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Clean Breakers of the DSA, Unite! · Gimme a Break!

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Look in your heart.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: See, we need a clean break up in the DSC.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or they can spoil the lot.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can bury the fakes.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we need a clean break in the DSC.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can split it apart.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: That old limousine.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need a break with the films in the DSA.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you want a revolutionary DSA.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, Lee Tall, here with my co-host Edward.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_05: Hello.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_05: And the song you heard at the beginning is by Jeremy, a friend of the JBA, and it's kind of our theme song whenever we have an episode focused on the issue of a clean break from the Democratic Party in the SA.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_05: And this episode is about the launch of the United Front for a Clean Break, which was initiated by JBA, Labor Militant, and International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_05: We had our first launch meeting last Sunday.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_05: So for this episode, we're going to first play the recording of the three panelists: myself for JBA, Stephen for ISAR, and for Labor Militant.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: Just to note, the recording started a little late and it's missing the part where I'm introducing myself and the work of the JBA before the recording started.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: After the panel, we're going to chat with Stephen and about how the event went and what are our next steps.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_05: So here's the panel enjoy.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: Workday, which had a lot of support from the branches, but which the New York City DSA leadership squashed in order to protect Mamdani.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_05: We've also been involved in the fight to defend public housing against Mamdani's privatization.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_05: In Chicago, we've put forward resolutions calling on DSA to stand with Iran against the war machine and mobilize workers against the US imperialist onslaught in the Middle East.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: On the West Coast, in LA, we've been fighting against the shameful endorsements of both Zionist Nithya Rahman and trader AOC, and nationally supporting independent socialist candidates from Brittany in Rhode Island to PSL candidates and other working class candidates in California, Chicago, and New York.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_05: And we help fight for the DSA to endorse SHAMA SOAT in Seattle and against the very spiteful sectarian haters on the left that argued against supporting SHAMA because she hurt their feelings by being too hard on progressive Dems and the DSA.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_05: So we're very excited to be part of launching the United Front for a clean break, as this is really what has been very necessary for a while, but especially now in this moment, as the Democratic Party foxes, as Malcolm X accurately described them, are pulling the wool over our eyes again.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: And as the DSA leadership is rehabilitating this very discredited Democratic Party of genocide.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, Mamdani's win as New York City mayor was really seen as the model for DSA electoralism.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: And Mamdani promised a lot, like arresting Netanyahu.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_05: That was obviously a lie.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_05: And his cops have actually ramped up stop and frisk, not reduced it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: And public transportation is as hellish as ever in New York City.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_05: Not only are the buses not free, but working people are being thrown under them.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_05: And so there are still massive illusions in Mamdani for sure.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_05: But as the economic situation worsens, the ruling class is going to transfer the burden of saving capitalism on to the backs of working people.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_05: And Mamdani is going to be the one to plunge the knife in.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_05: And the ensuing disappointment and anger is certainly going to cause a crisis in DSA.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_05: And already there's a lot of anger out there at the growing imperialist crimes, which, while under Trump, were paved by the Dems and which, you know, they have fundamental agreement on from the war in Iran to the strangulation of Cuba, to the repression against the left here, and the worsening conditions, inflation, jobs, housing, healthcare, you name it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_05: Everyone knows the Democrats won't save us.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: But in the absence of a genuine working class socialist alternative, that vacuum will be filled.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_05: And for many, it's it's being filled by the right.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_05: So the DSA says it's socialist, but it can't be both socialist and tied to the imperialist Democratic Party.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: And in order to cover up this basic truth, the DSA right finds all kinds of ways to trick us into believing that these two things are compatible.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_05: But mostly it's the same old lesser evilism.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's, you know, like dums or fascism arguments that really lead us to the same dead end that we're we find ourselves in now, where the left is smaller and more fragmented than ever.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_05: And DSA's ties to the hated Democrats also drives working people away from socialism.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_05: And the betrayals of their electeds in office dirty the name of socialism itself.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_05: So if socialism means throwing black and brown New Yorkers out of their homes, breaking rail strikes, why wouldn't workers reject that?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's fundamentally impossible to win working people to socialism with representatives of one of Wall Street's parties.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_05: Because at the end of the day, whatever pretense they put up to socialism, it always gets sacrificed on the altar of what's best for the ruling class party that they represent in reality.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_05: So enter AOC.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_05: We think it's a question of basic decency and solidarity with the workers and oppressed of the world to fight like hell against any support to the Zionist, strike-breaking liberal liar.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: This should really be ABC.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: The DSA right claps back at us that we're allergic to power.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_05: No, we are allergic to hypocritical lying Democrats.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_05: And as socialists, we need to expose these liars and betrayers, not cover up their crimes and sell them to working people as the quote, best we've got.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_05: As a young Lords veteran activist, Tito put it at the housing rally I was recently at.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_05: He said this about Mamdani, but it applies to AOC too.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_05: They're not one of us.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_05: But what is the DSA Marxist left doing?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_05: They talk a good game about abolishing this and that prisons, abolish prisons, abolish police, abolish the Senate, but they can't even support a resolution against support to AOC.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_05: Instead, they emphasize procedure like Marxist Unity Group, another caucus.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_05: They put forward resolutions that avoid the question at hand.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_05: Should socialists support AOC?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's not complicated.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's really a question of socialist principle and trying to save socialism from being further dragged through the mud.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_05: So the question posed to the left is what side are you on as the crisis for US imperialism deepens?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: If the point is to organize and strengthen the working class to struggle and defend itself in its own name and as its own force against the oligarchy, or do you organize people behind a nicer looking, smoother sounding version of the same old thing and just lead to defeat once again, as we've already seen with Bernie.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_05: So of course we can't let that happen.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why we help form this United Front.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_05: Despite whatever differences we have, we all agree that the primary task is to split the DSA on class lines so that a powerful socialist movement can be forged in the belly of the beast.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_05: So that's that's our pitch for this meeting.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Ethal.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh next up, we're gonna have uh Steven uh from the ISAR.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I also just wanted to note uh that we are recording the first portion of this meeting.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and apologies, I started that a little bit late, uh, but we're uh recording the first portion of this meeting.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're gonna turn off that recording for the main discussion, uh, just so everyone uh uh knows uh that.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so Stephen, go ahead.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, thanks.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh good to see everybody.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, can you hear me okay?
• 8:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 8:45
  unknown: Okay, cool.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um so yeah, I'm really glad to be here.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um glad to see you all.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: And I think for me, I I don't know, I look at AOC and I just think uh we have to do better than this.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I mean, like right now, if you look at um the approval rating for Democrats in the House of Representatives, um, it's like 20% with something like 70% disapproving.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: And this is not just because all Americans are like right-wing zealots or something like that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you look at the polls, people, you know, they want to tax the rich, they want universal health care.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they largely oppose the forever wars and the saber rattling against China and stuff like this.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, they're they're fed up with the status quo.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: And they might have uh a lot of confused or contradictory ideas about what to do about that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_04: But I think, you know, there is an opening to build a real opposition to the Democratic Party.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: And uh AOC is just not doing that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if you look at what she's doing, um, you know, she she supports um, you know, the Democratic leadership's guy, uh Hakeem Jeffries, to be House Speaker again.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: And this is the person who you know opposes Medicare for all.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: He supports the U.S.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: war machine.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, he's done everything he can to continue the flow of arms to Israel.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_04: He denies that there was even a genocide in Gaza.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, he's also a millionaire, like most members of Congress.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, he represents the status quo that uh Americans rightly despise.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but AOC supports him.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_04: You know, she supports the status quo uh in this way and in a million other ways.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, to me, this is just such a lost, you know, a missed opportunity and a thing that's really um, frankly, you know, it's it's dirtying our name as socialists.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: You know, when you have someone who's who goes up, gets elected, makes this big show of being a socialist, but then just supports the status quo and falls in line behind um, you know, the imperialists and the capitalists that lead the Democratic Party.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I think we really need to fight against this.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: And um, you know, so that's why I feel very strongly that we need to uh, you know, stop supporting Democrats like AOC and, you know, just also just any other Democrats, because it's just counterproductive for us as socialists to campaign for these people.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so I think that's the fundamental issue.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: But also, I mean, more specifically, I think it's important to build a united front like this, um, because we really need to break out of this cycle of building these hopes in the Democratic Party.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, seeing those hopes dashed and seeing everything, you know, that we built come crashing down.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so as an example, I mean, back when I back in 2020, I was very active in DSA.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I was one of the people who campaigned for Bernie and supported the endorsement.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but of course, um, Bernie ended up um endorsing Biden and saying Biden was going to be the best the best president um since FDR.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and most of DSA's, I think probably all of DSA's other prominent people also uh supported Biden and fell in line behind him like that and cheerleaded or were cheerleaders for his administration, which in effect put DSA, you know, the biggest socialist organization in the country, in coalition with Biden.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it made us part of his camp, part of his side, um, which was a huge problem because once he was in office, he presided over a huge uh redistribution of wealth to the richest 0.1%.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_04: There was the vicious crackdown against the Palestine solidarity movement.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there was the huge increase in fossil fuel production while he was in office.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he did the opposite of everything that we as socialists were supposed to be standing for, but we fell in line behind him because even if DSA didn't endorse him, our politicians did.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: You know, the people who we made the public face of our organization, they fell in line behind Biden.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so, in effect, that made us part of his coalition.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_04: And this was hugely, you know, counterproductive and demoralizing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: And um, so while Biden was in office, DSA lost 20,000 members.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, it was a real, it was, it was a really depressing thing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: And to me, one of the most frustrating things was that, you know, a lot of the people I knew in DSA who saw why this was a problem and wanted to do something about it, didn't have a pull that they could rally around.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, they didn't have a clear alternative.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and instead, those people, you know, disengaged, uh, often not just disnotage from DSA, but they disengaged from politics altogether.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so those people who learned from these experiences just became scattered to the winds.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: And now we're sort of back to square one.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: Now we're in another cycle of this, and we need to break out of that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think, you know, building a serious left pole in DSA is a really urgent thing because um, you know, some people are already uh seeing the problems with Mamdani and AOC, but other people will, as time goes on, see the problems too.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, we need a way to cohere these people together so that we can build the foundations for something better.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I think this project's really important and I'm really excited about it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and uh yeah, curious what other people think.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I'll stop there for now.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Stephen.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and uh uh I'll speak uh on behalf of Labor Militant, uh, which uh is the third organization that helped to launch this uh United Front effort.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're a small group uh of Marxists uh in Seattle, DSA.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh I wanted to start with uh Andy, I'm gonna mute you.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: There we go.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh as much as I love to hear the kids.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh right, so we are uh in the midst of a massive crisis for capitalism and for US imperialism.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and this is being reflected in uh the genocide in Gaza, in US imperialism and Israeli imperialism lashing out around the world in order to preserve their power.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we see this with the war on Iran, uh, with the attacks on Venezuela and Cuba, uh, and also on the attacks on the left uh in the United States, uh, with the charges against uh the Minneapolis 15 uh for protesting uh ICE in Minneapolis, the Spokane III, the Prairie Land uh defendants, uh, and you know, many others.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, at the same time as these attacks are coming, there is record opposition to the Israeli state, uh, a record uh level of consciousness about what's happening in Gaza and in Palestine with the occupation uh and the genocide.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's record opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties uh and uh historic understanding about the role uh that these parties play.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and DSA's growth is a reflection of that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: We have now an organization of uh more than a, I think now more than 130,000 members nationally.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this is now uh the largest self-described socialist organization in US history.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the Socialist Party of America at its peak, I think had something like 117,000 members.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and the question is, and the question that we pose in the launch statement of the United Front for a Clean Break in DSA is what are we doing with that?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: What are we doing with those 130,000 members?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and have we taken actual steps towards a working class party?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, have we taken real steps in building the power of the socialist movement?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the recent events in New York City are yet another uh example uh and another uh proof that we have not.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: That uh Zoran Mamdani, that DSA uh elected as an openly socialist mayor of New York, uh, not only didn't do anything to stop Netanyahu, uh who uh is, I mean, the biggest war criminal of uh the modern era, did nothing to stop Netanyahu from coming to visit New York City for the United Nation.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and not only that, he did nothing in the face of the NYPD arresting anti-genocide protesters who were uh there to protest Netanyahu's visit.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: What a working class representative would have done is mobilize masses of people to stop Netanyahu from coming in the first place, mobilize masses of people to fight against the NYPD's uh repression uh and uh to expose what was happening uh in New York City uh uh and in Gaza.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so we we have to ask ourselves this question and ask ourselves how can we actually take steps uh to build the power of the socialist movement, uh to elect actual working class representatives, uh, and to challenge the power of these two capitalist parties.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's also worth talking about what role do Mamdani and AOC play uh in propping up the Democratic Party.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: After 2024, after uh Biden was exposed through the course of the protests against the genocide, the breaking of the railroad strike, everything that happened under his administration that AOC was uh was right lockstep with him uh in, uh uh he was exposed.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: And following uh Kamala Harris's defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party was on life support.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: They were historically exposed for the role that they played in the genocide and the attacks on the workers' movement.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And what happens is that Mamdani and AOC come in to save the day for the Democratic Party.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: They prop up the image of the Democratic Party uh by presenting themselves as people who have some hope of reforming this capitalist genocidal party.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then they go and endorse politicians like Hakeem Jefferies, like Kathy Hokel, uh, and they are feeding this energy of the socialist movement back into the Democratic Party.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and we right now have this uh this splintering, this fracturing on the left, uh, where the left is split into a hundred different organizations uh that uh that don't have serious united fronts.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And it's because of uh, you know, we have to confront the sectarianism on the left, but it's also because of the opportunism of the DSA leadership of chaining the socialist movement to the Democratic Party.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: And the working class and the socialist movement can never be united under the leadership of the Democratic Party or under a strategy that drives people into the Democratic Party because it's a capitalist party, it's an imperialist party.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: We can't have a party that uh that includes both Jeff Bezos and Amazon workers and Howard Schultz and Starbucks workers, the people who are busting unions and the people who are trying to organize unions.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: You cannot have those two things in the same uh organization.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that is what DSA is trying to do.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh, and so we have to break that connection and unite uh the left and unite the workers' movement around an independent working class strategy.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to talk about the uh the dynamics within DSA between the DSA left and the DSA right.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is important to what we're doing here, which is that the DSA right maintains its power and its dominance inside of the DSA by keeping the left docile and uh by keeping the left more afraid of breaking with the right than with standing up uh to the Democratic Party and actually pursuing an independent line.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so what happens is that the left makes apologies for the right, or they say, oh, well, we can't, you know, yes, we agree that we shouldn't endorse AOC.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we agree that we should keep Mamdani accountable, but we just can't do anything because we have to maintain unity with the right wing of DSA that's keeping us uh chained to the Democratic Party.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh and so they'll say we need to hold Mamdani accountable, but what are we actually doing to make that happen?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh we need to wage a fight, uh, an open fight against the opportunist leadership of DSA that's making apologies for Mamdani, that's making apologies for DSA.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why we launched this.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I just wanted to close with reading out the uh the core uh points of unity that we launched on the basis of uh, which is dump the Democrats, that we need full independence from the Democratic Party, which means no endorsements of Democrats, no caucusing with Democrats, uh, that we need uh uh full independence of them, uh, that we need to elect independent socialist candidates, uh, and we should support an independent socialist in 2028 uh for president, uh, that we should expel these DSA Democrats, whether it's AOC or Mamdani or anyone who's still attached to the Democratic Party, they should be expelled from DSA.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: If they hold an official position within the Democratic Party, uh, they should not be part of a socialist organization.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh and finally, that we need to build a workers' party uh uh, you know, independent of these two capitalist parties, uh, that, yes, runs independent socialists, but also organizes our class as a class, uh, you know, organizes workplace workplace actions, organizes social and class struggle.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that is the kind of party that we need.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and we have uh taken some small steps forward in Seattle to bring together a militant wing of DSA to fight for these ideas inside of DSA.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh United Front for a Clean Break members were the decisive vote uh in removing a Democratic elected official from the SIOC, which is the Socialist in Office Committee, which is tasked with holding elected leaders accountable.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: And we removed a Democratic Party official from that body, and we were the decisive votes in doing that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: We just passed a Resolution uh fighting against the budget cuts, uh the attacks on housing and other things that are being carried out by a uh a supposedly socialist mayor in Seattle.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so we need to bring together a revolutionary wing of DSA and take steps towards a revolutionary working class party.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I think this is a step towards doing that.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll uh finish.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so now we're back.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um I wanted to start this portion of the episode by reading the points of unity, which Emma had also motivated at the end of her remarks.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_05: So the points of unity are dump the democrats, elect independent socialists, expel DSA Democrats, and build a workers' party.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I think there was useful discussion at the event about all these points of unity.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_05: So just to kick off the dump the Democrats point, somebody at the meeting mentioned that we need to divest from the Democrats, which I hadn't actually really heard that before.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_05: But it reminded me there was this uproar about Eric Blanc.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_05: He's in DSA in the Bread and Roses caucus.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_05: That is a centrist caucus, but they have a, I think, a pretty strong right wing to their caucus, and Eric Blanc is definitely in that wing.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_05: He wrote an op-ed in the New York Times recently called Young Democrats Are Putting the Party Back in Politics.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's working.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_05: He's basically talking about how a blue wave is youth wave is possible, that the party needs to dust off an old political tool called collective fun, that he's not talking about the vibes-based joy from Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, but an like a populist joy that older political machines used to build power.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_05: And then he cites that Michelle Wu and Zaron Mamdani are reviving it.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_05: But then he goes into Kamala Harris's pumping pop music in her rallies, and she called herself a quote, joyful warrior.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_05: And he says that her message landed because even Hent had shared her viral coconut tree meme at one point.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_05: But he's critical that the problem with her joy was it was from above.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_05: So Democrats really have to make shared fun a means of challenging corporate power and an end worth fighting for.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_05: So this piece was pretty bad.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_05: And its main criticism of the Democrats and Kamala's joy message was that it was broadcast from above, not below.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Where's joy and genocide?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_05: There's no pretense here in this article.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_05: Why would a person who's just a Democrat belong in a socialist organization?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's pretty basic.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_05: And so there was an outcry, but it wasn't because he was promoting the Democrats, but because his op-ed was in the New York Times and we're supposed to boycott the Times for their coverage of the genocide.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_05: So then it made me think kind of the obvious.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_05: Why would you just boycott and divest from the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party wing of the ruling class?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_05: Why not divest and boycott the entire Democratic Party, i.e., the actual enablers and perpetrators of genocide?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_05: That was kind of some of the discussion that I was seeing in my DSA chats over Eric Blanc's article.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_05: There was some discussion in the meeting about like divesting from the Democrats and how do we do that?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll jump in.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, this is M.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Smith from Labor Militant.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really happy to be back on the show.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know where to start with this.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, the idea that Kamala Harris's message of joy resonated with people.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about somebody who lost to one of the most unpopular politicians in modern history.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: These uh people, especially on the DSA right, but also on the DSA so-called left, are so embedded in the Democratic Party, they can't see straight and they can't even make sense of like what actually resonates with working class people and what's needed.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing that people are craving and wanting is not more joy in politics.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's for someone to actually stand up to the bullshit, fight back against the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what got Trump elected in the first place, is that he was promising to drain the swamp.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's what attracted working class people to him.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's what attracted working class people to Bernie Sanders.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously both of those routes are dead ends, but that is what people want, not this idea of whatever the hell he says, collective joy or whatever.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_05: What he was talking about was soccer leagues and running clubs, and that's great.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_05: But the reality is that most working people in this country cannot participate in those joyous activities because they work two jobs.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: They're really ground down, and people want an alternative to the status quo, which means that you have no joy.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_05: No one has joy right now.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's very rough and difficult for a lot of people.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, the whole basis for that kind of organization is working class organization, whether it's a soccer club or whatever.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, that's not a substitute for actual politics, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: For actually fighting for things that working class people need.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: But DSA's whole effort to chain itself to the Democratic Party prevents the kind of mass organization from developing that could actually create anything like what he's talking about.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: So on both counts, it's a total fantasy.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: Connecting the point on Eric Blanc's nonsense.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think what attracted people to this call that we had around the United Front for a clean break was not these fake solutions of we need more soccer leagues to build collective joy and camaraderie or whatever, but actually talking about the politics that's needed, talking about a break from the Democratic Party and fighting for that in a serious way and getting organized to fight for that.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is the fundamental basis on which people were attracted to this call, is people are fed up with the bullshit in the Democratic Party and people want to get organized to build a way out.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_04: People in the right wing of DSA, like Eric Blanc, use this rhetorical tactic where they basically say, we're not gonna burden working class people with these kind of difficult and depressing conversations about real political issues.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_04: And instead, we're just gonna have fun.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_04: Or the the kind of really difficult question of how we build an alternative to the Democratic Party, because that is a hard question.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_04: But it's not like it's gonna be easy to build a workers' party.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_04: And so I think what you get is this this attitude that says, well, let's just put that aside and let's just do things that will be fun and let's have have little parties and let's rent soccer fields and do little celebrations.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_04: The issue is that the ruling class has enormous resources at their disposal.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: So if it's a question of who can rent the most soccer fields or who can throw the biggest street parties or parades, we're not gonna win that unless we actually have a program that can galvanize working people to our side.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: And I think we're not gonna get to that point unless we have these hard political conversations.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's exactly the kind of thing that people in the right wing of DSA want to avoid, but we need to do that in order to really build an alternative to the ruling class, build political opposition that can win and point a way out of the kind of hellscape that we're living in today.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_05: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think wasn't it his caucus, the Bread and Roses caucus, that weighed the NPC.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_05: They had a recent vote that they were gonna decide.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_05: A decision to whether to or not to endorse AOC.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_05: There was a debate about it, whether it would be done through email, whether it'd be done on branch in the chapters.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: And then they decided that the leadership, the NPC, was going to do the actual vote.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_05: Bread and Roses that kind of put them over in that direction, correct?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I believe that is right.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_05: So I mean, I guess there's maybe some more centrist talking reps of bread and roses, but I just I was kind of floored by how there was like zero pretense in this article about anything socialist, really.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_05: It was just purely how do we get the Dems in the uh midterms, basically.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and this is I mean, this is the whole trajectory of all of these caucuses.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um Bread and Roses historically was considered a kind of center caucus in DSA.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and Eric Blanc, I assume he's still in Bread and Roses.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know for sure.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I don't either.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: But Eric Blanc is at this point on the far right of DSA.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_05: For sure.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: And all of these caucuses under the pressure of the Democratic Party are getting pulled further and further to the right.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: You have this reform and revolution member, Sarah, on the NPC, who's regularly writing long Twitter threads about why uh DSA must endorse AOC.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just like every single one of these caucuses that refuses to break from the Democratic Party is just getting sucked into it further and further.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have this thing where Bread and Rose is now is effectively a right-wing caucus in DSA.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's gonna keep developing as things continue to play out and the betrayals keep piling on from Mam Donnie to AOC.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_05: There's gonna be more of this hysterical vote blue, no matter who, even from the DSA.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_05: And then on the other side of it, which we found at the meeting we had, I think there's a lot of people who are just really disgusted by that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_05: And they actually want a real socialist movement in this country that's not uh tied to this imperialist party of genocide.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_05: But the second point of unity is elect independent socialists.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_05: A number of participants talked about the independent socialist campaigns that they're supporting in the midterms, including somebody from Ohio had talked about their branch having endorsed Greg Levy.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_05: There's now I think like three at least branches of DSA in Ohio have endorsed Greg Levy.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_05: Also, it came up that the Berkshire's DSA has just endorsed uh Joe Tatch.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_05: Is that how you say it?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's Tatchy or Tatchy?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so the Berkshire's DSA just endorsed Joe Tatchy in Massachusetts.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_05: So that was interesting because that's always a question, what can we do right now to build the alternative that we need?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: And so as you heard in the panel, we think that supporting independent socialist candidates is a step towards that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: Someone else on the discussion raised, I think correctly, that you can't just be against AOC.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_05: We also need to support a candidate, an independent socialist candidate to support for 2028.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's correct.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: We don't actually have that person yet, so that's something that needs to be addressed.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_05: But also one of the participants raised kind of at the end, so we didn't weren't really able to get into it very much.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, why we don't consider Greens as independent socialist candidates?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, there's a number of different reasons why the Greens aren't really an alternative and it's not really principled for socialists to support the Green Party.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: First and foremost, it comes down to the strategy of the Green Party for what it seeks to do.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: The funny thing about the Greens is they don't seem to talk a lot about the environment.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: They have sort of a general left populist, left liberal political program, which makes them popular among layers of the left because just to go back to 2024 for a second, Jill Stein was seen as the candidate to vote for for a large portion of the left if you opposed the genocide in Palestine, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And you didn't want anything to do with the Democrats.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is that the Greens' whole strategy is fundamentally the same strategy as that of the right wing of the DSA or the Democratic Party, which is elect us to office and we will make all of these reforms.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: The problem with that, of course, is that this is not actually how working people get what it is that they need, right?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: For socialists, we always put the strategy of the class struggle as being the way working people get what they need in this society.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the ultimately the only kind of strategy going up against the capitalist class, fighting against capitalist class interests that's going to allow the working class to not only get what it needs now, but to also move in the direction of what's actually necessary to solve any of the problems facing the working class, which is social revolution.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: You can't do that with the Greens.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: The Greens don't believe in that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: They want to run this system, they want to manage capitalism on behalf of the capitalist class.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: They haven't found any takers, but that's literally their entire strategy is like, please put us in office, we will manage capitalism better by giving out a bunch of goodies to people, and we'll also save the earth and all that other stuff.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same left liberal politics that led to Trump getting back in office in the first place, just a more radical version of them.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: What's the difference between a lot of these DSA candidates and the Greens?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Politically, not a whole lot, because they still are putting forward a program of like reforms to Congress.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're gonna change, we're gonna fix up, we're gonna put band-aids over the gaping wounds that the working class has under capitalism and hope that solves the problem, right?
• 34:47
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: So fundamentally, it's a complete dead end.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: You're just recreating the same thing, a liberal political program.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: It just happens to be a liberal program that's outside of one of the big capitalist parties in a small-time capitalist party.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's very clear who the Democratic Party and the Republican Party represent, what class interests they represent.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's the bourgeoisie, it's the the big capitalists, different wings of them, and you know, often overlapping uh interests there that support both parties.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the Green Party, I think fundamentally, if you look at their entire history, you look at their program, you look at the history of them actually being in power as well and how they've used their seats, is that they represent this kind of radical middle class attempt, like Edward was saying, to govern capitalism better, that if only these radical middle class elements could take the reins of the state, uh, then we could do things better.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: We could make things more environmentally friendly.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: If you look at their program, the first 25 points are on democratic reforms within capitalism.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: They talk a lot in their foreign policy, they talk about the United Nations and all of these international institutions, which were developed within capitalism.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, it's fundamentally a project of trying to maneuver within the capitalist system and try to bend it to this radical program, which ultimately, if you try to uh carry that out in practice, if you're not willing to take capitalism head on, it's going to result in all of the concessions and betrayals and everything that we've seen, both at the the you know, local level where the Green Party has had power on a limited scale in the United States, uh, and where they've had actual power in Europe in different places where they've gone into coalition with all of these capitalist parties and done the same old shit that everybody else does.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think that's part of the thing in the US, because the Greens are a small third party and they've never really come close to anything like what has existed in Europe.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_05: And I think a lot of the people we meet that really like what we have to say and hate the Democrats with a passion, they think that the Greens are some kind of socialist, eco-socialist kind of thing, which is just objectively not true.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's really not what their program is.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_05: And then when you're talking about the UN, I always think about Lenin's quote about the predecessor to the UN being the den of thieves and their victims, imperialist den of thieves and their victims.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's really very accurate.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_05: And I think what you said about the Greens looking to the UN and for that kind of liberal foreign policy is totally correct.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_05: But you start you start having an issue sometimes because some of the independent socialist candidates that we do support, sometimes it's hard to tell what the difference is between them and some of the green candidates.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_05: I think that if you look a little deeper at the like the PSL candidates that we support, they've even gotten into coalitions with Greens.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_05: And so it really muddies the waters a lot and makes it very confusing.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_05: But if you actually look at the Party for Socialism and Liberation's program, what they're for, they're definitely clear that they're for getting rid of capitalism.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_05: They're for the working class running society.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of contradictions in their program, and I'm not going to get into all that, but it's actually very different than if you read the Green Party program.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_05: But I think it would be useful to get more into this.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_05: We weren't really able to at the United Front, but I think there's a green caucus now in the DSA.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_05: And we're we're perfectly happy to block with them and break from the Democratic Party.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, as far as offering an actual real like socialist alternative, the grains aren't it.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_04: One thing I would add about PSL is uh for all their their issues, I really have been impressed by the fact that in Massachusetts and Ohio, yeah, they're going out of their way to run against uh really prominent liberals in the Democratic Party.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: And to me, that's a really positive thing.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: The Democratic Party might have these people who on paper are very liberal, but fundamentally they're on the wrong side of things.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_04: They're not a way forward.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_04: And instead of making concessions to the illusions that some people might have for these liberals, uh, PSL is really going out of their way to try to build an opposition to them.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's something that you don't always see with the Green Party.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I think when we do have a working class party in the US, it is going to be a party that that is gonna have to draw a sharp political line against the ruling class.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_04: And that's something that PSL does at least a little bit.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_04: They do it in a kind of consciousness.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: When they run for office, they often run on a very reformist platform.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: But when we have a working class party in the US, it might be reformist.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: It might not be revolutionary.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_04: But I think having a party that at least draws some kind of political line there, that would really be a big step forward.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_05: I agree with what you said about PSL.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_05: I actually feel like Greg Levy's campaign in particular has been more working class centered than the other ones that I've seen, like in California or New York, even.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, he's like going up against Sherrod Brown.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_05: Even the DSA left was very upset that DSA branches in Ohio were endorsing him because Sherrod Brown is pro-union, ostensibly, and this is a waste to support Levy's campaign.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: He did this great ad where he like throws out, like rips out this yard sign for Sherrod Brown.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_05: He's like, we gotta get rid of these Democrats.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_05: And that was a pretty good ad, and very clear that you're voting for a working class alternative here.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_05: But then you also have like Ranya Kalik, who it does breakthrough news for the SO, and she was just like gaga for El Sayed, that he was gonna change everything.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_05: And then, of course, later she's now critical because he's campaigning with Kamala, and he's very clear that he's a capitalist, and which he was before, anyways.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_05: But anyhow, I think it's kind of a mixed bag.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_05: But I think for a number of these campaigns, it is very clear that there is a class line there and that it is a working class alternative against the Democratic Party candidates in those races.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think this gets to what is our actual purpose in endorsing any campaign or running any election campaign.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: And this is where the Greg Levy campaign against Sherrod Brown has been really exposing for those people in DSA who had this kind of reactive defense of Sherrod Brown, which is like, I mean, this guy was senator for I don't even know how long before he lost in was it 2024 or 2022?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think he was like in the Senate for like 20 years at that point.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, this guy voted for the Wall Street bailout.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: He voted for who knows how many military funding bills.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: And the idea that we are gonna get even an inch closer to socialism by by defending Sherad Brown is nuts.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: But it gets to the question of what is our actual purpose here?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it has to be building socialist organization, building socialist consciousness, getting uh the working class organized and prepared for taking on these powerful forces.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's the question with any of these campaigns.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's a key part of why we shouldn't endorse uh and campaign for Green Party uh candidates.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: You would say, just with this this Green Party caucus, this new Green Party caucus in DSA, they should join us in fighting for a clean break.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: They should join with the United Front for a clean break in fighting back against the DSA's attachment to the Democratic Party.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And where we're going to diverge is the question of who do we actually support.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: But the reason that we don't support Green Party candidates is that the working class doesn't have an interest in building up a party that is still fundamentally tied to capitalism.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: And we have to build uh a party that's confrontational and hostile to it that can actually challenge it and lead a revolution.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think that's the key difference between these PSL candidates, even with all of their weaknesses and all of the strange things that happen in the PSL universe, is that they are pointing that basic way forward towards socialist organization independent of the capitalist parties.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I totally agree with that.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_05: So then the next point of unity is expel DSA Dem electeds.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_05: And there's actually been a number of people saying this, uh, not just us on many people are saying, yes.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, on social media.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_05: In particular lately about Mamdani.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_05: There's his push for privatization of public housing, him telling people not to protest Netanyahu after he promised to arrest him.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_05: Instead, his cops arrested the people protesting Netanyahu.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_05: The latest thing is he's just totally gone full on board with this.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's really a Zionist anti-Semitism campaign, which equates protest of Zionism as anti-Semitic.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_05: And so there was this Twitter account, Gay Disco, and they did a post, Expel Zoran.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_05: I don't care if it splits the org.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_05: We put in all our efforts to elect someone who will give Zionist taxpayer money to teach people that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_05: Our efforts have been for nothing.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_05: And so I don't know who that person is, but they also made it very clear that they still support Dem ballot lines.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_05: But now the account is private, and the person was pretty thoroughly hounded for daring to say the truth that Zaron is not a social destination.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: Should be expelled for all of these things he's doing right now.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the geese guys were like, if you don't like Zaron, just leave.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_05: No one's forcing you to be part of DSA.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_05: If you want to go some, some do something different here.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_05: You can.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_05: What's the point of being part of an org if you're just going to throw the baby out with the bathwater at every instance of power the second it becomes complex?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_05: And it's like, who's throwing out the bathwater and the baby is Zorron.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_05: This guy has took back everything people voted for him on.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's going to become more and more obvious the more that they betray, and the more there's just so much resistance to having any kind of accountability.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_05: There's a resolution for the upcoming New York City convention that the geese people also wrote.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_05: And it was kind of sounding critical of Zoron and saying that we needed an independent socialist poll.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_05: But the whole point of it was really about supporting Zoron.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_05: And so then a DSA writist did an amendment to that gut to the geese motion, and they like scratched out everywhere it said independent.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_05: But honestly, that's that's more truthful than the geese people trying to have it both ways, because that's really not possible.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_05: Those are some things that have been going on with intersecting this tension here.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_05: Also, the MPC, the national DSA leadership, I think this weekend is taking up the Nithia endorsement and whether her endorsement by DSA LA violates RS-22, the anti-Zionist resolution that was passed at the last convention, which duh it obviously does.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_05: But there's a lot of people.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_05: Nithya is literally doing ads with real estate billionaires.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_05: There's this Oppenheim luxury real estate.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_05: They have a reality show called Selling Sunset.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_05: If anyone has been unfortunate enough to watch that, but she's literally sitting there with this Oppenheim guy talking about how to deal with the quote homeless problem.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's like a parody.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_05: Obviously, a real socialist stands for the opposite.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_05: We want to expropriate these real estate parasites, you know, that it's even a question whether she should be expelled from the DSA, whether AOC or Mam Dani at this point.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I think that there's like less hysteria about this question.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that people are seeing some of the rationale for it a little more now.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: This whole game of trying to figure out who are the good Democrats and who are the bad Democrats.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there there has been a certain amount of, I don't know if I would if I would call it an uproar, but there have been calls for DSA to unendorse Nithya Rahman because of everything that you said.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: But where is that for AOC?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: Where is that for Mamdani?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: AOC voted against cutting uh military aid to Israel.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: She voted president on the Iron Dome and cried about it on the House floor, but then went right along with the Democratic Party.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: She went up and endorsed Kamala Harris and said she's working tirelessly for a ceasefire.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, what are our standards here?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: And the standard should be that the Democratic Party itself funded a genocide.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: That genocide uh could not have happened without the support of the Democratic Party.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think the Israeli state receives it's something like 70% of all of its imported weapons come from the US and the other 30% come from Germany.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so the Democratic Party is responsible for that genocide.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so why is the line not drawn at supporting a genocidal party?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: And why are we having this discussion about which Democrat qualifies?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's becoming more and more clear to people as people see the betrayals of AOC, which we've obviously seen over the course of whatever eight years now, or now Zoran Mamdani, which has had a rapid pace of betrayals just in the last year, people are seeing actually this is a feature and not a bug of working within the Democratic Party.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: I would just add that whenever people in DSA have a certain position on the Democratic Party, I think kind of fun game to play is if you took the analogous position with respect to the Republican Party, what would that mean?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_04: And if that's offensive to you to do that, then what's the issue of principle that that separates the Democratic Party from the Republican Party?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_04: Because when Trump campaigned, he said things like he was going to reduce credit card interest rates and he was going to bring down oil prices.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: And there were striking workers who were excited about Trump and wanted to vote for Trump.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I think more working class people voted for Trump than supported Kamala Harris.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_04: If your position as a DSA member is that the Democratic Party is where the workers are, and the party has these issues, but we want to be where the workers are and all this stuff, well, what about the Republican Party?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: Why not be a Republican?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_04: I think most DSA members would say, oh, that's scandalous.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_04: I can't believe you'd say that.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: We want nothing to do with the Republican Party.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_04: But again, I think the question that you have to raise is what is the actual issue of principle that says it's okay to be in the Democratic Party, which does genocide and imperialism and upholds capitalism.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_04: What's the issue of principle that says it's okay to be part of that, but it's not okay to be in the Republican Party?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_04: And if you really look at it seriously and you don't make it about vibes or you don't make it about what would be acceptable to your social group or your social milieu, I think what you have to conclude is that the Democratic Party is absolutely unacceptable.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_04: We absolutely have to draw a firm line between us and them for the same reasons we would draw a firm line between ourselves and the Republicans.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: There's this idea that is totally false that the working class is in the Democratic Party and therefore socialists have to be in the Democratic Party.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just not the case.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you look at any of the polls, if you look at any of the actual reality on the ground of who workers are voting for, at best it's 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: And a huge portion of working class people are just sick of both of them.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: But if anything, the Republican Party has has gained support from the working class.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, there's the famous stats from 2016 of union households voting for Trump.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was a similar kind of proportion in 2024.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just like, yeah, why is DSA not running candidates in the Republican Party then?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, I was just gonna say on that point, we did have at our United Front meeting, there were quite a few trade union comrades who were on the call and were kind of making a lot of some very similar points.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: The association of DSA with the Democratic Party makes it completely repellent to working people.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: The series of betrayals that these DSA Democrats, they get elected, they enact while in office, drives working people to the right.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the comrades who work in transit on the East and West Coast who are on our meeting were making those points.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: This association with the Democrats is completely toxic and it makes socialism a dirty word in the eyes of the working class and just drives them further to the right.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think one of the transit workers who participated was talking about the the wake last week for Moet McCollum, who is uh a black woman, a transit worker who was killed on the tracks.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very dangerous job.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_05: It was attended by hundreds of transit workers.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: And the the comrade that participated said that these workers don't know anything and don't care about the DSA.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_05: It doesn't exist for them.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_05: And this kind of gets us to our next point of unity: build a workers' party.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_05: You have all of these people on the DSA, and they talk about the working class, and we have to do that.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_05: The transit worker that participated also talked about the wake and how Mom Donnie and Hokel and Letitia James and all these Democratic politicians came to the wake.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_05: And it was just kind of brazen opportunism that even the family members were disgusted by.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_05: Because, and the whole point of them coming and the role of the Dems and the bureaucrats is really to head off the anger that there were there were so many workers at this wake, really reflected the anger at the conditions that they work in.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_05: They do not have a contract, they've been in contract negotiations for a while.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: But the purpose of Mamdani and being there with the the bosses, MTA bosses were there too, is to promote this kind of class collaboration.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_05: MTA's one family is was a theme of that.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's what people see as like the quote socialist mayor.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_05: That's what he's pushing, which really nothing to offer the working class in this city.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_05: So the question of building a workers' party that came up.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_05: One of the participants asked, What is our perspective for how to do that?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_05: Do we just want to fight inside and then have different little left groups, or do we want to turn DSA into a socialist group?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: One thing he raised was like, Are you trying to recruit people to another organization?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: Or how do you actually build a workers' party?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_04: I think at a basic level, I mean, for me, an important thing is that for a decade we had a working class representative in office in Seattle on the city council.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: And in various other elections, we've had independent socialists who have won substantial portions of the vote.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: That in socialist alternative, there were campaigns in a few different cities where people nearly got elected, in addition to the one in Seattle where our member did get elected.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_04: In Illinois, there's a working class candidate who got 10,000 votes last time.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_04: So there are a lot of little examples like this.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_04: And so what that says to me is that the possibility is there to elect independent socialists to office.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_04: But right now, most of the socialist movement is in DSA, which is campaigning for Democrats.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_04: So a big part of the issue is you just have to convince people who are already doing this stuff that instead of campaigning for Democrats, they should build independent socialist campaigns.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_04: I really think that's a big part of it.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, obviously there's an even more important part, which is how do you mobilize the the millions of workers who right now are not in any socialist organization?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_04: But that's a longer term project.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_04: I think before we can really make much headway on that, we've got to build a left that's just less of a joke.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_04: We've got to build a left that's doing something other than just campaigning for liberals, pretending that they're doing class struggle or something like that.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: To have a shot at actually having influence and winning over sections of the working class, we have to build an independent party, workers' party to do that.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's not gonna be the DSA or the Democratic Party.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was just gonna say I think we have to be honest that the kind of organization that we need that the working class needs does not exist right now.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: We need a a revolutionary working class party.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: And DSA is not revolutionary, it is not working class, and it's not a party.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: And outside of DSA, there's any number of small revolutionary groups, but for the most part, they don't have a real rooting in the working class.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they're for the most part very small and isolated groups, uh, which is one of the things that we've been trying to overcome with a United Front for a Workers' Party, this other organization.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: But but I think the way that I answered this question the other day is there's what would we like to happen and what is likely to happen.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the revolutionary left should join DSA with us and fight to do all of these things that we're calling for, to expel the DSA Democrats like Mamdani and AOC, to run independent socialist candidates, to really put up a fight against the leadership in DSA, this opportunist leadership that's trying to keep things safely within the Democratic Party.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't think that for the most part is likely to happen.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: I unfortunately don't think that RCA or these other organizations are likely to join DSA, even though they should.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what we have to do is we have to start laying the foundation for the kind of organization that we need.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is not ultimately going to be DSA.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the DSA right will burn the thing to the ground before they allow it to be severed from the Democratic Party.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: But we have to start laying that foundation, which means bringing together a revolutionary wing within DSA and then connecting it to revolutionary forces outside of DSA and starting to build those connections, starting to build the kind of basis that could create a revolutionary working class party that could actually put up a challenge to these capitalist parties.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: And that's going to be a long fight, but I think the the kind of demands that we're putting forward in DSA, the kind of fight that we're putting up, uh this this call was a first step along that road of bringing together the kinds of forces that can start building that workers' party.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very kind of difficult situation where the left is so splintered into all these small little groups.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_05: And then you have the DSA that has been growing.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_05: Every time I go to a DSA meeting, I go somewhere, I meet people who just joined and think they're socialists.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_05: And and when you talk to them, they're very critical of Democratic Party politics.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_05: That's why they joined, because they don't want to be Democrats.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_05: And and so you have that.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_05: So what do you do?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_05: How do you actually intervene into this uh contradictory situation?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think, like you said about the RCA, I also don't think they're probably going, but you can really see how if they did, it could really bolster the forces for a break.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_05: And what what would come from that?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's true.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_05: The the DSA right will just probably go with the Democratic Party, but then you'll have a clear division on class lines because you're not actually building a socialist movement.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_05: If what you're doing, which we see more and more every day, is what Eric Blanc talks about building the blue wave.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: That's what is happening.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_05: There's all these different left groups inside the DSA too.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_05: There's Maoists and Trotskyists and Ho-Shaites and all these different groups.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_05: We should debate these differences.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_05: But if we all agree that like there needs to be some kind of independent socialist organization, a workers' party, forging that in the first instance would be in itself a huge advance for the working class.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_05: And then the nature of what that party will be is gonna be fought out in struggle.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's that's what we're trying to get to.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of history behind this of the socialist movement, and we're not gonna get into all that on this episode, but but there is kind of a basic precondition for having a vehicle for the working class that is in that is that it's independent, and that goes back to Marx.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_03: Can I just add that this is this is going to require conflict with the leadership of DSA and with big sections of DSA.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_03: And any process that doesn't have conflict means that you're not actually confronting the tasks in front of you.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: And this is like with Mam Dani in New York City, he's the mayor of New York City, he's the mayor of the city where Wall Street is housed, where Trump is putting Nicholas Maduro on trial, where Netanyahu is flying in for the United Nations.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_03: And where's the conflict between Mam Dani and Wall Street and the Democratic Party, which is the party of Wall Street in New York City?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't exist.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: He's completely in harmony.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: Romance, yeah.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so that says something about what he's doing because the interests of the working class and the interests of Wall Street are completely in conflict with each other.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so if Mam Dani's not in conflict with them, it tells you what side of the class line he's on.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: And similarly in DSA, when the DSA leadership is uh throwing itself into the Democratic Party, if we as Marxists and as revolutionaries aren't entering into conflict with the leadership of DSA, we're doing something wrong because we need to be challenging that strategy, and that is going to create that conflict.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think that's totally correct.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_05: We've been in conflict with the right, and it's a lot of pressure.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that was kind of one of the nice things about the meeting we had was you had elements from all over the country, and people spoke about the different efforts they were making in their chapters to try to break with the Democratic Party, support independent socialist candidates.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's the kind of beauty of the United Front, is that it's a way to organize all of our forces together as a shield or something that actually can withstand that kind of pressure because it is gonna be a lot of pressure, and they are very uh bureaucratic, is probably it might even be an understatement of the kinds of maneuvers and things that will be uh thrown at the clean break forces.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess then I would just uh move on to what the next steps are, what our plans are for going forward with the United Front.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, we discussed having monthly meetings.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so if people weren't able to join us for that first meeting, we're definitely gonna have one uh at the end of October.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_05: Did we have a date?
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think we tentatively talked about October 25th, which is the fourth Sunday at 4 p.m.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: Pacific.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: That would be like the same, that would be the same Sunday in October.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll get a final date for that and we'll put it on our social media.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_05: If you want, if you're listening and you want to join the United Front, you can DM us.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_05: At the end, Edward's gonna give our socials.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_05: And to join the United Front, you have to be in the DSA and agree with the points of unity.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_05: We also had discussions about putting forward um anti-AOC resolutions, which is still a live question in a number of chapters.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um, there's a number of chapters that have already uh endorsed or called for AOC to run for president.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_05: There's other chapters that have actually opposed this resolution, so that's that's a positive development.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_05: And we talked about getting involved in the active struggles going on in our in our respective cities, talked about the struggles in Seattle where comrades were successfully able to put forward a resolution against the Democratic Party austerity budget cuts um being proposed there.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_05: They got that passed in the DSA, Seattle DSA meeting.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_05: All of these things are are are parts of this struggle for um for a clean break and for to build an actual like real socialist movement.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is there anything you guys would like to share with our listeners?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where can they find where can we find Labor Militant on socials?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you can find us on uh Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook at Labor Militant, all one word.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then also we are part of the United Front for a Workers Party, which you can find on all those platforms at for a workers party, the number for a workers' party.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: And Steven, how about ISAR?
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: How can folks get in touch with ISAR?
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary, is the full name.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_04: You can find us on Instagram at ISA underscore revolutionary.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_04: And if you go there, it links to like websites and stuff.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_04: So that's again ISA underscore revolutionary.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_04: So if you search for that on Instagram, you'll find us there.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're looking to follow the United Front for a clean break, which is Labor Militants, ISAR, and JBA, and anybody else who wants to sign on, that is you can find the United Front for a clean break on X and Instagram at DSA the number four a clean break.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's at DSA for a clean break.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: So please give us a follow, check out our points of unity, uh, watch the awesome reel that we put up on Instagram to promote the just say no resolution uh that our comrades introduced in Chicago and in New York.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: And feel free, please, copy paste that resolution, steal it for yourself, introduce it in your branch.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: We would love for people to do that.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it's made for, is for people to actually use it to fight back against the efforts to force AOC down our throats.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you are interested in following the work of the Just BreakAready Caucus, you can follow us at DSA underscore just breakalready on Instagram, at clean breaknow on X, and you should always check out our Linktree to find our most current statements, everything we've got going on.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: Other things we promote, like petitions, various resolutions, that would be at linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_02: As always, we love to get your comments, love letters, hate mail, and anything else you feel like sending to us sending us.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: We are still looking forward.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: I say this every episode, it hasn't materialized yet, but we are looking forward to possible debates with other elements in the DSA who are willing to debate us.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna happen one day, one day.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you can make it happen sooner if you send us a DM and say, Hey, I want to come on, give me a break, and have a debate with you.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: So our DMs are always open, shoot us one, we will get in touch and we can make that happen.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: That concludes this episode of give me a break.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for coming on, everybody.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next week.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everyone.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks, see you later.