Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Exposed
Is BAMN just a front for the Revolutionary Workers' League?
By Jacob F.M. Oslick

Consider a new student making his first visit to campus. As he takes his first stroll through our beloved Diag, this student unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of a protest condemning the U.S. bombing in Iraq, defending affirmative action, or one of a hundred other causes. Immediately, such a student might start to think, "what type of perverse environment have I gotten myself into for the next four years? Are all students this crazy?" Yet, as any U-M veteran will attest to, the vast majority of students here reside within that thin band of societal acceptance known as sanity. So, how do these legions of activist groups recruit their shock-troops? Largely, they do not. Rather, many of these organizations consist of only a few students, the same students. In reality, these organizations often serve as but different heads of the same beast. By registering under multiple names, the beast's heads can grant the appearance of representing a diverse coalition, instead of a few people. Most interestingly in this story, by examining each of those heads, one can uncover the true intentions of each organization.

We begin our journey into this complex mix of incestuous group relations with a visit to the web site of the Revolutionary Worker's League (www.rwl-us.org), headquartered in Detroit. The group defines itself as "U.S. sympathizing section of the International Trotskyist Committee," and its website greets the viewer with a prominently displayed sickle and hammer. According to the "view source" information, the site was created by Lee Felarca. Here, our story gets interesting. A March 31, 1998 Michigan Daily identifies Mr. Felarca as a BAMN member during a "Day of Action." Mr. Felarca, who is not a student, spent the day passing out BAMN fliers on the Diag. A search of Mr. Felarca's Yahoo profile lists his website as www.bamn.com and his Revolutionary Worker's League site prominently links to this site. A single computer appears to host both sites, with their IP addresses differing by a single digit (216.205.113.4 and 216.205.113.5). Similarly, both the Revolutionary Worker's League and BAMN (according to its Network Solutions registration) have P.O. Box's at the same Detroit post office-albeit different boxes. 

Although BAMN does not share a P.O. Box with the Revolutionary Worker's League, it does share one with several other groups, calling in to question the various group's independence from one another. For example, the National Woman's Rights Organizing Coalition (NWROC) and the Ann Arbor Antiracist Defense Campaign (AAADC) both list their mailing address as P.O. Box 1092 at Penobscot station - identical to BAMN, according to NWROC's website. NWROC and the AAADC jointly claimed responsibility for the notorious "Stop the Witchhunt" posters that swamped campus in the fall. 

The BAMN site conveniently links to "The Voice" a sickle and hammer decorated webpage run by a member of NWROC and the Homeless Power Union (HPU). Although the site does not reveal its author, it does include the tag "Bevins_II" in the address. A User Directory search for "bevins II" turns up Terry Bevins, a temporary U-M employee.

This site links to the site of the aforementioned Homeless Power Union. Interestingly, although theoretically separate entities, the HPU shares a phone number (313-730-3577) with NWROC. The HPU site states that the group will fight "By Any Means Necessary," claiming it will not rely on "the capitalist ruling class." The HPU fills its site with traditional Marxist rhetoric such as "capitalists only employ your labor when it is profitable for them" and states "We must fight for our means, militantly." In short, in its own words, it wants to "Build a new, militant, mass integrated Civil Rights Movement" (sound familiar?). 

The Voice also links to something called the Fighting Worker Slate, a Detroit political party. The party's list of city council includes Shanta Driver and Luke Massie - both of whom frequently work as activists on the U-M campus. The answering machine message of BAMN's UC-Berkeley chapter describes Ms. Driver as BAMN's "National Coordinator." The Fighting Worker Slate calls on people to "Build a new, militant integrated Civil Rights Movement" and "Defend affirmative action by any means necessary." It calls for the establishment of a "workers' democracy"-and shares a P.O. Box with the Revolutionary Workers League. 

The site also links to the Movement for Justice's (MOJ) webpage. A flyer posted on that site gives the MOJ's contact information-strangely enough, the same telephone number as NWROC. It also lists another number (313-438-0922), which leads to an answering machine message for the group "United for Equality and Affirmative Action" (UEAA). Checking the User Directory and Maize Pages, one finds an e-mail group ueaa@umich.edu, owned by Jessica Curtin with only the "bamn" e-mail group listed as a member representing the campus version of UEAA. A similar thing happens when one looks up uaa2000@umich.edu, a derivative list of the United for Affirmative Action group. 
The Hospital Worker's Organizing Committee shares this same phone number. This group seems dedicated to (duh…) organizing hospital workers into the labor movement. The group seems to have a particular fancy for the Detroit Medical Center, which it charges with "practicing institutional racism" and "knowingly degrading the quality of health care."

The Voice site also links to a "Smash the KKK!! By Any Means Necessary." The e-mail contact for the site? Identical to that of the Homeless Power Union. It links to the "Membership Organizing Committee" whose online information also is hosted from "Bevins_II"'s webpage. It links to the "Justice for Malice Green Coalition" (JMGC). The JMGC's mailing address? Once again, P.O. Box 1092 Penobscot Station. It's telephone number? 313-730-3577. It links to the "Youth Liberation Coalition"- addressed once again at P.O. Box 1092. 
With all these interbred groups, certain ethical questions arise. For example, in the Michigan Student Assembly's Budget and Priorities Committee, both BAMN and UEAA applied for and received funding. Yet, their identical e-mail list suggests that UEAA may be nothing more than BAMN operating under a different name. If true, is it just for the same group to receive a double allocation of student's money, simply by having the ingenuity to register under two names? 

Similarly, the voice message left by the UC-Berkeley's BAMN chapter identifies the phone number as that not only of BAMN, but also of the Defend Affirmative Action Party (DAAP). If this indicates a definitive link between these allegedly two organizations, then DAAP effectively acts as BAMN's political wing. Under such a scenario, MSA funding of BAMN either indirectly or directly supports DAAP - a distinctly political entity. 
Most interesting though, is the simple duplication of task and purpose. As the above tangled web shows, BAMN does not have a "mass integrated" movement. Rather, it has a tiny devoted core of followers quite proliferate about setting themselves up under different names-reminiscent of a Mafia-style shell company. Not only that, but these followers have goals significantly larger than the preservation of affirmative action. Although they might organize under different names to try to appeal to different types of people (NWROC for feminists, the HPU for the homeless, BAMN for racial minorities etc.) in the end, they might do so only to gain followers for the likes of Trotsky. Occasionally, BAMN slips up, letting parts of this possible secret agenda out-such as when its Liberator newsletter quoted Lenin. Usually, they mask any such plans under their cover causes like affirmative action. However, as the flaming sickles and hammer on some of these webpages indicate, the Real BAMN may very well be a Red BAMN.