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

  • diegeticalt (any)@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    17 days ago

    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?

    • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
      ·
      17 days ago

      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.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      17 days ago

      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.

      • diegeticalt (any)@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        17 days ago

        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.

        • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          17 days ago

          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

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          17 days ago

          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.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]
              ·
              17 days ago

              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.