Is there any veracity to the claim that "the PSL covered up SA allegations"? I hear it a lot in discussions surrounding the PSL. I wanna know if this is a valid concern
OP you are engaging in my mind in unacceptable wrecker behavior.
You are attempting to suppress votes for the only anti-imperialist, socialist party on the ballot nationwide in the US on election day.
The time to ask this question was a week ago, a month ago, 3 days ago, time for people to have a discussion without a deadline looming to cast a ballot for them or not.
Doing this at the 11th hour reads to me as an attempt to suppress votes for them, to perhaps even attempt to get some lurkers to vote Democrat instead by causing issues and concern that they're voting for abusive people.
Since we're in the court, I move that OP be given a temp ban until the election is over and this thread be locked and removed as should all other discussion on this as wrecker behavior.
Why couldn't any of you have brought this up a week ago? A month ago? We've long been supporting PSL's candidates and discussing our imminent votes for them for some time and people would have been happy to discuss it. But there was silence, no threads, no major discussions on it. Now at this opportune moment you break ranks, you deploy these accusations in an inflammatory thread on election day without proper time for a discussion, raising emotional tensions against PSL right as we most need people to vote for them.
So why now? I'm disgusted by people dredging up this shit on this day of all days. It's transparent what it is. It isn't good faith, it isn't helpful or useful. Even if it's all true what are you going to do about it? How else are you going to signal on the ballot as an American a support for the agenda of socialism, a vote against war with China and Russia?
There is a time for discussion and a time for solidarity and closing of ranks and showing any left-leaning people who browse our instance that we support Claudia de la Cruz and they should too rather than voting Democrat. Today is a day for closing of ranks. Tomorrow will be a day for litigating any problems we may have with our movement.
This is peak western left in-fighting, ill and unacceptably timed.
I really didn't want to get into it and have to try to work out how to say it diplomatically (and even so, I fear I'll get accused of being dismissive of women's issues for saying it), but since you've already gone there and aren't pulling any punches, I will say, I had a similar thought as you. The timing of it, whether accidental or not, is weird as hell. The accusations could be entirely true, exaggerated, false, or anywhere between, but there is no time for people to sort that out properly literally on election day. And it's not as though PSL is gonna win the presidency and someone needs to call them out to make sure they don't gain immense power and abuse it. In this election, they've always been a fringe "closest thing to something truly 'left' to gain popular support and build a movement at all" and electorally, is mostly just a way to spread a "leftist" message. Tossing around "what's up with, I heard a rumor" type statements at a time like this, when they're going to be at the height of being seen at all throughout all the erasure a party like them faces in popular media, is bizarrely naive at best.
Similar happened with the green party recently (not originating on here, mind) and though I have little desire to defend them considering I never expected them to be aligned with folks like us in the first place, the timing of it was also odd. After a lot of hearing little about them policy-wise one way or another, the green party VP running has a statement extracted out that makes him sound like he has anti-trans views. Maybe he does and it's important to know, but if there is one thing US electoralism is a well-oiled machine at, it's smearing political candidates. And when it's coming for candidates who in the best case scenario could have their party win 5% or whatever for funding, it's all the more to me like, "We're doing this right now? Is this supposed to be principled?"
I could understand if we were talking about candidates who can actually win the presidency, but like, what exactly is the goal of bringing it up right now other than to get people to hesitate voting for a third party and help undermine any attempts to put a wrench in the dual party structure?
Even as little as a week ago would have been better. At least then there'd be some time to go over what is known. And if this was already known and people were waiting around to bring it up until now, that's just straight up the opposite of helping; not helping women and not helping organizing efforts either.
This is how you get people to see through your party and NOT want to vote for them. Bourgeois democracy is literally not ever that serious, it is a symbolic protest vote and matters so SO much less than SA allegations true or not. Calling someone who wants to make sure they aren't supporting SA protectors a "wrecker" (again, whether the allegations are true or not and there are certainly true ones) is a misogynist reaction to real concerns that only shows that women are unsafe in the PSL. One more vote for Claudia is not worth that.
OP you are engaging in my mind in unacceptable wrecker behavior.
You are attempting to suppress votes for the only pro-democracy, democratic party on the ballot nationwide in the US on election day.
The time to ask this question was a week ago, a month ago, 3 days ago, time for people to have a discussion without a deadline looming to cast a ballot for them or not.
Doing this at the 11th hour reads to me as an attempt to suppress votes for them, to perhaps even attempt to get some lurkers to vote Republican instead by causing issues and concern that they're voting for abusive people.
Since we're in the court, I move that OP be given a temp ban until the election is over and this thread be locked and removed as should all other discussion on this as wrecker behavior.
Why couldn't any of you have brought this up a week ago? A month ago? We've long been supporting Joe Biden and discussing our imminent votes for him for some time and people would have been happy to discuss it. But there was silence, no threads, no major discussions on it. Now at this opportune moment you break ranks, you deploy these accusations in an inflammatory thread on election day without proper time for a discussion, raising emotional tensions against Biden right as we most need people to vote for him.
So why now? I'm disgusted by people dredging up this shit on this day of all days. It's transparent what it is. It isn't good faith, it isn't helpful or useful. Even if it's all true what are you going to do about it? How else are you going to signal on the ballot as an American a support for the agenda of the Democrats, a vote for abortion?
There is a time for discussion and a time for solidarity and closing of ranks and showing any left-leaning people who browse our instance that we support Joe Biden and they should too rather than voting Republican. Today is a day for closing of ranks. Tomorrow will be a day for litigating any problems we may have with our movement.
This is peak western left in-fighting, ill and unacceptably timed.
This is a perfect 2020 post about Tara Reade, with some modifications.
Not really the same thing at all. Tara Reade was an individual coming out, risking her reputation to do so, against someone who had a viable chance to acquire immense political power (and who subsequently did so and used it in service of genocide). Someone who also has a detailed past of horrible policies. This is vague "I heard a rumor" language being said about an entire party by an anonymous person on the internet, not even about the PSL candidates running specifically, and for candidates who have zero chance to win the presidency and a party that has virtually no political power thus far. The OP didn't even provide a case against PSL themself. They prompted a case to be made against them. Whether intentional or born from ignorance, this is one of the most common types of rumor-mongering, while trying to avoid having any responsibility put on the person who does it. "I heard that my neighbor Tom eats babies? Is this true? Just want to make sure if I should keep my children away from him."
Like take a step back from this particular issue for a moment and think about the framework of how this is being done. Because even if this is all true and PSL 100% deserves the flack and OP has the best of intentions trying to be a conscientious person, this is also a kind of approach that gets used for dishonest means. This cannot be the best we have for dealing with accountability and consequence, is reactively asking provocative questions on election day and shouting at each other about who is more principled in the face of accusations.
I think you may not have looked over the whole thread yet? It's understandable, there's a whole bunch written.
I'm referring to a specific situation where a specific person alleged that a specific party member SA'ed them, and then felt that PSL ignored their concerns.
I think, in light of that situation (which darkcalling is familiar with in this thread), their language really does parallel the DNC reaction to Tara Reade.
To be fair, PSL isn't a monolith, and the US is filled with misogynists and horrible men in general. Awful that people in power in the org covered it up, even for a single branch it should be all that we're against. Here's a mega link with criticisms and accounts of SA
Will note I disagree with a good portion of the public criticisms section as some are Maoist/Trotskyist takes but the first hand accounts here are worth listening to. I think a big problem here is the lack of transperancy and purposefully hindered communication (cadre in branches are told not to talk to each other except through leadership) and overall too much centralization without the democratic part. Considering the anti-indigenity found in their socialist reconstruction program as well as by other indigenous groups interactions with them (I would suggest reading the Red Nation link in the drive), you could also tie this in with their settler politics as a whole.
I will also note the organization has a history of calling people who disagree with their line or mention the cases of SA as "adventurists" "wreckers" or the like. This is where the danger steps in, PSL is a deeply imperfect org and even an org as revolutionary and worthy of praise and support as the black panthers should and would take SA seriously.
don't know why anyone is shocked about this it's a problem in every national communist party I've ever heard of. urge reckoning with reality instead of hand waving violence against women!
I know the entire PSL party went out of their way to discredit of SA victim, bring all their media people to destroy her. No wait that was the democratic party and Tara Reade.
I know the entire PSL party went out of their way to discredit of SA victim,
I know you're trying to make a joke, but isn't this a little uncomfortably close to what happened in Philadelphia?
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation
Is it only "believe women" when it's politically convenient?
Is it only "believe women" when it's politically convenient?
yes, communist men can be fucking gross when it comes to facing the reality that this occurs in many orgs.
What he said was "the entire PSL", not a branch, and that's kind of the thing about these accusations, that they are raised to try to claim that the entire Party participated or even had any awareness of the reality of the situation in whichever specific chapter, which is not true. Maupin is a real example of what is being insinuated here, with the central leadership being aware of and covering up his actions, among other complicit acts.
I'm not batting for the branch here, cut it off and burn it for all I care, but we need to be clear about the real scope of what happened, and the implicit meaning of "PSL shields predators" is that a Maupin-like situation is happening or something else (like the Catholic Church method) where the PSL has any involvement. No such accusation has been made concretely that I have ever seen, even though insinuations to that effect get made all the time.
The national Twitter account, pslweb, publicly doxed the alleged victim in Philadelphia. The current VP pick signed the letter denying the alleged victim's claim of SA ( https://www.gnvinfo.com/psl-president-candidate-claudia-de-la-cruz-responds-to-infamous-steven-powers-case/ ).
There are something like 5 cities with issues named in the prolewiki article, a source that's pretty friendly to PSL.
I don't hate PSL, but it's super gross to act like there isn't a kernel of truth here. Maybe it's an issue with organizing in the U$ as a whole, I don't know, but it's fucked up to ignore it.
Just a clarification :p we aren't necessarily friendly (or unfriendly) to any party, but we also can only write about what we can back up. In the case of PSL's controversy section ref 14 is a huge repository of many primary accounts, though I haven't followed their own links, but I would start with that catalog as it has tons more links that I saw
I forgot to mention it also comes down to who edits a page and what they want to say. We know for example from someone who tried out with PSL that they're not great at all on indigenous issues (but no party is in the US) but they haven't got around to editing that in.
Sure, that's more like the "Catholic Church method", as I called it, so then insinuations about the whole organization on the basis of that case are warranted.
That said, doesn't the denial dox use the (potentially) real name of the girl who the boyfriend cheated on the alleged victim with, who the alleged victim alleged was another victim? The article only mentions that person by name in one place and doesn't mention outing or doxxing. I don't know, this is hard to follow.
I do need to defend myself though that I absolutely did not say anything should be ignored, I was simply saying that the scope of the claims and people's actions should be kept in mind. It was PSL stepping in to deny this that is potentially the problem with "PSL" as an organization rather than "PSL Philadelphia" or whichever other chapter. Am I making sense? If some guy commits a murder, that doesn't mean his whole household was complicit in it unless they actually do things to help him (accomplish it, get away with it, etc.). What I am saying is that if it was the guy (chapter) acting on his own, put him on trial and sentence him appropriately. It's only if the household (overall organization) seemingly intervened at some point in the process that pronouncements like "the household is guilty" becomes relevant. And then you kindly provided evidence toward that latter end, so I agree with you that such pronouncements are relevant.
Thanks for the measured reply! It's easy for me to get heated when I feel like I'm getting boxed into a position I don't really hold.
No need for a defense of yourself re my "ignored" comment - apologies for insinuating that you were. That's more of a rhetorical device reflecting my frustration with the topic as a whole.
On the doxxing, I think "Griselda" (the alleged victim's pseudonym) did name the other girl involved in at least a Twitter post. There's a screenshot of a Twitter post in one of those docs where she's asking pslweb to take down her own real name, and I think they had her name in the now-removed letter that was signed.
Idk, this shit is complicated and there's way too much to read.
*One edit: regarding your chapter/national split, I mostly agree, but I think a situation poorly handled by a local chapter still does reflect poorly on the national org. They're the local representative of the national org.
Thanks for clearing things up.
*One edit: regarding your chapter/national split, I mostly agree, but I think a situation poorly handled by a local chapter still does reflect poorly on the national org. They're the local representative of the national org.
Yeah, I probably should have specified that this is true, but I was trying to avoid getting too in the weeds and made an error. My thing is that a chapter going to hell without the direct worsening of things by the national org is more a problem of negligence or poor construction of their onboarding systems, etc. rather than being culpable themselves of harboring abusers. Both are still harmful behaviors and should be treated as such and it's possible PSL did both (the case is very murky, as you say), but I just want to be clear on the standards I'm asserting for guilt since it isn't something one should speak lightly on.
I didn't make you do shit.
As much evidence exists here as in the Tara Reade case.
i mean u didnt put a gun to my head, but, i would think anyone with a conscience would read about something like this and i would think u know that.
Accusations to discredit leftist organisations are so severe that you should only believe it if there's hard proof. Let those accusers give some actual evidence then
It's in the prolewiki article: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation
I once heard a similar thing about Tjen Folket here in Norway.
the burden of proof is on the people claiming that, not on us or the psl.
https://archive.is/yT5vp#selection-42.0-42.1
Just saw this from the other link shared…
There's true stories behind it, you'll have to judge if what you hear is reflective of the truth.
It's covered in the controversies section here: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Party_for_Socialism_and_Liberation
