The Texas Observer

A well-known Austin activist fingered as an FBI informant has acknowledged that he provided information leading to the arrest and felony indictment of two Austin men who participated in protests last September at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN.

“The simple truth is that I have chosen to work with the Federal Bureau of investigation [sic],” Brandon Darby said in an open letter he sent this week to friends he has worked with since 2002.

Darby’s activist network stretches from Austin to New Orleans, where he co-founded Common Ground Relief, a grassroots reconstruction effort that drew thousands of volunteers from around the country. In 2004, he helped organize and was arrested during anti-Halliburton protests in Houston. His letter suggests that he disagreed with tactics some members of the Austin Area Affinity Group planned to use to disrupt the Republican Convention. Darby was a member of the group.

“When people act out of anger and hatred, and then claim that their actions were part of a movement or somehow tied into the struggle for social justice only after being caught, it’s damaging to the efforts of those who do give of themselves to better this world,” reads Darby’s letter.

Darby’s fellow activists say they identified him as “CHS 1” – confidential human source 1 – after reviewing an affidavit (PDF) by FBI agent Christopher Langert that was released in discovery in the case against David Guy McKay, 22, and Bradley Neal Crowder, 23. They say information described in the affidavit came from conversations between McKay and Darby.

The informant told Langert that McKay and Crowder fashioned protest shields made from cutting traffic barrels in half. After describing how police seized these items from a trailer the two helped drive from Austin to St. Paul, Langert refers to conversations gathered when the informant wore a wire to record McKay talking about how he and Crowder had made Molotov cocktails, using tampons soaked in lighter fluid for wicks.

The Molotov cocktails were among the items seized in a raid that led to felony indictments of McCay and Crowder, now known as the “Texas Two.” They were charged with possession of unregistered firearms (the cocktails). Information gathered by Darby may have contributed to broader charges against eight others from around the country for conspiracy to riot and conspiracy to damage property in the furtherance of terrorism.

Several of Darby’s friends initially defended him against accusations that he was an informant, but after they acquired additional court documents from sources close to the case against McCay and Crowder, they confronted him days before he went public.

“I don’t feel like I lost my credibility,” says longtime Austin-based activist Scott Crow. “But I staked my credibility defending him, and people backed me up.” Now that Darby has gone public, Crow is ready to go on the offensive.

“While it is not yet clear how long or to what extent Darby has been acting as an informant, the emerging truth about Darby’s malicious involvement in our communities is heart-breaking and utterly ground-shattering to some of us who were closest to him,” says Crow, who in 2005 co-founded Common Ground Relief with Darby.

Activists in St. Paul with the RNC Welcoming Committee posted a video in October 2007 that showed a tongue-in-cheek use of a Molotov cocktail to light a barbeque. Langert’s affidavit states that Darby had been working with the FBI since November 2007.

Crow and another member of the group claim the additional court documents – which the group has so far declined to make public - show Darby actively encouraged, enabled and provoked McKay and Croder to take illegal action. Crow asserts that Darby “hadn’t even met these guys yet” when he began reporting to the FBI. “How can you know they’re going to plan something,” he asks, “if you hadn’t met them yet?”

McCay’s father has previously argued that his son was naïve and gullible.

McCay and Crowder have been denied bail and remain in federal detention in St. Paul. Their trial date has been postponed indefinitely. They each face seven to 10 years in prison.

–Renee Feltz is a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and an intern with the investigative unit at The New York Times.

Tomorrow Williamson County commissioners will decide whether they want another year of the T. Don Hutto Immigration detention center in their county. The facility — run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America — is infamous for housing families, including young children, in a grim prison-like setting.

The conditions were once so bad at the Hutto facility that the ACLU — along with the ACLU of Texas, the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic and the international law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP — filed lawsuits on the behalf of children ages 3 to 16 who were being held in the facility. The children were kept in jail cells and not allowed outside. They were also threatened with separation from their parents if they made too much noise. One lawyer in the case told me that “they would have made the infants wear orange jumpsuits if they’d had small enough sizes.” The ACLU was successful in its lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and since then things have improved somewhat at the facility, according to the ACLU.

Still there is no denying that women and children are being kept in jail (a lucrative deal for CCA)  while they await a decision on a non-criminal matter (their immigration status) in court.

Every December advocates for immigrant and humanitarian rights gather for a candlelight vigil outside the facility in Taylor.  They want the facility closed for good. This week they are asking people to call the Williamson County Commissioners Court and persuade them to vote against renewing the contract with CCA. In a recent Austin American-Statesman article, however, many of the commissioners seem to think that $1 dollar a day the county receives from the federal government for each immigrant in the facility is still good business. Each month, the county can rake in as much as $16,000. The prison is funded at a cost of nearly $3 million a month by Immigration and Custom Enforcement.

County Judge Dan Gattis told the Statesman that he planned on voting for a renewal of the contract “unless something jumps up and bites me.”

The full results of a much-discussed survey by the Republican firm Hill Research showing the weakening GOP brand in Texas have been released. The details are stunning. Take for example this slide:

Got that? In a head-to-head matchup today between a generic Democratic candidate for governor and a generic Republican, the Democrat starts out with a 13 percent advantage. In a state rep race, the Democratic advantage is 14 percent.

What is it about the Texas GOP that voters don’t like?

Voters think the Republicans are arrogant, racist, corrupt and angry. While they think Democrats are smart, innovative, reformers, fair, thoughtful and - perhaps most important - the party of the future. As Hill Research notes, “Long-term, this is simply untenable.”

What’s going on out there to produce such profound distaste with the Texas GOP? After all, this is the party that currently controls all statewide elective offices and both chambers of the Texas Legislature.

Even Texas voters are sick of Bush. That much is evident. But Republicans in time can overcome the Bush problem. More worrisome for the GOP in this state is that half of the voters surveyed cited a lack of appeal to young people and Hispanics, the most important demographic groups of the future.

Based on their survey results, Hill slices the voting population into five distinct segments: Enduring Republicans (21%), Emerging Republicans (10%), Critical Middle (25%), Emerging Democrats (17%), and Enduring Democrats (27%). It is the Critical Middle - those “not in either camp solidly - that Republicans must win to hold onto power. This group is heavily male, under age 50, self-described moderate and/or independent, focused on fiscal rather than social issues.

Hill warns in no uncertain terms that for GOP campaigns to succeed they must wrap up 80 percent of the Critical Middle. “This isn’t ‘optional’ - anything less means Republicans lose.” The Texas Republican Party, controlled in large part by religious conservatives, is going to have to make some serious changes to accommodate these folks. This group could not give a hoot about immigration (only 15% said it was the most important issue vs. 38% of the Enduring GOP). The Critical Middle also doesn’t care much for “traditional values” (8% said it was the most important vs. 16% of the Enduring GOP and 19% of the Emerging GOP). What they do rate as important are cutting property taxes (17% said it was the most important vs. 15% of the Enduring GOP), child healthcare (19% vs. 2%), and investing in education (20% vs. 9%).

Because this survey is meant as a wake-up call to complacent GOPers, Hill has some recommendations for strategists and politicians on how to reach that Critical Middle.

The danger, of course, in appealing to the Critical Middle is pissing off the Loony Right, err… Enduring GOP. But, Hill emphasizes, not acknowledging and adapting to political realities will result in a Colorado-style meltdown for the party.

The Hill survey shows that Democrats have a golden opportunity to make major gains in Texas. But Texas Democrats - as was said of Yasser Arafat - have been known to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The U.S. Department of Justice today released a scathing report on conditions in Texas’ 13 large institutions for the mentally retarded.

The facilities — known as state schools, though they’re not schools but rather repositories for the developmentally disabled of all ages — house roughly 5,000 patients and employ 11,000 staffers. They comprise the largest remaining system of mental institutions in the country.

The Department for Justice has been investigating the state schools for more than two years. Justice officials have sent a 60-page report to Gov. Perry’s office, concluding that poor treatment inside the facilities violated residents’ constitutional rights. You can read the AP story about the report here. (When the the full report is posted online, we will link to it.)

There have been numerous media reports of abuse inside the facilities. A six-month Observer investigation revealed horrific incidents of abuse, including a staffer who repeatedly bashed a resident’s head into a metal door. You can read our story here.

However, while there has been severe abuse inside state schools, some media reports have failed to put the abuses in context.

For instance, the Associated Press reported last spring that 800 state school employees had been suspended or fired for mistreating patients since 2004. That sounds awful. But keep in mind that the system employs more than 11,000 workers, and the turnover rate is more than 30 percent. So roughly 20,000 people have worked in state schools since 2004. That means less than 5 percent of the total workforce was suspended or fired. Moreover, staffers can be suspended for incidents as minor as making inappropriate jokes in front of residents. None of which ever excuses the horrific mistreatment that does go on and should be prevented. But some media reports have failed to detail the complex reality inside these institutions.

Some advocates have seized on the abuse reports to call for closure of the entire system. The families of many state school residents desperately want the facilities to remain open.

As we reported last spring, the root problem is a lack of resources.The facilities are understaffed. Employees are underpaid (some direct care staff earn fast-food wages). Turnover rates are high: among direct care staff at the Austin State School in 2007, the turnover rate was 70 percent.

These problems stem from a chronic shortage of funding from the Legislature. There is abuse in state schools. But the larger story — and the one lawmakers must address next session — is that these facilities require greater resources.