askchapo

I'm very vocal on here about my membership and participation in so take a look through my comment history to see lots of discussions on the subject.

For me, PSL has been a fundamentally different sort of organizing experience than anything I've been involved in before. The first decade of my political activism on the left was mostly in anarchist-adjacent circles that spent their time primarily on interpersonal drama and essentially no outward facing work.

PSL on the other hand is always about doing effective political work towards a strategic end. At all levels of the party - from a unit of five people to national leadership - we implement a Marxist process of investigation, outreach, action, reflection, and planning. Cadre are trained through a year long candidacy program to develop all of those above skills and a general literacy in Marxism-Leninism. The political line and analysis are consistently excellent. Our history of principled stances on anti-imperialism is the reason we've been able to do so much to empower the Palestine movement. When Al-Aqsa flood happened, we were rallying in the streets across the country immediately. We had two decades of Palestine activism to show our seriousness, and resolutely supported the Palestinian resistance when liberals and DSA (I repeat myself) were crying about Hamas.

Right now, the party is doing a campaign to defend Venezuelan democracy and socialism. It's a much less popular position, but we know through history that parties who tail the masses can never lead them. Instead, the party proactively sent journalists and organizers down to Venezuela to observe and report on the election, to show the way working class Venezuelans support the Bolivarian project in a way that doesn't depend on imperialist media.

I have never felt more like my political work was actually achieving something that I do in PSL.

I can answer any questions and talk in plenty more detail.

Joining literally any org that is locally established and does at least some real life work (instead of internet posting) is better than not.

Vague allegations, rumours and hearsay have to be put inside because frankly for a lot of online people there are no stakes and they just lie our air personal problems out as more than they are, you'll know whether it's all true within literally a week of being involved anyway. I've heard bad or cringe shit too, but it's always also better to assume it's specific to 1 chapter anyway

Every US based leftist org has its own problems. I'm not intimately familiar with the PSLs brand of problems but they do have them.

Overall though when I go to events in my area, be they mutual aid, protests, or otherwise, PSL always turns out to the ones that matter and they're always well organized and well represented. I think that counts for something. Honestly if the PSL was perfect, the feds would have shut them down.

PSL is good. Some of the older members of my party have really frustrating old beef with the national org, but locally they are very good and organized and make sure their members know their shit.

In my personal experience they are really good at going to protests and bringing lots of signs and bullhorns, also they are good at giving talks on and publicizing very boilerplate partisan stances. They had the ability to shuttle people around to support nearby chapters at functions. Also in my experience, we (autonomous communists) provided them a space to operate out of, they tried to recruit from our circle, things devolved quickly into sectarianism, and the PSL chapter is not doing well now, to say the least (avoiding self-dox).

There's a lot floating around about the PSL, take it with the knowledge that everyone accumulates dirt, and it's not a question of "clean" but whether you're "less dirty".

Every org in the leftist space has vague allegations because vague allegations are easy to lob by every single spoiler and Fed and leftists are so quick accept them these days that it's a tactic that does a lot of work. If you don't know who is throwing those allegations or even any details of them I'd ignore them. If it's "well I heard..." then they either did not hear it and are spreading the shit themselves or they heard it from someone who was doing that.

PSL is good, in general.

I have never been a member of PSL, and I don't know a ton about them. But I think something that's universal for political orgs is it depends on your local chapter. Is it big enough to have well attended events and get stuff done without burnout? Can it avoid drama? Are the members people who you vibe with and can work with effectively? All of this matters way more than their national leadership or specific ideology imo.

I don't think there's any way to figure out how out except asking people in your community or going to a few meetings.

Everything I've read about PSL makes me like them more and more, if I was a yank I'd vote for them, I'd even join