This was originally shared by Marissa Sanchez in a note with the following content:
As I am finalizing my own response to the Central Committee’s “true narrative” about what happened to me, I am deeply appreciative of others who are taking the time to read their response carefully and assess what it reveals.
I especially appreciate this piece for calling attention to the fact that I signed the Steven Powers letter in 2020, and yet now find myself subjected to the same insinuations that I am a wrecker, a state agent, or someone whose criticisms must be understood as part of an attack on the Party rather than engaged with for its own substance.
I think there is an important lesson in that for every comrade to internalize.
One of the things I have had to reckon with from my own time in the PSL and on the NDC is how, when the Party comes under criticism, women comrades are placed in front of and made to bear those criticisms. Our identities become something the Party wields defensively against people who criticize it. I wish I had understood more clearly what was being asked of me in 2020. I wish I had thought more independently and critically about the role I was being asked to play then. It has taken a great deal of personal development for me to understand that role and to take responsibility for having allowed myself to play it.
As I said in my own essay: if PSL members can change the organization, great. I mean that sincerely. But this is one place where I differ from the hopes expressed in this piece. I do not believe the Party can be reformed by its membership in the ways this comrade is calling for.
The Central Committee’s response to me, and what I am hearing about the way I continue to be discussed in internal meetings and in one-on-one conversations with members, has only deepened that conclusion for me. Right now, rather than seriously assessing the organizational shortcomings that allowed these events to happen, Party leadership is working seemingly tirelessly to discredit me and to reinforce it’s increasingly closed internal narrative about why criticism exists in the first place.
I hope everyone following this situation will read this piece carefully. And I especially hope we will all think seriously about what it means that someone who once helped defend the Party against these very kinds of criticisms can so easily become their target when she is the one speaking.
For my part, my branch has expelled me. I’m officially no longer a party member after years of work, hundreds of hours, signing the lease on our Liberation Center, and helping to found the branch. This has hit our branch very hard; but leadership has doubled down and closed ranks.
I’m looking into other cadre orgs to join and work with, and looking to try and build an alternative here with the expectation that the party will not be able to handle this contradiction and will implode. Wish us luck 🤞
This is why it’s so disgusting and misogynistic for the wrecker faction to be weaponizing Marissa’s experience of sexual assault in a political attack intended to destroy the PSL.
I don’t really know enough to weigh in on factionalism other than that I think it’s inappropriate and harmful for future victims for these things to blow up at all and that the procedures necessary for this kind of thing need to be designed around making as little noise and impact as possible.
Most people don’t want to be the center of a huge drama if they come forwards and are less likely to do so if that is what they can expect. Any system that wants to serve victims properly must be discreet by design. Discretion and safety is the primary thing any victims want before they will come forwards.
I’m only so vocal because I experienced the exact same tactics and methods used against Marissa to silence and belittle me. If a faction is using it, and national leadership knows, they should have done the right thing instead of doubling down. I’ve put years into the party, but it won’t matter in the end.