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On PSL DFW (Part 8)

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Comrades, recall how I told you to observe and analyze the patterns of behavior, how PYM, SJP, and NSJP would handle this situation?

You can see how they will not publicly confirm whether they believe survivors or not, how they view the process of handling sexual abuse through the lens of a bureaucracy, how they will refuse to make the process open and democratic, and how even till the very end — they cling to liberalism.

As I have stated in On Criticism (Part 2):

"This lack of proper democracy, open forums of criticism, and disorganization coupled with the intense surveillance and police presence produces a political ecosystem of infighting, abuse, and unhealthy organizing. Not only do comrades not have the forum to express concerns -- they also do not have a place to hold leadership accountable in the event of unprincipled behavior. These critiques are not isolated to Austin -- but a general pattern one can observe all over Texas and the United States of infighting, division, and disorganization."

I predict they will follow through with these very patterns as now I find it doubly important to address that the allegations of abuse against Ayed are not the first example of abuse, misogyny, and harassment going unaddressed and allowed to fester in the DFW space.

If we are to truly examine the pattern of behavior of misogyny and abuse, we must begin with PSL DFW, specifically Jack. Jack is an active member of PSL DFW and often works on the security/safety teams at protests for PYM and PSL.

We are not surprised that a PSL chapter has abuse allegations. After all, this is routine for them, alongside their multiple allegations of collaboration with the federal government, their general liberalism and adoration for police-escorted parades.

To understand the pattern of sexual assault, cult behavior, liberalism, and abuse, refer to this:

1.https://fashbusters.wordpress.com/2020/12/30/psl-stalked-doxxed-harassed-steven-powers-accuser/ 2.https://web.archive.org/web/20200911022803/http://therednation.org/anti-indianism-and-sexism-have-no-place-in-the-movement-an-indigenous-feminist-perspective/ 3.https://descentrealizer.medium.com/abuse-counterrevolution-in-the-party-for-socialism-liberation-psl-cult-a-compilation-e5e7d54b7c78 4.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ntjUqtB-k4wuBuN4bc8r9ABxfNsIDVU2YOHW9E92TzM/edit?tab=t.0 5.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BGzU5z84rQ5rxt4lr4cpAtJwkJCuSt_ivll4rPZcMKY/edit?usp=sharing 6.https://docs.google.com/document/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/edit 6.

Jack is a white man who was in a relationship with the survivor, a person of color. The survivor later discovered that Jack was already in a committed relationship and had been using them. When confronted on this -- it would result in a series of harmful and abusive interactions where ultimately Jack would threaten the survivor with sending them to a mental health institution and locking them up.

To those unaware, mental hospitals are often extremely dangerous and abusive for people, it is used as a weapon of the state to oppress mentally ill people and is a form of ableism. The mental health hospital is extremely similar to prisons, both dehumanize and oppress human beings who are deprived of their humanity and agency.

Anyone who is principled and has an iota of morality understands that mental health institutions are carceral, criminalize mental illness, and must be opposed in the struggle to support mentally ill individuals -- who are disproportionately from marginalized communities.

In particular, women of color are even more at risk of being beaten, sexually assaulted, and denied of their autonomy and agency.

  1. "Sexual violence within psychiatric facilities has been a concern since the era of asylums. Although a majority of such violence is patient-on-patient, staff members and visitors can also be victims or perpetrators (1, 2). Despite the problem’s persistence, it is rarely on the agenda at psychiatric professional meetings or addressed in residency programs. The limited scholarship on inpatient sexual violence and its late entry into the psychiatric literature also speak to our field’s reluctance to engage with the subject."

  2. “An estimated one in eight people globally live with a mental health condition. And yet, most of them lack access to the health services they need. People with mental health conditions often face human rights violations, including stigma and discrimination as well as coercion, abuse or neglect in care,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyessus told the launch, on the eve of World Mental Health Day on Tuesday."

  3. “And we know from many reports that those (mental health) institutions are associated with extensive abuses. Institutionalisation is an example of one issue that this guidance is tackling by promoting the closure of institutions while supporting the development of alternative community-based health service,” she added. (Devora Kestel, WHO Director of Mental Health and Substance Abuse).

  4. "Although it is presented as a medical system, aiming to treat medical disorders, I suggest that the functions of the psychiatric system really consist of providing care and facilitating control. These functions have endured across the centuries, but have expanded with the evolution of capitalism that demands that workers not only work to provide for or contribute to their own upkeep, but produce surplus value. Regardless of the evidence or lack of it, it is necessary to regard the recipients of the mental health system as being medically sick in a way that can be aligned with physical illness or disease in order to legitimate current arrangements. The concept of mental illness justifies the use of force against people in situations where the criminal justice system cannot be applied."

What worsens this is that the manner in which an adult is transported to a mental health hospital is typically the police, who are well-known for their sexual abuse, physical mistreatment, and racism against people of color, particularly those who are women.

  1. "The contexts are important in advancing knowledge on police sexual violence because they define how predatory police officers target victims and take advantage of opportunities provided to them through both the structure of their work and the vulnerabilities of their eventual victims. Cases of police sexual violence do not occur by chance; they arise from situational contexts and opportunities that promote them."

It is especially worsened when we examine that since 2015 (In an article published in 2020), a quarter of the people killed by the police had mental health illnesses and anecdotal evidence of police violence against those experiencing mental health crises."

1."In its 45-page report, the DOJ found the city unnecessarily institutionalizes adults with mental illness and that the police department often escalates crisis situations by responding with armed officers instead of with behavioral health professionals.

  1. "As a result, urgent mental health needs often go unaddressed and crisis situations are needlessly escalated, sometimes leading to avoidable use of force,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement."

3.The risk of being killed while being approached or stopped by law enforcement in the community is 16 times higher for individuals with untreated serious mental illness than for other civilians. By the most conservative estimates, at least 1 in 4 fatal law enforcement encounters involves an individual with serious mental illness. When data have been rigorously collected and analyzed, findings indicate as many as half of all law enforcement homicides ends the life of an individual with severe psychiatric disease.

  1. The 21st Century Cures Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in December 2016, included a mandate for the US attorney general to collect and report data on the role of serious mental illness in fatal law enforcement encounters.

  2. An estimated 1 in 3 individuals transported to hospital emergency rooms in psychiatric crisis are taken there by police. It is estimated that 7% to 10%1 of all police encounters involve a person who has mental illness.* Most of these encounters do not involve any violence, and some don’t involve a crime at all.2 People with mental illness are no more likely than anyone else to act violently.3 Despite this, police arrest,4 injure,5 and kill6 people with mental illness at higher rates than people without mental illness. And because of systemic inequities in health care access as well as rates of police contact, Black and Brown people as well as LGBTQ+ people, young people, and those living in poverty–are particularly at risk of these harms when living with mental illness. People experiencing mental health emergencies are less safe when law enforcement are the primary responders.

  3. When police respond to calls related to mental health crises—situations they are often ill-equipped to handle safely and effectively—fatal outcomes are not uncommon. In 2021, at least 104 people were killed after police responded to someone “behaving erratically or having a mental health crisis.”

  4. "Washington Post review of fatal shootings by police suggests that 19–26% of cases involved mental illness in the deceased)".

  5. There have been multiple DOJ investigations that revealed a pattern or practice of excessive force against persons with mental illness (e.g., Seattle Police Department in 2011, Portland Police Bureau in 2012, Baltimore Police Department in 2016). For instance, the letter summarizing the findings following the investigation into the Seattle Police Department (SPD; 2011) stated, in relevant part: “SPD officers escalate situations and use unnecessary or excessive force when arresting individuals for minor offenses. This trend is pronounced in encounters with persons with mental illnesses…SPD estimates that 70% of use of force encounters involve these populations (p. 4).”

Knowing the realities of state violence against people of color, Jack used this to threaten and intimidate the survivor from confronting him, claiming that the survivor was "crazy". Jack was a white man who put a person of color's life on the line, willing to risk the survivor's death at the hands of the police to prevent them from speaking up against him.

Jack used his power, privilege, and positionality as a white man to abuse and fetishize a person of color and objectify them for his own sexual and emotional needs. Jack was in support of kidnapping and detaining a person of color.

As I stated in On Criticism (Part 2): "We must remember that fetishization is not merely a preference but carries the potentiality of sexual violence and abuse, which must be immediately investigated." Jack was a white man in organizing spaces preying and abusing people of color like the survivor and has potentially continued this behavior.

The survivor was distressed, scared, struggling with mental health issues, and at the time was friends with Ayed -- who reached out to the both of us in Fall 2023 asking if we could help them with exposing their abuser and holding them accountable. I remember that when the survivor and I were speaking, they wanted to expose Jack completely, remove him from organizing spaces, and publicize everything. I of course supported this, helped review the statement that the survivor had wrote -- but Ayed discouraged me, told me that he didn't agree that Jack was abusive, but that Jack had "created an abusive situation", and that the best thing for the survivor was to let go and move on.

To anyone with an iota of common sense, this reads as a ridiculous sentence, what does it mean to "not" be abusive but to "create" an abusive situation? What does it mean to hurt, threaten, and abuse another person but not be abusive? What does it mean that a white man threatened to send the state after a person of color, lock them up in a mental health institution, and potentially have this person die, be raped, or be abused?

Ayed's complete disregard and lack of empathy to a survivor was horrifying -- this person was actively navigating fear and paranoia of being kidnapped by the police to a mental health institution where they could be abused, beaten, and sexually assaulted by a racist and misogynistic staff. Ayed dismissed this, told me privately many times that he didn't really take the survivor seriously, that they were acting emotionally, and that they just needed to not talk or interact with Jack. Ayed barely even read the statement written by the survivor and their friends and did not care in regards to reviewing or helping with edits because he "didn't think it would go anywhere".

Despite my wish and commitment to supporting the survivor and relating to them on previous experiences of abuse, Ayed pushed me not to do anything, to just leave it be, and let "him handle it".

Ayed then spoke with PYM Dallas, framing himself as the representative of the situation, not the survivor -- telling them to essentially let it go and as a result, leaving the survivor to struggle on their own. It was misogynistic, patronizing, and abusive of Ayed to act as if he could speak over the survivor, dismiss their experience and their needs, and act as if their life wasn't in danger from an abusive white man.

It was additionally alarming that all that was needed for the investigation to be concluded was the word of one man to discount the abuse of a person of color by a white man. Investigation is a core and integral part of these processes -- one that was so blatantly neglected and ignored by PYM in this situation.

Why was the allegations against Jack not taken seriously enough -- why wasn't he held accountable and why does PYM Dallas still have a working relationship with these people? You can see how even now PYM Dallas works with PSL DFW and how Jack is still present in organizing spaces.

We can only imagine how many more survivors have been neglected or forgotten because of the relative liberalism of handling these situations.

In this environment where a white man could so easily abuse a person of color, it was completely possible for someone like Ayed to be able to take advantage of me and abuse me.

It's important to note how we as people in the imperial core understand we are all complicit in the genocide of Gaza by being bystanders, by not fighting enough, by not reforming and changing better, by the very society we exist in being built with the intention of genocide and colonialism, our universities funding genocide, our jobs supporting the financial infrastructure of Zionism, the things we buy funding the Israeli economy, and because of that we intend to embody anti-Zionism in our daily lives and to force our societies to change -- but yet somehow can't understand a relatively similar concept in relation to how abuse works.

We are bystanders when we refuse to actually prioritize the following: actively work in supporting survivors, in making spaces safe for women and children, in speaking out in our daily interactions when people engage in misogynistic rhetoric or behavior, in holding open accountability processes, in recognizing our spaces being indundated with abusers and misogynists, in not having mandatory guidelines and principles in the issue of misogyny and fighting against sexual violence, in not prioritizing the liberation of gender-oppressed people from sexual exploitation.

If these were prioritized -- we would not be seeing so many disparate and serious cases of abuse, rape, and harassment proliferate through organizing, if it was prioritized -- we would not be in a situation where a survivor's life was on the line and organizing leadership did not push to immediately protect this person and defend them from a racist, misogynistic male white abuser.

We are all complicit in not protecting the most vulnerable amongst us, in speaking of values of "community" and "care", and then abandoning those who needed us.

To the survivor, if you are reading this, I am sorry. I am sorry I didn't follow my instincts, that I didn't stand up to Ayed, that I didn't support you. I was both a victim of Ayed's abuse and a participant in being complicit in yours: there are no bystanders in oppression and I firmly believe that there is no excuse or apology I can offer that can rectify what I did, how I abandoned you in a situation where you were being gaslighted and could have lost your life.

I understood you then and I understand you now: the two of us people of color abused, taken advantage of, and then framed as "insane", "crazy", and gaslighted for being upset over what happened.

I understand you and to any other survivors reading this: you are not alone, you will get justice, and you are not crazy, you are not insane, and you are not crazy, that there are people who will support and fight for you.

I take full accountability and acknowledge I was complicit in misogyny, abuse, and white supremacy and this is part of my repentance for my wrongdoings. We must all take accountability and create a space where these situations cannot and must not occur again. We must be better: for oppressed people everywhere, for our communities as state violence worsens, and for the next generation who will carry on this fight for freedom.

Comrades, reopen the investigation into Jack immediately and concerned community members should not allow PYM Dallas/PSL DFW to oversee it as they clearly have a pattern of mishandling abuse allegations and misogyny.

Do not allow PYM Dallas and PSL DFW to "self-investigate". This is eerily reminiscent to police responses to police brutality: conducting self-investigations and accountability processes that are clearly biased and skewed, then claiming that they "corrected" their behavior.

If these organizations are truly principled, they will allow for open investigation conducted by the community following the guidelines of survivors like myself and others who do not have faith in their ability to support victims of abuse.

The investigations and accountability processes must be open, establish codes of conduct, make that process open and transparent, and allow for all community members to participate, ensuring democracy and fairness.

To everyone who has been abusive or been complicit in standing and watching by as abuse occurred, nothing will save you.

Try as you might to deflect, to gaslight, to lie and to manipulate, your credibility and your reputation are shattered, your organizing tactics mediocre and your loyal "base" of people divided -- there are scores of intelligent, talented, and committed organizers becoming disillusioned with you, there are more and more breaking off from your organizations-- and this is only the beginning.

The movement has shielded and nurtured these flaws, refusing to engage in criticism -- working on the side of the oppressor in enabling and being complicit in abuse, and there are undoubtedly more comrades who will come forward.

May every single survivor get justice. May we see the downfall of every abuser. May the movement be reborn.

Part 9 coming soon.

Links: https://joannamoncrieff.com/2022/03/28/the-functions-of-the-mental-health-system-under-capitalism/ https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-police-investigation-8f4f4e43a6da8727cebd2dcf3d030344 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9365085/ https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/913229469/mental-health-and-police-violence-how-crisis-intervention-teams-are-failing

https://www.tac.org/reports_publications/overlooked-in-the-undercounted-the-role-of-mental-illness-in-fatal-law-enforcement-encounters/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-some-encounters-between-police-and-people-with-mental-illness-can-turn-tragic

https://policingequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/US-WhitePaper-MentalHealth-Emergency-Response.pdf

https://commonjustice.org/blog/police-are-not-equipped-to-handle-mental-health-crises

https://time.com/6988584/us-police-violence-mental-health/

https://www.vera.org/news/we-need-to-think-beyond-police-in-mental-health-crises

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252721000790

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160252721000790

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/tied-up-forcibly-medicated-human-rights-abuses-far-too-common-in-mental-health-care/ https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.202000038 https://www.survivorlawyer.com/blog/sexual-abuse-psychiatric-facilities https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2021.771875/full