Testimony:
INSIDE THE NEW ALLIANCE PARTY
Cult
Awareness Network Forum*
New
York City, June 16, 1993
I
am a former member of the New Alliance Party and its internal
cult apparatus, the International Workers Party. As a
five-year member of this cult, I believed my actions to be an
individual, as well as a collective choice, as they, in many
cases, coincided with my personal and political beliefs.
Even
when I left in July of 1990--which I might add was of my own
accord--I still did not consider the group a cult. However,
based on research and analysis, I've since come to the conclusion
that it is, in fact, a cult and that my emotions and actions
were systematically controlled and corrupted by Dr. Fred Newman,
and others, through the use of Social Therapy.
I
met the cult in 1985, when I was a single mother living in the
Bronx; struggling to finish college and under much emotional
stress. One day I saw an advertisement in the party's
newspaper, the National Alliance, for "Social Therapy,"
which was described as a "non-racist, nonsexist, non-homophobic"
treatment. Although my initial consultation provided no
magical solution, the therapist's calm and reassuring manner
did seem helpful in exposing and alleviating a tremendous burden
of "secrecy" and "shame."
And so, I was hooked. The next few sessions were similarly
gratifying. My sense of trust and hope increased dramatically
as I continued to expose the abuse and emotional dysfunction
I had endured. This approach, I concluded, would help
me understand the basis for the anxiety and depression I had
suffered.
Soon
after, I entered a short-lived grouplet. Persuaded
to regard the change as a difficult but necessary challenge,
I suppressed my initial reaction that my therapist seemed more
concerned with consolidating her time than with the sensitive
issues involved. Although the change proved to be a failure,
the therapy itself still seemed somewhat gratifying. The
grouplet was barely a month old when my therapist suddenly announced
she was moving to Philadelphia to expand the work of The Institute.
My initial shock, anger, and sense of abandonment were quickly
abated by reassurances that this "new development"
could prove to be a productive growth experience.
Despite my uneasiness, I agreed to enter into both a larger,
mixed-gender group and--as a balance, it seemed--a smaller,
women's grouplet in February of 1985. My new therapists
and their assistant "co-therapist" trainees, however,
seemed even more detached and reserved than the first.
The racial, sexual, and cultural makeup of the patients in the
larger group was also quite unsettling. While we shared
some commonalities, I could not foresee how such a mixed-bag
of people--white, black, Jewish, Puerto Rican, gay, and straight
men and women--could ever work together.
But
my discernment and reluctance gradually eroded as we began intense
discussions about those very differences. Our diversity,
we were told, had to be examined in order to build the context
for support--in order to build the group.
It seemed like an exciting challenge then to talk openly about
such sensitive issues in a seemingly supervised and progressive
therapeutic environment.
At
our therapists‚ urging, we then confessed all of the stereotypical
prejudices we had held about each other. Exposing these
biases, we were assured, would help us understand our "societal
relationship to one another" Only then could we work
to redefine our backward relationships. It was a most
humiliating experience to then be labeled as an "upwardly-mobile,
wanna-be white, insane Spic," or to be compelled to confess
how I really regarded the others--patients and therapists alike--as
just "niggers","dirty Jews", "faggots"
and "dykes".
And
as these offensive remarks violated our psyches, the adroit
therapists then led us through this bitter quagmire to the more
soothing, but dangerous, path of least resistance. By
comparing our painful experiences, we came to realize that we
had all been similarly subjugated. The trouble wasn't
in our heads, but in the world, we learned. Our emotional
problems were neither isolated nor individual. They were,
in fact, symptomatic of our oppression.
The
abuse we had suffered had been prompted by racial and social
prejudice. These biases, in turn, were predetermined by
the inequitable distribution of wealth and power. My degradation
and self-destructive behavior were a lawful response to my role
as a scapegoat and victim of vulgar capitalism. Thus the
emotional and the political were fused and I became a depersonalized
byproduct.
Through Social Therapy, I was conditioned to relate to my personal
history in exclusively political terms. My family's problems
and subsequent poverty--and all of my suffering--were the result
of the government's imperialist invasion of Puerto Rico.
The United States had been founded and, in fact, still subsisted
on genocidal and increasingly fascistic practices with regards
to people-of-color.
While
these were, and, in my opinion, remain valid political arguments,
conducting them in such an emotionally vulnerable setting did
not fully explain, let alone improve, my condition. The
process did, however, serve to increase my dependency and impair
my cognitive skills (I could not understand this back then,
although I did realize that discussing my problems in such a
political context had not helped: I still felt crazy).
But
consciousness-raising in itself was not enough. Our individual
development and growth, we were told, was dependent upon the
group's. Indeed it was the group on which we had to focus.
And building truly emancipated and intimate relationships with
the members of the group could only be achieved by discarding
our perverted societal beliefs. Only by embracing this
psychotherapeutic-political doctrine could I hope to change
what it meant to be a poor, working-class, Puerto-Rican woman.
There
were no other solutions. Case in point: my
attempts to escape the pain with drugs or to bury my nightmarish
past by making it. Those efforts had failed
miserably, hadn't they? I still felt crazy, didn't I? And we
had all played this game, hadn't we? Our collective emotional
dysfunction was proof that the American dream was a sham, wasn't
it? Somehow, it sounded great.
After
a few months of this intense group practice, I began to feel
more confident and assertive. Although I felt empowered
and liberated of many ghosts, I was still not cured.
My persistent anxiety--indeed, our collective emotional baggage--were
inherently related to still prevalent societal inequalities.
How then, could I possibly hope to recover when poverty, homelessness
and injustice still existed all around me?
The
answer, of course, was to do something to make things better.
By working to bring about social change, one could eventually
assume a more politically-advanced, i.e., historical, identity.
Although the process of changing the world was in itself curative,
it was still not the solution. History, in fact, was the
cure, I learned, as I studied abstract articles by party leaders
Newman, Dr. Lenora Fulani, and others. One would be cured,
i.e., people would be cured, when history had righted itself.
Only when the world was rid of all the backward "isms,"
then and only then, could we genuinely develop as human beings.
And,
while commitment was deemed a "personal choice," the
struggle for social change could not be an individual or a "nationalistic"
endeavor. In and of itself, my writing, indeed, my very
existence, was meaningless; for only through collective action
could people truly overcome the horrors of societal oppression.
The group mind-set was now at work. Thus, the "cure"
for my depression and anxiety was ultimately conditional upon
my becoming a serious political activist.
And,
lo and behold, I had chanced upon this tendency of likewise
committed people! I could now ignore all that I had learned.
I could now reject the opportunity for a better existence.
Or, I could choose to make a real difference; one that would
benefit all of mankind. The burden of choice was now mine.
By
late 1985, the decision was being made. I had become an
avid reader of the Alliance and had grown impressed with the
tendency‚s sophisticated network which, in addition to the Social
Therapy Institutes, the National Alliance newspaper and other
publications, also included the Barbara Taylor School, the Castillo
Cultural Center, the All Stars Talent Show Network, the Rainbow
Lobby (a Washington D.C.-based lobbying outfit since renamed
Ross & Green), and, of course, the New Alliance Party.
Deluged with invitations from therapists and other employees,
I began frequent–ing Institute events and parties and making
contributions in support of the other projects. And, as
a "natural" extension of my growing support, I was
also encouraged to exert my influence with others to help further
the cause of this wonderful movement.
It
seemed logical then to encourage all my friends, family, and
fellow students to join the Institute, or to try and sell them
tickets to various events. The politic, was, after all,
the ultimate solution and I wanted to share it everyone I knew.
And it did not seem out of the question then, to exploit my
position as an intern at CUNY-TV's "Cityscope" to
schedule one of my therapists as a speaker for a program on
AIDS. Nor did it seem strange that I should begin to use
Social Therapy as a topic for my academic papers and video projects.
I
then joined the party's newspaper staff as an editorial assistant.
I had, by then, become quite disillusioned with the mainstream
media. I had analyzed their sophisticated manipulation
of facts and exploitation of distorted racial and sexual imagery
well enough to know what their bottom line really was.
If everything was "propaganda," I reasoned, why not
do it from a progressive standpoint?
It
would be the perfect synthesis of my skills, my personal experience,
and my political opinions. It would be an unpaid position,
but there would be other rewards. I would be trained to
conduct research and would write articles focusing on the Latino
community and women's- and gay-rights issues. All this
in such a progressive environment! To sweeten the pot, and my
ego, I was given a feature profile in the newspaper several
weeks later.
Although I still held lingering doubts, they were quickly sup–pressed
as I busied myself with the work. In addition to covering
NAP-related events, I also wrote slanted reviews of "outside"
activities and occasional "exposes."
The majority of my "sources," however, were my political
superiors. With just a few telephone calls and very little
paper trailing, the articles were then reduced to heavily edited
hypotheses full of unanswered questions. And there was
little time for follow-up, I realized, as I began attending
editorial meetings and was bombarded with front-desk, cleaning,
filing and "security" assignments. The newspaper
was mostly run by volunteers, I reasoned, and if we didn't help,
who would?
Soon
after, I was invited to attend a private study group, led by
NAP leaders wherein we read NAP articles and classic Marxist
literature. It was an "investment in my political
future," I was told.
I
had, by then, begun discussing some reservations in therapy.
But, whereas before my skepticism and anger had been encouraged,
as they had supported the group‚s broader social-political philosophy,
they were now considered an "impediment to my development."
Whenever I criticized my superiors on the newspaper--or challenged
the conjectures of my therapists and their "favored"
patients‚ (i.e., more politically active and therefore "advanced")--I
was quickly chastised as "racist," "anti-Semitic,"
"sexist," "homophobic," "nationalist,"
"unsupportive," "oppositional" and/or "right-wing."
The
"practice" had turned from illuminating supposition
to guilt-inducing blame--a mechanism which effectively suppressed
contention. I was also silenced by an underlying premise
which supposed that, because they had been organizing for so
many years, these people knew more than me. I was still
an innocent then and ignorant of the "realpolitik"
and also of the extent to which the therapists ruthlessly manipulated
personal relationships as a means of bringing people "closer."
I learned the game rather quickly, however.
One
day, my therapist decided we would work on a young woman in
our group who was having difficulty with her jealous lover.
But the problem wasn't just jealousy, we learned. The
fact that the patient had developed an attraction to the therapist
was incidental to her involvement in the Institute's Social
Therapy Training Program. Her lover's hostility, in fact,
was a "typical, white, middle-class, liberal" reaction
to the patient's "political development."
This
was often the case with traditional familial relationships,
our therapist explained, because they tended to "alienate"
and "retard" human growth and development. After
the group had "analyzed" the situation, we determined
that the patient should move out. The group then personally
helped her to do so. As for her lover, our former "friend"
was then relegated to a role later termed "disaffected
non-entity" and we never heard from her again.
Reservations had crept in, but the dream still seemed viable.
And the closer I was drawn to this vision, the greater the conflict
became between my "political work" and the "real
world." Although my grades had not suffered,
my friendships at school and my relationship to my children,
my lover, and my family, had already been compromised.
I was about to graduate when, in June of 1986, I accepted an
invitation to meet with my political superiors to discuss my
future--which is how I was then drawn into the group‚s underground
web of pseudo-revolutionary cult activity--The International
Workers Party.
When
I finally left the cult in July of 1990--after finally becoming
disgusted with the totalitarian internal structure which, in
my opinion, basically relies on slave labor for profit in the
name of justice and empowerment--I had to literally rebuild
my life. I had damaged my relationship to my children
and the rest of my family. I was thousands of dollars
in debt. And my self-esteem and judgment had been severely
impaired.
For
remediation, I took a personal approach which combined post-cult
therapy with my own study and documentation of the cult's history
in the hopes of trying to figure out exactly what I had been
involved in. I began to see how they rely on their victims
keeping silent out of guilt, as in thinking that they didn't
have what it takes, out of shame over having been duped, or
out of fear of retaliation. And after hearing about the
attacks committed against former supporters in Baltimore, Atlanta,
and elsewhere, and after witnessing the fraud currently being
perpetrated upon minorities and the general American public
by this cult, I feel I can no longer remain silent.
Contrary to what Dr. Newman may claim, my coming out has been
a personal, individual decision--something I could never do
while in his so-called progressive cult. My intention
is not to discredit the values of any individuals who genuinely
desire progressive social change. There are many intelligent
and decent people who support and have even dedicated their
lives to issues which this cult purports to represent.
However, I think that people have the right to know who their
so-called leaders are and what they really stand for.
And I think they would want to know the degree to which Dr.
Newman controls this multi-million dollar movement.
I
intend to continue speaking out and to investigate and document
the cult‚s activities. While there have been a number
of insightful and informative articles written throughout the
years, no one has ever taken the time to fully document the
quarter century of exploitation and opportunism the cult has
enjoyed, and the extent to which it has hurt so many decent
people and causes. In fact, I think that the general attitude
of lax dismissal and silence is partial reason for the cult's
success.
I
hope that my speaking out will encourage other individuals formerly
involved to re-examine their own experience and to join me in
speaking out. I would also like to encourage those who
haven't been as lucky or those thinking of joining or contributing
to really check them out so you know what you're dealing with.
Marina
Ortiz
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*Cult
Awareness Network has been sued into bankruptcy and it's
name logo and phone number bought by Scientologists. Therefore,
please be forewarned that they are no longer a resource endorsed
by Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind.
