Liberation Road

Liberation Road is a Marxist organization[4] in the United States. First founded with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in 1985,[5] the two split in 1999 to form two separate organizations using the same name. By no later than 2006, the group had officially changed its name to "FRSO/OSCL," combining the acronym in English with the acronym of their Spanish moniker. In 2019, the group adopted a completely new name, Liberation Road.

The group adopted a "left refoundationist" strategy after the 1999 split as a response to the "crisis of socialism" after the fall of the Soviet Union. It called for "a new type of political party" to unite with advanced sections of the masses, stressing collaboration across the left.[6] According to Liberation Road, "[r]efoundation calls for those who already believe in socialism to reach out and engage others active in diverse social movements of working and oppressed people."[7]

In their strategy to refound the left on a new political basis, distinct from the Marxism–Leninism of its past, the group seeks to build against what they have dubbed the "New Confederacy." The New Confederacy is seen as the united front of forces advocating for "white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and austerity" to galvanize the white working class to backwards politics. The group views the Republican Party as the primary political instrument of the New Confederacy.[8]

Liberation Road has been identified as the "parent organization" of the Black Lives Matter movement,[9] and is reputed to have close ties to the Chinese Consulate-General in San Francisco. The head of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, is also head of Black Futures Lab, a project fiscally sponsored by the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA).[10]. The CPA grew out of radical-left and pro-People’s Republic of China (Maoist) cadres and has received favorable coverage in the Chinese Communist Party-owned daily newspaper, China Daily.[11]