The PSL just released two documents related to the recent Marissa Sanchez post detailing her experiences at the national level of the PSL. I’m going to be posting both of them as well as their full text for archival purposes.
I should note a couple things before I link these things:
- At multiple points, the report mentions that Marissa was reportedly fine and thankful during and after the immediate events of this incident and it’s cover up. This is shown to be an example of proof that she was fine at the time, and leads into building the case that this is a factional decision. However, I am not convinced that this means she is cynically using this to split the party for her own ends. Betrayal Blindness is a collection of responses and symptoms broadly related to a person being betrayed by someone whom they rely on for financial, personal, romantic, or political needs. In order to come to terms with my experience of the same exact tendencies on a local level I read the book “Betrayal Blindness” by Jennifer Freyd, and I implore everyone to read it as well.
- Repeatedly they claim this is the result of a factional dispute. That might even be true in some ways, perhaps Marissa saw that there was a different way to organize going forward and it gave her the ability to be able to accept the abuse she faced. This, however, doesn’t have to only come from a sense of macabre cynicism, being able to finally use her trauma as a loaded gun to split the party for her own selfish ends as described in the article. For myself, when I stepped away from the party for my Leave of Absence, I was able to begin to be engaged in mass organizing work that I wasn’t in prior, that I didn’t have the time for. This has given me the courage to be able to stand up and say that I don’t think is acceptable at all.
- I am not in a faction, have not been in communication with anyone in a faction, and my disgust is only colored by my own similar experiences and emotional waves being thrown right back in my face as someone who’s faced the exact same tactics myself. I’m genuinely just a trans woman by myself, I have some friends and comrades, but our local branch is still up in the air
The party routinely expects things like this to be leaked, so they prepare for the possibility. Given they already know we’re going to do this, I’m just going to share the documents here for you and others here, and I leave it up to you and your comrades to decide how you feel about the party and it’s current leadership. For me, the emphasis on how this fits into factional warfare is not only not convincing, but honestly disgusting.
Comprehensive Report from the Central Committee in Response to Marissa Sanchez’s Letter
NDC Statement (Sept. 2026), the password is ndcstatement
c\main so main
Lol they pulled a Platner. I mean they used his excuse almost exactly, splitters instead of Republican operatives though.
It isnt worth rehabbing PSL, orgs are a dime a dozen and that IMO is a good thing. Organizers, however, are valuable. We should not waste their potential in a place where reporting SA will be used against them.
character assassination painting the victim as an irrational, cynical bad actor & the leadership clique playing the victim of a sinister factional clique (rich coming from an org born out of a split), revolted but wish i could say i was surprised.
@gayspacemarxist@hexbear.net re: the faction/split, i can guarantee firsthand that many, many members quit after the actual factional split who had nothing to do with it because of the A) noxious, accountability-dodging, character assassinating, and deflecting way leadership handled it in what should have been a moment of collective reflection and improvement and B) because the complaints outlined across multiple different documents (not just Walter’s letter) showed a pattern and gave voice to exploitation, mistreatment, & an undemocratic posture many of us had experienced from Party leadership.
i have mixed feelings about how those comrades handled things myself, but that’s not the point. it’s completely cynical and ugly of PSL leadership to use as a smokescreen in what should be a moment of reckoning with how the Party navigates SA (even if it’s true that Marissa sympathizes with the folks who left! beside the point and completely tone deaf of them to bring up in this context).
i’d also just add that, across all of these different complaints, there are milder-but-still-fucked harmful, consistent patterns of behavior outlined: bunch of times you’ll see accusations of Brian openly reprimanding, yelling at, and demeaning comrades beneath him in spaces supposedly dedicated to dissent and internal democracy for the crime of…expressing a dissenting opinion. Not to mention Walter’s charges that he was called into three on one screaming meetings with other Party leaders about strategic disagreements, which given my much more limited firsthand experience I do believe happened.
that’s my take & firsthand experience with all that, you can take it or leave it. i also don’t intend to call you out, it’s just that you were the main person i saw to mention the issue around the faction and i didn’t want my own firsthand experiences as a former member to get buried in the thread (and i know you and i both have skin in the game). PSL’s leadership structures and its central leaders create the exact kind of domineering, high control environment that breeds coverups over more grievous harms like this one. probably gonna tap out for a bit after this cuz this shit is making me feel sick.
I feel exactly the same. Locally we had no kind of faction or factional behavior as far as I was aware of at the current moment, but this is outrageous and indicates that this isn’t a tent to healthily stay under any more. It’s been something that feels really raw considering how much of my life and myself I’ve put into this party and movement, but it’s also kind of cathartic to know I wasn’t alone. Wish you peace comrade
Locally, as someone in another org? Fuck those Stalinist-positioned, Trot-tactic douchebags.
My local DSA was doing good work among community direct service, and the PSL came in to EAT the DSA at the expense of the work. When we all quit instead of following orders nobody discussed first, we’re all “factionalists”.
Oh wait, they split from their previous org to adopt the Stalinist positions, but changed little else. Who themselves split from Trots. Who themselves split from Trots. The “central committee” at the core of a “central committee” probably has a secret third, deeper “central committee” that’s just a clique of yes-comrades.
And we wonder why the membership knows nothing, but the leadership is this foul.
The fact that any of this backs up your wild assumptions about ML parties and gives you fuel to talk like this only furthers my disappointment
right back at ya comrade
on one hand i feel almost ashamed that this was an org i was once proud to be a part of. but on the other hand, i think we should both be proud of ourselves for taking a leap of faith into trying to be part of the struggle. and at the end of the day, the organizations/organs/specific forms are just means to an end, just bridges to the end goal of a better, more just, more humane, and more loving world. the struggle for that world will always be there for us, when we’re ready and should the right circumstance/opportunity come knocking
Thanks for the context. I honestly do appreciate it. I agree that this is a bad look, we could be talking about accountability and raising standards!
Building healthy militant organizations is really hard. I agree that the, somewhat understandable, tendency to be defensive here is actively damaging to the party. Here’s the thing tho, I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally or inherently wrong with centralized leadership or a representative hierarchy. Decentralization has benefits, but it always comes with a trade-off. This tack, in a way, is also deflecting responsibility away from the individuals who hold power within the party. We are (at least tacitly) assuming that organizations are inherently and fundamentally corrupt. I don’t buy that line of reasoning.
Fixing this mess won’t be easy, but I’d rather fight with my comrades to build a better party than go it alone in a country where people like me (trans and latina) are liable to get lynched or deported. I want accountability and I want better leaders. I don’t have time to start from scratch, so I have to work with what is available.
Edit: If there are other Parties out there with a similar trajectory as the PSL which would be a better place to do political work lmk.
i appreciate your perspective comrade. im not anti-centralized leadership either, i just think there needs to be coherent & robust mechanisms of internal democracy to keep them accountable (whether this would be more direct say in how representatives are chosen or something else, i don’t know for sure, figuring out the shape of things like that would be a collective process). i think we’re both in agreement that PSL rank and file deserve much better than the current crop of leaders, though, and i hope changes are made there.
don’t blame you at all for seeing something worth fixing and fighting for, even if i came to different conclusions (at least with the org as it exists right now), particularly considering the existential threats you face in this hellscape by simple virtue of existing as the person you are. while i feel demoralized by what a deeply sorry situation this is, i hope something good can come of all this and that our institutions can improve.
Well, it looks like the PSL core have opted to dig themselves in over this.
The Central Committee is calling this a hit piece, but what they are publishing could also be a tactically-motivated statement. They could just as easily be inventing a story
Without perfect knowledge, we are left to assess two main possibilities:
- Marissa is twisting the narrative to backstab the Party because she is a factionalist splitter, and became one after 8+ years in the party.
- Marissa is giving an accurate picture of how the PSL functions; the national party apparatus is sclerotic and nepotistic, it chronically protects abusers, it uses extensive secrecy and information control against its own members, and uses allegations of “splitting” as a cudgel against people who complain too much.
Apply a motivations analysis. Cui bono? What does Marissa have at stake here? She spent 10 years of her life building this party, just to throw it away over trying to vie for something… that put her in a higher position? She was in quite high positions. What do the Central Committee have at stake here? They have faced allegations like this before, and are justifying their positions in the face of criticism. They also have the image of the Party to uphold. Might they have something up their sleeve ready for just an occasion such as this? Might they lie about this former member’s motivations to try to clear themselves of guilt? Also consider the recently split faction. Does it make sense for them to use this as a vector, and market themselves as “people who were suckers in that party full of sex pests”?
Or, apply a power analysis. Is it more plausible that this woman is the victim, by being mistreated in the wake of the assault, or is it more plausible that the Party’s core is just a magnet for haters, and is the victim by having stories spun up against them?
Maybe even apply an analysis of what a base rate of incidents like this would be if it was part of a Cointelpro-style operation. Would you see public accusations coming up every few years, or would you see stories about it as frequently as the feds could pump them out?
Marissa alleges that the women on the NDC are there as tokens and effectively subservient to Ben. If they were, wouldn’t they vehemently say “We are not tokens and we don’t just do what Ben says”?
Old heads will remember what happened here with the allegations against Beatnik. I think there’s a remarkable contrast between those and what we’re seeing here.
My personal opinion is that if the PSL core was vindictively clinging to power and maintaining optics and the subservience and loyalty of its members, and more interested in convincing people that things had been appropriately dealt with rather than appropriately dealing with them, this is exactly what they would do: deny any substantial problems, make counter-accusations, and double down on the rigidity of the chain of command.
I highly recommend this Article that breaks down how the PSL handled the allegations surrounding the sexual assault at the Philly chapter. It clearly outlines a pattern of abusive cover ups that go to the very core of the leadership of the party
This is what the pls leadership thinks counts as consent.
The messages stated, “So Friday, when he was being overly coercive to get me to have unprotected sex— I was patient with him. I said no 10 times before I would literally move away from him— and that happened like 5 separate times on Friday. Pushing his boner into me, putting my hand on his cock. Because I thought that this is just how he grieves, and that he needs to feel connected to me this way and he needs this escapism.” Aclarado went on to text that she eventually relented and coercively agreed to sex for an “escape.” In PSL’s statement they referenced these text messages of Aclarado saying they had sex for an “escape” as consent, however, this shows the text messages were taken out of context and that the consent was being coerced.
This is the party leadership claiming it was a one time thing, the last time they attempted to cover up rape.
De la Cruz asked if Gnvinfo was aware of how long PSL was a party and told no, and she responded 20 years. She made it a point saying this incident was “one thing” in 20 years. De la Cruz was then told there was knowledge that it was not “one thing” as the document also included allegations of misconduct in Chicago. De la Cruz said the Chicago branch should be asked. Gnvinfo told her it was presumed to be appropriate to ask her as she’s a leader in PSL. Presently, allegations of misconduct into the PSL Chicago branch have not been looked into by GnvInfo to the same extent of research done into the Powers case in Philadelphia, however, transphobia is alleged along with allegations of an alleged abuser in PSL Chicago being transferred to the PSL Atlanta branch. De la Cruz implied that GnvInfo was getting misinformation from federal agents on medium, possibly in reference to Shae’s article. Gnvinfo referenced the larger document which contained text messages from Aclarado that directly conflicted with PSL’s statement.
If they were, wouldn’t they vehemently say “We are not tokens and we don’t just do what Ben says”?
Let’s be fair, they did exactly that. Did you read the statement?
“We are not pawns or pieces to be moved by some small cabal of men who supposedly predetermine our actions, but revolutionary socialists in our own right. Very few women in the party and in society do not have some experience of sexist violation. We are committed to building a world free from the exploitation and violence and abuse that we ourselves have suffered. Yet in a post that claims to seek a better world, those who are named are described as only extensions of the desires of our male comrades. Any serious leftist should think twice about this. We too lead the party. We make up the National Disciplinary Committee. We have spent hours on investigations and interviews and in discussions to ensure our party treats sexual misconduct with care, empathy and on principled views of what it means to transform our class and our society. We strategize the struggles in our workplaces and in our schools and in our communities. We play a visible and necessary role in the struggle and in the Party. It is unconscionable that we are repeatedly denied the right to visibility in attacks that claim to speak against the very violence that women are subjected to in society.”
That’s my point.
Someone who is hiding something from you is going to say “I’m not hiding anything from you, nothing at all”.
They deny everything and frame it as inappropriate to even make the consideration. That’s what an adept deceiver does.
This is embarrassing… Sexual assault survivor publicly expresses disillusionment with an accountability process, so you go to discredit her? As others have pointed out, sexually assaulting someone doesn’t come out of nowhere, it exists as a part of a pattern of behavior and cannot be treated as a single incident. Ideally I would like to see serious reeducation in a case like this, not just take a break and pinkie promise to stop drinking, then go back to same leadership role like nothing happened. (I forgot the go to therapy lol). Dogshit “accountability processes” are embarrassing and do a disservice to our movements and to survivors. Obviously In cases where reeducation is not feasible for any number of reasons expulsion is the reasonable course of action to protect other members. This is better than a shitty accountability process that doesn’t thoroughly reeducate.
They even went on to whinge about how the sexual predators poor little heart was failing due to the stress of all of this. Good! Maybe the universe will enact justice.
Its not my org but from the outside looking in… yeah. I don’t know if PSL has the capacity to do that kind of reeducation or how exactly they’d go about it, but it seems like the least you could do is demote the guy and do something a little longer lasting than “some therapy and sobriety, tapering off at 6 months”. Top leadership roles need to be able to change over time, if he’s so indispensible let him work his way back up from the lower levels by demonstrating better behavior and continued good work. Also like, if you couldn’t possibly tell the full central committee about this incident without word getting out and damaging the party publicly, then clearly your security and discipline is not up to the task of being a revolutionary vanguard party? Maybe they claim that was all Marissa’s wishes, but it seems to me like they may have an over-emphasis on keeping disciplinary action private and behind closed doors.
The leadership should’ve realized these two things:
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Puryear almost certainly have sexually harassed other women besides Marissa. You don’t go from being an upstanding man who respects people’s boundaries to grabbing women’s genitals. Like the vast majority of sexual predators, there’s almost certainly cases where he tests the boundaries of other women before making a move on Marissa. Puryear almost certainly have copped a feel before or use the excuse of being touchy-feely when he’s drunk or any other excuse. Perhaps Marissa isn’t even his first genital-fondling victim.
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Just because Marissa was cool immediately after experiencing this traumatic experience doesn’t mean that she would cool after she began processing what actually happened. Most people don’t actually process much of what happened while or immediately after the traumatic experience happened. It takes time before they truly understand what has happened to them and what happened wasn’t right. They should’ve made their decision based on what Marissa five years after the incident would act. And I don’t think Marissa or most SA victims would be cool with their predator having their reputation completely intact.
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Jesus, this reads like a teenagers Facebook drama post. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to to publish this?
Marissa continues to say she never wanted Eugene’s expulsion or punishment, nor does she want it to “define the rest of his life.” If that were the case, this is not how she would have gone about things.
Fuck you.
I didn’t read the full timeline of the party’s handling of the assault - I’m confident that it’s a very convincing account and gives evidence that she was happy with how things were handled. But regardless of all their evidence, if she says it was insufficient, then it was insufficient.
The hardest part about this and the other recent break from PSL is that the party alleges state interference, and there’s not a good way to discern if that’s the case.
I think both of the folks that made statements as they left were acting in good faith, and wanted what’s best to advance socialism.
They decided that PSL is not be the vanguard party that the US needs, and that making a public post criticising the party was the best way to advance socialism.
That is consistent with what I’d do if I thought people should leave the organization, though I would probably direct them to other organizations that I believed in.
On the other hand, I get straight up scared when I think about what we’re up against. This is exactly how the state would try to neutralize a threatening party.
So we’re left with a spectrum that everyone gets to pick their preferred place on. On one end, we have “PSL leadership is corrupt” and on the other we have “PSL is subject to state attack”. Choose your own reality!
PSL members will skew towards the latter and further PSL’s reputation as a “cult”, skeptics will flock to the former, and future issues will further cement each side’s views.
I don’t know what the best thing to do is, but just crying “cointelpro” isn’t sufficient. In my opinion, the top leadership needs to be replaced - at this point the reputation of the party is being harmed by their continued leadership, and I’m confident that there are many capable party members that would be able to run the organization just as effectively.
I think you nailed the core challenge. It’s hard to doubt that the PSL is subject to deliberate and active sabotage by motivated parties like intel agencies and factions. That said the key issue is really one of professionalism. The point about creating the NDC is a good one and indicates that they see a problem and are working to address it. The issue I see, and that this statement shows, isn’t that there’s necessarily a cult around the central committee, it’s that there are social cliques throughout the leadership. Another commenter alluded to facebook drama and I think that’s a good way of describing it.
The PSLs goal is to build a cadre of professional revolutionaries, which is a good goal and it’s something that they seem to do fairly well. What this incident and response indicate is that, regardless of hostile external parties, an organization with leadership bodies that have a number of insular social circles will necessarily be vulnerable to this sort of problem. It seems to me that it would be worth the PSLs time to investigate how other ML parties have acted to avoid these kind of issues and implement steps to mitigate against future incidents.
Last but not least, while the restorative justice angle they reference in the letter is a good one it’s still reasonable to hold leadership to an extremely high standard. I personally agree with the approach they describe in the initial response but at the same time the fact that a central committee member got drunk and acted inappropriately at a party function should be sufficient to remove that person from leadership going forward. As Mao said, “a revolution is not a tea party.” We can hold leaders to our highest standards without undermining the process of restorative justice.
This is a fucking terrible response. Frankly they need to just let new people take charge, this is dogshit.
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Every time someone is sexually assaulted they need to replace everyone in the entire leadership of the organization?
The central committee is mostly just one family who are apparently very enamored with a self admitted sexual predator. By not removing Eugene they endangered every woman in the organization. Hopefully, a new committee would simply ostracize the predator immediately rather than constantly making excuses for them. Real justice against an abuser should be much more violent than that, but I recognize the constraints we’re under.
I don’t support splitting, but I do support getting rid of weak links.
mostly just one family
Who is the family?
Anyone following this even remotely closely is aware of the Becker clique. Sanchez’s piece this week mentions Ben Becker (who is married to Karina Garcia), Brian Becker, and Dick Becker (who is married to Gloria La Riva).
If you know anything about the PSL, you know about the Beckers. They sit in the public-facing and powerful positions quite disproportionately.
I have a comrade from Chicago who was often saying “Brian Becker feels really creepy” since at least 2019.
The Beckers
If the whole leadership knowingly collaborated on the cover up and so on, yes, they should be replaced. If the org cannot handle that, it should not exist as a national org.
The rebuttal pretty clearly lays out why there wasn’t a “cover up”.
I don’t think it does that at all, but regardless can you see how the point that I was making wasn’t really about that but rather a hypothetical? Granted, I agree with the hypothetical, but my point in discussing it isn’t to prove what did or didn’t happen but to explain what would be appropriate if it did happen.
This might seem obtuse to you, but can you see the difference? The reason that I am explaining this to you is that I don’t have the slightest interest in your opinion on what actually happened, given what you have said so far. I am just commenting on an issue with significance “downstream of” the real point of dispute.
Well it seems pretty unhelpful to entertain vague “hypotheticals” when there is an actual real scenario being discussed from multiple points-of-view. It seems appropriate to try to avoid FUD and casting aspersions on entire organizations.
Do people just say FUD now? I thought that was reserved for those weird internet cultists living in denial about something they are compromisingly invested in. You know, crypto guys.
My initial comment was not casting aspersions at any organization nor was it doing “FUD,” it was explaining part of the framework for how these issues should be dealt with in general, which here is relevant to because if one side of the debate is right, then clearly the relevant leadership would need to go.
If someone is on trial and you point out the severity of the minimum sentence for the alleged crime, is that casting aspersions? No, obviously not, it’s explaining some of the significance of the trial.
I would further add that the initial comment that I responded to was unhelpfully flippant because it totally sidestepped these exact terms by question-begging the issue of culpability (to deny it) while insisting that the person you are responding to is saying we should punish people who we aren’t holding as culpable. I think this is indefensible and rhetorically underhanded.
“No you can’t just call out me being a massive sex pest, that’s called splitting the party!”
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One member groping someone at a party 6 years ago is a “massive sex pest”?
Yes… that is called sexual assault. Are you diminishing sexual assault?
It’s also not the first time this exact thing has happened in recent memory.
The PSL has a long established history of dismissing sexual assault and then attacking the victims.
Hell it’s well known enough that it’s in their description on prolewiki
“The PSL has been accused for decades of being cult-like in its organization methods and permitting sexual harassment and protecting sexual abusers (in locations across the country including Philadelphia, Carbondale, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Albuquerque).[16][17]”.
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Please listen to the women in this post with regard to your misogyny, this is an official warning.
Do you believe in the coincidence of a man doing this just once, and not having a pattern of similar behaviors?
I think you need to step away from the thread. You’re making an ass out of yourself.
Massive does not imply repeat offense. You can be a sex pest by “merely” harassing someone. Groping someone’s genitals nonconsensually is several steps worse.
How many times are these organizations going to claim “everyone that says something bad about me are only doing so as a differing political faction” The Communist Party of Canada did the same thing when one of their male members was a serial creep to other male members. So it’s not even just misogyny here, male members aren’t safe either and will thrown under the bus as political outsiders.
The faction thing was real, idk personally if Marissa has anything to do with them but a group of people tried to peel off a section of the party on their way out recently.
Dude, I’d probably want to split too, this is ridiculous
Walter didn’t split over SA or an ineffective NDC though. Walter leaving was just him wanting to take a slice of the party with him to do his own projects. That’s fine I guess, but the Party is obviously going to try and defend itself and its resources.
Marissa’s letter at least makes sense and isn’t trying to justify a robbery.
What exactly are you suggesting they do?
And no one in good faith would attempt to basically steal organization resources for some new org that has nebulous goals.
How often is a party split a good thing? There is a long history of this stuff happening and it’s why you have a bunch of tiny impotent left-wing orgs that achieve nothing (as designed).
Also where is the evidence that any issue with this process cannot simply be resolved with an election or resolution or something? You’re basically accusing the entire structure of the organization of being irreparably broken, which seems obviously false.
Exactly!
do better, PSL
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Rather than an org addressing the issue of a member accusing another member of sexual assault. This comes across as a faction accusing another faction of engaging in factional battle. The response itself is therefore part of that factional battle also.
An org shouldn’t operate that way. If a member(former or otherwise) accuses another member of something, org processes should handle that in the form of an investigatory committee being formed, then a cold PR statement, then pretty much nothing until the investigatory committee releases their findings and advice, followed by a final outcome in whatever form. And fine, if that ends up looking similar to this Report then that’s at the very least been produced by an investigatory committee spun off specifically for that job rather than by people directly involved.
The report even talks about the disciplinary process that exists now being different to then? So why is this being put out instead of just kicking it to the new process? As an excuse for not engaging those new processes with the issue? Just throw it into the process and what happens will happen. If they decide it’s been handled already then fine, if they decide it requires further action then also fine.
So why is this being put out instead of just kicking it to the new process?
Because Marissa released a public statement. They obviously have to release a statement giving PSL’s side.
Marissa’s statement also included factional language so that’s obviously going to be part of the conversation.
Why? No matured organisation does this. It goes into the organisational processes and follows the pipelines then out comes a brief professional public statement while the rest remains among those that need it.
Big public airing of this stuff in this way is just indicative of an org that has not matured past the point of feeling threatened by what is fundamentally social drama. Not to make light of the nature of the social drama, but it is fundamentally a social drama. There is no social drama threatening the existence of matured parties, so no matured parties feel the need to make big huge statements about it and stick to their rigid processes and professional PR statements.
For me it’s an indication of weakness and a lack of confidence in party structures or procedures that these issues should be sent into. A lack of confidence that’s probably held by both the membership and the leadership. That lack of confidence in the structures to handle the issue is what needs addressing to build a party that takes these things on the chin and keeps marching forwards. They’re not going to stop as the party gets bigger, they will increase as numbers increase.
I don’t think they can wait for something like this. You can tell by the response on hexbear alone this is a big deal, and the faction has used it as an opportunity to poach people as well. Hell, I received a message from one of the former PSL members trying to poach me with a link to this statement.
Whether you think they suck or not, PSL has to respond to this quickly or risk losing a sizable chunk of people to this newly developed faction, which seems to be targeting them as they’re growing in popularity and getting a bigger target on them as well.
NDC Statement (Sept. 2026)
spoiler
The following statement was prepared by the National Disciplinary Committee to give our members an accurate account of the investigative and disciplinary process around an incident involving Eugene P. in 2020.
Marissa S., a former member of the PSL, posted a Substack article about this incident on September 7. The letter’s contents are understandably distressing. However, the letter seriously mischaracterizes the party’s actions and procedures. The article itself not only mischaracterizes the accountability process and events following the incident in 2020, but also attacks the central Party leadership and the NDC and undermines the PSL’s history in dealing with incidents of sexual misconduct, which are taken very seriously. It is important for members of the PSL to understand the context. The Party leadership is aware that Marissa has been communicating and working with the leaders of the recent faction, and former members are sharing the article online and sending it to current members across the country. The following document is not a comprehensive response to all the mischaracterizations in her article but rather an account of the investigative and disciplinary process related to the incident raised.
We also would like to make clear, for the sake of people having a full understanding of what happened, Marissa was an active participant in the entire process. She repeatedly expressed to multiple people, both in the immediate aftermath of the incident and in the years following it, that she felt supported by the Party and that she supported the process.
2020 Incident & Accountability
On March 29, 2026, the Standing Committee became aware that Marissa, a former Central Committee member considered a disciplinary incident involving Eugene in 2020 to have been mishandled, the accountability not severe enough, and the support for her to be inadequate.
The incident took place at a house party in** **November 2020. Marissa brought the incident to the attention of members of the Executive Committee at the time, which prompted an immediate investigation and disciplinary action. We do not share details of incidents widely, primarily out of respect for the comrades most affected by it. In the Party, the norms of our practices regarding disciplinary matters goes as follows: An investigation is conducted by the appropriate body, timeline is collected from all parties involved, disciplinary action is proposed. The proposed disciplinary action is typically brought to the victim before it is carried out. If any disagreements arise, we work through those disagreements with a path forward. Once a decision is made and the disciplinary action is carried out, it is not customarily re-litigated.
During the initial investigation, Eugene claimed he had been too intoxicated to recall the incident, but he did not contest it, and said he would comply with any accountability measure. He offered to resign from the Party. Marissa was involved in each decision made about Eugene’s punishment, and helped craft the decision that Eugene would be suspended from Party activity and leadership for six months. Eugene apologized to Marissa in a meeting she agreed to and facilitated by a leading Party member. Marissa made it clear she did not want Eugene to resign.
In the over five years, from the disciplinary action in 2020-21 to right before she resigned in 2026, Marissa never made the Party leadership aware that she had become dissatisfied about the disciplinary action taken. While she had been part of the accountability process at each step in 2020 and 2021, we only learned in March of 2026, six years after the incident, that Marissa now considered it insufficient and handled wrongly. Every victim, including Marissa, has the right to assert this and to look back on things differently with time. After Party leadership was made aware, the leadership reached out to discuss the matter. Marissa chose not to discuss this further and resigned from the Party. Following her resignation, the National Disciplinary Committee reached out again during the review period. She declined to participate.
As soon as Eugene heard that Marissa felt dissatisfied with the 2020 outcome, Eugene offered to resign from the Party. The Standing Committee accepted the resignation that same day.
Strengthening and Affirming the National Disciplinary Committee
At the time of the 2020 incident, the Party process in place to adjudicate misconduct was for a higher body to handle the charge. There had not previously been charges within the top leadership, and it was handled inside the top leadership as an uncontested charge.
In 2021, the Party initiated an independent National Disciplinary Committe, which was ratified by the Party Congress in 2022 with independent authority. Marissa was one of the founding members of this Committee and helped draft its protocols and processes based on the Party’s history in dealing with these matters. These norms have been used by other Party bodies to deal with new cases.
Following Marissa’s resignation, the NDC initiated a thorough review of the 2020 incident. The incident occurred before the NDC’s existence. The NDC reviewed notes and interviewed comrades involved to the extent possible. In its review, the committee found no evidence that the processes following the 2020 incident had been mishandled. It was particularly important that the accountability process had been swift. Marissa had been engaged at each step. Multiple people who were close to her at the time have independently confirmed that she expressed support for the disciplinary outcome, did not seek a different outcome and expressed she was being supported by the Party.
The NDC has, since its initial formation, been strengthened as a necessary step as the Party continues to grow. It is now institutionalized as a permanent standing and empowered body, composed of long-time women cadres. It has independent authority vested by the Party Congress. Any issues related to sexual assault go to it, bypassing all other leadership bodies, and all comrades must submit to its rulings. The NDC has the right to review all cases of sexual misconduct.
To emphasize, while we do share summaries and decisions of the NDC with the appropriate leadership bodies and occasionally members of the body most impacted, the NDC does not share details of its work or investigations with the wider membership. The primary reasons are to protect the privacy of the victims and to protect the Party from the machinations of the repressive state apparatus. Serious violations and egregious misconduct, which are not common in our party, are expediently investigated and lead to swift disciplinary action up to termination of membership. More often, the charges require time to conduct an investigation and understand the impact of any incident on those involved and on the work of the Party. Fundamental to our approach to these incidents is our understanding as Marxists that people can and do change. Comrades who violate Party norms, but remain in the organization, are punished appropriately and held accountable to ensure that they are meeting set expectations or terms of conduct. The victim(s) of those actions is(are) offered the ability to be involved in the determination of that punishment and the path forward.
The NDC has been working to standardize protocols and practices for all leadership bodies and develop leadership trainings on our protocol. This statement is accompanied by a short version of the protocols and practices of the NDC: https://drive.proton.me/urls/JZ1BYEFE28#RK4fFJa63hIa.
Signed by: Karla, Nathalie, Satya, and Sheila, on behalf of the National Disciplinary Committee.
I think the lesson we’re learning here is that a mechanism that is intended to protect the party seems to instead be causing harm to it. If this had been more widely known it would have defanged a number of the criticisms that have emerged here. Most of us understand that SA and other interpersonal transgressions will occur in any body of people. Being visibly proactive, taking a restorative justice approach, and having visible accountability aren’t necessarily incompatible and serve to demonstrate that the party is taking the correct line on important issues.
Exactly! Exactly exactly exactly; it’s inevitable that these things will happen, but my logic going into the party was that if these things occured prior and were learned from, then that’s a sign of positive development. But they clearly weren’t learned from at all; instead they rely on the same mechanical structure and thinking that honestly just comes across as deny, defend, discredit.
I joined the party wanting to give it a fair shot, and I did. I even figured that my experiences were either justified, then simply a hard call, then a mistake made by my direct leadership. However, this clearly goes to the core. This is fucking nuts and wild, these guys fucking suck and have shown they’re not above wasting everybody’s time by making the promise and building the platform for us USians to finally have the party we all desperately need while not having the integrity to practice the self sacrifice and honesty that leadership requires. Fuck these guys
Can any of this be independently corroborated? Cuz otherwise its just she said they said, right?
The Party is obviously going to be on edge after a faction led by a relatively high ranking party member split publicly. Especially if it seems like people are coming out to stir the pot!
None of this changes what I think or said in the other thread about this incident. NDC needs to continuously raise their standards and improve their operating procedures. The background misogyny andremoved culture in the US is intense. I fully expect SA to happen all the time in big groups of Americans, its an extremely and unfortunately common occurrence. The fact that it happens in the party shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who takes SA seriously. Not because the party is especially bad, but because its made of people living in a country where SA happens all the time.
We also need to get all parties involved into some kind of therapy to help them process their behavior and their trauma.
It’s not he said she said, the reality is the central committee and Marissa and Eugene himself agreed that what Eugene did was wrong. The committee for some bizarre reason kept him on. They then go on to wax poetic about how great Eugene, the admitted sexual predator, is. The whole committee needs to be removed to avoid a split.
That’s not independent verification, that’s two sides of a story agreeing on some points. You need three points to triangulate the truth or whatever.
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Because they thought they could use the sexual predator to their advantage, and unsurprisingly that backfired
in american politics you usually can’t win elections if you can’t get away with SA.
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please stay the fuck away from women
For my part, I know vaguely that Chris either left or was suspended from the DFW Branch last year over matters related to sexual misconduct. I was never told the full story, but I know those tendencies to be true.
Further, I think the issue is not completely that it occurred in the first place. Organizations should and need to plan for the inevitability that sexual harassment, assault, andremoved will occur, and it’s not a complete condemnation of an organization if a member, even a founding member, was found to have done this. However it’s condemning if the organization did not respond adequately, and after the fact still insists on belittling the person who was abused, I do not feel it’s safe. I also can’t say this enough, I did experience many of the same tendencies from my national liaison which is part of what makes this so convincing for me.
I’m not trying to discount your experiences! I think raising the standards is the only way to ensure that these damaging tendencies are eliminated. I also get why you feel the way you do. I’m not trying to be combative, I’m just a really analytical person so sometimes I can come across a little abrasive.
Maybe the party cannot be fixed, but I’m still trying to determine if that is the case or not.
It’s kinda been a long running open secret that the org is pretty terrible when it comes to this specific topic. A similar scenario from a couple years ago.
A description of controversy on Prolewiki “The PSL has been accused for decades of being cult-like in its organization methods and permitting sexual harassment and protecting sexual abusers (in locations across the country including Philadelphia, Carbondale, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Albuquerque).[16][17]”
Other thread? Where can I get more info on this factional split? First I have heard of it
I received a message the other day trying to convince me to split. The faction stuff mentioned in this letter is real. I think you can read more about it in an old post I made with the committee’s responding to Walter’s letter, too, but idk if a lot of the faction stuff has made it out of internal PSL discussions yet. It seems to be an ongoing thing considering I just got the message a couple days ago.
Other thread about Marissa. I don’t have anything on the split. Some guy tried to run off with a liberation center or something.
