Communist Workers League: Youth Joint Statement in Regards to the Recent Takeover
By: Former Cwl Youth Cadre
Tags: Local Organizing, Politics, Communism

The following statement is in regards to the takeover of the Communist Workers League carried out on June 15th, 2019, when a minority grouping of veteran comrades summarily expelled youth in the Chicago and Detroit branches, demanded an unreasonable amount of ideological conformity, and effectively silenced all principled political discussion that was taking place internally. The purpose of this statement is to inform budding activists and organizers of our experience working with CWL so that they can make more educated decisions when choosing who to organize with.

We, the youth cadre, condemn this action utterly. As well, we condemn the long-term working conditions and improper foundation of the Communist Workers League entirely, which was formed prematurely and dishonestly. We condemn this betrayal of our trust, however misplaced, and this betrayal of our organizing principles, to which we recommit more strongly. Solidarity has carried us through being betrayed by our elders, and will continue to carry us forward even without a formal organization. We will continue working in earnest, seeking new strategies and new allies. We encourage all disciplined comrades in the struggle to dedicate themselves to democratic centralism, comradely conduct, and good consent behavior in their formal and informal organizing. We look forward to working with all who struggle for communist revolution and to providing active, revolutionary education to those who do not. Finally, we promise to keep growing from experience, to keep studying Marxism-Leninism, and to grow together as cadre in order to overcome the immense challenges facing our movement, as that is the only way that we can win.

The following details the events leading up to this statement:

On June 14th, 2019, David Sole (the Treasurer of the Communist Workers League and part owner of 5920 Second Avenue LLC) changed the locks to the League’s headquarters, a valuable organizing asset for comrades and community members alike, at 5920 Second Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. This was done without clearance from CWL Detroit’s Steering Committee (the decision-making body of the local League between meetings) or the Building and Finance Committee, and occurred without any announcement to any membership of their organization. This change was a direct attempt to lock out and manipulate a majority grouping which the LLC did not want to engage in political discussion with. Locking out this majority grouping, made up of CWL members in good standing, was an explicit violation not only of the League’s standards of action but also their self-proclaimed policy of building ownership via the long-time acceptance of pledges from their membership, including those undergoing financial struggles, for upkeep.

When queer youth comrades working on their Taking Back Pride Initiative arrived at the office later that day for a coalition meeting, they discovered that the office locks had been changed without warning.

When these comrades asked for clarification, expecting a misunderstanding, they were lied to by Mike Shane (a CWL member and part owner of 5920 Second Avenue LLC) regarding the reasons for this lock change; he claimed that the lights had been left on, the refrigerator door had been left open, and that a “ham was on the floor of the kitchen.” The members who admitted to having changed the locks were criticized for their undisciplined behavior — the unauthorized denial of access to an organizational resource — but the CWL youth were prepared to move forward and meet the next day for the organization’s local internal meeting. However, this act was the first step in a coup that was being executed by the handful of veteran members who were legal owners of the building — the 5920 Second Avenue LLC (comprised of David Sole, Abayomi Azikiwe, Mike Shane, Debbie Johnson, non-CWL member Cheryl Labash, and their public representative Jerome Goldberg) — and their minority supporters in the national organization. This coup — a term they accepted and used to describe the split — not only violated the rules of the organizations but also betrayed the Marxist-Leninist principle of democratic centralism that was supposedly so dear to these long-time communist organizers.

The coup, according to those perpetrating it, was triggered by ongoing discussions within the organization’s national email listserv, largely centering around the Chicago branch of the CWL. The Chicago branch (a diverse group of six young comrades who were fully accepted into the organization nearly half a year before this conflict) had formerly been candidates in Workers World Party and were engaged in writing articles for the CWL’s online publication. These articles, especially one on the pro-choice movement, were responded to with outright hostility rather than constructive criticism, leading to ongoing discussions over email. These discussions revealed a failing of the older comrades to engage in good-faith communication, education, and struggle through disagreements and political questions as they arise. The coup perpetrators escalated the email communication into conflict, declaring the issues “irreconcilable” and shutting down further debate. Additionally, the two veteran CWL members who were tasked with mentoring the Chicago branch cited one of the problems with the Chicago comrades was a lack of any real organizing (even though there were several other CWL national members and localities who often said they were not engaged in any organizing work but were never criticized for it). Upon investigation, it was discovered that one of these mentors had never even contacted the Chicago branch to learn about their organizing efforts, and that the other had indeed been aware of the Chicago branch’s work, including the Chicago branch’s many trips to support that mentor’s projects.

The day after changing the locks, on June 15th, 2019, David Sole announced at the CWL Detroit branch’s June internal meeting that the leaders of the Chicago branch had been unilaterally expelled from the organization by this minority clique. He went on to say that the youth of the organization should split from the CWL if they hold any of these political stances that the Chicago comrades were unjustly ousted for voicing. These stances, though vaguely defined, were centered around the term “social fascism” — which is a Trotskyist dog whistle — and the coup perpetrators’ condemnation of the Taking Back Pride Initiative, a successful queer-led, queer-determined event and coalition. In this discussion, David Sole admitted that the locks had been changed as part of this coup and that it was orchestrated by the owners of the building, two other local comrades, and the handful of national comrades who were not in Chicago (again, many of whom were self-admittedly inactive). It was stated that there would be no further discussion on these topics as the social fascism question had been “settled in the 30s.” This is the result of what we believe to be a deliberate ploy to hide their true ideologies. Social fascism had never been a part of the CWL’s limited political discussions or candidate education, and therefore many comrades were not familiar with the line that had been broken without it ever having been properly adopted.

The discussion that followed became very heated. It became clear immediately that this coup was profoundly undisciplined, that it would be incredibly self-destructive for what would survive of the CWL (an organization that was already losing membership rapidly), and that the political reasons of this coup were not irreconcilable but only required good-faith discussion to achieve synthesis and a willingness to organize together on a non-sectarian basis, something that CWL’s resignation statement (written when they split from Workers World party) claimed they wished to do, and that the outgoing youth had desired as well. However, this development reveals the true issue with this organization, very similar to the major issue that caused the collapse of Workers World Party before it: an unelected self-proclaimed leadership bullying comrades into being bodies and investors for the organization without hearing their voices or input, and organizing around defunct, unwritten and unannounced political lines that are expected to be intuited rather than taught. The CWL youth cadre, before voting to end that internal, voted unanimously to denounce this undemocratic action and to rescind the expulsions of these comrades; these youth comrades outnumbered those perpetrating the coup, locally and nationally (even if the Chicago comrades who were unjustly expelled or subsequently left are not included). Despite this unanimous vote, David Sole decreed that he would not recognize it, making his disdain for democratic centralism all the more abundantly clear. Later that night, Mike Shane — who did not attend this meeting but supported the coup — blocked all youth admin access to CWL pages and to the Fighting Words online publication.

Following this meeting, the youth cadre held frequent emergency meetings to discuss these actions and the broader patterns of bad-faith behavior and abusive tendencies in the organization, and to reorganize moving forward. This soon grew into broader meetings including non-CWL comrades, discussing the issues in organizing in the left and planning their responses to the coup as well as to execute Taking Back Pride. These comrades refrained from formally resigning from the Communist Workers League until the Taking Back Pride event took place, as the coup perpetrators had leverage over event page access. Following the successful Taking Back Pride event, they all have since resigned from the organization or, in some cases, even been removed without having submitted any resignation statement at all.

Democratic centralism, as a methodology, insists that we value the voices of our comrades and agree to work mutually, to organize and work as a unit. Organizing necessitates not only working against the systems we are fighting, but refusing to allow our own organizations to replicate oppressive structures and ideals. The Communist Workers League refused, time and time again, to hear principled critique by the majority voices in their organization, choosing instead to deny and minimize the serious problems in how they worked. In doing so, they proved that they are structurally incapable of educating or organizing themselves, let alone the masses. They have internalized bourgeois legalism as far as private property rights go. They have refused to hold veteran comrades and LLC owners (such as Jerome Goldberg and Kris Hamel, as well as David Sole and Mike Shane) responsible for abusive behaviors. They practiced ableism and transphobia towards many youth comrades, refusing to make their space accessible. They demonstrate a complete disconnect with actual working class conditions, still tied to factory union struggles despite the working environment changing radically since the writings of Sam Marcy. They alienated all the youth among their nationally oppressed comrades months before the coup while using the national question as a club to bully the remaining youth comrades. Finally, they have failed to assess their own efficacy or analyze conditions; they do not adapt, take stock, or update their techniques in any meaningful ways. Their persistence over the decades has gained them recognition in local organizing circles, but gained few material victories. When given an opportunity to grow, they have structurally failed to seize it, ballooning by dozens of members with the upswing in socialist popularity and then shrinking right back down to the same membership a few years later. Changing times demand adaption, which this organization has made clear they view only with contempt.

How then did this clear contradiction manage to survive so long unaddressed and unresolved in the Communist Workers League? How did a formation that claimed to be a “Leninist” organization come to be filled with active, dedicated comrades who are genuine Marxist-Lenininsts only to later purge them, and how was this coup so surprising to those newcomers? These questions are explained by the deliberate tactics used by the handful of veteran members employing practices from the highly questionable Marcyist school of Orthodox Trotskyism. This tendency, among other failings, rejects democratic centralism and criticism utterly; employing it would inevitably fail to organize genuine Marxist-Leninists, communists or leftists in general, let alone the masses. Because of this failing, Marcyists must resort to hiding their actual ideologies behind lies and obfuscations. This tendency has abused an obscure term that Karl Marx wrote in a letter (“mild in manner, bold in matter”) to apologize for lies of omission and for targeting Marxist-Leninists to grow their organization while at every turn slyly promoting Trotskyism. This was the case in the CWL and the Detroit formation which preceded it. Many discussions were openly known as being off the table, including discussions relating to the history of Trotsky and Stalin, which were shut down if ever approached. These veteran members would unilaterally avoid any discussions which might come close to their true political stances and silence any who raised such topics. Through this pattern, the true problem became not their ideologies, but rather their refusal to acknowledge or discuss them.

How can an organization structurally refuse to have any discussion, to educate on a topic, or to debate that topic? How can a communist organization demand ideological blind spots — contradictions — not to be reconciled? We believe that this occurs when the organization or those in power within it know that their position is indefensible. Indeed, when asked hot-topic questions or urged to critically analyze their work, these veteran members would give only two responses: one, that the comrade asking the question should merely “read [a specific Marcy text] to understand”; or two, that the comrade simply does not have enough experience for these ideas and that only struggle — struggle in the community in the specific, limited manner in which the veterans decide — will teach them the obvious truth before them. This disingenuous strategy utterly fails to practically educate anyone. The only outcome that can be drawn is now quite clear: this grouping refused to educate or struggle with their new members because their political stances are so full of internal contradictions and obvious falsehoods that attempting to teach them will only disprove them. To remedy this, these handful were willing to centralize their body, just not democratically; their criticisms of the Workers World Party’s similar failings were proven to be merely projection as the Detroit branch of some half decade ago (which would later become CWL) wanted to grow in numbers without growing in voices. This coup and the dysfunctional working conditions leading up to it were the inevitable outcome. The ideologically-isolated members of the organization they claimed to lead had failed to move their recruits towards their point of view, and so felt the need to seize control of its meager assets, attempting to use them in a final bid to bully their comrades into acceptance of a Trotskyist line. Naturally, they have failed.

Now, as a cadre, we must move on from this dysfunctional organization and direct ourselves more fully towards the struggle. Building a strong communist movement is the essential task to which we all remain committed. This cannot be accomplished by reinventing organizations from past eras or repeating the same strategies over and over; we must continuously and rigorously analyze our past and present in order to develop successful strategies. Though we do have political differences with the Marcyist organizations we’ve departed from, the real catalyst has been our former comrades’ refusal to grow, change, learn, and teach — and incorrect political lines inevitably result from this attitude. This has little to do with age differences and more to do with acting as principled, sincere Marxist-Leninists. We re-dedicate ourselves to organizing the working class rather than “networking” in organizing circles; we re-dedicate ourselves to principled criticism and self-criticism; and we re-dedicate ourselves to our comrades and our communities.

Signed,

Former CWL Members:

Adele H.

Jamie S.

Jeff P.

Jesse Ayres

Josh K.

Kaitlyn G. (Chicago)

Katherine Cavanaugh (Chicago)

Katya Derevo

Koz Mo

Laika K. (Chicago)

Mike C.

Sav Jpg

Thomrade

Trever

Victoria Gilbert

Non-CWL Comrades:

Alexander S.

George V.

Keysha Wall

Ravyn K.