Photo: Picture posted by “For the People-STL” after their garden was vandalized on November 10.

By Ed Dalton

Revisionist charity “For the People-STL” (FTP-STL) reported that their garden was vandalized the night of Sunday November 10 and proceeded to publicly blame revolutionary organization Community Power Network (CPN) for the act.

FTP-STL is a small organization run by a notorious opportunist, who has long been an antagonistic and bad element on the fringes of the Maoist movement in the US. He has been the subject of several articles published online. Despite the disdain for FTP-STL held by local revolutionaries and activists, CPN told Incendiary that they had no knowledge of the attack and had nothing to do with carrying it out.

“We heard about it from the FTP Facebook like anyone else,” said CPN spokeswoman Rita. “We called around to other comrades and no one had any knowledge of this…it is our position that the leader of FTP did this himself to gain internet sympathy and raise money, blaming his political opposition.”

The leader of FTP-STL, being the son of a wealthy landlord who uses a vacant lot of a property belonging to his mother to cultivate small vegetable patches, has been known around St. Louis and beyond as an attention-seeking, egotistical personality, leading local activists to strongly suspect he is staging a hoax against the Maoist movement in that city. His antics include excessive self-praise, appearing on the bourgeois talk show Dr. Phil, and even going so far as to base fictional characters on himself in self-published novels he has written.

The second in charge of FTP-STL has come under fire publicly in the past for inappropriate behavior toward women in the movement and unwanted sexual advances on women comrades. The rest of FTP-STL and their parent organization the “Maoist Communist Party-Organizing Committee” has so far failed to take any action or condemn the sexist and inappropriate behavior of their member.

Cover-ups of these kind of allegations are sadly commonplace in the US left. FTP-STL and MCP-OC join the likes of the Democratic Socialists of America and the former International Socialist Organization as organizations which fail to handle allegations appropriately by expelling or reprimanding their members who are accused of inappropriate behavior and or abuse.

“There is plenty to oppose FTP in this city for and even good reasons to combat and resist them, but this simply was not the work of the US Maoist movement or any of its support organizations,” Rita told Incendiary. A poster was left at the lot and former garden with the hammer and sickle, a clear effort to associate the attack with US Maoists.