We Are the Left

[Content Note: Harassment; threats; marginalization]

"An Open Letter on Identity Politics, to and from the Left." I am one of the signatories on this letter, and I strongly encourage you to read and share it.

This is a key passage:

This statement is not being put together by people who unilaterally agree with each other. Some of us have criticized each other in the past — thoroughly. Though the recent incidents seem to have corresponded to the Democratic primary, the people actually harmed include enthusiastic supporters of Senator Sanders, Secretary Clinton, and possibly even Jill Stein. We disagree on tactics. We disagree on issues. Some are socialist, some are not. Some call themselves "progressives," some "leftists," some simply "liberal." Each of us has a slightly different idea of what an ideal "progressive" agenda would look like in practice; each of us has developed our own priorities and threshold for compromise in the name of that agenda; each of us has disagreed with other progressives on these things.

What we do not do, however, is send each other sexually explicit or violent images, inveigh against each other with slurs, make claims about each other that we know to be untrue and inflammatory, respond to any discussion of oppression with personal insults, follow each other around the Internet leaving nasty comments on each other's pieces, set up fake social media accounts to harass each other, monitor each other's communications, coordinate pile-ons, send explicit or implicit threats, dox, defame, discredit, or degrade each other.

Abuse isn't disagreement.