What is the basis for a united front around Palestinian liberation in the US? Holden Taylor and Jack Lundquist explore the organizations, strategies and fault lines within New York City’s movement for Palestine.
On the morning of Saturday, June 22nd, New Yorkers began trickling into St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx. They were there to attend a rally for Jamaal Bowman’s campaign for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives. AOC and Bernie Sanders, two of the leading lights of the progressive movement in DC, were the guests of honor. Bowman was in the middle of a tough campaign, which he would later go on to lose. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was spending millions of dollars supporting his opponent and painting Bowman as an anti-semite. The charges? Among other things, Bowman’s labeling of the post-October 7th assault on Gaza as a “genocide,” his characterization of Israel as a settler-colonial project, and his support for conditioning military aid to Israel. Members of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) were well represented at the rally, with the chapter having just endorsed Bowman as part of the organization’s fight against Zionism and AIPAC: to many in NYC-DSA, the Bowman race was proof that “Palestine is on the ballot.”
However, not all the New Yorkers at St. Mary’s Park that day were there to support Bowman. A contingent organized by Within Our Lifetimes (WoL), a Palestinian-led community organization in NYC, showed up to protest against the rally. Their charges? Among other things, AOC, Bernie, and Bowman’s support of Joe Biden, whose administration has continuously provided material and moral support to Israel as the country carries out its assault on Gaza following the Al Aqsa Flood of October 7th.
The scene at St. Mary’s Park on that hot summer day captures, in a nutshell, the state of Palestine organizing in New York City. Organizations on the left are unanimous in their support for a cease fire and a cessation to the current genocidal campaign; from there, broad points of unity amidst left organization splinters, particularly depending on where exactly your ‘left’ is drawn. While organizations on the left are broadly aligned in their programmatic desire to end the genocidal violence we are witnessing daily, important distinctions and cleavages among these formations emerge when considering how this violence could theoretically come to an end and from this bloom many divisions of tactics, strategy, long-term horizons, decision-making and organizational form. While disagreement is inevitable in any coalition, the strength of our movement depends on our ability to find ways to work through this disagreement in order to unify effectively and strike as one cohesive body. The alternative is petty infighting, isolation and marginalization, and the dilution of the movement for Palestinian liberation: a counterproductive cycle that harms all organizations involved.
Our contention is that a united front for a liberated Palestine is the strongest form our movement can take. But, before we can identify what can be done to effectively unify the movement, we must begin with a survey of the terrain, the organizations involved, and an honest reckoning of the disagreements between them. All of this with the aim to diffuse/contain unnecessary conflict and put genuine, and important political differences to the fore.
Surveying the Terrain
The movement for Palestinian liberation in New York City is expansive, comprising many organizations that differ on a number of axes: organizational form and decision-making process, tactics employed and sites of struggle, and political-strategic horizon. We start this survey with the vanguard of the movement and following this use a categorization outlined by Neal Meyer in his piece “The Politics of the Three Lefts” – the progressive left, the democratic left, and the hard left – as a jumping-off point. These categories are, of course, just that, and as we shall see, most political groups fit somewhere in between them.
National Liberation Organizations
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) is a nationwide organization of Palestinian and Arab activists committed to the liberation of Palestine, made up of a national leadership and local chapters. PYM has been a leading figure in the movement for Palestine for years. Importantly, PYM understands itself, programmatically and in its internal composition, as an extension of the resistance in Palestine. It seems that as an organization, and particularly its NYC chapter, PYM has not experienced the same degree of internal fracture or tumult as the more emergent formations over the course of the past 12 months. This can be understood in terms of both relation and temporality. On one hand, the sense of accountability to family, friends, and people back home gives the organization’s existence a certain gravity while depriving any specific decision or conflict of potentially disorienting weight. Moreover, organizers in PYM seem to understand their struggle as intergenerational and recognize the past year as, though certainly an important and unique juncture, only one moment within a much wider temporal landscape. This, combined with the longer and more well-founded relational ties constituting the organization, has steeled PYM against the burnout more characteristic of crisis-born, urgency-infused organizations.
Since October 7th, PYM has been particularly active, taking a leading role, in the Shut It Down coalition; it has led or been part of the largest protest mobilizations in NYC as well as in DC and around the country, and has also engaged in specific targeted campaigns, notably Mask off Maersk, their project to pressure the Danish shipping/logistics conglomerate to halt all shipments of weapons and weapon-components to Israel. PYM was a leading sponsor of the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit this past May, where thousands of activists and organizers convened to cohere, ground, and rededicate the movement–ending with, as the closing statement gestures, a forceful evocation of a collective “commitment to organization.” Which organization and what kind of organization remains to be determined.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL) is a New York City-based organization, founded in 2015, it began as an NYC local of the national formation, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). WOL’s points of unity gesture toward a clear and narrow political program with four pillars: anti-zionism, the right of return, internationalism, and the right to resist. WOL, notably and perhaps more than any other single organization in the movement, has been subject to consistent harassment and repression by the NYPD. Not unrelated, WOL has been bold in the expression of its political vision, often through targeted direct action and visceral statements.
Two examples of this boldness in action are enlightening to the broader landscape and its fissures. The first: on June 10th of this year, WOL led a protest in front of the Nova Exhibition, describing the exhibition’s purpose in plain terms: to make genocide acceptable to the US public. The protest caused an outcry, as expected, on the right wing: the New York Post described it as a “depraved celebration” of terrorism. But the left also called them out, including Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC)–the NYC-DSA endorsed elected official–who denounced the protest as ‘callous,’ ‘dehumanizing,‘ ‘atrocious’ and ‘antisemitic… plain and simple.’ This moment exposed the limits of, and fissures within, a broad tent pro-Palestine movement in the US. Differing theories of political change and differing perspectives on the causes of this genocide, thrown into a blender with vitriolic social media spaces and a lack of interorganizational collaboration and familiarity, have proven disorganizing for a left in dire need of unity and power.
A second moment, alluded to in this essay’s introduction, came just a week and a half later and with very similar contours: WOL protested a rally led by AOC and Bernie Sanders for the Congressional incumbent Jamaal Bowman, who had just recently been re-endorsed by NYC-DSA despite having voted to give Israel defense funding.
Two other important organizations focused on the Palestinian liberation struggle are Al-Awda (also known as PAL-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as well as the latter’s employee-led offshoot Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP). Al-Awda is a national group focused on organizing for Palestinian liberation, specifically fighting for a free Palestine from the river to the sea and Palestinian’s right to return to the lands from which they were expelled. Their actions are primarily street mobilizations targeting corporations funding Israel, such as Citibank and ZIM, but they also wage a number of legal and street actions targeting the settlements and the sale of stolen Palestinian land. Al-Awda has a robust set of bylaws establishing clear democratic procedures for decision-making at the national and local levels.
By contrast, SJP is a more decentralized organization, with the national steering committee playing an advisory, administrative role and chapters given autonomy to pursue the tactics that make sense on their respective college campuses. While SJP organizers credit this decentralized model for their rapid growth, grassroots integrity, and ability to avoid infiltration, it also appears to create challenges, or at the very least a marked heterogeneity, in terms of formal democratic decision-making at the local and national level. This heterogeneity was most apparent across the encampments this past spring, which will be explored more below. Programmatically, SJP bills itself as an organization devoted to “a student movement connected, disciplined, and equipped with the tools necessary to pursue Palestinian liberation” on over 350 college campuses.
The Progressive Left
The progressive left comprises, for the most part, what is commonly known today as “the non-profit industrial complex:” a network of non-profit advocacy groups run by full-time staff and a board of directors. Since these groups are run by staff and a board of directors, decisions are made by these unelected stakeholders, rather than by the democratic decision of their often large base of volunteers. While this structure allows groups on the progressive left to make decisions relatively quickly, it comes at the expense of participatory member democracy. In New York City, the progressive left fighting for Palestine includes groups like Adalah Justice Project, IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Muslim American Society, and American Muslims for Palestine.
As Meyer notes, the political horizon of these groups is limited: “[u]nlike its counterparts, the progressive left has no vision of a better world beyond a more humane capitalism.” As a result, the progressive left is generally aligned behind a “popular front” or “realignment” strategy: uniting forces around the Democrats with the aim of pushing them left, rather than creating an independent force capable of fighting for and winning its own program. Tactically, this has led many groups on the progressive left (and beyond) to unify under the banner of the “Uncommitted National Movement.”
The Uncommitted Movement began in Michigan, where the group, co-founded by former Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shahid, successfully organized 100,000 “uncommitted” votes (13%) in the Democratic Primary as a protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. The Uncommitted Movement’s stated goal is to “[f]ight… for a Democratic Party that represents the anti-war, pro-Palestinian majority,” and accordingly, they are focused on pressuring Democratic Party politicians and organizing Democratic Party voters through phone banks, letter writing campaigns and the occasional march. Most notably, the Uncommitted Movement organized Democrats to vote “Uncommitted” in the party primaries, and organized a sit-in outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in protest of the party’s failure to grant their demand of a Palestinian speaker at the DNC. Because of this focus on the electoral realm, and Democratic Party realignment in particular, with some exceptions the Uncommitted Movement had a minimal presence during the Palestine solidarity encampments that were organized on campuses across the country.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is an organization on the progressive left with a more active presence on college campuses: at Columbia University, the administration suspended both JVP and SJP from campus following an initial round of protest activity after October 7th (both groups are suing the university). Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow are both national non-profit organizations rallying together Jewish anti-Zionists and critics of Israel for powerful mass mobilizations that give the lie to the idea that the American Jewish population stands uniform in its support of Israel. JVP is slightly more radical than IfNotNow, which is not explicitly anti-Zionist, and was founded through the same network that birthed the Sunrise Movement. But both are non-profits with local chapters that enable some level of democratic participation. Similar to variances within Uncommitted’s state formations, JVP’s campus locals demonstrate a degree of independence from the national organization, coordinating often with groups like SJP and supporting PYM protests.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Uncommitted Movement, despite its nominal commitment to a popular front or Democratic Party realignment strategy, is contested terrain that socialists and others to the left of the progressive left can push in more radical directions. For example, factions within the New Jersey and Wisconsin Uncommitted Movements have launched campaigns calling on voters to withhold their votes for Kamala Harris in the 2024 elections until certain demands are met. In the words of New Jersey Uncommitted: “No Votes for Genocide…[w]e…will withhold our vote from Vice President Kamala Harris and all Congressional Democratic Party candidates on the ballot this November 5th unless there is an arms embargo and permanent ceasefire imposed on Israel.”
The Democratic Left
Organizations on the democratic left are characterized by their membership-based, democratic nature. These groups have a low barrier to entry, and, unlike volunteers for progressive left groups, membership grants activists the ability to participate in the organization’s democratic processes. While this structure fosters an organizational culture of participatory democracy, it also slows down the pace with which organizations can respond and can result at times in a less coherent organizational line. In New York City, the primary organization on the democratic left fighting for Palestine is the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC–DSA).
NYC-DSA has been infamously inconsistent in its support for Palestinian liberation, with the Bowman Affair being a touchstone. Despite professing support for Palestine, since October 7th, NYC-DSA has not worked closely, collaborated, or shared billing on any notable actions with the two leading organizations of the city’s movement for Palestine, PYM and WOL. When it comes to Palestine, NYC-DSA is generally split between an “electoral-legislative” wing and a “movement” wing. The electoral-legislative wing supports electeds like AOC and Bowman despite their votes and statements losing them the trust of the Palestine movement, and has focused their energy on campaigning with organizations to DSA’s right for legislative demands like the Not on Our Dime bill or the call for an immediate arms embargo. The movement wing, comprising the chapter’s anti-war working group and the rank-and-file members active in other organizations in the Palestine movement, overlaps in their support of the electoral-legislative wing’s campaigns but extends that support to include the mass-protest events being organized by PYM and WOL. At NYC-DSA’s most recent convention, the electoral-legislative majority voted down a resolution put forward by the movement wing that would have established anti-Zionism as a clear “red line” for members and elected officials. In part, the intent of putting forward this “Anti-Zionist” resolution was to establish more trust with organizations with PYM by making clear that politicians like AOC violate organizational principles. Since support for AOC is a strategic priority for the electoral-legislative wing, the resolution was voted down, giving the appearance that DSA has chosen a relationship with AOC over a relationship with PYM. This appearance and the distrust it has sowed is heightened by the loud departure of members of DSA’s movement wing from the organization, accompanied by critiques of “opportunism” that paint DSA with a broad brush based on the politics articulated by the organization’s electoral-legislative wing.
DSA’s divergent perspective on its relationship to politicians like AOC on the one hand and organizations like PYM on the other reflects a diversity of political positions within the organization and a hegemony by the entrenched electoral-legislative right wing. Factions like the Groundwork caucus and the Socialist Majority Caucus align more with the progressive left’s “popular front” approach of working as a junior partner with the Democratic Party for incremental reforms, and approach all organizing terrains with an eye towards creating the possibility of electoral-legislative victory. Factions like the Communist Caucus lean more towards an abstentionist orientation towards the bourgeois electoral process, preferring to focus on organizing coworkers, neighbors, and social movement activists into an independent revolutionary force. Most NYC-DSA members fall somewhere in between, believing in a mix of electoral-legislative, base-building, and social movement organizing all under the red banner of DSA. These strategic differences flow from a key difference in political horizon. Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucus believe in a democratic road to socialism through a legislative majority within the existing state. Communist Caucus and Emerge believe in a revolutionary path to socialism rooted in independent working class organizations. Factions like the Marxist Unity Group and Bread & Roses believe in a path to revolution rooted in a mass political party, but Bread & Roses believes the party will lead towards an anti-insurrectionist, democratic road to socialism, whereas Marxist Unity Group believes the party will lead the fight for a constituent assembly and a revolutionary democratic republic. That being said, most DSA members agree on some level of organizational and political independence from the Democratic Party–though the details vary greatly across tendencies.
While this “big tent” nature does result in some organizational incoherency that can make it hard to build trust within and without, it is also one of DSA’s greatest strengths, for a few reasons. First, political diversity and organizational democracy allow DSA to sharpen its tactics and strategy through meaningful debate. Second, the diversity of DSA members means that the organization is present, albeit inconsistently, across the tactical spectrum: DSA is active in the Uncommitted Movement as well as the student encampments, in addition to running other electoral and legislative campaigns around Palestinian causes, organizing for Palestine in member’s workplaces and homes, mobilizing for big street actions, and beyond.
Of course, this organizational democracy and tactical diversity has its practical limitations. The democratic processes of the NYC chapter of DSA often feel stage-managed–with procedural considerations often subsuming what are actually political differences. Chapter leaders organize political discussion in a manner that encourages participants to come out of a meeting with leadership’s pre-determined political perspective (presented as truthful “expert knowledge”), and the number of spaces where members can make decisions using parliamentary procedure like Robert’s Rules is minimal: unlike most DSA chapters, NYC-DSA has no general meetings that are run using Robert’s Rules. Further, while members are active across the Palestine movement, leadership orients the chapter around electoral campaigns and existing coalition partners who tend to be elected officials and non-profits. This lack of space for democratic engagement was felt at the chapter’s city convention that took place earlier this month. The chapter’s electoral-legislative majority defeated the movement wing’s anti-zionism resolution and tabled the abolitionist “Stop Cop City” campaign proposal, signaling to many in the movement wing that their political ties to the Palestine movement and their abolitionist organizing projects do not have a place in the chapter. Despite these limitations, NYC-DSA’s nominally democratic nature means that opportunities for course-correction continue to exist, most recently through the chapter’s endorsement of Zohran Mamdani for the New York City mayoral race, who will be running in part on a pro-Palestine platform.
The Hard Left
Meyer describes the hard left, almost exclusively referring to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), as made up of “undemocratic cadre organizations” with “substantial financial support from a handful of very wealthy donors;” “smaller than either the progressive left or the democratic left” and made up by “a more intense base of cadre and activists.” The characterization of PSL as undemocratic–and specifically as undemocratic in contradistinction to a democratic DSA–is a bit too simplistic, especially when one considers that NYC-DSA’s democracy is far from perfect. Yet this perspective is both a product of the PSL’s external opaqueness and genuine hurdles to democracy within the organization–for example, PSL’s constitution states that the Central Committee may elect up to 40% of delegates to the party’s convention, and PSL’s current leadership has remained relatively unchanged for two decades. This resolute opaqueness, particularly in the context of the current Palestine movement, is an obstacle to left unity: the past year has seen no notable collaboration between the DSA and PSL. Rather, we’ve seen tensions, competing events scheduled on top of the other, and occasional political and interpersonal conflict, despite obvious shared intentions during historically urgent contexts. For example, on the day before the Democratic National Convention, instead of participating in the “Not Another Bomb” counter-protest DSA and others had been planning, PSL in NYC chose to organize a competing event protesting US military intervention in Korea and the Philippines. The result was a dilution in attendance and attention for both events, as well as another missed opportunity for rank-and-file members of both formations to interact and build relationships. While this lack of coordination weakens the movement’s ability to unify, PSL’s insularity may still act as a bulwark against organizational fracture and dissipation amidst the tumult of twelve months of fervent Palestine solidarity organizing. Whereas DSA’s orientation to the genocide in Palestine has been contentious, changing, and incoherent, PSL has been consistent in its analysis and approach, even in its propaganda, messaging, and aesthetics.
Following Oct. 7th, PSL launched–in characteristic fashion–two coalitional fronts: Shut It Down for Palestine (Shut It Down), dedicated to street mobilization, and Artists Against Apartheid, a reprise of the 1986 protest movement targeting South African apartheid and started by musician Steven Van Zandt. The latter brings together cultural producers across the country in solidarity against the Zionist occupation. This is characteristic of PSL, because, as Meyer notes, the hard left’s “main focus is on mass mobilizations.” Through front groups like the ANSWER coalition that have years of experience organizing rapid-response demonstrations, the hard left is usually the first to respond to crises and to organize protests.”
Shut It Down is a coalition project, anchored by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the ANSWER Coalition, the People’s Forum, International People’s Assembly, Al-Adwa, and the New Jersey Palestinian American Community Center. While some have identified it purely as a PSL front, this is reductive and, in fact, patronizing to the agency of the Palestinian organizations heavily involved, most namely PYM. Shut It Down has hosted biweekly volunteer meetings at the People’s Forum since this most recent siege in Gaza began; these meetings attract a wide array of people, serving as a hub of Palestine organizing and cross-pollination in the city. The content of the meetings, with people grouped by either neighborhood/area or sector (labor, cultural, etc.), is generally concerned with mobilization for already-decided-upon actions, with already decided-upon slogans, orientations, propaganda, and leadership. This project’s strength is clearly that it has served as a hub for the interfacing of Palestinian solidarity activists across sites of struggle and across the city’s geography. Cross-union collaboration and knowledge-sharing–particularly when similar efforts are embarked in different sectors, such as various projects to disinvest pension funds from Zionist securities and firms–is a notable example of this. One is forced to consider the potential interorganizational social ties left on the table by DSA not formally participating in these meetings.
But while this coalition has been at the forefront of the incessant and remarkably resistant street mobilization and direct action arm of the Palestine movement in New York City, and while this space has been important in connecting Palestine-interested radicals across the city, genuine questions have been raised about how its decisions are made, who is making the decisions that direct its actions and, lastly, whether it is succeeding in providing an on-ramp into permanent organization for the youth radicalized and activated by the Palestinian resistance.
As Meyer notes, the hard left is also characterized by its opposition to politics within the Democratic Party and the current US political system more broadly. Their preferred approach to electoral politics is “to run independent protest candidates,” or, we might add, to abstain from electoral politics more broadly, focusing instead on targets like corporations involved in the Israeli war machine. This desire to avoid electoral politics is understandable, since DSA’s engagement with the Democratic Party has resulted in much of its organizational incoherency and the dilution of its principles. But in practice, this leaves a wide swathe of political terrain open for the less principled organizations in the progressive and democratic left to claim, which the Uncommitted Movement has done quite successfully.
Interestingly, the progressive left and the hard left share some organizational characteristics. On the one hand, both groupings are capable of mobilizing quickly due to a more top-down financing and decision-making structure. On the other hand, the structure of both groupings (the progressive left’s reliance on staff and the board of directors, the hard left’s reliance on a small group of “cadre” members) limits who can participate in organizational decision-making, and acts to prevent both from becoming large-scale, mass membership organizations.
There are other formations that could be grouped into the hard left here in NYC, though with marked variations in democratic processes and stances on Palestine: the Communist Party (notably skittish support for Palestine, dubiously democratic), Left Voice (voluble champion of Palestine, strong emphasis on internal democracy) and a variety of even smaller communist formations. While these groups have a variety of different political perspectives and organizational forms, they tend to be similar in their “cadre” structure and rejection of Democratic Party politics (with the Communist Party’s popular front strategy being one exception).
Emergent Formations
In addition to the mobilization and activation of already-existing organizations, the unending horrors of this genocide have also sparked the emergence of numerous new formations and transformed other existing ones. These include rank-and-file groups within and across unions (notably in DC-37, Parks and City Workers for Palestine), university-based organizations (such as CUNY for Palestine), and cultural organizations (Writers Against the War on Gaza [WAWOG], Asians4Palestine). Often these organizations are suffused with members of formations discussed above (e.g., PYM and the DSA have members active across these). These organizations, born out of an overwhelming and righteous urgency, began as many organizations do: ad-hoc and with action (understandably) prioritized over the development of structure and internal processes of democracy or participation. Some of these organizations pre-existed October 7th, though after this pivotal date they assumed new scopes and intensities of activity. The question and specter of timescale–of urgency, responsiveness–loom heavily for the emergent formations.
These formations assumed a central role this past spring amid the university encampment movement that swept the country. These encampments have, thus far, marked the single most politically potent phenomenon of the past twelve months–a stretch when the drudgery of politics in the belly of the empire snapped and the political aperture widened considerably. The resilience and bravery of encampment organizers, the infectious, spore-like spreading of their strategies, the sheer fear and hysteria prompted in reactionary administrations and press alike all spoke to a rupture amidst a continuity of genocidal complicity. Their repression and the subsequent long-response of administrations has been jarring. Organizers had, before the encampments and pronouncedly after them, identified university campuses as particularly potent sites of struggle given their bounded territory, their identifiable and proximate targets, their histories of dissent, their function of knowledge-production, and their contradictory integration within the superstructure of Zionist genocide. This, as the autonomous collective the Bad Side recently wrote, shows “that the students have found, in the university, a point of real, if complex, leverage… [this] represents an advance beyond the 2003 mobilization against the invasion of Iraq.” Understanding the encampments, and their afterlives, as both a particular force within this current political moment and an objective development within a longer history of anti-war and/or anti-imperialist mass mobilization is crucial.
Though these encampments tended to be sites of left communion (or, as one organizer put it, local left reunion), with aspects of almost all the formations mentioned in this essay showing up, supporting, camping out; they were most often spearheaded by students and young activists without explicit left-organizational inculcation. Demands for disclosure (of institutional and financial ties with Zionism) and divestment characterized most of these encampments. The youthfulness, or perhaps the absence of established left organization participation, led, particularly across the NYC campus encampments, to some degree of a democratic-infrastructural dearth in these sites of resistance. Encampments in NYC were scenes of inconsistent participative democratic struggle, not necessarily incorporating masses of students and supporters into political agency and, moreover, saw understandable fixations on security assume predominance. It is certainly of note that San Francisco State, the first university country-wide to begin any substantial divestment processes, was the scene of robust participative democracy.
Like at San Francisco State,the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment at City College’s uptown campus, also played host to a remarkable performance of rank-and-file, protagonistic democracy when regular members of CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union heeded the call of the camp’s student organizers by holding a mass assembly addressing to the camp’s five demands. 200 rank-and-file union members showed up on a day’s notice to attend this mass assembly. After open deliberation, members voted to uphold the solidarity encampment’s demands and advocate for them at PSC’s Delegate Assembly. Most consequentially, the mass assembly voted to engage in the PSC’s first ever job-action, a sickout on May 1st, which happened to be the day after the NYPD employed military tactics to dismantle the encampments at both City College and Columbia, arresting hundreds and injuring dozens.
The encampments were surely the moment within the US and particularly New York Palestine liberation movement wherein the aperture of political possibility was widest. Such a high is often followed by a hangover of disarray. The repression–expulsions, evictions, arrests, felony-charges, militarized campuses, encaged free speech zones, new university statutes of discrimination protecting Zionism as a class–might appear somewhat stultifying. And the overriding question of what now?, given the balance of forces, after a year of nothing working has been at times destabilizing for many of these more emergent formations. This has come, it seems, in the form of internal fracture, burn out, feuds, and subsequent organizational restructuring.
The tactics of these emergent formations vary. For example, CUNY 4 Palestine (C4P) on one hand operates often through polemic, pushing variously aligned forces and formations within the CUNY system toward a more principled line of support for actual Palestinian resistance. A recent example of this is when C4P publicly critiqued the progressive-leaning Center for Place, Culture and Politics for an event the latter was hosting, “The Question of Palestine.” C4P described the event, a discussion between Marc Lamont Hill and Bashir Abu-Manneh, as participating in academic counterinsurgency–particularly because of the event’s flier which describes the current genocide as “triggered by Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attacks” as well as an article written by Abu-Manneh in which he questions whether a “socially regressive religious movement like Hamas” fits “into the universal emancipatory tradition of the Left.” Here we can understand C4P’s project as pushing institutional formations–even, and perhaps particularly, those that might be allies–to their logical limits so as to expose the institution itself. In contrast to the approach of polemic, C4P also engages in more long-term and deliberate organizing such as its efforts, in collaboration with Educators for Palestine, in researching and building support for the divestment of CUNY and Department of Education (DOE) pension funds from Zionist entities.
We can see a mirrored dynamic in Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG). On one hand, WAWOG engages in relentless polemic, most notably in their recurrent publication of the New York War Crimes newspaper. This publication exists to hold the ‘newspaper of record’ to account for its longstanding complicity not only in the genocide of Palestinians, but in the US’s imperialist bloodlust for many decades. Simultaneously, WAWOG unapologetically upholds and platforms voices of the Palestinian resistance and creates a sort of cultural counterpublic for such unambiguous discourse to flourish–a project they’ve described as “creating a revolutionary cultural front.” We have both the immediate and visceral as well as the less pointed and gradual, sedimentary work.
Yet both of these organizations, WAWOG and CUNY 4 Palestine, as well as many emergent formations, have been and are hamstrung by inchoate organization which is not able to organize those they’ve pushed or radicalized. This lack is magnified by the absence of a larger left organization capable of supporting or incorporating these emergent organizations without coopting or deflating their zeal. Organizers in these formations in NYC look at the two most prominent left organizations, the PSL and the DSA, and see either a worrying absence of democracy and transparency as well as roadblocks to integration or incoherent politics and inconsistent, reformist, even at-times chauvinistic support for the cause of Palestine. Thus, these emergent organizations are left to struggle on their own. Though these emergent organizations deploy admirably sharp political analyses and even political programs, their delimited forms of organization bracket their capacity to strike at the targets they’ve adroitly identified. Without a disciplined, united, and expanded base this form of organization is constrained to a limited ceiling of efficacy.
And yet, these emergent formations, the upswell they have both helped create and rode upon, have altered the composition of the question of Palestine in the US and NYC specifically. Both university campuses and cultural production in this city have been, though still contested and often hostile, unmoored from absolute Zionist chokeholds. Particularly with regard to the student movement and the campus encampments, young activists have become–often through the failure to achieve their demands–intimate with the scale, intricacy, and degree of intransigence of the institutions upholding that which they abhor. Such an education is instrumental. Moreover, the discrete arena of universities–and their exposable and alterable ties to this genocide–provides these students with an approachable site of struggle.
Labor unions have also been the site of such emergent organization. City Workers for Palestine, for example, is a rank-and-file cross-union formation stretching across public-sector workers in NYC that has focused much of its efforts on pension divestment. Here the struggle, though punctuated by public demonstrations and expressed in the waving sea of Palestine flags at the May Day Parade, is less explosive and the timescale of struggle more clearly baked into operations; that is to say, this work, concerned with the intricate social minutiae of massive, bureaucratized, and depoliticized union architectures, necessarily seems home to more pragmatic and slow-building efforts. Further, pro-Palestine union activists are often overlapping, and in harmony with rank-and-file reform efforts–with the former understanding rank-and-file democratization as necessary for a union’s genuine solidarity with Palestine and the latter understanding Palestine as a central and motivating political question that union leadership consistently fails to address. Perhaps because of this foundational symbiosis and the centrality of democratization, it does appear that the emergent formations for Palestine in union spaces are not as beset with such destabilizing internal fissures.
Lastly, we can include the figure of tenant unions and tenant organizations in NYC among this group. Though all pre-date October 7th, many of them–including the Ridgewood Tenant Union, the Crown Heights Tenant Union, and the Brooklyn Eviction Defense Tenant Union–launched campaigns and projects aimed at exposing and confronting the varying Zionist entanglements of local real estate and landlords, as well as neighborhood businesses and political figures, linking together broader processes of gentrification/displacement with the Zionist occupation.
Fault Lines
Having completed an admittedly limited survey of the Palestine organizing landscape in NYC, we can proceed to outline some of the major disagreements that exist within it. Again, while this analysis does not represent all points of disagreement, for the sake of legibility we will focus on four of the most critical: democracy and decision-making, organizational form and the basis for unity across organizations, tactical orientation and sites of struggle, and the orientation towards armed liberation. As we shall see, fundamentally different strategic horizons are at the root of these disagreements.
1. Democracy: who decides for “the movement?
Before we go further, let’s define our terms. When we speak of democracy, we are speaking about the process by which decisions are made. As democratic republicans, we believe in a specific form of democracy, as articulated in Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy: one that is based on freedom of speech, freedom of information, elected and recallable officials, central decision-making mechanisms where necessary, and deference to the self-government of localities otherwise.
Of course, since any movement is an amalgamation of organized and unorganized social forces, the question of democracy, how decisions are made, is complex. There is no one organized structure we can examine for its fidelity to the democratic republican framework articulated above. Nonetheless, we can make some cursory observations based on the different groups that are active in the movement.
We can place on one extreme the top-down decision-making processes made by an unelected or unaccountable group of senior leaders, with limited spaces for discussion and the sharing of key information: these processes tend to be seen from the board or staff of non-profits in the progressive left, or from the leader-funders of hard left organizations like PSL. On the other extreme, we have the open (yet often slower, messier) democratic processes characterized by open, participatory debate, freedom of information, and elected leadership.
While the democratic left seems, at a glance, to fit this more democratic framework, particular questions do arise when considering NYC-DSA’s democratic culture. Leadership’s use of NYC-DSA’s public platform to express political analysis, for example about an orientation to the Uncommitted Movement’s effect on the Harris/Walz ticket (and, implied therein, a general orientation to the Democratic Party), can at times dubiously represent the organization’s democratic will, and at times blatantly contradict it. Though these leaders are technically elected, the chapter’s Administrative Committee are often elected in uncontested elections. Limited spaces for members to participate in deliberative processes and a culture of hiding crucial political conversations between elected officials and chapter leadership from membership (known around the chapter as the “cone of silence” policy) also make the chapter’s democracy less than ideal. Chapter-wide endorsement votes that occur exclusively online via Opavote, with no mechanisms for amendment, present another layer of questionable democratic processes. These endorsement votes, sent out to the membership over email and engaging anywhere from 10 to 20% of membership, always win despite the fact that the limited deliberative spaces that precede such votes are often scenes of dissent and dispute. Such separation of debate from decision-making draws into question the organization’s democratic character. A mildly engaged paper membership, if they are to vote at all, are almost always voting to affirm an endorsement. The actual political disputes over any given endorsement, which always also touch on disputes regarding the endorsement processes as a whole, are lost in the wind.
Finally, the lack of formal accountability of the chapter’s elected officials limit the extent to which the organization’s democratic decisions are carried out. Despite adopting a clear anti-Zionist position at both the chapter and national level, Jamaal Bowman went against this democratically-determined policy and continued to demonstrate material support of Zionism (resulting in what is known today as the Bowman Affair). In the past, chapter leadership has allowed DSA-endorsed elected officials to violate democratically-determined organizational mandates (such as “No” votes on bad state budgets) because they believe the organization’s proximity to elected officials is worth more than the ability to stake out a unified, politically-independent position. This lack of accountability continues to sow distrust between NYC-DSA and organizations in the worker’s movement.
As mentioned, the progressive left and hard left converge in top-down decision-making. This decision-making process does have its benefits: organizations like PSL and JVP have been at the forefront of public-facing actions for Palestine in the past twelve months in part because top-down decision-making enhances their ability to coordinate with other groups as well as to move quickly. On the other hand, such decision-making processes can and do produce enmity among non-members and former members, who rightfully critique the undemocratic inflexibility of these decisions and ask how organizations can make strategically sound decisions without democratic mechanisms to incorporate feedback from activists on the ground.
The emergent formations are understandably variant on the question of decision-making and democracy. Many seem to operate with mechanisms of unstructured consensus. Some, like CUNY 4 Palestine and WAWOG, have developed elected leadership, but power and control seem to remain concentrated in particular voluntaristic cliques and methods of recall and accountability lack substantial buy-in. One organizer described the cross-union coalitional space of City Workers for Palestine (CW4P) to be among the most functionally democratic organizing spaces they have been a part of. CW4P has an elected body of delegates responsible for general oversight of the collective, as well as working groups with the ability to make autonomous decisions.
Due to lack of available information, the authors of this piece cannot provide a genuine accounting of the democratic processes of National Liberation organizations like PYM, SJP or Al Awda, among others. However, it is worth noting that there does not appear to be a single organizational body that can make decisions on behalf of the movement writ large, which is one of the reasons movement tactics, message, and strategy are divided along organizational lines. While cross-organizational coalitions like Shut It Down exist, it does not appear that these bodies have elected leadership committed to transparent, deliberative processes that rank-and-file organizers can participate in. A more effective united front for Palestinian liberation in the US would have a coordinating body that seeks to make collective decisions using the principles of democratic republicanism.
2. Organization: What is the basis for a united front across organizations?
Because these are fundamentally different types of organizations with different priorities and practices, broad unity has proven vexing. For example, PYM’s basis of collaboration is a red line of anti-Zionism: it will work with organizations that are anti-Zionist and will not work with organizations that aren’t. Importantly, its definition of anti-Zionism is a support of the whole of historic Palestine and the right of return which is fundamentally incongruent with the existence of Israel. This determining line is founded in the organization’s self-understanding as an extension of the resistance in Palestine. It’s this orientation that leads PYM to work so closely and consistently with PSL and to work selectively with DSA chapters and JVP locals that have either advanced anti-Zionist resolutions or shown in practice a commitment that sufficiently aligns. Here PYM operates with a narrow and pragmatic rational: PSL, as a hyper-organized formation, with impressive mobilization and propaganda apparatuses, and with a consistent principled line on Palestine, makes for an ideal collaboration for PYM; in fact, not working with PSL would be a failure according to PYM’s orientation. Yet it is precisely their close work with PSL that has caused a rift of sorts between PYM and WOL–the latter of which refuses to work with PSL (precisely why, the authors are not sure) and as such has refrained collaboration or cosponsorship with the joint PSL-PYM actions of the last year.
NYC-DSA, on the other hand, has a much less clear-cut method of determining the organizations it works with. NYC-DSA and PSL rarely if ever share billing on protests or actions, whereas genuine, formal inter-organizational relations and interactions are even more rare, if they’ve occurred at all. Why this is the case is hard to pin down. Possibly it is because the right wing of NYC-DSA, operating with significant control over higher-level chapter decisions, holds onto notions about PSL’s character as undemocratic or (overly) radical–of particular note here is the party’s internationalist (possibly campist) orientation; or it could possibly be the whisper network of sexual abuse coverups that seems to follow the PSL. Responsibility could also go in the other direction: that the PSL has no interest in working with a ‘milque-toast’ electoralist/reformist organization like the DSA. Perhaps it has to do with a difference in targets, discussed more below. Though it is likely a combination of the above, more important than the specific answer is the fact of the unanswered question itself, and even more so the lack of the question even being asked. A lack of transparency, external and internal, and the lack of collaboration, prompts speculation, assumption, and distrust, thereby weakening the possibility for a united front.
3. Tactical orientation: is Palestine on the ballot, or is it in the streets?
The tactics used by organizations across the movement’s political spectrum are basically all the same. Protests, flyering/door-knocking/phone-banking, disruptive direct actions, and organizing within labor and tenant unions are the tools the left has for collective action. The differences begin to emerge more clearly when considering targets. Whereas organizations on the progressive and democratic lefts tend to target Democratic Party politicians, National Liberation, hard left and emergent groups tend to target large multinational corporations like Maersk or other extra-state targets like unions, universities, or the bourgeois press. These differences in target seem to flow from a difference in political strategy: can we extract the power to achieve our goals from within the existing political system, or does that power come from outside the state? Focusing exclusively on either state or extra-state targets can result in strategic missteps.
An overemphasis on the Democratic Party as a target can result in diluted political messaging and compromised political positions. For example, because NYC-DSA views Jamaal Bowman and AOC as political actors who have some real material influence over the US government’s funding of Israeli genocide, they choose to prioritize these relationships rather than a relationship with organizations to the chapter’s left that would require a more critical orientation to Bowman and AOC.
In contrast, organizations to DSA’s left tend to view the Democratic Party as the “graveyard of social movements.” They eschew what they view as DSA’s compromised political approach within the bourgeois political system, putting forward a more class-independent political perspective (like PSL’s “No Votes for Genocide” slogan) while focusing their aim on extra-state targets like Maersk. This class-independent messaging helps organizations like PYM or PSL win the favor of activists within the Palestine movement. However, their failure to seriously engage with the bourgeois political system shuts these organizations out of important sites of political struggle: the voting booth and the halls of power.
The bourgeois state and its participatory mechanisms hold immense significance for socialists. Policy is made by the state and many Americans think of politics as taking place mostly within the state. Ultimately, the Palestine movement is at its strongest agitating, educating, and organizing people across all sites of struggle–the streets, the workplace, the ballot-box, and beyond–into a class-independent political movement united around an uncompromising program for Palestinian liberation. We cannot afford to, on the one hand, lose our unity by compromising our political program, and on the other hand, lose opportunities to organize the working class by writing off the bourgeois state as a site of struggle.
4. The politics of armed liberation and abolition
Perhaps the central dividing line politically within the varying aspects of the movement for Palestine in the past year has been the question of armed struggle broadly and the current resistance as led by Hamas specifically. How should organizations here in the US orient themselves to the factions conducting armed resistance to Zionist occupation? Or, more importantly, how do these differing orientations cause conflict or fissure within an ideally unified movement for Palestine, and just what exactly are the stakes of supporting armed resistance? How organizations answer these questions shape their strategies of antiwar resistance at home. Four approaches are apparent in the movement. First is unqualified/resolute support for the armed resistance–symbolized by the red triangle motif, championed by formations like WOL, PYM and PSL, as well as certain left caucuses within the DSA and much of the emergent formation organizations. Second is a more qualified support of generalized anticolonial armed resistance–characteristic of other sections of DSA as well as some emergent formations. Third is a careful silence on the question of armed resistance. Fourth is an outright hostility to armed resistance stemming from a left-liberal idealization of ‘peace’–often presented as politically mature. All of the ‘progressive’ organizations, particularly JVP and INN, as well as much of the DSA, especially the Socialist Majority and Groundwork factions within NYC-DSA who govern the chapter and are focused on a pragmatic electoral-legislative strategy within the existing system, fit within the third and fourth, and seem to move back and forth between the two.
This variance across, and even within, these organizations can be traced to differing accounts of why and how the genocide in Palestine is happening, ranging from strict structural inevitability to a function of personnel and policy. On the far left, within the framework of ‘unqualified/resolute support’ there is an attribution for the genocide to what is identified as the primary contradiction: US imperialism and its proxy-manifestation in the Zionist settler colony. In contrast is an understanding of the current genocide as a particular instantiation of the particular regimes led by Biden and Netanyahu, as held by the nationally-directed Uncommitted Movement. However, the spectrum is not so linear, as some left formations, like more traditional or quasi Trotskyist formations such as Tempest, bear hesitation about the ideological and class-character of Hamas–a hesitation that, to much of the hard left, is read as either unnecessary or outright reactionary.
In practice, this variance has been another obstacle to collaboration. For example, since Oct. 2023, NYC-DSA has operated with great reluctance to be associated with support for Hamas–this became evident early on when NYC-DSA delivered a formal apology for its promotion of an Oct. 8th Pro-Palestine rally in Times Square. NYC-DSA’s inconsistent support for Palestinian resistance has been a wedge between NYC-DSA and the most active left formations in the Palestine Movement (PYM, PSL, WOL). The electoral-minded leadership within NYC-DSA generally act to avoid the ire of reactionary media institutions like the New York Post who could hurt the chapter’s electoral-legislative campaigns, at the cost of building towards collaborative relationships with other formations to the organization’s left, including, importantly, principled Palestinian-led organizations.
A subordinate question is the lingering question of abolition. After the early January cross-organizational direct action effort to shut down for extended periods three major bridges (Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Manhattan) as well as the Holland Tunnel, NYPD repression of Palestine-related protests increased notably.
Before the New Year, arrests at pro-Palestine rallies were generally more ceremonious than anything else. Following the bridge and tunnel blockages, aggression and hostility by the NYPD shot up. The NYPD’s renewed enforcement of a ban on megaphones and other means of noise-projection provoked a question of complicity or refusal. WOL, for instance, has more-or-less maintained use of megaphones at its rally whereas PYM has elected not to. Of particular note is the role of immigration status and consequences of arrest, which of course vary by person. The divide here is most exclusively tactical, though it has been interpreted or discussed in some corners with relation to the afterglow of 2020 and the abolition movement.
While “NYPD, IDF, KKK; they’re all the same!” has been one of the louder chants at rallies for the last year, the tactical question of how acquiescent an organization or crowd is to the police often rears its head–though, again, this is more tactical than a genuine political schism. Blowing it out of proportion is a product of either bad faith or, more likely, the stark lack of communication, relation, and trust between some of these organizations. Of broader note is the recent abolitionist organizing by groups like WOL and PYM, who both recently led protests in response to the recent subway mass shooting by NYPD officers, suggesting a willingness in merging the abolitionist and Palestinian liberation struggles into a powerful, unified struggle against violent state repression. The emergent Stop Cop City campaign focused on a planned expansion of an NYPD facility in College Point as well as a plan to embed the NYPD more deeply in other city agencies will be an excellent opportunity to put this unity to the test.
The Debts Owed to Palestine
The current situation looks bleak. Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has spread to Lebanon and it is unclear what strategies in the US will be effective at ending our country’s support for Israeli genocide. Direct actions like encampments have been brutally dismantled by the police and followed by stringent new university policies, while electoral actions like the Uncommitted Movement have failed to shift the Biden/Harris administration towards a ceasefire or arms embargo. Jamaal Bowman was defeated decisively by an AIPAC puppet in his primary. And Donald Trump’s reelection to the presidency will bring, at best, a continuation of the Democrat’s policy of unconditional support for Israel, and at worst, a further emboldening of Israel’s genocidal project.
In this unenviable strategic terrain, serious political questions simmer within the movement for Palestine here in the US. For instance, differing visions of what Palestinian liberation might mean in practice–can a liberated Palestine exist alongside an Israeli state?–and, moreover, who might be the arbiters of that liberation, divide the movement. Of relevance here might be a 2009 essay written by Moshé Machover of Matzpen, Israel’s socialist organization, in which he situates minimum demands within a long-term, regional horizon, calling for “an immediate and unconditional end to the Israeli military occupation; and removal of all impediments preventing the exercise of Palestinian self-determination…A further demand is the abolition of all discrimination against the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, and turning it from an ethnocratic Jewish state into a democratic state of all its citizens.” Machover introduces his analysis by identifying that “the most fundamental element in a genuine resolution of the conflict is removal of its fundamental cause: the Zionist colonization project must be superseded. This means not only de-Zionization of Israel, but also repudiation of the Zionist claim that the Jews at large, constituting an alleged ‘diasporic nation’, have a special right in – let alone over – the ‘Land of Israel’.” Perhaps in Machover’s analysis, which contains a clear conception of primary antagonisms and immediate resolutions, the seeds of programmatic unity for the movement here exist.
The strategic questions that we face in this uphill battle will remain with us for the foreseeable future. But openings do exist. In speaking to organizers and activists across the city’s movement, one aspect that was highlighted over and over was the spill-off effect of the past twelve months of activity. The insurgent Palestine solidarity movement has sparked renewed activity by young and radicalized activists in traditional scenes and sites of struggle. The symbiosis that has emerged between rank-and-file union organizing with Palestine organizing, that the movement for Palestine has buoyed rank-and-file organizing within unions, the student movement’s newfound life–all speak to the profound debt that the left has to the Palestine struggle. This is a twofold influence: on one hand, the vigor and resilience of those organizing for Palestine, including the resistance in Palestine, serves as an inescapable inspiration, transforming the consciousness of millions and drawing into stark relief the sort of priorities imposed by bourgeois culture. On the other, the harsh and inflexible reaction to the movement by a diverse set of institutional actors, from union leadership to university administration, has provided these young and newly-conscious activists with a rapid education on the character and composition of institutional power in the US and in New York City; these activists, propelled by an unshakeable moral basis, have learned intimately the insufficiency of even the most righteous of moral arguments within the context of institutions long complicit with US empire. They are learning intimately the scale of the task at hand: the slow and quotidian nature of this class struggle, the motion of rupture and continuity, the fortified character of the institutions that structure our lives.
Activists are taking inspiration from the resilience of the Palestinian people by struggling for new ways to fight. However, divides within the movement limit our collective ability to fight for a liberated Palestine. Objectively, unity is a primary source of the worker movement’s strength, but finding a path to productive unity in the face of these many organizational and strategic differences is not easy. Based on our experience, we have a few recommendations on how the US Left can unify to fight even more effectively for a liberated Palestine:
- Disagreement is inevitable, but unity is strength. This is why programmatic unity is important, in contrast to theoretical unity or tactical unity. Unity around a shared program leaves room for debate that can refine that program, whereas unity around theoretical or tactical commitments fosters environments conducive to splits. For example, while most of the Palestinian movement in the US is aligned on a program for Palestinian liberation (e.g., ceasefire, US stop arming Israel, BDS, right of return, etc), many more differences exist on theoretical questions (e.g., what is the role of Israeli society in Palestinian liberation?) and tactical questions (e.g., strikes vs. protests vs. phonebanks). Accordingly, a unity based on theory or tactics would necessarily be smaller in size than a unity based on program. The worker’s movement’s objective source of strength is its mass character, and this is only possible if the basis for unity is something like a shared program that can be changed through democratic debate.
- More intentional, democratic coordination. Making decisions within our organizations is difficult enough. But, for a united front for a Free Palestine to actually work, we need ways for our organizations to make decisions together. While these mechanisms have been built within existing coalitions (the Uncommitted Movement or the Shut It Down for Palestine coalition), the absence of mechanisms for coordination across coalitions results in unnecessary, counterproductive competition. For example, coalitions deciding to host two events on the same day with different targets means that these coalitions now have to compete for turnout and media attention, limiting the size of the event and its subsequent impact. For maximally effective unity, we need to be marching in lockstep. While there will still be disagreements about strategy and tactics which may result in this form of competition even if more coordination mechanisms existed, talking, planning and making democratic decisions together is the best way to minimize competition and maximize productive unity. Emergent formations are an excellent place to begin experimenting with the form of this democratic coordination: by bringing together activists from different political organizations, these formations force a diverse group of activists to develop models of effective coordination.
- Identify some projects that can be co-owned. A great way to build trust and alignment on strategy and tactics is to work together! In some ways, this has been one of the successes of the emergent formations discussed earlier: by bringing members from different political tendencies together into one space and giving them a project to work on, these members are able to discuss and learn from one another while planning and executing a shared project. The process of developing strategy and tactics on a shared project (for example, City Workers for Palestine’s divestment campaign) can then scale up to broader conversations on movement strategy. Moreover, shared projects–like Shut It Down for Palestine–provide the environments wherein genuine trust and relationships across organizational lines can be fostered.We cannot overstate the significance of, and the patience required for, the construction of social infrastructure across the fissured left.
- Look inward. While writing this article, we heard many valid criticisms of organizations across the political spectrum. These criticisms deserve an honest internal accounting, both to build trust and credibility with activists outside of the organization and to address real organizational weaknesses.Too often, criticisms that cross organizational lines are, on the one hand, levied seemingly without any eye toward collaboration and, on the other, digested as bad faith attacks. The responsibility is on all of us: to critique toward unity and to receive criticisms with humility. As members of the Marxist Unity Group, a DSA caucus, we aim to model this open, constructive criticism through articles in our local publication, the Socialist Tribune, that tackle the organizational issues we see in NYC-DSA, as well as through conversations with members, participation in organizational forums and interventions at the chapter’s political conventions
As we look back on a year of organizing since October 7th, we see signs of continued strength and opportunities for growing organization and militant consciousness. The new academic year has already brought with it a wave of student protest activity, mass mobilizations continue at a large scale, community and workplace organizing continues, and the presidential election in November continues to provide leverage for the Uncommitted Movement and its allies to pressure the Democratic Party while agitating and raising consciousness on the largest political stage in the country.
Yet the weakness of the movement is also apparent. Major segments of the Uncommitted Movement have already folded, releasing a statement declining to endorse Kamala Harris while also opposing Trump’s presidency and recommending against third party votes so as not to win Trump the election. This statement invites the question: if Uncommitted doesn’t want voters to vote third party so Trump doesn’t win the election, how is that any different from encouraging a vote for Democrats?
While the Uncommitted Movement is showing signs of weakening its position as a principled pole of opposition that can rally disaffected voters, conversations with student activists indicate that the student movement seems to still be recovering from last year’s intense period of contentious, high-stakes organizing and repression. In a sign of worse to come, US institutions are preparing for heightening that repression against activists: NYU, for example, has updated its code of conduct to prohibit anti-Zionist politics.
Most significantly, the US ruling class shows no signs that it will end its support for Israel. Even claims to the contrary focus on the Democratic Party’s squeamishness towards the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which, while understandable and even desirable, ignores the fact that the horrifying events of the past year are only the most recent manifestation of a brutal, century-long process of Nakba, which will continue even if a ceasefire is agreed upon. As we continue to organize through this conjuncture we ought to take inspiration from the Palestinian resistance itself, that understands the struggle for Palestinian liberation as one that will last generations, cutting across both political and tactical differences.
Some have recommended the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) 1969 Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, written by Ghasan Kanafani. In it, Kanafani reprises Mao’s famous strategic questions: Who are our friends? And who are our enemies? Kanafani first outlines the movement’s antagonists–as Machover does, he identifies Israel, the wider Zionist movement, world imperialism (led by the US), and reactionary Arab forces–and then moves toward the subject of friendships and alliances. Writing against what he labels a ‘rightist’ current amongst some struggling for Palestinian liberation, he clarifies: “National liberation battles are also class battles. They are battles between colonialism and the feudal and capitalist class whose interests are linked with those of the colonialist on the one hand, and the other classes of the people representing the greater part of the nation on the other.” He goes on to write: “When we have addressed ourselves to the workers and peasants—the inhabitants of camps, villages and poor urban districts—and armed them with political awareness, organization and fighting means, we shall have created the firm material foundation for a historical liberation revolution. It is the rise of such a solid revolutionary backbone that will enable us to conclude class alliances to benefit the revolution without exposing it to vacillation, deviation or defeat.”
To the progressive and democratic left, we warn of the inevitable pitfalls of class alliances without the development of such a solid revolutionary backbone–that is, without the workers, politically aware, organized, fighting. To the hard left, we warn against the isolating of our movement and the forfeiture of sites of paramount struggle to the bourgeoisie precisely because we might associate those sites with the bourgeoisie. It is the hope of these writers that we keep Kanafani’s analysis in mind as we continue to organize against genocide and for the liberation of Palestine.As we agitate and protest we must ensure that the creation of the firm material foundation for historical revolution, which is to say class unity, remains a resolute priority. Tactical and political differences must not be mistaken for class antagonisms. Rather, collaboration and interorganizational relation-building in the name of class unity and national liberation must be a primary project of all on the anti-imperialist left.
