A lot of times when stories about a group's internal politics emerge like this, I think there are most likely different perspectives on the matter. This, however, is not one of those moments. Seriously, this is fucked up. Like NAMBLA is such a joke that it's hard to imagine its own members publicly advocating for it, let alone people who aren't actually pedophiles.
For the past year, I have been an active member of the Portland Branch of the IWW. I paid dues, attended GMB meetings, created the external Stumptown Wobbly newsletter and produced it for several months in a row. I met a number of good comrades in the IWW, and have been excited over the excellent work being done to organize the workers at Burgerville. However, after Sunday’s GMB, I resigned.
Back in April, I published a note about a meeting I had with an organizer from the Internationalist Group (IG), a Trotskyist political party which I discovered, through the course of the conversation and later research, is a splitoff of the Spartacist League. Like their parent group, the IG has a long history of supporting pedophiles, defending NAMBLA, and campaigning against Age of Consent laws, supporting “consensual sex between people of different age groups” , ignoring the fact that children are incapable of giving consent.
It also came to my attention that the local group, Class Struggle Workers Portland, which includes members of the Portland IWW, are, as their program states: “working fraternally with the Internationalist Group” - see their website here. Their website has 2 links on it - The Internationalist Group, and Class Struggle Education Workers, another mass organization of the IG:
The Internationalist Group in turn has a link to Class Struggle Workers Portland on their website (I won’t bother with the screenshot, here’s the link).
I brought up this connection to the several IWW members that belong to CSWP, whom I will not name publicly. Two of these members are elected office holders, and so hold positions of influence in the union. At the same time, I published the note exposing the Internationalist Group (this was April 2016). I talked at length with one person, who told me that the IG isn’t directly connected with CSWP, but just have some cross-membership, and that it is a broader, separate alliance that doesn’t necessarily hold the same views and positions as IG.
I took this assurance in good faith and agreed to leave CSWP out of my line struggle against IG. I received no other responses to my inquiries from the other two members.
CSWP and the Internationalist Group set up booths at the Portland May Day Rally. Comrades from Serve the People, having read my note online, approached the IG representatives, asking them about their stand on pedophilia and support of NAMBLA. They were met with defensiveness, verbal attacks, and accusations. Serve the People Portland published the results of their investigation online, and spoke out against the IG, as well as speaking out about a convicted pedophile who tried to attend the rally, but was confronted and then left.
In July, I noticed that there was a movie night co-sponsored and organized by the Portland IWW and the Internationalist Group. As it turns out, a CSWP member had just the month before been elected as the chair of the Education & Outreach committee which planned the movie.
At this discovery, I began to be concerned that there was, in fact, a deeper relationship between the IG and CSWP than I had been led to believe. I began to talk to some of the other members of the branch, asking them if they knew of IG and its support of NAMBLA - not surprisingly, they hadn’t, and some were alarmed. I was encouraged to bring up a motion to the next GMB regarding the issue. I also consulted with my fellow comrades from Serve the People, who also encouraged me to pursue the struggle and make the motion. I wrote it up and sent it out for the August GMB meeting:
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Motion to cease association with The Internationalist Group
WHEREAS, The IWW and The Internationalist Group co-sponsored a movie night together at the union hall on July 17th, 2016, naming the event as a joint event by the IWW and the Internationalist Group (see exhibit A), - Note: I provided a screenshot as proof
AND WHEREAS, The Internationalist Group, a Trotskyist political party, has made a party-wide campaign to support and defend the pedophile association NAMBLA (the North American Man Boy Love Association) on numerous occasions (see exhibit B below), - Note: I attached the article excerpts from IG’s newspapers below the motion. I will include them at the end of this note.
AND WHEREAS, The Internationalist Group has also declared one of its stated goals to abolish all Age of Consent laws, laws which while operating in a bourgeois patriarchal society do not protect women, people of color, and LGBTQ peoples equally, nevertheless should be applied equally in a just and equal society which we seek to build, to protect the oppressed from patriarchal sexual violence against children,
AND WHEREAS, official association with such a group clearly violates the Portland IWW’s Safer Spaces policy by partnering with a political organization that supports sexual predators against children,
AND WHEREAS, such an official association also violates the IWW general bylaws, Article IV, prohibiting political alliances,
BE IT RESOLVED, that the Portland IWW will immediately cease all current and future associations with the Internationalist Group, and will no longer hold joint events, or permit the Internationalist Group to conduct meetings or events at the wobbly Hall.
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When the motion came up Sunday at the GMB, another IWW fellow worker proposed some amendments to the motion, to the effect of forming a committee to investigate the connection between IG and NAMBLA, and to provide its findings at the next meeting. I agreed to the amendments because I felt that it would be a good opportunity for the union members to investigate the matter for themselves.
When the motion came under discussion, the 3 CSWP members immediately formed a bloc, roundly condemning the motion with a flurry of accusations: calling it slander, a witch-hunt, anticommunist, patriarchal, racist, and homophobic. One member recounted a personal anecdote in an attempt to justify the notion that very underage people should be able to enter into sexual relationships with adults, and claimed that my opposition to this was a patriarchal attempt to tell young women/underage children what to do with their bodies. Furthermore, they claimed that I made them feel unsafe and said that by talking publicly about these issues with the IG that I was calling for what they said amounted to the “murder” of IG members. They then called into question my emotional and mental stability, as they claimed that I was “mentally disturbed” to think that the IG supported pedophilia, and that I and the motion itself violated the safer space rule.
The second member compared the motion to the racist lynch mobs during the Scottsborough 9 trials, claiming that it was a direct attack on CSWP (though the CSWP was not mentioned once in the motion), and called it an underhanded political attack aimed at exploiting the emotions of the group in order to undermine the union. They said that anyone voting “Yes” for the motion, or even to form a committee to investigate the matter, would be supporting a factionalist witch-hunt. Illogically, they also claimed at one point that the motion supported slave labor in prisons.
The third member stated that the I and the motion are homophobic and recounted a tale of IG supporting a 19 year old lesbian woman who had sex with her 14 year old girlfriend, and was arrested after the child’s mother called the cops. The third member also recounted their own personal anecdotes, similar to the first person’s.
I responded that I wanted to acknowledge the individual experiences related to the group, and that the motion was not aimed at erasing or passing judgement on them or their experiences. I clarified that the motion was not about CSWP, although it is a fraternal organization, but rather directly and specifically about the IG. In response to their point of sex between minors and adults being a matter of personal autonomy, I replied that this stance gives support to a structural patriarchy which uses sexual manipulation against children as a means of oppressing and controlling the bodies of people who are unable to give fully informed consent. The response to this was the first member “thanking” me for man-splaining patriarchy to them.
One fellow worker spoke up in support of my motion and myself, speaking eloquently about their concerns with the issue, both personally and on principal. I would like to thank that person again for their words and support.
It seemed that a number of members were originally in support of the motion, but as the CSWP bloc continued to personally attack me with unfounded accusations and claims, and as the meeting had already gone on for more than 2 hours, the mood had changed.
When the motion was called to question and voted on in the end, only I and the one person who spoke in support voted in favor. 1 had left, 7 voted against it, and 3 abstained from voting.
7 People voted against even investigating whether such serious charges - which I provided evidence of, and which the CSWP bloc had given plenty of proof in evidence to their personal stands on the issue - were true or not. 7 did not even want to discover the truth. I won’t blame the 3 that abstained - there can be a number of reasons why they would do so. But the refusal to even investigate and consider the evidence speaks volumes about the Portland IWW.
This issue is more than just a simple motion, political maneuvering, or a personal beef. This issue reveals the disturbing willingness of the members of the Portland IWW to shut down and exclude anyone that brings up an uncomfortable truth.
And so, when the time came at the end of the meeting for comments, I took off my IWW pin, and set down my card, stating that I won’t be a member of a group that associates with the Internationalist Group.
I liked being a wobbly. I wanted to help the work along. I believe in the IWW’s goals and vision as outlined in its magnificent preamble. I also believe that associating with groups like the IG that support and defend the exploitation of women and children violates the most basic tenants and values of the union.
So, because I believe in the IWW’s stated goal of building ‘a new world within the shell of the old’, I will stand up and speak out against anyone that supports racists, misogynists, homo/transphobes, molesters and rapists. I will not be a member of or support any organization that allies themselves with such groups as the IG.
This criticism does not describe the IWW as a whole, and neither does it describe the majority of the people in the Portland Branch. But an organization is responsible for decisions made by its members and elected officers. If the membership of Portland IWW cannot come together and make a principled stand for the truth, and for equality, then it has no business calling itself a part of the IWW.
If you have any questions or need clarification, please pm me.
Excerpts from the Internationalist Group’s newspapers supporting pedophiles and abolishing age of consent laws:
The Internationalist Group Supports Pedophilia and abolishing age of consent:
The Internationalist Group’s newspaper is “Revolution”, and their magazine “The Internationalist” –
The more recent article is “Gay Rights and Socialist Revolution” by Aubeen Lopez and Abram Negrete, published in Revolution No. 4, September 2007, pg 5: http://www.internationalist.org/Revolution4web.pdf
“As new anti-sex witch hunts descended during the Reagan years, and Bible-thumping crazies clogged the airwaves claiming AIDS was god’s retribution against gays, mainstream gay and lesbian organizations shed remnants of radical vocabulary in a drive for respectability. Symptomatic was their ostracism of groups like the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), condemned for the thoughtcrime of criticizing the “age of consent” laws that arbitrarily criminalize consensual sex between people of different age groups. Scandalously, the reactionary hysteria that screams “pedophile!” at such critics is echoed by some on the left (the small Socialist Alternative group is an especially egregious example).”
The Internationalist, No. 4, Jan-Feb 1998, pgs. 30-31:
http://www.internationalist.org/Internationalist04web.pdf
Sinister Witchhunt Against NAMBLA
In Massachusetts, the most reactionary forces cynically seized upon a recent spate of grisly killings to whip up a racist death penalty hysteria. Black people are not their only targets. As part of the recent campaign, a sinister persecution was launched against an organization called the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Following the murder of a Cambridge boy, Jeffrey Curley, the media viciously and slanderously tried to implicate NAMBLA in this heinous crime. All defenders of fundamental democratic rights must oppose this crude victimization of NAMBLA, a political advocacy group that supports the rights of gays and youth and calls for the repeal of the state's reactionary age-of-consent laws. In the over two decades of its existence, NAMBLA has been the target of non-stop bigoted attacks and slanders, as part of the puritanical, homophobic "family values" campaign. Even "mainstream" gay rights organizations have shunned NAMBLA in a desperate attempt to ·achieve respectability with bourgeois politicians and public opinion. Today, reactionary forces such as the anti-abortion bigots who claim to defend the "right to life" (while harboring killers who gun down clinic personnel) seek to instigate an atmosphere reminiscent of the Salem witchcraft trials so that they can start up their machine of state murder. As always, the most unpopular and isolated groups are singled out for victimization as the "thin edge of the wedge" in the all-sided attack by bourgeois reaction. From the Clinton White House to the Massachusetts state house, the “family values" crusade targets women, gays, lesbians, youth, anyone considered deviant by a ruling class that wants to use sexual norms to regiment the population amid the rot of decaying capitalism. Thus a Dominican immigrant, Jesus Collado, was jailed for over half a year as the INS tried to deport him for a "statutory rape" conviction from 1974, when as a 19-year-old youth he was tried and found guilty for having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girl friend. As opposed to reactionary "age of consent" laws, which seek to criminalize youth sexuality, we hold that the only legitimate standard in sexual matters is whether there is effective consent. We demand: Government out of the bedrooms! At the November 1 rally against the death penalty Internationalist Group supporters carried a sign demanding: "Down With the State & Media Witchhunt Against NAMBLA!"
A lot of times when stories
A lot of times when stories about a group's internal politics emerge like this, I think there are most likely different perspectives on the matter. This, however, is not one of those moments. Seriously, this is fucked up. Like NAMBLA is such a joke that it's hard to imagine its own members publicly advocating for it, let alone people who aren't actually pedophiles.
Yes, for those of you not on
Yes, for those of you not on FB, it reads: