Letter to Comrades from Joel Geier

3-15-19

A number of charges against me have recently been made by

members of the current steering committee. I completely reject them.
Until it is possible to deal with these charges, I am recusing myself
from the Steering Committee. In the meantime, I urge comrades to
reserve judgment about what is being said about my role and what
occurred until you’ve had a chance to hear my side.

Alan has submitted a letter charging that I was responsible for the SC
implementing an unjust process.As a result, I’ve already been called a
“rape apologist” by another steering committee member, without
anyone having asked me my side of the story. This culture, inherited
from the last, in which comrades believe—without questioning, or
hearing the other side—accusations by any given person, is a toxic
culture that will destroy the organization and many of our best
comrades with it. In my case, the word of a comrades who has
disagreed with my views repeatedly over the years, is being broadly
accepted without anyone even asking if his view is accurate, or what I
might have to say.

My sympathies, compassion, identification, and solidarity is first with

accusers, victims, and survivors. I am myself a survivor of abuse. My
spouse is a survivor. Her sister was gang-raped and murdered. Like
many, if not most people, we have been traumatized.

I know as deep in my soul as anyone what the personal costs of these

nightmare experiences are. I will not tolerate any accusations of a lack
of empathy or sensitivity on these issues. I don’t presume to know the
experiences of others, or that can they know those of me or my family
and the pain that we have gone through. We will fight anyone who
tries to slander us, not knowing anything about us, and not even
stopping to ask before they make scandalous and abusive attacks and
charges to the world.

I have been a revolutionary Marxist activist for over 60 years. I have a

reputation for fighting racism, sexism and all oppression, of fairness,
transparency, honesty, integrity, and democracy, and of presenting
my views—popular or not—vigorously. Not by bullying, slander,
intimidation or personal attacks. I think the membership of the ISO
knows that, despite many times my being dismissed or disparaged by
the leadership. My reputation exists among the broader and
international Left as well. I will not accept being dragged into the
gutter by slanderous misrepresentations.
I consider Alan’s charges to be distortions, half-truths, and
misrepresentations in an attempt to make me a major culprit of what
went wrong in 2013. As I have made plain, I don’t think anyone should
believe his charges—or those of others—without my side of the story.

Alan has also accused me of functioning on the 2013 steering

committee as the accused’s advocate. The reason for that charge is I
fought to vigorously defend, often against others, the right of the
accused comrade to present a defense against the accusations against
him.

We start, for both personal and political reasons, with our sympathy,
compassion and solidarity with the victims, the survivors, and the
accusers—and then, we include revolutionary justice: anyone who is
accused has a right to a defense. This is what must exist under
socialism. We would never convict someone under socialism without
their right to defend themselves against an accuser. In the same
regard, we must have the same principle internally—that no member
is ever disciplined without their having had a fair opportunity to
defend themself. This is a revolutionary socialist principle, not a
capitalist one. This is what I fought for on the 2013 steering
committee—nothing more, nothing less. I’m sorry that Alan didn’t
recognize it then, or tries to convict me for it now. But I will not be
intimidated from fighting for the core revolutionary principles and
goals that I have fought vigorously for my entire life.

There are many facts about this case that have not yet
been disclosed to the membership in any of the
documents that have come out so far. The procedures
followed by the NDC, by its own admission, were deeply
flawed. This is what the NDC, signed by all members ,
submitted in a document to the 2013 Steering Committee:

On June 15, 2013, the disciplinary committee

finds that his hearing has ended in a
procedural mistrial. After coming to a
unanimous decision, we now rescind our
votes, our verdict, and our recommendations
on account of these very serious procedural
errors . . . .A hearing simply never took place.

According to the guidelines distributed to the

Disciplinary Committee, the Respondent and
presumably the witness, a hearing was
supposed to be convened after our initial
investigation. The Respondent was supposed
to have been given the right to call witness in
front of the Panel to address the entire Panel
 and to rebut charges and allegations of
witnesses to the Panel.

No hearing was ever convened. The

Respondent (a) never had the opportunity to
address the Committee, and attempt to
convince them of his innocence and; (b) the
Respondent never had the opportunity to
rebut witness testimony.

--The 2013 Disciplinary Committee

These are the things that I was fighting for, for the Respondent—and
for anyone else who is accused.

Since starting this letter, all sorts of other things have been said about
me, even though I said I would have a short response in an hour. I was
hoping that comrades would care to question, investigate, and hear
from me before leaping to judgment.

This is a quick response from me, because the steering committee

wants to come to a conclusion about my status before its meeting
tonight. This is the beginning, not the end, of what I have to say.

I will not function as a member of the steering committee until the

process over what occurred in 2013 is complete.