Fightback in Crisis: An Address to Comrades Internationally

Written by: Teri N., former Phoenix IMT member

My name is Teri (known online as both LemonyLenin and Tee) and I've been a Phoenix comrade for four years, most of it as a full member, and the last few months as a sympathizer.¹ I wanted to begin this by saying that in my years in the IMT I have met many people who I still respect a lot to this day. However, in my personal investigations regarding how leadership of the IMT have handled the accusations presented in Jamie’s blog I have come to the conclusion that not only have these situations been mishandled but that leadership both nationally and internationally are shutting down conversation regarding this. For the safety of those involved a lot of this is going to be kept anonymous as not everyone who has considered the leadership’s response inefficient has opted to leave and they do not want to be targeted.

I want to begin this by clarifying this question of a secret faction. I was one of the few American comrades who maintained consistent contact with the arising “Canadian Opposition”. I call it the “Canadian Opposition” despite the fact that many comrades within the Discord explicitly stated that the intent of the Discord was not to create a faction. The intent was to come together and determine a set of demands that comrades believed were necessary to rectify the situation at hand. It’s been called factionalism to reach out to your fellow comrades. This sentiment however, goes against what it means to be in a democratic organization. The whole purpose of democracy is to discuss ideas and come to conclusions based on mutual communication and understanding. Comrades on the ground in Canada have been noting that they’ve been told not to discuss this situation without a CC member present. How are we supposed to even determine if declaring factional rights is the proper response if we can’t independently determine if there’s even enough on the ground support to justify a faction? How are we to discuss if there is at the core of the issue a political disagreement that would justify the existence of a faction if comrades are barred from democratic discussion amongst their branches without the outside pressures of leadership?

On the ground in Canada leadership distributed a five point resolution dismissing calls for an emergency Congress and effectively requesting that the rank and file vote to clear them of all wrongdoing when the leadership of the American section had this to say about the situation:

“With the benefit of hindsight, could some of the steps taken by the Canadian EC and CC to investigate the facts and find a resolution have been done sooner, differently, or with a better bedside manner? By their own admission, yes. But does it flow from this that the IMT, and in particular its Canadian section, is a socially conservative cesspool of violence and abuse? Or that our rejection of identity politics in favor of class politics and class struggle is mere cover for grooming young people for predation by the leadership? Or that we are misogynists, racists, homophobes, and transphobes? Posing these questions so starkly is indeed over the top.”

Despite this partial admission by American leadership the second point of the proposed resolution put forward by the Canadian EC states,

“This branch believes that the actions taken by the (Canadian) EC throughout the process related to the three incidents mentioned in ex-member Jamie’s letter were rational and justified given the information available to them at each stage.”

I would like to emphasize that many of the people who have come to disagree with the position that the “EC did nothing wrong” do not necessarily agree with every inference or accusation set forward by Jamie. However, regardless of your stance on their conclusions it cannot be denied that the systems in place failed Jamie. I would like to highlight that the only thing that the EC in Canada had to say in regards to accusations of allowing someone under active investigation to host branch at their house was,

“We’ve explained above that far from a perpetrator being protected, we attempted for a period to ascertain the best way of getting to the bottom of the case. Bringing in the background of the comrade or the fact that branch meetings were held in the home of the comrade in question [which happens here and there regularly, especially in cities where renting rooms is difficult and expensive] is disingenuous.”

So, what I am seeing here is that the Executive Committee of Fightback has admitted that while determining the safety level of a comrade under active investigation they allowed comrades to attend branch in their home rather than discontinuing the moment the accusations were presented. While it is true that the victim did not request they stop hosting branch there, that is because the victim was unaware branch meetings were being held in the home of their abuser. I am alarmed that this wasn’t the first step in the process of investigating. Instead, the EC of Fightback has determined the very idea of critiquing this dangerous practice as “disingenuous”.

I wanted to continue by honing in on this quote from the Canadian EC’s initial reply to the original blog post by ex-member Jamie:

“The reasons why we did not inform the entire membership are simple. Events of this nature plague capitalist society, and unfortunately, our ranks are not immune. But we are no longer a small organization, and we do not believe it is useful for the work of the entire membership to be informed of every single case of disciplinary action. With the size of our group, when it comes to interpersonal conflict, disputes, or more serious cases like assault, we think that most cases can be dealt and discussed locally where all the relevant comrades are made aware, without having to spread the news across the entire membership.”

Now, if we want to talk about being disingenuous I believe that this statement is extremely disingenuous and let me tell you why. As the Canadian EC stated, “...we do not believe it is useful for the work of the entire membership to be informed of every single case of disciplinary action.” But nobody here or amongst the “Canadian Opposition” have argued that every single case of disciplinary action be broadcasted to the membership. What people have expressed concern about is that there’s minimal separation between the Control Commission and the leadership and that the idea that you should just informally report to leading comrades or your branch chair is a sign of that zero separation. Without a separation between leadership and those holding them accountable the reporting process relies entirely upon the benevolence of the individual leaders which is why comrades seem to have such mixed experiences. A side note though, if SA/DV aren’t relevant enough to broadcast these concerns to the membership then what is? Many comrades ended up interacting socially with the accused multiple times before they became aware of the dangers of doing so due to Jamie’s public statement.

So, let’s stick to the facts of the matter. Mitch, the perpetrator in Incident 1, was a Central Committee member until he recently stepped down after concerns went public. Only then did the Control Commission reintroduce their investigation. We have a screenshot of EC member Marco La Grotta acknowledging Mitch was being looked into again as early as February prior to leading Jamie into a call where they were told by Alex Grant that he in fact did not want to talk about Mitch at all. In that call, Alex started by forcing Jamie to recount what has happened in their abusive relationship with The Perpetrator in Incident 2 and chastised Jamie and the social worker comrade for writing the letter about their concerns regarding the reporting process. I will elaborate on this letter more below. The call was so rattling that the social worker member present cried and turned off her camera. After that, Alex Grant forced her to turn it back on to “make sure he was getting through”. The call was so bad that we have screenshots of said social worker member apologizing to Jamie for how poorly the call was handled. During this conversation with Alex Grant, Jamie expressed how they had to move because of the  situation surrounding Mitch and how much the event messed with them and Alex Grant dismissed the claims and implied Mitch was better now. And that Jamie was “not allowing people to get better”. And with all this in mind, it was still decided upon to have Mitch give a speech targeted at LGBT community members. A “comrade” who “joked” about blackmailing a new recruit over their sexual history. This event on LGBT Liberation ended up being led off by Marissa Olanick in his place.

As for Incident Three there's evidence that on December 21st misconduct was reported. Despite this, Liam was kept active and doing high profile work representing Fightback while interfacing with the leadership of the Wet'suwet'en as late as April of this year. According to ex-comrade Jamie in a post-public statement discussion:

“In my February meeting with Alex and Marco that I discussed in my statement, I told them both that I knew Liam was a rapist because he had basically admitted it to me and I chewed them out for the fact that he was still active and they weren’t seriously investigating him. That conversation was in February. So by February the investigation was already taking an unreasonable amount of time:

“I also brought up Mitch, the CC comrade who stepped down after my statement, in the February conversation. So the fact that they’re claiming they didn’t know about the Mitch thing before my statement is just a straight up lie. I reported the initial harassment incident in 2019. Marco was having conversations with Mitch about Mitch continuing to harass me and the impact it was having on our branch in 2020, until I moved. Alex also admitted he had had “a number of conversations” with Mitch about his inappropriate behavior in the February conversation.”

It was claimed by an experienced comrade in Fightback that they were unaware of any threat posed by this person until Jamie’s letter dropped. However, this simply was not the case:

One of the two comrades with experience in social work who have been used as cover during this entire fiasco sent a letter on February 7th of this year to the EC. In this document, the social worker comrade detailed the harassment situation and suggested Liam could pose a threat to other women and queer people in the organization. Despite being told that this is a problem that could extend outside of the main accuser the EC is claiming that their hands were tied after learning of the full range of concerns regarding Liam but the victim was unsure if they wanted to pursue a formal complaint.

While it is true that the victim was inconsistent around the question of reporting it had been expressed multiple times by the social worker comrade that the victim is bad at advocating for themselves due to prior trauma. We should also note how extremely common it is that victims are too scared to report because of how traumatizing the process can be. On top of this, Alex Grant was actively pushing for mediation which would require that the victim be in a room with their long-time abuser. Alex lied to the victim claiming their abuser was very apologetic in their attempts to coerce the victim into mediating. Later, the victim messaged Alex Grant inquiring why a Control Commission wasn’t opened if Liam was “apologetic” which is implying that he had admitted to wrongdoing. It was only after this message implicating the EC that a Control Commission was opened in March. During the Control Commission investigation, Liam was still claiming he did not assault them meaning that Alex had been lying. Despite having this knowledge the EC allowed for comrades to attend a branch in the abuser’s home and allow him to continue political work. Rank and file around him were none-the-wiser. The EC claims the victim wasn’t requesting a Control Commission when their members specifically discouraged it and pushed them towards “mediation” on false pretenses.

There are public photos of Liam being pictured in political content relating to the Canadian section's "Picket Lines Mean Do Not Cross" campaign as late as June after being suspended in late April. Despite all of this the EC has continued to claim they did everything they could have done given the information they had provided for them. 

I want to discuss from here what I have learned about the international response to this.

A comrade in the U.S. reported that a well known editor of Socialist Revolution magazine and EC member spoke with them at branch and these are the notes this comrade took from the discussion. Anything noted in parentheses are slight grammar adjustments. Anything noted in brackets was a side note from the original poster. 

The comrade's notes state:

i) “EC member met with us, and he basically said Jamie’s statement is deliberate emotional manipulation [...he kept stating it’s important for Marxists to ‘focus on the facts of the matter and not get carried away by our emotions’].”
ii) “(He) compared Jamie’s writing to Trump’s tweets in language.”
iii) “(He) also insisted nothing was wrong in the Canadian section, also admitted at least (eight) people have left.”
iv) “And (he) insisted that all branches should focus on re-reading ‘Marxism vs. Identity Politics’ in response.”
v) “The worst thing anyone said in the meeting though was the branch chair comparing Jamie’s accusations to both a lynch mob and Stalinist show trial.”
vi) “EC member’s position was that the Canadian EC had done nothing wrong. That discussing anything on social media would allow for ‘bourgeois distortions’ and implied that Jamie may be a plant to create bad press.”

On top of this, the IS document that was published seems to track with how individually American leadership seem to be handling this situation. The document towards the beginning states that they feel sympathy towards the victim. However, a drop of sympathy is yet to be found in the remainder of the document. The IS starts to rail about how other organizations have “given into identity politics”. Again, let it be clear, that not everyone who disagrees with the Canadian EC’s actions agree with every conclusion or inference made in Jamie’s statement. The document continues:

“The contents and conclusions of the letter depict the Canadian section as a breeding ground for sexual violence and abuse, covered over by the Canadian EC. It is designed to exploit the natural human sympathy of our comrades towards anyone who has suffered sexual abuse with the aim of sewing confusion and doubt within the IMT. To establish this, the letter is littered with countless distortions, half truths, and lies about the actions of the EC.”

The letter goes on to compare these accusations to Jeremy Corbyn being slandered as an anti-semite, or Marx being accused of racism by academics today. The entire discussion is framed both in this document and in person by a bulk of leadership on the ground in Canada as solely a political attack. The document likens Jamie to the type of person who would have lied about Lenin being a German agent. Their argument being that Jamie’s motivations are to “...promote the ideas of identity politics over revolutionary Marxism”. I want to emphasize that this is an extremely unhealthy dynamic the IS leadership is attempting to establish here. All dissent regarding this matter outside of Jamie alone is being depicted on the ground in Canada and otherwise as “political weaknesses”.

I am publishing this document because I am seeing how distressed and confused comrades outside of Fightback are regarding the circumstances surrounding this and many people have expressed being concerned regarding the prospect of reaching out to anyone outside of branch leadership or higher. However, the only way I was able to get a full picture of the situation is “breaking conduct” in the wake of what seemed to be the internal processes of the IMT failing us.

My call to action throughout all of this is to speak to your comrades! I was as an American comrade only able to piece together this information by speaking to rank and file. I don’t think that there is utility in telling you as the reader exactly what to say or do in this situation. Now is the time for comrades to dismiss the bureaucratic methods of leadership and think for themselves. This mishandling and bureaucracy will not end with this issue. There is a crisis of democracy not just within Fightback but the IMT as a whole! And due to these regrettable circumstances I will be leaving the IMT.

What I wanted to say as a comrade who spent four years building up the IMT in the American Southwest is that I am not leaving because of the accusations put forward by Jamie as the IS document might lead you to believe. I am leaving because of how the leadership has handled this process from the original EC response to now.

Just about every organization deals with some form of harassment allegations or another. What I and many comrades were hoping for was that this event be used to better the IMT as we hit this new stage of development. However, all I’ve seen throughout my investigations are leading comrades underplaying the contents of the accusations, leadership making bold claims reeking of a lack of a sense of proportion, leadership misleading comrades, and comrades being told to read “Marxism vs. Identity Politics”, as a response to allegations of harassment/SA/DV being mishandled. I am incredibly disappointed by much of the IS, Canadian leadership, and American leadership. One highlight is that I know a single member of the American CC voted against clearing the Canadian EC of all wrongdoing and for that I thank her.

I respect the decision to try to stay and fight for the organization we all fought to build. I personally could not continue to associate with a leadership that uses dogma and vague historical references to pad out what is clearly a heinous, cowardly distortion. You should all be concerned that the IMT leadership’s knee jerk reaction was to have you guys read an unrelated document. The call of action from leading comrades being that rank and file should read a document is not only grossly insufficient in my eyes but manipulative. It’s manipulative to declare this all as a political attack, not release details, and then tell people simply to garner a vague lesson by reading a theoretical document. The issue is not an issue of identity politics. It’s an issue of the safety of our comrades, a lack of proper empathy by leadership, and procedures that rely too heavily on the subjective factor.

I want to end this letter the same way I began it and emphasize that during my time in the IMT I met a lot of people who I still respect a lot to this day. And to those people I hold in high regard I am asking you to really think for yourselves: Can you defend this? Why are you being put in a position of having to defend this? Do you truly believe that this is the leadership of the revolution?

If you have any follow up questions or want screenshots please reach out to me over social media or email me at teriphxsr@gmail.com.

1. Edited, on Teri’s request, to clarify precise membership status. The substance of the post remains the same.