Beyond affirmative action

BAMN’s socialist revolutionary ties

By Michael Klein
From the December 2004 Print Edition

Staging minor and massive movements to defend affirmative action “by any means necessary,” BAMN represents only one appendage of a mighty body of coalition-building movements around the world.

A December 2000 posting of “The BAMN Files” by a pro–affirmative action, anti-BAMN University of Michigan group cites a September 25, 1995, issue of the Daily Californian wherein the author revealed that BAMN “has been organized by members of the Revolutionary Worker’s League, a socialist workers’ organization based in Detroit.” Just weeks prior to this, on August 30, 1995, BAMN had seized a peaceful Diversity in Action rally and shoved supporters aside in order to gain control of the event. On September 6, leading leftist socialists released a letter distancing themselves from the tactics of BAMN and its radical parent, the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL).

On the Revolutionary Workers League Web site, the only available link is that of the “Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary (BAMN).” Listed under their current campaigns is the BAMN cliché along with the Fighting Worker Slate of ’97 and the Homeless Power Union. Advocating the Trotskyite position on Communism, the RWL not only mourns the death of radical Communist Leon Trotsky, but supports the “destruction of capitalist society and the development of socialist society.”

The national director of BAMN is Shanta Driver. Driver, who also chairs the National Women’s Rights Organizing Coalition with Luke Massie, was reported in a summer 1998 edition of the Michigan Review to face misdemeanor property-destruction charges along with Massie for violence in opposition to a Ku Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor. Though few agree with the radical KKK agenda, Ann Arbor Police Sgt. Michael Logghe said, “we can’t allow people to break the law. If the KKK killed someone in Ann Arbor, rest assured they’d be arrested. But since that didn’t happen, as a city we wouldn’t want a police department that just defends the right of people to say what they want.” Both Driver and Massie are active BAMN organizers on the University of Michigan campus and both are members of the Fighting Worker Slate political party, based in Detroit and tied to the RWL.

Luke Massie is brother to Miranda Massie, who intervened in the recent Grutter v. Bollinger case for affirmative action at the University of Michigan. She and Driver work for Detroit-based labor and civil rights law firm Scheff and Washington, which has sympathized with the RWL in the past. A call to George B. Washington’s office revealed that he still took cases involving the RWL and did not deny having worked cases for it before.

An obscure, clandestine Web site representing the Homeless Power Union offers a series of homeless–civil rights success cases. It also presents this statement reminiscent of the bandwagon appeals of BAMN and the RWL: “The Homeless Power Union has always been dedicated to the struggle of those that are oppressed ... With this new addition to the Homeless Power Union site, I hope that we can unite the oppressed masses into a new civil rights struggle to take back what is rightfully yours.”

Jacob F.M. Oslick of the Michigan Review wrote an exposé on the ties between BAMN and the socialist movement in April 2000 entitled “Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Exposed.” He was not only able to link BAMN and the RWL, but also the National Women’s Rights Organizing Coalition, the Homeless Power Union, Movement for Justice, and several other radical organizations. Discovering the multiple relationships among these BAMN-affiliated groups, he concluded that they only have a small core of followers, like Driver, who have lead roles in multiple wings of the larger body. BAMN, Oslick says, specializes in reaching out to racial minorities, while the whole operation moves toward Trotskyism.

The UK-based Movement for Justice represents another specialized wing for international, radical anti-racism movements. Its Web site upholds the traditions of Malcolm X, and has links to BAMN and a Marx/Engles Internet archive. The site requests that followers “build militant campaigns for justice which link up all the injustices perpetuated by the state.”

Martin Luther King Jr. made it a point in his “I Have a Dream” address in 1963 that violence would not be an open door for his followers. He advised, “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds … We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.” In direct contrast, BAMN and its affiliates espouse the militancy of Malcolm X to achieve their aims.

Now, as UC Berkeley BAMN members take to Sproul with their movements and as their publication, The Liberator, quotes Lenin, some call to question their motives. They question whether BAMN is really a student-led organization, or a puppet led by radicals from generations past.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting the Patriot