I send my condolences to Halyard’s family and friends. I had the pleasure of meeting her and staying with her family while volunteering for the party. I remember her speeches and stances having a strong effect on bringing me over to Trotskyism.

When we lose leaders and their real story is lost as well, that is when workers and leaders can finally unite in having nothing left to lose. Without an honest Trotskyist leadership, we cannot carry forward her work or her name. Unfortunately, in the name of truth, I cannot say she gave her life in the service of revolutionary Marxism. She left behind an unfinished article hypocritically attacking the 1619 Project and BLM for having “affluent middle-class leaders” when the SEP and WSWS are themselves a privately owned corporation. The “leadership” should in fact be called an “ownership,” devoid of principles with regard to democratic control of the revolutionary organization. This much is known public information.

Furthermore, the anti-democratic position of the ICFI, against, for instance, Palestinian national liberation, and against all progressive nationalism contradicts the internationalism of Marxism, which extends the progress of nationhood for the oppressed internationally. (The #Democratic_Power_Faction supports Lenin and Trotsky in calling for a Black Nationalist Faction of the Fourth International and a referendum on national independence for oppressed black Americans.) Their odd repositioning only serves the narrow interests of chauvinist owners of the Fourth International within the imperialist countries by preventing the rise of a new international leadership.

Still, the mere presence of affluent, middle-class leaders or owners does not deny the cause its legitimacy. We see it as an inevitable feature of capitalist class division. Only a revolution of the masses of the working class can bring a revolutionary government to power, and only then when the middle class attempts to crush the revolution with its own “revolution,” will the workers eliminate the threat from the middle class. Until then, the revolution must follow the laws of bourgeois democracy and engage with the workers over ideas that can divide them from liberalism, fascism and all ruling class ideology. Among the most important of these ideas is that revolutionary leaders must accept revolutionary democratic ideas: instant recall, lotteries over appointments for bureaucratic positions, transparent finances, etc.

The #Democratic_Power_Faction urges the workers to preserve the memory of Helen Halyard by building the factional organization and contesting the existing leadership through the establishment of a Fourth International Congress outside the bureaucratic mechanism of the Nanobureaucracy and the private ownership.