I’m seeing a bunch of controversy surrounding which socialist organizations to join and I’ve heard the best things/least bad things about the PSL. Is this true?
The most important thing is to join an org that is not tied to or invested in the political fates of either the Republican or Democrat parties. The one thing that should be a deal breaker is when an ostensibly “socialist” party is just a front for Democrat electoralism, as is the case with the DSA. If the party or org you are joining is actively hostile to the duopoly (and not openly reactionary - this goes without saying) then it is good enough. Do not expect perfection, the ideal ideological orientation or 100% correct political line on every single issue.
So long as it is a genuinely independent org and not dominated by Democrat shills there is always the potential for party internal struggle to correct their erroneous lines and weed out problematic behavior. And even if this doesn’t happen, it is still better to be a part of a flawed org that does good and useful things to advance the overall struggle than to not be part of an org at all. So i would advise that instead of being hyper-critical and looking for every single bad thing that someone has said about them, you look at what are the good things that they are doing and whether you think you can do some good by being a part of that.
For instance: are they doing community organizing? Are they helping workers organize their workplaces? Are they helping to educate the people and raise the level of class consciousness? Are they speaking out against the imperialists and their warmongering? Are they doing mutual aid or something to protect marginalized communities against reactionary militias and police violence?
Once you join, if you do observe or know of problems within the organization you can try to get together with other members who agree with you and formulate a plan of action on how to raise awareness about these issues and solve them. Ultimately you need to ask yourself who does it really benefit if leftist orgs are examined with a microscope for the slightest imperfection such that people are dissuaded from joining, supporting or even working together with them?
Cointelpro is always looking to cause splits, infighting, to ruin the reputations of the enemies of the bourgeois state and of those who pose a threat to the imperialist agenda, to keep a broad, popular anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist front from forming, to keep our orgs small and divided. Don’t fall for it. Criticize leftist orgs that exhibit problems but do it constructively and remember that this is a process, we all learn and get better through struggle.
We’ve talked about it (mostly commenting for others, but also a reiteration of what I’ve said before) but I liked my time with the org. I was unfortunately unable to continue past the training period and I was trying to form a branch with like 5 people so it was a steep uphill battle. They expected a lot, but they also relented a lot. Our leadership understood that the conditions are pretty dire around here and were just happy when we were trying. Applauded every success and offered constructive criticism of the failures. Skews young, which I think is far better than skewing geriatric (much respect and love for the older comrades, but still).
If I find myself in a position where I can rejoin, especially an already relatively established branch, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. Lovely comrades and amazing leadership that talks directly to new recruits (one of the Zoom classes was taught by none other than Dr. Ken Hammond, and one of my best friends was taught a class by Gloria la Riva herself (making him two steps removed from fucking comrade Castro! kinda epic)
Yes PSL is based. Like every single org in existence ever, they have had problems. But these are extremely few and far between, and the good work they do for the communities where they have branches is really great. Several prominent members also do a lot of great journalism and education like Brian Becker, Eugene Puryear, Derek Ford, Walter Smolarek, etc.
If you’re going to hear something bad about PSL, it’s likely going to be the Philly branch sexual misconduct allegations. I’ll paste the links I made in a comment on another thread here.
This is the account of the accuser of the misconduct.
While I can’t speak to the veracity of the sexual misconduct claim, the way the party’s leadership handled the situation was pretty bad.
As I said recently, they have been accused of having feds in them, but the author seems a little paranoid and any effective party is probably going to have infiltrators at some point, so as long as they continue to make real change and don’t let wreckers break or incriminate the organization then, go ahead.
infiltrators are a fact of life for all communist orgs, that’s why democratic centralism and avoiding theoretical mistakes are so crucial. you can do a lot without doing anything illegal.
I heard they’re cultlike.
