https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/01/18/18883077.php#18883102
Restating what was written in “The work”:
Workshops4Gaza mostly runs paid Zoom classes & sells books, with some of the money going to charity efforts in Gaza. They've recently started doing call-in campaigns for political prisoners. Beyond that, there's a lot of clout chasing behavior on Twitter/X.
Recently they've spent a lot of energy online defending the iranian government, which is carrying out massacres to repress an anti-colonial uprising. This shouldn't be a surprise, because their response to Casey Goonan's statement already revealed how they are deceptive & dishonest in favor of their preferred version of oppression.
Both the online & offline left are full of people like this. If more people living under colonial capitalism considered just how much we're affected by these hierarchies, maybe we would be better able to defend ourselves against groups like Workshops4Gaza.
W4G defends oppressive actions because they believe the entity being criticized (like themselves, or iran) does “good work.” There is a long history of activist oppression being defended on terms like this, & more of us should learn to recognize & resist it when it's happening.
W4G's “good work” is actually standard liberal activism with “anti-imperialist” branding. Plus, they collect a lot of information on people who participate in that work when it is entirely unnecessary to do so. They are putting information in a form that makes it easier for enemies to exploit. It's not radical & it's not revolutionary, even if some of it helps some people.
[Note, not in original comment: Indybay took down Casey's statement after a couple weeks in response to demands to do so, presumably from W4G & their supporters. Indybay has a longer record of political censorship of left/radical content as well.]
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