{"id":4852,"date":"2021-12-02T09:59:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2021-12-10T12:01:20","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T17:01:20","slug":"do-comrades-cross-picket-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2021\/12\/do-comrades-cross-picket-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Do comrades cross picket lines?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A <\/span>major crisis has erupted in Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), sparking debate about whether or not Representative Jamaal Bowman should be expelled from DSA for his votes to fund Israeli apartheid and his propaganda tour of Israel. To understand the stakes of this debate solely in terms of how we can hold politicians accountable dramatically narrows the political discussion and minimizes these stakes. The call to expel Jamaal Bowman touches on crucial issues of socialist strategy today, including his material support for Israeli apartheid, how we understand the nature of liberal Zionism, and the relationship of socialist officeholders to their own socialist organization. On these points, I disagree with Hadas Thier\u2019s recent arguments<\/a> in Jacobin against expelling Bowman from the DSA, but more importantly, I think framing the issue around holding \u201cpolitical allies\u201d accountable misses what is at stake and could be seen as making an apologia for liberal Zionism.<\/p>\n

Thier argues against Bowman\u2019s expulsion by making two interconnected points. The first is that Bowman is \u201cgenerally part of advancing a left agenda.\u201d Secondly, because of his advancing of a left agenda, rather than being expelled, Bowman should be \u201cinfluenced\u201d and have his position \u201cshifted\u201d by \u201ceducation and criticism.\u201d For Thier, anything more substantial than this is just \u201ca knee-jerk response\u201d confining us to \u201cthe marginality of purity politics,\u201d earning the Left a reputation as those \u201cwho would rather engage in endless Twitter wars than practical political work, and who take haughty, self-righteous, and impatient approaches with people who \u2018don\u2019t get it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On the contrary, the call to expel Bowman from a socialist organization is a reasonable and warranted response to his material and political support for Israeli settler colonialism and thus the oppression of Palestinians. The call to expel Bowman is an insistence that socialist organizations hold the line on the question of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel. It is an affirmation that justice in Palestine is not just a secondary issue of minor importance for the socialist movement, but a central component of building a principled opposition to US imperialism. Holding Bowman responsible for his actions, to the extent of calling for his expulsion, is a call to hold a picket line against US support for Israel. That is the kind of principled unity that is needed to build a strong movement capable of standing up against the chief purveyor of violence in the world and the primary military and political backer of apartheid Israel.<\/p>\n