Introduction
Revolutionary youth alliance was an attempt at forming a student organization most notably influenced by Maoist student organizations around the country. The foundation itself was by people with a number of different political tendencies who eventually agreed on the mass line method of leadership and that it should be guided by Maoist principles(despite none of the founders being fully Maoist). The organization was initiated by people with no experience leading struggles who were still developing their politics. The activity of the organization reflected it’s foundations and the end result was an organization with poor leadership, no clear direction and a shaky structure.
First semester of the school year
Through discussions over our previous 4 months activity from January- April of 2017[summation link], the lack of activity and direction of the organization was a clear frustration for most involved. As a corrective to this, we decided that we had to locate a site of struggle in which there are proletarian students as our main priority during this school year. A trend in the organization, which ended up contributing most to our lack of activity was the growing pessimism about having to organize students in an elitist campus. On campus, the organization decided to start a campaign to change the names of buildings named after reactionaries and attempted to do social investigation in order to locate a site of struggle. Off campus, some members residing in Ypsilanti decided to do social investigation on anti gentrification efforts in the town. We found that there was a gentrifying project called the “International village” which some local activists and residents were raising awareness about. With not much discussion or debate on what engaging in this struggle would mean for us, RYA made an “anti-gentrification teach in” both in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, with almost no results due to lack of prior mass outreach for the events.
As a result of a failure in doing any meaningful social investigation on campus, failing to raise any awareness with the building names campaign and failure to speak with or attract anyone facing gentrification to our events(outside of activists), the growing pessimism resulted in a concrete line stating that mass work isn’t possible on campus. Realizing that we are a youth organization and not a community one, our main goal became to start work at WCC and EMU, colleges that are significantly less elitist than ours, and when we realized that it isn’t logistically possible for us to travel to another campus and organize students there, we realized we were stuck in a rut.
Here we see our indecisiveness, lack of clear direction and misunderstanding of our local conditions. Instead of assessing, and being critical of our actions, we relied on criticisms and suggestions from more active members to move us forward once there was a sense of failure or hopelessness from members. There was a severe lack of confidence in anything we did, which is why we see the sudden changes in our direction every so often. The clear root of this, in retrospect was lack of experience and leadership. We should also note was that despite our incorrect ways in deciding what to do, we did none of the tasks that were decided we should do, and if we did they were done by the same small number of people.
To bring the organization out of its rut, the leadership at the time proposed the political line[link in full]. To sum it up, the line rejects the possibility of mass work in the university and limits the work in the university to anti fascist work. The goal was to educate the masses in Maoism and the ability to use revolutionary violence, along with openly opposing reformists on campus(an issue we were focused with at the time due to reformist organizations taking control of the protest against Richard Spencer visiting campus) until the point where we could expand our work to the nearby colleges like WCC and EMU. At the time, while this was seen as a line that was clearing the fog, all it did was reaffirm our previous errors and make a logistical distinction on whether it was possible for us to leave the campus, not whether it was correct.
We now understand our unwillingness to work on campus as a severe misunderstanding of the mass line and a lack of study of our conditions leading to lack of faith in the masses. We considered the existence of petty bourgeois students on campus to mean that proletarian students on campus are too dispersed to be organized. The reality is that many students leave the university with no better prospects than they came and this economic anxiety is a source of struggle, sections of petty bourgeois students too are apart of this. We projected our own failures in using the mass line onto the masses.
Rape Investigation
In December 2017, a member of RYA brought to the secretariat’s attention that a fellow member, Alyssa Scheible, had raped her prior to both of them joining the organization and had emotionally abused her in the fall, while they were members. An investigation committee was immediately formed, and it set up interviews with both of them. Alyssa was suspended from the organization at the start of the investigation. It also came up that the member who had raped her, Aoife Gilooly, had raped someone previously, which she admitted to. The member who essentially brought her into the organization was aware of this but did not share what she knew with the rest of the leadership. This was a serious error that lead to a suspension of some of that member’s rights during a rectification campaign.
The investigation was cut-and-dry, with Alyssa admitting everything freely. Their stories matched up exactly. After the investigation, both members were expelled, as we found that rape was not rectifiable in our current conditions. We felt that our organization was not capable of wielding power in order to rectify something as severe as rape at this period. We do not hold that rape, or any severe error is unrectifiable but more severe cases are more difficult to rectify.The whole organization was filled in on what happened, and the org voted to take no further action for now. This was an error, as we determined we at least needed to ensure the masses’ safety by making sure people around the two former members were aware of their past abuse. To this end, the investigation committee was tasked with reaching out to the former members again and pressuring them to make public social media posts explaining their actions that would be monitored periodically to make sure they kept them up. This was a bare minimum action that was meant to protect the identities of the victims from police investigation. Much later, in October 2018, a statement revealing their identities was released, in order to protect the masses from possible future abuses.
Internal Contradictions between Secretariat and Proletarian Feminist Committee
One of the members expelled was the chair of the Proletarian Feminist Committee, and the other was in the committee. With them both expelled, ProlFem was left without a chair and no one interested in or able to commit to becoming chair. In the new year, a new member was elected chair of ProlFem but there was an issue of security that led to her removal. The nature of the security threat made it so information could only be given on a need-to-know basis, but the sudden expulsion of the ProlFem Committee chair created a contradiction between the ProlFem committee and the Secretariat that was on the verge of becoming antagonistic. The most aggravating fault was the Secretariat having an emergency meeting and barring the Prol Fem chair, for security, without explanation. Following this, the Committee issued a criticism of the Secretariat for its treatment of women in the organization. This criticism was accepted and agreed with by the secretariat. Measures were implemented to rectify this, including the secretariat doing weekly study groups on proletarian feminism and making sure prol fem committee has adequate representation in the Secretariat by accepting a temporary joint-chair solution.
The contradiction between the Secretariat and Proletarian Feminist Committee was not successfully resolved. The entire approach was based in theory with no practice. We did’nt sufficiently sanction those who those who made offenses nor did we take any action as an organization to uphold preletarian feminism in practice. We ended up stuck on an abstract idea of internal unity.
Focusing on Internal Unity
The new political line, approved and released in January, called for political and physical education. A big part of this was to repair internal unity following the damage done in December and January. At first, the physical education program had a decent turnout, but as it went on, participation lagged, until they were no longer feasible. At the same time, attendance at political education events was very low. Enthusiasm was extremely low, and why shouldn’t it have been? We weren’t taking any action, we were acting like a red-tinted social club. Our focus on internal unity without being apart of any struggles inadvertendly turned the chief focus of the organization into pointless recruiting of those who were interested in progressive politics and in trying to educate these members in communist politics, we only achieved to have abstract theoretical debates. The quality of our work decreased massively, we couldn’t gather anyone from the organization to a meeting let alone an action. We see this as a cautionary tale on how organizations should have strict criteria for recruiting members, growth should not be for growths sake but rather as a result of successful actions.
Plan to Organize with Workers
In January 2018, soon after the release of our new political line, the assertion that we should organize students was reversed, and a revised political line called for RYA to organize with the workers in Ann Arbor. This flip-flopping continued to show the leadership’s indecisiveness. A plan was made in March to conduct social investigation by sending members to restaurants, coffee shops, and other workplaces in Ann Arbor. Members reviewed social investigation/class analysis and the mass line method of organizing and were then instructed to go into workplaces and talk to workers about problems they’re facing (with landlords, bosses, pigs, fascists, etc.). We believed incorrectly that workplace struggles can only be undertaken when members are employed at the site of struggle, so we looked into places where student members could get jobs. This is not a line we uphold anymore.
Few members participated, and we were unsuccessful in discovering any struggles to take on or make any mass contacts. Final exams were a factor, as well as a generally very low enthusiasm. Again, we saw lack of participation among membership coming from the dual issues of individualism and not having rules for accountability and disciplinary actions. We see this move as a result of our growing pessimism of organizing students on campus. While workers and students should be united, we were essentially proposing that a student organization abandon student struggles and instead make its primary focus workers struggles. This was the final nail in the coffin of RYA as most members had pretty much stopped engaging after this.
Conclusion
The mistakes made by RYA were bound to happen considering the weak foundation of the organization. Nevertheless, we don’t regret starting the organization as we do see student struggles as something worth fighting for. We hope that student organizations and those trying to start student organizations can learn from our mistakes, the main being a lack of experience and knowledgeable leadership that could guide our struggles. Along with this, we hope comrades can see the importance of proletarian feminism. An organization cannot simply be proletarian feminist by calling itself so or studying this theory but actively putting it forward through actions. Lastly, comrades must grasp the mass line method of leadership, not uphold it in name and instead focus on organizational numbers at the expense of the quality of work. As a result of doing that seeks to overthrow capitalism, there will be people of many different anti-capitalist tendencies that are attracted to such organizations. Our job is not to orient towards these different activist tendencies but instead lead the masses through revolutionary practice. The founders and most active members of our organization have not given up on the revolutionary struggle whether amongst students or any of the other sections of the masses, and we hope that through criticizing our previous work and learning from it we can start a truly revolutionary Maoist movement in our area.
Former Secretariat of RYA
October 2018
Revolutionary Youth Alliance 