National Labor Federation
Encyclopedia
The National Labor Federation (NATLFED) is a network of local community associations, run exclusively by volunteers, that aim to organize
workers excluded from collective bargaining protections by U.S. labor law. Although the groups affiliated with NATLFED have denied having a political affiliation, NATLFED is described by some former participants as a front for an organization called the Provisional Communist Party
of the United States. NATLFED consists of several dozen mutual benefit associations and their organizers who conduct canvassing
in working class neighborhoods and coordinate assistance programs operated by members of the associations. According to literature printed by the groups, these benefit programs entitle members to emergency food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal advice, child care, and job referrals.
Press accounts of the groups affiliated with NATLFED sometimes praise their social work, sometimes raise concerns about their lack of transparency, and sometimes condemn the organizations for harsh treatment of volunteers.
The Essential Organizer, a manuscript describing the techniques of "systemic organizing", purports to teach participants an approach for unrecognized workers to obtain benefits that are needed and are rightfully theirs in a manner consistent with their best overall interest. At the same time unrecognized workers can materially see the benefits of organization in general as well as how to build their own organizations in specific.
A 10 year lawsuit brought by members of Western Farm Workers Association residing in state run migrant camps against the California Office of Migrant Services resulted in a monetary victory for the group of workers who brought suit under the legal guidance and practical organizing participation of Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals to recover illegal rent increases:
, founded in 1972 by Gino Perente
and others.
Perente had worked at the New York office of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee
in 1971 or 1972 and, according to Dolores Huerta
, "...created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in the press. Then he went off and formed his own group...."
Perente and his followers headed to migrant labor camps in rural Long Island, New York from an office in Bellport, New York
in 1972 to organize agricultural workers. The EFWA received press attention in its early days attempting to organize farm workers at the I.M. Young company. Perente organized 800 farm workers with 30 full-time EFWA staff and 70 volunteers in December 1972, when the EFWA led a strike of potato workers.
This was the first union
of agricultural workers on the East Coast; nonetheless, the U.S. Department of Labor
determined that EFWA was not a labor organization as defined by federal law.
The 1972 strike
against the potato grower I.M. Young and Company remains a central part of the volunteer training
process. There is little further information about the early years of the EFWA.
Perente was by all accounts a charismatic personality. He inspired volunteers with revolutionary positions and established discipline among the organizing drive's volunteers. Later accounts identified him as Gerald William Doeden, a former disc jockey
from California with a less-than-pure reputation.
, a secret society of Perente's cohorts. Perente gave lectures, often running late into the night offering idiosyncratic interpretations of the writings of Karl Marx
, Vladimir Lenin
, and Joseph Stalin
to audiences at the NATLFED office.
Perente's movement used its core of volunteers to expand, sending recruiters to other cities and towns, starting about twenty mutual benefit associations and perhaps as many related support organizations by the late 1970s. The new organizing drives were built closely after the model of the EFWA, using their 1973 organizational handbook, The Essential Organizer. The entities are managed by full-time volunteers, called cadre, many of whom have dedicated their lives to the movement.
In 1973, the California Homemakers Association pressured Sacramento County and won wage increases for attendant care workers. Subsequently the county agreed to bargain with CHA over the terms of individual contracts with its home care workers. CHA organizer David Shapiro hailed the agreement as "the first time that household workers have achieved the right to bargain."
and Syracuse, New York
) and California Homemakers Association (in Sacramento, California) were founded in the early seventies, and were followed by Eastern Service Workers Association, Western Service Workers Association, the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California
, Western Massachusetts Labor Action in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
, Western Farm Workers Association in Stockton, California
, Yuba City, California
, and Hillsboro, Oregon
, Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers in Portland, Oregon
and Northwest Seasonal Workers Association in Medford, Oregon
.
Since Perente's death, several new entities have opened, including Midwest Workers Association in Chicago
, Illinois
, Alaska Workers Association in Anchorage, Alaska
, and Mid-Ohio Workers Association in Columbus, Ohio
.
In the early 1980s several journalists wrote highly critical articles about several groups in the federation. One such article, written for the Christian Century
magazine, described changes in the leadership of the Commission on Voluntary Service and Action (CVSA). Originally a church-affiliated nonprofit organization, the CVSA had annually printed a catalog of volunteer opportunities called Invest Yourself: a Catalog of Volunteer Opportunities since 1946. A number of full-time NATLFED organizers had taken leadership positions within CVSA's board. In the early 1980s, when CVSA was struggling financially, NATLFED took responsibility and control of its operations, leaving some of the church leadership bitter. As many as 50 NATLFED entities were listed among about 200 service organizations in the catalog during the 1980s and 1990s. This number has slowly dropped since then; fewer than ten NATLFED entities were listed in the 2004 edition.
The political investigative magazine The Public Eye published two articles about NATLFED. The first, by Harvey Kahn in 1977
alleged an obscure but friendly relationship between Perente's NATLFED and Lyndon LaRouche
's National Caucus of Labor Committees
. Tourish and Wohlforth report a similarly tenuous but longer-lived alliance between NATLFED and Fred Newman
's new International Workers Party
in the mid-70s. Perente became head of the IWP-organized Nationwide Unemployment League, and soon after dissolved it.
The Public Eye published a longer exposé by former volunteer Jeff Whitnack in 1984 in which Whitnack identified Perente as Doeden and interviewed some of Doeden's friends in California. Whitnack concluded that the whole operation was a scam punctuated with drama and hints of violence.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
raided a law office and the NOC headquarters at 1107 Carroll Street in Crown Heights
, Brooklyn on February 17, 1984 on tips that they "...had planned a series of violent acts..." Kit Decious, Kathleen Paolo, and Daniel P. Foster, three other lawyers among the organization's cadre, were convicted of felony larceny
and possession of forged documents relating to the 1984 departure of Mia Prior, a member of ten years; they were disbarred in New York following their convictions in the 1980s. Paolo's conviction was overturned on appeal.
The New York City Police Department
raided the NOC again on November 11, 1996, on an anonymous complaint that children were being abused in the office. The police seized 49 antique firearms and $42,000 in cash, and arrested 35 people.
Newspapers around the country briefly ran columns about the group. Two of the organizers, Susan Angus and Diane Garrett, were initially convicted of misdemeanor
possession of weapons, but the appeals court overturned the convictions because the search was improperly conducted without a warrant. No evidence of child abuse was ever produced, and the press coverage died down rapidly.
Shortly after the 1996 raid in New York, an anonymously-created website appeared by "an informal network of people" who were "frightened for the current members who are our children, siblings, former friends, and coworkers." This website condemned NATLFED, but also archived many news articles and other stories about them. The site, http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed, disappeared from its original host in 2004 and is mirrored on the Wayback machine: http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/
The Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) operates on numerous college and university campuses in the Northeast, quietly recruiting student volunteers through the service-learning offices available to all students. The ESWA is thriving in Boston, Massachusetts and Rochester, New York
with assistance from several local churches and businesses who may or may not be aware of the group's practices or connection to NATLFED.
The Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals filed a class-action lawsuit against the State of California on behalf of migrant farm workers who worked in state-run camps in 1996 and 1997. In 2004, they won the case. West-coast entities participated in demonstrations against physician assisted suicide
in 2005. In 2006 the Jackson County Fuel Committee petitioned the Ashland City Council to halt utility cut-offs and distributes 30-40 cords of firewood each year to people in Jackson county.
. An internal memo quoted in the East Bay Express in 1984 gave the following instructions on withholding information from outsiders
At times entity operations managers have been directed not to give interviews
to reporters; other times managers insisted that reporters volunteer with the organization to get a story on it; other times volunteers gave reporters a runaround.
Most NATLFED entities produce regular newspapers to inform supporters and volunteers, and to generate revenue from advertising. The Women's Press Collective, for example, prints the magazine Collective Endeavor about media reform and topics concerning women, and the CCLP and CCMP each publish the quarterly newsletters, The Gavel and The Verdict.
These recruiters approach community and business leaders with their mission statement and ask for support to help with the founding of the entity. An organizing committee is created that includes community leaders willing to at least lend their names to the new effort, and the recruiters solicit donated office space until they can purchase an office.
The entities establish a program which provides services to members free of charge and soon start door-to-door campaigns to recruit volunteers and recruit low-income workers.
Available resources and the scope of the program vary from entity to entity, but usually include food, clothing, and holiday events for children. Some entities provide more involved services for members such as medical, legal, and dental services for volunteers and low-income members. Critics of the organizations contend that the 11-point benefit program promises far more than the entities can deliver. Supporters use criticisms of the paucity of resources to motivate volunteers to take action to expand these resources.
Critics and supporters of the organizations agree that some of the food, clothing and other goods collected for the poor is consumed by the cadre. Critics and some former members have claimed that the entities are highly inefficient—that the cadre consume much of the cash, food and clothing they purport to collect for the poor.
Volunteers for the entities' canvass poor residential areas to recruit low income members, knocking on doors and delivering a door-to-door pitch.
This pitch includes a brief explanation of organization, promises benefits, and asks for participation. Poor members are asked to contribute 62 US cents a month as membership dues, an amount said to be the average hourly pay for potato workers at I. M. Young and Company in 1972. New members also sign an authorization form giving the association a vague authority to bargain on behalf of the member. The groups also solicit resources (funds, food, clothing, medical services and legal aid) from professionals, business owners, and volunteers willing to contribute to the cause.
The NATLFED entities send speakers to churches, residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, university campuses, music festivals, and other venues introducing themselves and soliciting volunteers and resources. At these events, organizers will read a brief introduction to the organization to new volunteers and try to schedule visits to their office and participation in volunteer run activities.
For recruitment purposes, NATLFED entities keep extensive records of all their contacts on index card
s. Drawers of these cards contain detailed information about any sort of contact the group has with volunteers, members, donors, and other supporters. Whitnack has claimed that this elaborate paperwork is unnecessary, inefficient, and intended to exhaust the volunteers, in order to keep them in a suggestible state.
NATLFED also has an elaborate system for persuading volunteers to further the organization's goals by becoming roles of authority themselves, and the social pressure they apply convinces some volunteers to de-emphasize goals of their own. Regular volunteers are periodically interviewed and asked to increase their commitment to the organization.
Former members claim that deception and psychological manipulation
mix with the sensation some new recruits experience of an of intellectual awakening as stories of past labor struggles explain the underside of U.S. history, and classes in Dialectical Materialism
provide a coherent, if stilted, world view. The commitment of NATLFED converts is solidified by the emotional impact of working to exhaustion surrounded by others who constantly reinforce the groups message and beliefs.
Critics deride NATLFED's focus on the indigent, claiming that it is merely cover for more sinister activity. Jeff Whitnack told the Boston Globe that "They are like political Moonies
. They use poor people as flypaper to attract members."
, are listed on cult watch
websites, and have been described as a cult by various journalists. NATLFED supporters and organizers contest the label as loaded and misleading.
The individual organizations are not themselves labor unions. The various entities identify themselves with the labor movement for the purpose of attracting volunteers and supporters, but when describing their organization make it clear that they do not advocate the formation of trade union
s per se, calling themselves "labor organizations of a new type."
Other entity Operations personnel share an entirely different experience while organizing,
The balance of benefit to the community and toll on the volunteers, between the assistance they claim to provide and the actual assistance provided to the working poor, and the secrecy surrounding entity finances and operations, continue to make discussions about the NATLFED groups contentious.
Organising model
The organising model, as the term refers to trade unions , is a broad conception of how those organisations should recruit, operate and advance the interests of their members...
workers excluded from collective bargaining protections by U.S. labor law. Although the groups affiliated with NATLFED have denied having a political affiliation, NATLFED is described by some former participants as a front for an organization called the Provisional Communist Party
Provisional Communist Party
The Communist Party, United States of America also known as the Provisional Communist Party, Provisional Party, Provisional Party of Communists, Order of Lenin or simply the Formation is a Communist political party in the United States founded by Gino Perente, a controversial farm labor organizer...
of the United States. NATLFED consists of several dozen mutual benefit associations and their organizers who conduct canvassing
Canvassing
Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with a target group of individuals commonly used during political campaigns. A campaign team will knock on doors of private residences within a particular geographic area, engaging in face-to-face personal interaction with voters...
in working class neighborhoods and coordinate assistance programs operated by members of the associations. According to literature printed by the groups, these benefit programs entitle members to emergency food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal advice, child care, and job referrals.
Press accounts of the groups affiliated with NATLFED sometimes praise their social work, sometimes raise concerns about their lack of transparency, and sometimes condemn the organizations for harsh treatment of volunteers.
Strata organizing
NATLFED pursues a course of organizing based on the view of current membership leadership who form Councils, which contend that since few US workers are still employed in large-scale factory operations, new methods are needed to go beyond historic membership organizing tactics issued from the factory gate.Union workers are kept in separate bargaining units and not permitted to exercise time-honored methods of collective action based on community backing and mutual aid. As a result US workers labor for longer hours under more dangerous conditions for less pay and often without health and pension benefits. A new approach is needed.The organizations in NATLFED direct their efforts toward "unrecognized workers in the United States [who are] so far excluded from the somewhat dubious benefits of the National Labor Relations Act.".
The Essential Organizer, a manuscript describing the techniques of "systemic organizing", purports to teach participants an approach for unrecognized workers to obtain benefits that are needed and are rightfully theirs in a manner consistent with their best overall interest. At the same time unrecognized workers can materially see the benefits of organization in general as well as how to build their own organizations in specific.
The only thing that really makes sense is the local community-based associations that reach unrecognized workers and unite them with current and former union workers, retired workers, local business leaders, professionals and others who share a common concern for the long-term future of our communities.
A 10 year lawsuit brought by members of Western Farm Workers Association residing in state run migrant camps against the California Office of Migrant Services resulted in a monetary victory for the group of workers who brought suit under the legal guidance and practical organizing participation of Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals to recover illegal rent increases:
"Without organization, we could never have gotten money back," said claimant José Rodríguez, a WFWA member in Yuba County and former resident of the Davis Migrant Center in Yolo County. "The State would have taken advantage of us. This is a real victory for farm worker independent organizing efforts."
Recruitment
NATLFED recruits many of its members and volunteers from college campuses, through voluntary service programs, and by appeal to the larger community through speaking engagements and direct contact. For example, in one meeting of the American Sociological Association, Mark Levine, Western Service Workers Association, explained his view of the dynamics of government policy on Social stratificationSocial stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...
he re-directed his PH.D.to service when he discovered U.S. economic policies were mirroring pre-WWII policies in Germany which replaced higher paid workers with lower-paid ones, scapegoating and punishing workers. Levine used extensive volunteer help to enable these workers as an organized voice for change at WSWA functions. They have combated the downward wage effects of enterprise zones, in a deficit-laden California slashing education, health care, child care, and disabled services.
Shari Beck, a retired school teacher, has been volunteering at WSWA for the past three years. "Everybody who helps out can make things better," Beck said. "I feel like I'm doing something for the community." Beck, who volunteers alongside her husband, believes that by volunteering at WSWA, she has become more aware of things going on in her community. "We wanted to spend time in the community," Beck said.
Goals and objectives
Carlotta Woolcock, an organizer for Northwest Seasonal Workers Association, described its goals as "to provide a voice for the poor and working people that is independent from the government and addresses the problems that go along with being poor." Literature printed by the organization asserts the principle that "every man, woman and child is entitled to adequate and appropriate food, clothing, shelter and medical care as basic human rights." Woolcock described the ultimate end of giving working people a voice to the Ashland Daily Tidings:"Our goal is to form a worker's plebiscite, giving the workers a real vote. What most people vote for is the lesser of two evils offered them. A real say is stating real needs and having the resources to meet them. There needs to be more of a voice for the working people."
Origins
The organization grew out of the Eastern Farm Workers Association in Suffolk County, New YorkSuffolk County, New York
Suffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,493,350. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came...
, founded in 1972 by Gino Perente
Gino Perente
Eugenio Mario Perente-Ramos was the founder of the National Labor Federation , a collection of anti-poverty organizations in the United States...
and others.
Perente had worked at the New York office of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
in 1971 or 1972 and, according to Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta
Dolores C. Huerta is the co-founder and First Vice President Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO , and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Early life:...
, "...created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in the press. Then he went off and formed his own group...."
Perente and his followers headed to migrant labor camps in rural Long Island, New York from an office in Bellport, New York
Bellport, New York
Bellport is a village in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 2,363 at the 2000 census. The village is named after the Bell family, early settlers of the area. The public education system in Bellport makes up the South Country Central School District consisting of six...
in 1972 to organize agricultural workers. The EFWA received press attention in its early days attempting to organize farm workers at the I.M. Young company. Perente organized 800 farm workers with 30 full-time EFWA staff and 70 volunteers in December 1972, when the EFWA led a strike of potato workers.
This was the first union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
of agricultural workers on the East Coast; nonetheless, the U.S. Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor is a Cabinet department of the United States government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics. Many U.S. states also have such departments. The...
determined that EFWA was not a labor organization as defined by federal law.
The 1972 strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
against the potato grower I.M. Young and Company remains a central part of the volunteer training
Training
The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...
process. There is little further information about the early years of the EFWA.
Perente was by all accounts a charismatic personality. He inspired volunteers with revolutionary positions and established discipline among the organizing drive's volunteers. Later accounts identified him as Gerald William Doeden, a former disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
from California with a less-than-pure reputation.
Growth
In the mid-1970s, Perente removed himself from public view, but he encouraged his followers to expand the scope of the initial organizing drives in Sacramento and Long Island. He established an office in Brooklyn to direct the growing network he called the National Labor Federation (NATLFED), and refined an elaborate system to train and ensure the loyalty of volunteers by founding the Provisional Communist PartyProvisional Communist Party
The Communist Party, United States of America also known as the Provisional Communist Party, Provisional Party, Provisional Party of Communists, Order of Lenin or simply the Formation is a Communist political party in the United States founded by Gino Perente, a controversial farm labor organizer...
, a secret society of Perente's cohorts. Perente gave lectures, often running late into the night offering idiosyncratic interpretations of the writings of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
to audiences at the NATLFED office.
Perente's movement used its core of volunteers to expand, sending recruiters to other cities and towns, starting about twenty mutual benefit associations and perhaps as many related support organizations by the late 1970s. The new organizing drives were built closely after the model of the EFWA, using their 1973 organizational handbook, The Essential Organizer. The entities are managed by full-time volunteers, called cadre, many of whom have dedicated their lives to the movement.
In 1973, the California Homemakers Association pressured Sacramento County and won wage increases for attendant care workers. Subsequently the county agreed to bargain with CHA over the terms of individual contracts with its home care workers. CHA organizer David Shapiro hailed the agreement as "the first time that household workers have achieved the right to bargain."
NATLFED entities
NATLFED operates about thirty offices, called entities around the US, with concentrations in California and the Northeast. The Eastern Farm Workers Association (now in Bellport, New YorkBellport, New York
Bellport is a village in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 2,363 at the 2000 census. The village is named after the Bell family, early settlers of the area. The public education system in Bellport makes up the South Country Central School District consisting of six...
and Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
) and California Homemakers Association (in Sacramento, California) were founded in the early seventies, and were followed by Eastern Service Workers Association, Western Service Workers Association, the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, Western Massachusetts Labor Action in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Its area code is 413. Its ZIP code is 01201...
, Western Farm Workers Association in Stockton, California
Stockton, California
Stockton, California, the seat of San Joaquin County, is the fourth-largest city in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. With a population of 291,707 at the 2010 census, Stockton ranks as this state's 13th largest city...
, Yuba City, California
Yuba City, California
Yuba City is a Northern California city, founded in 1849. It is the county seat of Sutter County, California, United States. The population was 64,925 at the 2010 census....
, and Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city is home to many high-technology companies, such as Intel, that compose what has become known as the...
, Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
and Northwest Seasonal Workers Association in Medford, Oregon
Medford, Oregon
Medford is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States. As of the 2010 US Census, the city had a total population of 74,907 and a metropolitan area population of 207,010, making the Medford MSA the 4th largest metro area in Oregon...
.
Since Perente's death, several new entities have opened, including Midwest Workers Association in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, Alaska Workers Association in Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...
, and Mid-Ohio Workers Association in Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
.
Public scrutiny and controversy
The NATLFED groups have kept a low profile, operating with little public attention for ten years, and journalists writing about the various groups have both praised and condemned the organizing drives.In the early 1980s several journalists wrote highly critical articles about several groups in the federation. One such article, written for the Christian Century
The Christian Century
The Christian Century is a Christian magazine based in Chicago, Illinois. Considered the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism, the biweekly reports on religious news; comments on theological, moral, and cultural issues; and reviews books, movies, and music...
magazine, described changes in the leadership of the Commission on Voluntary Service and Action (CVSA). Originally a church-affiliated nonprofit organization, the CVSA had annually printed a catalog of volunteer opportunities called Invest Yourself: a Catalog of Volunteer Opportunities since 1946. A number of full-time NATLFED organizers had taken leadership positions within CVSA's board. In the early 1980s, when CVSA was struggling financially, NATLFED took responsibility and control of its operations, leaving some of the church leadership bitter. As many as 50 NATLFED entities were listed among about 200 service organizations in the catalog during the 1980s and 1990s. This number has slowly dropped since then; fewer than ten NATLFED entities were listed in the 2004 edition.
alleged an obscure but friendly relationship between Perente's NATLFED and Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. is an American political activist and founder of a network of political committees, parties, and publications known collectively as the LaRouche movement...
's National Caucus of Labor Committees
National Caucus of Labor Committees
The National Caucus of Labor Committees is a political cadre organization in the United States founded and controlled by political activist Lyndon LaRouche, who has sometimes described it as a "philosophical association"....
. Tourish and Wohlforth report a similarly tenuous but longer-lived alliance between NATLFED and Fred Newman
Fred Newman
Frederick Delano "Fred" Newman was an American philosopher, psychotherapist, playwright and political activist, and creator of a therapeutic modality called Social Therapy.-Early life:...
's new International Workers Party
International Workers Party
The International Workers Party is supposedly a secretive Marxist political organization founded by controversial organizer, playwright and psychotherapist Fred Newman.-Origins:The history of the IWP is itself controversial...
in the mid-70s. Perente became head of the IWP-organized Nationwide Unemployment League, and soon after dissolved it.
The Public Eye published a longer exposé by former volunteer Jeff Whitnack in 1984 in which Whitnack identified Perente as Doeden and interviewed some of Doeden's friends in California. Whitnack concluded that the whole operation was a scam punctuated with drama and hints of violence.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
raided a law office and the NOC headquarters at 1107 Carroll Street in Crown Heights
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted extending two miles east-west.Originally, the area was known as Crow Hill....
, Brooklyn on February 17, 1984 on tips that they "...had planned a series of violent acts..." Kit Decious, Kathleen Paolo, and Daniel P. Foster, three other lawyers among the organization's cadre, were convicted of felony larceny
Larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the wrongful acquisition of the personal property of another person. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law. It has been abolished in England and Wales,...
and possession of forged documents relating to the 1984 departure of Mia Prior, a member of ten years; they were disbarred in New York following their convictions in the 1980s. Paolo's conviction was overturned on appeal.
The New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
raided the NOC again on November 11, 1996, on an anonymous complaint that children were being abused in the office. The police seized 49 antique firearms and $42,000 in cash, and arrested 35 people.
Newspapers around the country briefly ran columns about the group. Two of the organizers, Susan Angus and Diane Garrett, were initially convicted of misdemeanor
Misdemeanor
A misdemeanor is a "lesser" criminal act in many common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished much less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences...
possession of weapons, but the appeals court overturned the convictions because the search was improperly conducted without a warrant. No evidence of child abuse was ever produced, and the press coverage died down rapidly.
Shortly after the 1996 raid in New York, an anonymously-created website appeared by "an informal network of people" who were "frightened for the current members who are our children, siblings, former friends, and coworkers." This website condemned NATLFED, but also archived many news articles and other stories about them. The site, http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed, disappeared from its original host in 2004 and is mirrored on the Wayback machine: http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/
Recent activities
Since Perente's death in 1995, and the raid on their headquarters in 1996, there has been little information about how NATLFED is run, although Margaret Ribar is reported to have assumed leadership.The Eastern Service Workers Association (ESWA) operates on numerous college and university campuses in the Northeast, quietly recruiting student volunteers through the service-learning offices available to all students. The ESWA is thriving in Boston, Massachusetts and Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
with assistance from several local churches and businesses who may or may not be aware of the group's practices or connection to NATLFED.
The Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals filed a class-action lawsuit against the State of California on behalf of migrant farm workers who worked in state-run camps in 1996 and 1997. In 2004, they won the case. West-coast entities participated in demonstrations against physician assisted suicide
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
in 2005. In 2006 the Jackson County Fuel Committee petitioned the Ashland City Council to halt utility cut-offs and distributes 30-40 cords of firewood each year to people in Jackson county.
Operational patterns
It is difficult to get information about NATLFED and its entities because the organization is institutionally secretiveSecret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
. An internal memo quoted in the East Bay Express in 1984 gave the following instructions on withholding information from outsiders
We regard outside inquiry from a position of distrust.... Never ask to know more than you need to know if you agree with the goals and strategy of the group. It's unfair to burden a comrade with unneeded information, and also unprofessional. The standard answer to any question you have not been instructed to answer is 'It's not my department.'
At times entity operations managers have been directed not to give interviews
Interviews
Interviews is:# the plural form of "interview"# a compilation album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, see Interviews # a C++ toolkit for the X Window System, see InterViews...
to reporters; other times managers insisted that reporters volunteer with the organization to get a story on it; other times volunteers gave reporters a runaround.
Most NATLFED entities produce regular newspapers to inform supporters and volunteers, and to generate revenue from advertising. The Women's Press Collective, for example, prints the magazine Collective Endeavor about media reform and topics concerning women, and the CCLP and CCMP each publish the quarterly newsletters, The Gavel and The Verdict.
Mutual benefit associations
New entities are started by recruiters from the cadre armed with lists of contacts.These recruiters approach community and business leaders with their mission statement and ask for support to help with the founding of the entity. An organizing committee is created that includes community leaders willing to at least lend their names to the new effort, and the recruiters solicit donated office space until they can purchase an office.
Available resources and the scope of the program vary from entity to entity, but usually include food, clothing, and holiday events for children. Some entities provide more involved services for members such as medical, legal, and dental services for volunteers and low-income members. Critics of the organizations contend that the 11-point benefit program promises far more than the entities can deliver. Supporters use criticisms of the paucity of resources to motivate volunteers to take action to expand these resources.
Critics and supporters of the organizations agree that some of the food, clothing and other goods collected for the poor is consumed by the cadre. Critics and some former members have claimed that the entities are highly inefficient—that the cadre consume much of the cash, food and clothing they purport to collect for the poor.
Volunteers for the entities' canvass poor residential areas to recruit low income members, knocking on doors and delivering a door-to-door pitch.
This pitch includes a brief explanation of organization, promises benefits, and asks for participation. Poor members are asked to contribute 62 US cents a month as membership dues, an amount said to be the average hourly pay for potato workers at I. M. Young and Company in 1972. New members also sign an authorization form giving the association a vague authority to bargain on behalf of the member. The groups also solicit resources (funds, food, clothing, medical services and legal aid) from professionals, business owners, and volunteers willing to contribute to the cause.
Cadre recruitment
Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the NATLFED entities is their aggressive recruitment of new cadre from the ranks of volunteers who participate.The NATLFED entities send speakers to churches, residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, university campuses, music festivals, and other venues introducing themselves and soliciting volunteers and resources. At these events, organizers will read a brief introduction to the organization to new volunteers and try to schedule visits to their office and participation in volunteer run activities.
For recruitment purposes, NATLFED entities keep extensive records of all their contacts on index card
Index card
An index card consists of heavy paper stock cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. It was invented by Carl Linnaeus, around 1760....
s. Drawers of these cards contain detailed information about any sort of contact the group has with volunteers, members, donors, and other supporters. Whitnack has claimed that this elaborate paperwork is unnecessary, inefficient, and intended to exhaust the volunteers, in order to keep them in a suggestible state.
NATLFED also has an elaborate system for persuading volunteers to further the organization's goals by becoming roles of authority themselves, and the social pressure they apply convinces some volunteers to de-emphasize goals of their own. Regular volunteers are periodically interviewed and asked to increase their commitment to the organization.
Former members claim that deception and psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
mix with the sensation some new recruits experience of an of intellectual awakening as stories of past labor struggles explain the underside of U.S. history, and classes in Dialectical Materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
provide a coherent, if stilted, world view. The commitment of NATLFED converts is solidified by the emotional impact of working to exhaustion surrounded by others who constantly reinforce the groups message and beliefs.
Critics deride NATLFED's focus on the indigent, claiming that it is merely cover for more sinister activity. Jeff Whitnack told the Boston Globe that "They are like political Moonies
Moonies
Moonie is a nickname sometimes used to refer to members of the Unification Church. This is derived from the name of the church's founder Sun Myung Moon, and was first used in 1974 by the American media. Church members have used the word "Moonie", including Sun Myung Moon, President of the...
. They use poor people as flypaper to attract members."
Cult accusations
NATLFED and its entities are often labeled as a cultCult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
, are listed on cult watch
Anti-cult movement
The anti-cult movement is a term used by academics and others to refer to groups and individuals who oppose cults and new religious movements. Sociologists David G...
websites, and have been described as a cult by various journalists. NATLFED supporters and organizers contest the label as loaded and misleading.
Governance and financial questions
In their publications, the individual entities and affiliate organizations, such as CCLP, describe themselves as independent, locally-chartered membership associations. The organizations claim to accept only those private donations that come "with no strings attached," and claim to be answerable only to their organizing committee and to their membership.CCLP is not subject to the whims of constantly changing Congressional and Presidential administrations. Because CCLP does not receive federal funds, it can organize without being subject to arbitrary restrictions on representation, audits of client files, unpredictable fluctuations in income, and general harassment from LSC nd OIG bureaucrats, all of which are the plight of an LSC-funded attorney in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the over 30-year history of the LSC shows that these conditions are likely to continue for the foreseable future. CCLP does not focus merely on individual representation or the issue-oriented litigation which others rely on to gain backing.
The individual organizations are not themselves labor unions. The various entities identify themselves with the labor movement for the purpose of attracting volunteers and supporters, but when describing their organization make it clear that they do not advocate the formation of trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s per se, calling themselves "labor organizations of a new type."
Conclusions differ
The various organizations in the NATLFED network have nearly identical rhetoric and training procedures, though they are spread out in many cities. Many of their donors and supporters speak up in defense of the services they provide for their communities. Former NATLFED cadre Robin Spellman-Fahlberg, who was an operations manager with Upstate NY EFWA for a decade, said in 2004 that in addition to helping in the most disenfranchised communities,
There is also a hidden, for want of a better description, evil, side of NATLFED. When I was there, and from what I've heard continues to be the case, there were manipulative people in powerful positions. Full-timers were subjected to an increasingly severe mental abuse and subjugation.... They felt the only way to help poor people was through Natlfed, that there was no possible success for them after leaving, and/or they were subject to physical threats if they did.
Other entity Operations personnel share an entirely different experience while organizing,
Carol Rogers is the Administrative Assistant at EFWA. She is originally from Western Massachusetts, and was met on a door-to-door membership canvass in 1998 by volunteers with Western Massachusetts Labor Action, a sister effort of EFWA. In 1999 Carol became a full-time volunteer with Western Massachusetts Labor Action. In 2004 she came to Syracuse to work with EFWA. She told her story recounting, “I was met on a canvass, people going door to door and explaining the condition farm workers are living in. I learned that I could donate my time and really help people. They seemed different from other organizations. The cost for joining the organization was $.62 per month. I became a part-time volunteer even though I did not have transportation. A young man came every morning. I got trained. I learned how to type. I learned how to work on a computer. Then they asked me if I wanted to be a full- time volunteer, and I asked what is that? They said 24/7. I said okay because I was bored at home. I knew with this organization I would never be bored. We are always doing something, going places, have speaking engagements, we are always busy.”
The balance of benefit to the community and toll on the volunteers, between the assistance they claim to provide and the actual assistance provided to the working poor, and the secrecy surrounding entity finances and operations, continue to make discussions about the NATLFED groups contentious.
External links
- Archive of 1996 anti-NATLFED site: Cached xnatlfed
- 2006 anti-NATLFED site (in blog format): Politicalcults.blogspot.com
- FBI file 100-486-889 on NATLFED/EFWA/ESWA/Provisional Communist Party
- ESWAboston.org