Statement regarding my complaint against Ahmed

The #MeToo moment and my own decision last summer to begin to fight against the core
leadership of the SC and alongside members for a democratic opening of the ISO and
examination of our political culture are deeply intertwined. They are intertwined in ways that are
personally devastating, but also in ways that I believe are relevant for understanding how we got
here. The revelations of the horribly mishandled rape allegation in 2013 brought this home to
me and it has left me reeling.

This statement is written to explain a complaint that I am bringing against Ahmed S, the long-
time principal leader of the ISO. The decision to bring forward a complaint has been a long,
complicated, terrifying and difficult one. It is something I have wrestled with since long before
the recent events. But recent events have compelled me to come forward now. My biggest fear
right now is that Ahmed will call or email to tell me I’m a liar, and that I will believe him. I am
writing this because it is important for me to confront this, be heard and demand that Ahmed not
only be expelled but that he has no place on the left. But I am also writing it because I believe it
is sheds light on aspects of our internal functioning that our comrades, and former comrades,
deserve to know.

I want to preface this by saying that nothing I convey here, or that I have experienced, absolves
me from responsibility for the role that I have played in perpetuating what I’ve come to
understand as a damaging political culture. I am deeply ashamed and sorry for wrongs I have
committed and I remain committed to working these through in collaboration with my comrades
and taking accountability for my own actions in that.

This statement will inevitably mix together things that are deeply personal and are about things
that were done to me and political history and assessment. There is no way to avoid this
because one of the things that I now understand is how that combination helped to create an
abusive political culture. Trying to sort through the precise balance between political challenges
built into the model or project or period and the abusive dynamics at the core of the organization
is one of the things with which I am wrestling. Providing my story is one way of trying to bring
some light to these questions. When talking about my personal experience and how I see the
impact on the ISO, I want to stress that this is my story, my truth and my perspective.

I know mine is not the only one and that so many people right now are having to sort through
their own understanding of what happened to them, what they did and what it meant for us. I am
doing so very publicly and in full view (Ahmed would be horrified!). The cost is immense for my
family and myself, but so is the cost of not speaking up. That is my choice. Others may be doing
so privately and that is also their right; to the best of my ability I have tried not to speak other
people’s truths without their consents and it means that this picture is necessarily partial and
incomplete. But I hope it can be of service.

My complaint

The core of the complaint that I am bringing against Ahmed is that he pursued and conducted a
relationship with me that was emotionally abusive, psychologically manipulative and at times,
and particularly on its darkest night, included intense fear of physical violence. The relationship
was also an abuse of power: it took place while I was a paid organizer of the ISO; I was not at
that time on our SC; he was the SC member [redacted] - i.e., directly responsible for working
with me and he held sole responsibility for our finances as well as personnel at that
time. I do not believe that this inevitably precluded an equal relationship, but within the
dynamics of our relationship, he wielded that power in ways that were deeply damaging - not
only to myself but to the organization. Subsequent to this relationship (which lasted for about 13
months), he engaged in what I now understand to be sexual harassment and attempts to use
this secret to control and intimidate me. This continued from the time our relationship ended in
2012 through 2018.

As I have begun to talk about this, I have taken pains to be clear that this was a consensual
relationship. But in doing so, I think I have minimized Ahmed’s culpability and I have blamed
myself for things that are not my fault. I am grateful to the survivors in the ISO who continue to
push against the deeply ingrained, pervasive culture of victim blaming that is so easy to
internalize and hard to resist. I like to think that I am pretty good at recognizing it when it comes
to other people’s stories, but I am still working to stop myself for taking the blame for this.

There are two things that I feel are difficult but necessary to convey. One is how deeply
destructive the emotional abuse was. I am not talking about an affair gone bad or a relationship
where the other person didn’t treat me very well. The second is how much I’m coming to realize
that I was manipulated into this relationship, over a period of years, and how circumscribed my
ability to freely give genuine consent actually was. These are difficult dynamics to describe. I will
be writing a formal complaint for whatever body the ISO decides to proceed with and it will have
specific incidents and timeline and much more information. In this statement, I can only try to
give some understanding.

Psychological manipulation, abuse of power and compromised consent

I joined the ISO when I was 20 years old. Ahmed came to [redacted] to give a talk when I was a
contact; I agreed to join that night. He was 32 and the principal leader of what was at that time a
very small group of a couple hundred people. That night and several other times over the
course of my first year of membership, we went out and he bought me mudslides throughout the
evening. It became “our thing”. He paid special attention to me and was flirtatious, but without
any direct overtures. From early on, he established a narrative in which we had a special
connection: he shared intimate details of his life, created special jokes or endearments that
were known only between us and made a point to sit next to me and buy me drinks when we
went out after meetings.

The age and experience gap were significant. I saw him as older and I saw him as the key
leader. He had tremendous influence over me. At that stage of my life and of my political
development I was vulnerable and I believe these experiences primed me to be a victim of his
abuse. In the years that followed, there developed a pattern of excessive attention alternating
with sudden withdrawals of approval or attention. In 2003, following a conference party, we had
our first affair. Following that night, he did not speak to me for months - except to call me once
to berate me for having confided in a close friend.

However, in following years his attentions resumed. In 2011, he came to [redacted] to give a
meeting and we met for dinner to discuss political work. I had a notepad with an agenda on the
table in front of me. I had not given any indication of interest in that moment and it was not a
flirtatious moment. In fact, it had been a tumultuous year in the ISO, we were at a turning point
and I was eager to have a political conversation with him and frustrated at the personal turn it
kept taking. Without warning or discussion, he reached over the table and began kissing me.
There was no time to say yes or no. I reciprocated, but I cannot imagine what I would have
done if I had not.
I was hesitant to begin an affair for many reasons, not least of which was that I was in a
committed relationship and had a young child. He was also married, to our national organizer,
but assured me they were separated with no future. This, of course, was a lie. Over the ensuing
month, he pursued me. When I did decide to go forward with the affair, he suddenly raised
concerns that it was a mistake, inappropriate, that he was a leader of the ISO and should not be
sleeping with women, that he never did this because he took his role seriously, etc.

I now understand this as a manipulative tactic to get me to take responsibility for the affair,
which I did. This issue was a recurrent theme in our relationship and he would often invoke it at
moments when I did things that displeased him. At this point, I was vulnerable and would often
succumb to whatever his dictates were. My consent and responsibility for the affair were a big
deal. At one point, I wrote a note saying that I consent to this relationship and that should I ever
bring charges against him that he was to be absolved of all responsibility. It was meant as a
joke, but thinking about it now is horrifying to me.

Emotional abuse
Anyone who has interacted with Ahmed has some sense of both how charming and attentive he
can be, but also how quickly he can get angry and “pull rank”. In the context of an intimate
relationship, this dynamic is debilitating. His emotional abuse took a few recurrent forms. One
was an extreme anger and power trip if I ever showed any dissatisfaction or desire for more
respect. In these moments he would yell, send abusive emails, stop returning calls, invoke how
wrong the relationship was and threaten to end it. Almost always, I would end up apologizing.

He had all of the power in the relationship - a power that was amplified by the extreme secrecy
and my intense fear of being found out. This fear was also fueled by the fact that his wife
(Sharon) was the national organizer, so also sort of my boss, and was herself quite intimidating.
Her potential reaction, and what it would mean for me politically, was a not so subtle threat that
Ahmed wielded consciously. In the years preceding our affair, three other ISO organizers had
been fired or quit and driven out of the organization. My fear was not irrational.

The other aspect of the emotional abuse was the extreme denigration of me, particularly
politically, and the damage to my confidence and sense of self worth. Often, his insults and
terms of endearment were so intertwined they were hard to distinguish and had me off balance.
But the biggest damage was to my political confidence. He knew that politics were core to my
very identity and he would tear me down on that basis. This was most true around theory. I was
pretty confident in my abilities as an organizer, but I doubted my theoretical abilities. I never
graduated college and this was something that hung over me. As I began to participate in more
theoretical arenas such as [redacted] conferences, cadre study groups in [redacted] and more, I
was tentative and unsure of myself. I lacked much of the academic background and vocabulary
that marks those arenas, but I was trying. Ahmed systematically tore me down on that front.
(Side note: I am eternally grateful to [redacted] for taking me seriously as a contributor to the
discussions on the Comintern and to always proposing me as a speaker on this topic with
[redacted] at the Socialism conference - it was a lifeline on this front)

He was constantly subtly mocking me and would often “quiz” me. He’d drop some historical or
political reference into the middle of the conversation and test if I got the reference and make fun
of me on the occasions when I didn’t. At one point, he bought me an engraved iPad that had an
intimate abbreviation (known only to us) on it and I asked what I was supposed to tell people
it meant; he said, it could stand for “know our theoretical tradition” - a reference to the fact that
he thought I did not.

At one point, we had a huge argument in which I was reduced to tears over an article I
submitted to [redacted] on [redacted]. It was based on a talk I had given at [redacted], which I
had worked very hard on and had been very well received. I was asked to write it up so it could
be published as soon as possible. However, Ahmed thought it was weak and that I was “in over
my head”. He said it was riddled with problems. There was not constructive criticism or
guidance but simply a dismissal. When I asked him to be more gentle and tried to explain that
as a woman, in particular, I struggled with confidence and that this was hard for me, he
expressed exasperation, said he had never heard me talk that way and that I sounded like a
feminist using gender as an excuse.

These are the examples that are most prominent in my memory but there were constant small
scale put downs. The damage to my political confidence was profound and it perhaps the thing
that I am most angry about.

Physical fear of violence

For the most part, the abuse did not involve a physical element. However, Ahmed is prone to
intense anger and this can be terrifying when you are the recipient of the full weight of that
anger. One night, we had an argument and he became angrier than I have ever seen him. It
was genuinely terrifying. We were in his car in the middle of the night in Chicago and I had no
place to go but with him. While yelling at me, he began driving extremely fast, through red lights
and otherwise dangerously. I was terrified and begging him to stop and let me out. He pulled
over on a dark street and told me to get out; I couldn’t. I honestly thought he could kill us both
and I had no idea what to do. Finally, we returned to the apartment where he was staying and
we had a sexual encounter that I am still struggling to define.

Abuse of power, sexual harassment and the impact on the ISO

In the spring of 2012, I finally ended the affair. However, for years Ahmed continued to act as if I
we had a special relationship and he had special and unique access to me. On political
conference calls or at meetings, he would make subtle references to things between us that
only I would know. He was constantly joking and referencing our relationship. He also would
continue to call me at all hours of the night. Every time he called I did not know if it would be for
something political that I needed to answer or if it would be personal. I was afraid to answer the
phone in front of my partner and I lived in fear that he would expose me.

I have also recently begun to understand and piece together all of the ways he abused his
power. Many of the tactics I am about to describe were also used against other people on the
SC or in the organizing department; but for me, they were in the context of an intimate
relationship (or its history) and a secret that he held over me.

During the course of our affair and after, he would come to [redacted] for ostensibly political
reasons, but he would cancel out of the meetings he was scheduled for. I was forced to make
excuses for his absences and several times I had to give talks on his behalf. But he was the
“SC member responsible for [redacted]” and so he would report back to the SC about [redacted].
I was not elected to the SC until [redacted]. For the entire duration of our affair and after,
Ahmed was reporting back to the SC or to the core organizing team about [redacted]. I have
been told now that he would characterize [redacted] as variously unstable or having this
or that issue or “adapting” to
various political currents. This was not based on actual knowledge of [redacted] and it was
deeply undermining to my leadership. Around this time, the [redacted] was quite strong and had
developed an impressive and independent-minded cadre. I believe that I was beginning to
develop a different method of leadership, particularly after 2011 - one that was more open and
collaborative. I am convinced that both [redacted] and myself were seen as threats - not by the
whole SC, but by Ahmed and Sharon who constituted the core power center in the SC.

Ahmed would also straight-up lie about me. He would say I didn’t return his phone calls or didn’t
properly report developments, even though I had. At least to some of the core organizers in
Chicago, he put down my efforts and made fun of how incompetent I was. He had a high degree
of control over how I was viewed.

When there were challenges in [redacted], I did not receive support. Instead, I think Ahmed’s
(and Sharon’s) approach alternated between abandonment and then intense and destructive
intervention. This dynamic became critical and I think had a profoundly negative impact on the
course of the ISO in 2013. In that year, I helped lead a process of re-examining and apologizing
for the [redacted]’s response to [redacted] document in 2010. My initial assessment of that
process was that it was enormously positive and I was eager to share this with the national
organization. Around that same time, we also had a women’s meeting for the first time in the
[redacted]. We had also been experimenting with different formats like “go-arounds” and we
were one of the first districts to start paying attention to mechanisms for using proper gender
pronouns. There were also questions about the print paper and many other questions. My initial
response to all of this was to think that the work we were doing and the questions were
important.

I attended the fall SC/NC meeting in 2013 determined to raise these issues and try to pry open a
discussion in the organization. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I wasn’t prepared for what I
encountered. I have written elsewhere about this experience, but I have not explained some of
the personal backdrop. When I arrived in Chicago, I was subjected to an intense and terrifying
conversation with Sharon in which she said that Ahmed told her I wasn’t speaking to him and
that she did not know what was going on between us. The truth is that Ahmed wasn’t speaking
to me. She berated me for the fact that [redacted] had produced a series of bulletins for its own
fall perspectives meeting but that I hadn’t shared these with the leadership. In fact, I had sent
these all to Ahmed and he lied and said I had never sent them.

Walking into that meeting, it became clear to me that the entire SC had been told a story about
[redacted] that was false and that Sharon was furious with me and Ahmed was lying about me. It
was in this context that Joel led off a discussion in which he attacked the [redacted] for our
adaptation to identity politics and the breakdown in Leninism. This attack was continued by
Sharon in subsequent sessions. I spent most of that weekend sobbing and at one point I had to
leave the room; [redacted] came to comfort me and convince me not to quit while [redacted]
came to tell me I had to return to the meeting. Following the first day’s meeting, Sharon and I
were locked in a battle for several hours about all of these issues. It became clear that Ahmed
had told her that the [redacted] leadership was going to throw her under the bus for the 2010
document and she spent a lot of our discussion denying any knowledge of the document (she
signed off on it). Sharon was clearly furious with me and told me I needed to “think about my
role” in the organization. I felt completely disempowered. Having had a secret affair with Ahmed
only added to my fears and sense of helplessness.
It is to my eternal shame that I backed down and retreated from my positions. I have asked
myself dozens of times in the last 3 weeks if I could have fought and not been driven out in 2013
and if that would have saved us and set us on a new course earlier. The fear of being driven out
was real. I had seen it happen to others while not fully understanding it. I could see how it could
happen to me, because I saw how I had managed to accept lies and half truths. And the thought
of giving up the best of what we were and the elusive hope of gaining enough trust or power to
somehow shift things from within the leadership, or at least mitigate damage, was a powerful
carrot to accompany the stick. I came on to the SC for the first time a few months later and
hoped that I could influence things from the inside. But I was not prepared for how hard that was
and how much the levers of power and the control of information was held in two people’s
hands. I spent far too much of my 5 years on that SC accommodating. I tried to protect
[redacted] and we always had a much more flexible interpretation of the campus perspective
than other places. I also tried to protect individuals and shield them from the attacks I saw but
failed to challenge elsewhere. That balancing act, of course, came crashing down in 2017-18.

In 2018, Ahmed re-asserted himself in [redacted] and the abusive dynamics of his relationship to
me also came to the fore again. On the final day of the 2018 convention, he had shown up
visibly drunk. I begged him to leave. He wanted to go talk to a comrade who disagreed sharply
with the course we were taking; I told him not to, but he did. This, along with the convention
itself, set off a chain of events in [redacted]. Ahmed insisted on coming to [redacted]. When I
hesitated and tried to deflect in hopes that he would move on, he began calling other cadre in
[redacted]. He again began casting doubt on me and telling lies. Eventually, I felt I had no
choice but to concede that he could come to [redacted] - over the objections of two of [redacted]
leaders whose opinions I valued the most. The visit was, of course, a disaster.

Over the course of several months, Ahmed told me I was “falling for some really deep shit” and
that I was “sitting on a pile of shit”. When I tried to say that it was wrong for him to approach a
woman comrade while drunk during the voting session at convention, he berated me. He called
other comrades to complain about me. And he clearly complained to Sharon as I was to learn at
the Socialism conference that summer. Everything was beginning to come crashing down.

#MeToo and its impact

However, this was also a moment in which I was tentatively beginning to identify the problems
and find my own voice. Everything I have said here about the abusive nature of my relationship
with Ahmed is never how I had understood it. And I had repressed major aspects of it until very
recently. In fact, I had what can only be described as a fairy tale view of our entire history - an
edifice of lies I told myself. My attitudes about many questions were changing as a result of
#MeToo and I was an order of magnitude more confident about ideas I had begun to put forward
a few years earlier around the nature of sexual assault and sexism. I knew that my enthusiasm
for #MeToo was considered excessive by Ahmed and Sharon in particular, but Socialist Worker
and other comrades embraced it. I was so proud of the position we took, which I felt was far in
advance of so much of the left. That feeling of pride makes the revelations about how the 2013
case was handled all the more personal feeling a betrayal.

But despite my enthusiasm, I had not yet re-examined my past with Ahmed through this lens.
And then, one day in the spring of 2018 I listened to the NPR podcast episode, 5 Women, which
was about the editor of AlterNet’s serial sexual harassment and the incredibly complex ways in
which that played out. Everyone should listen to it. As I was listening, my heart started
pounding, I began crying and I struggled to breathe. I recognized my story. Thus began a period
of reflection. This was enormously difficult as this remained a carefully guarded secret. I had to
struggle with this on my own. And, as I did so, I felt the full weight of what it would mean if I were
to come forward. I was convinced, wrongly I now think, that coming forward would destroy our
organization. And I still doubted so much and questioned myself.

The breaking point came at [redacted] following a [redacted] meeting. Following the meeting
Sharon, [redacted] and I met to assess. Sharon began berating me for not fighting hard enough
against what she characterized as factionalism. She criticized me for “not wanting
Ahmed to come to [redacted]” and started a string of “Ahmed says…” that all were complete
lies. At that point, I broke down and started to try to explain my growing concerns about Ahmed
while maintaining my secret about my own story. [redacted] backed me up and that helped bring
the discussion to a close. But he must have sensed something else because he offered to talk.

At this point, I broke down in tears and finally disclosed my long-held secret. Words cannot
begin to describe what it meant to be listened to, supported and validated with such immediacy
in that moment. But more of an earthquake was the realization that [redacted] himself shared so
many of my concerns about our political culture and the dynamics in our leadership. That we
could be on an SC together for more than 4 years and not know that each of us felt
disempowered, uneasy and even disgusted says so much about the way the flow of information
was controlled, people were divided from one another and alternately coopted and bullied into
cooperation or silence. For the first time, really, I felt I wasn’t alone. I felt like there could be a
path forward.

In the coming weeks and months, I would learn more about the history of how our leadership
had functioned - a history of which I was almost entirely ignorant. I learned that [redacted] and
others had tried to have Ahmed asked to take a leave or removed from the leadership years
before, had failed and been forced to apologize for their personalism. I learned more about how
people had been marginalized and isolated. I learned how little so many people knew. I also
shared information that [redacted] had no idea of - information that horrified him and gave
context to things he hadn’t understood. And I began to talk to others as well - to [redacted] and
SC comrades in [redacted] like [redacted], [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted]. We all began to
go through the same process [redacted] and I had begun. Together we began to each put
together our puzzle pieces and see clearly for the first time.

Seeing clearly was the first step; breaking free was harder and terrifying. Everyone had so much
to lose. And I found the prospect of confronting Ahmed unimaginable. A complaint felt
impossible. [redacted] did not know. The humiliation and shame of admitting that I had been
used and treated in this way was paralyzing. My entire identity was wrapped up in a self-
conception of myself as a strong, woman leader. How could I possibly become defined by having
been a victim - and in the most humiliating way? But I also felt a responsibility that he could not
be part of our leadership. That summer [redacted] and I began discussing how to get him to take
a leave and how to take the finances out of his hands and move to an accountable financial
system - without which democratic functioning was impossible. [redacted] took this on himself,
but predictably, Ahmed refused to step down and instead went on the offensive to threaten and
intimidate.

All of this culminated in a retreat of our political committee (a subsection of the SC) in
September. This was my final, horrifying encounter with Ahmed and I won’t get over it any time
soon. There were two main issues on the agenda. One was [redacted] proposal that Ahmed take
a
leave. The other was an assessment of the current state of the ISO. It took every ounce of
courage to get through that meeting. On the plane I had resolved to raise that I thought we
made mistakes at the last convention and that there were problems with the way we were
acting. They were the mildest of criticisms and I had been a member for 26 years - yet I was
shaking. It’s mind boggling when you think about it. I had no idea how pulling on that thread
would unravel so much more.

In that meeting, Ahmed fought back ferociously and manipulatively. It was brutal for everyone
involved and we reached no resolution. But I believe it was worst for me. At one point, he stood
towering over me where I was seated, pointing his finger in my face and screaming at me. He
did the thing that only he can do to me (or try, he failed this time) of expressing such
disappointment in my political stupidity and naivete and giving me warning looks. I felt like I
could be exposed at any minute. Once again, he asserted that he was the SC member
responsible for [redacted] and I felt it as a palpable threat. After he and Sharon left, I began
convulsing and feeling like I would vomit. This is what it took to even take the first steps to
break free from the abusive dynamics that had ruled our leadership for at least 20 years
(longer?).

What does it all mean and where next?

I’m not sure I have answers to all this. I can say with total confidence that the personal abuse
that I experienced was replicated in different ways politically within our leadership and that that
radiated outwards to the organization. It is part of what made it impossible to expand the
leadership beyond a trusted core. In fact, the core was not trusted; this was an illusion. It is that
we had been broken. I think it is also part of why their power crumbled fairly rapidly once the
leadership did expand. Those of us closest to this dynamic attempted to shield others from the
reality while simultaneously perpetuating aspects of this culture. But the dynamic at the center
was systematic, pervasive and almost impossible to break.

Outside that core, good work was able to flourish because of the politics. But not just the
politics: we many times said all the right things, while doing the opposite in practice. But
comrades took the good things we said and built good work around it. We built cadre that did
meaningful work in the world. The dialectical tragedy at the heart of all this is that we really did
make a difference, and that kept us, but it simultaneously allowed their abuse of power to
continue. We were set up to fail because of the rot at the core and in ways large and small we
adopted some of the practices flowing from there. And when our politics were bad, or our
leadership under threat, these practices became particularly toxic (e.g., our response to the
question of caucuses and the mistreatment of comrades of color).

I know we have to wrestle with the political questions about the model of revolutionary
organization. I believe firmly that we need an organized revolutionary organization or current. I
also agree that the small group model is inherently limiting and leads to tremendous distortions.
I am not convinced that this fully explains the situation we have found ourselves in. Individuals
matter in history. I honestly believe that with different individuals we might be in a different place
right now. But I think our small group model absolutely created an environment where this type
of abusive culture could flourish and that however we rebuild, it cannot rely solely on trust in the
individuals leading us - though I believe this can and must be rebuilt - but that we must have
practices, structures and rules that guard against this degeneration. I think we must thoroughly
break with martyrs and heroes and embrace the rich collectivity that must be at the heart of any
socialist emancipatory project.
Avoiding martyrdom has been one of my own personal challenges throughout this process. The
challenges and sacrifices of this project combined with the pressures not only of leadership in
general but the particular dysfunctional model we have and the personal abuse all add up to
some habits to break. I’ve been inspired by the comrades who have taken ownership of this
organization; I have been ashamed to be surprised at the multiplying of talented and dedicated
leaders; I am learning who my comrades are for the first time in ways I never understood; I have
been grateful to those who have offered help to me personally and those who have reached out
with the most generous and kind words of support that I could have imagined. Those who have
told me that I have had some positive impact have kept me going. And I am learning to let go of
a model built on sacrifice and control.

I’m sorry but I’d like to ask your forgiveness for ending on a personal note. I know that I am one
person and the pains are multiple and vast. I know that I am responsible for far too many of
them. But in writing this, I feel the need to share the impact the particular mixture of my personal
story and our political path has had. It is hard. For the last 27 years of my life, my entire adult
life, I never took more than 3 weeks off of political activity at any time and that long was rare.
Even when my children were born, I barely took time off. I have worked through severe personal
crises - not only of my own, but of those closest to me. I also owe an apology of the greatest
magnitude to those people. In the past 6 months, I have held all of this as I fought as hard as I
could to not allow the people who’ve controlled this organization prevent us from moving
forward. The 6 months before convention were so hard, but I also felt more free and confident
about our direction than I had in a very long time. I felt like I had found my voice. And I believed
that we were embarking on the project of renewing our project just at the moment when it was
most critically needed.

The revelations of the past week have shattered all of this for me. They have left me reeling and
it’s hard not to succumb to the feeling that my entire life has been stolen from me by people who
convinced me to sacrifice everything for a project that they are willing to see burn to the ground
rather than admit any wrong. I am devastated that the people being held most accountable right
now are the ones who are most vulnerable, have been most manipulated and abused by Ahmed
and Sharon and have the least to fall back on while Ahmed and Sharon and those who continue
to cling to them hide out and furiously try to cast blame. I am angry that the people picking up
the pieces are the members who’ve been most disempowered by our organization. I am furious
- and feel deep guilt - that the incredible leaders who took the helm at our most important
convention have inherited this existential crisis and have to represent and answer for the worst
of what was rather than the best of what we can be. One thing I know is that I won’t abandon
them.

Last month I told a trusted friend and comrade my story and she asked me, “what does a win
look like for you? is this enough - that he’s off the leadership and we’ve taken back the
organization? or do you need people to know what he’s done and have him gone?” It was a
beautiful question and one for which I am immensely grateful because I have struggled to think
that I deserve justice - let alone what justice means. I know I cannot be in an organization any
longer with Ahmed. I know that Ahmed deserves no place on the left and I want others to know
that. Of course, I’d love genuine recognition of harm done and an apology but I know that will
never come.

I do want to say that as a socialist I do not believe that people are defined by the worst act they
have ever committed and that I want to proceed from a place that recognizes the capacity for
change. But I also believe that accepting the need for change is critical to that process and the
world of alienation and hurt that we have inherited under capitalism makes that so much more
difficult.

One thing I’m pretty sure isn’t a win is if the project I dedicated my life to burns to the ground. I
fear that this revelation may be the thing that pushes people over the edge to disgust and giving
up. My hope is that it helps provide a piece of the puzzle that can allow us to understand as a
first step towards changing. I keep saying project because I think we must separate out the
organizational form and the specific organization from the politics and project. I don’t know what
form this project will take in the coming weeks and months. Admitting I don’t know the next step
is perhaps the hardest thing. But right now, I want to take those steps with all of the people who
have also committed themselves to these politics and this project and decide where we go
together.

I want to end by sharing a quote from the late French socialist Daniel Singer; it is one that
resonates with me in particular in this moment. I still believe in the collective, emancipatory
vision he offers as the only hope for humanity. I’m just a lot more humble about my personal
contribution to it:

“On the ground littered with broken models and shattered expectations a new generation will
now have to take the lead. Chastened by our bitter experiences, they can advance with hope
but without illusions, with convictions but without certitudes, and, rediscovering the attraction
and power of collective action, they can resume the task, hardly begun, of the radical
transformation of society. But they cannot do it on their own. We must follow their lead and, to
the dismay of the preachers and propagandists shrieking that the task is impossible, utopian or
suicidal, and to the horror of their capitalist paymasters, proclaim all together: “We are not here
to tinker with the world, we are here to change it!” Only in this way can we give a positive
answer to the question: Whose millennium, theirs or ours? It is also the only way in which we
can prevent the future from being theirs–apocalyptic or, at best, barbarian.”