NYC-DSA’s Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Working Group (TRBAWG) has apparently attempted to purge one of its leaders. On December 16, a field coordinator for the TRBAWG states she was put on a zoom call with three members of the OC, where she was informed that on December 11, the OC met at a closed door session and “unanimously” voted that she could either rescind her affiliation with DSA’s Liberation Caucus, or be barred from serving as a field coordinator or holding any other leadership position in the working group.

To give some background, this individual, who wishes not to be named, is not a member of the caucus but an applicant, and has served as a field coordinator since September. Prior to this, she had been a very active member of the working group. During New York City leadership elections in November, she ran for a position herself and divulged her applicant status with Liberation. From this, we can assume that the working group OC learned of her affiliation.

Assuming these details are true, this can only be described as a purge. An individual faced backlash, punishment, and removal for their political beliefs and associations, beliefs that fit well within the tapestry of DSA’s so-called “big tent.” Members of the TRBA working group OC who voted for this expulsion are broadly on the DSA right, a group which, ironically, likes to call itself “the mass politics” wing, contrasted with the left’s so-called “sectarianism.” Time and again, members of these political factions have called for the restriction of meaningful deliberative democracy which is essential in effectuating the “mass politics” they supposedly represent. As this event shows, they engage in the very sort of sectarian gatekeeping and interpersonal petty bickering that can drive an organization to irrelevance.

During NYC DSA’s recent chapter elections, members associated with the right accused members of the Liberation Caucus of “supporting murder.” Political differences are one thing, and passionately presenting the case to membership that you are worth their votes over your opponents is an obvious part of any democracy. Such outsized language towards comrades, however, should not be allowed to be normalized.

The accusation of supporting murder refers to the fact that the Liberation Caucus signed onto a letter back in May which called for the release of Elias Rodriguez, an individual accused of killing two Israeli diplomats in Washington, DC. This letter, to be clear, is not one I would consider signing. In no uncertain terms, it declares that the signers “support” acts of “resistance” against the Israeli genocide, which include Rodriguez’s alleged actions. It’s also a letter using language about solidarity, violent resistance, and anti-imperialism that I don’t find especially shocking after multiple years of being in left-wing organizing spaces. It was, quite frankly, the sort of letter I’d expect a group of self-identified Maoists might sign.

And let’s be clear, no one on the right found it “shocking” either; they found it embarrassing. Specifically, they found it embarrassing that Liberation’s signing of the statement was used by the Cuomo campaign as a red-baiting cheap shot against Mamdani. Their instinct was not to ignore the attack as a clearly desperate rhetorical plea by a disgraced politician disappearing into irrelevancy, but to join in the attack.

Whether or not we consider signing onto the statement to be an unforced error, the right’s response was rooted in the false logic that capital would not find reason to attack us if we present them with a “respectable” enough socialism. We in DSA are facing a fascist presidency that has vowed to fight the Left with the coercion of the state. We know this state needs no excuse. We know that the only thing that can stand up to state repression is unified, organized solidarity. Undermining that solidarity is a far greater threat to DSA than any letter signed by our comrades to the far left.

It is the height of irony that the very factions of DSA extolling their inclusiveness would engage in exclusion. The very people who claimed that democratically-mandated Anti-Zionist electoral and membership standards would open the floodgates to purges (some even suggested they could be used to purge “anyone who had a bar mitzvah”) have now resorted to engaging in purges and interpersonal bullying in the most petty manner. One has to wonder, what exactly is the danger the working group OC imagines they are preventing? What threats does a Maoist field coordinator pose to the integrity of the work of protecting the rights of trans people?

The comrade expelled from her position did not want to be named because she didn’t want bad blood between her and the other members of the working group. She only wants to serve in a role that she is qualified for, where she can make a difference for a cause that is meaningful to her. She wants to serve in that role alongside comrades who she might not always see eye-to-eye with. She wants to bring her vision of change to her work, together with the visions of those around her, and to work together to build something bigger than she could on her own. We can only hope the “anti-sectarians” of DSA allow her to do so.

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