The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a Marxist–Leninist organization in the United States. It formed in 1985 amid the collapse of the Maoist-oriented New Communist movement that emerged in the 1970s. The FRSO's component groups generally identified ultraleftism as the U.S. New Communist movement's main error. Merging under the FRSO banner, some of these groups hoped to consolidate the movement's remnants in a single organization and move beyond the sectarianism that marked the previous decade. The FRSO was founded out of a merger between the Proletarian Unity League and the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters in 1985. It then fused with the Organization for Revolutionary Unity in 1986. It later absorbed other groups, including the Amílcar Cabral-Paul Robeson Collective in 1988 and the Socialist Organizing Network in 1994. Ideology The FRSO considers Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong the principal theorists of Marxism–Leninism. It recognizes Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and China as socialist countries. It also maintains close relations with the Workers Party of Belgium (WPB), participating annually in the WPB's International Communist Seminar. It was one of two U.S.-based groups to attend in 2006, along with the Workers World Party. It vocally supports the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Its continued solidarity with the national liberation movements in Colombia, the Philippines and Palestine in particular remain a defining feature of the organization since the 1999 split. One of the FRSO's most distinguishing characteristics on the U.S. socialist left is its approach to the national question. Drawing from the line of the CPUSA from 1928 to 1958, the FRSO considers African Americans in the Black Belt South an oppressed nation. Additionally, it views Chicanos in the Southwest and Hawaii as oppressed nations within the borders of the United States. FRSO supports independence for Puerto Rico, as well as the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Palau, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The organization opposes U.S. intervention in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Political work in the 1980s In the 1980s, members of the FRSO and its predecessor organizations worked to build the Rainbow Coalition, and supported Jesse Jackson for president in 1984 and 1988. They also worked on Harold Washington's successful campaigns for mayor of Chicago in 1983 and 1987. In the 1980s, the FRSO also played an important role in the U.S. student movement,