Many of the Occupy Oakland movement protesting at the city’s port declared their solidarity with the Longshoremen’s union in Washington state.  In September, longshoremen Port of Longview in Washington stormed a grain shipping terminal, cut the brake lines on rail cars and held security personnel hostage, resulting in violent clashes between union workers and police.  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on August 31st had issued a complaint against the union, condemning its “violent and aggressive” actions.

From the Monthly Review, John Hamilton interviews Oakland, CA International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 member and co-chair of the Million Worker March Movement, Clarence Thomas (not the SCOTUS Clarence Thomas), who explains why the Occupy movement is supporting the ILWU and closing of the port:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The partial transcript from Monthly Review is below:

“One of the reasons why they are doing it is because they are trying to defend ILWU workers in Longview, Washington, who are facing a behemoth of agribusiness, EGT.  The driving force behind EGT is a leading agribusiness concern called Bunge. . . .  Longshoremen have a debt of gratitude to the people who have organized this action today. . . .  30% of the funding of our pensions comes from that grain operation in the Pacific Northwest.  This is an attempt to rupture the jurisdiction of longshore workers that we’ve had for over 77 years in this country.  Wall Street is on the move, on the waterfront, looking for new profits, and the community are standing with the ILWU.

They are standing with us for a reason.  They know about 1984, when longshoremen refused to unload cargo from South Africa for 11 days.  They know about the ILWU shutting down all 29 ports in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  They know about the ILWU shutting down all 29 ports on May Day, International Workers’ Day, to protest the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They understand about the ILWU and the actions that we took by not crossing the picket line in response to the murder on the high seas of those humanitarian activists taking supplies to Gaza.  The ship was shut down for 24 hours, the Zim Line ship from Israel.  They know about the actions that we took last October in support of Oscar Grant.  And this resonates with the community.  So now the community is saying: We want to stand in support of the ILWU.  So, this connection is genuine, it’s legitimate, and we embrace it.”

Early last month, the leftist publication SocialistWorker.org hinted at such coming activity:

“Corporate arrogance could provoke a first-ever shutdown of all U.S. ports at once. And Panama Canal pilots, who recently joined the ILWU, as well as the International Dockworkers’ Council and the International Transport Workers Federation, are also on board.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther who was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a Philadelphia policeman in 1981.  The ILWU organized a work stoppage at West Coast ports in 1999 to protest the execution of Abu-Jamal.

When the Mavi Marmara (the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla) attempted to break Israel’s established Gaza blockade in international waters on May 31st, 2010, resulting in the deadly conflict between Israeli security forces and activists, Palestinian trade unions called for a work stoppage on Israeli cargo, and for dockworkers in the US to stand in solidarity against “Israel’s occupation and apartheid.”  Here at BigGovernment.com, we brought you similar protest footage from that day of  solidarity from leftist activist Lisa Fithian, where one of her activists leads the chant, “Long live Intifada!”.

The power of the people can be a very useful tool in forcing positive change through democratic direct action, we’ve seen it with both sides of the political spectrum.  But, left to the hands of organizers who may not necessarily have America’s best interests at heart, it can also be abused – for instance, to shut down every port – and cause severe harm to the economy of our nation.  These are not actions that should be taken lightly, or for ideological reasons.

While the Occupy Movement purports to represent the 99%, upon hearing some of the comments above, I’d question whether that majority really shares the same views.

The Fraternal Order of Police issued a strongly-worded letter to American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten, parent union to the CFT.

The union’s absurdly radical action is now producing its consequences.

I received an email from a CFT and AFT member resigning his union membership over the kerfuffle.  He wrote in part:

“Having given the matter considerable thought, I have decided to resign from our labor union, an affiliate of the CFT and the AFT. I have already instructed [an administrative staff member] in Davenport to stop deducting dues from my paycheck. I feel some responsibility for briefly explaining the reasons for this difficult decision.

“I did not especially think this faculty needed to unionize when the idea for that came forward, but I did vote in favor of it, in support of the majority of faculty that did think this worthwhile. I did so with the understanding our union would stick to our immediate educational and terms of employment issues at [our school]. Indeed, our local has pretty much done a good job of that, except for having used tactics during the last round of labor negotiations that I rejected as long ago as 1968 as a college student. No, the end did not justify the means. I will leave it at that.

“More to the point, I cannot allow my dues to support either the CFT or the AFT. The CFT recently passed a resolution supporting convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. I have attached a strong objection written by the National Fraternal Order of Police. Frankly, I have no idea whether this person did or did not kill a cop; but I do know that I do not want one penny on my union dues spent on this cause. It has nothing to do with education. Moreover, the CFT also expends considerable resources on state-level political struggles that I do not support, and in fact could bankrupt the state I live in.

“As for the AFT, it is purely and simply an organ of the Democrat party. I have attached some charts below showing that at this time it contributes almost exclusively to the Democrat party. I do not approve of this use of my dues.

“Since I continue to support the mission of our Local insofar as it involves educational issues at [our school], I will contribute 10% of what I have been paying directly to our local, through the treasurer. As the former treasurer, I believe that amount will exceed the portion of my dues that remains in our union’s bank account after regular monthly payments to the CFT and AFT.”

Kudos to this teacher and former union treasurer for standing up for what he believes.  He now realizes that he didn’t leave the labor union, the labor union left him.

Many other teachers are beginning to recognize the in-your-face radicalization of the public sector unions, and they don’t like it either. I expect we’ll be hearing similar stories from brave union members who’ve had their fill and simply say, “Enough!”

Teachers, please continue telling them.

On April 14, FOP National President Chuck Canterbury issued a scathing letter to American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.  In part, it read:

I cannot understand why the CFT, which like us represents rank-and-file employees, would support a murderer.  In fact, Abu-Jamal’s victim was a rank-and-file law enforcement officer and a member of F.O.P. Local Lodge #5 in Philadelphia.  I can only assume that the membership did so out of ignorance of the facts or that they were misled by this killer’s propaganda machine.  I want to set the record straight and would respectively, yet urgently, request that you and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) publicly reject this repugnant resolution.

Not likely.  According to PublicSchoolSpending.com, an AFL-CIO spokesperson said the union had no plans to respond to the FOP letter.  The AFT had no comment as of 12:30 pm ET after repeated attempts.

Maybe Canterbury is beginning to understand just how far-left and radical the AFT is.  How sad for the police officers.

The FOP letter ended ominously:

This resolution, if it remains unchallenged by the AFT, would cast grave doubts on your leadership as well as pose serious questions as to the ability of the FOP to work with your organization at any level.  On behalf of the more than 330,000 members of the Fraternal Order of Police, the families of slain law enforcement officers and the honored memory of the officers killed in the line of duty, I urge you repudiate the resolution support this cop-killer.

So will Randi Weingarten and the AFT stand with cops or their killers?

National-Fraternal-Order-of-Police-letter-to-Weingarten

Why aren’t teachers angrily denouncing a recent resolution passed by the California Federation of Teachers in which the union “reaffirms support for death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal?”

The American Federation of Teachers, led by Randi Weingarten, has to date issued no statement in opposition to this offensive resolution.

And what does the AFL-CIO, the parent to the AFT think?  More importantly, what do the police members of the AFL-CIO think?  After all, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing one of their own.

Or don’t they care?

At what point will the teachers’ unions be more concerned with the pitiful state of public education than they are about the fate of a convicted cop killer, or other unrelated issues like gay rights, national health care or American foreign policy?

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a hero of hardcore radical leftists – to some because he executed a police officer – does not deserve the honor and respect of teachers.  It sends the wrong message to children.  But the fact that the union would take the time to pass such a resolution shows the purpose of the union: to pass a radical agenda that has little if anything to do with education.

Photo collage by New Zeal blog

Jones, an anti-American communist radical who has rebranded his image as a “patriot” after being adopted by the leftist elite, has come a long way from being a 9/11 cheerleader and record producer for cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal to striding the halls of power in Washington, D.C. and Princeton while traveling the country as a motivational speaker serving heaping helpings of eco-pablum to crowds of adoring liberals.

Jones was appointed in the Spring of 2009 by President Barack Obama to be his ‘green jobs czar’ but resigned his position several months later after hints of his radical past were exposed. At the time, Jones said he was a victim of a “vicious smear campaign” of “lies and distortions.”

Jones stated on Twitter his belief that the passage of time (but apparently not repentance) will make it harder to hold him accountable for his actions as a thirty-something Yale Law grad.

The older I get, the harder it will be for the Right to throw my past views in my face. Or mock my contributions. – 29 Mar (2011)

In the same conversation on Twitter, Jones spoke of his plans to join corporate boards.

Now I’m in process of launching private ventures+joining corporate boards. Will the Right will be glad? Or mad? – 29 Mar (2011)

Jones does not say which corporate boards he is considering joining. He served on the board of the leftist Rainforest Action Network alongside fellow Obama ally Jodie Evans in the mid-2000s. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the environmental group 1Sky.

Jones is also listed on several advisory boards for liberal education and environmental outfits.

Jones may have ruled out serving on the boards of these companies in a Tweet he posted Wednesday:

SO sad. RT, @TheNewDeal: GE, Exxon, BofA, Chevron, Boeing, Goldman, Citi, WellsFargo etc PAY NO TAXES & GOP Gives Them Tax Cut! #WIunion #p2 30 Mar

Corporations vetting Jones to sit on their boards will have to consider if having someone who less than ten years ago cheered the 9/11 terror attacks with a hate-America rally held the day after the attacks is suitable. They will also have to factor in the support Jones gave to Mumia Abu Jamal, a leftist radical convicted of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel J. Faulkner.

Jones went so far in his support for Mumia that he produced and appeared on a post-9/11 anti-American propaganda album narrated by Mumia called “WarTimes, Reports From the Opposition” that was released by Jones’ record label, Freedom Fighter Music.

The album contains virulently anti-American screeds such as this ditty reported by Big Journalism:

F*** the government, they never done s*** for me
For my people their defeat is a victory
“The man” wants the whole world under his thumb,
Plunders the globe and tries to buy us off with the crumbs…
That’s not your flag, not your government
Not your war, not your President
Now is not the time to be silent
Raise your voices, raise your fist
Against the real terrorist – Uncle Sam.

Jones also appears on the album in comments where he identifies himself as part of the “global struggle against the U.S.”:

About three minutes forty-five seconds into the highlight video, there is a brief interview with Van Jones at an anti-Israel demonstration where Jones criticizes Israel and calls for Palestinian ‘right of return’ and then unloads on the United States:

“We see violence against poor people and poor people of color within the U.S. border, at the U.S. border, and beyond the U.S. border and you see U.S. tax dollars funding all of it. And so we have this now global struggle against the U.S. led security apparatus and military agenda that impacts people here and impacts people around the world and I think that we need to see our problems as linked.”

The WarTimes album was part of an anti-American propaganda campaign ginned up by Bay Area leftists to undermine the post 9/11 war effort by the United States.

Jones served on the organizing committee for the proposed War Times biweekly newspaper to undermine the war effort.

The prospectus for War Times began:

The terrorist attacks of September 11 marked the beginning of a new and frightening period in our history. Thousands of people died that day, and their families along with the country as a whole are still struggling to recover. But President Bush’s response of “permanent war against terrorism at home and abroad” has further endangered the lives and liberties of millions of people everywhere.

The world’s most powerful nation has mercilessly bombed Afghanistan and is installing a neo-colonial government of its own choosing, although that country has never attacked the U.S.

The prospectus fails to mention the Taliban government of Afghanistan allowed al Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan and protected Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda after the attacks.

The prospectus describes another of the goals of War Times was to “build a mass movement against U.S. interventions abroad and link to it the struggles for social justice. The security and livelihood of people across the globe depend on success in this fight.”

The day after the 9/11 attacks, when the rest of the country was still in shock over the cold blooded mass murder of thousands of Americans, Jones led a rally that cheered the attacks and praised the terrorists as “heroes.”

Jones was videotaped at the rally saying America deserved the attacks:

(4:38) “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders…We’ve got something stronger than bombs, we have solidarity. That dream of revolutionary change is stronger than bombs.”

One speaker at Jones’ rally praised the attacks:

(4:10) “But when we knew what those places represented, we were kind of also glad that there’s a place called the Pentagon where, where, military strategies which have killed millions of people around the face of the world (unintelligible). We know, to see that place burnin’, there was some satisfaction to it.”

Another speaker (and the crowd!) cheered the attacks and called the terrorists “heroes.”

(3:06) ” We’re always seeing America dropping bombs on people. Now the chicken is coming home to roost, as Malcolm say. (Cheers from the crowd.) We gotta deal with it. They got people so dedicated they gonna commit suicide to make their point. We gotta understand there’s a war going on that people are fighting for their own life, for their land. Right? We gotta support those people. We cannot let the lies of the media take our spirits down. We don’t want to see our people dying, innocent people dying. But in fighting a war, they don’t have the army to fight and block our warfare with the American people. Don’t call them cowards. They’re heroes that died. And they’re the people that we have to support in this case. The people of color are rising here and we gotta understand that. I just want to say we gotta support and don’t let this thing turn your spirits down. Turn ‘em up!”

The rally was organized by Jones for “people of color.” According to the press release for the rally issued by Jones’ Ella Baker Center, white people were tolerated at the rally, but they were not invited to speak.

“Though people of color in particular will be invited to speak at the gathering, but everyone is welcome.” (sic)

Blatant racism and anti-Americanism such as that practiced by Jones at the rally would automatically disqualify anyone from serving on corporate boards, as would cutting a record with a cop killer. However, Jones is supported by the liberal elite.

Presently Jones serves at Princeton as a“distinguished visiting fellow in the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.”

Jones also was appointed a “Senior Fellow” at the Democratic party front group Center for American Progress after leaving the Obama administration.

Let us remember that it is leftists who support convicted cop-killers, organize to prevent other Americans from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights, consistently threaten violence, and otherwise have a long history of supporting foreign powers who wish our nation and its freedoms harm.

For many years, the anti-American culture of the extreme left has been largely ignored. Like a cancer running through the body politic, the culture of hating America has metasticised. It is now “uncool” to have a flag in the yard, support our troops or believe in American exceptionalism.

To better see how the left works and the threat it poses, let us take a look at the Left and the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC).

As could be expected, many leftist groups and individuals decided to stage large protests and demonstrations in St. Paul, Minnesota during the 2008 RNC. This is a very American thing to do and is protected by our constitution. However, a group of extreme leftists joined together and called themselves the RNC Welcoming Committee. These individuals set out across the country and used the internet to organize other like-minded individuals and groups to shut the RNC down and they threatened to use “any means necessary.” The organizers showed videos of firebombs being used, handed out maps of “targets,” and went as far as studying the communication systems of law-enforcement and EMS with the stated intention of possibly shutting down such systems.

Of course, a majority of the left-oriented individuals who participated in the RNC protests and demonstrations did not want much to do with the more radical RNC Welcoming Committee. This division in the Left’s protest organizing is standard practice at all large protests and demonstrations. However, the organizing hierarchy of the protest groups is another story all together and will be touched on later in this piece.

As the RNC kicked off, the protests began. All began well and thousands voiced their opposition to the Republican party. At the same time, the the extreme leftists and anarchists were attempting to follow through with their violent threats by actually making fire-bombs and attempting to use force to prevent Republicans from attending the convention. The Extreme Left wanted to prevent other Americans from exercising their Right to Assemble. Again, bombs were made by several different groups. Thankfully, numerous law-enforcement agencies and the FBI had infiltrated the groups. The bombs were confiscated, arrests were made, convictions were won, and Republicans were able to exercise their right to assemble and were not killed, burned, or otherwise maimed, as the extreme left had intended.

Reading the accounts, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that the attempted atrocities came from extreme leftists and the more moderate Left had no part in any of it. Right? Well, wrong.

Here is where the more moderate groups participate and contribute to such extremism: As soon as the demonstrations were over and the arrests were made, the more “moderate” Left began to stand behind the extremists. Local law-enforcement and the FBI’s successful efforts to stop violence and protect the Republicans right to assemble began to be portrayed as “government oppression of demonstrators.” The ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild began helping to defend the various radicals who had decided to dehumanize and interfere with the rights of Republicans.

There is yet another trial coming up which stems from the Left standing behind the extremists. The Left and the MSM have dubbed the extremists as the “RNC 8.” They are now “fighting” for their “rights” to “assemble.” The many heroes from all of the various law-enforcement groups involved are now being demonized by defense attorneys and the many leftist groups involved. Yet somehow the White House is claiming that conservatives are a threat?

The matter of the extreme anarchist “RNC 8” gets even more disturbing. One of the key “direct action” “trainers” and “community organizers” for the Leftist extremist contingent, Lisa Fithian, also happened to be on the streering committee for the umbrella organization which encompassed the more “moderate” Leftist groups. This umbrella organization, United for Peace and Justice, boasting nearly 1,400 various groups from across the nation, seemingly organized both the “moderate” and the “extremist” demonstrations.

Former President and cigar aficionado Bill Clinton, recently claimed that anti-government rhetoric from the Tea-Partiers concerned him and could lead the way to violence. Has Mr. Clinton ever looked at the websites of the Far-Left? They have infoshop.org, where the latest “communiques” from the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) can be read by all of the nation’s underground and covert “cells.” Or what about the indymedia.org sites which are sprouting up in most cities?

Did Mr. Clinton not know that all of the latest Animal Liberation Front (ALF) “communiques” can be read there?  Does Mr. Clinton and the folks at MSNBC realize that the majority of the Left believes in and use the term “GreenScare.” This is a Leftist buzzword which is used to defend Eco-Terrorists, like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and Animal Rights terrorists, like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). It’s meant to tie the FBI’s efforts to stop such domestic terrorism with Mccarthyism.

Let’s get our history straight on the Left in America. The 1960’s and 1970’s were dangerous times for our nation. There were various Black Nationalist groups who stated very clearly in both word and action that they intended to overthrow the US government. They worked with foreign powers to do just that. They murdered police officers. They kidnapped the children of wealthy Americans. They hijacked commercial airliners and forced them to land in Cuba. They set off explosives. They saw themselves as part of a global struggle for “peace and justice.”

The FBI nuetralized them and prevented them from committing further acts of violence. Those who did not die in shootouts with law-enforcement officers were mostly incarcerated for their crimes.

Then the Extreme Left began to grow again. The cop-killing criminals who were in cells began to be deified.  The conservatives ignored this. Now such thugs are heroes to a large percentage of our society. One can easily look at Mumia abu-jamal, Leonard Peltier, and the National Committee to Free the Angola Three. The Left claims that all these individuals and groups are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. However, it is telling to note that the Left never mentions the particulars of the crime. In the case of Mumia abu-jamal, a young officer named Daniel Faulkner was murdered, leaving behind his wife and young baby. Never once is this mentioned as a tragedy by Mumia’s leftist supporters. In fact, while claiming his innocence, they also make sure to attack the character of Officer Faulkner. He was, according to the Left, a “racist.” He was also a “pig.” Once again, the Left and the MSM have overlooked these facts and claimed that conservatives pose a threat.

Now this is where the Left gets scary again. Once again, the Extreme Left considers itself as being part of a global movement for “peace and justice.” What was once a simple unchallenged glorification of a dark-Leftist era and a ridiculous glorification of that era’s thugs has grown into a force to be reckoned with–and scared of.

Pipelines are being blown up in Canada, domestic anarchists and other extremists are beginning to glorify their Greek and Italian counter-part’s use of explosives and murder internationally. Many American Far-Left websites are beginning to publish the” communiques” and “how-to” manuals from their foreign “comrades.” Groups such as the SHAC (Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty) have successfully used violence and threats of violence to bring a company to it’s knees by using violence against shareholders and any company that would work with the target of their aggression.

Though much of the violence being exhibited by the Left in foreign nations has largely been stopped by the FBI in domestic matters, the Left-wing Extremists are glorifying violent actions by their foreign “comrades.”

It’s just a matter of time before the Left begins to emulate their heroes- and the killing begins again. They are a ticking time bomb.

Did you know that a courageous former radical helped to avert a planned left-wing terrorist attack at the 2008 Republican National Convention that might have killed who knows how many Americans?

Neither did I until recently.

That’s because if you disrupt a terrorist attack on Americans by Islamic fundamentalists as Northwest Flight 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa did on Christmas Day, you’re a hero; however, if you take the initiative to undermine a terrorist attack on Americans by supposedly well intentioned left-wing fundamentalists, you might as well be a terrorist yourself.

Brandon Darby, who in recent years also refused leftists’ invitations to get involved in Venezuelan communist subversion here in America and in anti-Israeli terrorism in Palestine, learned this unpalatable truth the hard way.

The Left-Wing Plot to Kill Republicans

After years of in-your-face protests, confrontational tactics and working with America-haters, Darby eventually experienced a political epiphany. He rejected the radical Left and its culture of political violence. He came to realize that America, for all its faults, wasn’t such a bad place after all.

“I felt I had a duty to atone after badmouthing my country for so many years,” Darby told me in an interview. “I love my country.”

But Darby didn’t always love his country.

Darby previously considered himself a revolutionary. His charisma and militant anti-Americanism made the intense Texan a larger-than-life figure among leftist activists in the South.

He openly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he considered too corrupt and oppressive to be reformed. He expressed his hatred of police as guardians of the status quo. He consorted with eco-terrorist tree-spikers, radical feminists and black nationalists.

He was approached to rob an armored car and asked to commit arson to fight gentrification. He mouthed politically correct slogans and platitudes about the Bush administration. Government didn’t care about people, and in his eyes, the much-maligned response to Hurricane Katrina proved it.

But around the same time, the former radical community organizer was turning away from radicalism, and at tremendous personal risk, he undermined a leftwing terrorist plot to attack the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. If he hadn’t taken action, Americans exercising their free speech rights and police officers might have been killed.

Without informing his fellow anarchists, Darby offered his assistance to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and, at the FBI’s request, infiltrated a leftwing group known as the Austin Affinity Group. The outfit had joined with a larger coalition of progressive organizations that facetiously called itself the “RNC Welcoming Committee.” The committee hoped to lay siege to the GOP convention that nominated the presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

The FBI sent Darby to meet with anarchists who were developing their plan at a bookstore in Austin.

“It was a group of people whose explicit purpose was to organize a group of ‘black bloc’ anarchists to shut the Republican convention down by any means necessary,” he explained. “They showed videos of people throwing Molotov cocktails, and they were giving people ideas.”

The two 20-something plotters on whom Darby informed, David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder, had made homemade riot shields and were ready to use them in St. Paul to help demonstrators block streets near the Xcel Energy Center in order to prevent GOP delegates from participating in the convention. The shields were discovered and confiscated.

But McKay and Crowder were undeterred by this setback. Together they manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with.

During a search of a residence, police found gas masks, slingshots, helmets, knee pads and eight Molotov cocktails consisting of bottles filled with gasoline with attached wicks made from tampons.

“They mixed gasoline with oil so it would stick to clothing and skin and burn longer,” Darby told me.

Thanks to Darby’s cooperation with the FBI, the two anarchist would-be bomb throwers are now languishing in prison. McKay entered a “guilty” plea and was sentenced in May 2009 to 48 months in prison plus three years of supervised release for possession of an unregistered “firearm,” illegal manufacture of a firearm and possession of a firearm with no serial number. A week before, Crowder cut a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for possession of an unregistered firearm.

McKay received the stiffer sentence in part because he fabricated a tall tale about Darby’s involvement in the plot.

During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis went out of his way to make a specific legal finding that McKay obstructed justice by falsely accusing Darby of inducing him to manufacture the incendiary devices.

Davis told McKay he crossed the line between peaceful dissent and violent protest. “You were leading the charge. You and Crowder were coming up here [to Minnesota] to do anarchy against the system.”

But now the story takes a strange turn.

After Darby, who until the end of 2008 had been a confidential FBI informant, revealed that he had worked with authorities to pre-empt the violent conspiracy, he became the subject of a campaign of vilification by the Left.

Google Darby’s name and the words “snitch” and “rat” appear. Cyber-squatters appropriated his name and created a hateful Web site to defame him.

The floodgates of abuse burst open after Darby acknowledged in an open letter posted at an alternative news Web site that not only had he worked with the FBI, but he also “strongly” stood behind his decision to do so.

The irretrievably liberal New York Times ignored his heroism. A Jan. 5, 2009, article focused not on Darby’s lifesaving intervention but on the feelings of “betrayal” his former allies in left-wing anarchist circles were experiencing.

The paper showed how shocked and appalled Scott Crow, who with Darby co-founded the Common Ground Relief agency in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, was after learning about Darby’s cooperation with the FBI.

“I put it all on the line to defend him when accusations first came out,” Crow said. “Brandon Darby is somebody I had entrusted with my life in New Orleans, and now I feel endangered by him.” Why someone who presumably hadn’t committed a crime would feel “endangered” by knowing an FBI informant is unclear.

ACORN founder Wade Rathke (shown at left in above photo), who worked as a professional agitator for the violent Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s, would have preferred that Republican delegates be incinerated.

He denounced Darby for working with the authorities to disrupt the domestic terrorists. “It seemed so, how should I say it, ’60s?”

It’s “one thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks,” Rathke wrote on his blog.

This response to ideological apostasy is not altogether surprising. Leftists who abandon their faith are demonized by their former co-religionists. Relentless attacks on Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and former radical David Horowitz continue to the present day, decades after they moved rightward.

Right-Wing Violence Bad, Left-Wing Violence Good?

Compare the treatment of Darby at the hands of the Left to the respectful— often groveling—treatment afforded ObamaCare architect Robert Creamer.

A HuffingtonPost.com contributor and husband of shrill socialist Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Creamer served prison time for kiting checks and failing to pay withholding taxes for his leftist nonprofit, Illinois Public Action Fund. Just like his liberal friends in Congress and the Obama administration, he refused to roll back spending and instead created a modified Ponzi scheme in order to continue drawing his full $100,000 salary.

This crusader for social justice and political consultant to Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and impeached Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich even whined at his 2006 sentencing that he received a five-month period of incarceration, well below the 30 to 37 months called for in federal sentencing guidelines. The media failed to call him on it.

Convicted cop-killing activists Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal are legends on the Left. Black Panther Abu-Jamal in particular enjoys a cult following among radicals even though no serious person—including Abu-Jamal himself, who failed to claim to be innocent at his trial—contests that in 1981 he shot and killed Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in cold blood.

Creamer, Peltier and Abu-Jamal are all heroes to the Left no matter what they did, and to some precisely because of what they did.

This is because on the Left there is a presumption of good intentions even by fellow-traveling terrorists. As left-wing talk radio host Thom Hartmann told me last year: “My left-wing crazies are better than your right-wing crazies.”

Hartmann explained:

“Your right-wing crazies are incited to violence based on fear and hate of people because of whom they are, because they’re gay, because they’re Catholic, because they’re Jewish, because they’re black, because they’re Hispanic. And our left-wing crazies are incited to violence because they’re trying to create a better world. They’re trying to save the environment in the case of the eco-terrorists. They’re trying to end the Vietnam War in the case of the Weather Underground. They’re trying to bring about civil rights in the case of the Symbionese Liberation Army and some of the other black terrorist groups that were operating in the 1970s” (emphasis added).

To the Left, violent acts aimed at desirable ends are worthy of praise, especially if aimed at the other side.

Internationally known Marxist author Naomi Klein has praised the riots that took place during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and openly called for violence at the 2004 Republican convention, urging protesters to bring the Iraq War to the streets of New York City. The Canadian writer wasn’t ostracized by the Left after her outrageous statement; if anything, her public stature has only grown since 2004.

If right-wing terrorists plotted to attack a Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled the conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” Darby said.

“But when it’s leftists that organize to prevent Republicans from being able to meet, then all of a sudden it’s considered government oppression. There’s something wrong with that, and no one points that out, and it’s really offensive and damaging to our system.”

Social justice-oriented terrorism isn’t ugly and anti-American, according to the nation’s entertainment-media complex; it’s downright praiseworthy and hip. So it should come as no surprise that Crowder and McKay are in the process of being rehabilitated by the Left.

Early on, the duo became a cause célèbre for the Left, dubbed the Texas 2. Now documentary filmmakers are currently making a movie about them called—you guessed it—“Better This World.” The documentary, which is reportedly in the post-production phase, received an HBO Documentary Films Fellowship.

No doubt there will be more praise heaped on them as they ascend to the Left’s pantheon of social justice champions, joining Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and the Unabomber.

The Journal Away From Radicalism

But no one is singing the praises of Darby, a genuine American hero.

Born in Pasadena, Texas, in 1976, Darby’s efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans were highlighted favorably in the media, most notably in a Jonathan Demme documentary that was shown on the “Tavis Smiley Show” on PBS.

When Darby learned people were suffering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, he moved there, defying police orders not to enter the stricken city. With $50, he co-founded Common Ground in the home of Malik Rahim, a veteran community organizer and former Black Panther who did prison time for armed robbery.

“When we started, everyone in the city was armed, everyone was scared, and there was a complete lack of law enforcement,” said Darby. “The few roving bands of law enforcement that were present didn’t like us very much because of the fact that we were involved with people like Malik Rahim, who to this day continues to advocate for those who have attacked law enforcement personnel.”

“We were young, we were caught up in the fervor of helping others and fighting injustice, and at that time, we couldn’t see why people like law enforcement didn’t like Malik,” Darby said.

Common Ground was no mere relief agency. It was a group of far-Left revolutionaries who viewed their work as an extension of their politics.

In a promotional video, Rahim thunders to volunteers: “You are showing this government that the people, that the people in this country do care for peace and justice and that we will stand for peace and justice and that we will do what it takes to restore peace and justice back to America.”

When Common Ground was threatened, the radical Left mobilized to defend it. Police were “freaked out because there were all these Black Panthers who’d had shootouts with the police years ago, and they’re in this house and they refused to leave, so it turned into this really stressful ordeal,” Darby explained.

Despite many obstacles, Common Ground quickly became a successful nonprofit group that helped alleviate the suffering of poor people in the devastated city, especially in the hard-hit 9th Ward.

Supported by donations that flowed in from across the country, in its first three years 22,000 volunteers worked for Common Ground. A magnet for outraged radicals ranging from garden variety collectivists to militant vegans to pagan lesbians, the group gutted flood damaged houses without bothering to obtain permits and provided free health care and meals.

The group was profiled by ABC’s “Nightline,” and the media treated Darby as a savior. With its contributions to the city, the group began to wield political influence, Darby said. Even its initial detractors begrudgingly admitted Common Ground’s positive impact on the Crescent City.

Over time, a lot of the things Darby experienced with Common Ground led him to question his political beliefs, and these experiences offer a window into what happens when the radical Left takes over an area.

In bed with real-estate developers, New Orleans wanted to use eminent domain to condemn many vacant flood damaged houses. According to Darby, many anarchists refused to join his fight to protect the property rights of homeowners, because they didn’t believe in private property.

“I just started putting the call out, and all these libertarians, Republicans and Democrats, started showing up. And what we would do was any time there were bulldozers we would just get in front of them and wouldn’t let them work,” he said.

“We had our lawyers file lawsuits, and so next thing you know, they backed away from it. And they started to work with us to identify where the residents were, and we’d ask the residents if they wanted their place demolished or not.”

Darby defied the politically correct “consensus” method of group decision making and riled feathers by daring to tell aimless volunteers what to do. After vegan volunteers took over the Common Ground kitchen and tried to inflict their dietary preferences on the poor, it occurred to Darby that the leftist-anarchist approach with its aversion to hierarchy would never work in the real world.

“Like most people driven by a strong dogma, the majority of the people who took over were from Berkeley, and they came in under the guise of helping,” he said.

“They tried to use the experience to ‘correct’ the culture and lifestyle of the working-class poor. They tried to use the black residents of New Orleans as lab rats and guinea pigs, and I didn’t like that at all—and the residents didn’t like it either.”

For example, some of the activists tried to organize the residents into “collectives,” and another group of gay activists took over part of a church that had donated its space to help relief efforts. “We were helping to rebuild the church, but then some radicals took over and started using over half the space and designated it as a ‘queer safe place,’” Darby said.

This infuriated the church leadership who were already uncomfortable with being associated with so many radical activists.

“It’s not about you coming here and creating your utopia,” Darby explained.

“It’s about helping these residents and making them feel comfortable. The radicals wanted to make residents sit through political orientations in order to get fed. I objected and that got me called a dictator.”

Common Ground leaders continued to insist on indoctrinating young volunteers and on continuing with in-your-face protest tactics, which lost their usefulness after the group became well established and had connections with people in the city, Darby said.

“The people making decisions for the city about how aid was distributed and about where FEMA work crews and search-and-rescue crews operated, developed relationships with us,” he explained. “They were completely open to hear our perspective and wanted us to participate in what decisions were made, but unfortunately many of the other community organizers were stuck in a fight-the-power dogma, which ultimately hindered their ability to serve those in need. There was no official of local government there that we couldn’t call on their cell phone and set up a dinner meeting with or enjoy a cup of coffee with.”

After initially having rocky relations with the New Orleans Police and other local authority figures, Darby came to realize that, in the hurricane-ravaged city, relief volunteers and the authorities were on the same side—both sides wanted to help people.

Darby’s “eureka” moment came as he began to accept the idea that not everyone in government was a villain.

He credits Maj. John Bryson of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) with helping him to stop viewing everyone in government as the enemy.

Bryson (pictured above), who, in the wake of Katrina, was the NOPD’s 5th District commander, an area that encompassed the especially hard-hit Lower 9th Ward, observed Darby’s transformation over time.

When Bryson first met Darby, he was “so up in my face it was unbelievable,” Bryson told me. “Radical” was too weak a word to describe Darby, Bryson said.

When the two first met, Darby promised that his fellow activists would be videotaping police and that they wouldn’t hesitate to report anything they didn’t like to the media. Bryson helped to improve the relationship by giving Darby his cell phone number and told him to contact him directly if police officers misbehaved.

Bryson offered to help Darby but cautioned him that “if we find that you are not here to help our citizens, then we’re going to have a problem,” Bryson explained, “and that was our agreement.”

Over time, the two, who had been filled with mutual distrust and hostility, began to get along, even to like each other as friends.

Bryson watched Common Ground—which, in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, he said, had more people on the ground than the federal government—begin to flourish. The group opened shelters for women, families and children, offering services to locals that governments at the time were unable to provide.

As relations with the police improved dramatically, Darby confessed to Bryson that he had never had this kind of positive relationship with any kind of law enforcement personnel. The feeling was mutual.

Bryson praised Darby for cooperating with the FBI:

“Everybody [on the Left] hates Brandon because he did the right thing for the right reasons. Anytime anyone in this country, in this state, in this city, or even in this world is going to do some horrible things to innocent people, if a good man does not stand up, or a good woman for that matter, then we’re in trouble. And Brandon stood up and did the right thing. He stole my heart as he said, ‘I thought about you and how well you worked with us, and I couldn’t see innocent people getting hurt.’”

Plots Abroad

Although Darby’s positive experiences with New Orleans police had forced him to begin questioning his anarchist beliefs, a trip to Marxist Venezuela helped to kill off his remaining radical impulses.

The trip came as the U.S. government was taking a beating in the media for its post-Katrina relief efforts. At the time, Venezuela’s communist strongman, Hugo Chavez, began trying to embarrass the Bush administration by offering aid to the Katrina-hit Gulf Coast.

Chavez had already been running what political scientists call a “public diplomacy” campaign in the U.S. to help bolster American support for his regime. The propaganda effort consisted of funneling discounted home heating oil to former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy’s, D-Mass., nonprofit group, Citizens Energy Corp. The nonprofit then distributed the oil to poor people, and Kennedy (pictured above behind lectern) went on TV to berate the Bush administration, which he said “cut fuel assistance.” Kennedy boosted his benefactor, boasting in a commercial that “CITGO, owned by the Venezuelan people,” had helped poor Americans while their own government stood idly by.

Darby traveled to Caracas in 2006 as part of a Common Ground delegation to the Chavez government to seek funding to keep Common Ground afloat.

“I had this idea of having ‘Chavez trailers’ for displaced residents to live in. This would embarrass FEMA into supplying trailers,” he said.

Darby said he didn’t realize when he came up with the concept that using money from abroad to influence the U.S. government might be illegal, but Chavez government officials he met with insisted it would violate U.S. law.

“They told me I would get in trouble, and they wanted to work out a way to make the project happen,” he said.

In the month he was there, Venezuelan officials introduced him to executives of PDVSA, the government-owned oil company that owns CITGO, which operates a chain of gas stations in the U.S. They pressured Darby to journey to neighboring Colombia to meet with a group aligned with the narco-terror organization FARC and to visit another revolutionary group in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

According to Darby, Chavez wanted to create a terrorist network in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. This is the same Chavez who blamed the recent earthquake in Haiti on the United States and who called President George W. Bush “the Devil” during a United Nations speech, so some might find his efforts at subversive activities in the United States hard to take seriously. However, it’s important to remember that Chavez has close ties to Iran and Cuba and allows terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah to operate offices in Caracas.

(Long before he learned of the RNC plot, Darby reached out to the FBI to undermine terrorism. A longtime Texas friend, the late Riad Hamad [pictured above], had tried to hijack Darby’s plan to provide medical assistance in war-torn parts of the world. Darby wanted to create a group called Critical Response that would have sent medics into war zones to help civilians caught in the crossfire in places such as Lebanon and Darfur. Hamad, founder of the much-investigated Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund, told him he wanted to send medics to Israel and put explosives on motorcycles and boobytrap ambulances in order to kill Jews. Hamad also hatched an elaborate plan to funnel money to Hamas and Hezbollah. Around the same time, Darby viewed a very graphic Israeli first responders’ training video. “At the time I was conflicted about what to do, but seeing the dead bodies of Israeli children in that tape made the so-called Palestinian activists’ chant ‘no justice, no peace,’ take on a whole new meaning. I decided the only ethical thing to do was to tell law enforcement what I knew.”)

To Darby’s astonishment, during his stay in Caracas, senior officials in the Chavez government and in PDVSA told him they wanted him to create a revolutionary army of guerrillas in the swamps of Louisiana.

“At the very last meeting they ramped up the pressure,” Darby said. They taunted him, saying, “What? You’re not a revolutionary?”

Despite intense pressure from his Venezuelan hosts, he refused. This was the last straw for him.

“I realized I didn’t like Venezuela, the authoritarianism of it, and I started to realize how brilliant and miraculous the American system of checks and balances was,” Darby said. “There was still something brilliant about the fact that this nation had institutionalized a system of checks and balances that has been working since this nation was founded. I realized just how hard a task that is.”

Common Ground, divided by radical factions with harebrained ideas constantly warring with each other, was a living example of left-wing radicalism in action.

“When I would leave Common Ground for a few days I would be worried that a power vacuum could develop and factions could displace me while I was away, and that’s just the way things are in places like Venezuela,” he said. “It is actually absurd to want the United States government to go away, and that’s when it really hit me that my ideas were wrong.”

Darby said he’s still proud of his Common Ground experience on the whole. “I’m proud of helping people, but I’m ashamed of what I used to believe,” Darby admitted.

“Thankfully, I had the honor of serving my country by working undercover with the FBI and participating in efforts to protect the safety and civil rights of others.”

(This article appears in the current issue of Townhall magazine and is posted here with the magazine’s permission.)