Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Associated groups

FRSO's publishes the newspaper Fight Back! News and its Spanish version Lucha y Resiste.^[6]

In 2002, FRSO created the Anti-War Committee (AWC), which it leads.^[7] In 2008, the AWC protested the 2008 Republican National Convention.^[8]

In 2006, FRSO helped create the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS or "new SDS"), which has significant FRSO leadership^[9][10] and FRSO collaboration.^[11][12]

Origins

In 1985, the Proletarian Unity League and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters merged to create FRSO.^[13][14][15] In 1986, FRSO fused with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity.^[13] In 1988, FRSO absorbed the Amílcar Cabral-Paul Robeson Collective.^[13][4]

In 1993, FRSO merged with the Socialist Organizing Network (SON)^[13][14][16] and adopted the placeholder name "Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Socialist Organizing Network" (FRSO/SON). The SON was formed by former members of the League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS), which had dissolved in the late 1980s.^[4] The 1994 FRSO Congress, which formalized the merger, was called the "First Congress of FRSO/SON". However, no new name emerged, and FRSO/SON reverted back to FRSO afterwards.^{[citation needed]}

FRSO's component groups believed that ultraleftism was the US New Communist movement's main error. Merging under the FRSO banner, these groups hoped to consolidate the movement's remnants in a single organization and move beyond the sectarianism that marked the previous decades.^[15]

1999 split

In response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, FRSO began to develop two distinct positions on socialist countries. The "Left Refoundation" group, aligned with democratic socialism, argued that these events resulted from a deep crisis of Marxism. The "Fight Back!" group, aligned with Marxism-Leninism, argued that these events resulted from revisionism rather than failures within Marxism.^[13][4] These divisions grew during the 1990s. In 1998, the Left Refoundation group wrote an internal document, "Theses on Left Refoundation", and requested an organization-wide discussion.^[17] The FRSO National Executive Committee (NEC) unanimously rejected this discussion.^[18] In 1999, the Left Refoundation group received a second hearing, at which the NEC and FRSO as a whole split in two.^[19][20]

Both factions claimed the name "Freedom Road Socialist Organization". In 2006, the Left Refoundation group renamed itself to "FRSO/OSCL", combining the English and Spanish acronym. In 2019, the Left Refoundation group renamed itself to Liberation Road.^[21]

FBI raid

On September 24, 2010, over 70 FBI agents raided the homes of six antiwar activists, five of whom were FRSO members, as well as the Anti-War Committee (AWC) headquarters. The FBI claimed to be searching for evidence of "material support of terrorism".^[22][23] FRSO formed the "Committee to Stop FBI Repression" and claimed that FBI agents left behind documents indicating that the raids were aimed at people suspected of FRSO membership, due to the AWC's political support for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).^[24] FRSO further claimed that the FBI had placed informants inside its organization.^[25]

On February 26, 2014, a federal judge unsealed the extensive documents the FBI collected during its nearly three-year surveillance of FRSO.^[26][27] The FBI never charged any person involved.^[28]