Special Episode: The DSA "Red Wave" That Wasn't

In a special episode of Gimme a Break! Lital and Edward are joined by Tom from Transit Workers for a Fighting Union to talk about the supposed "Red Wave" elections in NYC that has so many DSAers celebrating. Sorry, we're here to burst your bubble. Tom explains how workers really see DSA as little different than the liberal Dems who make it impossible for them to live in NYC and made their lives a living hell. We also talk about Melat Kiros' win in Colorado and pour water on the notion this represents a real leap into national relevance for DSA.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Look in your heart. See, we need a clean break up in the DSC. But they can spoil the lot. Or we could bury the fakes. That's why we need a clean break in the DSC. We can split it apart. That old lipsary. We need a break with the films in the DSA. If you want a revolutionary DSA.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I'm your host, Lee Tal, here with Edward.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And today's episode is a special episode dealing with what is being called the quote Red Wave, or what the right-wing New York Post called the Red Wedding, of the electoral wins for the DSA-backed candidates that took place last week in New York City, but also other cities. The Washington, D.C. mayor was also a DSA-supported candidate, as well as congressional seats in Denver, Colorado, and also Chris Robb a month ago in Philly. The audio you heard at the beginning is an original song inspired by the goal of the JBA, performed by Jeremy, a friend of the JBA. And its lyrics are what would Karl Marx say? You got a break with the Dems in the DSA. So this is relevant to this episode because all of these quote red DSA candidates have been running as Democrats in Democratic Party primaries. And there's been a lot of noise in the media about how the establishment dunes have been flipping out in response and saying that the New York City mayor Mamdani is now directing the Democratic Party. He's controlling it on his model. But there's more to this story. Drone killer Obama and killer Kamala, infamous genocidaire, have both been having meetings and discussions with Mamdani in the recent period. For us at JBA, all the discussion of what direction for the imperialist Democratic Party really has nothing to do with the working class. In fact, both wings of the Democratic Party have only more austerity and anti-labor attacks in store for working people and the oppressed. So our guest today is Tom. Hi there. A New York City transit worker and supporter of JBA. He is also active in Transit Workers for a Fighting Union, which is a militant opposition in Transit Workers, Transport Workers United Local 100. We invited him on today to talk about what is the real deal with how workers in New York City view these DSA Dems, what is the actual record of progressives when it comes to fighting Trump reaction and advancing the conditions of working people, black people, immigrants in the city, and why the oligarchy, why the ruling class actually needs politicians like Mamdani and like AOC. So to be joy kills and burst the bubble of euphoria around the recent elections, let's talk about what these elections represented. Who voted, who didn't, and what do workers think about these electeds? Has the working class gone socialist? The truth is, is it was a very poor turnout. I think only 15 voted of the whole New York City Democratic Party electorate. And so on one hand, you had candidates like Daria Lisa Chevalier and Claire Valdez. They ran pretty woke campaigns, which would go against actually how Mamdani ran his campaign for mayor as focused on affordability and bread and butter issues. So these new candidates that got elected ran as pro-Palestine candidates against establishment Dems like Espayat and Reynoso that are pro-Israel and they've taken AIPAC money. And so we know Israel is extremely unpopular and the genocide of the Palestinians is unconscionable for many. But also another elected as part of this quote red wave was in Queens, the New York State Senate Aber Kawas. And she will be the first Palestinian in history to serve in the New York State legislature. She was on Democracy Now and she said, if you're saying deliver affordability, that you're against ICE, and if you're consistent in also saying that you're against genocide, these are the many ways that we are transforming the Democratic Party progressive voice to make sure it includes Palestine. So the party of genocide, remember it was Joe Biden that armed and enabled the genocide, is going to now include Palestine. This is really a lie meant to corral pro-Palestine activists back into this party where support to Israel is a red line for the imperialists. Israel is their attack dog in the Middle East. So they will say they're not for giving arms to Israel, but they are for selling arms if Israel pays. This is the AOC's new position. This is also Rahmanuel's position, former Chicago mayor who worked for under Obama, definitely an establishment dem. Emmanuel advocates for ending U.S. taxpayer-funded military subsidies to Israel, arguing that Israel is now a wealthy nation and should be able to purchase the weapons at full price like other allies. This position is hardly pro-Palestine. There was also a recent piece in the nation by Karim Elrafai. He's in the leadership of the New York City DSA. And the piece was called Why AOC Needs to Apologize for her infamous DNC speech, where she lied and said that Kamala was working tirelessly for a ceasefire. And Kareem wrote, she has the potential to unify the left in 2028 if she addresses her decision in 2024 to carry water for people committing the most severe crime of the 21st century. To this day, this is probably the single biggest black mark on AOC's otherwise solid record on Palestine. So maybe, Edward, you can explain why this is a lie as far as AOC, but also why the DSA is actually carrying water for the people that committed the genocide in Palestine.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Yeah, I mean, it's really funny. There's a lot of revisionist history going on. The purpose of it is to try to get people in a position where they're willing to overlook the many, many, many times that she took a side with the Democratic Party establishment on Palestine. There's the most infamous incident where there was a vote. I believe this was the first time she had to vote on the Iron Dome, funding for the Israeli Iron Dome system. She voted present and cried on the House floor about it. More recently, of course, there was an amendment to a bill which was actually introduced by Marjorie Taylor Green to end all weapons and military aid to Israel. Now, that sounds like a supportable kind of thing if you're a socialist, right? You know, like cut off Israel or whatever. But not for AOC, who rejected supporting that because that would mean Israel would be deprived of so-called defensive weapons, like the Iron Dome. I don't think it it takes a whole lot of thought to figure out what is a defensive versus an offensive weapon when it comes to the Zionist state, which their whole right to defense or whatever is based on genociding the Palestinians. So yeah, I think there's a lot of revisionist history going on. Whether it's AOC, who's sort of a known quantity, although you also have others in the DSA who may not vote for Iron Dome funding, but are part and parcel of the Democratic Party of Genocide that has been supportive of what Israel has been doing for the last three years in Palestine, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of these candidates that won in um New York City, I think also Milat Kiros in Denver, they wear kafias, they say they're for free Palestine. I think that's true of Chris Robb too. The left presents it as like these are victories that are getting us closer to free Palestine. But the truth is like the opposite, which is bringing people back into the fold of the party that's literally responsible for the genocide.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yeah, window dressing.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I just wanted to start with that because that has had a lot of commentary in the media about what having all these pro-Palestine electeds, what it represents. But again, AOC's been presented like that before, and her record has been the opposite. And Mam Dani has retracted and gone back on a lot of his earlier support for Palestine and the cause of Palestinian freedom. But just to go back to the New York City elections, it was pretty low voter turnout. But who voted seemed like it was a lot of petty bourgeois types that now live in Brooklyn and Queens and Harlem. It really reflects the changes in the weight of the New York City electorate towards more liberal white petty bourgeois transplants. Uh, most working people did not bother to vote. The recent elections also showed that these kind of old ethnic union-backed democratic machines are dying in New York City. Um, there was this ad for Reynoso was a Puerto Rican uh Democrat running against Claire Valdez, and he was endorsed by uh Nydia Velazquez, who had that seat for maybe it was decades. For a long time, she's had that seat. Yeah. In the ad for him, it's like the logo of every major union in the city that endorsed him. The election wasn't even close. Claire Valdez swept him. This was also true when Cuomo was running against Bam Dani. All the major unions backed Cuomo, too. Obviously, that doesn't have really much weight, and it doesn't translate into these union-backed candidates winning. Maybe, Tom, you can speak to like what the reaction to workers is, to co-workers, to these elections, why candidate like Reynoso can get so much union support that represents thousands and thousands of union workers in the city, but that doesn't translate to a win.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yeah, well, it's definitely true. I think a lot of workers, especially transit workers with whom I work, who are black, Latin, Asian, white from all over the place, and people that get up to make the city run every single day, they probably wouldn't listen to their own union leaderships in many, many cases, those recommendations. They may that might even be uh something that repelled them from voting for those people. But um certainly, yeah, we've noticed for a long time this huge gulf between the working class and and socialists. And um that gulf continues way up into to present-day New York, where the DSA has very, very little traction. And some workers know that the DSA is socialist, people know that Mam Dani was supported by them. But really in the recent elections, I I don't think I met a single I've met a single co-worker uh who even voted. And these include some stalwart pro-Democratic Party um workers who, you know, hate hate Trump, hate the Republicans, but um and I think the numbers confirm that and afterwards it was it was a very, very tiny number of people that ended up voting and these things. But basically, yeah, the uh what what workers are seeing in these candidates is kind of the same form of progressive Democratic Party liberals that have betrayed betrayed working people in New York City over and over and over again. And I think the most common like remark you hear, you'll he I'll hear often, Walton, what do you think of Mamdani? And the most common remark you'll hear is not a fan, not a fan. And everyone will have a range of different reasons for that, but they've seen broken promises and they know um in the recent uh strike struggles have taken place that uh Mamdani has really completely failed the test of what anyone should consider to be a proper socialist response to uh strikes like the Nyzna strike, the nurses were on strike, and that was when he chose to endorse Hokol, who was massively strike breaking against that strike. And um more recently with the No More 24, this are these are the home care workers, mostly Asian immigrant women who have been working for, in some cases, for decades or for, I mean, equally long amount of time, 24-hour shifts, where they're only paid uh $13 an hour. I know um, you know, you guys have covered this issue so well, and the just break already is really pushing this, pushing this endeavor. But at that time, you know, Mamdani had said he was going to support legislation to lower the work day um and actually just stab them in the back.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Completely stabbed them in the back. For mayor, he promised that.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah, when he was running.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

And then more recently, the Long Isle Railroad strike was vivid, not even a single peep or a word from Mamdani in support of the Long Isle Railroad strikers. Even in DSA chats and stuff, you really feel as though they're sort of harking back with that strike in particular, but remember it was Hillary Clinton who famously called um working cause Trump supporters the deplorables. There were people, you know, you almost felt that that was a there was an echo of that among the SA supporters who felt this is a predominantly white, um, skilled workforce with good wages and pensions, and and uh they're probably Trump supporters, so I'm not gonna say anything in defense of them. And and that's really what's gonna what we're you know, as genuine socialists, what we're worried about, what we have to turn around is this the socialists just, you know, um driving I even driving the wedge between the socialists and the working class even deeper by by betraying the the cause of socialism.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yeah, that was very clear with the LIR strike because you know, Hokel was so vicious against this workforce that it made people hate the Dems even more because this is what they're doing. And so you have these DSA's who are like, oh, a lot of these LIR workers are Trump supporters, so we're not gonna support their strike. So they're basically on the other side of a class battle, and then they're gonna support Mamdani, who's supporting Hokul, who are on the boss's side.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Well, fearful of showing support to the strike. You felt a little bit of that in the nurses' strike where the DSA, I felt, did very little to actually mobilize for mass picket ones for big pickets, yeah, or support even for that strike.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah, and I think you see, even though Mamdani has not been in office that long in his short time that he's been in office, you have a clear record here already on the question of labor's struggles to improve their conditions. And he's pretty much been on the other side on all of them in practice, what he's what he pushes. And so all these candidates that got elected, Daria Lisa, Claire Valdez, all of them, they're for the working class, they're for the working people. But the election of more Democrats doesn't actually advance the working class. It actually, like you spoke about, Tom, like it it just furthers that gulf between the people. No, it really does. It really does.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

I mean, I talk to my coworkers all the time, and you and they really feel like because there's a general hatred of politicians, you know, quote unquote politicians. But they are keenly aware that promises have been made, but never never kept. And what they're looking for, what working class people in New York City are looking for are real improvements in their life. So let's even take a look at what Mandani has quote unquote accomplished. So he got a rent freeze for two years. My coworkers, I mean, some will say quickly, before that even comes out of your mouth, they say, Well, that's been done before, and it is like crumbs, it's crumbs. It's you know, people are thankful to have, you know, a few hundred dollars break, no doubt about it. But we're not seeing transformative change at all. And this is a time when so uh my group, Transit Workers for Fighting Union, what we what we have said is we move New York, but we can't afford to live here.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

And there's not a single coworker that doesn't feel that in their gut right now because working cost people cannot afford to live in a city that's seemingly for millionaires and billionaires. Um then uh uh and they really do not see, you know, the there's two thousand more seats for what, pre pre-K? I mean they're seeing small things, but in the same time they just see the same, same old, same old. And they saw it in the de Blasio, they saw it in Eric Adams, and they've watched it, but but working people really need serious improvements, not not uh Trump change. The people like the the home care nurses, they need they need to be able to go home after working eight hours a day and not starve. The working class in New York City is really hurting, and you can feel it. You feel it even more now after the war and um with the inflation ramping up and um in in transit workers we don't have a contract. Um Railroad, they they were working without a contract for three years. You'd think maybe that would soften Mamdani or the uh DSA to them, but but they didn't get the support that they needed. And a lot of that's because of this Democratic Party um loyalty of the trading bureaucracy who just is trying to maneuver between different candidates to get you know, get a few more crumbs out of the Democratic Party. You know, and you know, total independence from both of the imperialist racist imperialist parties. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

We talked about this on our last podcast we did on labor notes, but just this connection of fighting for a break of the DSA from the Democrats and their support to Democratic Party politicians elected, but also in the unions, the need for a break with the uh trade union bureaucracy from the Democrats as well, and the connection between those two things as far as the state of the working class in the city.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

For sure. I was a labor notes too, and um and I went to a uh a workshop called Power in the New York City Mayor's Office. What can labor win? And it had uh four it had four or five panelists. I don't think any of them were workers. I could be wrong. They were all union staffers and also, you know, generally I think DSA supporters and um got up and talked about these various labor battles that Mamdani has been on the other side of. And and it really, it really first the bubble, Mamdani Mania was completely burst. But I might appoint afterwards to one of the staffers for DC 37. The Mamdani's budget was recently, um he reconciled the budget by um postponing, yeah, I think it's like 1.2 billion six billion dollars of pension payments for city workers. At the same time, they talk about how much they're they're they're taxing the rich. Well, the only thing they got was a pied de terre tax for luxury apartments of five million dollars or more that are vacant. Some of those pied de terrears could just be taken over to house the homeless. But if you just do the numbers, that means workers are paying three times more to balance Mamdani's budget than the billionaires are paying, or the millionaires and billionaires. And uh they didn't have a response to that. But we've seen this before, especially in times of crisis like the 70s fiscal crisis. The way the New York City got bailed out was by going into the teachers and transit workers and and construction workers and everyone else's city workers' pension funds to bail out the city. And this we're sort of seeing that coming down the pike right now, too.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

So can you explain that a little more? Why isn't there more anger about this, about them freezing it? Is the argument like in a few years they'll put it back in?

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah. First of all, they're not talking about it. They're really keeping it on the hush hush, as far as I can tell. And they're saying they're saying they're restructuring, almost like restructuring loan payments. But um, the problem is they're delaying payments that were required because at one point in time the pension funds were underfunded. And this is a problem across the country. Mind you, these pensions, all these city workers are not paid that well. We like to think of the pensions as deferred wages. So you don't work in the private sector, you're you're working like a dog in the public sector. You do get certain benefits, but your pay is pretty low, but you do get a pension. It's one of the remaining like sort of enclaves of American society. People get some pensions, but it's generally for because the pay is lower. So they're they're kicking the can down the road and imperiling some of these pensions. And there are places like Detroit and uh places in California where pensions have been shaved, you know, taking a hit. It is dangerous. There needs to be a fight for affordable housing. And I really appreciate one of your last episodes, which was on the housing crisis. Working people cannot afford to live here. And it's not just what we should do is bind these struggles together for affordable housing for transit workers and city workers and teachers with the fight to defend um public housing and the fight to make real public housing affordable, integrated, quality public housing for for everybody, the black and black and Puerto Rican, Latino masses who are who are you know threatened with losing their homes and the struggle for working class housing for unionized workers. And in many cases. Cases it's the same people. But um we're not getting that from our trade union leadership either, our misleaders, precisely because they're they're tied to the Democratic Party, like um unfortunately the DSA is.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah. Yeah. I have I have a friend who's a transit worker in the Bronx. I asked him if his coworkers were talking about the elections right after the quote red wave. And he said that none of his coworkers could even vote because they don't live in New York City, which is just to your point, Tom, for vast majority of working class people in New York, they cannot live in New York City. They commute for long distances. No one was talking about it. What they were talking about was Tucker Carlson leaving the Republican Party and both parties sucked, basically. That kind of captures what you were talking about, like with housing. I think that is a part of it too. The unions can endorse whoever they want, but the sell-out leaderships haven't haven't been fighting to make it so that working class people in New York can stay in New York and don't have to move further and further out. You spoke about mom Donnie's role, role in the niceness strikes and the L strike and the L AR strike. There's always like kind of deja vu with this stuff. Like when AOC got elected, it was like, oh, we have a socialist, she's working class socialist candidate. It was like so much euphoria about her. And then what what did she and other quote squad members do when it was a railroad strike posed? They worked with Biden to spike it. So maybe Edward, I don't know if you want to talk a little more about that, because I feel like a lot of people don't know about that now than a minute ago, but it was a pretty significant thing when it happened.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

I think it was almost four years ago now. The conditions for railroad workers are and remain pretty horrible. These guys are working long hours, they're subject to being summoned at any time to go hop on a train, and who knows how long you're gonna be out for, right? The main question was just getting something as simple as sick days, road workers. They didn't have sick days in their contract. And because railroads are such a central industry in the United States where so much shipping within the US goes by rail, they are subordinated to the government under this Railway Labor Act. When the companies refused to like give like budge on this at all, the contract negotiations ended up getting kicked all the way up to the federal government. There are all these scare stories in the bourgeois press, right? Like, oh my god, if the railroad workers go out, food's not going to be on the shelves and all this stuff, right? So Biden meets with the union leaders and with the railroad executives, and he's basically getting ready to impose a contract on the railroad workers. There's some like parliamentary maneuvering going on, and these different politicians just say, Oh, we'll impose a contract that it'll have sick days, you know. And this was really the justification that people like AOC put forward to justify basically banning the possibility of a railroad strike. If you want to get sick days, like that's how you're gonna do it, right? Creating a crisis for the capitalist class in this country, something any socialist should be for, is giving the bourgeoisie a big crisis they have to deal with in in a way that empowers and strengthens the the working class, but not the socialist congresswoman from New York City who instead voted to impose a contract and ban the strike from happening, giving Biden a big win at the time when he needed them.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

They're just fury and furious that they can't use their strike weapon, which is the only real weapon the labor has. And they had jumped through every possible hoop to get to the point where they can strike under the Railway Labor Act, which believe me, it takes years to jump through those hoops. And then it's the Democratic Party friend of labor, Biden, who and the rest of the party who who knifed them in the back when they had one chance to actually win a battle. The Democratic Party grease the skids for them to go back not to be able to strike, saying, Oh, it's all gonna work out, and then and then uh no improvements, real improvements can be made.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Maybe we can talk a little about the DSA left. Everyone knows the DSA right is like all about running as Democrats, realigning the Democratic Party. But what about the DSA left? Quote left. You have like the Marxist Unity Group, the Emerge Caucus, and others that claim to be for class independence, for working class party, but they're literally managing the campaigns for some of these Democratic Party candidates. You have Maoist caucuses like the Liberation Caucus. I just saw a picture of Black Red Guard. He's on Twitter. I don't know what his real name is, but anyways, but he's in St. Louis, and there was a whole picture of him with Corey Bush, who's another Democrat who I think she lost her seat and now she's trying to get away. Yeah, she was primary. So, like from our perspective, there's really just like an across the board on the DSA left, a total failure to maintain any kind of minimum standards necessary to actually advance uh struggles of the working class as a force for itself. I think mug is like one of the most contradictory because between what they say their program is and what they do with these campaigns. And so after these elections, a number of people, not just us, but other people too, were pointing out that there seemed to be like an obvious contradiction for mug, and they were posting stuff on Twitter. And so Mug replied that the DSA passed principles for party building in 2025 to affirm our independence from Democrats. Anti-socialist ballot line laws can't deter us from using elections to build mass socialist organizations. Instead, democracy and independence, markers of a true party, protect us from the Dems. So they're saying that they're going to use Democratic Party ballot lines, but that because they stand for independence from the Dems, that in itself will give them protection from the Dems. And we joked on uh JVA's Twitter that it seemed like Mamdani's protection has definitely worn off since he's the biggest promoter of a rebranded Democratic Party. I don't know how many people got the joke, but it's just so ludicrous. Mamdani has literally said that his goal is, quote, we need to have a democratic party where working people can look at it and they can see themselves. So that's like kind of crazy, the kind of devices they have to use to justify what's clearly the opposite of class independence. And then they also argue that progressive DSA candidates can run on the Democratic Party ballot line, but they don't have to follow discipline of the Democrats, and that doesn't really mean anything. And I think like with these elections, it was, it's, it's so clear that that's totally false. Daria Lisa Chevalier, she had been an activist with the pro-Palestine encampments at Colombia, and she had tweeted appropriately, fuck Kamala Harris during the height of the genocide. But to run as a Democrat, she had to make like a groveling apology and saying that as a black woman, she knows how important it would have been to have Kamala as president. There goes being pro-Palestine. And we've seen this with candidate after candidate, that there are these red lines. And, you know, if your whole thing is to like refurbish, rebrand, rebuild, you know, the Democratic Party, you know, as quote, progressive and, you know, for the working class, you know, you're gonna have to, you're not gonna be anti-imperialist, you're not gonna be pro-Palestine. There's no you're not, you're not gonna be pro-working class. You can't be any of those things and be a representative of, you know, the one of the main parties of US imperialism.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Yeah, I mean, it's a question of like uh, yeah, just over and over again, you can see them bending to the, you know, not not even bending, they they become bourgeois ministers. They go from, you know, pale pink socialists to uh and basically m administrators or legislatures totally tied to the Democratic Party's, you know, pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist, blood drenched domestically and internationally programmed. And they have to they have to and then and then and then as they seek more influence that they're they're deli they're given further instructions, you know, further red lines.

SPEAKER_04 30:46

So you know, they become Yeah. Well they do this thing too where they at least on the DSA left, they pretend like some of the electeds are the real left wingers, you know, versus like if they make a distinction between them and AOC, it's like Chris Robb, he's a real left winger. And it's like this dude's first event after getting elected was something about how to take over the Democratic Party. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Like with the Justice Democrats, they're all also Justice Democrat, whatever that is, candidates.

SPEAKER_04 31:15

Like Daria Lisa, who's over there talking about, oh yeah, you know, you could you could support us if uh if you support Israel and just not Netanyahu or whatever, you know, it's like all of five minutes.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Like i.e. Brad Lander, who also was supported by Mamdani and is is a very open liberal Zionist.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Yeah, right. So it's just like it's really, it's really like the left really does this obfuscation, and and really what it is is it's a way to justify this block with the right behind the strategy of supporting these Democratic Party politicians, like drawing a line, oh, this one's slightly more left. Like Rashida is a lot better than AOC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, they all are representatives of this genocidal imperialist party.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah. I think you really could see the DSA left like in the last year or so after Mamnani's election, and now reinforced this a couple weeks ago, they really moved to the right.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Like, you know, they were capable of talking a lot talking a lot more in line about we need a workers' party, we need an independence of the Democratic Party. But when they when they see this, um these electoral wins, it really is like giving candy to babies. They're all over it and they justify it as this is really a clever maneuver we're doing. They they see it as a great success when it's actually just putting a ball and chain to the to the DSA at these electeds to actually make a breakthrough with the working class. And to win over the working class, let's just make this clear. You have got to be opposed to Democratic Party liberalism. You've got to present a program of complete independence from both the Democrats and Republicans. And have a bold, you know, program of fighting to make some serious gains for the working class. Because the workers see right through the through Democratic Party politicians. In general, I'm not saying across the board. But um they're doing a rebranding the Democrats for a purpose, and I think they they know the utility of candidates like the ones who just won. They're the they're the only way that they're gonna claw their way back into power if they can get there.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah. Uh there's another DSA supported candidate, Mila Kiros, who uh won her primary in Denver, Colorado. And a number of people have commented, and I agree with this, that these woke DSA candidates that won in New York City that doesn't win nationally. And the area where Claire Valdez won is literally called the Commie Corridor. Um, it's District 7, and it includes like Long Island City, Ridgewood, and Queens, Green Point, Williamsburg, and Bushwick in Brooklyn. And like the New Yorker magazine called this area by many measures home to the most left-wing voters in America. I'll also note that these are some of the most gentrified neighborhoods in New York City where many Black and Latino families have been pushed out, and areas where Zoran's trying to privatize public housing, where this is what's left of any kind of affordable housing for working class people, is the projects. And so now you have uh Milats win in Colorado, and the argument is up to Colorado, so the DSA can now win anywhere. It's not just the commie corridor.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

So maybe uh Tom, who has some with Denver, can maybe help explain what's going on here, why it's not like such a shock or Denver's pretty um recently uh pretty become a liberal, pretty consistently blue part of um Colorado and part of the um part of the region. And you're just talking about the Democratic Party Mary and and her opponent, this Diana DeGett, had been in there for 15 terms.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Fifteen.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Fifteen terms, and she had been she was probably politically not a whole lot different, but I mean no one was de getting anything from DeGett. And so along comes Mela, and I'm sure she galvanized enormous support from a lot of people who I grew up in Denver, and I probably have a lot of relatives who who were who were very excited to have someone that wasn't part of the Democratic Party machine. She was a a corporate attorney who got fired for um writing a letter for um students who are protesting Palestine.

SPEAKER_03 35:36

Uh-huh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

So she had a little street cred, no doubt about it, and she she's she's has the talking points of a lot of DSA Democratic Party candidates saying they're for Medicare for all, for more housing and things like that. So it's not too surprising. She was endorsed by Sanders and some. I think it would be a stretch to say that she was garnering any support from the working class, garnering much of any support for the working class in in Denver. It was a pretty petty bourgeois area there in central Denver where she was um running. But I think we might see similar we might see similar wins in different enclaves around the country. Uh but it's not gonna um it's not gonna help uh in and of itself help build the uh you know, bridge the gap between socialists and the working class, which is where the social power exists to really fight for not only in gains, not only for not only meaningful reforms, but for revolution for real change.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

I think there's this problem of looking to electing progressive democrats as the way to save the working class as opposed to actually fighting to win battles of like win working class battles. You know, the JBS strike in Greeley is a perfect example. Greeley's very close to Denver, it's like an hour away. But what did Denver DSA do during the JBS strike? Well, they didn't mobilize their members to go out and help reinforce the picket lines, they instead were busy doing all-out mobilizations to get Millot elected. For all of the talk of stopping ICE and defending the unions, two questions that were tied together and posed during the JBS strike at Greeley, they didn't do anything but tell bureaucrats who sold the strike out. JBS traffics an immigrant slate immigrant labor so it can impose the worst slave-like conditions on the union, leans on ice if it needs it to do its dirty work. They also work with Trump for worse conditions. So win it during that strike would have had a huge impact for immigrant rights and for labor conditions. But again, rather than build support for an actual live strike in defense of immigrant workers, DSA put all of its efforts in getting Democrats elected.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Yeah, I think like we've seen that throughout. If you've been in the New York City DSA in the last period, I mean, everything was like all out, everything was completely consumed by these elections. And they also, I think, sent people from New York to Denver too to help Mailat win as well. But yeah, but then when you have these strikes like in Greeley, I was in Greeley, the SA did not organize mass pickets to bolster that strike. So they'll mobilize, knock on thousands of doors, and do all of that to get Democrats elected. But when there's actual class like battles right there, their whole strategy is to just cheerlead the bureaucrats who are selling the struggle out. Because the bureaucrats have the same strategy. Get Bernie Sanders to write a letter, get the Democrats to do the right thing, to put pressure. And none of this equals improving the conditions of the working class. You see that very clearly. We saw that with the niceness strike, which we talked about earlier. But DSA could have built mass pickets, but instead, everything they were doing was sending thousands to Albany to lobby Hokul. But the way to fight Hokul was to win the niceness strike. But Zoran was endorsing the strike breaker of that strike. DSA is like totally beholden to Zoron. For real socialists, you look to the class struggle to advance the conditions of our class, and strikes are won or lost on the picket lines. But for the DSA, it's electoral politics they look to as what's going to save us. It's been shown time and again that it's a dead end. But it also really just lies to the working class and to leftists and activists and people that want real change. And as far as workers are concerned, when when you have these kinds of betrayals by these pro-democratic party bureaucrats, by Momdani, by these characters, it it just moves workers to the right. It's the opposite of helping the working class.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

That's definitely true. I mean, workers are looking very carefully at who says what and what do they do in those battles. Um the DSA is not doing what it should. I know there are people, I know there are there are socialists in the DSA that would that would uh that we need to win to the side of breaking completely with the Democratic Party and bringing them to actually bridge the gap between socialists and the working class, but you're not never gonna get that with this link with the Democrats.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Yeah. I guess it's kind of like this first we'll get all these Democrats elected, and then socialism will be dominant, but it never works that way. Reality, there's plenty of evidence for that not working. The other thing you get in these elections that the DSA left talks about is how to hold these electeds accountable. What's the likelihood of them betraying once they're in office? How do we prevent that? There's a lot of discussions on Twitter, especially about this. Recently, uh New York City DSA put out a critique of Mamdani, probably the first ever, of him he was gonna hire like 600 more NYPD officers. And so, like, I think literally the day of the budget, Mamdani announced he wasn't gonna hire them, which is good. It's good to not have even more cops. It was a big ruse. Mamdani has like reneged on all his promises regarding the cops. I'm not gonna list them all, but the SRG, he said he would disband. So he's like backs off hiring some more cops. So it seems like he's accountable, but it's a big hoax because the police power is stronger than ever under Mamdani and Tish. Mam Dani said that they were able to identify ways to keep the NYPD headcount at the originally authorized 35,000. But the budget is to have a NYPD size of 35,000 cops. Right now, there's 34,000. So they're still hiring a thousand more in this budget.

SPEAKER_02 41:51

So it's not a bad switch.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Yeah, they're still hiring more cops. So the whole thing is just like, you know, yeah, it's just totally, and I think that is really how he works. You have to really look in the fine details, like the pension thing that no one will talk about. Where are these great victories coming from? So the left is touting this as a victory. He listened to us, but the bar is so low on like on this question of being held accountable. And the co-chair of the New York City DSA, uh, Grace Mauser, who is quoted in The Gothamist today when they asked her what she made of Mamdani's reversal on hiring Mark Hopp, she said, I think it says that the mayor does have a core of socialist values that he is ready to return to. And it's like, is that acknowledging that he has departed from his core socialist values? Yeah. I thought we're living under socialism in New York City. I don't understand that. But they have to go to such lengths to try to portray this guy as some opponent of the oligarchy, as some socialist who's gonna like get us all these great things. And it's so uh far from the reality.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Totally far, especially, you know, with the housing. Yeah. When he's pushing through this disinvest and uh disinvest, privatize and demolish public housing. And then he goes and has these uh fake NYSHA in the neighborhood meetings, you know. Yeah. And um yeah, they're select in the on the trade union front, some of the DSA left are trained union bureaucrats, like at Labor Notes. They train them how to sort of three packaged sellouts. Like, for example, they depicted the strike uh in Greece as being a great victory.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

The accountability thing always comes up around the DSA left. Right now they're feeling the wind in their sails, they've got all these new people elected to Congress or dog catcher or whatever. It was just funny because I saw the other day Sarah Milner, who's a member of the NPC or supporter for former. Revolution tweeted out something like all of these new socialists in office need to stand in defense of the Prairie Lendants, which, yes, of course, they should. But the reality is I do not see that happening. But people should put pressure on them, come out in defense of the Prairie Land protesters, because this is another one where the situation right now is these guys are getting railroaded to prison for opposing ICE.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Like 30 to 100 years in prison.

SPEAKER_04 44:28

Right. It's it's ridiculous. Yeah. And we've seen the accountability stuff come up before on the left, and there's always a lot of noise about it, but then at the end of the day, it never goes anywhere. There's an opportunity here to try to make it go somewhere, right? We don't think we can actually hold these guys accountable, but the only way to find out is to actually try it. So, like, yeah, call on them. All these people who got elected, they should call for the immediate release of the Prairie Land defendants. All these people are innocent, they should be freed.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Like that's what socialists would do.

SPEAKER_04 44:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

When the Philly election happened, the DSA left promoted Chris Robb as so radical, so left because he was for freeing Mumia Abu Jamal, who's former Black Panther, framed up for killing a Philly cop and has been in prison for over four decades. And what has he said about Mumia? I looked it up and he signed one letter that was from the Philly DSA to the Democratic Party governor Shapiro that Mumia be released due to old age and poor health. I don't think the letter even said that Mumia was innocent. It definitely didn't say anything about the crimes of the Democrats in railroading and persecuting Mumia and the MOOV organization. But you know, this guy, Chris Robb, has been on the Pennsylvania Board of Representatives for 10 years. And I'm not aware of him doing anything for Mumia in those 10 years. But yeah, he should advocate for Mumia. Again, what side is he on? Now he's going to be in Congress. So yeah, he should fight to advocate for Mumia's freedom. He should call to open all the police archives. So many secrets, especially in Mumia's case in Philly and Pennsylvania, and call to jail killer cops. If any of these people are any kind of socialists, they would fight for those things. And if they don't, then you know what side they're on and it ain't ours. For a lot of the DSA's, they'll say this stuff during election time, but then that's not the thing they push. It gets dropped, basically. For sure, with Prairie Land, with Mumia, there really should be pressure put on these supposed socialists to actually fight against this state persecutions. That's a I guess the question that you always get is well, what do you do? If these electeds aren't gonna save us, if we shouldn't run on Democratic Party ballot line, what do we do? Because the system is so rigged against independent candidates, against um third parties, whatever it is. And it's usually argued that this is really the most practical way to have mass politics or to get people involved. What is the answer if this isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 47:07

Well, I think we absolutely have to support candidates that are genuinely independent of the Democratic Party, ones that want to see a polarization along class lines uh with uh independent socialist candidates. And I think there are a number out there that are that should be supported, like Salant in Seattle and Easton here in New York City, Christian Chicago, and Rhode Island, D SAA is actually running a candidate independent of the Democratic Party. And um I really appreciated the recent episode with her on it. And it was it was really uh those are the that's what we need to do. Have real socialists running for office that don't aren't aligned with the par party of blood wrenched US imperialism.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Yeah, and I I think also it is important to have independent candidates to to show that it's not like impossible, but also whole DSA big tent, what binds the left and right together is this conception that socialism is gonna be built through electing people to office. And um we don't think that's true. We know that's not true. And for us, we use elections to propagate our ideas and advance the struggle to build a a socialist Marxist poll against both the DSA defenders of Democratic Party liberalism and also the reactionary MAGA opponents that a lot of the working class looks to as well. We use these campaigns that we support to really build confidence in the working class and amongst the oppressed to struggle under their own independent banner. That is not only possible, but really the only way to advance. And like Marx said, our politics must be working class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party, it must be independent and have its goal, its own goal and its own policy. That's a legit Marx quote, even though all the caucuses and the DSA call themselves Marxists and support the opposite of that. But that is actually what Marxism is about. It's really fundamental.

SPEAKER_04 49:11

I think that's exactly right. It's the the unity behind this parliamentary road to socialism with the Democratic Party. This is an impediment to getting anything workers need right now to defend themselves, to better their position. What does it meant to actually have these so-called socialists in elected office in New York City? It's meant privatization of public housing. It's meant Tish gets kept on as police commissioner, the SRG continues to exist. It means terror by the police, so not much change there before so-called socialism came to New York City. It means immigrant home care workers work 24 hours a day. In all of these different struggles that have come up, where some elements of the DSA left have reacted to these injustices or these struggles that are going and tried to chart even just a slightly different course than what the Mamdani administration and all these elected DSAers have been arguing for. They come up against a roadblock, and that roadblock is if you get out of line, you threaten unity behind these elected Democrats. From this whole organization is built around the idea that the more of these guys you have, the closer you are to socialism in some way, shape, or form. But that's really the wrong conception. These guys are holding those struggles back, and not getting out of line from these guys is really what is holding all of these fights back. And that's something that has to be fought against, not just on the electoral arena, but in every different arena that DSAers are involved in. If it's labor, if it's immigrant defense, if it's anti-imperialism, this is an anchor around the neck of the DSA.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

There are independent working class alternatives that we support. I think Tom mentioned Sawant in Seattle or Easton here in New York City. We'd canvass for them and do what we can because we do want them to have a good showing. And also we use those in the working class to try to provide a true alternative. But there's also just so many struggles going on right now that that the DSA should really be fighting as opposed to just total liquidation into electoralism. There's the fight against Mam Dani's privatization of the project. The fight against New York PD terror is all the time in New York City. The DSA should be fighting for justice for the families of those killed and terrorized by the NYPD. There's a court hearing on next Wednesday on July 8th for uh Jabez Chakra Bordi, who was the youth who the cops shot as he was having a mental crisis. Donnie applauded the cops for doing a good job. Not only are the cops not facing charges, but Jabez is charged and he's still facing charges. And so there's a court hearing, and I think maybe the racial justice working group is trying to mobilize for that court hearing, and that is good, but obviously a lot more could be done for that. There's the ongoing fight for the Nomar 24 bill. We were at a press conference yesterday, and they had announced that they're likely to go on another hunger strike because men and won't put this bill forward. That's another thing that really should be fought. The fight to get rid of these slave-like work conditions for immigrant women is a now fight and a fight against US imperialism, which has been on a rampage, fight to defend the Cuban revolution. Our next episode is going to be focused on that and what what we can do here in the belly of the beast to defend Cuba. These are all urgent battles that need to be fought right now. I think when you get involved in these struggles, you'll see that actually the alliance with the Democrats is actually the source of the betrayals on all of these burning questions that I mentioned. And far from helping, it's an obstacle to advancing the conditions of workers and the oppressed, whether it's New York City or Denver or Philadelphia. Fighting for a break with this losing cycle of supporting progressive Dems that just turn around and stab you in the back is really crucial to be able to go forward.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

I'm really glad you added the point about how these fights are interconnected, the fight against U.S. imperialism and the fight against, you know, the fight for labor rights here at home, and uh fight for Puerto Rican independence, the fight against war against imperialist slaughters in the Middle East, the fight for Palestinians. All these are red line issues for the Democratic Party, the real people that run the Democratic Party. And I think in the DSA, the world that just break already caucus are really the only people really clearly and forcefully calling for a clean break with the Democratic Party. There are people out there who are gonna see as time goes by um the total and utter bankruptcy of this electoralist program and and of you know pinning their hopes on basically helping socialists who be betrayed socialist principles as as elected politicians of the Democratic Party. And I just hope that all those people in the DSA who want who who begin to see more and more clearly where this this is taken them, that they will join us in a fight to have a have a a break with the Democratic Party and then to you know forge a real a real socialist alternative, you know, an independent working class alternative to both bourgeois parties. So I'm all for the JBA's doing. That was what I said.

SPEAKER_04 54:34

That concludes this episode, this special episode of Give Me a Break. Uh, you can follow all the work of the Just Break Already caucus by checking out our Linktree. That is linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already. You can also follow us on X at Clean Break Now and on Instagram at DSA underscore just break already. If you would like to come on the show, debate us, send us your positive comments, your hate mail, whatever you got, send it to us. Our DMs are always open. And if you want to be on the show, that's the easiest way to get in touch. Before I end, Tom, is there a way people can follow the work of uh transit workers for a fighting union you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_02 55:17

For sure, for sure. People should definitely check out our website, twfu.org. TWFU.org. And you can find us on Facebook and X as well. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 55:30

Great. All right, thanks so much for coming on. Oh, my pleasure. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 55:35

Bye bye.