u/dinny1111

They gave us less than two hours this morning to comment they really wanted us and everyone else to say we declined to comment.

Hey all, it’s Benjamin. I’m posting this on behalf of our Organizing Director.

Hey everyone! I'm Andrew Pemberton, the Organizing Director for PV. I wanted to shed light on recent drama regarding Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez along with an explanation of PV’s beliefs. If you’ve seen Hasan’s stream or seen us on Twitter then you probably already know what this is about but here is a quick recap. 

TLDR: Prior to the Choose Your Fighter event we hosted, our endorsement criteria boosted candidates that were pro-Ukraine. After the event, we updated our endorsement criteria for new endorsements to make support for Ukraine equally as mandatory as support for Palestine. We also went back through our endorsements and confirmed nearly all the candidates we had previously endorsed or were considering endorsing already met this standard. Two notable candidates who didn’t were Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier. Both were present for Choose Your Fighter and as a result received a portion of the fundraising revenue. We hadn’t yet endorsed Claire and made the decision not to due to her lack of a stance on Ukraine. Regarding Darializa, who we had previously endorsed and were in active communication planning to launch a major initiative for, we asked her to clarify her otherwise silent position on Ukraine. After being rather communicative, they suddenly stopped replying all together. After a few weeks, we decided to take our request for comment on her Ukraine policy publicly asking where she stood so we could continue the Initiative. When an interview with the NYT editorial board saw her avoid answering the question, we decided to cancel the initiative and divert the resources to Melat Kiros and Julie Gonzales. To be clear, we never supported or promoted Espaillat. We don’t like him, he sucks.

I want to explain a bit more about why we did this. Progressive Victory has 4 red lines for any candidates we endorse in the primary elections: you must be anti-Israel, pro-Ukraine, pro Section 230, and reject taking corporate money. Of course, like any progressive organization we do not back corporate candidates in the primaries and as an organization that appeals to people online that means we need to be aggressive on protecting the internet. Those two red lines are obvious so I’m going to talk about the foreign policy related ones.

What is happening in Ukraine is genocide, just like how what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We oppose human rights abuses across the board, not just the ones talked about the most. We want to end suffering. For Palestine, we believe that means no more funding for Israel. For Ukraine, we believe that means more funding. Our decision isn’t based on what helps or hurts the American military industrial complex, it's solely what we believe will reduce suffering. We can’t abandon a people in need simply because of who it secondarily benefits. The solution to defeating right wing reactionaries isn’t to replace them with left wing reactionaries. Imperialism needs to be fought against no matter the country, not only when the United States engages in it. If you are on the left but you don't care about imperialism from nations outside of just the United States, you are not a progressive. That means your beliefs are based on reactionary thinking that makes you only care about specific incidents based on what camp you are in and not an actual objection to imperialism. We have not come this far only to succumb to campist ideology by the time we change the democratic party. We are not just trying to get a socialist majority in the government, we are preparing for what that majority should look like. Everyone is talking about DSA candidates right now and there are plenty of amazing DSA candidates along with excellent chapters that we will support but we are not the DSA. We have a unique identity with our own theory of change. 

This sentiment was already reflected in our highest endorsement tier, the PV Pledge. After Choose Your Fighter, and seeing first hand how completely absent Ukraine was from the narrative, we felt we needed to make all our red lines more explicit but especially the one on Ukraine. This has been part of a two year long journey where PV has become more comfortable taking public stances on policy. We started by publicly making our stance against Zionism clear, and have continued adding on to the aforementioned red lines when our community has felt strongly.

On Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez specifically, we were going to phonebank for them but decided to cancel our plans. In Darializa’s case, our communications with the campaign were good until we asked their position on Ukraine and they went silent. Now, we didn’t revoke our endorsement because she was originally endorsed before we implemented our new endorsement criteria. It would set a bad precedent to revoke an endorsement because she didn’t pass standards that were implemented after the fact. When it comes to organizing around her, that is a bigger commitment and we needed clarification on her opinion of the Ukrainian genocide. We still gave her multiple chances to respond and she didn’t. We attempted one final last ditch effort by tweeting at her saying we needed her position on Ukraine in order to proceed with the initiative. 
https://x.com/progressivevic/status/2066978822264631765?s=61
https://x.com/progressivevic/status/2068133215538126914?s=61

With Darializa our prior endorsement demanded we make a hard choice, we didn’t previously endorse Claire Valdez and as a result we rejected her endorsement due to their secrecy regarding any position on Ukraine. The only time she said anything was to complain about the cost and say we need to negotiate more with Putin. Because of that it failed our standard. We may have backed Reynoso who as the wfp candidate is at first glance quite similar but we didn't have time to make sure so we stayed out of the race other than to announce our decision to not endorse as we always do. We posted a statement about it here: https://x.com/progressivevic/status/2066681610666213378?s=61

Some have characterized this as “ratfucking”, if that is how you feel I can sympathize with that belief, though it is one that I feel is simply misinformed and rather unprincipled. We should expect better from our own candidates than Pelosi-esque evasions.

There are so many left-wing organizations out there that have different strategies and candidates they focus on. Their specific strategy and theory of change is what justifies that organization's existence. That applies to PV as well. If we were the same as the DSA, Working Families Party, or Justice Democrats then what would be the point? We would all just join them instead. We are an alternative to the political orgs that have been organizing the same way for decades that tend to have boom periods then falter because they didn't build something centralized and sustainable. We all want leftist candidates to win but PV has its role to play in the broader movement. That role is to build a strong community of young people that come from content creator audiences which puts its weight behind progressive socialists that reject reactionary sentiment so that when the left gets a majority, we have politicians that stay true to the values we believe in and have been organizing around. The solution to defeating right wing reactionaries isn’t to replace them with left wing reactionaries.

Here is what we see as the 4 quadrants of left wing politics:
Quadrant 1: Digital Ground Game (neoliberal centrists)
Quadrant 2: Working Families Party (warrenite liberals),
Quadrant 3: Progressive Victory (progressive socialists)
Quadrant 4: Democratic Socialists of America (ranging from progressive socialists to authoritarian campists)

*Note: that doesn't mean we are ideological enemies of people not in our quadrant. We reserve that belief for only one of the above listed orgs. We wish to champion, defend, and work alongside the orgs that are part of the same shared movement to push the Democratic Party left.
https://x.com/progressivevic/status/2068138529209680364?s=61

Not everyone within each of those organizations necessarily have the same ideology but that is the political leaning of each organization overall.  When it comes to being consistent with our progressive values, there is no section of the left that is consistent that treats all genocides, ethnic cleansing, and severe human rights abuses as a red line when deciding what candidates to back. Well… except for us. It’s possible to develop reactionary beliefs as a leftist, nobody is immune to that flaw. Where we see it the most on the left is on foreign policy which is why it’s such a good litmus test that gives us a preview of the tendencies of that politician. Reactionary beliefs on any genocide is a warning sign of the direction politicians will take the country if they get a majority. It's a deeper ideological belief that will make us lose sight of the mission. 

PV’s goal in all of this is to carve a new lane in the left so people that feel like they don’t fit in with any of the other major left-wing orgs have a place to go. We will coalition build with other organizations whether that be DSA, WFP, Justice Dems, Sunrise, and they will support whoever they want to, but PV is going to be electing progressive socialists into office so that we can get a leftist majority that we believe is needed to put this country on the right path. That doesn’t mean we are going to be putting resources against any leftist candidates that don’t match with our mission, it just means we will let the other orgs that are supporting them handle it and PV is going to stay on course to carve a lane that aligns with our theory of change. The DSA was very successful in the NY primaries and we are happy to see the left gaining momentum, and while we didn’t put resources towards these candidates, any DSA backed candidate that doesn’t cross our red lines is able to get our full support (Oliver Larkin for example). We will fill in the gaps that other organizations are not filling, and that third quadrant (progressive socialists) is the biggest gap we can fill, and thankfully it’s also what we believe 

We are the alternative option for young leftists.