Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - BAMN Are A Violent Cult

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April 25, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

52:52

BAMN Are A Violent Cult

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	Today, though, um, we came out today to show our support for the mayor of Berkeley, for all of the activists and leaders in this community, including Yvette Valarka, who've stood up to the trolls that work from the sewers of the internet and support Donald Trump, and have started a campaign to try to intimidate and terrorize people who speak against them, like the mayor.
	We are calling on the Berkeley School District.
	We're calling on Yvette School, we're calling on the Teachers Union, we're calling on the Berkeley City Council and every other body and organization in this city to take a stand to make clear, no, this city will not be intimidated.
	We will not allow Trump supporters to silence our leaders and our activists who have stood strong against Donald Trump, representing the whole city, the sentiments of the whole city, And we will fight against them.
	The lady speaking at the beginning of this video is an attorney called Shanta Driver.
	And the lady standing next to her is a middle school teacher called Yvette Falarka.
	These women are leaders of a group called BAM, the coalition to defend affirmative action, integration and immigration rights and fight for equality by any means necessary, with those last four words making up the acronym.
	A website called discoverthenetworks.org has got quite an extensive article on BAM, and after fact-checking it for myself, I found it to be relatively accurate.
	Attorney Shanta Driver founded BAM in 1995 in Berkeley, California, to act as a bulwark against the University of California Board of Regents campaign promoting Proposition 209, a bill designed to ban affirmative action in the state's university system and public employment sector.
	When Prop 209 became law in 1996, BAM asserted that by cutting underrepresented minority student enrolment, the bill violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution and would lead inevitably to the resegregation of higher education.
	Shanta Driver earned her bachelor's degree in psychology and social relations from Harvard University in 1975 and a JD from Wayne State University Law School in 2002.
	Reasoning from the premise that America is a profoundly racist nation, Driver passionately supports affirmative action as a necessary safeguard against discrimination targeting non-whites in the workplace and academia.
	In 2008, she told an interview on National Public Radio that it was the aim and intent of Ward Connolly, the former University of California regent who had led the fight to eliminate public sector racial preferences in several states to re-segregate higher education by driving black and Latino students off campuses across this country.
	It seems that Shanta Driver is a proponent of the bigotry of low expectations and in her opinion black and Latino students would not be able to make it into university without affirmative action.
	Driver headed up a legal team challenging the constitutionality of state bans on affirmative action in Michigan and California.
	Also under Driver's leadership, BAM helped organize a massive wave of immigrant rights rallies that swept across the United States in spring of 2006.
	In 2011, Driver's Law Firm filed a suit that was successful in striking down the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative of 2006, which had banned the use of race and gender preferences in college admissions and even government hiring and contracting.
	Shana Driver is an active and vociferous advocate of group rights for non-white people in the United States, and has been for many years.
	Describing itself as a primarily student and youth-based organization devoted to building a new civil rights movement, by any means necessary seeks to galvanize a united struggle of the black and Latina/slash-O communities and all the disadvantaged and oppressed in American society.
	A society allegedly distorted by racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bigotry.
	BAM traces the new Jim Crow second-class treatment which these groups receive to the unbridled cynicism of the many re-segregationists affiliated with the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement.
	The organization urges its activists to work collectively to promote real egalitarian principles through mass action in conjunction with young leaders of other new movements, not only to save Dr. King's dream for America, but to also forge an international movement of the oppressed that would, for the first time in human history, place the needs of humanity before the enrichment of a few.
	Shanta Driver has been particularly active with BAM, performing both activism and legal challenges to advance her agenda.
	BAN's challenges to anti-affirmative action legislation have not been confined solely to the courtroom.
	Indeed, the organization exhorts young non-whites to employ tactics of intimidation and harassment in order to advance BAM's agendas.
	This directive is intended not only for low-income minorities, but also for those from privileged backgrounds, who, according to BAM, should come out of their Brooks brothers suits, stop acting like exaggerated white people, embrace their communities, put principles before career, and build mass militant struggles.
	Now, you might think that that is a paragraph riddled with bias.
	This is after all, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Foundation, and so you might think that this was a partisan attack.
	You would be wrong.
	This is an incredibly accurate paragraph, and everything in that is completely supported by not only their own sources, but sources I will show later in this video.
	On the BAN website, you will find quite a lengthy pledge that BAM members must give before they can join the organization.
	Point 3 is rather interesting.
	I pledge to be a youth leader of mass actions led by the youth themselves.
	I do not fear the anger, boldness, or power of youth in struggle.
	To those who criticise the legitimacy of our war counts or other youth-led mass actions by saying, most of the students/slash youth cannot even say what they are fighting for, I say rest assured, we are always fighting for our dignity, equality, respect, and justice.
	We understand that actions speak louder than words.
	We judge leaders by what they do and not their ability to make great speeches, which they never deliver on.
	Some of our greatest leaders are those who lead in action and fight to win.
	Shanta Driver appears to be the leading member of BAM, and standing next to her on her left is Yvette Falaka, and she appears to be the hatchet woman of the organization.
	Falaka is a strong proponent of political violence.
	It's just lucky for everyone else that she's a 5'2 Asian lady.
	In June 2016, Falaka attended a counter-protest to a white nationalist demonstration in Sacramento.
	Here she is caught on video initiating violence against one of the protesters.
	Fuck off our speech!
	FUNNOF OR SNET!
	SHIT!
	FURNIC YOU!
	SIR!
	Please!
	That appears to be Falarka not only attending the rally with members of Antifa, but also assaulting a man and dragging him to the ground after punching him repeatedly in the stomach.
	The Sacramento demonstrations were particularly violent.
	Afterwards, Falarka was interviewed by ABC News, and she's clearly got a head wound from where she has been involved in the fighting.
	And a lot of people have their face covered, didn't want us to show their faces.
	You, on the other hand, are speaking to us, you don't have your face cover.
	Talk about the difference in the protesters.
	It seemed like there were different groups, everyone had their different groups, people had, you know, have different ways that they approached the struggle.
	Bams, our method is to build a mass, militant, integrated, anti-racist and immigrant rights movement, and to do that and getting as many people as possible to take militant mass direct action.
	And so, you know, but we all, everyone who came here today, came here united with one goal, and that's to shut down the Nazi scum, and we did that.
	And so they had a recruitment party.
	It ended up being cancelled, police told us.
	We're not sure if it's because they cancelled it, or police said, hey, you can't have it.
	Or I guess they were permitted by whoever permits people to have rallies here at the Capitol.
	Maybe they pulled it.
	We don't know why it was cancelled.
	It was cancelled, but we know it was cancelled and that seemed to have been your goal.
	Absolutely.
	The Nazis and the fascists are dangerous.
	They need to be stopped and shut down by any means necessary.
	Falaka had been instrumental in organising the counter-demonstration, and according to local paper Berkeleyside, the counter-demonstrators struck first.
	According to some newspapers, members of the counter-protest appeared to have initiated the violence, and the LA Times reported that seven people were stabbed and 10 hospitalized.
	One of the people who took responsibility for helping to organise the counter-protest was Yvette Falarka, a teacher at North Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
	Falarka is an organiser with the activist group By Any Means Necessary, which helped lead a series of Black Lives Matter protests in Berkeley in December 2014.
	Parents of the day campers were told Monday morning that one of the counter-protesters from Sacramento had been linked to the Berkeley school where the camps were located.
	The public outing had prompted an influx of emails to the principal demanding that the teacher be fired.
	The Berkeley Unified School District confirmed in a prepared statement that it had been informed Monday morning that a King teacher had been involved in a protest in Sacramento.
	Since that incident, the school and principal have received calls and emails from parents and community members.
	One anonymous email in particular threatened that if certain actions were not taken against the teacher within the week, someone would come to King with the intent to harm students.
	And the FBI have reviewed the email in question and determined that by their criteria, it should be considered a low-level threat.
	Falarka responded to this with a statement, I am disgusted and condemned these attacks on myself and the children, the faculty and staff of my school.
	I hold Donald Trump responsible for this.
	His politics of racist demagoguery and hate is inciting these vile threats of violence, even against children.
	It exposes why Trump and his racist, Nazi, and KKK supporters need to be defeated, and it shows us what Donald Trump's vision for America really is.
	The California Highway Patrol completed a 2,000-page report about the Sacramento rally.
	The Sacramento branch of the CHP announced it had concluded its investigation into the 2016 Capitol incident and sent its results to the DA's office.
	In a prepared statement, the CHP said the violent incident involved more than 300 people.
	In a brief overview of events, the CHP said that about two dozen people from the Traditionalist Workers' Party had secured a permit for the June 26 rally at the Capitol, but they weren't alone.
	Other groups present that day, and numbering in the hundreds, did not have a permit and were there to prevent the permitted rally.
	The non-permitted groups confronted the permitted group, leading to violence, which resulted in 14 reported injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage on capital grounds.
	The CHP said its investigators faced several challenges as they did their work.
	Authorities said in particular many people involved with the rally tried to disguise their identities and did not cooperate with the investigators.
	So to summarise, a group of demonstrators held a legally sanctioned rally, and Yvette Falaka organized BAM and any other resources to hand to go and counter-protest illegally as part of a group that initiated violence against illegal protesters and then caused various injuries, property damage and hospitalisations, all with the aim of inhibiting the right to free speech of the legally sanctioned demonstrators.
	Shortly after the event and Falaka had been identified, she was placed on administrative leave.
	The Berkeley Unified School District has placed Yvette Falaka, a Martin Luther King Jr. middle school teacher who is also a controversial anti-racist activist, on administrative leave pending an investigation into concerns that had been raised.
	Falaka was placed on leave Wednesday according to Charles Bureas, district spokesman, who declined to be more specific because it was a personnel matter.
	Falaka and BAM declined to share with Berkeleyside the letter BUSD sent outlining the investigation.
	However, in comments made before and at BUSD school board meeting Wednesday night by Falaka and her supporters, it appears that BUSD is looking into whether Falaka indoctrinated any students with her political views, whether she took excessive time off, perhaps to engage in political activity, and whether she spoke badly of the BUSD administration.
	This is not the last time that we will talk about Falaka indoctrinating her students, but we will come to that later.
	Falaka said that she had been ordered to stay off BUSD property.
	The district also went into a bank account to removed her August paycheck and indicated it will garnish more funds in the future.
	District officials also took some of Falaka's students out of her class on Wednesday to question them, she said, without parents' permission.
	Falaka said that BUSD's actions against her were a witch hunt.
	I believe the district's actions against me are politically motivated, capricious and unlawful, she wrote to Berkeleyside in an email.
	This cannot be allowed to stand or allow the district administration to set precedent that would give them the right to conduct political witch hunts against teachers who challenge the racist xenophobic politics of Donald Trump and his ilk and who challenge the increased segregation and growing inequality within the Berkeley public school system.
	Management's disciplines against me are based overwhelmingly on my off-duty political activities and my political affiliation within the National Civil Rights and Immigrant Rights Organization BAM.
	The Berkeley Federation of Teachers is filing a grievance on my behalf.
	Falaka said that if she is not reinstated, she and her supporters plan to protest again before the school board before the next meeting.
	Falaka herself appears to think that she has done nothing wrong.
	And despite the fact that she was the one organising illegal counter-protests and initiating violence against those people that they were protesting against, and then finding herself in trouble for this, she thinks she is the victim.
	At a Berkeley School Board meeting to discuss the events, Falarka and her supporters presented children to try and argue her case for being a fantastic teacher.
	Oh, okay.
	Hi, my name is Jimena, and I just gotta say that Ms. Valarka was a great teacher.
	She was kind and she teached me as an immigrant how to know my rights and to understand more about who I was, really.
	She helped me with all that, and then she's great, and then that I love her, and then I feel like she's part of my family.
	My name is Asha, and Ms. Valarka was my amazing teacher for less than a month.
	I mean, I came to school, she was really amazing, she taught us incredibly.
	And then one day I came to school and she wasn't there, she just kind of vanished.
	And no one would tell us where she was and what happened to her.
	And we were all just very confused.
	And we had many subs, and many of them didn't really know what they were doing.
	And every class, we've been doing the same thing over and over.
	And I just want to say I stand with Ms. Velarka.
	That's not fair that the district don't let Yvette bring kids to protest.
	And we won't, and we won't let Yvette come back to school.
	I am a student at EOP, and I stand with Ms. Valarka.
	And it's not fair what you guys are doing because Ms. Valarka deserves to take kids out to protest on her free time.
	And you should let her back in her class tomorrow.
	And she does not.
	And she does not deserve being treated bad or being against by Donald Trump or anybody.
	And yeah.
	And when that didn't work, her college-age supporters followed through with her wishes and shut the meeting down.
	We're talking about our agenda here today.
	If you don't stop talking over us, we can't communicate.
	Talking recess to close session and then we will be we will cause nothing is going to happen today It's just not going to happen, guys.
	It's just not going to happen.
	It's not going to happen today.
	It's not going to happen.
	So say it, because you will never hold office in Nintendo again.
	And threats against the careers of the people arbitrating over this dispute were not confined to Falaka's supporters.
	Falaka herself gave a statement in which she did basically the same thing.
	Suspending me from my class, that was just done this afternoon, barring me from access to do my job, and barring me from having the chance to continue to teach students is not only silencing me, but it's silencing them, and I promise you, you will not get away with this.
	Her students had some quite interesting things to say about it.
	One community member described Falaka to the board Wednesday as an exemplary teacher.
	She represents what's best about Berkeley, the ideals of Berkeley.
	He said the community has made itself clear and will fight for Falaka's return to the classroom.
	Many speakers said they appreciate that their teacher takes her fight for social justice to the streets and said she should not be penalised for what she does outside of the classroom.
	This is of course special pleading.
	If this had been a neo-Nazi teacher who had done what Falaka had done, initiated violence, been caught and then been put on suspension, I very much doubt that these students would be complaining.
	By November 2016, Falaka was reinstated to her Berkeley classroom.
	Falaka told Berkeleyside that her restitution came after a meeting between administrators and the union and Shanta Driver, her attorney.
	It will probably come as no surprise to you to learn that Yvette Falaka was one of the key organizers in the violent protest that shut down Milo Yiannopoulos' February the 1st talk at Berkeley University.
	Well Anderson, what you're seeing behind me is quite a bit of commotion.
	This is an event at Berkeley where Milo Yiannopoulos, who is known as an internet troll, a self-complained internet troll, a very provocative speaker, he was invited here to the campus.
	And you can see from the reaction, I'm going to step out of the shot here.
	What is happening here is that these are student protesters, some anarchists from what I can gather, and they're trying to breach the building right now.
	UC Berkeley cancelled Milo's speech because of this protest.
	Here's what The Guardian had to say.
	The University of California Berkeley has cancelled a speech by the right-wing internet troll, Milo Yiannopoulos, after thousands of students gathered in protest and a group of black-clad, anti-fascist activists shot fireworks at the speech venue.
	The gathering was boisterous but peaceful until about 6pm, when several dozen protesters wearing black face masks and carrying glittering flags arrived.
	The group quickly attacked the police barricades but then began shooting firecrackers at the building.
	Some used barricades to smash windows.
	After about 15 minutes, a police officer announced the event was cancelled.
	Some cheered when the police announced the cancellation, but others continued to jeer and call for the police to send Milo out to face the crowd.
	God only knows what the crowd would have done in the event that that had happened.
	We won't put up with the violent rhetoric of Milo Trump or the fascistic alt-right, said a Berkeley history student who declined to give his name.
	The student, who was dressed in black and wore a face mask, carried a banner that read, Queers Bash Back.
	He said he identified with the anti-far movement.
	We are willing to resist by any means necessary.
	Another protester who used a pseudonym said this.
	The moral imperative is to win.
	There's something to be said for fighting according to a code, but if you lose, people are going to die.
	People are going to get deported.
	It's absolutely acceptable to use violence.
	They are 100% certain to use it against us.
	This seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Up until this point, nobody had used violence against Antifar until they had been attacked first.
	In fact, as far as I can tell, Antifar always seemed to be the group that initiates the violence.
	After the Milo Berkeley riots, Yvette Falarca appeared on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News to claim credit for getting him shut down.
	You did a bunch of interviews after and you were asked about this and you were, to your credit, I think, very straightforward about it and unapologetic.
	And you said, yeah, this guy was a fascist.
	Milo's a fascist and we shut him down.
	You didn't pretend otherwise.
	We shut him down.
	And that's what you do with fascists.
	I think I'm characterizing what you said correctly.
	Just so we can understand the standard here, what is a fascist?
	So a fascist is someone who's organizing a mass movement that's attacking women, immigrants, black people, other minority groups in a movement of genocide.
	That's what a fascist is.
	That is not what a fascist is.
	There is actually a perfectly adequate definition of fascism on Wikipedia, which Yvette could check for herself if she likes.
	And I suggest you do as well if you're interested.
	But what's very interesting is that she fits her own definition of what a fascist is.
	Okay.
	So it's someone who's committing violence?
	And it's someone who's committing violence and who's trying to organize other people to commit violence.
	Okay.
	And Milo Yiannopoulos is a fascist.
	Okay.
	So he's committed acts of violence against the protective groups you mentioned.
	Well, what he's doing is he's trying to be the youth face and the token that other people who are organizing violence try to hide behind.
	And so in all of his talks all over the country, what Yiannopoulos has done is whip up a whole lynch mob mentality where people who come to see him or his supporters not only agree with his views, but also attack other people.
	This is exactly what Yvette Falarca herself is doing.
	This is not what Milo is doing or has done.
	This is precisely what her and BAM are doing themselves.
	The lynch mob mentality is coming from these extreme hard left groups that Yvette is actively organizing.
	And she herself has committed violence.
	It's almost hard to believe that she can't see the hypocrisy in what she's saying.
	But the thing is, she is perfectly consistent in this position.
	She believes that everyone she is opposed to is a fascist.
	Well, first of all, Milo Yiannopoulos is a fascist.
	He's a white supremacist.
	He's funded by Steve Bannon and Breitbart.
	He's an acolyte of Donald Trump.
	And he was on the UC Berkeley campus to try to recruit more fascists and to wage attacks on Muslim students, immigrant students, women, and trans students.
	Now, Milo himself denies those allegations.
	But again, that's why you were there and that's why you felt like it was important for him not to speak.
	What is the real fear of him having a conversation with the 500 students or the 500 people who had bought tickets to the event?
	Well, just to go back to how you characterize the protest, this isn't a question of violent versus peaceful protests.
	I was there and there were thousands of people out there who were united.
	It was a mass protest.
	It was a militant protest.
	And everyone was there to shut him down.
	And so whatever it was going to take to do that, they were all there with a united cause and we were stunningly successful.
	But why not be peaceful about it?
	Why not, you know, chant and hold your signs and things?
	But when you take the barricades and you destroy the building and when you set fires, isn't that counterproductive?
	You know, I think that the left has been far too timid for way too long.
	And it's why we've even gotten in this position where we even have someone like Donald Trump leading a fascist movement as the President of the United States.
	We need to make sure that we have more mass protests, more militant protests that are mass and militant.
	So after openly calling for violence, it's no surprise that there was a public backlash against Falaka.
	The phones, voicemail machines, and email inboxes at the Berkeley Unified School District have been flooded with calls about Falaka, said Charles Buras, the spokesman for the district.
	The main office of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, where Falaka teaches, has been swamped as well.
	Every message I've seen has been opposed to having her employed by us.
	There was even a petition with 8,000 signatures delivered to complain that she does not believe in free speech and should not teach children about their constitutional rights.
	And of course, Falaka has a long history of this kind of troublemaking.
	A district letter to Falaka included in her complaint shed lights on problems the district says it has dealt with in the past in relation to her work and activities.
	The 30-page letter documents allegations dating back to 2009.
	The letter said that Falaka's performance reflected unprofessional conduct and unsatisfactory performance, and both are grounds for dismissal.
	The district cited six education code sections related to its notification letter which was dated June 30th, 2016.
	Immoral conduct, evident unfitness for service, persistent violation of or refusal to obey school laws, dishonesty, unprofessional conduct, and unsatisfactory performance.
	In 2009, according to the letter, Falaka repeatedly solicited students to participate in protests against a proposed charter school BUSD was considering, despite having been formally reprimanded about involving students in her political activities and pursuing those activities during the workday.
	In 2011, she asked for permission to take her after-school club on an all-day field trip to UC Berkeley for activities relating to Proposition 209.
	The school principal ultimately denied permission, according to the letter, because it was an opportunity for you to indoctrinate students and use them to support your own political agenda.
	It took them away from necessary instruction and violated the directives you had been given in 2009.
	In 2013, the district said Falaka repeatedly used time to attend immigrant rights marches in Washington, D.C., which BUSD said is not an allowable use for personal sick leave.
	The district docked her pay and alerted her to the problem, according to the letter, but the behaviour continued.
	When the BUSD tried to schedule her private meeting with Falaka about the issue, employees in the district office were confronted with a loud group of over 10 young people chanting and carrying signs to protest teacher harassment.
	The BUSD wrote, It is apparent from your Facebook protesting that you enjoyed defying the administration and taking an adversarial position against the administration of your employer.
	This is blatant insubordination and will not be tolerated.
	Your Facebook posting and the petition also make clear that you are intentionally providing the readers with biased, slanted information.
	The district said its issue with Falaka was her lack of compliance with BUSD rules and regulations.
	The verbiage of your post and petition, which is embarrassingly narcissistic, makes it clear that you were trying to provide readers only with information that would support you, not the actual facts.
	It was evident that you and your by any means necessary representatives were actively trying to brainwash and manipulate these young people to serve your own selfish interests in not being held accountable to the same rules that apply to everyone else.
	As a teacher, your conduct was particularly reprehensible.
	The parent of one of Falaka's former students had been in touch in response to flyers being handed out at Berkeley High in support of Falaka, saying Falaka had previously marginalized Caucasian students in the classroom and did not present a balanced view of controversial issues.
	Under no circumstances may you try to present materials to students in a biased and one-sided manner in order to try and influence or indoctrinate students into a particular way of thinking.
	BUSD wrote, You are to treat all students equally regardless of their ethnicity.
	The letter also instructs Falaka to avoid using a defiant, rude, or insubordinate tone with district staff and says, You are not to lie or engage in any type of dishonesty or to try and bully or manipulate district officials.
	The district had said that she had to remove her petition and any posts related to this confidential personnel matter from her Facebook page, the BAM website, and other online locations available to the public.
	I understand that I've been quoting at length for quite some time there, but I wanted you to see just how reprehensible Yvette Falaka is.
	She uses her students for her own political gain.
	She indoctrinates them in her classrooms by providing them a view of reality that is entirely one-sided and self-serving.
	And then she uses these indoctrinated students in an attempt to bully the school board and her own employers into giving her her own way.
	And she also uses these students to go to political protests where she initiates violence in order to, and I'm not joking, in her own words, revolt against Donald Trump.
	That's something that the whole movement can and is really proud of, because it wasn't just about Yiannopoulos alone.
	What happened on February 1st was a rebellion against Donald Trump.
	It was a rebellion against the attacks he's making on immigrant communities.
	It's a rebellion against the attacks he's making and scapegoating of Muslim and Jewish people.
	And that rebellion continues to grow while Trump and his movement are actually getting weaker and weaker.
	Despite all of this being manifest against her, Falaka appears to be retreating into a fantasy world.
	Falaka says that the BUSD is trying to bully her out of the district.
	In her own 10-page grievance letter in response to her allegations, Falaka requested that her back pay be returned to her, writing, We cannot allow the district to dictate what teachers do on their own time.
	She said the district's political witch hunt would send a message to the Latina, O Arab, Asian and other immigrant students and to black, Muslim and other minority students and the many anti-racist white students I reach every day.
	That the teachers who actively defend their rights and interests and tell the plain truth about racism and the new Jim Crow are not welcome and will be driven out of BUSD.
	This is delusional.
	Everything the BUSD is doing is in response to Falaka's thuggish strong-arm tactics.
	I am honestly incredulous that she still has a job and that she hasn't ended up serving some sort of jail time yet.
	And of course, she was present and presumably organizing at March 14th, 2017's Battle of Berkeley, where there was a pro-free speech rally going on attended by many different groups.
	And Antifar and Yvette Falaka attended as well.
	And she, of course, was involved in the violence.
	Independent journalist Tim Poole and YouTuber Joey Salads were both present at the protest.
	And Joey Salads had dressed himself up as an anti-farm member and infiltrated their groups.
	This is his account of what it was like to be part of the anti-far side of the demonstrations.
	What did you see when you were hanging out with these Antifa people in Berkeley?
	So much.
	So at first, when we first got there, there's a lot of stuff I discovered on the footage that I didn't realize at first.
	When I first got there, a fight broke out immediately.
	And when I looked back at the footage, I saw, you know, like a small scuffle broke out, and then there's just an anti-far guy just calling constantly for more anti-fog people to run in to join into the madness and to the fighting.
	So I saw that on the footage.
	I was on the ground.
	I had hidden camera sunglasses on.
	So this way I could get like a first-hand point of view of everything.
	And first off, I saw a girl.
	She had a fire extinguisher and I started dragging it.
	I was like, oh, did you, you know, hit anybody with it?
	She's like, yeah, I sprayed this one person in the face.
	I got him good.
	I'm like, yeah, nice job.
	And then I'm like, oh, you all out?
	She's like, yeah, but I can still hit him with this.
	And she was like, shaking it.
	I was like, all right.
	That girl, she was a troublemaker.
	Because you could see her pop up a couple times in the videos.
	And then I later on found out she had a huge rock in her hand and she was throwing rocks.
	Multiple women were throwing rocks.
	So a lot of the men were walking around with poles and sticks.
	But it's weird because the women are the dominant ones in their group.
	The men are like the submissive ones.
	So the women are the ones that control everything.
	They're mostly the troublemakers.
	From what I've seen.
	Do you think that's because they're radical feminists?
	It could be that.
	What I see is a lot of the guys will step back, right?
	They have this.
	I forgot what they call it.
	It's like step up, step back.
	A lot of the guys will probably back down on purpose and let the women take charge and make decisions.
	I think the women are like, because since they're feminists, they're probably like, I got something to prove.
	They want to show that they could hang with the guys, I feel like.
	So they're really aggressive.
	It certainly appears that the women are leading the anti-far groups.
	And there is also very strong evidence that Biony Means Necessary is a cult led by Shanta Driver and Yvette Falaka.
	And it's important to note that I am not using the term cult in a lay sense.
	I'm using it as defined by Dr. Arthur J. Diekman in his book, The Wrong Way Home.
	Dr. Diekman had 30 years' experience dealing with cults and cult members and was a professional psychologist.
	And I have also done two videos about this book that I will link in the description.
	And I strongly recommend you watch them if you would like to know exactly what a cult is.
	I will be directly referencing these videos, so I recommend watching them to get the full context of what I'm saying.
	There is a blog called The Secret Survivors of Ban.
	They say, We are former organisers and survivors of this dangerous organization.
	Like a lot of people were deceived from the beginning about the true origins of BAM and their motives, former organizers of this organisation come from a diverse origin of class, social status, and political orientation.
	Regardless of their origins, they at one time saw BAN as a true civil rights organisation that would offer them some sort of platform to grow upon.
	These former organizers left Ban over time and after a series of abuse and manipulation.
	The stories of this site are true and provide insight into what BAM really is.
	Politically, this site leads to the left, but the site's political stance should not taint or change one's opinions or the facts presented about BAM.
	This site will periodically expose BAM and their flawed leadership.
	Particularly, the site will also point out that the leadership of BAM and the obscure Trotskyist organisation the Revolutionary Workers League is led by people of privileged backgrounds.
	And finally, our last point.
	BAM will attack this site like any of the other critics before as delusional far-right wing of group of angry former members.
	To address BAM's leadership and the site's publishers are indeed angry, and will expose BAM and their affiliated organisations for abuse.
	We are not the far-right wing group, but rather the platform for survivors of your abuse.
	Survivors and the people currently under the abuse of BAM understand that there is a growing movement of people who are speaking out about abuse and manipulative organizations and cults that exploit, destroy dreams, ambitions and hopes for your futures.
	We will expose these monsters for who they are and we welcome testimonies of former organisers and people who have had to deal with BAM's abusive and coercive attacks and that expressing their testimonies is essential to the fight against BAM's horrible regime that essentially robs people of their dignity as an individual.
	Here is a post about Shanta Driver.
	Most people who have had contacts with BAM organizers eventually see the national chair and spokesperson of BAM, Shanta Driver.
	She may seem polite and friendly at first, but you will soon see her true motives through her loyal comrades who are abusive and have nasty attitudes.
	Shanta Driver, a deranged leading attorney, assumes the role of the dictator of both BAM and the obscure Revolutionary Workers League, who is also led by the deranged and mentally ill Leyland Sanderson.
	Leyland is a man of unkempt appearance who spends days being busy with BAM's propaganda or busy sleeping all day.
	They also have an article about Yvette Falarka which ends with Despite leaving UC Berkeley in 2006, Falaka has been a permanent fixture at the University of California, oftentimes handling Shanta's or Leyland's pointless and sometimes questionable pronouncements.
	She, along with other organisers in the Bay Area, are members of the obscure Trotskyist organisation, the Revolutionary Workers League, who are also affiliated with the Revolutionary Internationalist League in the United Kingdom.
	Ask any student who has engaged in some sort of political activism and somehow BAM and Yvette Falaka are mentioned.
	Yvette's control in BAM is testimony to the fact that the organisation does not show control or any sort of accountability in the leadership.
	Her rule as dictator in the Bay Area chapter serves that so-called leaders bullshit and that the organisation drills into the brainwashed minds of the organisers.
	It is clear that the true leadership of BAM isn't the organisers or the community they supposedly represent.
	Yvette is the figure of that twisted and corrupt authority.
	There is also a Facebook page called UC Berkeley Confessions, and in 2014 they posted a very long and but very detailed account of an ex-member of BAM, exposing them for the cult that they are.
	This is again going to be quite a long segment I'm going to read, but it's very important that you hear it, especially if you intend to watch the Cult Case Studies video that I'll link in the description.
	The similarities and parallels between the activities involved in both of these accounts between BAM and the account of Life Force, the cult study featured in The Wrong Way Home, are eerie.
	Letter from UCB alumna Jevin.
	I am running with Students for a Democratic University as a student advocate, and I am an ex-member of BAM.
	I think I can give a little bit of an insider's perspective as to why it's not a good idea to have dealings with that organisation.
	The dislike that most people have in the activist community on campus have of BAM stems from the fact that they are very sectarian, undemocratic, and obnoxious.
	However, if the problems with BAM stop there, I would be working for them.
	However, internally, that organisation is a lot more corrupt than people realise.
	The organisation is tightly controlled by two members, the president, Shanta, and another founding member named Leyland.
	There is no democracy in the organisation.
	Members are encouraged to follow whatever perspective and course of action that Shanta and Leyland put forward.
	When disagreements arise between base members of the group and leadership, i.e. Shanta and Leyland, that is when things get scary.
	In order to coerce people into doing what they want them to do, at the leadership's command, this organisation engages in a whole host of disgusting behaviour, like physically dragging people to meetings and political events, denouncing members who disagree as crazy/slash suicidal, and encouraging them to take unprescribed medication, stealing money and ID cards to restrict the movement of dissident members,
	spreading lies about such members in order to turn them against others.
	The list goes on and on.
	The way the organisation makes this possible is often by convincing members to abandon their lives and come live in BAM households.
	There, such members become financially dependent on BAM and many times have no choice but to comply with orders so that they can eat and not end up homeless.
	Furthermore, many of the BAM members are teenagers, so this fact makes it even more possible for BAM to prey on people that become financially dependent on them.
	This issue has been coming up a lot lately, so I'm going to write a much more coherent statement on it documenting my horrible experience with this organisation, but I will start to talk about that here.
	I was one of those teenagers.
	I joined BAM when I was 14 and remained in the organisation until I was nearly 18.
	When I was 16, BAM convinced me that my family was abusive and crazy, and that it was better that I move in with BAM members.
	I did so against my family's will.
	When my family started to look for me, BAM advised me that it was best I move from my hometown to live with BAM members in another part of the country.
	They told me that I could legally solicit emancipation without my parents' consent upon turning 17, and since my birthday was soon, this meant that I would not be away from Detroit longer than one month.
	However, they lied.
	They took me to Oakland, California to live with Yvette Falaka and instructed me to change my name to Chase Stern, and to cut off all contact with my family and friends and either other BAM members in Detroit.
	I complied, thinking that that would only be for a short time.
	However, upon turning 17, BAM's leadership in Detroit just did not answer my phone calls.
	When they finally answered, they told me I had to just wait a little longer, and each time I would ask them when I got to go home, and this is the answer they would give me.
	I ended up being in Oakland for a year.
	A few weeks before I turned 18, I decided that I wanted to end the ordeal, so I contacted my family and reconciled with them.
	My mother brought me a plane ticket back to Detroit.
	When I informed BAM, they tried to talk me out of leaving, but I was adamant on returning home for at least a little while, and having a chance to re-establish relations with my friends and family.
	When they realised that they could not talk me out of leaving, they got physical.
	Yvette Falaka came into my room one night and instructed me to read out loud a statement that Shanta driver had written and convinced me to sign about how my family was abusive.
	Tired of debating my decision with them, I refused.
	That night, Yvette and other band members took turns sleeping by my bed to make sure he doesn't go anywhere.
	They confiscated my house keys to restrict my movement.
	The day before my flight back to Detroit, I was packing my clothes when band members came in and told me that I could not pack clothes in that luggage because that was luggage that they had provided me with.
	At this point, I still had illusions in BAM, so I called Shanta driver, thinking that Yvette was just being unreasonable and overly pushy, and that Shanta would work everything out.
	I told her what was happening and asked her to speak with Yvette and the other BAM members and request that they let me leave.
	Much to my astonishment, Shanta refused.
	At that moment, I realised I was in a cult, and not only was Shanta well aware of what was taking place, but that was her plan all along.
	I called my mum at that point, and in the midst of me talking to her, one of the BAM members, Adie Hoag, a former Berkeley student, screamed, grab his phone, and three BAM members grabbed me and tried to take my phone.
	Luckily, they were all pretty slightly built women, so I managed to push them off of me and make it outside the house.
	I ran to the neighbours and explained to them what was going on, and she let me inside and closed the door.
	My mum called the police, and when they came, Bam made up a lie about how I was trying to steal things from them.
	There were two white police officers, and the three BAM members there at the time were three white women, so shockingly, or maybe not so shockingly, the police believed them and treated me like shit.
	All I was trying to do was get my belongings and get away, and the cop said to me, you yourself admit to being a runaway, so why should we believe anything you say?
	I should take you to juvenile and make you miss your flight tomorrow.
	I insisted on being able to get my belongings and at some point the cops gave in and escorted me inside to get my things.
	Once inside, I discovered that Bam had stolen the $70 I had in my room and all my ID cards.
	I got what I could and left.
	The phone that I was using had been disconnected, since it was in the name of Mark Ergood, a BAM member and teacher in Oakland.
	The neighbour, however, let me use her phone to phone a friend, whose parents let me stay at his house and dropped me off at the airport the next morning.
	When I tried to inform other band members about what had happened to me, particularly the other youth, many of whom I had recruited and therefore felt responsible for putting at risk, I learned that BAM had denounced me to everyone.
	They told people that I went crazy and turned against the organisation and went to the police and that everyone should cut off all contact with me.
	They were also instructed to report my whereabouts to Shanta because they were looking for me to put me in a mental institution.
	Some band members complied with this order but many did not and ended up leaving the organisation in the fallout.
	I have heard many lies that BAM spread about me to cover up what they did, including telling people that I tried to kill myself and that's why they intervened in the way that they did.
	When I got to Detroit and started to tell people about my experiences, I learned from some ex-BAM members who had remained silent that I was not the only person who had an experience like that with BAM.
	There were many others.
	Some of these stories are even documented on the internet.
	Anyway, for the longest, I have been publicly silent about my experience with BAM because, like others, I have believed that since they play such an active role in politics on and off campus, it's better not to bump heads with them.
	However, a few days ago, I received a phone call from a BAM member I had never met before.
	He had gotten my phone number from other ex-members of BAM and he wanted to talk to me to help him through his hellacious experience with BAM.
	At that moment, I realized I could no longer remain silent.
	This organization is continuing to manipulate young people and it has to stop.
	This is a really dangerous thing, because this organization is luring young activist-minded individuals, and unlike me, most of the people who survived BAM draw the conclusion that they must abandon the struggle.
	BAM either converts you into a drone or it kills your fighting spirit.
	I feel so strongly as to not working with BAM that I think it's worth sharing this deeply personal story with all of you.
	I feel like by working with them, we are validating their disgusting tactics and empowering them to get away with things like this with more people.
	That's my piece.
	Jevon.
	That is a cast iron description of how a cult operates and, like I said, is almost word for word a mirror of the life force example given by Dr. Diekman.
	And if anyone is wondering why the authorities in Berkeley, such as the mayor and the police department, don't do anything to break up and shut down this cult of violent radicals, I think we have the answer.
	Jesse Eriguen, the current mayor of Berkeley, is not only friends with Yvette Falarca on Facebook, but he is also a member of the BAM Facebook group.
	And I would think that his close ties with Yvette Valarka Enchanter Driver and his membership of this group would explain why they speak so highly of him.

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