We receive the International Socialist Organization (ISO) leadership’s statement “A response to slander,” published in the Socialist Worker (SW) of 19 February 2014, with sadness. It is written by people who evidently think little of their audience. The authors assume that their readers cannot or will not acquaint themselves with the facts of the matter; that they cannot or will not independently investigate a controversy and make up their own minds. The statement is an argument for those who need no argument; persuasion for those who require no persuading.
Month: February 2014
We are expelled (Updated)
On 17 February 2014, the National Convention of the International Socialist Organization voted to expel the Renewal Faction. Our delegates were excluded from this session, as they have been from the last two days of the Convention.
A longer statement is forthcoming, but we wish to take this opportunity to thank our comrades inside and outside the ISO who supported us during this difficult struggle.
Freedom and Renewal!
Update: The resolution to expel the Renewal Faction is reproduced below. It is recorded as passing “Many for, 6 no, 1 abstention.”
Whereas the Renewal Faction has refused to renounce and remove specified documents from their website, in defiance of an ISO convention resolution that required them to do so or face disciplinary action; continues to engage in snitch jacketing; exploits confidential information for the cynical purposes of point-scoring; exposes our organization to state attack; and spreads slanderous lies about the ISO leadership:
We, the delegates of the International Socialist Organization’s 2014 convention, the highest decision-making body of our organization, declare that members of the Renewal faction are no longer considered members of the ISO.
Jonah B. (New York City), Héctor A. (New York City), Phil G. (Madison), Sherry W. (New York City), Lauren F. (Chicago), Melissa R. (Chicago), Elizabeth W.-F. (Madison), Tony P. (San Diego), Bekah W. (Atlanta), Tom G. (Atlanta), Jonathan E. (Atlanta), Sean P. (Atlanta), Keegan O. (New York City), Brian K. (Poughkeepsie), Nisha B. (New York City), Royall S. (Greensboro), Ann C. (Boston), Amanda A. (Boston), Alpana M. (Boston), Khury P.-S. (Boston), Madeline B. (Boston), Akunna E. (Boston), Sid P. (Bay Area), Avery W. (San Diego), Fermin V. (Amherst), and Rigo G. (Chicago)
My Bureaucratic Exclusion from the International Socialist Organization
(For anyone that wants the short version of this document, feel free to skip to the Lies and Accusations section at the end of the document to read a summary of what I’ve been accused of by the ISO Steering Committee and my responses.)
This document goes into detail about my activity in the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and includes examples of how the organizational culture created by the leadership faction leads to comrades being ostracized, bullied, pushed out, slandered, and expelled for having disagreements, even when those disagreements are within the boundaries of the ISO’s politics.
Reply to Convention (Updated)
The ISO National Convention demands that the Renewal Faction take down External Bulletin by the morning of Monday, 17 February, on pain of disciplinary action; and that the Renewal delegation repudiate the last four statements of the faction, on pain of exclusion from Convention.
The Renewal Faction, including delegates and guests to the Convention, declines to renounce or remove anything on External Bulletin. We can’t renounce what we think.
Update: Based on the notes of our delegation, we present below the text of the resolution that excluded us from Convention. This may not be an absolutely faithful reproduction, as delegates were not given a written version, but we believe it to be accurate in substance. We are, as always, willing to correct any errors brought to our attention.
Assessing the Year-Long Inaction Regarding Charges of Sexual Violence in the ISO (Updated)
At last year’s convention, many members recoiled in horror at the complete mishandling of the allegations of sexual assault brought against “Comrade Delta,” a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It was at this same convention that comrades discussed the case of an activist in Boston who had recently been accused of multiple cases of sexual assault. What the majority of those in attendance at the 2013 Convention did not know was that at least one member of the ISO’s Steering Committee had heard similar reports of sexual misconduct from a long-standing member in “Xville” six months prior.
The existence of these allegations emerged just over a week ago in a document included in Pre-Convention Bulletin #19. The authors of the document, “Addressing Allegations of Sexual Misconduct Made Against Members of the ISO,” argue that the current procedures of the organization do not go far enough in seriously addressing issues of sexual harassment, assault, or other forms of intimate violence. While we in the ISO Renewal Faction agree with that conclusion, when presented alone it is, at best, myopic in its understanding of the organizational dynamics that allowed a much-liked, long-term member to remain a member and elected leader of the organization a year after the allegations of the assault first emerged.
According to the Xville document, “Daniel” (the pseudonym the Xville comrades use) was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in July 2012. Though several members of the branch, including those on Branch Committee (BC), knew about the allegations, they wouldn’t become public knowledge until the following year, when an activist mentioned the case on Facebook in July 2013. Then, and only then, did this become an official branch matter.
A new publication policy
The ISO Renewal Faction announces that it is abandoning its policy of redacting “internal” material from its documents for publication on External Bulletin. From this point forward, all of our documents will appear in public, in full. We will also begin to unredact currently-posted documents.
We have decided on this course because the permanent faction that controls the ISO Steering Committee (SC) has refused to publish our full, unredacted document on the ISO and CERSC. We submitted the document on February 1; on February 10, we received the following email from ISO Treasurer Ahmed S, written on behalf of National Secretary Sharon S:
Sharon asked me to write back to you as she has been traveling for preconvention discussions. We did receive the document. It’s posted on the internet, so yes, we’ve seen it. We will not be publishing it in the internal bulletin.
Letter of resignation from the ISO: Ben S (Atlanta)
To all my comrades both inside and outside the ISO:
This letter is intended to announce my resignation from the International Socialist Organization. This decision has been prompted by my experience in the months since I first publicly expressed my support for the ISO Renewal Faction late last year. To summarize in brief, as a result of my endorsement of the Faction, I’ve been effectively isolated and iced out of both the Atlanta branch and the national organization as a whole. This has made it all but impossible to continue my involvement within the group.
In addition to this, my experience within the Atlanta branch–which, I should note, closely parallels and interlocks with that of my comrades in the ISO Renewal Faction–has led me to question the viability of the ISO as a vehicle for revolutionary Marxist politics. In sum, I’ve come to doubt the ability of the ISO to fulfill its stated purpose of “playing a role in laying the foundation for a [revolutionary socialist party].” Despite this conclusion, I remain as dedicated as ever to the politics of revolutionary Marxism and socialism from below.
Questions and concerns about the ISO and CERSC (Unredacted)
[Unredacted as of 12 February 2014; see our revised publication policy.]
The Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization legally independent of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), but to which ISO members have contributed significant time, money, and talent. The success of CERSC, especially its Haymarket Books project, is due in great part to ISO members. Some of us in the Renewal Faction, for example, have supported CERSC since its foundation in 2000. We have a sense of investment in the nonprofit, and consequently a sense that we ought to understand and influence its direction, especially as it intersects with the life of the ISO.
Through our experiences and a study of the publicly-available information about the finances of CERSC (available here), we have become concerned that the development of the nonprofit may be a force tending to undermine democratic accountability and control in the ISO. It occurs to us that the membership of the ISO ought to know much more about CERSC and the relationship between the ISO and CERSC given the contribution that the former makes to the latter. This document therefore poses a series of questions about the leadership, finances, and apparatus of the nonprofit. It concludes with further considerations of the importance of the questions we raise in the general context of the left today.
This document is based overwhelmingly on material available to the public–most of it filed with the state and/or federal government. In the rare instances where we use internal material, it is redacted for external publication.
External Bulletin 