"We've kind of gathered up our skirts and pulled in," said Sarah Bardwell, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Along with some activist roommates, she has also volunteered for Food Not Bombs.
"In our house, we don't talk about politics anymore," Bardwell said. "There's been a toning down of everything we do."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday March 29, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 61 words Type of Material: Correction
Monitoring of activists: In some copies of Monday's Section A, a front-page headline said, "Activists on Anti-Terror Watch List." The list referred to in the article was not a formal terrorist watch list, the FBI said, but was included in a Department of Justice presentation to a law class that listed groups terrorists might associate with. Two left-wing groups were included.
That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers visited her house in July 2004.
Months earlier, the FBI had obtained a flier advertising a meeting near Bardwell's house to form a chapter of Anarchist Black Cross. That movement has two wings; one, according to the FBI, has been associated with "some of the most violent left-wing groups of the past 40 years."
The organizer of the meeting, Dawn Rewolinski, said the prospective chapter would have been part of the movement's other wing, which writes letters to prisoners. The chapter was never established, Rewolinski said. "All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and realize we didn't have enough money for a P.O. box."
Nonetheless, FBI investigators believed a Denver chapter had been launched. They discovered that Anarchist Black Cross was affiliated with Food Not Bombs, and authorities ended up on Bardwell's doorstep, asking about the anarchists' plans for protests at the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Kelso, the FBI spokeswoman, said there were documents that could not be released to the ACLU that showed good reasons for the government's concern. She dismissed the idea that agents were spying on activists for political reasons.
"We don't have enough agents," Kelso said, "to go out there to monitor and surveil innocent people."
