Has anybody here heard of this organization? I’ve seen a bit about them on Twitter but that’s it. Due to some…circumstances, my former FRSO cadre has disaffiliated ourselves from Freedom Road and have instead been working independent of any national group. We’ve been organizing locally, including with many unaffiliated communists. We have been pretty effectively doing a book club-type meeting twice a week and a mutual aid organization modeled after the Black Panther Party’s survival program. We’ve made a lot of connections in the community.
However, as communists, we recognize the importance of internationalism in the struggle against capitalism and we have a desire to connect both with other comrades in the US and abroad. Only a few of our current organization’s members are American citizens. While we understand that joining a larger political party is something we want to do(and also that this will need to take place far into the future), we don’t know quite where to turn.
We have some concerns about the larger socialist parties, such as the Workers World Party or the Party for Socialism and Liberation, because of their hesitance to organize in small cities(ours is less than ~120,000 people) and previous member experiences with them that indicate their preference for campus activism, which isn’t what we’re about. While many of us do live university-adjacent lives, all of us are dedicated to focusing on improving lives off-campus as we all have roots in the community.
FRSO is out, for reasons I’d rather not discuss here. I personally am interested in the PCUSA. I’ve been following their party’s development since its foundation(at the time I was a CPUSA member), and was interested in what they were doing. However, many of the younger members of our organization feel more inclined to less traditional groups, such as the PRS, for reasons I’m not quite sure of, so I’d like to find out a little more. Has anyone here hard of them?
It came out that the district organizer for my area effectively covered up a sexual assault within the party and several members of the cadre in that city resigned. There were about 7 people in the local FRSO cadre, most of us joined the new local organization. A few hesitated but saw the good work we’ve been doing and will be joining us soon.
I take it this is the Dustin Ponder affair?
FRSO is a tiny organization, that doesn’t recruit well, even compared to the rest of the tiny world that is “American” anti-capitalism. When one of their own is accused of something like this, it hurts them worse to kick them out than it does to allow them to continue, especially if they are at all active.
Of course, this is one of the tried and true, tested methods of sabotaging an organization. I personally looked into the accusations at the time, and believe it was the result of a terf war between FRSO and the CPUSA, though I wouldn’t put it past Dustin Ponder to have done what he is accused of. In fact, having already been out of the organization at the time, the accusations actually brought me a small bit of joy, as I knew that the vast majority of people would believe them, regardless if they were true or not. That’s just how the “American” “Left” functions; political hierarchy has nothing at all to do with things like political education or how much actual work people do for an organization, but perceived virtue. Except if you’re Joe Biden.
I’m unfamiliar with the Dustin Ponder affair, can we DM and talk about this? Most of this took place in DFW.
When I joined the FRSO, it was after a lengthy period of checking out what the response was for other organizations in regards to sexual assault. I’m married, and I typically bring my wife to events. I don’t want her to be in a situation where a known sexual abuser is wandering around. It’s just not something I’m comfortable with. When I asked the district organizer what the policy was, he told me “It’s zero tolerance. We don’t fuck around.” I took him at his word. I shouldn’t have.