The following is a pamphlet we produced to hand out at a local series of demonstrations in response to the Cornell Sexual Assault Scandal which a front group of PSL, a Stalinist organization, SFS has been invited to attend. We find this to be an example of their disgusting opportunism given their rampant history of abuse within their organization.

The universal pamphlet version is available here. It is formatted for trifold printing and as such may be hard to read on a screen.

Here is a Tucson specific one that includes statistics about local chapter relations.

rape is systemic

• The prevalence of sexual violence is not incidental.
• Abuse is encouraged and protected by structures of power and control that place people in vulnerable positions and others in positions that incentivize and allow abuses of power.
• The overall structure allowing this is capitalism, a system of class domination in which the majority of humanity is exploited by the few, and which more than any other system stratifies even the oppressed into positions of individual power over each other.
• We won’t end this abuse until we end this system.
• Not all groups that claim to oppose this system actually do, and not all groups that opportunistically denounce abuse fight to stop abuse in practice.
• We can’t work with groups that perpetuate these systems and organize along the same controlling structures that enable and cause abuse if we actually want to put an end to them.

Biggest PSL Abuse Cases

We have provided our sources for these claims. All accusations shown here are representing the accusations of the victims. None of them have been explicitly proven in the US court system.

• STEVEN POWERS
  • In 2020, a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of PSL, who chose to go by the pseudonym Griselda Aclarado, was sexually assaulted by another member, Steven Powers¹
  • In response, PSL doxxed Griselda’s legal name and address.² as well as kicking out around 1/3 of the local chapter members for having internally criticized the handling of the situation.³
• EUGENE PURYEAR⁴
  • In 2020, a central committee member was assaulted by executive committee member Eugene Puryear.
  • Ben Becker, co-founder of PSL told her not to tell anyone what had happened.
  • Other than Ben’s father Brian Becker and Ben’s Wife Karina Garcia, no one else in the executive or central committees was made aware.
  • When the victim told her party recruiter Chris, Ben was angered because he feared the recruiter would be upset since he got a more severe punishment for a “lesser allegation” against himself prior.
  • Eugene only took a month off of working with the party before returning to the same role.
  • After a few years, she broke “discipline” by telling friends within the party of her struggle with the abuse including her recruiter who had once again had to move cities due to another sexual misconduct scandal of his own.
  • Only then, six years later did she leave, at which point Eugene later resigned.

PSL exercises a high level of control over members

• PSL members are discouraged from openly communicating with members of other chapters.⁵
• PSL members aren’t allowed to publicly criticize PSL
• In founding member of PSL, Ben Becker’s 2018 essay “Social Media and Democratic Centralism: Opportunities and Challenges” he asserts that: “Leninist parties have been vertically organized — from bottom to top and top to bottom. Maintaining these Party internal norms is of maximum importance to defend the organization and preserve its unity in action. Social media poses considerable challenges to the Leninist party form and the broader socialist movement. It creates unlimited potential for horizontal communications between members, for gossip and innuendo in the movement, and for surveillance on members’ individual lives”
• An organization limiting “horizontal communications” for vertical control is inexcusable. Their claim that these measures are in place to prevent gossip and innuendo, or for the privacy of members is laughable. There is no reason to restrict open communication among the members of your organization unless you want to control them.

psl is a secretive organization that lacks transparency and their central committee is all powerful and unaccountable

• PSL’s central committee members are unknown to the public.
• PSL’s party constitutions are not publicly available.
• While PSL keeps all its internal documents a secret, the party constitution from the July 2022 PSL PSL fifth national convention was leaked, revealing the extent of central Committee control over the organization.
• ARTICLE 3. THE PARTY CONGRESS⁶
  • 1. Party Congress
    • 1.1 The Party Congress is the highest body of the Party. It has the authority to act on all aspects of Party policy and activity.
  • 2. Delegates to the Congress
    • 2.1 The Party Congress shall be comprised of voting delegates elected at the branch level and by the central Committee
    • 2.3 The Party Congress may also have voting delegates nominated directly by the central committee, the maximum number of which shall not exceed 40 percent of the total elected delegates.
      • This means that the central committee handpicks 40% of the vote, requiring only 11% of the delegates to agree with them to get a majority
• ARTICLE 10. AMENDING AND INTERPRETING THE CONSTITUTION
  • 1. Amendment
    • 1.1 The Party Constitution may be amended only by vote at the Party Congress.
  • 2. Interpretation
    • 2.1 The Central Committee and Executive Committee shall have the authority to interpret the Constitution and to create procedures not specifically covered by it. Interpretations made by the Executive Committee shall by submitted to the next Central Committee meeting for approval. All interpretations shall be submitted to the next Party Congress for approval. (Typo is theirs)
      • This means that the central committee has total power to dictate the meaning and interpretation of their constitution, and the constitution may only be amended by the party congresses which they control.
• ARTICLE 4. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION
  • 1.4 The Central Committee has the authority to make decisions and take action necessary and incidental to the good and welfare of the entire Party, and to act upon all problems and developments occurring between Congresses.
    • This means the Central Committee can do whatever they want.

where psl gets its funding and where the central committee gets its power

The Central Committee isn’t a magical body that exerts such a high level of control over its members because the members choose for this to occur nor because they are such great leaders but because of the amount of control their immense funding grants them institutionally.

• PSL gets funding from Neville Roy Singham, an American citizen living in China worth over 750 million dollars.⁷ People’s Forum has received at least 20 million dollars in funding from him.⁸
• Several members of the high command of PSL including Breakthrough News hosts such as Rania Khalek work directly for the Chinese and Russian States. (Rania is a journalist for the Russian state news outlet Russia Today)⁹
• Eugene Puryear, another abuser within the central committee and past Breakthrough News host worked as a talk show host for Russian State owned “Radio Sputnik”¹⁰
• PSL’s finances are kept private and not shown to members.
• THE PSL IS REGISTERED AS THE FOR PROFIT CORPORATION “LIBERATION NEWS, INC (3488507)¹¹
• The Global Justice Center, where Tucson PSL hosts the majority of its events, spent 54 million dollars in 2021, 100 dollars per resident of Tucson.¹²

silence is compliance

• In the Cornell Case, messages were sent to a fraternity group chat with 57 members. The 50 members who didn’t directly participate in the abuse but didn’t say anything either aren’t innocent. These bystanders are abusers too.
• Abusive organizations like PSL thrive on secrecy and taking advantage of those that don’t know any better about them.
• Don’t be silent.
• Don’t enable PSL
• Don’t be an accomplice in their abuse.

sources

1. Original Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ntjUqtB-k4wuBuN4bc8r9ABxfNsIDVU2YOHW9E92TzM/edit?tab=t.0
   Our Mirror ↩︎
2. Ibid ↩︎
3. According to member testimony: https://web.archive.org/web/20240602010520/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1620136255106453504.html ↩︎
4. Original Source: https://theyeisblind.substack.com/p/the-eyes-is-blind-that-will-not-see
   Our Mirror ↩︎
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20181116144407/http://liberationschool.org/social-media-and-democratic-centralism-opportunities-and-challenges ↩︎
6. Party for Socialism and Liberation PSL Constitution 2022 ↩︎
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Roy_Singham ↩︎
8. https://www.thedailybeast.com/neville-singham-funded-breakthrough-news-is-pushing-moscow-beijing-propaganda ↩︎
9. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/public-mistrust-of-gaza-coverage-is-opening-space-for-russia-linked-media-on-the-left/ ↩︎
10. https://sputnikglobe.com/author_eugene_puryear/ ↩︎
11. https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business (search 3488507) ↩︎
12. https://nonprofitscan.com/org/522094677/alliance-for-global-justice ↩︎