Is there any veracity to the claim that “the PSL covered up SA allegations”? I hear it from people a lot. I wanna know if this is a valid concern.
(Originally posted on Ask Lemmygrad)
Anyone who has been involved with leftist political organizing knows you occasionally get that one white dude who gets power in the organization and then uses that power to exploit some younger, vulnerable member. I think most of us know of an instance where this happened...in DSA, SA, PSL, FRSO...any of them. And I have seen firsthand that once in a while when this happens the victims claims are not taken seriously enough and it often leads to big problems. It's a huge issue in organizing spaces across the board.
So has some member of some PSL group at some point not taken some victims claims of sexual violence as seriously as they should have? I can almost guarantee it.
But.
This has very little to do with PSL or any of the others as organizations. I almost guarantee you PSL leadership is not trying to cover up widespread or even localized instances of SA. This is just unfortunately what happens once in a while in these kinds of groups. It's wrong and it should not happen and the senior leadership should work hard to stop it from happening and remove people if it does, and I'm sure they have policies in place to do that, but local groups can often hide under the radar with stuff like this.
And it's not limited to leftist political organizations. It's not limited to political organizations. It's a symptom of a much wider systemic problem...one that PSL absolutely is aware of and wants to work towards solutions to.
If there is any legitimate criticism of PSL or if any similar leftist orgs around this topic it would be that they should do better at vetting and training their local leaders to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen. But to me claims of some widespread SA cover up in PSL sets off all my "this is propaganda" alarm bells.
All that said, not an expert on it specifically so if someone does have genuine information around it I'd be curious to know.
Yep, this. I’m sure it happened because any hierarchical organization has people who exploit that hierarchy. This is an argument for improving accountability and punishing wrongdoers, rather than never joining an organization because they’re all bad and evil
it's very unsurprising to me that this is the case (heard accounts like this from most national left wing orgs I've ever heard of). as I said in the other thread I urge people to reckon with the truth instead of hand waving. dismissing something as serious as this as a "smear" especially is really fucking gross.
Even the Panthers had pest issues; it can happen anywhere an individual can be insufficiently disciplined as far as i'm concerned
As Awoo said, the reason you see so much focusing on these types of scandals in left organizations is because the liberals know that we are more serious about these issues than they are so it makes a good angle of attack.
It's such a cynical route that it could only really be the work of liberals honestly. We go out of our way to make our spaces safe for the marginalized and chronically-abused; and that's how the liberal mind opts to attack the concept...
fr like all the behind the scenes talk in mod/admin back channels is about issues of intersectionality and how to combat various forms of abuse that unfortunately have happened on this site. Every time a space is big enough and especially an anonymous space like this it is a factor you have to deal with. And we do deal with it here. I think 3 people already got banned from this post.
I personally have organized with multiple people from different chapters of PSL who were abused for being trans or brought complaints about being preyed on by people in their chapter and in each instance they were essentially pushed out of the org and the person they were abused by remained. Over two dozen members of the chapter I used to be affiliated with locally left over an issue like this happening to someone and then finding out that they are not a dem cent org and there is no internal mechanisms for solving these issues.
If PSL is all that you have available, I'd still say go for it, and just be aware of these problems and try to be a good communist in combating liberalism and defending comrades from harm.
I also heard complaints about PSL not being dem centered org. Can you explain what the looks like ? Does everything go to 1 person to decide ? The brief organizating I did with them didn't seem siloed, but I never got in the weeds.Edit: Nevermind someone explained further
From what I was explained by former cadre, there is an established leadership and an appointed majority who control things which average cadre are not really involved with and do not vote for, and who's strategies have not really changed for a very long time. When these average cadre see similar issues, they end up asking similar questions, which becomes pushing for similar answers and being rebuffed in similar ways. Whether it is asking about how to change organizational structure to properly hold abusers accountable because of actual cases of abuses, asking about why pursuing an electoral strategy has been absorbing so many resources of the org and there are virtually no mass programs nor interaction with "the masses" outside of going to protests (arguably not the masses), or even pushing to do specific types of organizational work that cadre see as valuable and missing and are willing to put work into , these things aren't up for discussion openly among the cadre even behind closed doors.
I was happy to see PSL did update their electoral strategy with new candidates who seem great and their media arm has been doing well, hopefully they keep improving.
Thanks for that. I heard similar complaints but coming from DSA, where we had sooo much bureaucracy, I couldn't see the issue. Well I feel less bad about not following up more frequently and only going to their talk events/protest. If that's all there is then I'll keep it up.
Yeah DSA is the left wing of fascism imo, been in spaces with them for years and it is very disturbing. I do believe a lot of good people get wrapped up in there thinking they can make it better but god is that an awful org to be a part of. I think PSL isn't beyond changing it just needs really dedicated and principled comrades. I guess what you'll be missing from joining PSL would be like, a more intentional education track but if you are good with studying already, an organization doing actual work with colonized groups and marginalized people in general would be a much better learning experience.
Every single organisation of any size crosses this problem. You don't constantly hear about the Dems covering up or playing down SA allegations, even though they certainly do. Either because people know an organisation of that size is certainly going to have them or because it's always going to dismissed as "not the organisations fault". People will also always dismiss the organisation playing down these things as a personal issue between members because that's what organisations do, protect themselves, snd in the case of someone abusing power, that's just quietly dealt with eventually when it comes to it and again played down.
The highlighting of it in leftist orgs while clearly not caring about it in capitalist orgs should be viewed as equal to the highlighting of issues that socialist countries have faced while ignoring the same issues in capitalist countries.
If anything it is because leftists take these issues more seriously than liberals that it is used as a frequent method of attacking leftist orgs.
3 perma
s so far in this thread and the lemmygrad thread for misogyny and downplaying SA and I'll fuckin do it againOh shit, first time I've seen a Pavlichenko emote! There are so many emotes and they take a while to load on my phone so I mostly search for them, and haven't seen them all. That's extremely cool!
I don't recall this being about sexual abuse, but you can google "On Alienation" which was written by a former member in my city.
I do think it's true that all American orgs of a certain size have SA problems. However, that is a terrible indictment of the current state of the American left and not a statement that it's OK. These problems are more than just bad apples. I suspect there's something about cadre orgs that enables abuse of members. A substantial reason I left Socialist Alternative was their unserious response to multiple sexual assault scandals (one of which was highly publicized and resulted in an international split), which was hampered by their highly centralized leadership. I hope this criticism shows that I'm not a PSL specific wrecker.
All orgs have SA issues, I think there is probably some truth to cover ups regarding external facing aspects of it, my local PSL chapter sometimes won't even give me inane details to make coordinating with them easier. The question is whether there is internal cover ups.
I'm willing to bet there are because of the way PSL structures communications keeps locals isolated from eachother, and I get the sense of paranoia/siege mentality probably making folks more inclined to avoid spreading stuff that could be damaging to the org.
However the org also allows the escalating of SA stuff past local leadership which is an exception to their command structure.
I think criticism of PSL should probably be more concerned with their lack of democratic centralism (40 percent of delegates can be appointed by the central committee), their structure not really resembling successful pre-revolutionary structures because they are a Cadre org, not a cadre org within a wider democratic organization of socialists/anticolonialists, and they waste a lot of time with the presidential campaign.
Before people say "the presidential campaign is mostly to just have a pretext to talk to people" I've seen the literature for this year, and a lot of it is solely oriented around getting your vote and not convincing you of the correctness of their positions or analysis. I've also had 1 on 1s with psl organizers and been at their educational events. They claim it is about having conversations but they treat it like the goal is to get votes. While I like talking theory with PSL comrades, they seem really underdeveloped as actual organizers and popular educators.
I've only ever heard people bring it up in vague terms, never specific names or incidents, which makes it hard to verify the truth or lack thereof to the claims.
AFAIK the incident many refer to has to do with the former member Steven Powers in 2020. I say former because he's been permanently suspended from the party, something not often mentioned when his name is brought up, and both internal and external sources to the party can attest to that. There really isn't any evidence of widespread covering up of SA and Abuse, and if it did exist it should be taken extremely seriously. Unfortunately libel and smearing like this is part of the history of dismissing large socialist organizations, and all socialist spaces that grow to a certain point will have to and have had to both seriously deal with incidents like this within their organization and show internally and externally that it does not define them, that it is in fact counter to their goals and methods.
When I was first wanting to join the party, I had friends warn me and link these various documents, and frankly it gave me unease. As part of my entry to the party I asked extensively about this situation and found that the Philly PSL Branch had suspended him permanently, and he's not rejoined the party in another region since. Speaking again as someone victimized as such in the past, I feel that there are robust and answerable institutions that are responsive within the party to deal with people like this, and is exactly what made me feel okay entering organizer spaces again after some things that have happened to me in the past. There's no public document I can share though, only my own testimony as someone who's investigated this internally and willing to speak on it.
For transparency when I said external sources, I meant a statement by the PSL saying he'd been suspended as well as people who I'd met in real life willing to speak about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ there may not exist a public document saying the words "permanently suspended" but that's my understanding internally. I hope you'll understand why a person who is working on the ground may be hesitant to write things down when even mistakes like I made are very easy to make. Frankly these things are serious but also easily able to be wielded by people who don't really care about the safety of SA survivors and just want to red bash (for example, right wingers attacking queer people with "grooming" allegations) so there's hesitancy to even give things like this fuel by discussing them publicly, but I think it's worth being open about in this situation.
My only impressions of the party so far have been professional engagement with the serious matters of being a disciplined ML organization within the imperial core, and issues like this are clearly counter to bringing about the revolutionary change we want to see in the United States and the world. Me and other party members do a lot of work towards achieving this change and I for one would be incredibly pissed if it was wasted on interpersonal drama and protecting people with anti-social desires or tendencies.
Edit: Also thank you for being genuinely curious and open about this discussion, it's not an easy one
Unfortunately with the way these things are usually framed that's an easy assumption to make lol
so bringing up the truth that SA occurs in left orgs is "fed shit"? you're fucking gross
Bring it up repeatedly for the sole purpose of being a wrecker is yes. I am not saying it didn't happen. Or that it isn't bad. I am saying that the people who most often bring this up are libs. Who just want you to support some Bill Clinton style politician whith no sense of irony about the level of misconduct in every normal formal organization.
personally I've only ever seen leftists bring it up, not saying the bad faith group doesn't exist but making it the focus of the thread is itself an act of bad faith.
