Baumann affair all over again...

“Communists must be ready at all times to stand up for the truth, because truth is in the interests of the people; Communists must be ready at all times to correct their mistakes, because mistakes are against the interests of the people.” (Chairman Mao, On Coalition Government)

He told me that the only people he had told were [Ben's brother] Brian, Ben’s father, and Karina, Ben’s wife.

Still reading through the blog, and this stood out. I don't think it's healthy at all to have some family be the head of the org. Why is Ben's father and wife privy to private party matters?

Also, what is up with PSL NYC being as shitty as DSA NYC apparently? Did the feds saw that the NYC branch of the BPP was the best branch and decided to run a COIN operation to make sure that every NYC branch of subsequent socialist orgs would be the shittiest branch?

honestly everyone responsible should be fucking shot as a traitor and dumped in the nearest forest for the carrion. if we won't even protect our own from our own what's the fucking point

This cover-up didn't serve to protect the PSL it only served to protect a perpetrator of sexual violence within the PSL.

I think the PSL has potential (which is why I'm a member), but an org isn't grown up until it can hold high ranking officials accountable for their behavior. I don't know anything first-hand about the situation described in this post, but I support holding the guilty parties accountable for their behavior and removing them from positions of influence. The Party has supposedly done a lot of work in recent years to be better at accountability, but considering that the organization includes many American men its going to be a long process. Especially if there's an American man up there that's trying to convince himself that he's a good person because he's fighting for something important.

I still think building organizations is harder than fixing them tho so I'm gonna keep trying.

We know these people insinuate themsves into any organization of any sort. So its no surprise. The question for a political organization is how they treat it.

The link in the post is hardly at all about the initial assault. Its mostly about the subsequent manipulations. The betrayal of the physical act by 1 person vs the betrayal of the organizational act by several people. Its in the context of what came before and after.

In PSL, which is known for insisting members not air disagreements in public, what is the process for this stuff? Knowing as we do that it will certainly occur.

And that agents of the state use SA and IPV to diminish women. Class treachery one way or the other.

"but he does so much! What would we do without him?"

How to decide

1. How to save him?
2. Is he worth it?

Not every guy who "does a lot" is worth the drama and pain he charges as a fee.

Eventually, I was asked to move to New York City to help plan the 2019 Congress. Once there, I spent every day with Ben and his family. We organized out of his apartment. We cooked and I helped care for his young child. In those years, I was one of only two party staffers.

Well that is weird.

Its wild that an org as big and structured as PSL still has structural issues that boil down to a lot of the shit from The Tyranny of Structurelessness. (The parts of elite formation and such especially.)

Feels like it'd have to have been intentional at this point, but maybe not. Regardless its a very bad look, disgusting behavior from these men and everyone complicit in the coverup. Sorry, you have to do the hard thing, remove the abusers from positions of power, take the PR hit, but gain in trust overall.

Having someone who signed onto the public statements on the last major PSL scandal now coming out with her own allegations is just above and beyond. Ialready had no huge love or trust for my local chapter but this puts it down in the dumps with national DSA

Not another one. Between this and DSA's endorsement of Platner, it has not been great for the US left recently.

accuses Puryear of the assault and Ben Becker of covering it up.

Just want to share a tid bit about Brian Becker. My first introduction to him was on Sputnik Radio's Loud and Clear podcast, where he co-hosted with John Kiraikou... The former CIA officer, who in 2007 seems to have just blurted out in an interview that the CIA was waterboarding people during the Bush administration... He left the CIA in 2004, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of the torture. Gina Haspel was directing the program at the time, and so she was implicated, she was later Appointed deputy director under Trump 1, and director under Biden. Kiraikou served 2 years in prison for that interview. The thing is, in the podcast he always portrayed himself a having been a whistle blower, and that he was trying to take down Haspel like he was some kind of hero. I'm not clear on the details of the case though.

At any rate, he gets this co-host gig with Brian Becker on a explicitly socialist podcast produced under the umbrella of "Russian State Media" Sputnik Radio. Brian Becker is an old head activist, I've heard him many times talk about protests he participated in back in the 80s or so.

Both of them offered pretty principled takes as far as I could tell at the time, but it's been years since they cancelled the show and parted ways.

But what the fuck is a founder of a revolutionary ML party doing, chumming it up with an "former" CIA officer? It's weird imo.

something really nightmarish about being told that you cant tell people that someone sexually assaulted you because it would damage the party and harm building socialism

(imma be honest, i think leftist parties should put harsh cutoff point on age of around 25 to save everyone, people both know their worth (and less likely to take this stuff), and it should reduce young radical->finds a stable job thingy, and thus ruthlessly is squeezed for juices in the heavy rotation of young ones, because party knows it's statistically likely to happen, while older core ossifies/becomes unaccountable)

Thanks for sharing this. Very curious what PSL members here think and feel about this and other allegations that have come out in the last year or so.