Freedom Road Socialist Organization

One of the FRSO's most distinguishing characteristics on the U.S. socialist left is its approach to the national question. Drawing from the line of the CPUSA from 1928 to 1958, the FRSO considers African Americans in the Black Belt South an oppressed nation. Additionally, it views Chicanos in the Southwest, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii as oppressed nations within the borders of the United States.[8]

FRSO supports independence for Puerto Rico, as well as the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Palau, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.[9]

FRSO actively participated in the 2020–2022 United States racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.[10][11] It celebrated the conviction of Derek Chauvin.[12] FRSO believes that convicted felon Jussie Smollett was the innocent victim of a racist police conspiracy.[13]

FRSO demands full equality and sovereign development for Native American tribes, Asian-Americans, and other ethnic minorities.

FRSO advocates a strategy of the building of a "militant minority" within the unions. "The goal of the militant minority is to transform our unions into class struggle organizations. In concrete terms, this means overthrowing collaborating union officials and replacing them with class struggle forces."[14]

During the pandemic, FRSO advocated for closing most businesses:

"Immediately close all non-essential and non-emergency businesses and services. This is a public health pandemic that impacts every square inch of this country. We need to act accordingly." [15]

FRSO supported the teachers unions resistance to resuming in-person instruction, particularly with the Chicago Teachers Union.[16]

FRSO supported Jesse Jackson for president in 1984 and 1988. FRSO also worked on Harold Washington's successful campaigns for mayor of Chicago in 1983 and 1987.

The organization generally supports Democrats in elections. This position is arrived at by opposing those candidates that represent what they describe as posing a "special danger",[17] typically meaning the Republicans:

"Our approach regarding the elections will take different forms in different places. Often, this will mean that those who are working in swing states must work to defeat Republican candidates. In places where the Republicans are very unlikely to win, organizers should vote against right-wing or centrist Democrats in favor of candidates with more progressive stances."[18]

FRSO played an important role in the U.S. student movement, leading the Progressive Student Network (PSN), a national, multi-issue, progressive student activist organization.

In the 2010s, the FRSO experienced sizable growth, fueled in large part by an influx of young workers and student activists. Over the decade, the organization cultivated a sustained mass organizing presence in the labor movement and the Black freedom movement, and further developed its presence in the student movement, particularly in the (new) SDS. The FRSO expanded geographically beyond its longtime Midwestern stronghold, establishing new districts in the South and southwest.

FRSO actively participates in the reproductive rights/abortion rights movement, including the massive 1989 demonstration in Washington, D.C.

The FRSO played a role in the anti-war movement that emerged in 1990 in opposition to the Gulf War.

FRSO represented a particularly anti-imperialist pole in the protests against the War on Terror.

In the Russo-Ukrainian War, the organization opposes US support for Ukraine, but does not support Russia.[19] They cite the Ukraine war as an "Inter-Imperialist Conflict", a reference to Lenin's view of WW1.

The FRSO emerged from the 2010s as a leading force for victims of state repression, having founded the Committee To Stop FBI Repression and played a leading role in the campaign to free Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh after her arrest in 2014.

The FRSO was created by a merger of the Proletarian Unity League and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters in 1985. It fused with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity in 1986. It later absorbed other groups, including the Amílcar Cabral-Paul Robeson Collective in 1988.

In 1994 the Socialist Organizing Network (SON) merged into the FRSO. The SON was formed out of the dissolution of the League of Revolutionary Struggle in the late 1980s, and included those who had been in LRS who still considered themselves Marxists (most of the leadership had rejected Marxism when they disbanded the LRS).

The merger of the FRSO and the SON technically marked the creation of a new organization, as at the time it was seen as a merger of two equal organizations into something new, rather than the FRSO's incorporation of the SON. The merged organization was briefly called "Freedom Road/Socialist Organizing Network", including both organizations' names, with the possibility that it would adopt an entirely new name. A new name never came to fruition, so the name reverted to "Freedom Road Socialist Organization". But the 1994 FRSO Congress, at which the FRSO/SON merger was formalized, was called the First Congress of FRSO/SON.

In response to the fall of Eastern European governments, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, two distinct positions began to emerge within the FRSO on how to assess socialist countries. One saw the events of 1989–1991 as indicative of a deep crisis in Marxism that required what it called "Left Refoundation". The other continued to assess the experience of socialist countries as essentially positive, and saw their defeats as the result of revisionism rather than a crisis of Marxism. This side continued to identify itself with Marxism-Leninism.

At the organization's 1991 Congress, a document giving the FRSO's official position, "On the Crisis of Socialism", was adopted, which expressed a pessimistic view of actually existing socialism.

In this context, in 1989, Mick Kelly, a leading member of the FRSO, wrote Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party, which argued that the defeat of the Tiananmen Square protests was an important setback for counter-revolution and capitalist restoration in socialist countries and prevented the overthrow of socialism in China. To this day, Kelly's paper encapsulates the FRSO's basic line on the People's Republic of China, which it considers a socialist country.[20]

The internal ideological division continued to grow throughout the 1990s. In 1999, the FRSO split into two groups, each retaining the name and considering itself the only legitimate FRSO for several years. The two groups split principally over a proposal brought forward by a section of FRSO's membership that argued that the organization should adopt a strategy of "Left Refoundation". The Left Refoundation advocates saw Marxism as in deep crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of socialism in Eastern Europe and other regions. Their strategy received its clearest expression in a document called Theses on Left Refoundation, which outlined their views on the "crisis of socialism" and called for the construction of a "party of the dispossessed" based on "uniting in struggle with other forces in the progressive social movements." Their proposal prioritized establishing a "left-pole" in more mainstream liberal, left-wing and progressive political organizations rather than continuing to build a new communist party in the United States. The document expressed general pessimism about the remaining socialist countries and the prospect of socialist revolution in the U.S., looking instead to left-wing social-democratic formations for inspiration like the Workers Party (Brazil).[21]

At a December 1998 meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the FRSO, three Left Refoundation advocates presented their strategy as a proposal to the NEC. The proposal, "the longest single item at the December NEC meeting," called for a four-month "organization-wide discussion of party-building" along the lines of the Left Refoundation strategy outlined in the initial document.[22]

By a unanimous vote, the NEC rejected the Left Refoundation advocates' call for a four-month organization-wide discussion. In a written response published internally to members of the FRSO in January 1999, the NEC cited concerns that such a discussion would detract from ongoing mass organizing work. Beyond these immediate practical impacts, though, the NEC saw the particular proposals as effectively overturning the strategic and tactical decisions reached at the FRSO's Second Congress in 1997. As a democratic centralist organization, the FRSO, according to the statement, "requires the common application of lines collectively decided on and the collective evaluation and adjustment of those lines based on their implementation in practice."[22]

The NEC's written response took a measured tone, but represented a serious defeat of the Left Refoundation position. The majority position generally upheld Marxist Leninism and wanted to continue building a revolutionary communist party, even in disadvantageous circumstances. The Marxist–Leninist group considered Left Refoundation an ideological expression of "a right wing section of our organization" that had "adopted the standpoint of social-democracy and anti-communism, and insisted that FRSO pursue this strategy."[23]

Sometime in 1999, the Left Refoundation faction regrouped and joined with sympathetic, wavering NEC members in calling for an organization-wide meeting to adopt their proposal anyway. This meeting was not called as a congress in accordance with the FRSO's democratic centralist structure, in which the congress is the highest decision-making body and tasked with approving changes in line and strategy. At the meeting, "the National Executive Committee was almost evenly divided" on the question, with the Marxist–Leninist NEC members denouncing the move as "this road to liquidation and disintegration."[23] A split took place during the meeting between the Marxist–Leninist group and the Left Refoundation group, which formally separated from one another.

The Marxist-Leninists maintained the Left Refoundation project was "contrary to the line, strategy, and plans we adopted at our past Congress which is the highest decision making body of our organization" and "contrary to Marxism and democratic centralism." According to a statement the FRSO released after the split, the Marxist-Leninists summed up the meeting as the illegitimate outcome of "another section of our leadership refus[ing] to struggle for the decisions adopted at our past Congress, and instead pledged FRSO support for this left refoundation strategy. There was a real danger that Freedom Road would cease to be Freedom Road."[23]

Although each faction claimed the name "Freedom Road Socialist Organization" and refused to recognize the other for several years, the Left Refoundation group officially changed its name to "FRSO/OSCL" by 2006, combining the English and Spanish acronym of the organization's name, and then to Liberation Road. Liberation Road explained its name change in a statement released on its website as "pragmatic—motivated by the need to differentiate ourselves from the splinter group who continue to operate under our old name", referring to the present-day FRSO. It also reiterated its ideological commitment to "Left Refoundation".[24]

Previous FRSO logo

On September 24, 2010, over 70 FBI agents simultaneously raided homes and served subpoenas to prominent antiwar and international solidarity activists in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The agents seized computers, books, written material, cell phones, family portraits, clothing and other items deemed political. FBI agents also visited and attempted to question activists in Milwaukee; Durham, North Carolina; and San Jose, California. The search warrants and subpoenas indicated that the FBI was looking for evidence related to the "material support of terrorism".[25]

In the process of raiding an activist's home, FBI agents accidentally left behind a file of secret FBI documents showing that the raids were aimed at people who were or were suspected of being members of the FRSO. The documents revealed a series of questions agents asked activists about their involvement in the FRSO and their international solidarity work related to Colombia and Palestine.[26]

FRSO protesters in January 2017 at DisruptJ20

On January 12, 2011, members of the newly formed Committee to Stop FBI Repression held a press conference in Minnesota revealing that the FBI had placed an informant inside the FRSO to gather information before the raids.[27]

On February 26, 2014, a federal judge unsealed the extensive documents the FBI collected during its nearly three-year surveillance of the FRSO.[28] The documents revealed that the FBI placed an informant around and eventually inside the FRSO during and after the 2008 protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The informant, Karen Sullivan, attempted to craft a case that the FRSO was materially supporting the FARC and the PFLP with its antiwar and international solidarity activism.

As of April 2023, no charges have been brought against members of the FRSO or non-FRSO-aligned defendants. In an April 19, 2023, statement condemning the federal indictment against the African People's Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, FRSO referenced the 2010 raids, saying "we know from experience how importance resistance to repression is" and that the organization "is committed to pushing back against this repression and we stand in solidarity with those under attack."[29]