Special Report:
FRED NEWMAN, LENORA FULANI
AND THE ALL STARS PROJECT: WRONG
FOR NEW YORK’S CHILDREN AND TEENS
Why the City’s Industrial
Development Agency should reject Newman and Fulani’s application for $12.5
million in bond financing.
To the Board and Staff of the Industrial Development
Agency:
The All Stars Project, a youth charity controlled by radical activist Fred Newman and his sidekick Lenora Fulani, has applied to the IDA for $12.5 million in tax-free municipal financing, of which $8.3 million will go for refinancing All Stars’ 2002 IDA bonds, and $4.2 million for improvements to All Stars’ W. 42 St. theater, offices and youth performance center. The new bond is scheduled for approval at the IDA’s September 12, 2006 meeting.
I urge the IDA to take a step back from this deal and perform the kind of in-depth due diligence that should (on moral if not legal grounds) be mandatory before granting public funds to a controversial organization that works with vulnerable children and teenagers.
The report I am presenting to aid in such due diligence raises harsh questions about the leaders and staff of the All Stars Project, and whether they should be working with children and teens at all, much less whether they should receive public financing to do so. The questions relate to Newman’s “social therapy” and the collectivist cult that has evolved from the interactions of social therapists and their clients, the peculiar beliefs and practices of this cult (e.g., friendosexuality) and the cult’s history of exploiting and manipulating children, teens and parents through a variety of dubious programs dating back to the early 1970’s.
I presented an earlier, shorter version of this report to the Department of Youth and Community Development in opposition to a 2005 contract bid by All Stars to run an after-school program for middle- and high-school kids. The DYCD, which also received complaints from other sources, presented All Stars with a series of questions about the finances and living arrangements--and connections to social therapy--of the charity’s officers, staff and board of directors.
Rather than answer these questions (which were perfectly reasonable given the seriousness of the allegations and the fact that All Stars’ contract was for a program that would work with children), the charity’s president, Gabrielle Kurlander, sent a letter to the DYCD withdrawing the charity’s application. She cited as her reason the “abusive” and “intrusive” nature of the questions, which she said “read like an inquisition from [sic] Senator Joseph McCarthy” (Village Voice, Aug. 23, 2006). Apparently, Kurlander knew that it would be impossible to answer the questions truthfully without being rejected for the contract and suffering negative media coverage (which would inevitably cut into the millions of dollars All Stars raises from philanthropists and corporate giving departments each year).
Kurlander’s response to the DYCD inquiries raises an important question regarding the current bond deal. If the IDA decides to authorize a serious investigation of whether All Stars’ brand of youth work is a possible threat to the emotional development of children and teens, would the charity’s officers once again evade the questions? And if they did, would there remain then any possible justification for giving them $12.5 million in public financing at the expense of New York City’s taxpayers? There is only one way to find out--postpone the vote on the All Stars bond and authorize the thorough investigation that should have been, but wasn’t, undertaken prior to the first All Stars bond issue in 2002. Demand that the All Stars leadership answer the questions raised by this report, by the six-part NY1 News series on Newman and All Stars that aired last fall, and by the many former members of the Newman cult who say they were lied to, manipulated and exploited in the most egregious ways.
Some members of the IDA board may resist further investigation of All Stars because of the statement by Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, that Fred Newman has “distanced” himself from All Stars (Village Voice, Aug. 23). Loeser was referring to Newman’s announcement in December 2005 that he was resigning as artistic director of All Stars’ Castillo Theatre--a move apparently triggered by the negative reaction of wealthy All Stars donors to Newman’s remarks on NY1 News the previous month defending therapist-patient sexual relationships.
The notion that All Stars has somehow been sanitized by Newman’s resignation ignores the fact that Newman is basically a cult leader rather than a conventional not-for-profit executive. Given his unusual degree of influence over his followers, any titles or positions he holds or ceases to hold at All Stars (or at any other entity within his network) are irrelevant to his control of the entity in question, since his power basically flows from the loyalty (some would say the mindless obedience) of his followers. Here’s how it works at All Stars:
*Ms. Kurlander, Newman’s chief confidante and the number one woman in his informal harem since the late 1980s, is the president of All Stars.
*Robert Levy, All Stars board chairman, and Jeannine Hahn, All Stars CFO and COO, have both been loyal followers of Newman for over 15 years.
*Gail Elberg, All Stars director of volunteers, has been one of Newman’s “wives” for over 30 years.
*Pam Lewis, All Stars director of youth programs; Chris Street, director of development; Roger Grunwald, director of communications; Gloria Strickland, New Jersey All Stars director; and Lenora Fulani, co-director of All Stars’ Development School for Youth--all have followed Newman for 15 years or more.
*Diane Stiles, managing director of the Castillo Theatre, and Dan Friedman, the artistic director of Castillo’s youth drama program, both reside with Newman, Kurlander and Elberg in Newman’s townhouse on Bank Street. (So much for Newman’s “resignation” as Castillo’s artistic director--he has two housemates to be his surrogates.) Friedman and Stiles have been with Newman since the mid-1980s.
*Most other All Stars officers and staffers--and at least half of its 24 board members--are longtime Newman followers. Three of the board members, including another Newman “wife,” reside in the Bank Street household.
The decision regarding the All Stars bond should not be based on political spin from the Mayor’s office but on what’s best for the city and its kids. As the history of bizarre and manipulative behavior by the Newman cult indicates, the All Stars’ youth programs are an accident waiting to happen--and IDA approval of the All Stars bond will put the City of New York at risk of serious court action. When the first multimillion dollar lawsuit is filed by outraged parents on behalf of a child or teen allegedly victimized by All Stars, the plaintiffs will be able to point to this report and say that the City was forewarned and should have rejected the All Stars bond application but instead willfully and knowingly put children and teens at risk.
* * * * *
*
About the writer of this report: Mr.
King has tracked the Newman organization and other political cults since the
mid-1970s as a journalist, advocacy writer, and activist. He is the author of
Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism (Doubleday, 1989), the first
book-length study of a U.S. political cult. His work has appeared in the Wall
Street Journal, The New Republic and other national and local
publications. More of his findings and comments on the All Stars Project and
other Newman enterprises can be found at http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/ and http://lyndonlarouchewatchblog.typepad.com.
In preparing this report, Mr. King frequently consulted, and strongly recommends
to IDA board members and staffers, the vast web archive on the Newman cult at http://ex-iwp.org.
I. THE PEOPLE WHO CONTROL
ALL STARS ADVOCATE RADICALLY UNCONVENTIONAL VIEWS ON THE FAMILY AND
SEXUALITY--AND THEY PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH. GIVEN THE SPECIFIC NATURE OF THESE
BELIEFS AND PRACTICES, ALL STARS SHOULD NOT BE RECEIVING PUBLIC BONDS TO
FACILITATE ITS WORK WITH CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS.
A. Destroying the
“bourgeois family” and replacing it with the “development
community”
1. Fred Newman says: The bourgeois family’s as bad as
apartheid
2. Personal relationships versus the “group
mind” 3. Fred:
Monogamy is bourgeois selfishness 4. What is the “development
community”? 5. All Stars and other Newmanite programs for kids
are part of the development community B. Fred Newman’s doctrine
of
“friendosexuality” 1. How Fred explains it 2. How Fred practices it 3. Fred’s sexual relationships with his therapy
patients 4. Friendosex is polymorphous
sex 5. Friendosex among the Newmanite “grunts”
6. Friendosex, revolutionary organizing and IWP
“office politics” 7. Friendosexual art 8. Friendosex (and Catholic-bashing) on the
stage 9. Friendosexual gate receipts C. Exposure of kids in
Newmanite-run programs to friendosexual propaganda and role
models 1. Failure to maintain appropriate boundaries
between the All Stars youth programs and the sexually explicit adult
programs 2. Inviting kids to sexually explicit theater
performances 3. Newmanite sex advice for
teens 4. Newmanite sex advice for primary-school
children 5. Newman and his friendosexual housemates totally
control All Stars D. The Newman
organization’s opposition to its own members starting families or accepting
responsibility for the children they already have 1. Mother urged to put her child in foster care for
sake of the “revolution” 2. Abortion a revolutionary
duty? 3. Rationalizing child
abandonment 4. Social therapy devalues
parenting 5. Kids regarded as a “nuisance” by party
leaders 6. A father says: The cult almost killed my infant
son A. Overview by a former
IWP leader and All Stars Talent Show Network activist B. Programs for kids from
the 1970s through the 1990s 1. Centers for Change and “Grand Central
High” 2. The Barbara Taylor School 3. The SCAP Head Start program 4. The All Stars Talent Show Network (1980s and
1990s) 5. Social therapy for teens? One mother’s scary
experience C. The All Stars Project
and other current Newmanite youth programs 1. Recent allegations of emotional
abuse and bizarre behavior at All Stars 2. Social therapy and promotion of
friendosexuality continue to be part of the All Stars experience 3. All Stars, social therapy and
Newman-style sex education 4. All Stars pedagogy: Down with knowledge! 5. Are All Stars performers still just “poster kids”
for fund-raising purposes (and for a hidden political agenda)? 6. Does All Stars seek to recruit
kids to the “development community”? 7. The Castillo Theatre and the
Youth Onstage! Community Performance School 8. The “Let’s Talk About It”
social therapy program 9. The CUIP student internship
program III. THE PEOPLE WHO
CONTROL ALL STARS HAVE EXPRESSED CALLOUS VIEWS ON CHILD ABUSE, AND HAVE A
HISTORY OF PROVIDING POLITICAL AND LEGAL DEFENSE FOR CHILD MOLESTERS AND CHILD
ABUSERS. THESE VIEWS AND ACTIONS
SUGGEST THAT ALL STARS IS INCAPABLE OF PROPERLY SCREENING AND MONITORING THE
HUNDREDS OF ADULT VOLUNTEERS WHO PURPORTEDLY WORK IN ITS PROGRAMS, WHICH OFFER
SERVICES TO CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS FIVE.
IN EFFECT, ALL STARS IS AN ACCIDENT (AND AN EXPLOSION OF LAWSUITS)
WAITING TO HAPPEN, AND ITS APPLICATION FOR FURTHER MUNICIPAL FINANCING SHOULD BE
DENIED. A. Newmanite views on child abuse 1. Fulani says: Child abuse a
“liberal myth” 2. Fulani says: Abused child and
abusing adult are both the “victims” B. Political, legal and public relations defense of notorious
child abusers 1. The North American Man-Boy Love
Association (NAMBLA) 2. Kodzo DoBosu 3. Sue Simmonds 4. Tony Alamo 5. The Branch Davidians IV. THE PEOPLE WHO CONTROL ALL STARS ARE PART OF A
POLITICAL/PSYCHOTHERAPY CULT THAT PRACTICES A BLATANTLY UNETHICAL FORM OF
THERAPY IN PURSUIT OF SELF-STYLED REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL GOALS. GIVEN THE FACT THAT THIS THERAPY IS
PRACTICED ON YOUNG PEOPLE, AND THAT SOCIAL THERAPISTS WORK CLOSELY WITH ALL
STARS PROGRAMS, THE APPLICATION OF ALL STARS FOR FURTHER MUNICIPAL FINANCING
SHOULD BE DENIED.
A. Overview--Boundaries-free therapy B. Sex between therapists and patients is regarded as
permissible 1. New York Times interview
with Lenora Fulani 2. Observations of a former social
therapy patient 3. Therapist-patient romances used
as mechanism to break the patient away from the outside world 4. Fred Newman and his CFC
patients C. Therapists aggressively steer patients into sexualized
situations, make inappropriate sexual remarks to them, or give them
inappropriate sexual advice 1. Newman’s former newspaper
unabashedly described such manipulation 2. Inappropriate sexual advice 3. The experience of a
Philadelphia social therapy patient D. Social therapy as an instrument of political recruitment
and control E. Social therapists betray the confidences of their
patients F. Social therapists solicit volunteer work from their
patients on behalf of Newman’s political, charitable and artistic programs G. Social therapy is a tool for financial exploitation of
patients H. Social therapy as boot camp I. Social therapy:
the cult of Fred J. Fred says it’s all for the revolution K. Social therapy aims at total control of the individual
personality 1. The 1974 version 2. The year 2000 version (the
change, if any, is for the worse) L. The psychological results of having a “proletarian
ego” M. The practical results of having a “proletarian ego” V. A SIMPLE QUESTION FOR THOSE WHO WILL MAKE THE FINAL
DECISION ON THE ALL STARS BONDS:
WOULD YOU WANT THE PEOPLE WHO RUN ALL STARS TO SERVE AS MENTORS FOR
YOUR KIDS? A. Fred Newman, founder of All Stars B. Gabrielle (“Rie”) Kurlander, President of All Stars C. Lenora Fulani, co-founder of All Stars VI. CONCLUSION APPENDIX To fully comprehend what follows it is necessary to
understand first that the All Stars Project is controlled by a
psychotherapy/political cult led by Fred Newman, a former philosophy professor,
with the help of Lenora Fulani, a developmental psychologist. Their cult
embraces a network of interrelated organizations, including social therapy
clinics, All Stars and other youth charities, and political fronts such as the
New York County Independence Party. At the core of this network is a secretive
Marxist group known as the “International Workers Party” or “IWP” (and referred
to euphemistically as the “tendency,” the “cadre,” or the “core”). All of the entities within this “development community” (as
Newman calls it) work together as one machine. The social therapy clinics
shuttle patients into the youth charity work and from thence into the party;
likewise, the youth work shuttles both adult volunteers and teens into social
therapy and from thence into the party. Most social therapists are party members
and regard themselves first and foremost as recruiters for the revolution. The
entire network, including the IWP, is completely dominated by its founder, Mr.
Newman. Although his chief public spokesperson, Ms. Fulani, is African-American,
over three-quarters of the members are white and middle class, including Mr.
Newman. In this Part I we will examine how Mr. Newman’s strange group
and its belief system place children and teens at risk of abuse, exploitation,
indoctrination, and recruitment. Readers who are familiar with how cults operate
can start in immediately on this section. Those who are unfamiliar with the
nature of cults may find it useful to first read Part IV, which documents the
typical cultic features of the Newman group’s social therapy. A. Destroying the “bourgeois family” and replacing it with
the “development community” 1. Fred Newman says:
The bourgeois family’s as bad as apartheid The reorganization of
intimacy (serious therapists can speak of nothing less) has as a
precondition the collective destruction of the network of institutions which
prevent intimacy. When Reagan (like Hitler) calls for the return to old family
values, it is plain that what is really being asked for is a great leap forward
into deadly fascism. Hence the destruction of the bourgeois family is in fact
the progressive act of smashing an institution which has evolved more and more
over recent decades into a tool of political and social reaction. Destroying the
bourgeois family is no more negative than destroying the U.S. nuclear
arsenal or capital punishment or apartheid. It is, indeed, a distinctly positive
act.
--Fred Newman, “So How’s the Family?” The New York
Alliance, Oct. 17, 1983 [emphasis added]. [Earlier in this article Newman
repeatedly referred to the bourgeois family as the “modern” family, which
suggests he aims not just at replacing nuclear families of a supposedly
reactionary character but the nuclear family, period.]
“How do we solve the problem [of
the supposedly reactionary and bourgeois family],” continued Dr. Newman,
“without accepting the family arrangement? Social therapy does that every day
by insisting that we not revert, in our way out of the problem, to the authority
and bogus legitimacy of the bourgeois family. Now that’s an extremely hard
thing to give up. Even in times such as these, our tendency--we have been
socialized this way--is to look for the more conservative solution. This is true
of masses of people as it is true for family units. But if we don’t actively
challenge the authoritarian family, if we do not attempt to create new kinds
of social arrangements that allow both for human intimacy and for the
progressive social advancement of our society, then we will wind up
overdetermined down a very unhappy, unintimate, and ultimately reactionary
road.”
--“Family In Crisis? Time for a ‘Revolutionary’ Cure,”
unsigned, The New York Alliance, Oct. 17, 1983 [emphasis added]. [Note that Newman calls not for new
kinds of families but for new kinds of “social arrangements.”]
2. Personal relationships versus the “group mind”
The antifamily philosophy was reinforced over and
over by [social] therapists. Patients were taught to resent all personal
relationships (with therapists denouncing partners as engaging in “coupling”);
the idea obviously being that one or two people could present a threat to the
“group mind”….As such, I alienated myself from relatives and old friends and the
cult became my total existence. --Marina J. Ortiz, “Slave to a Dream: Inside the
International Workers Party,” ex-iwp.org, 2003. [Note that in the Newmanite
lexicon the word “coupling” does not refer merely to sexual intercourse but is a
pejorative term meaning those in or around the IWP who attempt to pair off in
loving relationships (either married or unmarried) as opposed to giving most of
their energy and devotion to the political collective. Ms. Ortiz was a social
therapy client and member of the Newman cult in the late 1980s and early
1990s.] 3. Fred:
Monogamy is bourgeois selfishness “If I’m invested in that being
my lamp, then if you fuck with it and take it for your room, I’m jealous
because it’s my lamp. If it’s my fuck, it doesn’t have to do with
sex, it has to do with my. That’s mine. You touched my sex object!… “That’s what bourgeois sexuality
is all about. It’s so childlike and fundamentally possessive. It’s like saying,
‘How could you dare touch that person’s vagina or penis when you touched mine?’
Why not?” --Fred Newman, quoted in
Freda Rosen, “An Interview on Love and Sex with Dr. Fred Newman,” The
National Alliance,” Feb. 16, 1989. 4. What is the “development community”? If you want to talk about social
change, if you want to talk seriously about revolution, we have to deal with how
we’re going to get people to desire to make one. That raises the “personal”
issues of desire, of attraction, of what people need and want, and why. A lot of leftist friends of mine say you don’t have
to deal with that. They say that somehow historic necessity swoops down upon us
and we go out and make a revolution. I don’t think that’s ever happened
anywhere. I think that what actually happens is that a community is created
wherein people can not only transform their desires, attractions and wants as
many of us did in the ‘60s, but can transform their very understanding of
attractions, desires, wants and needs so that they come to be expressive of a
class-for-itself and not a class against, or worst still, not against, capital.
We have to be sure that we do not disregard that critical intermediate step. --Fred Newman, quoted in Phyllis Goldberg, “Newman Speaks Out
on the Political and the Personal:
Organizing Desire, Building a Freedom Movement,” The National
Alliance, November 1, 1985. 5. All Stars
and other Newmanite programs for kids are part of the development
community Over the past 20 years, this developing development
community and its independent institutions has grown dramatically, from one
apartment complex in New York City to social therapy centers in several U.S.
cities, from a handful of people to tens of thousands. Its work is now
multifaceted and includes a research, training, and education center (the East
Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy and its Center for Developmental
Learning); the largest community-based cultural organization for inner-city
youth in the country (the All Stars Talent Show Network); a highly respected
multicultural off-off-Broadway theater (the Castillo Theatre); a small
alternative press (Castillo International); a Vygotskian-influenced laboratory
elementary school (the Barbara Taylor School); teen pregnancy and abuse
prevention programs in preschools and public schools; and more. --Lois Holzman, Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives
to Current Educational Models, Mahway, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1997, p. 12. [Holzman, a development psychologist, All Stars
consultant and member of the IWP, has been Newman’s chief theoretical
collaborator for over 20 years. Her claim that the Newmanite community embraces
“tens of thousands” of members is preposterous.] 1. How Fred
explains it “There are people I love dearly
and we have sex. What’s critical is not that we have sex, but that I love them
dearly, and they love me dearly. What’s critical is that we’re dear friends,
that we’re there for each other. If they’re being friends with other people and
if part of those friendships includes physicality, I don’t have a problem with
that. I have too much love for the people I’m intimate with to degrade those
relationships by transforming them into possessions…. “When I sometimes raise the issue of people having
sex with friends, frequently they say, ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to mess up that
friendship by having sex.’ That’s very revealing about where sex and friendship
are at in this culture. The message is, I don’t want to have sex with a friend
because what sex is about is being abusive…. “My commitment is to sleeping only with
friends. Sleeping only with friends isn’t the same as sleeping with
all of one’s friends. A friendosexual only sleeps with friends, but not
all friends. I’m a friendosexual!” --Fred Newman, quoted in Freda Rosen, “An Interview on Love
and Sex with Dr. Fred Newman,” The National Alliance,” Feb. 16, 1989.
[Ex-members of the Newman cult say that this was all calculated to get the
maximum number of women for Fred himself at the expense of the wimpy men in the
group, and to steer members away from living as couples or getting married and
having children, which would result in his not being able to control them as
easily or get them to work such long hours for such low stipends.] 2. How Fred practices it a. Kellie Gasink’s recollections Gasinke [sic] said part of Newman’s indoctrination
is he frequently makes passes at women whom he favors in NAP. “He made a pass at
me,” she said. “He just started kissing me. Newman believes in
‘Friendo-sexuality.’ When I was in the organization he had taken on his sixth
wife. He has communist weddings where he would have non-legal ceremonies. They
are also told not to associate with their families. You are told not to ‘do
family’ and you’re supposed to [not believe] in being a couple. That
relationship is considered bourgeoisie. The only social life is NAP and the
therapy group.” --Lucas Rivera, “Political Guru: Fred Newman Exposed,” The
City Sun, Sept. 15, 1993. [Gasink was one of several members of Newman’s
underground revolutionary party who quit in disillusionment in the early 1990s
and went to the media and law enforcement with their complaints. “NAP” in the
above quote is the New Alliance Party, an electoral front which Newman’s cadre
group disbanded in order to infiltrate the New York Independence Party.] b. Fred boasts
to a reporter He [Newman] lives in an
ivy-covered brownstone in Greenwich Village, which he co-purchased with a female
friend for $920,000 in 1993. Mr. Newman lives in a unit with Ms. Kurlander. The
rest of the place is occupied by two men and nine women, some of whom Mr. Newman
has been involved with over the years. “I feel very good and proud about
it,” he said. “I think it’s disgraceful the way people who have intimate
relationships break up and then hate each other for life. I find that very
offensive.” I said his living arrangements sounded like every
man’s dream. “These are my dearest, dearest
friends and colleagues, co-workers,” he said, “who’ve invested millions of
hours to build the All-Stars Talent Show Network. That’s who we’re talking
about here, and many of these people are women, and in the case of some of them,
but not all of them, we’ve been close in all kinds of ways, including
physically, and I feel thrilled about that.” --George Gurley, “Therapy Guru Fred Newman Charms Loyal
Followers and Pat Buchanan,” The New York Observer, Dec. 6, 1999
[emphasis added]. [NOTE: The
“female friend” who helped Newman purchase the brownstone is Dr. Susan Massad, a
member of the All Stars board of directors and, until the fall of 2005, its
chairperson. For more on Newman’s peculiar household, see I.C.5 below.] c. Fred’s
rationalization Women have saved my life and made
my life. I have no wives. But I am terribly, terribly in love and empowered by
all the women I live with. --Fred Newman, “Women I Live With,” Practice, Winter
1990. 3. Fred’s sexual relationships with his therapy
patients Fred Newman lives by his own rules. He says monogamy
and marriage aren’t for him. “I don’t think it’s any of the state’s business who
my dearest loves are and how I relate to another human being and give to them
and receive from them,” he says. Newman calls them his dearest loves, the women he
lives with in his West Village townhouse. He admits some of the women
initially came to him for psychological help. Newman treats patients in
Social Therapy, his self-created field of psychotherapy. “Some of them were in therapy,
yeah,” he says. But mainstream psychologists say
it’s unethical for therapists to have sex with their patients because it
violates personal boundaries and trust…. “I think that people’s sexual relationships should
be something very personal between the people who are engaging in it, and I
think if people love each other, care for each other, are attracted to each
other and decide together that that they want to have sex, they should,” he
says. “[Does it matter that it’s a patient and a therapist?] I think sexual
relationships are relationships between human beings, not human beings under
certain descriptions or in certain categories. I believe that people should fall
in love as they so desire, and if they want to include in that sexuality, they
should include that.” --“Psychopolitics”:
Inside the Independence Party of Fred Newman, Nov. 2, 2005 (Part Three of
a six-part NY1 News series produced by Rita Nissan) http://ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?&aid=54694.
[NOTE: According to IWP
defectors, Newman has been seducing female social therapy patients for almost 40
years. Newman has kept some of them close, the ex-IWPers say, in order to use
them as political or business flunkies who turn over their incomes to the
collective and receive modest stipends in return. Among Newman’s
patients-turned-lovers are All Stars President Gabrielle Kurlander and several
other All Stars board members and top staffers.] 4. Friendosex is polymorphous sex Rather than regarding homosexuality as being determined
mostly by biology and the pre-natal environment, the Newmanites regard it
chiefly as a political phenomenon--a willful rebellion against bourgeois society
that can and should be encouraged through ideological indoctrination. To
Newman’s party cadre (including the social therapists, who are supposed to
function essentially as political organizers of their patients), the framing of
homosexuality as a political phenomenon means it’s okay to encourage
recruits/patients to change their sexual preference artificially (from straight
to gay or from either straight or gay to bisexual). When Newman’s theory of sexual preference as politically
grounded was initially raised in his publications in the late 1980s, it elicited
strong criticism from gay and lesbian journalists, who regarded the Newmanite
outlook as similar to the conservative Christian view of homosexuality as a
willful engagement in sinful behavior that can be corrected through prayer and
Bible study. For the new recruit to Newman’s IWP, preference switching is
a means of fitting into and being accepted by the collective. It is also a step
in the process by which recruits sever their ties with their past lives, discard
their old individualistic identities, and become reborn as units of the
collective’s “group mind.” One might add that, for veteran IWP cadre, the
ability to “perform” homosexuality and then to turn around and “perform”
heterosexuality (like an actor in a Castillo Theatre play) could be useful in
the individual organizer’s work with lonely or disoriented outsiders, enabling
him or her to flirt with or seduce targeted persons as the first step in
recruiting them and/or raising donations from them or using them as pawns in the
IWP’s political maneuvers. Artificial preference switching is not unique to the
Newmanites--the Weather Underground leaders encouraged it in the 1970s to keep
their followers isolated from the outside world and to bond them with each other
as a select band. Newman, however, adds a utopian dimension. Those who embrace
preference-switching or bisexuality within his development community are acting
as the vanguard of the largely bisexual lifestyle that Newman believes will
prevail in the “freer” society to come (i.e., his “postmodern” version of
Marxist-Leninist class dictatorship), blocking any return by society to the
“reactionary” capitalism-breeding lifestyle of the nuclear family. a. Sexual preference as an extension of revolutionary
politics One of the consequences of the social and political
destabilization of late twentieth century capitalism is a protest against social
crisis and the extreme oppressiveness of social relations. This is what, in our
view, homosexuality is. --Mary Fridley, “Homophobia and the Rise of Neo-Fascism in
the United States,” Practice, 1985. “We do not believe that [homosexuality is]
genetic,” concurs Legal Service Director of the New Alliance Community Services
(NACS) in New York City, Alvaader Frazier, “because we think that that is the
Right Wing’s position, and they have used that to call for our extermination….So
our position--get it clear!--is that it’s a radical political choice that makes
a very radical, political social protest.” --Masha Gessen, “‘Radical Social Protest’: NAP and the Gay Community,” Next
Magazine, Aug. 31, 1988. [Alvaader Frazier was a ranking member of the IWP
expressing the party line.] b. Cult-induced bisexuality and preference-switching Another issue is how so many women (and men) who’d
been “straight” all their lives decided to “come out” as lesbian or gay after a
time in the cult. Many of them swung back and forth, while some never looked
back at the opposite sex. --Anonymous posting on the ex-iwp.org Forum, August 26,
2003. The IWP constantly organizes and reorganizes sex and
intimacy among its cadre and sympathizers, including “sex” that does not involve
two individuals sleeping with each other. I saw it as a potentially wonderful
tool of empowerment.…My disappointment was that it was more of what I later
identified as the shell game, the “bait and switch.” Because the IWP cadre(s) in
command of a given organization or activity are who called the shots as to what
was “preferred.” Anyone not so inclined is then prey to badgering, ridicule,
isolation. Democratic centralism in the bedroom? No, thank
you! --Anonymous posting on the ex-iwp.org Forum, August 28,
2003. Most gay- and lesbian-identified NAP activists state
that they came out before getting involved with NAP--making the inherent
political choice unconsciously. For some, like NAP New York City Medical
Director Dr. Susan Massad, the choice was a conscious one, which followed their
initiation into NAP. “When I came out,” recalls Massad, “was basically when I
said, I just don’t want to do the family stuff any more…I had absolutely no
connection with being a lesbian before that.” --Masha Gessen, “’Radical Social Protest’: NAP and the Gay Community,” Next
Magazine, Aug. 31, 1988. [NOTE:
Dr. Massad brought her two young daughters into the cult with her,
presumably so that they, too, would no longer have to “do the family stuff.” One
of these IWP-raised daughters would later become a member of Fred Newman’s
personal staff. Dr. Massad today is a member of the All Stars board of directors
and served as its chairperson prior to the fall of 2005.] c. All Stars child development expert finds it all
“playful” In 1992, the National Alliance asked various
Newmanites to comment on the campaign slogan “Fulani for Prez: She’s a Sexual Preference,” which was
celebrated by All Stars Talent Show Network teens in a Gay Pride Parade float
that year. Lois Holzman, the developmental psychologist who is Newman’s closest
theoretical collaborator and serves as a consultant for All Stars on how to work
with children, replied as follows: I really love the slogan: I think it is very playful. And it’s
also serious. Like Dr. Fulani. It plays with traditional categories and
boundaries. Saying that she’s a sexual preference is odd--how can an individual
be a sexual preference? For who? Gay people? Straight people? It embodies the
movement that she is leading because we won’t settle for the traditional
understanding of preference, which means choosing among choices you already
have. --“Fulani for Prez:
She’s a Sexual Preference. What Does It Mean?” The National
Alliance, July 2, 1992. d. The result:
Beyond weird I too noticed bizarre behavior around sex and gender
roles. One thing that struck me was that many of the “in” people who claimed to
have been heterosexual when they met the group would now “go either way.” I also
found it weird that my main social therapy contact started asking me personal
questions to “feel me out” about my previous sexual history, and to see if I
felt a certain way about “the other way.” My responses led to them probing
further, wanting to dig deeper into my reactions, as if they needed to be
deconstructed. I also saw [social therapy] clients who claimed to be openly gay
now due to social therapy. This could be good, if they indeed were conflicted
before, but I worry about the influence that environment exerts on people’s
sexual choices. There was definitely a feeling there that it didn’t matter, one
should be open minded and go either way, not ascribe to any identity. Fine for
people who choose to do that but like everything else around there, subtle kinds
of manipulation, “milieu control” may foster changes in people they didn’t set
out to make in the first place. I too noticed my main social therapy “friend”
changing back and forth, acting one way with me in private, with the public
another. I saw them interacting in so many different ways depending on who they
were with, I felt like I would never truly know that person. Probably it started
to become automatic, but I feel it was a behavior that was developed as part of
the “social therapy seduction act.” Be whatever you need to be to attract that
person and get them in. --Anonymous posting on the ex-iwp.org Forum, August 27,
2003. e. “Performing” homosexuality [I]n line with the tendency’s [IWP’s] demand for
money, straight men assigned to raise money in the West Village or at gay events
were often counseled (i.e., pressured) by their political superiors to don
earrings, skimpy tee-shirts, and spandex biker shorts (which accentuated their
genitals), so that they could “pass” for gay--all the while sneering at the gay
community because the party doesn’t believe you’re really “gay” unless you
support the NAP (IWP, etc.). --Robert Cohen,
letter submitted to the New York Amsterdam News, Sept. 12, 1993, full
text at ex-iwp.org. f. Bisexual communism? “I think in a freer society you’d have people being
attracted to and living with and making friends with whoever--same sex,
different sex. That’s a society I’d like to see happen some day. A point I’m
trying to make is that homosexuality is in some sense more exciting and advanced
sexually precisely because it is a challenge to the existing social arrangement.
That’s not to imply that if there weren’t the existing social arrangement there
wouldn’t be homosexuality. In fact, if the existing social arrangement didn’t
hold there’d be many more people who’d be having sex which is now identified as
homosexual. Hopefully in that world you’d no longer define it as homosexuality
but simply human beings having sex and hopefully they’d be friends.” --Fred Newman, quoted in Freda Rosen, “An Interview
on Love and Sex with Dr. Fred Newman,” The National Alliance, Feb. 16,
1989. [In spite of the above rhetoric, Newman hastens to repeat no less than
three times in the interview that he himself is not, not, not
gay.] 5. Friendosex among the Newmanite “grunts” The sexual lives of cadre members were also
degraded. Like most figures who arose from the sexual revolution of the 1960s,
Newman preached free sex. With a few half-digested quotes from Engels’ writings
on the bourgeois family and a little feminism thrown in, he fashioned a moral
line within the IWP that attacked couplings--heterosexual or gay--as
“oppositional” to the Tendency. Marriages of new cadre were regularly broken up
through “couples counseling.” IWP members were encouraged to have sex, but to
avoid forming lasting emotional relationships. The pressure was placed upon
cadre to live as sexual atoms, seeking physical gratification whenever desired
and convenient. --William Pleasant, “Fred Newman: ‘Communism Is Dead, I Killed It!’” 1993,
available at ex-iwp.org. [W]hat people are not talking
about is how often sex is used to “organize” people new to the cult. I remember
seeing women “leaders” flirting whenever they encountered well-known political
leaders and businessmen. It’s a known fact that the “newbies” were all pounced
on by the lifers when they arrived at Castillo for “training.” These people are
so starved for real intimacy and attention so it’s not surprising. --Anonymous posting on the ex-iwp.org Forum, August 26,
2003. Sex was also used as a means of recruiting new cadre
and gaining influence over high status males--particularly men-of-color. For
example [a former NAP leader] was recruited by a team of IWP women….Seduction
became a chief tactic in the Rainbow Lobby’s international liaison work with
progressive foreign government officials and revolutionary representatives. For
lower status males and females, sex was viewed as a tool for rising in the party
hierarchy. By copulating with the appropriate high status cadre, they could get
“closer to Fred.” Their role models were the women who serviced Newman. --William Pleasant, “Fred Newman: ‘Communism Is Dead, I Killed It!’” 1993,
available at ex-iwp.org. 7.
Friendosexual art When you walk out of the elevator into the lobby
(which doubles as a gallery) of the Castillo Cultural Center these days, you’re
surrounded by sex. Collective Sex, to be precise. Collective Sex is a series of
large, brightly colored paintings with provocative titles--“Nancy Shows Her Tits
to the Sanitation Workers,” “Sex For Itself,” “Sexercise”--produced by Nancy
Green, Judy Penzer, Elena Borstein and Dr. Fred Newman, all members of the
Castillo Collective. The artists--Green, Penzer and Borstein traditionally
trained painters, Newman taught by them--have developed what they call
“performance painting,” a “dialectical synthesis between painting (the activity)
and performance (the activity).” And the show is exactly what you’d like to
think “good sex” is all about…open, uninhibited, joyous…as the paintings invite
you to jump in and join the marvelous sexual jumble of naked bodies that come
alive on the giant canvasses. --Mary Fridley, “Sexy pictures sold here,” The National
Alliance, November 8, 1990. [In the page layout of this issue, the New
Alliance Party’s “Youth and Democracy Campaign Calendar,” aimed primarily at All
Stars talent show kids, is directly underneath the “Sexy pictures” article.] What are three nice girls like
Nancy Green, Janet Weigel and Dawn Friend doing in a place like this (“this”
being the Kit Kat Club, a not-quite-reputable striptease club in a play called
The Store: One Block East of Jerome that opens at the Castillo Cultural
Center on March 8)? Taking it all off for the working
class, that’s what. And while all three members of the Castillo
collective are looking forward to their nightly performance, they will be the
first to tell you that it doesn’t come naturally. Green, a painter and the
curator of the Castillo gallery, grew up “very religious” in a white working
class-heading-into-lower-middle-class Catholic family in Pennsylvania. Weigel,
an actress, was also brought up Catholic in a “very repressed” small midwestern
town. Friend, a working class lesbian who works for the Castillo video team, was
the daughter of upwardly mobile Black parents in an isolated New Jersey suburb.
In short, they know from repression. Not just any repression--working class repression.
The very particular, historically specific repression of a class that,
because of its loyalty to the church and family (and other like-minded
institutions), has rarely challenged the perverse thing known as “morality”
(yet another cruel invention of those who rule this sick and corrupted
society)…. “Taking off your clothes is hard,” agrees Green.
“How could it not be? The Catholic Church is anti-sex. The message is ‘deny your
sexuality and all joy of living.’ I did. And when you do, you become very spaced
out about sexuality, which Paula [Green’s character] is--she can’t even handle a
conversation with a man. She’s so repressed that she’s crazy. She doesn’t know
what’s going on. There’s a lot of pent-up rage, which I turned against myself.
So taking my clothes off is an expression of wanting to go all the way, which
for me means taking seriously how repressed I’ve been and doing everything I can
to change that. “We discovered a lot of things in our work,”
continues the 37 year old artist/activist. “For example, we discovered that
there is actually a very small difference between having your clothes on and not
having your clothes on--between showing your tit and not showing your tit…. “It took a long time to learn how to say ‘dirty’
words,” Green said. “There are enormous prohibitions--for example, sex is
supposed to take place in the bedroom, under certain conditions.…[I]t became
clear that if we were going to engage sex, we would have to talk to each other
about parts of bodies. So we started looking at certain parts of the body--what
do you call them? Once we got started, all of us knew the dozens and dozens of
words that you don’t hear except on the street or in private. Words like cock,
pussy, tits, boobs, snatch, dick”…. But why nudity? “Because it’s there,” Weigel states
very firmly. “It’s on everyone’s minds and no one can talk about it. We have to
take it on and open up sex and our sexual repression and our sexuality. We’ve
got to get dirty”…. And that’s what’s so powerful and sexy about Janet
Weigel, Nancy Green, Madelyn Chapman, Diane Stiles, Dawn Friend, Fred
Newman--six revolutionaries who are taking it all off for the class. Because if
you’re not willing to strip for the class, how are you gonna make a
revolution? --Mary Fridley, “Working class sex, part I: What turns on the
working class?” The National Alliance, Feb. 28, 1991 [emphasis
added]. When I saw a postcard [in 2002] advertising a Fred
Newman play as part of the Unfiltered Fringe, I was extremely upset….The play is
called The Store: One Block East of Jerome and bills itself thus: “Thirty years
after the sexual revolution, feminism meets striptease.” It’s a no-brainer for
the Newmanites: Nudity will bring ‘em in, and Fred Newman’s manipulative
philosophy will handle the seduction. --Liz Spikol, “Boycott This Play! We should not support
Social Therapy in any way,” Philadelphia Weekly, Sept. 4, 2002. C. Exposure
of kids in Newmanite-run programs to friendosexual propaganda and role
models Much of the Newmanite sex-o-talk is just downright silly from
an adult point of view, and much of the behavior that accompanies such talk
could be dismissed as merely the typical self-expression of bohemian radicals,
except for two things: (1) it is being elicited artificially by psychotherapists
and a cult leader from patients and followers who probably otherwise would have
eschewed such behavior; and (2) it occurs in close proximity to the cult’s youth
programs (which work with children as young as five) and thus inevitably
influences some of the kids in these programs. 1. Failure to
maintain appropriate boundaries between the All Stars youth programs and the
sexually explicit adult programs In January 1991, the Castillo Center became the “producer” of
the All Stars Talent Show Network, which even then worked with children as well
as teenagers. In an article in June of that year, The National Alliance
stated that since Castillo took charge of the youth program “between 60-80 young
people meet every Saturday morning at the center on Greenwich Street before
going out to do community service. Many go out on the street with adult
volunteers [this would include Castillo volunteers--DK] to raise money.” The
article quotes Newmanite developmental psychologist Lois Holzman as saying: “The
All Stars is Castillo.” (Mary Fridley and Dan Friedman, “New Yorkers Give
It Up For All Stars,” The National Alliance, June 20, 1991.) But the adults at Castillo who now shared the facility with
All Stars and were now apparently mentoring All Stars kids were also
aggressively promoting their highly sexualized agenda on the premises. For
instance, in March of 1991 kids coming to volunteer on weekends might have
encountered, in the entrance area, the art exhibit “Collective Sex Again,” a
continuation of the adult exhibit displayed the previous fall (see I.B.7 above).
A reviewer in the March 21 issue of the National Alliance described how Newman
and the other painters “created…a swirling mass of bodies and sensuous
shapes--right in front of our eyes. And more important, they invited us to join
them (I went for the ass myself).” Meanwhile the Newmanites were trying to whip
up audiences for Fred’s raunchy new Castillo play “The Store: One Block East of
Jerome.” For instance, Mary Fridley followed up her Feb. 28 review (see I.B.8
above) with an utterly bizarre article the following month: C’mere. I want to tell you
something. Can you come a little closer? After all, we’ve been pretty intimate
these past few weeks, so I wanted you to be the first to know. I had great
sex this weekend. So did a lot of my friends and colleagues. So did a lot of
their friends. We had some great sex this weekend and I’d really like to
tell you all about it. Or better yet, I’d like to show you. I’d like to
show you all the ways we did it, all the places we did it in, and the women and
men we did it with. I’d like to show you the passion, the excitement, the love,
the tenderness, the pain, the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the nakedness, the
compassion, the humiliation, the humanity and much, much more. But it’s not so
simple. In fact, it’s pretty damned hard. When you’re taught to look through
emotional peepholes and call that living, it’s pretty scary to fling the door
wide open.… C’mere. I’m going to show you how Fred Newman, and
the revolutionary tendency he has led for over 20 years, are doing sex. --Mary Fridley, “Working class sex, part III: The Show Must
Go On,” The National Alliance, March 21, 1991. [NOTE:
This hypersexualized article in the Newmanites’ free weekly would
have been readily available to the All Stars children and teens who passed in
and out of Castillo’s then headquarters on Greenwich Street; and, since the
article was graced by a photo of two nude social-therapy actresses, a large
percentage of the teenage boys doubtless read it avidly. (And then they went out
on the streets to raise money with mentors who advocated this stuff???) Over the
next few years “The Store” and other sexually explicit plays by Newman became
part of the standard repertoire of the Castillo Theatre, while at the same time
Castillo became more and more closely integrated with the All Stars youth
programs through youth theater projects.] 2. Inviting kids to sexually explicit theater
performances Once [in
2001] I was at a meeting with several social therapists where they were
discussing the issues of their recent “street performance” (where they and
some of their social therapy patients would ask passers-by for money for
Newman’s plays or other Newman related projects like All Stars). The issue was
raised about how to relate to people with kids or young people who might go by
(whether or not to invite them to an upcoming Newman play) and I expressed deep
concern since the play and many of his others clearly contained explicit,
totally inappropriate, adult material that I certainly would not want to expose
to kids (it was offensive enough for many adults as it was!!!). The
social therapists looked offended that I would say such a thing and a heated
argument ensued. One of them used to repeat to me a quote she liked from Fred
Newman, something to the effect that “we were raised in a pond and today’s kids
were raised in an ocean... and we are trying to teach them to swim!”
Basically, they wanted us to think that youth today don’t need protection, that
they have seen it all. I wasn’t yet completely aware at that point what the
Newman political agenda was so the quote made sense when they were talking about
incredibly streetwise kids who had endured incredible hardships, but in fact
we were talking about exposing this to everyday families out walking on the
weekends in friendly parts of town with pedestrians, or to little kids with
their mothers! They [the social therapists] are zealous supporters of
Fred Newman and I don’t think they will stop at anything when it comes to
raising money for Newman events or recruiting people. They just don’t see
kids as in some sort of category where they need to be sheltered. I believe
that kids who don’t already have strong advocates at home are likely to be
very vulnerable to Newman’s program because the social therapy trained staff can
be very intimidating and convincing and the bottom line about social therapy is
that it is about organizing people into Newman’s Marxist-Leninist social
movement. --Erika Van
Meir, email to Dennis King, August 16, 2005 [emphasis added]. 3. Newmanite sex advice for teens a. The “Sexually Speakin’” column The cult’s attitude regarding sexual advice to teens goes
back many years. A teacher at a Bronx high school wrote to The New York
Alliance, the NAP newspaper, in 1983 suggesting that the paper’s “Sexually
Speakin’” column was having a “detrimental effect” by encouraging
“impressionable youth…to be sexually promiscuous.” The teacher suggested that
“young people are not prepared (either developmentally or economically) to face
the outcomes of their premature sexual indulgence” and referred to the
“fragility” of their “as-yet-to-be-consolidated egos.” The Newmanite columnist replied as
follows: Who are these youth whose sex life
you find of such pressing “concern”? They are the youth you work with, for whom
“get a good education to get a good job” is meaningless, since both are
increasingly impossible for them….[W]hy aren’t you concerned that all they’re
allowed to have is sex! Feeling sexy and attractive, being attracted, and having
physical contact and sexual intimacy is the most pleasurable and
fulfilling activity that your students can make happen. In fact, it’s one of the
only fulfilling things they can make happen…. [T]he lives of you and your students are more
closely linked than you would care to think. After all, if you spend each day in
a place where what’s going on (creatively speaking) is sex, and your posture is
to “stand above” it all and make pronouncements about the decadent tragedy of it
all, you are not in a very potent position, either at work or at home…It can’t
be that you are so “out of it” in your work and then so “in it” in bed.… Obviously you and your students
are not able to do much of anything (much less change anything) together,
given how your relationship is currently organized. This column can help to
create a climate where students and teachers, working class and professionals,
can change their relationships to one another. For you and your students, my
column could be a vehicle for all of you to move closer by talking about what is
going on--namely SEX! --Freda Rosen, “A Touch of Class,” The New York
Alliance, May 16, 1983. b. Recent promotion of the friendosexual ideal among
teenagers (1) The All Stars Project has published, and promotes among
teens as well as adults, Newman’s Let’s Develop!, a book that advocates
friendosexuality, comparing it to the sandbox play of toddlers In social therapy, we help men and
women to do sex quite differently. I sometimes, playfully, call this activity
friendosexuality. It’s a game that everyone --men and women, gay people and
straight people--can play. Friendosexuality means playing the sex game with a
good friend instead of engaging in getting behavior with someone who is,
effectively, a stranger (even if you’ve been sharing the same bed, and the same
name, for the last 15 years). The way that very young children
play is the model for friendosexuality. Three-year-olds and four-year-olds
create contexts for playing with their friends in which what they do--like
rolling a ball back and forth to each other or spilling sand on one
another--isn’t guiltily perceived, morally overdetermined, or rooted in
humiliation….[T]he social therapeutic approach helps people do sex how
the youngest children do playing. --Fred Newman with Phyllis Goldberg, Let’s Develop! A
Guide to Continuous Personal Growth, New York: Community Literary Research
Project (previous name of the All Stars Project), 1994, p. 72. [NOTE: I personally witnessed this book
being hawked aggressively to adults and teens in the lobby of Town Hall in
Manhattan after a free lecture by Fred Newman in 2003 attended by dozens of
teenagers who apparently had been brought to the event by the All Stars Project.
Also in the early 2000s, a researcher working for me obtained entrance to a
Development School for Youth luncheon for teens, their parents and wealthy
donors at which Let’s Develop! was promoted for sale. Recently the book
could be seen on display in the window at the new All Stars center on W.
42nd Street in Manhattan; a friend of mine purchased a copy there in
December 2005. --DK] DSY trolls for participants…in the
high schools of these low status communities, many of them schools with the
worst achievement records in the city. The initiation of this program shows
great promise. The curriculum, a continually developing entity, still lacks some
of the incremental building of skills one upon another that would enhance its
already effective delivery….In addition, while some students indicate that they
benefited from reading the text Let’s Develop, others had difficulty
identifying with the characters and contexts used for illustration. We suggest
that the organization write its own text, with input from the young people who
have come through the program. --Edmund W. Gordon, Carol Bonilla Bowman and Brenda X. Mejia,
“Changing the Script for Youth Development: An Evaluation of the All Stars Talent
Show Network and the Joseph A. Forgione Development School for Youth,” Institute
for Urban and Minority Education (Columbia University Teachers College), June
2003, pp. 97-98. c. A school
psychologist’s opinion on Newmanite sex education for teens Social therapists have in the past conducted, and
apparently continue to conduct, a form of “sex education” that is every parent’s
nightmare: an ideologically driven
attempt to undo years of parental proscriptions at the most vulnerable time in
an adolescent’s development. In effect, the social therapist becomes a role
model and substitute parent who panders to the most chaotic tendencies in
teenage life in hopes of finding new recruits for the Newmanite life style. --Statement by New York school psychologist/family therapist,
August 20, 2005. d. Recent All
Stars production on patient-therapist sex was wildly inappropriate for a
theater/youth drama program where social therapists interact with teens In May-June 2006, the All Stars Project’s Castillo Theatre,
which shares facilities with the charity’s youth programs and is closely
integrated with its teen drama program, produced a play about a friendosexual
affair between a therapist and one of her patients. Castillo publicity described
the play as follows: The Castillo Theatre presents a love story,
Sapphire’s Kiss, by Maggie Zarillo-Gouldin. Set in New York City in the 1990s,
this fantasy-drama follows the tender relationship between a white social
worker, Diana, and her “crazy” African American client, Cypris (who claims she
knows Diana from another life). In the midst of madness, Diana and Cypris pursue
an unconventional love affair that touches them both in unexpected
ways. --Taken from the Castillo Theatre web site, June 27, 2006.
The Castillo Theatre is wrapping
up its 2005-2006 season with a Five Points Productions… premiere of
Sapphire’s Kiss by first-time playwright, Maggie Zarillo-Gouldin.
Sapphire’s Kiss is an intimate play about two women who “shouldn’t” fall
in love, but do: a white social
worker and her troubled, African American client. Audiences are finding
themselves touched in unexpected ways by the piece. --All Stars Project eNewsletter, June 29, 2006. [COMMENT:
The theme of a therapist and patient developing a personal
relationship should not be off bounds to the theater world. But it becomes
troubling when a play on this subject is produced as propaganda by a
psychotherapy-oriented cult that regards such relationships as a normal part of
therapy, and when the play is co-directed by a therapist who has initiated
sexual relationships with many of his own patients and publicly boasts of the
fact. Indeed, the choice of such a play for production by Castillo in mid-2006
can only be viewed as a deliberate defiance of, and nose thumbing at, the
various persons (including certain All Stars donors) who strongly expressed
their disagreement with Fred Newman’s defense (on NY1 News, Nov. 2, 2006) of
therapist-patient sexual relationships. The Castillo production of “Sapphire’s Kiss” should not only be
criticized because it appeared to indirectly defend Newman’s repulsive behavior,
but also because the play could have had a disorienting and upsetting effect on
many teens or children who participate in the charity’s programs (and would
either have seen the play or heard it talked about during All Stars activities
which mostly occur on the same premises as the theater). Indeed, the sponsorship
of this play by All Stars should never have been allowed by Henry Louis
Gates and other non-cult members on the charity’s board, because, along with the
reasons cited above: * social therapists work as
volunteers at the All Stars Project or participate in its theatricals, * social therapy is constantly discussed in All Stars programs
for kids, and * social therapists run teen
therapy groups that serve as a means of recruitment to, or encouragement of
continued participation in, All Stars. Furthermore, “Sapphire’s Kiss” can be regarded as a dubious
endeavor for All Stars to be associated with because many All Stars youngsters,
after noting that the therapist in “Sapphire’s Kiss” is white and the patient is
African-American, would instantly connect the dots with the real-life All
Stars/social therapy community, where most of the therapists are white women and
most of the teen therapy group participants are from minorities. Dubious projects attract dubious people. In this case we must
mention not just Newman but also his co-director, social therapist Mary Fridley,
who was the author in the early 1990’s of raunchy articles in The National
Alliance apparently designed to attract teens as well as adults to the
milieu of friendosexuality (see I.B.7, I.B.8 and I.C.1). This is the same
Fridley who is alleged, in Marina J. Ortiz’s account of life in the Newman cult,
to have engaged in a romantic relationship with a client. (Ortiz participated in
a Fridley-led therapy group along with the client in question, and says she
watched the emotional turmoil develop; see excerpt at IV.B.3 and full text at http://www.ex-iwp.org/docs/Ortiz-Others/Slave%20to%20a%20Dream.htm.) The situation imagined in “Sapphire’s Kiss” by playwright
Zarillo-Gouldin, who has been active with Newman’s theater since the 1990’s, is
more extreme than that in Fridley’s real-life therapy group. Although the
Castillo website describes “Sapphire’s Kiss” as part of a series about “strong,
independent women,” the story line depicts a white therapist taking advantage of
a black patient who suffers from delusions. In the real world such a
relationship would be more likely to involve exploitation and unequal power than
strength and independence. The All Stars eNewsletter, however, describes the
therapist’s behavior not as flat-out wrong but merely as “unconventional.” All
Stars board member Henry Louis Gates should ask himself what sort of message
this sends to All Stars’ teens.--DK] 4. Newmanite sex advice for primary-school
children Dear Readers, Ever notice how much fun sex can
be when you do it a little different? Well, talking about sex is like that too.
This week Phyllis and I were invited up to Harlem to talk sex with some of the
boys and girls, aged 7 to 11, enrolled in the summer program of the Barbara
Taylor School…. Q [by one of the children]: Is sex really fun to do? I think it’s
crazy. A [by Freda or Phyllis]: Well, sometimes it is and sometimes
it isn’t. Sex is like a lot of other things you do. Take going to the movies. If
you go with someone you like to see something good, if the popcorn is hot and
the seats are soft, you can have a wonderful time…. --Freda Rosen, “Something Different” (“Sexually Speakin’”
column), The National Alliance, Aug. 8, 1986. [NOTE: Ms. Rosen, in answering the above
question, does not speak in terms of adult (or even teen) behavior. She uses the
word “you” as if this were advice for the seven- to eleven-year-olds in the
room. She also gives them the adult advice that “if you’re doing it because you
want to, in a way you like, then it can be lots of fun.” Other topics of the
discussion include the difference between “fucking” and “humping.” The article
displays a photo of Rosen with three of the girls, whose full names are given in
the photo caption. Also included are signed drawings by several of the kids. At
least one of these drawings should have been grounds for immediate notification
of Child Protective Services, but apparently the Newmanites preferred to unite
abused child and abusing adult in a joint political struggle against the
bourgeois family (see III.A.2 below).] 5. Newman and his friendosexual housemates totally control
All Stars
In 1999, The New York Observer described Newman’s
lifestyle in the town house at 60 Bank Street in Greenwich Village that he had
purchased with the help of a woman supporter (see I.B.2.b above). Newman told
the Observer that he shared the house with nine women and two men. He
called them his “dearest friends” and stated that he had been sexually involved
with some but not all of them over the years (in fact four of the women, one of
whom has since died, were part of his longtime personal harem). It’s a free country, but we have to ask: Do these
friendosexual living arrangements have any significance for evaluating the All
Stars Project, where adult staff serve as mentors for kids from age five up
through the teen years? We were able to identify all ten of Newman’s surviving
housemates through campaign finance filings, voter registration rolls, real
estate records, telephone street directories and a NEXIS search. Each of the ten
has listed the house as her or his address within the past three years, although
it is possible (but not likely, given current rents and co-op/condo prices in
New York) that one or more has moved out. The individuals identified by our
records search include: *Gabrielle Kurlander, Newman’s
number one paramour and the President of All Stars; * Dr. Susan Massad, who signed the
house purchase papers with Newman, is a member of the All Stars board of
directors and was its chairperson prior to the fall of 2005; and * Lois Holzman, Newman’s
co-thinker on therapeutic issues, who does consulting work for All Stars and is
the director of a social therapy institute to which All Stars has disbursed
large amounts in consulting and training fees. Other residents of this peculiar household include the
artistic director of the All Stars youth theater program, the managing director
of All Star’s Castillo Theatre, the All Stars director of volunteers (a Newman
“wife”), a recent director of the All Stars capital campaign, a top social
therapist who does training and consulting for All Stars along with Holzman, and
a businesswoman (another Newman “wife”) who serves on the All Stars board with
Dr. Massad. Then there’s Newman himself (listed on the All Stars website until
December 2005 as Castillo’s artistic director and as All Stars’ “co-founder”
along with Lenora Fulani, who has the sense to live elsewhere) and Jacqueline
Salit, the New York County Independence Party power broker who helps to keep the
patronage flowing to All Stars from the mayor and other politicians. In other words, the All
Stars youth charity (a) is a “family” enterprise in which each of the 11 known
recent occupants of Newman’s friendosexual household plays an important role and
(b) is totally dominated by these individuals operating as a team under the
patriarchal direction of their dear leader. D. The Newman organization’s opposition to its own members
starting families or accepting responsibility for the children they already
have 1. Mother urged to put her child in foster care for sake of
the “revolution” The final straw was when Newman and his therapists
“suggested” that I forsake my rights, obligations and love as a mother and send
my young daughter to live with relatives or in a state-sponsored foster care
home. My daughter had begun having a lawful response to my neglect by cutting
school and “acting out” around the house. In June of 1990, a few Social
Therapists (including Deborah Pearl and Linda Young) then attended several
household meetings to help “resolve” the problem. “Suggestions” included asking
whether I had relatives with whom I could send my daughter to live. Fred Newman
personally inquired whether I would consider sending my daughter away to a
private school (which he was willing to pay for). The last “suggestion” was that
I consider putting my daughter in a foster home because she was “getting in the
way” of my “work” as a “revolutionary.” I considered that for about 10 seconds
(then thought “What the hell are you doing?”). I couldn’t believe this was
happening. I had dedicated my life to this organization, I thought, for the sake
of my children and future generations, and this is the way they treat children?
I left the cult one week later, in July of 1990. --Marina J. Ortiz, “Slave to a Dream: Inside the
International Workers Party,” ex-iwp.org, 2003. 3. Rationalizing child abandonment Lenora and
I have discussed how Black and Latina women feel very protective of their boy
children. We often feel that if they know about what’s going on in the world
they will only get into trouble, that if we keep the world away from them they
will grow up innocent and safe. That being a mother means spending almost all
your time with your children or they will think you don’t love them, that you
have neglected them. Well, I’m glad there will be a Barbara Taylor School…and a
Dr. Lenora Fulani at the Harlem Institute challenging these oppressive--with a
capital O--myths and building a political community where children can grow up
with the tools they need to be powerful. --Emily Carter, “To
Our Youth,” The National Alliance, August 2, 1985. [NOTE: Carter had been ordered by the IWP to
move to Mississippi the previous year as an organizer and leave behind her
9-year-old son in New York to be raised by Fulani, who as a top IWP leader did
not have the time to adequately meet such an obligation. Carter’s statement is
clearly a self-deluding rationalization of her abandonment of her son. Carter
subsequently left the IWP.] 4. Social therapy
devalues parenting a. Statement by a
mother of two small children One of the therapists made comments to me such as,
“it’s strange how mothers who decide to give up their kids to work or devote
themselves to causes get such a bad rap in our society.” She brought this up
with me twice during discussions about children and motherhood….In retrospect, I
feel she may have been trying to begin to shift my paradigm about my role as a
parent…and pave the way for furthering separation of me from my family. --Email to Dennis King, Sept. 1, 2002. b. Motherhood is “bourgeois”? Social Therapy sessions were places where political
revolt was crushed by a process of manipulation….Since the therapist is familiar
with the histories of the patients, then she/he can easily attack the
vulnerabilities of the rebel. For example: A group member voices that she is
feeling guilty about the fact that she is not spending enough time with her
child. But of course, spending time with a child is time not spent serving
Newman. That’s a no-no! In
response, the therapist charges that the woman is organized by motherhood and
not the Tendency [the IWP]. Motherhood is bourgeois! Her relationship with her
child has to be organized around supporting her very, very important “political”
work. The therapist will then employ the rest of the group in the attack on the
rebel, who proceed to “kick her ass” around not supporting the therapist’s
position. Fearing ostracism from the group, the rebel capitulates. She has
“gotten some help” with her “emotional issues.” In short, her objections to how
her time is being used by Newman are silenced. --William Pleasant, “Fred Newman: ‘Communism Is Dead, I Killed It!’’’
1993, available at ex-iwp.org. 5. Kids regarded as a “nuisance” by party leaders
Within the IWP, kids weren’t really wanted. They
prevented the members from working for Fred. At NAP, there were lots of poster
kids. In the IWP, kids were regarded as a nuisance. --Summary of notes from a 2002 interview by Dennis King with
Kellie Gasink. 6. A father says:
The cult almost killed my infant son Jim R. was active in the community organizing efforts of
Newman’s Centers for Change (CFC) in 1971-74. “Mary,” Jim’s partner and the
mother of their infant son, “Sam,” was a patient of Newman’s and thus much more
deeply under his influence. When Jim quit in protest over Newman’s alliance with
the violent Lyndon LaRouche organization, Newman retaliated by breaking up Jim
and Mary’s relationship, showing no concern for the effect this sundering would
have on the infant. While blindly following one of
Fred’s sudden tangents as a self-appointed medical practitioner/“healer,” this
group almost killed my infant son in 1974. [Sam] had suffered several bouts of
minor respiratory problems and, at six months of age and in the court-ordered
temporary custody of his birth mother, [Mary], a longtime Newman follower,
Newman intervened in his treatment for a minor ear infection, replacing the
physician-prescribed antibiotics with a diet consisting solely of herbal teas
and vitamin supplements. While my son’s condition worsened, I was being denied
the right to see him. Sensing that something was wrong I
went to the judge and won a visitation agreement. When I at last was able to be
with Sam, I was horrified! He was emaciated. He was so weak that he couldn’t
lift his head. He was running a very, very high fever
I. THE PEOPLE WHO CONTROL ALL STARS ADVOCATE RADICALLY
UNCONVENTIONAL VIEWS ON THE FAMILY AND SEXUALITY--AND THEY PRACTICE WHAT THEY
PREACH. GIVEN THE SPECIFIC NATURE
OF THESE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES, ALL STARS SHOULD NOT BE RECEIVING PUBLIC BONDS
TO FACILITATE ITS WORK WITH CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS.B.
Fred Newman’s doctrine of “friendosexuality”