Statement in support of the NYC Anti-War Working Group

Marxist Unity Group opposes the move by the NYC-DSA steering committee to coup the leadership of the Anti-War Working Group. The AWWG should be able to run its own elections from among its membership according to its own bylaws. The alternative plan -  to move the leadership election outside of the active WG membership against bylaws and custom - is a bureaucratic maneuver by the dominant factions of the steering committee to disrupt work that other factions have led. 

If DSA is able to operate with unity around a program of shared goals, member-led working groups will pursue tactics in varied fields including both electoral and anti-war organizing. We should see the electoral effort and on-the-ground antiwar organizing as two tactics of the same organization and the same program. The current maneuvering reflects, in our view, an overblown fear by the steering committee majority that the two areas of work cannot coexist unless the steering committee’s dominant factions have total control. This fear has apparently justified the manipulation of the Anti-War Working Group immediately at the outset of a new imperialist war.

The coup against the working group leadership is counter to healthy internal democracy and, as the AWWG statement puts it, “the very possibility of carrying out democratic, member-led work in DSA.” Factional disagreement is inevitable in a democratic organization, but the factions which were so disengaged from this work that they could not produce eligible candidates now aim to decide its leadership.