International Socialist Organization votes to dissolve and cease publication of SocialistWorker.org
LETTER TO THE ISO MEMBERSHIP
March 15, 2019
THREE WEEKS ago, the ISO held its most important convention, which was also its most painful. Much of the convention was devoted to reckoning with the damaging impacts of our past practices and internal political culture. As branches have reported back and opened up these discussions, more examples of a damaging political culture have come to light. This brief letter from the new Steering Committee (SC) was written to update comrades on those incidents and on timelines with respect to mandates voted on by Convention delegates, while offering some thoughts on how to proceed.
As this letter was being drafted, the SC (as well as several members of the National Committee (NC) and several socialist feminist allies) received a document from a former member (FM from here forward) on March 11, detailing the ways in which the 2013 SC had badly mishandled an allegation of rape in 2013. Moreover, the document explained that the respondent in the allegation had recently been elected to our SC at this year’s convention. FM was on the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) that originally heard the case. FM’s account has been corroborated by other members of the NDC at that time who remain active members of the organization. We are grateful to FM for having taken the time to write this and reach out to us. FM also copied on the e-mail allies outside of the ISO whom we have worked in socialist-feminist and queer activism.
Read more: https://socialistworker.org/2019/03/15/letter-to-the-iso-membership
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THE ISO’S VOTE TO DISSOLVE AND WHAT COMES NEXT
April 2, 2019
MEMBERS AND recent ex-members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) have decided to dissolve the organization and end publication of SocialistWorker.org over the coming weeks, but also to support several working groups and initiatives going forward, and to work toward continued collaboration in rebuilding independent revolutionary socialist organization.
These decisions followed a week of online voting that ended March 29 on nearly two-dozen proposals put forward ahead of an all-member conference call on March 24. Nearly 500 members, participants in disaffiliated branches and recently resigned members took part in the vote.
Read more: https://socialistworker.org/2019/04/02/the-isos-vote-to-dissolve-and-what-comes-next
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OPEN LETTER TO SOME EX-LEADERS OF THE ISO
April 11, 2019
I AM a survivor of sexual and emotional abuse that I believe was facilitated by the culture you helped to create in the International Socialist Organization.
It took all of about 30 minutes of being in an ISO space before a man took acute interest in me. All of a week before he gave me his number and asked if we could hang out sometime. All of a month before he made it clear we were dating.
That man was a serial rapist.
He utilized the passive vulnerable position I was in during an intense period of grief — having suffered the loss of my mother, grandmother, good friend and dog in a very short time period — to not only be intensely emotionally and sexually abusive, but also to lay the groundwork for discrediting my word to people in your organization.
Read more: https://socialistworker.org/2019/04/11/open-letter-to-some-ex-leaders-of-the-iso
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