The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)

Key Points

• PSL is a U.S. political party based on socialist and “anti-imperialist” ideals that runs candidates in local and national elections.
• It incorporates extreme anti-Zionism as part of its organizing platform and has long been involved in anti-Israel organizing across the U.S.
• PSL justified the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel as a “bold counter-offensive" and has sponsored or co-sponsored over 1,700 anti-Israel rallies since then.
• PSL is closely tied to anti-Zionist groups such as The People’s Forum and the ANSWER Coalition, and has considerable organizational and leadership overlap with them.

Background

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a socialist political party in the United States that incorporates virulent anti-Zionism as a core organizing principle.

PSL has been involved in anti-Israel organizing since its establishment in 2004, ramping up its activity significantly following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror massacre against Israel. In the first 18 months after Hamas’s attack, PSL sponsored or co-sponsored over 1,700 anti-Israel rallies around the U.S.; the majority of these rallies featured antisemitic rhetoric,  as well as expressions of support for Hamas’s attack, belligerent calls to “smash Zionism,” and flags and other materials of U.S.-designated terror groups and more. Some PSL events also included on-the-ground harassment.

The party legitimized Hamas’s attack in an October 7, 2023, statement as a “bold counter-offensive,” said “the actions of the resistance” were a “morally and legally legitimate response to occupation” and called to cut off all U.S. aid to Israel.

PSL’s other ideologically driven geopolitical positions have included a reluctance to criticize the regime of former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and the denial of his use of chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war; a refusal to denounce Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine; and abject denial of the Chinese government’s crimes against the Uyghurs. PSL has also defended North Korea and Venezuela against U.S. and Western “imperialism.” A 2024 article on a "revolutionary news site article” describes PSL as “campist,” offering “their support to just about any government that is in conflict with U.S. imperialism.” Some left-wing activists have also taken issue with PSL's organizing tactics and handling of community issues.

In 2025, PSL came under additional scrutiny in the wake of the May 2025 murder of two Israeli embassy workers at a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. Suspect Elias Rodriguez, the alleged murderer who shouted “Free Palestine” during his arrest, was once affiliated with PSL but later cut ties with the group, citing disillusionment with its tactics and worldview.

Overview of Organization and Key Activities

PSL has dozens of affiliated chapters nationwide and regularly collaborates with other prominent organizations in the U.S. anti-Israel movement. There is significant organizational overlap between PSL and the ANSWER Coalition and The People’s Forum (TPF). PSL has also frequently worked with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Al-Awda, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and others to organize many of its activities.

PSL was supportive of the anti-Israel spring 2024 encampments on college campuses, collaborating with campus student organizations and community-oriented groups such as the Palestinian Youth Movement. PSL founding member Richard Becker, also the Western Region coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, was a panel speaker at a PYM event at the George Washington University encampment in the spring of 2024. 

PSL’s other activities include organizing educational programming and supporting candidates running for local and federal elections. 

Support for Terror Post-October 7

Attendees at PSL protests have displayed flags and other materials bearing the logos of U.S.-designated terror groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as explicitly pro-terror rhetoric and imagery, such as depictions of the paragliders used by Hamas to infiltrate Israel on October 7, 2023.

PSL members have also openly supported the October 7 terror attack in interviews, speeches, at protests and in public comments at city council meetings. Such comments have included explicitly supporting Hamas or other terrorist organizations and mocking victims, as well as lauding the “creativity” of the attack and minimizing its impact on Israelis.

In a speech during the group’s October 8, 2023, protest in New York City — mere hours after Hamas’s attack across southern Israel including at the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im where terrorists killed nearly 400 and took 40 hostages — PSL co-founder Eugene Puryear told the gathered crowd: “And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters...But I'm sure they're doing very fine….”

At an October 20, 2023, anti-Israel rally co-sponsored by PSL in Baltimore, Maryland, Rafiki Morris from the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) defended the attack and justified the murder of Israelis: “Now y’all might not like what I’m getting ready to say, but you know a Zionist is a settler! The people who died, they lived in a kibbutz. You know what a kibbutz is? A kibbutz is a settlement. It’s a place where settlers go to settle.”

At an August 2024 rally in Seattle, WA, organized by PSL, ANSWER Coalition, Samidoun, Falastiniyat and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a speaker stated, “We say, with our full chest: Long live October 7th!” Protesters also displayed signs with messages that included: “Many fronts one struggle; Globalize the Intifada” and “By any means necessary” with inverted red triangle imagery — a symbol that first appeared in propaganda videos promoted by Hamas to mark targets — and imagery of an Israeli flag being torn and burned. Samidoun, one of PSL’s co-organizers at that protest, has since been sanctioned by the U.S. government for its ties to the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization the PFLP.

(Screenshots/ X and Instagram)

A composite image showing materials related to terror groups — including inverted red triangle imagery alongside the slogan “Globalize the Intifada” — at the August 2024 rally in Seattle, organized by PSL and other anti-Israel groups (left) and protesters displaying a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) flag at a PSL-sponsored protest in San Antonio, TX, celebrating the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel. 

In addition to the commentary at protests, numerous PSL members and organizers have articulated explicit support for Hamas in social media posts and in interviews. For example, Jeremiah Boxley, a PSL organizer in Georgia, said in an interview when asked about his views on Hamas: “Absolutely, as a party, as a person, I stand with the resistance. When we say free the land by any means necessary, we do mean any means necessary.” 

Jodi Dean, a PSL member and professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, wrote in an April 2024 essay for Verso Magazine that, “The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating. Here were moments of freedom, that defeated Zionist expectations of submission to occupation and siege...The paragliders who flew into Israel on October 7 continue the revolutionary association of liberation and flight.”

Targeting Jewish Institutions and Individuals

PSL has co-organized protests that have targeted synagogues and harassed individuals at private events. These events include a viewing of a documentary about the October 7 Hamas attack. PSL-affiliated protesters and event attendees at PSL co-sponsored events have also compared Zionists to Nazis, denied the connection of Jews to the land of Israel and organized disruptions of events they feel are “too Zionist” — sometimes leading to physical altercations.

In December 2024, for example, at a PSL co-organized protest in Houston, Texas, protestors harassed synagogue attendees, calling them “baby killers” and “Zionist pigs.” Their event speakers have used dehumanizing language about Jews who support Israel, referring to them as “parasites.” At a July 2024 anti-Israel rally organized by PSL in Alpharetta, GA, a speaker stated, “The Jewish people should know better. They were on the receiving end 70 years ago and they're on the wrong side of history now.”

PSL has also been involved in protests that escalated into alleged assaults at events and political gatherings. In December 2023, PSL and PYM activists disrupted a Michigan Democratic Party holiday party, demanding a ceasefire and shoving attendees, one of whom was left with two black eyes.

In March 2024, PSL co-organized a protest in Chicago of a private viewing of the documentary “Nova,” which details the events of the October 7 Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival. Some of the protesters allegedly attacked an attendee who walked into the venue carrying an Israeli flag.

Origins, Funding and Structure

PSL was established in 2004 when activist Brian Becker, his brother Richard Becker, and others splintered from the Workers World Party (WWP). Like the WWP, PSL’s political ideology is Marxist-Leninist. This ideology has informed PSL’s positions on various other international matters beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The WWP was itself a splinter group, having parted ways with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1959 following a disagreement about Stalin’s 1956 invasion of Hungary. Sam Marcy (family name Ballan), who became WWP leader, and his acolytes supported the invasion, claiming the Hungarian uprising “could only serve imperialism.”

PSL offers little organizational transparency and does not release membership numbers. One must apply to join the organization, and potential members are vetted to ensure compatibility with the organization’s aims.  In an April 2024 article in Marxist outlet Cosmonaut Magazine, labor organizer Shuvu Bhattarai, a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, and of the Marxist Unity Group within DSA, describes the process of joining “Marxist-Leninist Parties, such as PSL” as a “democratic centralist cadre model,” with potential members enduring a “months-long training and vetting process for entry alongside standards of revolutionary discipline.”

PSL’s funding sources are also unclear. The group claims not to take money from foundations or corporate sources. Members are expected to contribute to PSL’s major annual fundraiser, the National Fund Drive.

PSL has a college affiliate group, Students for Socialism (SFS), with chapters at schools such as the University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of New Mexico; and previously at the University of Georgia, before it was suspended in December 2024.

In December 2024, the group launched the PSL Action Network, a more informal organizing structure for those looking to get involved without committing to PSL’s opaque membership structure. 

Overlap with Other Prominent Anti-Israel Organizations

PSL is closely tied to other notable anti-Israel entities, including the ANSWER Coalition, The People’s Forum (TPF) and the anti-Israel media outlet Breakthrough News (BTN), which all share significant overlap in membership and leadership. For example, BTN’s editor-in-chief is Ben Becker, a PSL member and former organizer with the ANSWER Coalition.

These groups also share real estate space, and in some instances, are considered unofficial arms of PSL. 

According to PSL organizer Sanika Mahajan, the party has “mass organizations including Artists Against Apartheid, our Liberation Centers, The People’s Forum and others that may not have explicit ties to the party when it comes to our public facing work but are led primarily by [PSL] comrades.”

Artists Against Apartheid functions in part as a repository for a large variety of anti-Israel posters and a vehicle for organizing anti-Israel artists. PSL also has close ties with Shut it Down for Palestine, a group that provides a calendar for anti-Israel actions and offers resources to help organize protests and other actions.

PSL also has a strong physical footprint, according to Mahajan, who indicated that “some of our physical buildings that we use as organizing centers like our Liberation Centers in cities across the country -- The People’s Forum in New York City that is a real hub of internationalist, anti-imperialist organizing.”

Personnel Overlap between PSL, ANSWER and The People’s Forum

PSL, ANSWER Coalition, and The People’s Forum overlap on leadership, membership, and paid workforce.

• The People’s Forum’s previous executive co-director, Claudia de la Cruz, ran as PSL’s candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. De la Cruz previously served on The People’s Forum’s board of directors.
• Eugene Puryear, an ANSWER member, is a “founding member” of PSL and currently a host on left-wing and anti-Israel Breakthrough News. He was also PSL’s vice presidential candidate in the 2008 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Puryear previously hosted a program on Radio Sputnik called “By Any Means Necessary,” now co-hosted by PSL activist Sean Blackmon. Radio Sputnik was the radio and digital wing of Russia Today, a well-known English-language channel widely considered to be overt Russian propaganda and directly funded by the Russian government.
• Brian Becker, one of PSL’s founders, is currently the national director of ANSWER Coalition. He also has taught courses on Vladimir Lenin and the history of the Communist Manifesto, available to the general public, with The People’s Forum. He hosts “The Socialist Program” on Breakthrough News’ streaming platform and also hosted a program on former Russian propaganda outlet Radio Sputnik. He said in a 2007 interview as ANSWER’s national coordinator that their approach to organizing “is about radicalizing people. You hook into a movement that exists — in this case, the antiwar movement — and channel people who care about that movement and bring them into political life, the life of political activism.”
• Richard Becker was a founding member of PSL and is the Western Region coordinator for ANSWER.
• Ben Becker is a “central committee member” of PSL, a previous editor of PSL’s Liberation newspaper, and a previous organizer with the ANSWER Coalition.
• Breakthrough News writer and co-director of the 2025 documentary The Encampments, Kei Pritsker, a current PSL member, has also organized with the ANSWER Coalition.
• Saul Kanowitz, a PSL member and an ANSWER coalition organizer, held the lease to the San Francisco-based PSL Mission Liberation Center in 2023. Kanowitz also served as the chief financial officer of Liberation News, a separate for-profit corporation incorporated in California, according to 2024 business filings. The group’s listed address is the same as the Mission Liberation Center.
• Karina Garcia, PSL’s 2024 vice presidential candidate, is the spouse of fellow PSL leader Ben Becker, who is also the Breakthrough News Editor-in-Chief. Garcia was an ANSWER Coalition organizer.
• Gloria La Riva, a PSL co-founder and PSL’s 2020 presidential election candidate, is married to Richard Becker.  She was a longtime ANSWER Coalition leader and director of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee.
• Karla Reyes, Karina and Claudia’s 2024 presidential campaign manager and PSL central committee member, was also a member of ANSWER and is the chair and director of Breakthrough Media.
• Progress Unity Fund, the nonprofit that serves as the fiscal sponsor for ANSWER coalition, is currently run by Susan Muysenberg, Elizabeth Lowengard, and Claire Cook. Muysenberg is described as a “founding member” of PSL; Lowengard was a member and is described by the Beckers as a “special family friend,” and Cook is a PSL organizer. PUF spent $232,244 on the November 4, 2023, “National March on Washington: Free Palestine!”
• Progress Unity Fund also “supported” Breakthrough Media with a grant of $45,000 in 2023.

PSL and The People’s Forum Overlap in Activities and Funding 

PSL and The People’s Forum also share a close association. PSL has supported The People’s Forum’s organizing projects with the use of space and social networks, in addition to members, and the two groups coordinate and co-host events together. 

Founded in 2018, the New York City-based The People’s Forum characterizes its mission as being an “incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.”

The PSL-affiliated group is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that receives funding from various sources. In 2022 and 2021, for example, The People’s Forum received $21,539 from the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation and $8,350 from CodePink, a virulently anti-Zionist group, respectively. In 2018, The People’s Forum received $3,015,000 from the United Community Fund (UCF), a grantmaking body primarily associated with Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman who has been accused of having associations with the Chinese Communist Party.

UCF has given most of its grants to The People’s Forum and the left-wing research institute Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. The People’s Forum’s Manolo de los Santos is also a researcher at Tricontinental.

In the fiscal year ending 2022, The People’s Forum had revenue of $4,428,869, significantly more than 2021’s $486,926.

In 2023, the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) granted The People’s Forum $26,894. AFGJ is an Arizona-based organization that serves as a fiscal sponsor to several progressive and anti-Israel initiatives, including Samidoun, which is labeled as the international fundraiser of the U.S.-designated terror group the PFLP, and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

As far as organizational activity, The People’s Forum convenes numerous panels, protests, events, and other “educational” experiences, many of which are virulently anti-Israel.

At one such event, De Los Santos said: “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

Shared Spaces and Organizational Crossover

PSL, The People’s Forum, and the ANSWER Coalition also share spaces and collaborate closely on projects.

PSL chapters have several physical meeting spaces, referred to by the group as “Liberation Centers,” in many of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Phoenixville, Pennsylvania; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Martinsburg, West Virginia. These centers are mostly PSL volunteer-driven, though some have volunteers from other groups. For example, the Salt Lake Utah Liberation Center is staffed by volunteers from both PSL and ANSWER.

Another example of organizational crossover can be seen in PSL’s “Liberation Media.” Originally, PSL’s major publishing outfit, in 2023 it merged with the community bookstore 1804 Books under the auspices of The People’s Forum.

In addition, The People’s Forum leases property to Breakthrough Media, the non-profit organization behind BreakThrough News. This “media outlet” is spearheaded by Puryear, Ben Becker, and Rania Khalek, an apologist for the Assad regime who also promotes Uyghur genocide denialism, anti-Israel views, and pro-Russian propaganda. His prior media roles with Redfish and Soapbox were both found to be Russian intermediaries for disinformation by reputable journalists and the United States government. In 2022, the lease contract for BTN was worth over $315,000.

In 2025, BreakThrough News helped produce the new documentary, The Encampments, which purports to be about the 2024 campus encampments that erupted across the country.

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