Socialist Alternative: The Vampires of the Left

Why DSA and The Left Should Be Concerned

Recently, Socialist Alternative (SAlt), a US Trotskyist group, made an organizational decision to “dual join” the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) causing some internal debate within DSA around the impact of entryism, the tactics of this outside group, and how to orient towards members now claiming DSA as a political organization, but under the democratic centralist control of SAlt.

In this essay, I would like to examine some of the tactics of SAlt’s Chicago branch, as well as personal experiences that highlight their serious organizational flaws which I believe should be seen as cautionary tales to DSA around uncritical acceptance of these dual members. While I do agree with some of their political frameworks and celebrate the 2013 and beyond victory of Kshama Sawant in the Seattle City Council, I also am deeply concerned with the transactional, opportunistic, and often strongly arrogant and paternalistic approach this organization takes towards Left organizing. Their use of highly manipulative tactics, disregard for individual or group safety, the tactic of using secretive front groups, and their parasitic relationships to local unions, organizations, and individuals has no place in DSA or other organizations of the Left.

I first came in contact with this group through a co-worker. Initially, I was taken in by his charisma and charm. SAlt seemed serious about Socialism. And on the surface, I found myself initially agreeing with many of their political positions. I even spoke as a Chicago Teachers Union member at a few of their small events and began to work closely with their group on political projects. And, full disclosure, I did have a short-term romantic relationship with one of their members.

It was not until I saw deeper into the organization that I began to feel something was…off. As they attempted to openly recruit me, I began to see how they viewed other leftists, politicians, and organizations. Whether in partnering with Bernie supporters, local politicians, or unionists in Chicago, I began to feel that they saw these other groups as opportunities to exploit, not partner. To steal the benefit of the organizing work being done by others in order to grow their own insular organization.

Relatively early on, I began to feel uneasy about their tactics, such as how they planned to do hard recruiting at Bernie events, events planned and organized by the Bernie campaign, even though they are openly critical of the Democratic Party in general and Bernie and his positions in specific. They created front groups on Facebook, outwardly calling for support for the Bernie Campaign, without identifying their own organization or goals. I watched, perplexed, as they planned to use Bernie events in Chicago as their own personal recruitment events. For example, they attempted to flier and speak with the thousands waiting in line at the Navy Pier campaign event to grow their tiny, insular organization. But they were not the only group there using these tactics so I brushed this off. The usual suspects like RevCom also were there. But SAlt’s “critical support” of Bernie was just the tip of a much larger exploitation iceberg. Still, there were political arguments to be made in favor of such tactics. It was not until their unapologetically exploitative and transactional approach to other organizations affected me personally that I really became concerned.

Exploiting the CTU

The most glaring example of SAlt’s vampirism was how they approached my union, the Chicago Teachers Union. As a member of the Executive Board, the CTU Bargaining Team, and an active member of CORE (the Caucus of Rank & File Educators), SAlt members saw me as a prize to be won. I overheard snippets of “it would be so great to have a higher up CTU member in our organization.” While I was flattered by the attention at first, I later saw it as exploitative and opportunistic. They were not interested in my ideas, my concerns, my many years of political and organizing experience. Instead, they viewed me as pawn to capture for their own plans.

They quickly saw me as a well of information about CTU, about my union caucus CORE, and as an entry into access to my union’s immense political reach. They would spend hours questioning me about internal CTU or CORE issues. They pushed me to take specific stands in political debates, introduce political positions to CORE and CTU through me, and used me as a poster child in their literature as a relatively well known rank & file leader in the CTU. I naively felt flattered by the attention initially and thought we were honest political partners, but later began to feel their suggestions were actually manipulations to further their agenda. And I began to see that SAlt saw me, my political work, my years of organizing as a tool, a mere chess piece which they used unapologetically

This use and abuse was nowhere more apparent than in the lead up and during our strike in October 2019. In our rally in May, they used our event to flier for their group. Not unthinkable, just presumptuous. As I became more and more wary of this group, I began distancing myself from them. By the Fall, I was beginning to openly speak out about the group. Despite this, they choose to use a picture which included me in it, a recognizable CTU member, on their literature. They handed this flier out at the CTU Bernie event, making it look like I, a vocal member of my union, supported them. In fairness, they did call me the night before, informing me that they used this picture after already making their copies. I was not pleased. But still, I thought these things were just an annoyance.

Unfortunately, once the strike began, SAlt decided to step up their interference. Without having even one CTU member in their group, they attempted to steer our 25,000 democratic union towards their agenda. During rallies, I saw that some CTU members carried signs with SAlt’s logo on them. I thought this strange and inappropriate. They were using our strike to advertise? They flyered at nearly every rally and march in order to tell CTU members what to think. They showed up at some picket lines, not offering food or other material support like other Socialist groups in the area, but as an opportunity to recruit and talk to a captive, radicalizing audience, pulling rank & file members away from the fight at hand, and instead leeching off the extensive organizing work it took to make this strike a reality. It was always the arrogant, top-down, “We have the answers’’ approach with no appreciation of rank and file agency or voice.

On a personal note, my co-worker in SAlt had over the months I knew him had gone from being friendly and seemingly genuine, to manipulative, irritable, and emotionally abusive as I increasingly became uncomfortable with his politics. While I spent a good portion of the strike working in the bargaining room as a member of the CTU big bargaining team, he was subtly smearing my name on my school’s picket line, undermining my authority and attempting to turn co-workers against me. He would gaslight me telling me manipulative statements meant to undermine my authority like, “Listen, no one at this school wants to hear from you, they don’t respect you. You should step back from leading.” It got so uncomfortable that I reached out directly to the head of SAlt in Chicago asking him to intervene. I asked as a form of solidarity as the pressures on the bargaining team were great and going to my picket feeling alienated every morning was harming my mental health. I told him I felt this co-worker, a national leader in SAlt, was being cruel and abusive, but my pleas were ignored. I was told “this is a personal matter” and nothing was done. SAlt’s Chicago Chapter’s default was to not believe women.

SAlt’s hubris culminated on the Wednesday before the strike ended. Without consulting any CTU rank and file leaders, SAlt put out a letter demanding that we continue our strike indefinitely, calling for escalating actions culminating in a general strike and handed out pamphlets to our House of Delegates. Now, as a Socialist, I of course want a mass movement of radical workers to rise up and seize the means of production. But one union alone cannot be the revolution. SAlt’s demand to vote down the tentative agreement was reckless and irresponsible. The TA vote was an internal decision, one our members had to make. We knew we did not have the capacity to continue the strike much longer and had to balance our ability to continue striking versus what we knew we still needed to win, yet here was an outside organization calling us “sell-outs” and telling members to join some non-existent general strike movement. Be very clear, SAlt had not done any work to prepare and organize for an indefinite strike much less prepping for a general strike, yet they expected our members to take on that burden, after an already grueling 11-day strike that had sucked out our strength and resources. SAlt wanted to USE our strike for their own ends and potentially harming our union strength and capacity was not a consideration. They were told explicitly, from both internal and external sources, that their actions were harmful at the time, and they actively ignored that criticism.

Now some will say that Socialist groups should be pushing for more militancy in the Labor Movement. I agree in theory. But, there is a distinct difference between doing the work to build connections, to build relationships, and push the Labor Movement by winning rank and file members over to more militant action, and exploiting work done by others for your own, immature revolution fantasies.

SAlt and BLM

In another glaring example of SAlt vampirism and their utter lack of empathy and inability to accept criticism, consider what happened last summer in Chicago during the George Floyd protests. In one Southside traditionally working class, white neighborhood, there was a real threat of a white supremacist backlash against the Black Lives Matters protestors. And yet, white SAlt members chose to organize their own rally in that neighborhood. They created a facebook page, with little other organizing efforts. Other Leftists in the community quickly responded with “What have you done to keep people safe, especially marginalized groups? Have you set up security of any kind, first aid?” SAlt members did not care to listen to this feedback, instead opting to capitalize on the national unrest to propel their individual members and group to the forefront. Finally, after a few tense days of real fear, as white supremacists protected by local police patrolled the neighborhood looking to start fights with BLM activists, SAlt was finally convinced to take down the event. But this lack of consideration for the potentially deadly impact of their adolescent revolutionary fantasy tactics is characteristic of how SAlt operates. Arrogance, know-it-allism, seeking fame and recognition by leeching off of existing movements and actions.

In addition, SAlt often uses front groups to essentially trick people into their organization. SAlt often makes paper actions on Facebook such as “Union Members: Defund Police, Tax the Rich, Fund Education & Housing!” a group run by SAlt members, though nowhere is the name Socialist Alternative mentioned. They call themselves “union members who support calls for #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd” and have recruited union members pretending to speak for unions across the country. Their #Movement4Bernie and #Movement4BlackLives campaigns have all been characteristic of using this misrepresentation of their political agenda to recruit. Using the Bernie Campaign, using the BLM movement, using the organizing of others for their own ends.

In a piece titled, The Struggle for Socialism Today, the author describes this front group tendency in SAlt:

One campaign simply not panning out is understandable, but pushing hard on a campaign that SA appears to be the only “partner” in, only later for it to be dropped for no obvious reason appears to be a theme. An initiative called “Workers Speak Out” was launched in March 2020, only to be dropped some 12 weeks later. Socialist Students, another campaign, was launched in August 2016 only to disappear from public materials a few months later. Movement for Bernie was launched in the midst of Bernie’s 2016 campaign, then renamed Movement for the 99% after the campaign ended, again only to disappear from public materials.

SA’s record with external campaigns bears more than a passing resemblance to what is sometimes called “front group-ism” or “tailism.” This is a feature of some forms of left organizing, often associated with sectarian models, where rather than seeking to be full partners with other organizations in common work, organizations instead throw up astroturf style “campaigns” that are really just little more than banners and slogans with no real life or mass character. The objective is less to actually win the demands they promote, but rather to capitalize off the popularity of those demands by creating a transmission belt between the broader movement and themselves in order to acquire more members, more volunteers, and resources. It’s a transactional approach whose objective is more about access than building the collective capacity of workers themselves.

SAlt and Local Campaigns

SAlt members also saw the organizing efforts of local Socialist politicians election campaigns as yet another entryway into greater political influence in the city, again acting as parasites latched onto the already existing organizing work of DSA, local unions, local independent political organizations, and community organizations. Most notably, they attached themselves to the campaigns of Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Rosanna Rodriquez, both open Socialists and DSA members. To be clear, I am not claiming that either campaign expressed any problems with Socialist Alternative members participating in their campaigns. Byron even has gone so far as to openly support Kshama Sawant and help campaign for her. What I am describing is my opinion on, given their internal processes, how SAlt internally viewed these campaigns. That they saw their participation as transactional, that they were essentially buying influence into the wider Chicago political scene. Perhaps there is an argument to make for this approach to electoralism, but again, it is an approach to politics that is more parasitic than authentic partnership or collaboration.

SAlt and DSA & CDSA

Since dual joining DSA, many SAlt members have misrepresented themselves to DSA and its members. On the CDSA Slack, for example, SAlt members introduce themselves as collaborative partners, yet within days of joining, are calling for DSA resources in terms of money and members to be used for pre-existing SAlt projects, namely supporting the Sawant Campaign. While calling for support of a Socialist City Council member is not inherently a bad thing, the way SAlt members joined DSA seemingly for the express purpose of diverting resources from a larger organization to their smaller org which was unable to raise those funds and member support from the local Seattle community, is problematic. SAlt also immediately began using the DSA Chicago logo on their events, a brand better known and trusted than their own, regardless of whether those events had been endorsed by CDSA. In some instances, DSA had to expressly ask them to remove that logo on events that were not actually dually created and endorsed. SAlt also immediately submitted resolutions and amendments to the DSA Convention as Socialist Alternative, presenting themselves almost as just another internal caucus instead of a fully independent outside organization that practices Democratic Centralism with its members. These actions all point to how SAlt as an organization views DSA as yet another organization to exploit and use, not partner with as collaborators.

At no point that I am aware of, did SAlt consult DSA directly about their members joining, en masse, DSA. Instead, SAlt, seeing the explosive growth of DSA, while their own organization grew much less substantially, chose to leech off the DSA success instead of examining internal reasons why their own organization did not experience a similar explosion of interest. SAlt once again chose a parasitic relationship to a more successful organization rather than a collaborative one.

Which leads into the very real fears of SAlt practicing entryism into DSA. While complicated and certainly nuance is needed in examining SAlt in the context of entryism, it is important to point out how SAlt tactics and organizational structures do lead to very real reasons for distrust. As is articulated in this In These Times article, The Dangers of Factionalism in DSA:

Herein lie the dual dangers of entryism. On the one hand, it poses a threat to the organizational integrity of an open and democratic organization. Entryism is the sectarian equivalent to a hostile corporate takeover designed to split or seize control of its target organization. At a minimum, it seeks to poach members new to politics who may not be aware of the stratagem being employed. On the other hand, it disrupts the internal democratic processes of that organization, which depend on members engaging in honest debate and deliberation over policies and political strategies.

Entryists enter all debates and votes not with an open mind and a willingness to be persuaded, but with the express intent of advancing a political line that has already been decided in advance. Such tactics can quickly poison democratic political cultures, especially when opponents resort to the kinds of tactics they did in SDS.

SAlt and Harm

Ultimately, I write this piece today as someone who was personally harmed by individuals in this organization. The Left has a nasty tendency to disregard any political critique when personal relationships are involved. Maybe it’s time to critically examine that tendency, especially after the fall of prominent Socialist organizations that crumbled under the weight of cover-ups around sexual abuse scandals and other personal harms. I know in my case, I had to reach out to SAlt’s national grievance committee after Chicago Branch leadership and members ignored and mocked my requests for help, enabling serious abuse and harm. (Though I do want to acknowledge SAlt’s national grievance committee took my complaints seriously, ran an investigation which concluded that harm was done, and took steps to remedy some of that harm. I am immensely grateful to that team. It is unfortunate that the Chicago Chapter never acknowledged the harm that was done.)

Overall, taken individually, perhaps none of these actions present as serious red flags. Yet, when seen as a broader pattern of exploitation, lack of empathy, arrogance, and disregard for harm or critique, SAlt’s organizational tactics are very troubling. Certainly, not every individual in SAlt is a harm-doer per se. I’ve met some authentic socialists genuinely working towards a better tomorrow who were members of SAlt. It is a complex, nuanced issue.

But given their history, it is time for DSA, and the broader Left, to take seriously the potential negative effects of the parasitic, exploitative nature of Socialist Alternative. Given their organization’s recent international collapse, this organization’s transactional, arrogant approach to the Left, unions, organizations, and individuals may simply be the death rattle of a dying organization. Still, we should remain vigilant in protecting movements, organizations, and individuals from the harm of these exploitative tactics. Otherwise. SAlt will suck the lifeblood out of our movements and organizations.