Regarding Dave Strano
As a collective we have come to the point of recognizing that there is no further recourse but to share our experiences about an individual who has repeatedly failed to make necessary changes to his damaging behavior in our community, prior communities, and has now moved on to continue his destructive patterns in a new city.
Dave Strano is a former member of the Denver Anarchist Black Cross and was a co-owner of a local anarchist print collective. He left Denver after destroying relationships with his partners, friends, comrades, and business partners here, a wide array of solid people we know and trust. More situations than we can count have been personally experienced by our current and former members, and have been relayed to us, from multiple sources of comrades we have known and worked with for many years, of sexual assault, coercion, gaslighting, aggression towards trans and femme folx, sexism, withholding information about reporting on funds for collective businesses, unanswered questions about misuse of business funds, stealing collective money, paternalism, tokenizing, lack of consent issues around security, and overall fucked up power dynamics in his personal relationships, and in non-hierarchical, anarchist organizations and spaces.
And it turns out Dave has a long history of this kind of behavior, stretching back to at least Lawrence, KS where he lived before Denver.
We are making this statement so people are aware. We have an obligation to let people know when their organizations are entrenched with a patriarchal, sexist, manipulative abuser who is capable of lying and stealing from comrades and collective projects. Information is needed to make informed decisions. For quite some time now, DABC and many others in the anarchist community here in Denver have refused to work with him on any level. We have deep concerns at the moment about his involvement with movement work in Arizona, where he is still attempting to dominate the work and groups, gaslighting anyone who raises concerns about his past and present behavior, continuing his pattern of snitch- and bad-jacketing anyone who tries to hold him accountable (especially femme folx). We are concerned about harm he is causing people currently, and the intense and agressive manipulation he is employing in his personal life, including directly utilizing the state for his personal intimidation tactics, and the lasting impact it could have on those he is harming.
We are in solidarity with all the survivors.
And in solidarity with anyone who has been impacted by this dude’s shitty behavior.
We will not associate with, and will not support, any organizations who continue to work with Dave Strano.
In Solidarity,
Current and Former Members of the Denver Anarchist Black Cross