meeting of its own National Committee on March 15 in Washington, DC. We had invested substantial political and human resources in the building of Reform; been a part of the magnificent results produced on election day in which the national infrastructure of a new, independent party was cemented; worked coalitionally to build numerous state party organizations; participated through various individuals in the 50 state conference call and the Nashville meeting, and were proud to have Patriot founders James Mangia elected to serve as national secretary of the Reform Party and Tom McLaughlin appointed by the partyâs officers to serve as chair of the Rules Committee. We felt throughout and feel now extremely positive about the growth and development of Reform, and about the many working relationships that have emerged between Patriots and many UWSAers, the Dallas staff and the many independents in activist and leadership roles in state parties.

Like others in Reform, we have also been concerned about the ongoing fixation by a vocal few on the so-called issue of "internal democracy" that permeated Nashville and has flooded the Internet since. The Patriot Party meeting was convened to discuss this state of affairs. It appears to us that the effort to focus the Reform Party on a fight over "internal democracy" -- whether Ross Perot does or should "control" Reform; whether Russ Verney does or should "control" Reform; whether the Schaumburg group does or should "control" Reform and the various state level permutations of this in Illinois, California, Virginia and elsewhere -- obscures an underlying and more significant issue for the Reform Party: namely, the issue of what kind of party we are building. Of course, everyone pays lip service to democracy and democratic rules. No one says they think things should be undemocratic. But an obsession with rules, however democratic those rules might be, means little in the absence of using them to guarantee inclusion and open debate and means nothing at all if they are used, as a cover for exclusion and stifling dialogue on key issues facing the party. Moreover, while rules are important to the process, democracy is not simply a structural or administrative matter, Mr. Roberts' rules not withstanding! It is also a posture, a spirit, a commitment to the open and free exchange of strategies and approaches. It is as much about the culture of a new kind of party as it is about the written rules of the party.

Centrist or Populist?

How do we answer the question of what kind of party we are building? One Patriot leader, Fred Newman, puts it this way: There is currently a disagreement in the Reform movement over whether the party should be a centrist party or a populist party. The centrists view the political situation in the country like this: The two parties are at the "extremes" -- the Democrats being on the "left" and the Republicans being on the "right." As referenced earlier, the centrists believe there is such a great space between these two parties that a new party -- a party of the center -- can be created and win elections there. This party would, in effect, try to get into the game now being played by the Republicans and Democrats, the game of winning elections by creating an electoral majority at the center. Those who believe in a more populist model have a different view of the political situation in the country. They -- the Patriot Party is among them, and so, we believe, is Ross Perot -- think there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans; that both parties have taken control of the government and are running it on behalf of themselves and the mega-interests which fund them. Consequently, for the populists, ideology -- right (conservative), center (moderate), or left (liberal) -- is not fundamental. The real issue is creating a bottom-up, inclusive party that can unite all Americans regardless of their ideology, their background, their race, religion, ethnicity or lifestyle, who are excluded from ownership of a government and a country which, as Ross Perot has said, belongs to us. The populists aren't interested in creating a new party to get into the bipartisan game. Populism is about changing the rules of the game so that the American people can take back our government.

Win, Lose or Build

In response to this characterization of these two distinct positions, some Reform activists have said that while they strongly support the concept of a bottom-up, inclusionary, tolerant party, they like the characterization of Reform as "moderate" because the majority of the American people favor positions on social issues that are not at the extremes, but closer to the center. We agree. However, the point of creating a new reform-oriented party is to break the deadlock of the two party system. Defining a party in terms of positions on social issues, even moderate ones, does not promote that kind of reform. Everyone in two-party politics today calls themselves a moderate. Bill Clinton is for "responsibility" and "opportunity." Newt Gingrich is for bipartisan cooperation. Why? Because most voters consider themselves moderates, and the Democrats and Republicans want their votes. If a new third party simply defines itself as moderate, then it is trying to appeal to voters on the same basis as the two parties. But in addition to being moderate, the American people are rejecting the "win at all costs" game. The highly partisan and very corrupt system of American politics must be taken apart and reconstructed to be democratic, inclusive and a proper tool for governing by and for the American people.

Some in the Reform Party have a different take on this issue of the party's focus. They see the critical and immediate objective for Reform being that of winning elections in the short term. With that as your objective, it makes sense that projecting the party as "moderate" would seem important, since that's how you win elections in America these days (that, plus millions of dollars from special interests). Some have argued against this strategy because it is too ambitious and "bigger" than we are. My problem with the strategy of "winning elections" is that it isn't ambitious or big enough! Reform is out to reform the political system; to change the way our government is elected and run. The more Reform wants to project itself as the new political party that can accomplish that, the more we will grow. In my opinion, in the not-too-distant future, we will attract support from millions and millions of Americans because our message is their message. Then, winning elections will be a snap.

The American people are fed up with politicians whose idea of governing is figuring out how to take positions in order to raise the most money for their reelection campaigns. This system of political compromise has compromised our political system. We don't want compromise. We, the American people, want solutions. In order to get to those solutions, Reform is going to have to be more than "moderate." It's going to have to lead the fight to de-politicize our government and policy-making and revitalize our democracy through structural political reform. It is the focus on political reform -- which in Patriot has meant the focus on principles rather than social issue programmatics -- that makes the Reform Party uniquely relevant.

It goes without saying that everyone in the Reform movement -- not to mention everyone in the country -- has the right to choose whatever position on this matter they like. While the Patriot Party does not agree with the premise of a centrist party, we respect the right of those who hold to this position to do so. We'd love to see the populist vs. centrist debate put right out on the table. That's why we're distributing this paper. However, rather than have an open and democratic dialogue on this issue, some of the pro-centrist elements of our party have attempted to drive what they would characterize as the party's "conservative/right" and "liberal/left" out of the party in order to create a pure party of the (moderate) center -- before anyone even gets a chance to consider whether they think those ideological labels are useful and whether they want that kind of party or not.

Ideological Cleansing

What is the value of doing this, from their perspective? Presumably, if you have a new party that is "centrist" in its approach, it will be able to compete with the Democrats and Republicans for that "space" at the "center." After all, while the centrists believe the two parties are at the extremes, presumably they also recognize that the Democrats and Republicans are both clutching for a "center," too. That's why the two parties are so into "bipartisan cooperation." However, "bipartisanism" is easier said than done. The Democrats have a "left" and the Republicans have a "right" -- both of which are balking at their respective parties' attempt to muzzle them as the two parties seek compromise and accommodation with one another. Perhaps, the independent centrists believe that if they can chop off Reform's "left" and "right" from the start, it could give the party a significant advantage in the competition with the two major parties.

Presented in that framework, there may be some truth to the "centrists'" argument. The problem is that the framework is only useful if you're looking to create a third party that is just like the Republicans and the Democrats. Why would we want to do that? The American people are tired of politics as usual. We want to break out of the existing two-party mold, not simply by adding another clone to the picture, but by creating a party that is different in its approach to governing and spending, different in its ethics and accountability and different in its ability to unite the majority of Americans who currently have no place in the political system. That is the populist view.

The efforts at "ideological cleansing" inside the Reform Party have been ongoing and insidious. Some months ago, under the guise of a fight to "democratize" the Illinois Reform Party, accusations were made against Dawn Larson that she was a supporter of David Duke. Recently Jim Mangia was verbally attacked at a meeting of the West Los Angeles chapter in California Reform for his relationship to Lenora Fulani, who in turn was vilified for being a leftist. The discredited and politically (Democratic Party) motivated ADL report on Fulani and Newman has been widely circulated inside the party, most recently by members of the Board of the Colorado Reform Party who are aligned with Dick Lamm. These divisive efforts and others too numerous to mention emanate from the same circle which asserts the need for "internal democracy" and ideological purity. Obviously, the party is free to democratically decide that it wants to choose this ideological path. But no such decision has been made.

To the Convention

So far, the major decision that has been made with respect to this critical and self-defining issue, is to hold a national founding convention with hundreds of delegates, representing Congressional Districts and, thereby, diverse populations of Americans from across the country. This convention will democratically determine the character of the Reform Party. This convention will decide what kind of party we want our party to be. And it is a great strength of Reform and a tribute to all who are playing a role in building it that we have placed the future of the party in the hands of all those who are and will soon come to be building it.

And so, what is the Patriot Party's role in this process? Some have asked (more or less provocatively) why we still exist? Why haven't we simply "merged" into Reform?

In some respects, of course, we have. Patriot leaders hold varied posts in the Reform infrastructure. In states where election law provides for registering voters into a party, Patriot activists register voters into Reform affiliates. Patriot News reports on and analyzes developments in Reform and the broader independent movement.

At the same time, the Patriot Party believes in and is a particular model of a new political party. It is the populist model, the non-ideological approach, the inclusionary, bottom-up approach. Some call it Patriot populism. Some call it Perot populism ö in recognition of the populist and non-ideological voice that Ross Perot has contributed to the party-building effort.

The success of Reform has brought it to the point where it is in a position to deal with these very fundamental party "engineering" issues. Given the road Patriot has traveled, given our experiences and all that we have learned from our "experiment" to date, we hope that we have something very particular to contribute to the process, not the least of which is our ability to bring different kinds of Americans together for constructive dialogue on our shared future.

New York City
March 24, 1997

JACQUELINE SALIT is the editor of Patriot News, a National Committee member of the National Patriot Party and a State Committee member of the Independence Party of New York.

Open Letter to Minister Louis Farrakhan (1994)

2011-08-09T15:55:00.001-07:00

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Nation of Islam
Chicago, Illinois

A-Salaam-Alaikum, Minister:

My name is William Pleasant. I am the former senior editor and chief writer of the National Alliance newspaper. As you know, the Alliance was the leftist journal that supported Dr. Lenora Fulani and the New Alliance Party (NAP). In November 1985, former senior editor Michael Hardy [and I] conducted an interview with you at your Chicago headquarters. That interview was eventually published as a booklet and distributed throughout the US, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. It became the seminal document of your political, social, cultural and religious thinking at the time. I am very proud of that publication, for it allowed you to speak your mind without the usual interpretation and distortion found in the pro-Caucasian bourgeois media.

Though I believe that our political methodologies and strategies are very divergent--even at some points conflicting--I also believe that the only way that the oppressed Black community can successfully formulate a truly revolutionary political agenda--an agenda that will lead all people to liberation--is for ALL opinions and tendencies that exist within our community to be heard. That means that I have always supported your right to speak, as I believe you have always respected my right to disagree with you. That is the essence of political principle.

It is on the matter of political principles that I address you today. Allow me to be blunt. It does not serve your interests, or the interest of serious political dialogue within the Black community, for you to continue to be associated with Dr. Lenora Fulani, NAP, Fred Newman or any of other front personages or organizations of the International Workers Party (IWP). As you may know, Michael Hardy [and I] were leading members of the IWP. You may not know that we broke with Newman and Fulani in 1992. Like many Black, Latino and white members of the IWP, we walked out over Newman's political and financial corruption, as well as his brutal and humiliating manipulation of Dr. Fulani.

Not unlike Roy Innis, Fulani exists as a fictitious Black Leader, manufactured by Newman's Jim Crow propaganda department, for the benefit of Newman's fundraising business among liberal whites. Dr. Fulani serves as Newman's poor, Black militant-talking poster child. Needless to say, the millions of dollars that Newman has harvested through his marketing campaign have fattened his pockets and done nothing to advance our struggle.

Newman is the leader of a psychotherapy cult, predominately composed of middle class whites and a handful of Black and Latino dependents. Fulani is simply one of those dependents. She cannot speak or act without Newman's permission. Everything that comes out of her mouth is scripted by Newman. He, like a Dr. Frankenstein, readily refers to Fulani as his “greatest creation.” Several times Fulani has publicly declared that Newman has done more for the Black community than any Black leader alive! Fulani's emotional, intellectual and political thralldom to Newman is complete. For example: in 1991, Newman told Fulani to denounce then Chief of Staff General Colin Powell as just another fascist. But in 1994, eager to curry favor with right wing and white followers of Ross Perot, Newman told her to launch a campaign to draft Powell as the Black progressive candidate for the Virginia U.S. Senate seat! Fulani is no more “independent” than Charlie Bergen's puppet, and her political integrity begins and ends with any and every scheme Newman cooks up to turn a buck. When you hear her, you are actually listening to Newman's scam, nothing more.

You may be aware that Newman, like his former partner Lyndon LaRouche in the early 1980s, has abandoned leftist politics altogether and attempted to ally with the billionaire rightist Ross Perot and his followers. He has demanded that the Black community join with the Perot folks, irregardless of the fact that the new far-rightists (proto-fascists) are ideologically anti-Black and anti-poor. Newman's message to the Black community is that if we fail to jump on the Perot bandwagon, then we have nothing but ourselves to blame for our disempowerment!

Newman's newest objective is to repackage and market himself to Perot's new right, given that he has blown all of his contacts in the Black and progressive communities. Newman must be understood today as merely another white Jewish owner of a string of businesses that is being reorganized to sell intelligence on the progressive opposition--you and the NOI included--the labor of his cultists and an affluent white middle class database, generated by the honest political work of the now defunct IWP. He is an entrepreneur. You are literally his last high-profile Black link. He seeks to exploit you by positioning himself as the “Jew” who has your ear. He can sell that, just as he will make a mint from marketing video copies of the interview of you he orchestrated on the so-called FULANI Show. Frankly, Minister Farrakhan, I was quite shocked by the ease with which you allowed yourself to be used by Newman. You were the hot property and he got you for nothing!

Though I do not subscribe to the nationalist tendency, I consider myself a Black revolutionary--of the Marxist variety, with no apologies. That means that I understand that the uprising and triumph of our people--the truly “wretched of the earth”--will mean the rising of humanity, in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's poetically apocalyptic “North American Wilderness” and elsewhere. Likewise, I am concerned that the progressive movement, historically led by African Americans, Latinos, Indians and other people of color, purge itself of white parasites and their black skin apologists. I am talking about Newman and Fulani here.

Every time that you or your followers allow Fulani a photo opportunity, you feed Newman's money machine. Fulani draws relevance from her association with you and other organic Black leaders, not from a relationship to a grassroots grouping of people in our communities who share her psychotic obedience to Fred Newman. Such people simply don't exist.

For example: Fulani's political support in the NYC Black community is currently so poor that she has to literally pay people recruited at homeless shelters to participate in her marches and demonstrations! In the 1993 Gay Pride Parade, she boasted of an army of Black lesbian and gay followers in her contingent. In fact, the sisters and brothers marching with the good doctor were not only straight, but they had been paid only $10-a-head to march in the torturous 5-hour parade! Any grouping of people--particularly Black and Latino people--you see at a Fulani event tend to be rented props, or Fred Newman cultists. So you see, you do not give Fulani any legitimacy in the Black community; Black folks have already sniffed her out and stampeded in the opposite direction! She can't do anything in the Black community with an endorsement from you, because the community basically distrusts her--and for very sound reasons--no matter what you say. The Fulani that you knew in 1988 no longer exists! She has been reprogrammed by Newman.

Newman's money machine depends on having a “Black Cause” that can be sold to white liberals--they give the money--and Fulani is that cause. In lieu of an organic following, Fulani must constantly appear to be associated with Black controversy. She has become a sort of political ambulance chaser, latching on to any happening in the Black community or any Black leader who bothers to return her phone calls. But once the TV cameras have been turned off, she disappears until the next opportunity for a sound bite. I believe that if you spoke to Rev. Al Sharpton about the matter, then he could give you a very vivid picture of how Newman has sought to manipulate and control Black progressive politics through Fulani. Newman believes that he can simply bribe out anyone. He attempted to bribe Rev. Sharpton. Fulani simply served as his bag man, so to speak.

Though many Black people may have political disagreements with you, nonetheless, they have great respect for your integrity. In short, they believe you won't back down. The same cannot be said for Fulani. Your association with Dr. Fulani--i.e., Fred Newman--actually degrades that respect. Fulani is widely viewed as a compromiser and a slave to the whims of a white limousine pseudo-radical.

I speak as an insider, so I know the score, Minister Farrakhan. Fulani's 1992 Presidential Campaign, the All Stars Talent Show and Pregnant Productions, Castillo Cultural Center, New Alliance Productions, International Peoples Law Institution, Community Literacy Research Project [All Stars predecessor], even the Barbara Taylor School, etc., are all Newman business fronts, paper organizations that exist for the sole purpose of laundering donated money into Newman's personal accounts! That is why myself and scores of other IWP members--Black, Latino, Asian, white, gay--have spent a year and more investigating and exposing Newman's corruption. Meanwhile, Dr. Fulani--for reasons that are totally opaque, given her history and education--has played Newman's Black tail-gunner, as he has attempted to dodge criminal indictment. Newman is currently under investigation for fraud, embezzlement and forgery by the Manhattan DA. He seems to have stolen at least $4 million from Fulani's 1992 Presidential campaign alone!

Out of respect for her historic status as the first African American and first woman to wage a nationwide Presidential campaign, Dr. Fulani was privately warned in February 1993-before the investigation began--that she should distance herself from Newman and avoid scandal and further political humiliation. She refused and denounced myself and scores of other ex-supporters as “liars” and “snitches,” on cue from Newman, of course. We were the ones who warned her! Fulani will probably attempt to counter my charges by denouncing me as an agent of some conspiracy against herself and so-called “independent Black leadership,” hatched by the government, the Democratic Party, the Elks or anyone else who strikes Newman's fancy. She'll charge that I turned her (Newman) in to The Man. The irony of that charge is that her “mentor” has a long history of using the police and the courts to chastise his critics. For example: when Morning Sunday, the Black Maryland state chairwoman of the New Alliance Party (NAP Md.) protested the way that Newman's operatives were mistreating native Black campaign workers and expatriating every campaign penny raised in her state back to Newman's NYC bank accounts--by withholding submission of Fulani's 1992 Maryland ballot nominating petitions-Newman ordered Fulani to file charges against her erstwhile Black sister for grand theft! Sunday, who had been a longtime grassroots NAP activist and Fulani partisan, was subsequently convicted of the charge, but was later vindicated by an appeal--months and thousands of dollars in legal fees later. Fulani (Newman) is actually an expert at “snitching” o activists. But, as the old folks say, “What goes-around-comes-around!” And just to be clear, I was not the one to first publicly denounce Fulani (Newman) for embezzlement and fraud, or to file a complaint with any legal authorities whatsoever. Fulani knows that's the truth, but she won't let that stand in the way of trying to convince you otherwise.

Likewise, when the Brooklyn-based City Sun broke the story of the DA's investigation in October 1993, Newman signed Fulani's name to a 3,000-word rebuttal painting anyone who dared to criticize him as an FBI agent. Needless to say, City Sun publisher Andy Cooper refused to print the nonsensical response--for one, because at no point in the piece did Newman address the very specific charges made against him b his own associates, not the police! Newman then ordered is attorney Arthur Block to harass and threaten Cooper into publishing the rebuttal. Cooper stood by his guns aid so Newman backed down, knowing that a libel suit against he City Sun would be a legal nightmare. He would have to open his books and answer questions under discovery.

It is important that you be informed about this matter. There is no reason why you and your organization should in any way soil yourselves with Newman.

Beware, Minister Farrakhan: as you move closer to Fulani (Newman), you give your followers the impression that there is some sort f strategic political fusion between yourself and Fulani (Newman). This is a grave error on your part, because it opens up the NOI to infiltration by Newman. He cannot put people into the NOI, because, frankly, he has next to no Black disciples anymore, particularly Black males--maybe to 6 remaining. And those who remain are so damaged that hey would be useless as moles. But he can attempt to corrupt your middle leadership. In fact, that is his favorite tactic. He will use whatever he has at his disposal, including bribery and even sexual seduction to build a pro-Fulani (Newman) caucus within the NOI. He will prey upon you more weaker or ambitious followers.

Allow me to give you an example of Newman at work against Black organizations that I am personally aware of, though I refused to collaborate in. The 1991 split within the Mason-Maddox-Sharpton-founded United African Movement (UAM), though born of some pre-existing internal organizational contradiction,, was consciously abetted by Newman's backroom antics, front d by Fulani. Newman sought to do whatever was necessary to split Sharpton away from Maddox and Mason, whom he characterized as too hostile to even begin to co-opt. His tactic against the UAM was simple; once internal strife became manifest in the organization--after Sharpton was stabbed in Bensonhurst--Newman gave the order to swarm Sharpton and is immediate followers with fawning IWP operatives, financial assistance and free PR. Newman sought to pull Sharp on into his orbit for no other reason than he believed that Sharpton would give Fulani (Newman) legitimacy in the Black community. He sought to use what he perceived as his financial leverage over Sharpton to force Sharpton to sponsor Fulani within national Black leadership circles--to allow her to tag along. To his credit, Sharpton peeped Newman's game early on, and constructed a counter-tactic that at once allowed him to utilize Newman's relatively formidable financial and organizational resources, while at the same time maintaining a healthy political distance from Fulani. In other words, Sharpton turned the con-game on the con-man Newman! Newman has been seething with hatred for Sharpton ever since.

More or less, Newman has been hatching a similar scenario for you and tie NOI, at least since your 1988 appearance with Fulani at Atlanta's Wheat St. Baptist Church. You know quite well how Newman meddled in NOI affairs three years ago, after Dr. Alim Muhammad allegedly made contact with the neo-fascist Lyndon LaRouche. Newman's sole purpose of “warning” you about LaRouche was to promote political polarization within the NOI--to paint you as the “progressive wing” of the NOI and to portray Alim as a right winger! Newman's strategy against the NOI has always been to split you, Farrakhan, away from you more politically and religiously conservative supporters by forcing Fulani upon you. You are what he calls a “big fish.”

He knew that your pro-Black political orientation would inevitably le d you to embrace Fulani out of pure solidarity, if nothing more. He calculated that such an association, given Fulani's scripted provocations, would alienate sectors of the NOI. Newman believed that your fear of NOI dissident leaders would drive you into his arms. Once you had become isolated, then Newman planned to move in, offering you money, PR and political foot-soldiers in the form of IWP cadre. Newman still dreams of owning you, like he owns Fulani and attempted to buy out Rev. Sharpton. I know this because I was present at many of the IWP leadership me tings where these matters were discussed. Newman reserves a particular contempt for Black males, he fears us as competitors--seemingly in the most vulgar, racist and sexual terms. He also knows that Black men more quickly sniff out his con-game long before many of the Black females he ha been able to emotionally manipulate and string along s welfare cases, i.e., women like Fulani.

Within the leadership of the IWP, Newman often openly bragged about what he saw as his “profound” political impact upon you and the NOI. Newman portrayed your 1990 endorsement of Fulani for NY governor to the IWP as testimony of his influence over you. He had “won you over” to participate in partisan politics. He operated under the delusion that somehow he was transforming the NOI into an auxiliary of the New Alliance arty, with himself in the lead and you under his spell, vi your relationship with Fulani! Personally, I believed, like several other IWP leaders, that any relationship between the IWP--while it still had some relevance as political organization, it's just a cult now-and the NOI ad to be based on mutual respect and concrete political cooperation, not on trying to get Fulani's (or Newman's, for that matter) picture taken with the famous Farrakhan, no seeking a hollow endorsement by association!

That is why, as the inevitable criminal indictments come down you should not feel an obligation to rush to Dr. Fulani's defense. She will not be a Black sister under attack by The Man, but a willing-but-ignorant accomplice to Newman's con-game against Blacks and other progressive folks.

Ironically, given how Newman kept his name off of any of the forged and falsified campaign finance documents, Fulani and her campaign staff will be the ones most likely to bear the criminal consequences of the scam. There is circumstantial evidence that Fulani's chief campaign finance officer, a white lawyer named Francine Miller, has already allegedly turned her candidate into the DA, possibly with the promise of immunity from prosecution. Miller, a very high ranking and long time Newman operative, reportedly resigned from the IWP and disappeared a few months ago! For the record, I strongly believe that Fulani never touched a cent of the stolen money. She didn't even know that the money-laundering operation was going on! Tragically, Fulani has stepped into a trap. Newman, the real crook, will probably walk away clean--and richer!

Thousands upon thousands of decent people--Black, Latino, Asian, gay an white--across this country gave their precious pennies and dollars to support Fulani in 1992--100% more than the did in 1988! They gave because they believed that she would make a political difference in their otherwise degraded and disenfranchised lives. Newman ruthlessly pocketed their money and told them to chase after Perot.

You know how and it is to reach people, particularly Black people these days. Over the years, we have been lied to and robbed by phony revolutionaries again and again. This constant betrayal builds up like a callous over the hearts of our people--we become cynical and self-hating. Fulani's betrayal of the community, at the behest of her white-skin master, only feeds that cynicism and hate. They are critical components of the nihilistic mindset afflicting our youth. Our children kill each other because they have very little hope. Newman's scam left them with even less, and Dr. Fulani helped him with the heist. That was a political crime more dastardly than murder itself.

Minister Farrakhan, I look forward to meeting with you again. In the meantime, I hope that you take my words to heart. Share hem with your followers--publish them in the Final Call, if you like. Likewise, the next time Fulani attempts to crash one of your events, confront her with these charges. Let her know that you are aware of who she is and what she as done for Newman at the expense of political development in communities poor and oppressed people. Again and again I aid others have called her out to answer these charges in print, on radio and in public meetings. She has chosen to hide. Likewise, Newman, a consummate coward, has hidden behind her skirt! Don't give her refuge in the Nation of Islam, or our integrity as a Black leader. Again, as our old folks use to say: “If you lay down with dogs, then you're likely to get up with fleas.” Fulani is that proverbial do and Newman is the flea!

I have nothing to gain by fighting Newman. Nobody will send me a check in the mail for exposing him. I have to buy my own stamps an pay my own long-distance bills, just as the dozens of other ex-IWP members who have stepped forward to take a stand or what is decent and progressive. We are determined to get the word out. I trust that you are listening....

Thank you for your time, Brother.In Solidarity

William Pleasant

Newman in Africa (1994)

2011-08-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

William Pleasant, 1994

New York City, February 14--Over 1,000 Zairian civilians and renegade soldiers have been killed in the last month. The slaughter is the by-product of a political confrontation between the Central African Republic's dictator/president, Mobutu Sese Seko, and his erstwhile oppositional Prime Minister Etienne “Fast Eddy” Tshisekedi (pronounced Te-say-key-dee) wa-Mulumba, who came to power a year ago, following riots which forced Mobutu to hold elections. Zaire (a.k.a. Congo), Africa's second largest nation, has been ruled for 27 years by Mobutu. Appointed by the C.I.A. following the assassination of the country's first and only democratically elected president, Patrice Lumumba, Mobutu has ruled through terror, torture and murder.

Successive U.S. administrations have either ignored the carnagea or actively supported it in the name of propping up a friendly anti-Soviet dictator. Likewise, the anti-imperialist movement has, for the most part, turned its back on the Zairian people, eager to support the trendier anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Meanwhile, Mobutu and his gang of cutthroats have robbed the country blind, stealing billions in gold and diamonds, while selling mining concessions to U.S., European and South African corporations for hefty kickbacks. Mobutu is the richest Black man in the world. Zaire, however, remains one of the poorest countries on earth with an accumulated debt which equals the dictator's personal fortune ($5 billion). Disease, illiteracy and terror, meanwhile, are the lot for most of its 34 million inhabitants.

The recent bloodshed in Zaire erupted on January 28 when Mobutu paid the salaries of his soldiers with new 5-million Zaire banknotes. Seizing an opportunity to up the political ante, Tshisekedi decreed that the money was worthless. In other words, the crisis was manufactured for political profit. Hungry and broke--the average pay for Zairian soldiers is 15 million Zaires or roughly $6 per month-the troops went on a rampage, firing their guns and looting shops. During the melee, the French Ambassador was killed. French and Belgian paratroopers were then sent in to protect and evacuate their own people.

Throughout its coverage of the Zairian crisis, the mainstream media has depicted Tshisekedi as the democratically-elected opposition to the tyrant Mobutu, i.e., THE GOOD GUY. But, is Tshisekedi really the hero of the Zairian people, an African version of Martin Luther King, Jr., or just a political hustler out to snatch Mobutu's crown and his Swiss bank accounts? And, who are the erstwhile “democracy activists” in the U.S. attempting to ride his coattails to the cashbox?

Mobutu's Main Man?

Etienne Tshisekedi is generally viewed as the moderate voice of the Zairian opposition. He is a typical Europeanized African millionaire, no radical by anybody's measure. His program amounts to little more than a cosmetic change in the dictatorship. Tshisekedi has no interest in wresting the country's enormous natural resources away from the American, South African and European corporations. In short, he is just what the C.I.A. and the State Department would order to replace Mobutu. We are led to believe that any self-respecting African Joe would love to have him as a head of state. In his current manifestation, Tshisekedi looks like the model democrat when compared to the barbarous Mobutu. The only hitch in this scenario is that the people of Zaire tend to have much longer memories than some American PR jockeys would like to admit.

“Tshisekedi is no more than a dissident Mobutuist,” explained Serge Mukendi, U.S. Representative of the Workers and Peasants Movement of the Congo (MOP). Mukendi, currently stationed at Local 1199's Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Manhattan, has been a leader of the anti-Mobutu resistance throughout his adult life. He is also a veteran guerrilla fighter. The armed wing of Mukendi's organization currently controls roughly 15'% of Zaire's territory and is committed to toppling both Mobutu and Tshisekedi. “Tshisekedi was a member of the Council of General Commissars, which included Mobutu. They were the group that carried out the assassination of Patrice Lumumba under the direction of the CIA,” Mukendi added.

It seems that Tshisekedi has a rather unappetizing history. Tshisekedi literally participated in installing the Mobutu dictatorship. “He was the author of the doctrine of Mobutuism,” said Mukendi. “If Mobutu is a dictator today, so is Tshisekedi, the one who conceived of the dictatorship. I am not surprised to see them together today competing over who will get the job of betraying the Congolese people.”

Tshisekedi was in fact Mobutu's Minister of Interior, the equivalent to the FBI chief during the 1960's and 70's. He was also the Minister of Justice, i.e., the Attorney General of Zaire. “He is responsible for the murders of hundreds if not thousands of revolutionaries,” said Mukendi. “Among his victims were Pierre Mulele, Mukendi and Tshimanga, all leaders of the Simbas (Young Lions), the anti-imperialist fighters. Thousands died.”

Tshisekedi is fond of answering these charges with the excuse that he was only following Mobutu's orders. But that doesn't wash with the Zairian opposition. Mukendi explained, “Nazis war criminals are still being hunted down today. And they use the same excuse: they were only following orders. Tshisekedi was not blind. He supported Mobutu in every way. The Congolese people cannot make a democracy with homegrown Hitlers and Moussolinis.”

But with a reputation like that, then how can Tshisekedi's massive following be explained? One way to answer the question would be to take a look at the recent riots. Tshisekedi used the upheaval over the currency to make a move on Mobutu's control of the government press, radio and television centers, as well as the central bank. He called for a mass public mobilization to drive out Mobutu's gunmen. When the day of reckoning came, nobody showed up. “The people were afraid. They hid in their homes. The mutinous soldiers owned the streets,” Mukendi said. He recently returned from his country, where he was severely wounded in a tangle with Mobutu's triggermen.

Mukendi continued, “Then Tshisekedi asked the people to stockpile food in preparation for a general strike against Mobutu. Our people hardly have enough money to buy a single meal, much less hoard food. But Tshisekedi has money, so do his cronies in the so-called oppositional National Conference. Members of the National Conference literally get their lunch money from Mobutu, $60 paid in U.S. currency. The people couldn't follow him. He was a failure. Moreover, Tshisekedi, the hero of democracy, his government and the National Conference fled the capital anyway. They ran like rabbits.”

It appears that the anger of the mutinous soldiers was directed against Tshisekedi, not Mobutu. The 5-million Zaire banknotes were only refused by Kinshasa merchants who backed Tshisekedi, not universally as was portrayed in the mainstream U.S. press. Moreover, the new bills were readily accepted outside of the capital city. Tshisekedi's political ploy cost thousands of lives. Mobutu's praetorian guard, the Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division slaughtered the mutineers and then set about assassinating grassroots opposition leaders, university students and anybody else who tickled their fancies.

Once the body count was sufficient, on February 5, Mobutu ordered that Tshisekedi be dismissed as prime minister. Tshisekedi's little game backfired. In the meantime, the Zairian people bury their dead and wait for the next round in the no-win battle between Mobutu and his main man Tshisekedi. Despite Tshisekedi's naked political opportunism, there are some American hustlers still trying to prop up his image as the savior of the Zairian people.

From Revolt to Retail

Many readers have probably had the experience of someone knocking at their door and asking them to contribute money to a worthy cause. Some of you may have contributed to an outfit known as the Rainbow Lobby, which promised to promote civil rights, gay rights, and any other progressive cause that you might say that you were concerned with.

The Rainbow Lobby is actually a business owned and operated by Dr. Fred Newman, the former Marxist-turned-marketer, psychotherapy hustler, New Alliance Party brain trust and all-around MACDADDY of the Tendency-a/k/a the International Workers Party (IWP). Newman marketed the Rainbow Lobby to literally hundreds of thousands of guilt-ridden white middle class folks across the country.

Founded in 1986, it quickly became his top moneymaker, only to be supplanted by his later Federal Primary Matching Funds scam. Its revenues from canvassing and telemarketing reached into the millions of dollars. That money was supposed to have been used to maintain a Washington, DC lobbying operation and to conduct political work in support of various issues. Judging it in comparison with other lobbying groups, the Rainbow Lobby was an utter failure. Not a single piece of legislation was ever passed on its behalf, though in terms of financial resources and subscribers it was rated among the top 10 lobbying offices in Washington.

As of January 1, 1993, Rainbow Lobby--now Ross & Green, a new business formed under Newman's privatization campaign--was eliminated. For obvious reasons, a mass political organization no longer fit Newman's marketing strategy. Its data base was turned over to Newman's other enterprises. These names and phone numbers will be used to market his new products--via Castillo Cultural Center or the still-born New Alliance Party--or be sold to the highest commercial bidder; that means if you gave money to Rainbow Lobby, then don't be surprised if you get telemarketed or direct-mailed by everyone from the Ronco Slicer Dicer to the Republican Party National Committee.

Literally, millions of work-hours were spent by hundreds of activists who solicited door-to-door believing that somehow they were contributing to radical change in this country. Most of them had weekly quotas for donations which, if not met, resulted in them not being paid a salary. It was not uncommon to find unsuccessful Rainbow Lobby organizers in tears at the end of a week of canvassing, penniless and facing hunger. Yet, they continued to sacrifice. They had been told that they were building a mass organization among the middle classes that would support a radical agenda. Now they have discovered that they were actually only building Newman's nest egg and a direct marketing data base. More than 100,000 decent people gave money to Rainbow Lobby to make a difference. They were conned. As for the organizers, Newman has dropped all pretense of an anti-state political strategy. What had been a tactic for revolt has become an outlet for retailing.

Yet, the Rainbow Lobby--Ross & Green--is fond of pointing out that it was the first to come to the support of the Zairian opposition. It even makes the dubious claim that it was, ...”the democracy lobby which finally succeeded in getting Congress to cut off all aid to Mobutu two years ago.” (7he National Alliance, February 16, 1993, Newman's one-page advertising circular.) Both of these declarations are false.

The anti-Mobutu forces enjoyed support among elements of the Black and so-called white anti-imperialist left dating from the 1978 Shaba Uprising, long before the Rainbow Lobby existed. Secondly, Rainbow Lobby was effectively muscled out of the anti-Mobutu debate in Congress by church and other humanitarian groups, eager to have the Zaire turf to them.

The truth is that, dating from 1982, the International Workers Party (IWP) gave financial support to the Congolese National Liberation Front (FLNC). This was an armed anti-Mobutu force, the people behind the Shaba Uprising. They later evolved into the Workers and Peasants Party of the Cargo (POP) and are now Serge Mukendi's MOP, the Workers and Peasants Movement. They are committed to blasting Mobutu out of power and establishing a socialist alternative, meaning driving out the American and European corporations that are sucking Zaire dry of its natural resources. For a Marxist, this is a goal worth supporting. In solidarity, a delegation of IWP members even visited liberated territory in Zaire. But in 1989, support for Mukendi's organization suddenly cooled under Newman's orders. The leaders of the Zairian revolution were no longer the women and men who were routing Mobutu's army and gendarmes, but Etienne Tshisekedi, Mobutu's former right-hand man.

Newman made a wise business decision. He concluded that armed revolutionaries made poor basket cases. They are hard to sell to Middle America. But a button-down, silk-suited CIA operative would do the trick. There was money to be made with Tshisekedi. From 1989 on, Newman pumped Tshisekedi as the be-all-and-end-all of the anti-Mobutu movement. The now-prime minister was squired around Washington by Rainbow Lobby manager Nancy Ross, to cry crocodile tears about Mobutu's nastiness. For Newman, Tshisekedi was the ticket, the Zairian people be damned--revolution and anti-imperialism to the toilet also.

Tshisekedi never paid the Rainbow Lobby a penny for its PR campaign on his behalf. In a sense, he and the U.S. State Department got a free ride off of the poor deluded souls who gave and collected the money to the Rainbow Lobby. In return, these supporters were fed a diet of dated photos featuring Tshisekedi rubbing elbows with Newman, Lenora Fulani--Newman's prized finger puppet--and Nancy Ross. Recently, the Alliance featured a picture of Ross sitting on the prime minister's sofa at his mansion. Ross probably went to Kinshasa to demand that Tshisekedi throw some cash her way. After all, she and Newman had made him a prime minister. In their minds, he owes them and he is now in the position to write some checks.

Needless to say, Tshisekedi gave Ross the finger. Swine at the trough are not likely to share their slop with comrades. But Ross was undaunted. She has established Americans United with the Congolese People (AUCP), another paper organization to provide a cover for hustling American public sympathy for African causes. Ross' companion, the Howard University academic Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja also made the trip to Kinshasa. He grins in the snapshot too.

Newman has consistently promoted Nzongola as a leading Zairian revolutionary. He is in fact a respected African historian, a resident in the U.S. for 20 years or more, but he has absolutely no following in the U.S. or in Zaire-and no particular history as an activist either. Nzongola is actually the only middle class Zairian exile who will collaborate with Newman these days. Put simply, he is used as a prop.

This would all make for a hit sit-com, but people are dying in Zaire. Revolutionaries are forced to count their bullets. The wounded die in need of elementary antibiotics. Thousands of women and children are refugees in surrounding countries. The women are forced into prostitution to feed their families. AIDS spreads like prairie fire in the poverty and devastation. People suffer and die in need of revolutionary change, not a “peaceful transfer of power” from the bloodthirsty Mobutu to the blood-splattered Tshisekedi.

Yet, Newman's support for the leftist armed insurgency against the dictatorship was cut because Mukendi and others refused to go along with his scheme to “unite” the opposition, meaning to force a popular front between the Marxist anti-Mobutu opposition and the Tshisekedi variety of net-colonialists, the so-called Democracy Movement. In his arrogance and racism, Newman thought that he could broker a deal that would effectively set himself up as the political matchmaker behind the anti-Mobutu forces. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Zairian people had died in the fight against the dictatorship, people slaughtered by Etienne Tshisekedi and his cronies didn't even cross his mind. He couldn't for the life of him understand what all the fuss was about. For him, it was only the blood of Africans, after all.

Newman has never been to Africa, and when he was offered the opportunity to meet with the Zairian guerrilla leaders in 1989, the great revolutionary hero chickened out, demanding that they all leave their troops and meet him in Brussels, Belgium where it was safe for him. Sitting in his Upper West Side boudoir, Newman had no appreciation of the hostility between the guerrilla fighters and Tshisekedi. Tshisekedi had put many of their comrades and families to the sword when he was a Mobutu employee. There could be no basis for an alliance. For them, Tshisekedi was at best a CIA stooge and at worse a Mobutu-in-waiting. But in Newman's mind, they were all just a bunch of desperate Blacks who needed money. He had the money.

Serge Mukendi commented on the Rainbow Lobby, “It seems that the Rainbow Lobby has the same outlook on the world as Tshisekedi. It's quite lawful that they should come together now. Newman likes to say that he's now swimming with the big fish-Tshisekedi, the assassin of the working class--not us revolutionaries. If you support criminals like Tshisekedi, then you support the enemies of the people. We started the resistance to Mobutu and we are the only ones who will guarantee the triumph of our people's aspiration for liberation.”

Open Letter to Lenora Fulani (1993)

2011-08-09T15:52:00.001-07:00

The following two letters, dated March 12, 1993 and October 5, 1993, respectively, were sent to Lenora Fulani and published in the National Alliance, November 25, 1993.

Dear Lenora:

By now you have probably read my letter to Fred (1/25/93). I sent that letter to about 25 other comrades. It was my statement of political rupture with Newman. I stand by it, and there will be more to come from me. Since Newman has refused to politically respond to the charges that I have made against him, then I have no other choice but to take my debate public. It is for that reason that I am writing to you at this time. I want to make clear to you that my conflict is with Newman and Newman alone. I have no interest in attacking you or painting you with the same brush. You followed the swine Newman out of your belief that he was committed to liberating our people. Your decency and steadfastness against adversity was and remains a great political and historical milestone in the struggle of all oppressed people in this stinking country. Personally, I want to thank you for the help that you gave me when I was your therapy patient-though you might believe that my time with you was too short and I was your worse [sic] patient. Nonetheless, in many respects, you cured me. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I give praise to you.

Newman's crimes against our movement speak for themselves. I laid them out in my January letter. He must resign! I am concerned that he does not drag you into his personal cesspool. Of course, you may liken me to Dennis Serrette [NAP's presidential candidate in 1984, Serrette left the party soon after and began attacking it; he had been Fulani's lover]. For you, I may play the new role of the ungrateful, traitorous, Black Nationalist male-in-competition-with-Fred. It's a convenient characterization but it is inaccurate. In respect to Newman, I am 100 Serrettes! I am the one who can drive the stake through the heart of Newman's phony left cover once and for all. Why?-Because I am actually a communist who chose to follow him. Serrette was not. He was a poor working-class Black guy who discovered that the straightest and shortest path to sex with white women was through the Left.

First of all, I am not a poor working-class Black guy. I'm a Black guy from obnoxiously bourgey Southern roots, with a serious red chip on his shoulder. As for interracial sex, well, that's passé, an obsession of nationalists and guilty nationalists [sic] posing as communists-also a boogey-boo [sic] for white leftists who haven't quite worked through their personal Jungle Fevers. I fit into none of those categories. I am who I am. My political history speaks for itself. And it did not begin when I collided with Fred Newman. I was never a middle class neurotic seeking refuge from a bad marriage, the suburbs or irrelevancy. I was never a "therapy patient." I never sought a father substitute in Newman nor a model of sexual liberation. To me, he's just a middle-aged white guy with a lot of money and a small army of dizzy devotees blatant parasites, most of whom (male and female) he cock-teases and a few he actually attempts to copulate with. I find his "sexiness" as repulsive as I find the scam of any other pimp grotesque. And of course, unanimously, poor, working and oppressed people in this country have come to a similar conclusion. The sound of their shoes marching away from Newman is thunderous. You know this is true.

Lenora, our people need you. They don't need or want Fred. You can still salvage much of your political integrity vis-à-vis our communities.

Newman is not Frankenstein and you are not his "creation." You are a working-class Black woman with some sense and an educational accumulation that you paid dearly for. You are righteously angry. Newman organized you and Newman used you. I, like you, allowed myself to be used too. We believed that Newman had something to teach us about revolution. We wanted; we want revolution. And as the result of very different histories, we sat at his knee and drank his wisdom. Speaking personally, he taught me a great deal. I give all credit to him that is due. But I also have a very different set of political sensibilities and visions, but for no other reason than I am not an elderly, wealthy Jewish man. I am not tired and I am not satisfied.

You and I; like many other Black and Latino comrades, raised hell-and continue to pay the price-and Newman raised the money, which he kept to himself. Our political capital on behalf of poor and oppressed people was transformed into dollars in Newman's offshore bank accounts. We bled, we feared for our miserable lives; we went hungry and raggedy; we had to figure out what we would do with our children so that they would grow up strong and revolutionary. We took the abuse and the gastritis, while Newman went his merry way, his pockets fat and his ego massaged.

I don't have to tell you this, you already know. I can never forget the night at 500 Greenwich when you sat in the circle with Fred and his white concubines. It was the summer of 1989. You spilled your guts out about your anti-Semitism, you cried and lamented. Meanwhile, his white home girls-Fred's moneymakers-fed off of you. They didn't do shit because they resided in his crib. They were safe in the bunkhouse, fighting over who would get the next chance to "service" their sugar daddy. (Please read ICEBERG SLIM'S "PIMP: STORY OF MY LIFE.") They were silent, except for your ex-flunky Gabrielle Kurlander [Fulani's aide during the 1988 presidential campaign, she is currently the president of Castillo International], who raised nonsense to revolutionary strategy. She wanted Fred, and you bit into it, though "wanting" was a white girl thing that could only be bestowed on a middle-aged white dude. You bit in and rode the tiger, as Fred Newman purged the party of revolutionaries, i.e., people who would oppose his sell-out.

Millions of people loved you, Fulani. Fred Newman drove you into the dirt. You no longer have a following. You ran around the country advancing the electoral tactic without a communist strategy. Newman had a financial strategy. You made him a lot of money. You have been reduced to a liberal Roy Ennis [sic]-a talk-show monstrosity. Your power had always resided in your connection to the grassroots Black community-as a communist. Newman marketed you to the white liberal petit-bourgeoisie as a liberal who happened to be Black. You became that. Your base rejected it.

You didn't even rate as a Jesse Jackson 1992. You were just an independent running in 1992, Of course, the people responded appropriately. They turned their backs on you. Bo Gritz, the fascist, kicked your ass in terms of votes. You have nothing to build on in 1996. NAP is a joke, because you let Newman compromise you. An independent working-class party is supposed to be in opposition to bourgeois parties (Democrats or Republicans)-that's why people support it. But that's not what Newman thought. He wanted the money, so any politics would do to milk the white petit-bourgeoisie. Newman is the blame, though he squeals about being connected to the "community." The only poor people that Fred deals with are the people he speeds by in the backseat of his limo. Why should you be put in the position of explaining that to anybody? Newman doesn't pay you enough!

Lenora, you had a base, yet Newman destroyed the Harlem Institute and later, even your political office in Harlem. He took in $5 million and told you there was no money to keep the lights on at 125th St. You are not stupid and I am not stupid either. You have been reduced to a crank. Black cranks sell, so Newman pumps you up. He has no revolutionary strategy. That's why I oppose him now. Coalitional politics is popular front politics!

As you know, I was only attracted to Newman because he said that he was determined to combat popular frontism with working class political formations. If I had wanted to tail Black nationalists or worse, then I would have joined the CPUSA long ago-if for no other reason than the pay is much better. Newman is no revolutionary. He merely has the corrupt ego of an aging white man who wants comfort in his decline. He uses you as a prop to whip his white followers into line. They are led to believe that their barbarization at the hands of Newman is somehow connected to supporting you, the Black woman, as a category designated as the object of white liberal guilt. Newman (subjectively) despises Black people and Black women in particular, because (1) they have no money to give him and (2) they tend to see through his game, i.e., they reject him. Our people aren't stupid-they "understand"-they are lawfully wary of honkies bearing gifts-and for good historical reasons.

In any event, Black women do not suit Newman's sexual tastes, so you are kept on the fringes of his inner circle. You are told what you need to know to promote Newman. You are never told where the money is located, that's reserved for white girls.

Lenora, you are being pimped. The Ross Perot scenario, where Newman was attempting to cash your declining relationship to the oppressed communities of color-a decline engineered by Newman-for a cut of Perot's millions, is the best example of Newman's opportunism. He sold you out! Why were you and Al Sharpton being set up to market Perot's austerity program to poor and oppressed people? Independent politics isn't class-neutral! Independent politics is a communist invention in the US. It has an intense class content. Communists in the US do it to disrupt the capacity of the bourgeoisie to formulate social policy, while at the same time organizing off of the inability of the bourgeoisie to deliver on the demands of the working-class. Formal bourgeois democracy is just that, bourgeois democracy, a legalistic cover for the machinations of the bourgeois state -an armed body of men, in the USA, an armed body of white men. It is, in fact, a cultural construct. You know this. What's your problem, Lenora? Democracy isn't revolutionary, proletarian power is revolutionary, and that can collide with every bourgeois institution, including electoral politics.

Lawfully, thousands of activists have died or been ground into the dirt simply for raising the slogan of independent politics. It is no joke here.

Let Fred Newman eat shit, the way that every other white entrepreneur gambles on the "market economy." Newman has set you up to be his black-skinned apologist. You have fought for and won much more. Answer for yourself, never for his crap. Let him soak in his own filth. He is only concerned with the money that he can get. Don't tie your political fortunes and gifts on Fred Newman. He's finished.

Lenora-stop following Newman. You will be the one to go to jail and he will send you cigarettes from his condo in Barbados. You are too smart to be sucked into his Sweet Daddy Grace, Father Divine, Elijah Muhammad bullshit. Our people don't need messiahs-nor pimps-they need communists. Newman is not a communist, he's a white businessman. You make him rich and he makes you proud, pleased and thrilled. Wake up, Lenora Fulani! If you lay down with dogs, then you will get up with fleas.

I don't need to tell you this. You know it. Maybe you can't hear this from me now, but soon you will see the light. When that happens I will support you.

Don't swallow the pride that your mother taught you. That pride was the power that lifted you out of the depths of Chester, PA. You know it too. Stop acting stupid. Or at least get paid your worth. You have not sacrificed your life and your children for the revolution-to have bowed your head to a white-skinned con-artist and his girlfriends. You will never be one of his intimates because he has no intention of giving you the right-or power-to write checks. You are his "bottom woman."

Stop it! You are too good.

William Pleasant
March 12, 1993

***************

Dear Lenora:

I hope your health is good. I know that you have been under a great deal of stress. Take it easy, sister. Our people need you. Don't let a gang of idiots bum you out. They eat better than you, ride better than you and sleep better than you. That is the usual arrangement between Black and white in Amerikkka. Hang on, Lenora.

I am writing you this letter, probably my last attempt to communicate with you directly, because of your performance at the Brooklyn GAY MEN OF AFRICAN DESCENT (GMAD) event-8/26/93. To be frank, Lenora, I was shocked. You were hysterical. You ranted about a Chip Berlet/FBI/ADL plot to get you [Berlet is employed by Political Research Associates, a Democratic Party-connected think tank; the ADL is the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith]-a highly inappropriate move since the vast majority of your audience didn't know what the hell you were talking about. Of course, you were responding to myself, M. Ortiz [a former-NAP activist] and K. Gasink [a former NAP activist romantically involved with Pleasant]. Our presence upset you. There is no conspiracy against you, sister. That is a Fred Newman invention, designed for internal consumption. On the contrary, there is an organized front dedicated to throwing Newman back to the pigs from whence he came. Three of its leading representatives sat before you in the GMAD event. You could not and cannot deal with that, so you raved about the Berlet/FBI/ADL conspiracy. You could not engage in a political confrontation with us in public. Why? Because we know too much. You cannot call us liars outside of Newman's virtual political community, that moron's paradise that he has built to supply himself and his girlfriends with a steady cash flow. You acted crazy in Brooklyn because the truth drives you crazy.

One reason it makes you crazy is because we are not anti-communists, Black nationalists or worse-the kind of folks that Newman is fond of pimping you off to. I think that Colin Moore [an activist attorney who was endorsed by his 1993 City Council race] is MacDaddy Newman's latest steady "john." We are communists and we want Newman's treacherous hide nailed to a tree for selling us out. We mount an attack from the left-ironically and lawfully, Newman's left. He can't handle it and you, least of all, are in position to respond. Let's be clear, I and a number of other[s] have publicly charged Newman with using your 1992 Presidential campaign to steal money for himself. And that is just one facet of Newman's scam that we have exposed through very painful investigation. Chip Berlet, the FBI and the ADL gave us nothing. Berlet/FBI/ADL are pigs. Newman is a pig. Let pig eat pig!

We did the work on our own and paid for it out of our own empty pockets. Why? Because we are communists and not Fred Newman cultists. He cannot rationalize and re-rationalize our worlds for us. We don't want Fred, we want a revolution. Unfortunately, the distinction got blurred for you. In the end, that is a function of your own personal weaknesses. It's a Black working class thing that has to do with longing for white validation-in competition with the Black petit-bourgeoisie who take it for granted. The scene is very deep. We can talk about it, but I suggest that you reread [Frantz] Fanon [the Martiniquan psychiatrist]. Nonetheless, you must come to terms with the fact that you have been pimped to Al Sharpton, David Paterson [a New York state senator from Harlem], [Mayor David] Dinkins, Ross Perot and worse by your sweet daddy Fred. You have nothing to say to the Black masses that hasn't been said by a hundred other sell-out Black leaders. You are willing to sell off your base for a seat at Al Sharpton's chicken dinner-a seat that you pay for like every other sucker, Fred Newman made a fool of you. Ask that fucker if he believes that you are a legitimate Black leader. He'll tell you yes, but he has told me otherwise. You are only relevant to him to the extent that you can rope in the scumbags like Sharpton.

They give him "legitimacy" in the Black community. Not you. His idea of legitimacy has nothing to do with Black leadership, women of color, independent politics or any other political principles. They have everything to do with what marketing strategy a bunch of middle-aged JEWS need to employ to sell their proximity to revolt to the while petit-bourgeoisie. NYPIRG, 9-to-5, Greenpeace, etc., have a similar scam at work. It's all about the exploitation of the many for the few, in the name of revolution. You are being used. I have been used. Wake up!

Lenora, you made history! Fred and his concubines didn't do anything other than what they needed to do to suck off of your courage and get paid. You never got paid. Did Fred Newman ever say to you that he was stressed because he didn't have the bucks to put his daughter through college? You are stressed because he gave you the fish. A. [Fulani's daughter, a junior at Berkeley] has been dumped. But you need to think about the shit that you have to eat to get her un-dumped. Your Chester, Pennsylvania mother taught you better. Newman is the master. You have no idea of the crap that he carried out in your name. He has run you into the dirt.

You may believe that you owe Newman something. You owe him nothing! You live in a shanty apartment-by Newman's decree-though you could have easily moved into the Massad residence [the apartment of a NAP activist] or better. You are dependent on him for your money to live. You cannot provide a decent scene for your children. You are the chairwoman of a political party that has dwindled to a fiction. And even then, you have no control over the financial or political policy of the organization that Newman tells you that you lead.

What do you owe him? Did you demand that our cadres build you a bridal suite in your apartment? Did you ever take a vacation or a honeymoon on the party tab? Are you such a revolutionary hero that your psychotic fear of flying induces you to book passage on the QE II every time you have to leave this continent? Do you demand gas money for your limo? Do you buy the clothes for your lovers out of party funds? Newman did so and worse! You don't owe him-he owes you for putting bucks in his pocket by playing out his political charade to its conclusion. Whatever crumbs that have fallen your way from Newman's plate have been given to further his selfish personal ends, not to make you rich or famous, and definitely not to liberate our people.

You are living a deprivational scene because that's the way that Newman knows that he can string you along. A starving dog is an obedient dog! He makes you beg, he keeps you on your knees. He makes you afraid to demand the things that you want and need by constantly telling you that you are (I.) unworthy and (2.) too ignorant to decide what is not only best for your personal self but best for making a revolution. He relates to you as a sort of hollow reed from which the pith of self has been blown-his "greatest production." He has publicly described you as a sort of finger puppet. I know you bite your lip and bear his humiliations of you. I know well because he did the same to me, but in a different way.

I refrained from skewering his rotten ass from 1989 to 1993 because of a combination of fear and loyalty. I feared being on my own, literally trying to make a living while fighting for communism. I had done it before, but the scene made me politically and intellectually complacent. I had a check coming in-a sorry one, but, nonetheless, there was some degree of stability in my life. I had friends and colleagues-lovers too. It was a nice and cozy world. A bunch of white people were also proclaiming that I was a leader-of course, on cue from Newman, the director and producer of the comedy.

Let's be frank, I didn't want to lose that. I was afraid. I was a coward. I was also loyal to Newman as a friend, the way that southerners are loyal. It's a regional cultural thing and maybe you don't understand. But my tongue was stilled against Newman because I didn't want to give anybody the break to opportunize off my differences with him to attack you, him or the political movement that we had built. I kept quiet until after the 1992 campaign. I stupidly kept quiet while Newman ground everything that we had built into the mud. Indeed, communism is dead. Newman should know best, since he literally assassinated the only communist party in this stinking country. And he killed it because it didn't suit his aims of building a cult any longer. I realized this fact much too late.

Like you, I am an egotist of the highest caliber. Unlike you, I am an arrogant Black petit-bourgeois punk, I am also a communist-at best you are a Black nationalist. Like you, I am a Black intellectual who paid a very high emotional price for ripping-off my knowledge from a cavalcade of hostile and alien institutions. I have pride. You have pride.

I went after Newman because he took my pride away. I could no longer defend and organize for a political party that was so transparently bankrupt. I no longer felt proud enough to ask a revolutionary to join. I could not parrot Newman's assertion that there is no Left-Center-Right when I was personally assaulted by skinhead fascists in Europe-in Europe representing Newman, by the way. I could not justify attempting to trade off our base for Ross Perot's bucks, in the name of "independent politics" stripped of its race and class content. I don't believe in bourgeois democracy-progressive, peoples, grassroots or otherwise. I believe in revolution, and democracy is merely a bourgeois institution-in-service-to-the-state that needs to be smashed by communists (I guess I'm still a M/L). I could not march through the streets of my community screeching that I was a "Newmanite and proud of it!"

Our people don't need or want Newmanites or termites. Your showing in the polls in 1992 should be a good indicator of what even people who were your loyal followers thought of you aping Newman's numbskull "new" politics-actually the same old cracker sellout. The SWP [Socialist Workers Party] creamed you in New York! The SWP is a bookstore, Lenora! What does that tell you about the value of the "strategic and tactical leadership" of MacDaddy Newman? Use your muthafuckin' head, comrade. How do you lead an "independent coalition" when there is no social or political content to your own base beyond the lies that Newman tells you and an occasional photo-op with a Black democrat?

Black people and other oppressed sectors of this society clamor for revolutionaries! They want a party of opposition. They want NAP. But Newman has turned your project into another caucus of the DP, pandering for a place under the ruling class table. I could not be dishonest with our people. No lie to the working class is justified. No tactic stands based upon a strategic betrayal of M/L principles. Newman-consciously and deliberately-betrayed those principles, and now he will pay the piper.

"A PIG IS A PIG, AND THAT'S THAT"
-Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics-1984

Unfortunately, Lenora, you are merely Newman's penis-extender that allows him the opportunity to diddle with the political aspirations of Black people. You are his moneymaker, the bottom woman in his stable. Though this hurts me and it will hurt you, you have to hear it: YOU ARE NEWMAN'S BLACK WHORE. Everybody knows it too, particularly in the Black community. Newman tells you that the revulsion that Black people feel towards you is a function of their anti-communism.

Black people are not anticommunists. They are the most pro-communist people to be found in this country! Read history ... It's just that Black people are smart enough to know a 'ho when they see one. They see you darting around kissing ass at Newman's behest. You cannot oppose the DP and support David Dinkins, for example.

Likewise, you can't talk about popular power and chide Black gays about trashing Ed Towns [a Black Brooklyn congressman] as you did at the GMAD event. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE OPPOSITION, not the loyal intermediary between the community and the DP. You have been effectively forced into a role of providing a left cover to the corrupt, neo-colonialist wing of the DP. You occupy the same role that Gus Hall and Co. did. That's what Newman wants, but it's not what our people want or need. And they vote with their feet, stampeding away from your corrupt politics by the millions.

Naturally, you don't want to know this. To admit that you have been played for a fool would shatter your mind. Obviously, you cozy virtual reality is much more valuable to you than fighting for power. You spend your time pumping Newman's ass up as a leader of our people. But Newman isn't a leader; he's a rich white pimp.

That bastard can't come within ten blocks of 125th Street and open his mouth to our people. He can't even relate to other Jews in the streets. When has Newman ever set foot in Crown Heights? Newman is a big coward. He is even afraid of me and I have nothing but my politics to back me up. He has the stolen millions and a crew of mind-fucked therapy cultists to back him up. He also has you to front as his authentic negress. But in the end, he's just a punk liar.

So I challenge you. If I am blowing hot air, then stand me down. Anyplace, anyhow-you've had three prior opportunities on WBAI [the Pacifies station in New York City] and you chickened out.

Look at yourself. Despite Lucas Rivera's garbled article in the City Sun, I slammed the shit out of Newman. Why? Because HE used Rivera the week before to pump the lie that there is some kind of COINTELPRO conspiracy against you. Newman is racist and arrogant enough to believe that the Black community is stupid enough to fall for his shallow PR strategy.

Through you, he paints himself as a martyr, a victim of the same folks who got Malcolm and Martin Luther King. How vulgar! Newman is about as much a threat to the state as my housecat-he can shit and piss in a comer and make a racket every once in a while but, after all, he's no more than [sic] annoying pet. Why do you think he's been allowed to get this far? His wits? Newman is a clown.

Newman's FBI/ADL/Berlet conspiracy theory, complete with its pro-right wing pandering to aggrieved Christian fanatics, Scientology, EST and assorted limousine gurus is merely a political hedge against the fraud, forgery and embezzlement indictments that are coming his way. He needs the trappings of a victimized saint in order too hope of gaining [sic] any public support-even the purely sentimental variety-beyond the walls of 500 Greenwich St.

Obviously, the stars indicate that the Black community has not been "moved" by Newman's self-serving declarations of imminent political peril. They know that an attack on Newman by law enforcement is simply a case of a conman finally getting snagged n his own game. The best way to rove me wrong is for you to go to Bed-Stuy or 125th Street and try to rally "the masses" to Newman's defense. I can say with a high degree of certainty that your pro-Fred partisans will number few beyond a handful of homeless day laborers you hire for public display and therapy patients.

I have read your 10-page response (three times longer than Rivera's original piece!!!) to the CITY SUN article. I had expected better, but it is obvious that coherent political thought has gone to seed down on Maas Newman's SoHo plantation. The fact that you-i.e., Phyllis Goldberg/Jackie Salit [Goldberg is a senior editor of the National Alliance]-were pushed forward to answer the charges speaks volumes to Newman's racism.

The Rivera article was about Newman, not you! HE was being called a liar and a thief. MacDaddy conveniently enlisted you as his Black cover the way cracker politicians in my neck of the woods would find some black-skin creep to tell poor folks about all the good things that Mr. Charley had done for them. Of course, the strategy was that somehow Black folks will swallow a blatant racist lie if it comes in a black wrapper.

Do you honestly think that anyone reading your response to Rivera would not see right through you to that pig Newman? If so, then that proves that prolonged contact with Newman definitely causes brain damage! Well, Andy Cooper [the editor of the City Sun]-not exactly a whiz kid-saw through it. Newman made the further blunder of using Art Block [an attorney for the New Alliance Party] to try to intimidate Cooper into publishing "your" response. Honestly, I wished that Cooper had run that trash so that I could have the pleasure of further ripping MacDaddy to political shreds. But, alas, I'll have to wait for another opportunity.

Comically, in the response, all that you (Goldberg/Salit) could do was blather about how you know some Democrats and they think you are legit! You know that the 1992 campaign was a charade, so why lie, except to shield Newman. Surely you don't think that the Black and Latino communities were fooled by 1992? They wouldn't vote for you because you gave them nothing to vote for! Get it? The specific charges in the Rivera article were true and, lawfully, MacDaddy was advised by his attorneys to keep his trap shut or face self-incrimination. It took you ten pages of bullshit to avoid addressing the central charges or mention the fact that they were being raised by specific members-predominately [sic] Black and Latino-not Chip Berlet or the ADL. Once again, Newman used you and he made a fool out of you!

I know that you and MacDaddy are fond of denouncing me as a liar. That's okay. After all, you have to tell the tortured wretches left something in order to continue to string them along. They are the ones who have to beat the bushes for Newman's snatch money. MacDaddy needs them. But even they sometimes wander back to consciousness and ask why are they being made miserable in order to make Newman rich. Newman hasn't completely removed their brains, you know.

They have just enough gray matter left to remember that they too not only played a part in Fred's scam, but often knew intimate details of it. They knew that tens of thousands of decent people were contributing to a presidential campaign that didn't exist. They know I am not telling a lie, because they know the truth. But in the virtual political community, Newman arrogates to himself the right to declare what is reality and what isn't. He is the TRUTH, I believe I once heard him say. And Newman has decreed that what I am saying is a lie. But as more of Newman's corruption comes to light, it will be harder and harder to keep the inmates in the asylum under control. Not only will they want their money back, but they'll want their revenge for the way that they have been tricked and abused. That time is close at hand, sister.

I am no psychologist, but I believe that you and a lot of other folks are in a state of denial. Sooner or later, you will have to face the music. Meanwhile, MacDaddy will have already fled with the loot and his white chicks. Lenora, don't worry, MacDaddy isn't going to go to jail. He has no direct legal responsibility for any of the graft. He was smart enough to let you and a bunch of other trusting fools lay down your John Hancocks on the phony financial documents. So, in the patois of the street corner society, "Baby, you got played."

If you want to prove me a liar, then I make the same challenge to you that I made to MacDaddy and any other takers. You choose the time, place and medium. Moreover, I dare you to print this letter in the National Alliance, I dare you to call a public meeting to discuss it, even a meeting where I am not invited. I dare you to even secretly circulate this letter. Get Phyllis Goldberg to write a response to this for you! Until you do, I will consider you just as much a coward as your pimp Fred Newman. If you lay down with dogs too long, then you will get up with fleas.

Lenora, I hope you get up before it's too late.

In Solidarity,

William Pleasant
October 5, 1993

Newman and Fulani support of gay and minority causes called “nonsense” (1993)

2011-08-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

By the Late Robert L. Cohen

The following is a copy of a letter submitted to the New York Amsterdam News in response to the newspaper's publication of a New Alliance Party press release describing the group's "support" for, and role in, the African American and lesbian and gay communities. As a former member/victim of the NAP (a/k/a the International Workers Party), I have written this letter the hopes of forewarning prospective pawns about the group's 25-year history of economic and political exploitation of gays, lesbians and people of color.

I would like to respond to your publication of a New Alliance Party (NAP) press release describing the group's "support" for, and role in, the African-American and gay and lesbian communities ("Dr. Fulani, Towns addresses Gay Men of African Descent," New York Amsterdam News, September 4, 1993).

First of all, Dr. Fulani's claim that the NAP (a/k/a the International Workers Party (IWP), the Castillo Cultural Center (Castillo), the All Stars Talent Show Network (ASTSN), the Rainbow Lobby/Ross & Green (the Lobby), and other paper organizations fronted by Dr. Fred Newman, Fulani's "mentor"), is "pro-gay 365 days a year" is pure nonsense.

The NAP (IWP, etc.) has, in fact, never been pro-gay or pro-black any day of the year. In fact, the actual, bottom-line objective and end result of any and all of the various tactics and actions conducted by the NAP (IWP, etc.) are to "liberate" gays, blacks, and others, from their cash and personal freedom.

Furthermore, the NAP has a long (and, in their minds, proud) tradition of infiltrating and attempting to take over organizations that they claim support for, including, but not limited to: Queer Nation, ACTUP, Gay Men of the Bronx (GMOB), the Rainbow Coalition, the Unity Party,-the Peace & Freedom Party, the New Coalition Party, United We Stand, New Jewish Agenda, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, among others.

Contrary to Fulani's claim, members of Queer Nation swear that they never physically attacked any member of the Castillo "collective" (IWP, etc.), although they did knock over one of their fundraising tables. The gay and lesbian community is furious with the NAP (IWP, etc.) and its founder, Newman, a s well as with Fulani (Newman's "greatest achievement"), for taking, advantage of the AIDS epidemic by ripping off the gay and lesbian community.

When Newman, a self-described "benevolent, despot," sent his followers (myself included) out to the streets of Greenwich Village to raise money in support of the AIDS Bill of Rights (ABOR), it soon became apparent that the measure was a sham. There was never any serious attempt on the part of the NAP (IWP, etc.) to gather enough legislative support with which to pass the bill (just ask any of the representatives on Capitol Hill about the ABOR). In fact, the proposal (actually a rough draft which was never assigned a bill number), was simply a tactic designed to elicit an emphatic response so as to solicit money from a desperate community which was, and remains, under siege from AIDS.

I will never forget the despair of the gay community, and the initial hope and faith that they had in us when we first began to raise money through the ABOR scam. It was not uncommon those days to work an 8-hour fundraising shift on Bleeker Street or Sheridan Square and then walk away with one or two thousand dollars donated by people affected by, concerned about, or who had AIDS.

I remember going to the home of Noel Levert (a brethren NAPer who has since died of AIDS), to count the money, and how proud we were to finally have found a way to gather support (i.e., big bucks) from our community. After counting the money, we would promptly hand it over to Jim Mangia (Newman's most useful and skilled operative in the gay community). But, the money was ultimately used to pay for anything that Newman ordained (i.e., rent for NAP/IWP offices, salaries, and/or used in ways that only Newman will know), and definitely not for the ABOR as we were led to believe.

And, in line with the tendency's demand for money, straight men assigned to raise money in the West Village or at gay events, were often counseled (i.e., pressured) by their political superiors to don earrings, skimpy tee-shirts, and spandex biker shorts (which accentuated their genitals), so that they could "pass" for gay--all the while sneering at the gay community because the party doesn't believe you're really "gay" unless you support the NAP.

During the 1993 Gay Pride March in New York City, the NAP (IWP, etc.), contingent included approximately two dozen homeless men and women gathered from various shelters and paid 10, and a "pride" tee-shirt and button in order to inflate the party's presence in the march. When asked about the moral integrity of this kind of organizing, party members often dismiss the criticism by explaining that many "normal" organizations use similar tactics to "beef up" their numbers, while still others maintain that the homeless are not really being "paid," but rather being given money for food (all the while proudly pointing to the fact that NAP is the only progressive organization around that is willing to include the homeless).

However, no progressive and genuinely grassroots organization that I've ever heard of has ever had to hire people to march with them. But, if these folks were really being fed rather than paid, I question, then why were they not given any money until the very end? The answer, according to one organizer, is that most of these people are "hustlers," and so, the NAP could not rely on them sticking around unless they withheld the money until the end of the march.

The NAP is, in fact, a front for the IWP, a 25-year-old "secret" organization (cult) created by Newman. The "doctor" has surrounded himself with roughly 20 loyal followers who have been carefully conditioned throughout the years, and who have had their personal identities replaced with a belief system created by, and which glorifies, Newman. The technique used to terrorize and virtually enslave his "comrades" is called Social Therapy, a technique similar to that of Lyndon LaRouche, Newman's "mentor" from late 1973 to mid-1974. In fact, most of the tactics which Newman currently practices (within the realm of psychological terrorism, mind control, and political fraud), were gleaned from LaRouche.

The remaining 150 or so IWP cadre are also subjected to the same techniques employed through Social Therapy, but are more often recruited by the top tier of Newman's circle through various scams which are marketed toward gays, lesbians, blacks, Latinos and women by various front groups. Although most NAP (IWP, etc.) victims are "developed" (brainwashed) without Newman's personal attention, the psycho-terrorism and isolation from friends and family and "love bombing" (cult lingo for seduction), are usually delivered by Newman's closest and most skilled operatives who are just as effective as the "master" himself.

Social Therapy is offered (at a high monthly fee) to all IWP members without exception, and is presented to the members as a way in which he/she will "develop" emotionally. People are told that they will, through an ongoing process, learn to think and experience life and the emotional issues that are raised by "living in the world" in a non-oppressive and "revolutionary" manner. The basic premise asserted through Social Therapy is that the people in the world have been abused and harmed emotionally due to the continued existence of a society that is fundamentally racist, sexist, homophobic, classist (et al.) to its very core.

As well, emotional problems are identified as being caused by a sick society and patients are then encouraged to participate in the "revolutionary" activity of changing the world (through NAP, IWP, etc.). Throughout this process, people are "supported" to "step out of" their societal role and into a more "historical" role (where Newman resides) and learn to shed their bourgeois identities (i.e., their common sense and individual belief system).

Most IWP members "submit" to Social Therapy and, day by day, work to "advance" the process that undermines and robs them of their individual identities. Many of Newman's "comrades" are then available to "help" "conflicted" members of the tendency respond to a directive or order (usually a command issued by middle- or top-tier operatives of Newman who often function as trained Social Therapists themselves), in a fashion that supports the goals of Newman and his organization NAP (IWP, etc.).

These "assignments" can range from being ordered to clean and/or renovate Newman's home, or to submit to a demand that requires the "conflicted" member to turn over large sums of money to any of the IWP front groups (or to Newman and/or his operatives). These monies come from trust funds or inheritances, personal savings, income tax returns, insurance claims, civil or personal injury awards, and various other sources of income.

Naturally, not every member can be manipulated and forced in line to the extent that the "doctor" would like. Each person's response to the Social Therapy technique (i.e., coercive manipulation) varies from one degree to another. For instance, some "cadre" are more easily persuaded to part from their money (if they have any left) but cannot be persuaded to carry out other commands that their "leadership" would have them do (i.e., 18-hour work days, performing slave labor, or having to beg, borrow or steal money from family and friends).

On the other hand, some members will labor ("perform") tirelessly and display a willingness to carry out any command issued by Newman or his operatives, but, perhaps, may not respond "pro-IWP" if ordered to relocate to other out-of-state cult operations, or ordered to sing for money on the New York City subways trains, as many cadre have done in the past.

This reluctance to submit 110%a is recognized by the cult as "oppositionalism," and/or a combination of racism, sexism, classism or homophobia (depending on the "social" identity of the "resistant" member, as well as that of the superior who has issued the command). In more drastic cases, "unsupportive" members are accused of the dreaded "right-wingism" in order to whip them back in line. "Oppositionalism" is often dealt with in a coercive and controlled environment, including Social Therapy sessions, secret "cell" meetings, or "political" meetings lead by "leadership" personnel who offer "support" to the "rebel" to help him/her reject his/her "conflict" by confessing to and denouncing the "problem," and embracing the group's pro-IWP ideology.

Newman and his cohorts are acutely aware that these "character defects" exist in individual cult members and they (Newman and company) will often make a calculated decision as to whether to push or not push members around issues which are perceived by Newman (and company) to be road blocks that stand between Newman and whatever resources are being withheld (money, labor, etc.) by the "oppositional" member.

For example, if it is known to Newman or one of his operatives (therapists, etc.) that a particular cultist has a large sum of money, then he/they will calculate and conspire as to the best way in which to secure the money from the "withholding" member. But, if Newman has reason to believe that making the attempt to grab the money will "polarize" the member and cause them to defect from the cult, then Newman may make a decision (based on knowledge about the member acquired through his/her therapist, leadership, lovers or "friends") to "settle" for what the "under-developed" IWPer is "willing" to give. Of course, Newman will hold off on his demand, if only to wait until such a time that the member has "developed" or "lives with Newman in history," at which time the "doctor" will then make his move and go for it.

It is my experience that many of those who join the NAP (IWP, etc.), resign or detach themselves from the cult (IWP) at the point when the attacks on their identities (bourgeois ego) have been driven to a point of intensity which either draws them in further, or, thankfully, drives them out. Fortunately, most NAP (IWP, etc.) victims eventually walk away from the cult.

Presently, Newman has intensified his fundraising and recruiting scams through other, newer phony organizations that in the public's mind are not recognized as NAP (IWP, etc.) organizations. Among the current front groups are Castillo International, a publishing business run out of the Castillo Cultural Center's back rooms, Ross & Green, a lobbying firm whose partners formerly ran the cult's Rainbow Lobby, and, last but not least (as far as I know), the All Stars Talent Show Network, which is the cult's most appealing and palatable scam because it claims to give youth an opportunity to express themselves and "build a community" in a constructive way, while keeping them off the streets and away from drugs and crime. Keep in mind, however, that each contestant must pay a hefty registration fee in order to be a part of this "wonderful" experience (which remains unrecognized by most legitimate entertainment companies and agents), while the proud and loving relatives of these youth guarantee that the cult will sell up to a dozen talent show tickets per child.

It is my hope, therefore, that before you publish any more stories on the IWP front groups or Fulani, that you first investigate these allegations. I am certain that, if you take the time to do so, you'll find enough evidence to suggest that my accounting of the NAP experience is real. I should know, I was there!

Open Letter to Fred Newman (Pleasant, 1993)

2011-08-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Fred:

How are you? I hope you are well. You never responded to the report I gave you about the GREENS. Did you receive it? I left it for you at the 72nd St. office in mid-September. I also left several notes for you at Castillo asking if you had gotten it and requesting your feedback. I received no response from you. So it goes... Thanks for the late review of BROADWAY MELODY 1492. I see that I was given no credit in the article for adapting or designing the show, but that's okay. Why give credit to a Black communist when you can fawn over an Austrian fascist, especially one who has her hand in the cashbox of the Austrian government. Maybe she can pluck out a few pfennings for you, old buddy. That's what counts in the end, right?

I have come to the end of my patience with you, Fred. I can no longer accept your contemptuous treatment of me and my work. I have consistently informed you on what I was doing. I turned over scripts to you. I confided in you as I have done with no one else. The impression you have communicated to many people that I somehow was off doing my own thing, was a complete fabrication on your part. I deeply resent it. Moreover, I take great offense to the way that you related to my work in BROADWAY MELODY 1492.

I considered you my friend. But you have gone out of your way to treat me like a sack of shit. I am very saddened by you now. I really believed in you as a comrade and a leader. I have taken out your work and defended you on three continents. I don't regret a minute of it. I did it because you were my hope for a revolution in this stinking country. I loved you, man. Even though I disagreed with you on many things, I still respected you. But now things have changed.

To be blunt, effendi, you fucked up. You punked out on history. You had the left--and I'm not talking about the micro-sectarians, but the radical movement in toto--in this country in the palm of your hand, and you threw it away. I believe you just got scared. Fred, you are a coward. I am not necessarily an emotive individual, but at our 1989 plenum I cried with joy at the prospect that we, as a party, were poised to bring down the house--here and abroad. But then I watched you step-by-step sell us out.

You substituted your ego for Marxism/Leninism. You opted to tail--Pedro Espada, Sandra Love, Al Sharpton, Farrakhan and worse, Ross Perot--rather than lead. You turned a political party into your own personal business. Your conservative and incompetent leadership wrecked NAP and reduced Fulani to a pandering political crank, a talk-show novelty. She has become an ignorant puppet that you manipulate by constantly reminding her that: (1) she is not good or white enough to be one of your consorts, (2) her activities are insufficiently informed by Marxism/Leninism, and (3) her ability to mobilize any element of the party is mediated and controlled by you.

Fulani has been reduced to a babbling wreck, desperately attempting to use the fact that her skin is Black to sell your liberal racism to people of color. Lenora Fulani, above all else, is a decent working-class Black woman who always wants to do right by the people that she knows and loves. You, like a cheap pimp, manipulated her around that. In the end, she will extract her pound of flesh from you. I can say no more.

Lawfully, the poor and oppressed reject you in hordes, because YOU deliberately took us from being a leadership combat organization into being a popular front left cover for democrats, nationalists and other assorted scum. As we have said over and over again, everybody knew that we were communists. We were supposed to have been the revolutionaries. Subjectively, nobody respects the sell-out of revolutionaries. Objectively, the Democrats and their lice can always cut a better deal. Patronage is patronage. You are no Richard Daley.

We were once powerful and now we are weak. You are rich ($5M) and the people are defenseless. Your ONLY relationship to the Black and Latino population is a talent show which is sold to the liberal white strata as a hedge against the little bugaboos snatching their purses--let them rap, dance and clown instead--shame on you.

You destroyed the National Alliance as a leadership publication rooted in the communities of the oppressed, reducing it to your in-house advertising flyer--catalogue for the Fred Newman line of liberal pathetic products. You surrounded yourself with sycophants and hustlers. You ruthlessly mind-fucked your most devoted followers in the name of a revolution that I am convinced now you don't even believe in. How sad. You had everything. You had me too, Fred.

Though I feel betrayed by you, Fred, I don't hate you. A number of years back, I spoke with Jackie Salit about you. I said then that I really cared for you and I wanted to support you in being a revolutionary leader. But I would not support you in being a middle-aged, Jewish asshole. Every movement and every party has its time, its moment to transform itself and transform the world. Leaders have upper bounds too, a place on the historical landscape where they must correctly reorganize themselves or pass into the dustbin. You have been to that place; you saw it and you ran away, straight into the arms of the bourgeoisie. Naively, perhaps, I believed that you had guts. That is that.

Fred, you have everything you wanted now; a nice chauffeured limo, all the liquor and food you can stuff into yourself, a nice home, a never-ending supply of young white women and millions of dollars at your fingertips. Our “rank-n-file” comrades tend to go hungry and they sleep on floors-sometimes my own. You have grown rich and powerful at the expense of people whose only weakness was that they wanted to do something decent with their lives. You have disorganized scores of Black and Latino activists who looked to you for COMMUNIST leadership. Instead, you gave them the brush-off and hid behind a curtain of parasites who stroked your ego. You can never be taken seriously again. I will see to it. Lee Iacocca--and Stalin--would envy you, comrade. You are accountable to no one, except your ego.

By the sheer weight of your accumulation, you can have no interest whatsoever in revolution. Your main concern is in keeping the “business” going, maintaining your privilege and political patronage. Cynically, you have laughed at the hundreds of activists, our party members, who have put everything on the line to please you.

By your own decrees, the interests of the party were equated with your own personal gratification. They trusted that what you had to say had something to do with making revolution. It did not. It had everything to do with insuring that you, your harem and your sycophants would enjoy an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

A businessman is a businessman. I don't fault you for that. I only oppose you when you mislead our people into believing that making you rich will make them proud, pleased or even powerful. Your corruption makes it difficult, if not impossible, for new communists to build from. Your liberal middle class racism is a scourge on the poor and oppressed, it feeds their cynicism. Over the last two years, you have made all the right business decisions for yourself and your flunkies, and all the wrong revolutionary political decisions. That is why I can no longer support you. Our people don't need marketers, they need Marxists.

I don't believe that you are sinister. I don't cry that you are some sort of guru or cult leader. I was never tricked by you or brainwashed. I willingly followed you when you were right, and when you were wrong I was one of the first to tell you to kiss my ass. That is how I expressed my love and loyalty to you. I always took you seriously as a revolutionary leader, a Marxist and a Leninist. I was always one of the people who actually gave to you. Most of your followers simply sit passively around you and suck you dry.

They hate you and they give you nothing, not even a response to what you have said and taught. They don't take you seriously. If you are right or wrong, if you make an utter fool of yourself, they don't care. They are only concerned with you punching their emotional or financial tickets. They go along to get along. Most of them resent that they-by virtue of their failures in life--are forced to kowtow to a Jew, not to mention a Jew from the gutter. You have learned how to skillfully exploit that for your own ends, but, sadly, making revolution got swept under the rug in the process. You forgot who you were.

Since 1990, you have pursued political tactics and strategies that have failed at every turn--nationally and internationally. Your declaration of a grand coalition is merely a cover for the fact that what little political capital we had managed to accumulate was squandered by you following the 1988 Fulani campaign. There is no “coalition,” no “independent movement,” only your phone book and a fistful of failed and corrupt bourgeois politicians who are so desperate that they will answer your calls. You have fully retreated from the Black and Latino communities and found your true audience, the moneyed elements of the white liberal petit-bourgeoisie. Actually, you don't need a base in the communities of the oppressed anymore. They are not cost effective--i.e., poor people don't have money to give you. Good business sense, traitorous revolutionary leadership.

You have lied to our people and they have responded by turning their backs on you. The problem is that, in your stupidity and arrogance, you have compromised the political integrity of many activists who took you at your word and believed in you. As you tool through the city in your big black car, think of the scores of people who had their most radical political aspirations ground into the dirt by you. Think of all of the people who were disorganized by you and ultimately disillusioned with class politics by YOU. As you guzzle your next diet coke, thinking of your next cruise or Caribbean vacation with your chippie, remember that a lot of people--including myself--shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears to promote you and defend you. I won't do it anymore. As you swim with the “big fish--par ex: Tsesekedi is not only a CIA operative, but an executioner of African communists--know that you swim in the blood of our people.

Now the political chickens have come home to roost for you. A true revolutionary enjoys intellectual and political challenge, and I think that you did so too for a while. You grew because of that. But now that you are the CEO of a small corporation, you have no use for it. Marxism does nothing to enhance your marketing strategy. You definitely have no use for me. The means have become the ends for you, Fred. I never thought for a moment that this would happen to you.

You may ask why I choose now to relate these thoughts to you. I haven't seen you since August and then I raised none of these objections. The answer isn't that I am having a tantrum because you cut off my salary at Castillo Canter--I had expected that to happen for months because I refused to participate in the revisionist politics and bad art at the center. Predictably, you have told people that I am hostile because I don't get any money from you. First of all, I am not hostile to comrades. I simply oppose you and your political corruption. Secondly, for some time I have not been dependent on my Castillo salary. I used it to support my writing and political projects. This might come as a shock to your white supremacist mentality, but there are some Black communists who can live without your patronage. I don't need you to punch my ticket, especially when the price is to collaborate in your exploitation of the comrades and our communities. As I have told you before, I never needed a father substitute or anyone to rationalize and re-rationalize the world for me.

I waited because I stupidly held my breath hoping that you would come to your senses. I could not imagine that you were a traitor. But I eventually realized, from a business point of view, Al Sharpton is a better buy than me. He's an anticommunist, Black Democratic Party operative, who goes out of his way to disrespect NAP and Fulani. He's an easy sell, I am not. I'm a communist; I don't fit into your marketing strategy for tailism--if mind-fucking middle-class whites out of their money and labor can be honored with such a term. Fred, Gus Hall should be proud of you. Maybe now is the time for you two to form an alliance. There are certainly no political principles that the both of you won't sell out.

No, I was moved to write to you because I ran into Hazel Darren on my block. I really like Hazel, though I can't say that I have spent a great deal of time with her. I guess I have loved her from afar. She is a very strong, big-hearted woman. I took a look at her, how she hobbled along, the way she avoided looking me in my eyes as we exchanged pleasantries. I looked at Hazel, a woman who has devoted her youth to you and saw a shame and pain that no revolutionary should carry. She was not proud. She was a mumbling wreck, a casualty of your egotism. As for the past three years I was not proud of whom I was. From that point a little while ago, I resolved to regain my pride. The first step was this letter. I needed to give you a piece of my mind, once and for all. The next step will be to take many of the lessons that you taught me when you were a Marxist and apply them to organizing a revolutionary communist press. That is something that I know I can do.

Just for the record, I DO NOT RESIGN FROM THE IWP. I do, nonetheless, reject your political leadership as revisionist and incompetent. I urge you to resign as chairman and retire to make room for new leaders and developments. The movement can no longer grow with you in a position of authority over its personnel and financial resources. Lawfully, you and your ideas have become tired. It's time for a vacation. No one will think any less of you if you make a gracious exit.

An episode in both our lives has come to an end. I saw us walking into a revolutionary horizon together. I still hold to my assessment of you in 1985--I said it at your 50th birthday party. Remember? I said that you had made the most significant breakthroughs in Marxist science in the latter 20th century. That is still true. Unfortunately, you refused to believe it and to believe in yourself. I really dug you, Fred. You broke my heart.

William Pleasant

1/25/93 NYC

cc: Central Committee IWP

Business Unusual (1991)

2011-08-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Interesting how Newman used to be more than willing to step up to the plate and take full responsibility for every single front group (and, more importantly, to openly acknowledge a connection among the IWP’s cultural, political, therapeutic and business ventures). In the article below, Newman is assigned full credit for a variety of artistic and financial schemes, and crows about having the support of prominent members of the black arts community—all this and corporate sponsorship, too! With the exception of the All Stars Talent Show and the Castillo Cultural Center, all of the projects mentioned in this article were either abandoned (by Newman) or were jointly disbanded after bitter contests for artistic and financial control. Guess who served as free labor in all of these businesses—social therapy patients and rank-n-file cadre.

By Michael Klein
National Alliance, August 8, 1991

When the Party Boat set sail for Bear Mountain up New York’s majestic Hudson River on a foggy May morning seven wars ago, Dr. Fred Newman didn't know at the time that the all day outing would lead, a few short years later, to a corporate sponsorship of an immensely popular summer entertainment extravaganza that has become the talk of the town. Not to mention finding himself neck deep in film, theater, video and cultural enterprises.

And much, much more: there’s the corporate sponsorship deals with Anheuser-Bush Companies, Inc, the giant brewer behind Budweiser beer, a feature film production, a hit off-off Broadway show, the largest and most successful talent show network for youth in the country, business ventures with a sparkling of some talented and creative people, all of them innovators, in their respective fields. People like the Reverend Sharpton, America’s premier civil rights leader, who is less widely known for his role in bringing millions of dollars from the billion dollar entertainment business back into the communities from which they come; multi-talented music producer and publicist Tony Rose; writer, actor and director James Chapman who leads the Living the Dream theater company; songwriter Annie Roboff and countess more performers, artists, DJs, promoters, recording engineers, investors, publicist, rapper, songwriters, roadies, writers, clowns and fire-jugglers.

Not to mention the hardest working man in show business, America’s most beloved contemporary artist, James Brown. This fall, one of the record companies Newman founded will release a fabulous lost masterpiece, a set of recordings by the Godfather featuring none other than Reverend Al Sharpton preaching alongside Brown singing a series of gospel classics, including “God Has Smiled on Me,” “Power in the Blood” and “Nearer My God to Thee.”

Welcome to Fred Newman Productions, Inc., the business empire built by America’s most controversial political figure, with a portfolio that includes some of the hottest acts and talents around.

But back in May of 1984, Newman was concerned with managing the first presidential campaign of the then fledgling New Alliance Party, the independent party he had been instrumental in bringing into being five years earlier when he brought together progressive leaders of the welfare rights movement to form a people’s party in New York City. By ’84, NAP was ready to go national, and that was going to cost money. Newman opted for a cruise up the Hudson, which would give members of NAP’s New York community the opportunity to have some fun and sun on the Hudson and raise money for the campaign.

It was a hit—so much so that by August they were back on the boat, this time for a moonlight cruise named “Jumpin’ in ’84,” which was not only a fundraiser for the campaign but also a tribute to top African American artists starring alumni of the legendary Count Basie Band. It was fun, moonlight, and all-important dollars for an historic move onto the national arena, for progressive independent politics.

Newman was convinced that the key to successful fundraising was professionalization. For the two summer cruises, New Alliance Party activists and volunteers took on the job of planning and running the rides, the primary goal being that everyone who came on board would have a BLAST. The idea was doubly radical; it revolutionized not only how entertainment events were done, but gave a new and radical twist to how leftist politics was done as well.

“There has always been, tragically, a glorification of poverty in progressive politics,” Newman recalled, citing the instance of a progressive Southern state legislator who had complained about how the New Alliance Party violated the tenet that for a movement organization to be legit, it had to be poor. “We do not glorify poverty,”

And out of that simple dictum—that poverty is an evil which needs to be battled out of existence by any means necessary—Newman has fashioned an extraordinary, new way of doing business, a business as unusual as anything in these trying times that is committed to the needs of people and our communities above all else.

From the stage of the popular downtown club, Wetlands, Cantor Cohen Debo'rah Yahvah and company, dressed in biblical garb complete with swords, leads a crowd of hundred of mostly white young people in a chant/rally/sing-along, turning the trendy, alternative music club in to a rocking call and response happening.

“C'mon, ya'll, let me hear you!”

“No justice.”

“No peace.”

They chant for Tawana Brawley, and Phillip Pannnell, Jr., and other victims of racial violence, here in the middle of the New Music Seminar. The Castillo International recording artist was one of the featured performers during the annual showcase of the cutting edge of music and performance. Debo'rah has already sold over a thousand copies of her “Reggae Down Babylon” single, recently out on Castillo International, a record, tape, video and publications production and distribution company that is among the latest of Newman's enterprises, and which is in the midst of discussing licensing for the record, which has made a splash as far away as Japan.

Castillo International’s Gabrielle Kurlander, special assistant to Newman, built CI into a vital force in the publishing and recording business, developing a national sales team that pounded the pavements to build the grassroots network, and bringing on as national spokesperson, Moses Stewart, who rose to national prominence as a much-respected battler for social justice following the murder of his son, Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst in 1989. The funky “Reggae Down Babylon” was the label’s first straight-ahead dance release.

A powerful vocalist and songwriter who refined her art in the churches and clubs of Florida (she was once dubbed “Jacksonville’s own Aretha Franklin”), Cantor Cohen Debo'rah Yahvah's music is an organic part of the new and righteous movement for social justice on the streets of African America whose call and response rallying cry: “No justice, No peace,” has shaken the forces of evil and injustice across this land. The regulars at Wetlands, where the radical alternative culture of the 60s has been revived, had just joined forces with a new movement—a social/cultural/political happening of the 90s based in the African American communities, new and unusual business. The performance/get together is rocking, passionate, historic and fun. Newman strikes again.

Back on the Hudson—around 1985.

Out of the success of the boatride/fundraisers, the idea for a concert series on the water—Musicruise—was born. Key to making it happen was the coming “on board” of respected concert producer Julie Lokin of New Audiences, Inc., one of the largest such enterprises in the New York area. Lokin had started out as a patient of Newman’s, whose burgeoning Social Therapy practice had grown over the past decade and a half to become a significant force in the mental health field. Newman established himself in the field of business counseling; among a group of business people who had sought out Newman’s much respected services was a young Jewish businessman Bob Levy of the advertising firm Levy, Sussman and Levine, who today serves as executive vice president of Fred Newman Productions, Inc.

Together Lokin and Newman, with Levy providing management support, have piloted Musicruise into what is now its eighth and most ambitious year, having established itself over that period with a roster of top acts and the Newman brand of fun. Before you even embark from Manhattans Pier 81 (every Friday night throughout the summer there are two sailings, and some nights three), you can spend (free) the early evening hours on land enjoying a unique “carnival of possibilities” with fire-jugglers, slack-rope walkers, belly dancers, stilt-walkers, clowns and wandering musicians, not to mention food, drink and crafts for sale. By the time you board the boat, ticket in hand, you are most definitely chillin’ and ready for some of the hottest acts around. The whole experience of mingling top talent and a delightful array of acts that would make Broadway Danny Rose green with envy has resulted in rave reviews across town from customers, weekend guides and trade magazines.

“Musicruise Mixes Music, Social Message,” says the headline in Amusements and Business, a respected industry journal. “Before the ship sets sail, guests are courted on the pier by an offbeat carnival of mimes, clowns and stilt walking poets, produced by New York’s Castillo Cultural Center,” AB notes in a flattering profile. “The venture is not operating without a social conscience: Mingled with the free entertainment are vocal representatives from the Community Literacy Research Project, a New York organization combating the city’s drug problem. The representatives speak to the public, call for donations and sell merchandise to support their causes.” Newman strikes again.

What’s a veteran political activist such as Newman doing, swimming in the mainstream of the billion dollar entertainment biz reading Variety, auditioning talent and sitting down to hammer out a string of deals with all sorts of people you might ask. Those who first saw him in the entertainment [magazines] or chatted with him after a theater performance of “Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care,” James Chapman’s extraordinary and moving play that Newman is directing at the Castillo Cultural Center (where he is the executive director) may wonder how one of the keenest minds in show biz wound up as America’s most important and controversial political activist and organizer.

“Buy political,” says Newman. That was a slogan he coined in the early 80s, when the political community he was building was increasingly reaching out to and getting support from local businesses eager to be a part of a movement for political empowerment. Political community has distinguished the tendency Newman founded in the late 60s throughout its nearly 25-year existence. Newman was born in the Bronx to a poor Jewish family during the depths of the Depression, artistically and literarily-gifted, those talents were forced below the surface by the survival needs that followed the tragic death of his father when Newman was nine years old. The gifts came out instead in the machine shops of the Bronx and Manhattan, where he learned the craft of tool-making. After service in Korea, Newman took advantage of the GI Bill to earn a doctorate in philosophy at California’s prestigious Stanford University.

Following graduation there was a series of teaching posts at colleges coast to coast, but by the mid-60s Newman was being bounced out of school after school for giving all A’s to every one of his students so as to keep them from being drafted. His academic career finished after that rebellion, Newman—now quite radicalized by the turmoil of the times—turned to political organizing.

In contrast to the various leftist “party builders” who've come and gone, Newman’s burning concern was to sink roots into the heart of the community by building, from the bottom up, independent political, cultural, economic and therapeutic institutions.

“Buy political” grew from the success of that new kind of building: neighborhood businesses, mom and pop stores, the local dental clinic and scores of other establishments were happy to support the efforts, with advertising, contributions of goods, services and money; lots of other ways: Newman insisted that the support be mutual.

“It has been African American artists who have made the music business in this country.” says CI’s Kurlander. “But distribution is owned lock, stock and barrel by companies with no concern for the African American community. We've had the beginning, with CI of establishing a truly independent distribution network. All of the profits go back into the community. We’re here to make money and we know what we are going to do with it—reinvest it in the community.”

By the time of its first outing up the Hudson, Newman’s tendency was ready to branch out with the particular brand of professionalism that Newman had developed, moving ever more deeply into both the high-rolling entertainment business (although the base of community business support was always nurtured) as well as other arenas. The Rainbow Lobby was launched in Washington, DC to apply grassroots pressure on Capitol Hill that would force the powers-that-be to pay attention to the yearning for peace and decency that politicians generally ignored. Very rapidly, the Lobby became a million dollar operation, investing the funds contributed by tens of thousands of supporters back into legislative and lobbying efforts that have already won a number of significant victories for the national and international democracy movement.

And NAP was getting ready to launch its second national campaign, with Newman managing the 1988 Presidential run of Dr. Lenora Fulani, the dynamic national spokesperson for the party who made history by becoming the first African American and the first woman to get on the ballot in every state. The professionalism that had by now become the hallmark of the tendency not only pulled off the almost superhuman feat of gathering the necessary million and half signatures (striking down a number of anti-democratic state election laws in the process) but also qualifying for over a million dollars in federal primary matching funds. Between the Lobby, the national campaigns, Musicruise (and other entertainment ventures launched by New Alliance Productions), Newman’s Social Therapy practice and that of other therapists he trained at the Institute for Social Therapy, the tendency had become a “millionaire,” but with a twist: all of the money is reinvested back into the community, to fund local campaigns, develop young artists, build schools, expand health care and legal services, and much, much more.

Musicruise and the All Stars Talent Show Network in particular had sunk themselves deep into the cultural mainstream. The boat rides have had continuous corporate sponsorship and support, while the talent shows culminating in the twice yearly National Finals in New York’s Town Hall have become star-studded, gala affairs. Throughout the year, young people who join the talent show network not only get to display and develop the awesome creative talent they have honed in the ‘hood, but also run lights, stage manage, sell tickets and build audiences in their communities, creating the infrastructure necessary for the network to grow and thrive at the grassroots.

Because this isn't about simply dropping some dollars into a community, but actually creating what is needed for a whole new way of doing entertainment, and business, so as to grow and expand.

“This business enterprise is one which has been built to support our people and our community,” says Newman. “People like Cantor Cohen to Tony Rose to James Chapman are contributing to that.”

It’s quite dialectical really, the community contributing to an enterprise that makes it possible for the community to be given to, all in one business package. Most importantly, the model breaks out of the traditional scheme which has devastated under-served, and downright exploited, communities dependent often for their very lives on the uncertainties of corporate largesse. Even the most conscientious businessperson has to weigh a whole host of factors in giving back something to the folks who made success possible in the first place.

“Individuals and businesses have always given back to the community in some way or another, but now there is a business designed to do just that,” Newman explains. “Not just a portion of the money, but the bulk of it goes into the community, because that is how the business has been set up.”

Which has led to some extraordinary and important collaborations of late. In association with Carl Clay, the moving force behind Black Spectrum Theater in the African American community of Queens, Fred Newman Productions and the Community Entertainment Group is producing “Let’s Get Busy,” a powerful film starring rap idol Doug E. Fresh as a young artist who organizes young folks in his community to challenge the corrupt political machine that’s selling them and their families down the river. Doug E. is on of a crew of talented and socially concerned artists who have lent their support to the Talent Show Network, as have Regina Belle, Kool Moe Dee, MC Lyte, and actor Giancarlo Esposito.

Clay—who describes Black Spectrum as “dedicated to producing a theater of social relevancy”—first met Newman’s enterprise through the All Stars. “There was a very positive gravitation toward both entities we had developed mutual respect about programs that we were both doing with young people,” Clay recalled in an interview at the start of the project last year. “I had gone around trying to get the resources to do this film, and there was a great deal of interest—but a different type of interest. A lot of people didn't want to get involved in the politics, no matter how much I talked about this being the wave of the future, and that it’s the kind of thing we need to talk about with young people. A couple of foundations wanted to help out, but the bottom line was a lot of ‘interest.’”

Sated for release later this year, “Let’s Get Busy” will be the first full-length film Fred Newman Productions will have helped to make happen. A number of distributors are already looking with interest at the film, which is now getting the finishing touches put on its soundtrack.

I don’t want nobody to give me nothing. Open up the door, I’ll get it myself.”
James Brown, 1968

That’s the Godfather of Soul himself talking. And as everybody knows, there is probably no artist in America who ha been a more passionate advocate of folks and communities doing it for themselves with their own strength. “Just open up the door,” James has always demanded.

And there has probably been no more forceful door opener in the past 15 years than the Reverend Al Sharpton, currently president of the National Action Network. who in addition to being the most important civil rights activist in the nation today, has also specialized in putting heat on corporations to give back to the communities some of the money they take from it (fully 25% of all U.S. entertainment consumer dollars are generated from the African American community).

Forged in the crucible of Dr. King’s “Operation Breadbasket” by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, throughout the 1990s Sharpton led numerous campaigns that leaned on big entertainment to give something back, using community mobilization as muscle.

In 1980, while Sharpton was heading up the National Youth Movement, he went into a studio in Augusta, Georgia with Brown, who since the early 70s has been a surrogate father to the civil rights activist, to lay down the only gospel record that Brown has cut in his extraordinary 30-year recording career.

At the time of recording I had already been involved for years in the movement, and he had supported me, doing concerts with the Youth Movement,” Sharpton recalled. “He and I decided we wanted to do a record, and this was the only time that he wanted to do gospel. He wanted to record me preaching, so we decided to [combine] it as a rap/gospel record with me preaching and him singing.”

They put down the two main tracks with James’ powerhouse band, the JB’s: “God Has Smiled on Me” and “Power in the Blood,” a pair of powerful and inspirational rockers with Brown and “Rev” trading off on the vocals (“Preach. Rev” Brown exhorts his surrogate son in the course of the tracks). Three years later they were back in the studio to round out the collaboration, laying down more tracks, including a beautiful arrangement by Brown of the classic “Nearer My God to Thee.”

Recently, Brown decided that he was going to pull the lost masterpieces from the vault to lay on Sharpton as a gift.

“The ultimate gift that a musician can give is to do his music with somebody,” says Sharpton proudly. “To have James Brown record you—that’s like having Picasso do a portrait of you so this is an ultimate, personal gift he gave me, more as a result of our father and son relationship than anything else.”

Sharpton brought the tapes to Newman, whose Castillo International had already produced and marketed Reverend Al’s first release on tape, the remarkable “Sharpton and Fulani in Babylon.” Produced, mixed and mastered by the enormously gifted Tony Rose, “Babylon” was Castillo International’s first tape release. Rose took the documentary audio footage from the movement on the streets for justice that Sharpton and Fulani had been leading and transformed it in the studio into an extraordinary audio experience, mixing in raps, beats, samples and adding special effects that created a brand new genre altogether which grabs you, the listener, from your chair and gently but firmly thrusts you into history.

CI also produced and distributed “Independent Black Leadership in America,” the only collection of the writings of Sharpton, Fulani and Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam currently available under one cover. The book, released last year and now in its second printing, is carried by a number of national distributors, including Baker and Taylor, the nation’s largest. Building upon the support provided by community-based book and record stores, “Independent Black Leadership” has now landed on the shelves (and the best seller lists) of chain stores like B. Dalton’s and Tower Books, generating profits that can be sunk back into attracting and supporting more talented authors from the community. And this September, CI will publish “The Man Behind the Sound Bite: the Real Story of the Reverend Al Sharpton,” the first biography of the “people’s preacher.”

FN Productions’ executive [vice president] Bob Levy is thrilled with the forthcoming release of the Brown/Sharpton gospel collection on the CI label, and was equally thrilled with the opportunity to meet Brown in Augusta recently. “I had been directly responsible for the marketing and advertising for Polygram Records with Levy, Sussman and Levine in the 70s—when James Brown was on the label,” Levy recalled. “I hadn’t had an opportunity to meet him until now. 1 first saw him perform in 1963, and I wanted him to know that there were millions of young people like me who grew up on him. He was part of our lives how we dressed and how we danced. And he’s one of those legends who—when you meet them—lives up to the legend.”

What they were like as kids

“Nothing runs on air. WE MUST HAVE MONEY to do our dream.”

Tony Rose—musician, producer, engineer, publicist, a modern day Renaissance man—is a living, breathing example of the power, creativity and hope for a new life in our communities unleashed by the unusual business of Newman’s enterprises.

Brought up in the African American community of Roxbury in Boston, Rose, like Newman. hoisted himself to the pinnacle of excellence in his field, in this case, the recording business. As a manager and engineer (among Rose’s countless credits was the engineering of the New Kids on the Block “Merry, Merry Christmas” mega hit), Rose was at the height of his creative powers when he first met Newman at the Castillo Cultural Center. They have, in a short time, developed a strong and intimate relationship based on their shared commitment to give their all to the community, and to make all the money they need to make it happen.

Tony Rose does not glorify poverty either.

“Fred Newman appeals to every person on the planet,” says Rose. “He gives 100% and more to every thought and idea that comes in to him. I’ve seen and met a lot of people, but he is the first I have connected with. He can understand everybody who comes across his way. His love of people—of human beings—is enormous. And his business acumen; we’re talking about a Stanford graduate, that’s no joke. I’d love to know what he was like as a kid, you know, ages 5 to 15.”

Like Newman, Rose grew up in poverty, an experience which helped shape a powerful commitment not just to making it, but to do whatever was necessary to ensure that everyone makes it.

“Myself as a Black man in America—I’m a captive,” says Rose. “We’re all people, with our hopes and dreams, but someone like George Bush sees himself as a conqueror. And I’m the captive. So it’s my job to overthrow the conqueror. It’s a fight of good against evil, and at the end of the day, Fred Newman is a good man against evil. He’s in history.”

Rose, like Newman and all those involved in the enterprise, is confident that CI—including the profits—will continue to skyrocket. “The business success is naturally there, because I’ve never seen a person give people so much as much as Fred does, in so many ways, what they need,” says Rose. “And Bob Levy, that cat is something else.”

Rose described a typical evening hanging out with Newman. “First he would do business, business, business with me. And then business, business, business with Al Sharpton. And then do a newspaper meeting. And then, he put on a smock, and he started to paint. You know, we’re here for a short time, and he knows that.”

Newman and Rose have recently become partners in a new record label, Cold Sweat Records, which is about to rock the house and the clubs with its first release, “Debbie’s House Party.”

“Hey, ‘Debbie’s House Party’ is a great record. I’m proud to do this in partnership with this person. We’re on to the next level in business, we’re rocking and we’re rolling and we’re in business. It’s designed for a purpose. It’s our coming out.”

Barely a year old, Castillo International is indeed coming out, all over. The James Brown/Reverend Sharpton collaboration promises to thrill the millions of fans of both. “It’s going to be a classic, and ironically, he’s hotter now than he’s ever been commercially, and I definitely wasn’t the household name I’ve become when we recorded it,” says Sharpton. “James was a victim of police brutality as well as police misconduct, but because of the spiritual side of James Brown and his understanding of oppression, he came through without bitterness because he had a depth that was deeper than they thought, like a Mandela. He was able to turn a negative situation into a resurrection of his entire career.”

Is the entertainment world ready for Reverend Al Sharpton, rock star?

Art Caper (1990)

2011-08-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Artists Defect From Castillo Center Auction When Links to Political Group Surface
By Alisa Solomon
Village Voice, November 1990

Artist Les Levine handed over a silk screen worth more than $2,000 to the Castillo Cultural Center for its auction November 1 to raise money for its “New Visions/New Voices” program. He didn't think twice when a group of young painters asked that he support the work of Latino, African-American, and women artists. Over the last year, he'd already donated prints to benefits for AIDS, homelessness, Franklin Furnace, and the War Resisters League, but, like more than 40 other established, well-known artists, when the group approached, he couldn't say no. “Artists from those communities are not shown enough,” he said.

But last week, Levine pulled his work out of the auction. “They didn't tell me the Castillo Center was connected to the New Alliance Party,” he said. “When I found out, I asked them questions about some of the things I heard they supported, which are repugnant to me, and they didn't give me satisfactory answers, I decided I couldn't be associated with them.”

By press time Monday, at least nine artists had withdrawn from the auction or had announced their intentions to do so. While more than 30 remain, including Richard Serra, Christo, and Robert Longo, the move has shaken the Soho art world and generated controversy again around NAP. “The art world is kind of dumb,” said artist Deborah Kass, who decided to withdraw from the benefit after reading some of Castillo's publications last summer and then was outraged to find her name listed among participants in an advertisement for the event. “We'll all do any vaguely liberal sounding sort of thing without looking into it because we're all too busy, or we're flattered to be asked, or because it just doesn't occur to us to be suspicious of something that sounds decent.”

It's a story familiar to critics of the New Alliance Party, the cult-like political organization headed by Fred Newman, whose rhetoric borrows from most progressive movements, and whose omnipresent candidate in every election year is Lenora Fulani. The Castillo Center is another NAP affiliate (like the Rainbow Lobby, named to evoke Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition) that looks good on the surface but is, according to Chip Berlet, an analyst with Political Research Associates, “a recruitment mechanism for the party.” Berlet, who published a report on NAP in 1987 and continues to monitor the group, calls NAP a “proto-fascist” movement.

“They are divisive and destructive to the African-American community,” said Jitu Weusi, longtime black activist and a founder of the Unity Coalition. Just last month, NAP challenged the ballot petitions of the coalition and the United African Party. Weusi fears that NAP could attain permanent ballot status if it garners 50,000 votes on Tuesday. Last year, New Jewish Agenda took the unprecedented step of expelling NAPers from the organization because, as an NJA memo put it, “NJA was faced with what appeared to be a concentrated effort by NAP to infiltrate with the purpose of damaging our work.” And Queer Nation, the gay and lesbian direct action group has recently labeled NAP “a menace to our community.”

While NAP is targeting the gay and lesbian vote, its definition of gayness, Joyce Hunter of the Hetrick-Martin Institute has said, is “merely a political restatement of the pathology view of homosexuality.” Sue Hyde of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force adds, “NAP does not limit itself to preying upon the gay and lesbian movement. It will prey upon any movement, use any issue, use any disguise to further the megalomania of Fred Newman. Their newest scheme and scam plays upon many people's interest in freedom of expression” and Hyde puts the Castillo Center's November 1 art auction at the focal point of that scheme.

The Castillo Center does produce plays, exhibit paintings, and develop a variety of artistic projects in its $2.7 million Soho loft. “Right,” said Berlet, “And Leni Riefensthal made films, too.” At the very least, one has to wonder about the idea of an upscale auction by a center that claims to be, in auction co-chair's Judy Penzer's words, “a place where art is no longer a commodity.” If Castillo sells all of the objects in the auction at their lowest prices, it will haul in close to $200,000. Meanwhile, one Castillo painting on a central wall of the gallery is a still life with the words “Fuck Bourgeois Art” scrawled across it.

Penzer and the other auction co-chair, S. K. Duff, both of whom have worked in the art world, got the event off the ground by approaching gallery owners, directors, and artists and asking for their support. Once they had some takers, they were also able to use their names to lure others. “1 heard Christie's was involved,” said one artist who is pulling out. “Leo Castelli was supporting it. Some friends were donating pieces. I figured, why not?”

Yet Christie's spokesperson Roberta Maneker said that the auction house never gave official permission for Castillo to use their name, much less their logo—which graces the auction invitation and catalogue. While Penzer asserts that such permission was granted, Maneker replies, “I'm the only one authorized to give permission and I did not give it.” She says a letter from Christie's lawyer has been sent to Castillo expressing their dismay at this “appropriation.” At the Castelli gallery, associate director Patty Brundage said, “I think we were misled. If we had it to do over again, knowing the facts, we wouldn't have participated.”

Meanwhile, some artists have complained that Castillo unfairly listed their names to promote the event. Penzer has said that some artists, like Kass, were listed in the ad before they had decided to pull out. But Tim Rollins and Altoon Sultan, among others, were listed as participating artists when, in fact, a collector had donated one of their pieces. Penzer says this was a mistake attributable to her inexperience.

Contributors began to have second thoughts after receiving one or more of several mailings. Queer Nation sent out a flier to the advertised list of participating artists, with quotes from Voice articles, Chip Berlet, gay newspapers, and former NAP presidential candidate Dennis Serrette, all warning of NAP's questionable practices. For some the flier motivated withdrawal from the auction. For others, it seemed unsubstantiated. “It was anonymous and all the quotes were taken out of context,” said Vered Lied, whose husband, Thorton Willis, will participate. Lucio Pozzi questioned auction organizers about various charges, and came away satisfied that the money from the sale of his artwork “will be used for charitable purposes.” And Cary Leibowitz, a/k/a Candyass, says, “1 don't have time to think about it. It would seem a little fascist to rule them out right away.”

Attorney Jerry Ordover, who represents a number of artists, saw the ad for the auction and “felt alarmed because of the things I've read about NAP over the years.” He sent a letter expressing his “healthy skepticism about a group that takes positions which I find weird and which allies itself with individuals who are antithetical to pro-humanity positions.” He enclosed a copy of a Voice article published last year about Castillo's opening.

That article, and a Voice review of a Castillo production of a Heiner Muller play, were the subjects of a front page article in the National Alliance, NAP's weekly organ, which called the Voice “the party line-ish voice of the New York City arts establishment.” The article quoted Newman labeling the Voice a “Stalinist operation” trying “to drive an ice pick into the head of a significant and independent rival.”

According to some artists, Penzer tried to convince them to stay in the auction by discrediting the Voice, and calling the mailings part of a “witch hunt” against Castillo. “When she used that word,” said Melissa Meyer, “that's when I was convinced to pull out.” Penzer told the Voice that there was a “McCarthyite attack” going on, “insinuating that Castillo is not really Castillo and that we don't really do culture.” She denied that Castillo is part of the New Alliance Party but said that it “is part of a network of progressive organizations. NAP is one. Castillo is another.” She added, “We're supportive of the work they [NAP] do. We think it's good.” She did not deny that Fred Newman heads NAP, the “social therapy movement” and the Castillo Center. “He's lots of things.” she said. “He's a painter and a playwright, too.”

Penzer said that artists who pulled out are responding to pressure, insinuation, and a “censorship attack on their support of this organization,” adding, “I don't have a sense from the artists who pulled out of any substantive disagreement about Castillo.” But for Dotty Attie, there were serious problems. “They have ties to political groups that support Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan,” she said. “I don't feel sympathetic with that.” And Gary Stephan, who let his answering machine pick up his phone for a week even when he was home “because Castillo was calling me six times a day,” was put off by their “left and right analysis mixed in some sort of paranoid soup.”

One artist who chose to withdraw from the auction after reading up on NAP puts it, “When groups as diverse as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Jackson, Mississippi's progressive black newspaper [The Jackson Advocate] all conclude that NAP is seriously bad news, you can't exactly call it a conspiracy.”

In the end, some artists say, the experience has been sobering, and might, Gretchen Bender suggests, “get us to do our homework in the future.” But, says one artist who requested anonymity because he feared for his family's safety, “This has left such a bad taste, it's almost shut me off to the whole idea of donating work. It's really sad, but next time a group comes to me, I'm going to be really hesitant.”