Yesterday, I interviewed my co-worker Brandon Darby as he was traveling toward the Republican National Convention in Florida. The interview focused on strategies used by anarchist protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention and how those strategies will be used once again next week by the Occupy movement.
In addition to trying to shut down bridges to prevent delegates from reaching the convention center next week, Brandon has learned that a subgroup of Occupy is looking to shut down EMS communications throughout the city.
The video that goes along with this interview is one Brandon took at the RNC convention while working undercover for the FBI in 2008. Some of it is a bit jumpy, but you’ll see some of the street blocking tactics as well as several instances of individuals throwing items onto a freeway from an overpass.
Both the audio and video have been edited for content and brevity. What follows is the seven minute interview/video and a complete transcript of Brandon’s comments as they appear in the clip:
Brandon Darby: The video I gave you is interesting because it’s a video surveillance I took of one section of the Republican National Convention welcoming committee. Several of the clips of video were used in the prosecution of David McKay and Bradley Neal Crowder.
What happened at the Republican National Convention in ’08 is that the overall liberal, Democratic protests were organized by a group called United for Peace and Justice. Now these were the mainstream liberal protesters, not the ones who would violate the law or violate a police order or anything crazy. Now what was interesting is that the same group of people organizing the mainstream liberal protests also organized a breakaway group called the RNC Welcoming Committee and it was 500 to 1,000 anarchists. And their goal was to shut down the Republican National Convention by any means necessary.
Now they had meetings for a long time before and what they ultimately decided to do–and it was folks like Lisa Fithian leading the training, and I know because I was in the training…undercover –but what they did is they mapped out the city, maps with corporate targets, business leaders home addresses, and Republican delegates home addresses, and also where the hotels were the delegates were going to be staying in. And they handed out these maps and then they showed people videos of Molotov cocktails and various other criminal behavior and asked everyone to be creative and feel free to use what they called a diversity of tactics and to make sure the Republican National Convention can’t occur, you know, can’t happen.
In a later planning session they mapped out the area around the convention center; they divided it into several sections. Then each group of anarchists of their RNC Welcoming Committee–which we now call Occupy–each group was responsible for a different sector. They had organized everyone into three groups of people. There was the red, the yellow, and the green. What they decided was that the yellow group was going be the group that would be arrestable. They were the ones who were going to get arrested. They were going to chain their arms and hands together in PVC pipe so that the cops couldn’t cut ’em out without injuring them. But they were going to chain themselves across the major arteries so that the delegates could not get to the convention center.
Now, Lisa Fithian and the organizers, they realized that the police were not going to allow a group to set up and do that, allow the yellow group to do that. So they figured they could use the green group, the green group being the mainstream liberal and Democratic protesters who would never violate the law intentionally. So the organizers would manipulate the green group to get into the street and protest. The green group’s not realizing that they’re being used to cover illegal behavior that’s interfering with the rights of other Americans to assemble. And then when the police told the green group to get out they would slow the green group down and try to keep them from getting out of the road. Well eventually the green group would get out of the road. And if that didn’t give the yellow group enough time to finish locking down across the road, then the red group–which are the black mask wearing anarchists would come in–and the red group would actually begin to attack police.
Last time they made riot shields that they had made out of stolen traffic barrels and the riot shields had protruding sharpened deck screws from them. And they had their signs where, their protests signs were made out of heavy, heavy sticks so they could actually have a weapon against police but police couldn’t take them or else they were violating their rights to free speech.
And they would send the red group in to attack the police and then the red group would flee and then that would give the yellow group enough time to lock down and shut the RNC down. Well what was interesting about it, is that when the red group fled then the police would treat the protesters–because they’re all one protest–they would treat them as though they had just been attacked, because they had been. Well then the green group would look like they were innocent protesters who were getting attacked and in their minds they were because they didn’t realize that Lisa Fithian and the leaders were using them as part of this effort to violently attack police and attack conservatives.
So the buses that did get through when they were held up by the yellow group, then the red group would come back and the red group threw bricks and flagstones through the windows, they slashed the tires of the buses, they threw bleach and urine in the delegates faces and they attacked the buses and the people on the buses. And that’s what they’re going to do this time.
So that was…the red, yellow, green concept is very important for people to realize that that’s what’s occurring. So people have to remember, this isn’t a bunch of unorganized and disorganized kids. This is Lisa Fithian, she’s the one who led the unions and the anarchists to shut down Seattle at the ’99 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle. It’s not something to play around with because when this is all said and done the FBI informants will have stopped bomb plots just as they and I did last time. And when that happens conservatives need to rally around because the left media and the entire left establishment who claims they have nothing to do with these anarchists, they will defend them and dirty the name of anybody who exposes them just as they did to me and just as they did to Andrew. They will defend their darlings and attack the character of anyone who holds them accountable and calls them out. And that’s what’s going to happen this time. We need to stand up as a movement, recognize what the threats are, and we need to defend the people who are keeping us safe and hold accountable and demand accountability for the people who are trying to interfere with our rights to assemble.
The other thing that they’re trying to do is that they have a coms group–and this is breaking news you need to know this–they have a coms group that is trying to shut down the EMS communications structure for the city. That’s really happening. They’re trying to shut down the communications structure for the city for law enforcement and emergency medical personnel.
People don’t realize that these demonstrations, they have a sophisticated communications structure. Like before they have one of these demonstrations, whether it’s this one or whether it’s WTO or whether it’s, whatever it is, whether it’s IMF…When these people when this global movement of anarchists that protests these things they have to rent space and have extra cooling systems and have massive cable networks and they have to have to have a lot of communications equipment, a lot of computer equipment. It’s not like a bunch of people are going to show up and talk on their cell phones. They have some massive computer equipment and their goal is to shut us down.
And no, they’re not going to do the same thing at the DNC, that’s the thing, is because the radicals feel like the average liberal is confused but they have dehumanized completely the conservative. And so they feel they are entitled to take our rights away when they’re not going to do that at the DNC. That’s the difference.
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