https://iclfi.org/pubs/wv/1181/jba-box
WV supporters are part of the DSA’s Just Break Already (JBA) caucus, which advocates an immediate clean break with all Democratic electeds, a vote for PSL, anti-imperialist struggle to free Palestine and a fight for black liberation. Unable to respond politically to the JBA program, the DSA-L.A. Steering Committee has expelled a JBA member for purportedly violating the “dem-cent” (democratic-centralist) ban, which is an anti-communist club used by the right against the left and should be junked in the interest of workers democracy. The same L.A. leadership that upheld pro-Zionist elected Nithya Raman’s DSA membership against calls by the left to expel her has now expelled a DSA member who defends Palestinian freedom.
Utterly incapable of justifying their allegiance to the Democrats, others on the DSA right whipped up a moralistic frenzy on social media against WV for our opposition to “age of consent” laws. In response, our supporter made an unexceptional statement that the Republicans push campaigns against trans people and gay and intergenerational sex and that we object to state intrusion into consensual sex and determining who can sleep with whom. Such laws deny the bodily autonomy of youth in the same way that laws against abortion deny women’s bodily autonomy.
This caused further hysteria and revealed the fragility of the DSA. The L.A. Steering Committee has resorted to the lie that defense of those who engage in consensual intergenerational sex is defense of abuse. They did so to mask their refusal to break with the same Democratic Party overseeing the slaughter of thousands of children in Gaza.
So far, the DSA left has refused to take up the JBA member’s defense, abetting the right. The moral codes of the ruling class are always used to stir up reaction against the workers movement and the oppressed. Remember the Scottsboro Boys, nine black youth framed up for rapes that never happened in the 1930s. Or black former NFL player Marcus Dixon, imprisoned in 2003 as a teenager for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old white classmate. Any concession to this reaction divides and weakens the workers movement. This is seen in how the orchestrated backlash against our supporter undercut the momentum building in the DSA for a break with the Democrats. Instead of fueling this backlash, the DSA left should fight against it—it’s a danger to us all.
