Timeline_Context

Timeline and Context regarding Brad Laird

On October 18, 2018, the General Executive Board (GEB) released recommendations from a complaint that they had heard filed by expelled former member Brad Laird against ShugE Mississippi, Travis Erickson, and Brianna Peril. The GEB recommended removing ShugE from his role as Central Secretary-Treasurer (CST) of the General Defense Committee (GDC) and barring him from office for one year, and they then immediately voted to do this before receiving any input from the membership. There was very little information given about what he had allegedly done to merit such a serious censure, one which puts the GDC at risk, but the GEB report summarizes that he had shown “a concerning disregard for the integrity of our union’s processes” in his role as a survivor advocate. There are many serious issues with the way the GEB handled this complaint, which we will address below.

There is a lot of background information that is not available to most members. Some because it is old (and has been deliberately obscured by some people). Other information was part of a complaint process where ShugE abided by the confidentiality clause while some of those who are now going after him clearly weren’t. We have put this together to help everyone get a fuller picture of what has been going on. We will start with the recent complaints and then give a timeline of other events.

Earlier this year, several women members of the Michiana (Michigan/Indiana) branch, who had little or no connection with the outside union, filed charges against a sexual assaulter in that branch. Brad Laird, who was the Branch Secretary and a very well connected member, took several actions against this, including stacking the complaint committee with friends of the accused who found that the complaint had nothing to do with IWW business. The FWs were on the verge of leaving the IWW and the GDC, but before they left they happened to get in touch with ShugE in his role as GDC CST and ask him for any advice. ShugE helped them to file charges against Brad for his actions in silencing and intimidating them and abusing the charges process. ShugE also filed charges based on some of the information that he learned from them. (This is the action which supposedly crossed the line into “disregard for the integrity of our union’s processes.” In our opinion, anyone worthy of office in the IWW would have done the same thing; and anyone who disagrees, should not be an officer of the IWW.)

The complaints against Brad were heard by the Missoula, Montana branch. They granted terms of immediate relief that stipulated that Brad and a few of his allies were immediately suspended from the IWW and GDC. These terms were requested in part due to risk of retaliation against the members who had filed the complaints - the survivors and advocates had specifically mentioned Brad’s history of abusing the charges process to intimidate his opponents. Brad and his allies indicated that they would ignore these terms of relief, at which point the complaint committee asked the GST (Travis), GEB Chair (Brianna), and ShugE to help ensure that all local members knew of these terms and that it would be their responsibility (the local members) to enforce them.

Around this time if not earlier, Brad began working with Anthony Khaled (a member of the GEB) to prevent the complaint from moving forward, prevent the survivors and their allies from taking control of the Michiana branch (although they were the majority), and retaliate against ShugE and Travis in particular.

When the survivors and their allies held a meeting in which they elected interim officers, amended the branch bylaws, and renamed the branch to Maple City, Brad and a few others emailed the GEB about how there was some supposed crisis (which they didn’t name) and asked for the branch charter to be suspended and an audit committee to be formed. This was another violation of Brad’s suspension. Anthony pushed the GEB to move immediately on this, and added himself to the audit committee at the last minute.

We will note in passing that US labor law (and, more importantly, even the most basic sense of union democracy) requires due process before trusteeing a local. Suspending the branch charter would likely be seen by the courts as a form of trusteeship. In their rush to suspend the charter with no clear reason for urgency, the GEB did not pause to consider this. For us, principles of union democracy are far more important than abstract adherence to US labor law; but for several of the GEB members and other conservatives in the union, adherence to process and avoidance of any risk is seemingly more important than any other revolutionary principles - unless it is inconvenient to them.

Earlier this summer (date?), the Missoula Complaint committee released its findings that Brad was expelled from the IWW. On the same day, during a GEB meeting, Anthony brought charges from Brad against ShugE, Travis, and Brianna forward which he claimed to be “just seeing for the first time.” (We strongly suspect that Anthony was involved at every step of writing and planning these charges; at the very end of Brad’s email with the charges is a piece of a facebook conversation involved Anthony which has no context, and is seemingly a mistaken copy/paste.)

Brad had been suspended from all activity in the IWW and then was expelled, meaning he had no rights except those relating to a possible appeal. The GEB violated the Constitution by hearing the charges in the first place. More important than abstract adherence to the Constitution, Brad’s charges were a form of retaliation which the survivors and their advocates had been expecting from the start, which is why they had requested terms of immediate relief from the start. The GEB should have thrown it out on that basis, and it is shameful that Anthony was allowed to push it through.

When the GEB formed a complaint committee, Cole pointed out that Anthony had a history of outright hostility towards ShugE and Travis and shouldn’t be part of the committee. Other members pointed to Cole’s membership in WRUM and argued that “since wrumies will stick together”, Cole would also be biased and balance out Anthony. (It is worth noting that Anthony is a lawyer, while Cole is an ex-incarcerated worker with no college education; their ability to drive a process like this is hardly ‘balanced’, especially when one of them clearly had an agenda to push forward.)

Travis and ShugE both noted that during their interviews with the GEB, Anthony was allowed to question them extensively and in very hostile, prosecutorial ways about things that had nothing to do with the complaint, including their political connections (eg whether they were members of WRUM or M1). ShugE said that his interview felt more like an interrogation under McCarthyism. Cole noted that during the committee deliberations, Anthony was pushing hard the entire time for extensive sanctions against ShugE.

Ultimately the GEB decided to remove ShugE from his role as CST and bar him from office for one year. We will state plainly that any sanction of ShugE would have been unacceptable; his actions as an officer, to support survivors and advocates, is the standard for what being an officer in the IWW should be. Anyone who disagrees with that should not be an officer of the IWW. The specific sanctions that they came up with also could have severely jeopardized the GDC, particularly right now during the annual referendum - luckily the Steering Committee was able to find someone else who was able to step up on short notice.

Anthony and Brad, with a few allies, claim that ShugE abused the charges process to target his political enemies. This seems to be a bad conscience giving itself away, as this is exactly what Anthony has been doing by targeting Travis and ShugE with these illegitimate charges. We will briefly outline some of the important past context below - among other things it makes clear that Brad was not a political enemy of ShugE (or anyone in WRUM), Brad had actually been a supporter of the GDC and community self-defense work in the IWW who made ShugE an enemy over Brad’s intransigent support for sexual assaulters.

We recognize that this timeline is convoluted and may be hard to follow. Much of this happened behind closed doors or has been deliberately obscured. We have done our best to make it accessible but apologize in advance for any difficulty.



Timeline

Mid-late 2015
A member of the Indiana branch (Mike White) who was on the GEB sexually assaulted another member of that branch. The Branch officers worked with the survivor to bring charges forward. The branch approved terms of immediate relief which included suspending Mike White from all union activity. When this was communicated to the GEB chair (MoonDog), he told the branch officers that the branch did not have the ability to remove a member from the GEB, and also threatened them with charges if they were lying. This process stalled for a long time until one of the branch officers, who was the main advocate for the survivor, resigned from the union in protest. This was going to be brought to the 2015 Convention by the GEC chair but they were told by another GEB member (DJ Alperovitz) that if they violated confidentiality they could be brought up on charges, and the GEC chair ended up not bringing this issue forward.
It is important to note that ShugE and Brandon Sowers both joined the GEB shortly after this happened and caught a portion of the details but not enough at the time to take action. Both essentially decided to assume that people had made procedural mistakes but that there was not enough to assume malicious behavior (which they both later apologized for).
Early 2017
Brad Laird is elected as Chair of the GDC Steering Committee. As a minority of the union begin to express hostility about the growth of the GDC, Brad remains thoughtful and supportive of this growth.
March 2017
A conservative majority of the GEB recalls ShugE as GEB chair for encouraging people to bring different ideas about the GDC to the next Convention. Shortly after, due to bullying and psychological abuse, ShugE resigns from the GEB.
~June 2017
The last Steering Committee acknowledges that the CST who had been elected previously was not doing his work to keep up with the large growth of the GDC. They acknowledge his resignation and begin searching for a new CST. ShugE offers to do this in coordination with other members in the Twin Cities. The steering committee unanimously votes to appoint him - at this point Brad Laird is very supportive.
July 2017
Brandon Sowers, who was still on the GEB, brings forward information about what had happened in 2015 with Mike White, and MoonDog and DJ covering up for him. This was after speaking with the survivor advocate and with her consent and encouragement. Several people begin to cast doubt on this, including Brad Laird who says that the the survivor advocate was an “alcoholic” who had been lying, and that bringing this up was just going to harm her (which he stuck to even after Brandon clarified privately that this was brought with her consent and encouragement, and that Brad didn’t have authority to make those decisions for her). ShugE weighed in to support what Brandon was saying and that it fit with what he had seen at the time. Brad immediately moved towards extreme hostility against ShugE, and began petitioning the GEB to remove ShugE as GDC CST, which they did not do. Brad resigned as chair of the steering committee in protest and did not run again for steering committee.
Early 2018
Some women members of the Michiana branch bring forward charges about a sexual assaulter (not Mike White). Brad maneuvers to get friends of the assaulter on the committee and the charges move nowhere. The women members are on the verge of leaving but speak with ShugE and decide to work with him to file charges against Brad. This brings us up to the recent stuff detailed at the beginning of this document.
Also during the period, Brad communicates to a member of the GDC steering committee (Jenny Cat) that he is refusing to report GDC dues collected in protest of ShugE being the CST. Around this time the aggrieved members also requested an audit of the Michiana branch which Brad and Anthony opposed - it was discussed on a GEB call where Anthony is on the record opposing it.
Mid 2018
When Brad and his allies saw they were going to lose their control over the Maple City branch, they engineered a crisis and got the GEB to (illegally) suspend the branch charter and strike an audit committee for the branch. This time, Anthony rushed it through and put himself on it at the last minute. Jenny Cat spoke up to explain their conversation with Brad and theirreasons to think that the Michiana GDC local also needed to be audited, and that they hoped the GEB and GDC Steering Committee could work together on a joint audit. They were immediately mansplained to by several men, Anthony in particular, and told that they were a “subordinate body” and that the IWW had a “chain of command.”
Several people raised concerns about Anthony being on this committee when it had already been clear that he was very much in the thick of the conflict in the branch (and supporting one side) and that his involvement would skew the perspective of the audit committee, but this was ignored.