I met Dave in 2012. My initial impression was pretty positive. I saw someone with a level head, but with a passion and determination to live by his ideals and make good on his commitments to the people around him. I kept that view of Dave from afar for years. We lived on nearly opposite sides of the country, so we didn’t get to be very close, but we kept up with each other’s lives, occasionally checking in on things we both cared about, or if I needed a contact I thought he may have. I greatly admired the work that Dave and other folks in Denver had been doing around police violence, political prisoners, and anti-repression strategies. So much so, that when I finally felt I needed to say goodbye to my home-state, I took a position that had opened at the collective print shop Dave and others worked at in Denver.
My perspective on Dave quickly shifted within the first few months I lived in Denver. Within my first week of working at the print shop, Dave’s former partner left the collective, and I became aware of Dave’s history of sexual assault, emotional abuse, and generally controlling and manipulative behaviors. This wasn’t the first time that a collective member had left citing Dave as a primary reason for their departure, and in fact there had been a string of them. Often it only took a number of explosive arguments and guilt trips to make a person decide they didn’t want to work there anymore. Most of these folks left before their 6 month trial period was even over. Those that made it through the gauntlet of tantrums, weird money shit, and bullying, eventually found a reason to leave later, sometimes only citing in private that a major reason was not wanting to deal with Dave anymore. Many of these folks were femme and trans folks.
Dave’s former partner who left the collective had been the person who got me an interview at the print shop, which at the time Dave seemed excited about. That quickly changed as it seemed to Dave that me and his partner were becoming closer, coming up with multiple reasons that folks should actually consider someone besides me for the job. I later found out that around this time they had gotten in a huge fight regarding the amount of communication his ex and I had, and he remarked to a mutual friend that I was “the reason the marriage fell apart”.
I continued to become very close with other folks in Denver, including Dave’s former partner, and began to uncover just how deep the scars he had left on people went. I slowly heard stories of past drama, often leading back to Dave, even when the person telling the story hadn’t made that connection. I once met someone through a dating app who had dated Dave for a time. She told me eventually that when she found out I worked at the same print shop as him, she didn’t want anything to do with me until she heard that I didn’t like him. This wouldn’t be the last time I would hear something like this from someone who had only dated Dave for a short time. Multiple people who have had sexual relationships with Dave have later described his behaviors as sexually coercive.
Around this time the print shop began to nose dive. Dave was known for being “chicken little” about the shop, but this time shit seemed a little more real. This was about the time he began to turn on a coworker who had worked there nearly as long as him. This person had lived with Dave at a social center they all used to run, and was someone he often referred to as his best friend. This conveniently changed as the print shop failed. Dave often found ways to blame his best friend for the shop’s problems. Dave used this friend’s struggle with alcohol, even creating a scene in front of the shop at one point shouting at him that he thought he was a danger to his kids. The accusation came as a surprise to most of us, as we knew Dave was often asking him to babysit. One morning this same coworker didn’t come into work, and we quickly found out his dad had passed away in the night. Dave’s immediate response was that he thought he was lying to get out of work.
Dave and his former partner have two kids together, so they continued to interact on a nearly daily basis. I would see them get into an argument on the porch, often over seemingly normal conflicts any parents might have. These conflicts could quickly escalate, and I would then observe my friend attempt to end the conversation and ask to speak about it later. Sometimes they would have to physically remove themselves from the same space as Dave, leaving the porch and shutting the door. Then their phone would begin to ring. They would hang up. It would ring again. They would ignore it. I once counted nearly twenty times he would call over and over again. It got to a point that my friend made a boundary not to communicate with him, even through text, without another friend in the room or on the text thread. Sometimes I was that friend, other times it was someone else. Even over those threads I could see a bombardment of long texts, often trying multiple angles of argument, trying to attack my friend’s concerns or perspective. Another friend once called him the “debate team captain”. He could come at you from often contradictory angles, just to see what might stick. I have saved all of those threads, just in case anyone ever needed reminding of just how bad he could be, or to catch him in lies he would weave. It fucking sucks when you feel that its necessary to save communication with a former comrade, just to make sure you and your friends don’t forget that his favorite past time is gaslighting.
Multiple times I heard Dave promise to seek therapy, in fact it was a stipulation for him to continue to work at the print shop, especially once we were made aware of his abuse in his former marriage. Another stipulation for him staying was that he would be transparent with us about things, and wouldn’t react as if we were challenging him when we would check in about how things were going. However, when he would be asked about the status of his search for a therapist, it was always met with excuses, and sometimes outright hostility. Once he threatened to quit the shop just for being asked how it was going. To this day I’ve never been able to confirm if he actually entered therapy.
Dave’s toxic masculinity runs deeper than I can truly explain through a short letter. He is a master of manipulation, and is quick to bring up any good deed he has done in the past to lord over someone’s head when he isn’t getting his way. The fact that femme folks tend to take the brunt of his abuse has allowed me to walk away from Dave with most of myself intact, while I try to be there for those of my friends who haven’t been so lucky. Dave creates a shield with the few people he allows into his closest circle, often preying on the young and inexperienced he can find to carry out his projects. Dave would try to bully me on occasion, attacking my legitimacy as a “prole” because I didn’t like sports. Or because I preferred insurrectionary writing and critical theory to reading endlessly about the Spanish Civil War. Lucky for me I was the only anarchist I knew for years, and I’m plenty used to hyper-masculine alpha dudes trying to attack my ego. I got over that shit in high school. Dave relies on little things, that in a healthy friendship might just be banter and playfulness, to subtly create feelings of insecurity, to push someone to feel the need to “prove” their commitment to the principles we all attempt to live by. I haven’t even found a way to get into how Dave dropped a year’s long relationship with a long running political prisoner magazine and manipulated the print shop into thinking they were refusing to pay what they owed us. I can’t get into the constant issue of money, where it was going, who was going to be held responsible for bills not paid, and just how many loans had been taken out without the collective’s permission. I can’t even crack the surface of his abuse and manipulation towards platonic friends who he kept in his inner circle, the way I’ve seen them struggle afterwards to come to terms with the lies they were told, as if a veil had been lifted suddenly from their eyes. I can’t tell you about his tendency towards erratic behavior with firearms. How his trainings and insistence on safety and respect for weapons clashed right up against his nonchalance about them when it was convenient for him. There is so much more I can’t even mention here, and I only lived in the same city as Dave for a year and a half.
I wrote this because apparently it will take more than comrades reaching out to folks directly to convince them that Dave is an erratic, manipulative, and actually dangerous person. I hate the culture of written call outs in even a semi-public sphere, but unfortunately I think most other avenues have been exhausted. Redneck Revolt as a network needs to hear directly from people who have known Dave for years what exactly he is capable of. I think it is important to ask yourself, if you are a part of the network or thinking about joining, whether you need Dave to be able to do the work you want to do. Just how many towns and projects and comrades does Dave need to tear apart for people to listen?