Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)

The Party was formed by activists who left the Workers World Party (WWP), and it retained the WWP’s Marxist-Leninist orientation. Its published program contends that capitalism could not be voted out of power and that only a revolution could end capitalist rule. The PSL nevertheless fielded a presidential ticket in election cycles beginning in 2008, and its 2024 nominee, Claudia De La Cruz, received 166,175 votes, or 0.11 percent of the national total. ^{1  2  3}

PSL drew sustained federal and congressional attention beginning in 2025, after a man who had allegedly previously been associated with a PSL branch was charged with shooting and killing two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. In reporting on the network of organizations financed by Neville Roy Singham, an American technology businessman based in Shanghai, the PSL was identified as the entity at the center of that network. ^{4  5}

Background and History

The Party for Socialism and Liberation was established in 2004, when Brian Becker, his brother Richard Becker, and others separated from the Workers World Party, whose Marxist-Leninist orientation the new party retained. The Workers World Party had itself broken from the Socialist Workers Party in 1959 over the Soviet Union’s 1956 invasion of Hungary, which its leader Sam Marcy backed on the grounds that the Hungarian uprising served imperialism. ²

The Party’s San Francisco, California, office has operated for years out of the “Mission Liberation Center,” a storefront on Mission Street. The party has organized itself into branches and claimed to operate in dozens of cities. According to claims by a member of the Marxist Unity Group of the Democratic Socialists of America quoted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2024, prospective members of PSL are subject to “months-long training and vetting process for entry alongside standards of revolutionary discipline,” which the member called the “democratic centralist cadre model.” ^{6  2}

After its formation, the group organized socialist and anti-imperialist protests and produced literature and media. The party also ran a presidential candidate in election cycles beginning in 2008. However, in the wake of increased scrutiny of the group and its leaders’ ties to organizing mass protests and allegations of engaging in domestic terrorism, the group came under multiple federal investigations, which drew increased public attention in 2025 and 2026. ^{2  7  8}

Federal and Congressional Scrutiny

At a George Washington University Program on Extremism conference in February 2026, Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, said that the Department of Justice intended to shut down groups it accused of antisemitic conduct, along with those funding and supporting them. She named the Party for Socialism and Liberation and American Muslims for Palestine as groups engaged in what she called “acts of domestic terrorism,” adding that many had also obstructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. ⁹

On June 11, 2025, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, opened an inquiry into the financing of demonstrations against federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, California, sending letters to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, and Union del Barrio. Sen. Hawley wrote that funding civil unrest amounted to aiding and abetting criminal conduct rather than protected speech. ⁸

On July 24th, 2026, the House Ways and Means Committee announced that its chairman, U.S. Representative Jason Smith (R-MO), had issued subpoenas to BreakThrough News and the People’s Forum, two organizations with overlap with PSL in personnel, and the radical-left think tank Tricontinental Institute for Social Research after the organizations declined to produce documents requested since 2025. Rep. Smith said reporting had traced hundreds of millions of dollars from Neville Roy Singham through shell companies and donor-advised funds. ^{10  2}

On May 21, 2025, Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The Network Contagion Research Institute reported the next day that Rodriguez had prior affiliations with the PSL and the ANSWER Coalition, and that his online and protest activity echoed slogans both groups promoted. PSL rejected any association with the shooting, saying that Rodriguez was not a member and that his connection to a single branch had ended in 2017. ^{4  11}

Ties to the Singham Network

In June 2026, City Journal (published by the Manhattan Institute) reported public statements by James “Fergie” Chambers, a Cox Media heir and financier of radical-left organizing, in which he said that after reviewing an organizational chart drawn by figures in the network funded by Neville Roy Singham, he concluded every project in it was designed to build the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Chambers also claimed that PSL leadership had sought to control and isolate Palestine Action US, an anti-Israel direct-action group he had helped fund. ⁵

The Anti-Defamation League reported that the PSL, the ANSWER Coalition, and the People’s Forum overlapped in leadership, membership, and paid staff. According to the ADL, PSL organizer Sanika Mahajan said the party maintained mass organizations, including Artists Against Apartheid, the PSL’s Liberation Centers, and the People’s Forum that were led primarily by party members even where public-facing ties were not explicit. The ADL reported that the Progress Unity Fund, fiscal sponsor of the ANSWER Coalition, was run by Susan Muysenberg, Elizabeth Lowengard, and Claire Cook, all identified as PSL members or organizers. The Network Contagion Research Institute reported that the fund had financial and personnel ties to Singham. ^{2  4}

Advocacy

The Party for Socialism and Liberation adopted its program at its first Party Congress in February 2010 and amended it through 2022. The platform held that the United States operated as a dictatorship of the capitalist class behind a democratic facade and that only a revolution could end capitalist rule. It called for the government to be abolished and replaced by a workers’ government merging legislative and executive powers, with all officials subject to recall and paid an average worker’s salary. ¹

The program called for the standing army and police to be disbanded in favor of armed workers’ defense councils and for all foreign military bases to close. It called for the seizure of banks, industry, agribusiness, and mines without compensation to their owners and for employing labor for private profit to be prohibited. It further sought an end to all oil, gas, and nuclear energy use in favor of weather-dependent sources, reparations for Black Americans, and Puerto Rican independence. ¹

Activities

The Party for Socialism and Liberation operates several media properties, including its newspaper Liberation News, which also processed donations. It also runs Liberation School, an online political education site; Breaking the Chains, a magazine; and PSL Books, an online store. The Anti-Defamation League reported that in 2023, PSL’s publishing arm, Liberation Media, merged with the 1804 Books bookstore operated by People’s Forum. ^{5  12  2 13}

City Journal reported that the PSL had established more than a dozen facilities called Liberation Centers, which serve as hubs for protest coordination, political education, and cadre development. The ADL identified such centers in San Francisco, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Salt Lake City, Utah, some of which were staffed jointly by PSL and ANSWER Coalition volunteers. PSL maintains college affiliate, Students for Socialism, with chapters, including at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and previously the University of Georgia until it was suspended in December 2024. It has worked with Shut It Down for Palestine, which maintained a calendar of anti-Israel actions. ^{5  2}

Anti-Israel Activities

The ADL reported that in the 18 months following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023, the Party for Socialism and Liberation sponsored or co-sponsored more than 1,700 anti-Israel rallies across the United States. In a statement issued on October 7, the Party characterized the attacks as a counter-offensive and described the actions of the Palestinian armed factions as a legitimate response to occupation. ²

At a PSL protest in New York City on October 8, 2023, PSL co-founder Eugene Puryear called the Nova music festival, where the ADL reported terrorists killed 364 people, a desert party where attendees were enjoying themselves “until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.” The ADL further documented attendees at PSL protests displaying flags and materials bearing the logos of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At an August 2024 Seattle, Washington, rally the PSL organized with the ANSWER Coalition and Samidoun, a speaker declared, “Long live October 7th.” ²

Protest Organizing

Earlier PSL organizing centered on demonstrations against police. On July 3, 2020, roughly 600 protesters led by Denver, Colorado, chapter organizers Lillian House, Joel Northam, and Eliza Lucero surrounded the Aurora Police Department’s District 1 headquarters for seven hours over the death of Elijah McClain in police custody. Some participants were arrested that September and charged with inciting a riot, blocking highways, and attempted kidnapping of police officers. On March 25, 2021, an Adams County judge dismissed the kidnapping counts, finding officers had sequestered themselves inside the station on their commanders’ orders rather than because of protester force. The remaining charges were dropped later in 2021. ^{14  15}

In January 2026, the Party for Socialism and Liberation helped organize a nationwide day of demonstrations against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), promoted as a “National Shutdown,” which urged participants to abstain from work, school, and shopping. Fox News Digital reporters observed PSL organizers in Washington, D.C., unloading dozens of pre-printed yellow signs from a vehicle in an alley shortly before the demonstration began. Other left-wing organizations promoting the action included the People’s Forum, Code Pink, BreakThrough News, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Hundreds of Austin, Texas, public-school students walked out of class on January 30, 2026, prompting Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) to announce a state investigation of the Austin Independent School District. ^{16  17}

Electoral Activity

The Party for Socialism and Liberation nominated Claudia De La Cruz for president and Karina Garcia for vice president in 2024. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records showed the Claudia De La Cruz for President committee reported total receipts and disbursements of $387,646.26 between July 1, 2023, and December 31, 2024. De La Cruz received 166,175 votes nationwide, or 0.11 percent of the total cast, appearing on state ballots under labels including “Party for Socialism and Liberation,” “Peace and Freedom,” and “Workers Party.” ^{3  18}

As of 2026, PSL has run a presidential ticket in every cycle beginning in 2008. Gloria La Riva was the nominee in 2020, and Eugene Puryear was the vice-presidential candidate in 2008 and 2016. The ADL identified La Riva as a PSL co-founder, the wife of founding member Richard Becker, and a longtime ANSWER Coalition leader. ²

Leadership

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is governed through a central committee, whose members the Anti-Defamation League in 2026 identified as including Ben Becker and Karla Reyes. Co-founder Brian Becker is national director of the ANSWER Coalition, taught courses on Vladimir Lenin through the People’s Forum, and hosts a program on BreakThrough News. ²

Richard Becker, also a founding member of PSL, was the ANSWER Coalition’s Western Region coordinator. Ben Becker, a central committee member and former editor of the party’s newspaper, is editor-in-chief of BreakThrough News. Eugene Puryear, a founding member of PSL and two-time PSL vice-presidential nominee, hosts programming on BreakThrough News and previously on Radio Sputnik, which the ADL described as the radio and digital wing of Russian state broadcaster RT. ²

Karla Reyes managed the 2024 De La Cruz and Garcia presidential campaign and as of 2024, was chair and director of the entity behind BreakThrough News. Saul Kanowitz, a PSL member and ANSWER organizer, held the lease on the Mission Liberation Center in 2023 and, according to 2024 California business filings cited by the ADL, was chief financial officer of Liberation News, a separately incorporated for-profit company at the same address. ²