An open letter to the members of Youth Third World Alliance;
I have written two letters about my resignation from FTT/Y3WA. This one is for you, to explain why I left and that I consider my participation in FTT, from beginning to end, to have been a big mistake. The other letter is directed at the general left-community. Both letters have been posted to a blog I’ve set up to make sure you and others have the opportunity to read these reflections about FTT:
http://ivandrury.wordpress.com
I imagine many of you may think that I owe you more than this. I’m sorry that I was not capable of explaining these things when I was a member of FTT/Y3WA. While I have neither the intention nor the means of recruiting you to specific group or tendency, I must admit that I am writing this with the hope that you will read my reflections and second thoughts about FTT/Y3WA and think about your own involvement with FTT/Y3WA critically. I hope that each of you will leave FTT/Y3WA to move on to bigger and better things. Ali is chaining your capacities. There is a whole world of opportunities waiting for you. I’ve worked with all of you and know you are capable of so much more.
I’ll begin with my resignation:
In January I sent an email to FTT and Y3WA requesting a leave of absence. The same day of this email I met with Ali, Shannon, and Tamara and told them that I was actually resigning from FTT and Y3WA. It was not a friendly meeting. Ali told me, “if you go, you can never come back.” I said that I understood this but was willing to work with them to strategically lessen the negative impact of my sudden departure.
For the following 2 months, at the request of Ali at this meeting, I continued to lead MAWO education classes and contributed to the FTT newspaper. I met one final time with Ali, Shannon, and Tamara at another breakfast restaurant in early March before I left for the Yukon. This meeting as well operated under the auspice that I would not be returning to FTT or Y3WA. I said that I had not decided what exactly I would be doing in the coming months or years, but at the time I felt it possible to continue a certain correspondence and collaboration with the FTT newspaper. Ali told me that would be fine, but when I decide what it is I want to do, I should email him, Shannon, and Tamara to inform them of this decision. He assured me that they had arranged an extension of my leave of absence for six months, and that it would be extended again to one year or whatever was necessary until I decided that I wanted my name taken off the FTT Editorial Board. He said that when I made that decision, I should just email these three again to inform them. I agreed, and said that I would leave to them the internal matter of unfolding my LOA to a resignation. Ali’s only further request was that I send a letter explaining my political differences to allow the opening of this discussion in Y3WA.
About 6 months later, I sent an email exactly as agreed, to Ali, Shannon, and Tamara. It said:
“To: Fire This Time Editorial Board
From: Ivan Drury
Re: Resignation
I am writing to inform you that I have decided to officially resign from the Fire This Time editorial board.
Please take my name off of the editorial board listing.
As you probably know, I am currently living in Vancouver. I do not intend to attend events organized by any Fire This Time related organizations (MAWO, VCSC, etc.) or contribute to the Fire This Time newspaper. I do plan to meet with other activists and/or attend events organized by other activist groups; though I do not have any specific or immediate plans to do so at this time.
A letter explaining this decision in the context of my political differences with FTT is forthcoming.
Ivan Drury”
While I understand this is not the specific content of the letter Ali was hoping for… can the form of it really be considered as outside of our agreed upon perimeters for the conceptual letter discussed on two separate occasions? In the response letter I received on October 16th, there was a willful misconstruction of the discussions and verbal agreements I had with Ali in the spring. I’ve posted this letter here:
http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/fire-this-time-criticism/3-letter-from-ftt-to-ivan-drury-in-response-to-resignation/
Is it not understandable then, that I would be reluctant to accept the ‘good-faith’ of a verbal meeting in place of a written (documented) discussion?
I am not going to go through each point of the response letter here. I will address some of the points brought up in your letter throughout this letter, but first it is necessary to say why I am – against the demands of your letter and against the omniscient ‘organizational norms’ that pop up now and again – sending this individually to members of Y3WA and posting it publicly:
- I owe an explanation to the members of Y3WA who had neither the access to the meetings I had with Ali, Shannon, and Tamara, nor (judging from the content of the letter I received) the privilege of an accurate telling of events.
- I do not believe that the 6-hour meeting proposed to me in the October response letter would be a suitable ground for such an explanation. The proposal itself is vindictive, full of condemnation of me, and congratulation of yourselves. It is what Ali would call a “cadre” letter. Written more for the education of the internal than for open discussion with the external. There are two sides to this education; one for the ex-member and one for the potential ex-members.
- I believe that the only guarantee that this letter (as well as the publicly issued apology letter) will be read by members of Y3WA is if it is posted publicly.
The education of the betrayer is the same that I was part of dishing out against Ian Beeching when he left. I told him that I understood that the pressures of Y3WA were too much for him, and that there were other groups out there that required less commitment and issued less pressure; that he could still make a contribution to the struggle –though less than he could if he remained a member of Y3WA and on the path of a professional revolutionary. As soon as Shannon and I got back to the house, Ali lambasted us for not ‘educating’ Ian about the consequences of his resignation; meaning his betrayal of revolutionary struggle. Like good soldiers, we returned to meet with Ian for a second send-off. This time we followed Ali’s instructions and humiliated Ian. We told him that he was a capitulator, that he was weak and petit bourgeois and had given in to the pressures of the SQL. That he was cashing in his revolutionary contribution for an easy life. In short, we tried to break whatever was left in him before he left so that he would be completely destroyed as an activist-organizer-political person without Y3WA.
I have seen and spoken with Ian recently. I have apologized to him for my role in recruiting him to Y3WA, for my part in manipulating him when he was a member of Y3WA, and for his brutal and inhuman ‘exit meeting’ part II. He told me that he had a hard time when he first left. He thought he might not be able to get involved in organizing again for a long time, maybe 10 years. He said that he believed what we had said about him; that he was petit bourgeois, that he was too weak, too lousy to be a revolutionary. He came to a few MAWO meetings and saw hands shoot up without consideration for each and every motion. He thought – “there’s no place for me here if I’m not a member of Y3WA.” He re-applied himself to martial arts and then to video games before he had an epiphany. He came to the founding meeting for the May 20 Coalition for Cuba and Venezuela and saw 16 people from Y3WA and ‘close peripheries’ representing 16 different groups. He said he saw Noah representing the Free the Cuban 5 Committee – Courtenay. And then he saw the chair make a motion that each representing group have one vote. “Ah-ha!” he thought. He saw the independent Latino community members present argue for consensus decision making once they too saw that they were outnumbered. And he saw that argument get manipulated around (by me) to ensure control of the ‘coalition’ in the hands of one tiny group of ‘professional revolutionaries’. He realized: “there’s not something wrong with me… there’s something wrong with this group…”
And you know what? The Ian Beeching I met with and spoke with recently is ten times the Ian Beeching I knew in Y3WA. He is a confident, active, thoughtful, honest, political person. He overcame his exit meeting, and his experience in the Y3WA cult of exceptionalism.
The education of the potential ex-member is even more important than that of the really existing ex-member. While with the really existing ex-member it is important to attempt to neutralize them as actors against FTT/Y3WA, exerting authority beyond the grave as it were, the danger latent in the potential ex-member is far more difficult to calculate. Especially considering the ratio. It is a matter of simple mathematics – there are 15 potential ex-members and only one (at a time) really existing ex-member. Therefore, the opportunity must be taken to use the really existing ex-member as an example to those still unactivated.
From the perspective of an active member of Y3WA, there must be two problems with this formula.
First, that the leader (Ali) uses the resignation of a member not as a time of reflection and deep assessment, nor as an opportunity to have a friendly and familiar person out active in other groups to strengthen FTT/Y3WA, but that his perspective is of how to use this resignation to terrorize the rest of the membership further into a Thatcherite “There Is No Alternative” obedience.
Secondly, that this is how each member of Y3WA is essentially viewed by the leader: as latent betrayers. You are not ‘members’ of FTT/Y3WA except in the most temporary way, in the transitional space between recruit and ex-member. FTT/Y3WA itself is only one man: Ali. Hence his boundless authority. Hence his re-definitions of ‘democratic’ centralism (to his will) and dictates of ‘organizational norms’ (to his taste and mood). Hence his absolute unaccountability. Hence his extra-procedural, ultimately exceptional privileges. Only one person exists in the Marxist sense of creative expression in the organizations: Ali. Everyone else is recruited when they are useful to him, and will be disposed of when they cease to be. Precautions, then, must be taken against each of you and your potential or anticipated deviance. Precautions like this ‘education’ and ‘example-making’.
I have no reason to believe that a meeting would be anything other than a continuation of the same. As you said in the letter response to me:
“If you are out of this movement then you are not interested in debating, discussing or even educating us for any changes or any corrections that we might need to do. If you were serious about it you would stay in your organization and take yourself seriously and discuss it as a revolutionary in a revolutionary organization with revolutionary conduct and norms.”
As long as the “movement” is thought of as exclusively FTT/Y3WA (controlled) organizations, then exclusion of all other voices is the rule. A rigid juxtaposition is established: if you’re not with us, you’re with the Status Quo Left! And the definitions of both to be with “us” and “Status Quo Left” are abstracted. The same ridiculous parallels that were issued forth to La Surda are repeated to me. When Kira was spat on at a STATUS event and we were appealing to La Surda to turn against the rest of the STATUS coalition, Ali said, “if La Surda were honest, they would follow us.” Therefore, if they do not follow us – they are not honest. And if they are not honest, then ‘we’ want nothing to do with them, right? Furthermore, Lenin wished for an honest opponent, remember? So if they’re not honest, then they’re already falling into the camp of opponents, and we’re back where we started: if you’re not with us (read: the only honest, revolutionary group), then you’re with the SQL (read: dishonest, unprincipled clique of casual leftists). The real trick is in trimming the measuring stick to fit the subject. Contrary to thousands of years of science, the sun revolves around the earth. And since 2003, all class and social dynamics revolve around FTT/Y3WA. Now that’s a qualitative change.
Why – under this premise – would anyone agree to meet with you? I certainly am not interested. I can’t see the meeting as being anything other than a pissing contest between me and Ali. While there is some sick appeal in that, I don’t think it’s healthy.
In the place of this ‘meeting’ I am posting this letter to the internet as a public document. Despite my fear that this will further tighten Ali’s internal paranoid control, it is the only way I can imagine that you will all have a chance to read it. It is virtually a certainty that you would be forbidden from reading any letter from me sent individually, and the best I could likely hope for might be to have it screened and ‘interpreted’ by the great leader. I also hope that it will reach some of the people who you are trying to recruit, or people in your ‘peripheries’ (a term of such Machiavellian appropriateness) – people who I could not hope to reach privately. I do not intend this letter as ‘suggestions’ on how you can ‘improve’. I do not have small detailed differences with FTT. My differences are fundamental, and they would be impossible to implement within the structure of FTT. I am for the complete dissolution of FTT and Y3WA, for the freeing of the membership to do important work within the left as it exists in Canada – or the US, or wherever. I hope that you will read it because I know that some of you have doubts about FTT/Y3WA and I hope that this might help with the development of some of these doubts; and that you will quit.
I am sorry that I did not bring these things up when I was a member of FTT and Y3WA. Unfortunately, this was not possible. Firstly because I did not have time to work them out because of the completely crushing workload that you are all familiar with. And secondly because I was not emotionally capable of articulating them, so consumed I was with unspoken and inspecific “norms” and “conduct” that dictate an entire life-philosophy and mode of existence… for the development of a “revolutionary cadre”.
It was only with space from FTT/Y3WA that those thoughts and feelings could become articulate. I think you too will find your creative and political capacities will only grow once released from the fetters of FTT/Y3WA/Ali Yerevani.
If there is anything I can do to help, or if you just want to talk or ask questions or tell me off, don’t hesitate to contact me. I won’t tell anyone.
To the future, and with the greatest respect;
Ivan Drury
ivanddrury@yahoo.ca
http://ivandrury.wordpress.com
2 responses so far ↓
Carel // February 5, 2008 at 8:25 am |
Thanks Ivan for having the bottle to write that letter
Yours Carel[SQL]Moiseiwitsch
ian Beeching // February 5, 2008 at 3:13 pm |
As a former member of youth third world alliance I can say that what Ivan says matches my experiences as a member of that group. I first became an antiwar activist when the Iraq war started. At that time I was at UBC, antiwar rallies on campus could draw more than 200 people and organizing meetings had 40 people. After the summer when Bush declared the war over most of those activists disappeared and I was left in a position that if wanting to continue working on the issue MAWO was the only group there with open arms.
Having very little political experience I found their serious approach and energy exciting. Slowly I became more and more involved. They were the only game in town visible to me that talked about revolutionary politics and were active at the same time. I slowly became more and more involved with them. I lost interest in school and dropped out.
Shortly after leaving school I joined Y3WA. I finally felt as a young revolutionary I belonged somewhere and had a purpose. By this time I was already beginning to get sleep deprived, I was being told that sleep was subjective and that wasn’t needed as long as you had revolutionary perspective.
I remembered how myself and another Y3WA member had designed a poster and Ali rejected it. How after lecturing Tamara and myself for an hour (our opinion falling on deaf ears) the poster he finally told us to make had to have the words Allahu Akbar on the Iraqi flag. How this upset the Muslim community and was rescinded. And how when the old version with the words still on it was brought to a MAWO meeting by mistake Ali demanded all the leaflets back without explanation. When one teenager refused Ali yelled at him “this is revolutionary discipline” and intimidated him until it was returned without explanation. I remember how I sat silently and said nothing.
Common practice while I was in Y3WA was maxing out credit cards, sleeping four our five hours a night until you got terribly ill, breaking relations with your “peti bourgeois” girl friend and parents, calling Ali, Shannon or Ivan every time a decision has to be made and only reading selected articles and your own paper. Depriving yourself of sleep and normal social relations is something you might do during the revolution not in a time of low class struggle.
I was shocked when I found out over a month after joining the organization that Mike had in fact been assaulted. I had been told before that that mike was mentally ill, that he was a traitor and going for an easy life and that Ali did not assault Mike. I believed all of these lies and even helped spread them.
The internal discipline was extremely abusive. It included two mandatory education classes a week that were at least three hours each. One mandatory y3wa meeting that could go from 8pm or 9pm to 3am in the morning. A MAWO meeting, a VCSC meeting, your campus antiwar group and all the political assignments (such as postering or making a leaflet) we had on top of for me what was a 40-hour workweek. There was also always tabling, rallies and picket.
I also was under pressure for refusing to take sick days off work to do political work. Many y3wa members would constantly lose their jobs because they would take to many sick days. Ironically when they were fatigued to illness they would go to work and sleep in the washroom or in my case in the meet freezer. I was also taking heat for avoiding the mandatory monthly hiking trips and instead spending the time with my girlfriend.
Almost everyone in Y3WA live in houses with others in that organization. Without the money in the bank for a months rent food and deposit, disagreement is repressed out of fear of being thrown onto the streets. A Friend of mine who left Y3WA shortly after I did was forced to beg for money from his abusive family after he left so he would not end up on the streets.
An example of the mindless sectarianism is how three of us walked in circles for hours around sunset beach during the gay pride parade in 30 degree whether and with heavy containers and a table because we were kicked off the grounds by the organizers after we had decided to set up next to the main sponsors table not having registered. I told the other two that we should set up outside the grounds or pack up and simply hand out leaflets. They insisted on finding a spot inside the grounds were they had just been banned. After getting sick and tired of walking in circles for hours and almost about to drop from the heat I told the two I was with that I was leaving. The funny thing is if they had payed $100 like everyone else they could have had a table. $100 dollars to reach thousands is not a lot considering they spend around $5000 dollars or more on an issue of fire this time and distribute them free at skytrains were most get thrown in the waste bin.
There was a fire this time “public forum” I attended where a young activist they had deemed “hostile” for criticizing the group and being emotionally upset at her ex boyfriend in the organization. By the way they played tapes of her crying on his voice mail to the entire y3wa meeting, I regrettably did not voice opposition. They banned her from the meeting and forced everyone else entering the room to remove their cell phones and all other electronics.
When in the organization I believe that there is no alternative. That Y3WA is the only true revolutionary group probably in all of North America. Having devoted so much time money and passion to a project it is very difficult to just let it go.
When I left I did so largely because I was exhausted, sleep deprived, emotionally in pieces and being put under tremendous pressure to donate the $5000 dollars I had saved for school. I could not handle Ali shouting at us at 3am to pawn our TV’s and Radios all so we could put out another issue of Fire This Time. I am not one to horde money but young people should have the right to education without taking out debts if possible. I was donating more than $200 dollars a month and only working a dollar above minimum wage.
It took me six months after leaving to engage in political activism again. I slept and got a better job and realised how wrong what I had been doing was.
When I read Canadian Bolsheviks by Ian Angus and the section on the third period and the conception of united front from below saw a striking similarity to Y3WA’s conception of the SQL that Ivan describes in his letter.
Their conception of building revolutionary organization is dead wrong. A revolutionary organization should function so members can freely criticize without fear. Be open to a wide variety of ideas and opinions. The Bolsheviks themselves were far from a homogenous group; the political differences inside were often huge and often never resolved. People should be free to independently read, go to school and have healthy relationships with both political and non-political people. Ultimately as a revolutionary you put the interests of the class and the struggle before the interests of your organization. The movement is not an organization or its fronts. The only presidents for the “organizational norms” of Y3WA come from people like Stalin and Mao not true revolutionaries.
Since I have left I have been involved in countless campaigns and organizations such as the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Communities for Laibar Singh, Stopwar and others. I also helped found a socialist organization that organizes monthly forums called Vancouver Socialist Forum. This organization values differences and is open to debate and anyone interested in socialism that can work in a non-abusive and non-sectarian manner. I work with a wide spectrum of people with all kinds of different ideas and find value in them all.
The revolution cannot be made with sweat and blood alone and definitely not with a closed mind.
Ian Beeching