Don’t Say Sorry, DSA!
I have not been sleeping well lately. The horrific suffering of Gazans and all of Palestine, the brutality of their Zionist colonizers, the shameless lies, the gloating hypocrisy of their country’s rulers and our own. And the resigned detachment of millions who recognize our utter inability to prevent it—it all gnaws at my spirit. Then there is the knowledge that a computer screen can’t cast the faintest shadow of the real terror on the ground, the terror of those living in Gaza, and the exiles who must watch their loved ones suffer through the carnage.
I won’t pretend to know that suffering, any more than I know where it is leading. All I know is that Israelis have themselves suffered a terrible blow, to their soldiers, their civilians, to the legitimacy of their entire social order. After years of drowning their own losses in a sea of Palestinian blood, they will be determined to restore the old death ratios. It seems almost certain that they will slaughter countless thousands of Gazans.
And what are we doing, here in the DSA, watching genocide unfold on Twitter? We are apologizing! Apologizing for a rally we endorsed or a tweet we made, as if DSA must collectively atone for every breath of air we take and every word we speak, and the words of every Palestine demonstrator in America! What has apologizing ever done for a leftist who supported Palestinian freedom? Jeremy Corbyn tried it twice in 2018, and his opponents trashed him anyway for not apologizing more. Corbyn and his supporters bent over backwards to appease those who smeared them as anti-semites, but the Zionists and Labour Right sabotaged him anyway. Now establishment Democrats across New York are doing the exact same thing, lambasting DSA for making the slightest gestures towards Palestinian humanity. We are standing waist deep in the ocean with sharks circling around us, and we are flagellating ourselves!
I am still holding on to hope that DSA’s new national leadership will find its footing. But that has not happened yet. Instead our National Political Committee is urging chapters to keep quiet and avoid releasing their own statements on Palestine. National’s response has severely downplayed street demonstrations and protest actions that would help us build trust with the Palestinian freedom movement. Instead, it centers a phone banking campaign asking Congressmembers to oppose Biden’s atrocious new security bill—which appears set to bankroll the Israeli, Ukrainian, and Taiwanese war machines alongside US border wall construction. At this very moment Biden’s administration is drumming up support for this vile bill, while our response is to hide meekly behind our phones, privately begging our Congressmembers to not take part in an impending genocide!
But I know the cold truth. There may be a place for phone calls, and we may sway a couple votes. But it will never be enough. One call from Joe Biden is worth a million DSA phone banks, and Biden and the entire Democratic Party apparatus know what they want. The bill will pass, the grim functionaries will do their jobs, and the Pentagon war machine will spill its rivers of blood. I know that this will happen, and I don’t want to hide behind my cell phone when it does. I want DSA to stand shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of Palestinian and Arab Americans and all who support their cause, who are certain to take to the streets—in mourning and determination to plant the earliest seeds of real power, by countering the false narrative of the Zionist oppressor.
To speak the truth, plainly and openly, about the genocide that is brewing in the massive concentration camp that is Gaza. That is what I hope DSA membership will find the courage to do, and if we face slander or harassment or even the threat of violence, then let us face it, together. At this very moment millions of people are struggling to maintain their dignity in a sea of bombs and rubble, while we cower and silence our dissent over a doxxing threat on Twitter or a harsh comment in the news. Can we keep cowering? No! No! We are cut from different cloth and set on better things. We are socialists and we joined DSA to transform public opinion, not to grovel to it—and certainly not to grovel to Zionist colonizers! The Marxist Unity Group and Red Star caucuses are now taking a principled minority stand on the National Political Committee. Together, we are challenging the climate of silence and fear, for action and urgency—NOW!
I am proud to be a member of Marxist Unity Group and to help with these efforts in every small way that I can. And I hope that when this evil bill approaches we will find the will to throw our very bodies at the machinery of the oppressor with groundbreaking civil disobedience. To occupy their gilded halls and war factories and the offices of every Pentagon bootlicker in Congress who votes to fund tyranny and oppression. To call the genocide collaborators what they are, to plant ourselves down and endure painful blows and make them drag us away on camera if we must—and those of us who can’t do this must be ready to support those who can.
When socialists challenge the Pentagon’s war machine and connect it to the oppression and injustice at home, to the tyranny of our own Israeli-trained police and their bloated Cop Cities—then DSA will become a group worth paying attention to. Then we will rightly be seen as a movement that is strong-willed, independent, subversive, and defiant. We will revive the invigorating populist appeal that Bernie Sanders brought us, but this time we will claim it for ourselves as DSA, to the glory of the socialist movement and the freedom of oppressed people across all the world. And when our opposition brings on the inevitable backlash and repression, we will draw on our newfound bases of popular support to survive, endure, and overcome it. We will be socialists, without apologies. That is a hope I refuse to relinquish, because if tortured people living in rubble can still find the strength to revolt and hope against hope, then we truly have no excuse.
Glory to the martyrs.
Freedom for the prisoners.
Healing to the wounded.
Disgrace on the traitors.
Victory to the resistance.
SOLIDARITY—FOREVER!
BEN GROVE
