Informant Page #3

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Those experiences I had,

as a runaway,

had a lot to do with why

I had a strong disdain

for people abusing power.

I moved into Austin,

which is more

of a progressive community.

I was exposed

to a lot of different people,

a lot of different ways

of thinking.

I met this Black Panther,

Robert King Wilkerson.

Brandon idealized King

in a lot of ways,

and the struggles

that King went through.

He's a former Black Panther,

did 32 years in prison,

I began to have a fascination

with the Black Panther Party.

That kind of attitude

towards the U.S. government.

That was pretty

influential on me.

I identified as a revolutionary.

I felt that the U.S. government was an

obstacle to having a peaceful world.

As a revolutionary

I really believed at some point

that I was going to join

a revolutionary movement.

One day I got this call.

It was King and he said,

Brother, me and so-and-so,

I'm not gonna say the guy's name,

we're coming to pick you up.

Scott:

The story is,

it was bunch

of former Black Panthers.

They called him and they were like,

"Hey, man, we wanna meet you.

We're gonna take you

on this private ride."

Brandon:

And I was like, what's going on?

He goes, "Well I want you

to meet some people, brother,

and I think this is gonna help

kick off the revolution, bro."

And I was like, oh sh*t,

this is an honor, you know.

Scott:

He's thinking it's gonna be a heist.

That's what he wants it to

be in Brandon Darby's head.

And I'm over here

thinking that he has

some big revolutionary act

planned or something.

Or I didn't know,

you know?

Scott:

They like make him sit in the middle,

and he's a little

uncomfortable with it.

And they're like,

are you ready for this?

Oh man, what's going on?

Are we really gonna do something?

And I'm like,

well who're we going to meet?

And he goes,

"That's the thing, my brother.

We have these things called

business units,

What they wanted to do was

get into multi-level marketing.

"Anybody you sign up,

is gonna get some.

You're gonna get

a percentage."

And I was like aawwh,

"Is it an Amway meeting?"

These are products that are

designed to help the planet."

And I was like, oh man,

let me out of the f***ing car.

The Black Panther Party was about...

all about guns and stuff.

He wanted to form a revolutionary

cell of underground people

to do something with a gun.

That's what he would want to do,

in his ideal world.

(pages shuffling)

I was involved

in a lot of causes

with people that I believed to be

political prisoners at the time,

and I wanted to make sure I had

sussed out a place for them to go,

because there was a lot of talk about that.

We called it Plan B.

And we figured ways of like,

would we ever break them out of the prison.

- Oh my gosh. Oh my god.

- (nterviewer speaks quietly)

He made that sh*t up!

Nobody was... Listen...

what's the story?

Well Plan B is, the concept,

and it wasn't something I initiated.

(indistinct chatter)

Brandon:
When it looked like there was

no way they were ever gonna get out

the concept was for me

to get a job as a prison guard.

And then find a way

to break them out of the prison.

...here, here, and there.

Nobody tried to...

he wanted to do that.

That is a total fabrication.

Maybe in his brain someday

he was gonna do that,

but it wasn't a story I ever heard,

or anybody else ever heard that I know of.

How serious were you

about Plan B?

I was pretty dedicated to it.

You know?

I was pretty dedicated to it,

but I never lost hope that there was

a way to get people out without that.

But I thought it was probably

pretty wise to do.

There's a few stories that run into

Brandon's head, over and over again.

One of them is that he wanted to be a

revolutionary so that he could go to prison.

He wanted it so bad.

But not really.

But that was the ideal.

And so, so he has this whole prison

story and like he'd just start,

he'd just meet somebody and

start telling them this story,

and you're like,

why are you telling that story?

It's like, this is a story

he made up.

So he's gonna learn to cage fight,

and do all these things,

and somebody tries to rape him,

he can defend himself.

And he like goes into all the details,

like, "When the cell door closes,

and it gets dark and somebody

tries to come in,

this is what I'm gonna

do to him."

And it just made me want

to pull my hair out.

I was like,

shut up already.

That is the stupidest story

I have ever heard.

Interviewer:

What should people who are living,

what should they ask themselves in

order to understand the situation.

The U.S. government has

a tendency to criminalize,

people that disagree

with it politically.

That's why we don't have

political prisoners,

is because if you're someone who's

political and they wanna incarcerate you

for your politics

and your organizing,

they find a charge against you,

like they did Marcus Garvey,

or like, we could go on and on.

They criminalize you.

His, his, what he called

revolutionary rhetoric,

to me was also just

completely reckless.

I can't say anything else

about it.

Somedays I think,

I only wake up and I think to myself,

like how on earth could we

attention to what's happening here?

And the concept of going to

Congress and burning myself alive,

I've thought of that, you know?

And I think about stuff like that a lot.

Sounds drastic,

but you know,

there's a lot of things

happening here that aren't okay.

I don't want to minimize Brandon

Darby's work at Common Ground,

because he did a lot

of good things.

But I also saw

this recklessness.

He didn't want to be

accountable to anybody.

Brandon:

I had the skill-set to run the project.

What I didn't have were the

organizational skills to learn how to,

I think, deal with people

who had different opinions.

Brandon did support hierarchy...

and did want to be in charge.

Really what we want is direct democracy

and participation from people.

Ken:
If you know anything about

decision making by committee,

that's a long

and drawn-out process.

Brandon:
I just didn't want to spend

five hours a day in a meeting,

arguing with 17-year-olds.

Scott:
He didn't participate

in the meetings.

Or he would come at the very end

and just tell everybody what to do.

And that created

huge amounts of resentment.

I'm not an activist.

I was just trying,

trying to help my community.

But a lot of these people

were activists

and were looking for this

utopian type of thing.

Well, utopia doesn't exist.

Brandon:

I understand that the consensus model

meant a lot to all the folks

who came out.

I understand you got

here yesterday

and you think this is

a fresh, virgin environment.

Every week,

somebody's come here

and started

a composting toilet.

We have no sawdust, and y'all are

pooping and peeing in a bucket,

and then y'all go off

to the next like,

Chiapas or the next wherever.

I've dealt with 20 of you,

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