Gimme a Break!
The official podcast of the Just Break Already Caucus.
Gimme a Break!
Why is it so hard for DSA to endorse independent socialists?
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Lital and Edward are joined by Dan from International Socialist Alternative (Revolutionary) for a postmortem on the Sawant campaign. Dan recently wrote a letter to Cosmonaut replying to Socialist Majority Caucus support David Duhalde on the question of DSA endorsing Sawant. DSA didn't endorse Sawant in a pretty brazen display of sectarianism, and all wings of DSA celebrated her not making it past the primary to face off against arch-Zionist Adam Smith. Despite that, Sawant got an impressive 17% of the vote (nearly 25,000 votes).
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And then it's the DSA leadership. The DLC leadership bears a big share of the blame for what has happened. Because they they, you know, when they refuse to have a vote on endorsement, then we as individual DSA members, which I am a duespaying member of DSA, we brought forward a resolution which was to have, you know, it was a vote to have a vote. They wouldn't let us have an endorsement vote itself. So we had to have a vote on whether an endorsement vote could be held. And in that meeting, they engaged in one of the most vicious character assassination campaigns that I have ever been subjected to. And you know, I've been subjected to all kinds of things. One of the things that they did was, I joined that meeting on Zoom and um our other comrades were in person. One of the things that they did was repeatedly accuse me of not taking that meeting seriously because I was not there in person, even though they knew full well that I was not there in person because I was at that moment in Sacramento to in the Bay Area to support a rally for statewide Medicare for all there in the absence of any of the DNC leaders or labor leaders supporting that rally. And the DNC leaders never once explained why refusing to support our campaign was somehow mysteriously in the interest of the Palestinian people. So I think this is all extremely important for us to note, and we also have to note something that we have done, you know, noted many times before, which is our metrics of success. Our metrics of success, our obviously it includes winning elections, but it is not an election winning elections as an end in itself. It is winning elections on the basis of actually using the campaign itself as a ridicule of fight back. And then if we win then using that elected office as a vehicle of fight back, it is a principal approach that we use from start of financial, and we are damn proud of that. And that's one it was noble that we run as an independent again. Because if you, you know, and you have we heard this all the time. Oh, it's just tactical, you're run as a democratic tactical. It is not a tactical question, it is very much a principal question. Because what about what is the way that we are pointing towards pointing forward for the working class? When we tell them, oh, you know, the democratic party is not on your side, but I'm going to run as a democrat simply because I'm going to win an election. It doesn't work. And from the number, I'm still been pointed out, and this was a very important point that was made this evening, which is that as a matter of fact, those people who run as Democratic Party candidates, they don't actually ever intend to fight against the Democratic Party. But it is a lie that they sell us that hey, you your fight back will be better if you come into the Democratic Party, but they don't actually fight.
SPEAKER_03Hello and welcome to another episode of Gimme a Break, the podcast of the Just Break Already Caucus in the DSA. I'm your host, Lee Tall, and I'm joined by my co-host Edward. Hello. And the audio you heard at the beginning is a clip of Shama Sewant's speech on August 4th, the night she lost in the primary elections for Washington's 9th Congressional District. She placed third behind incumbent Democrat Adam Smith and Republican Doug Bassler. But Sewant got over 20,000 votes, um, 17th of the total vote. And this is actually quite good given she ran as a socialist and in explicit opposition to the Democratic Party. That said, there was a real chance here to go into the November election with an independent socialist candidate against an arch-Zionist, decades-long staunch pusher of U.S. imperialism in Congress, Adam Smith. And this opportunity was lost. As we discussed in our previous episode before the election, the DSA played a very bad role in refusing to endorse her and mobilize for a win here. Which, given she was only a few thousand votes away from second place, would have pushed her over the line and massively undercut votes from Melissa Chaudhry, who also ran as a progressive but was the spoiler candidate in the race to stop Shama from winning. So why would a proclaimed socialist anti-Zionist organization boycott this election and let a genocidal Dem win? To help us understand all this, why it's not an isolated issue of just personal vindictiveness for SHAMA, but DSA leadership's whole strategy against running independence, we have a special guest, Daniel.
SPEAKER_00Oh, hi there.
SPEAKER_03He's with International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary in Seattle, and he recently wrote an article, Why is it so hard for DSA to endorse independent socialists? which is a response to David Duhalde's defense of DSA not endorsing SWAN. Now, DuHalde is with the Socialist Majority Caucus, which is the DSA's right and which, along with groundwork, runs the New York City and LA branches. However, the DSA left has greater representation on the NPC, the national leadership. Yet I really think the left and the right were united in opposing giving support to Sawant in this election. And Daniel's article was published in Cosmonaut last week, but also got a nice boost from Brianna Joy Gray, who does the Bad Faith podcast. She posted the article and told all her followers to read it and highlighted a quote from it quote, a socialist organization that fights for the working class must oppose the Democratic Party. Fundamentally, Duhalde disagrees, but cannot politically respond to Sawant's criticisms. And this is why he exhorts the values of the quote big tent to argue that it should not back mean old Shaman against Adam Smith, end quote. So maybe you can tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your organization, just to start.
SPEAKER_00Sure thing. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm a member of ISAR, that's International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary. We're an external tendency of ISA, which is International Socialist Alternative, and that means we were a faction in that organization fighting on some really basic programmatic points for ISA to take up. Uh, that we shouldn't be supporting pro-imperialist trade union leaders and instead fighting for revolutionary leadership in the unions, that Marxists should be taking up the defense of oppressed nations against imperialism like Iran, Palestine, Cuba, or Venezuela, and of course, that we should not be supporting capitalist parties. And so, socialist alternative, that's the US section of ISA, which I was a member of, endorsed Jill Stein back in 2024, and then endorsed Zoran Mandani last year, and this was a huge point of contention. And rather than actually carry out a process of political debate within the organization to clarify these issues, ISA expelled us on an extremely depoliticized basis. And for some context, ISA was the former organization of Shamma Solant. I was in the and I joined back in 2020, so a lot of my formative political years were spent in that branch during the twilight of Shama's council office time, fighting for things like the Amazon tax, fighting against the right-wing recall in 2021. But for some history, and then this kind of gets into some other points, Shama split from ISA back in 2024 on a pretty horrible and unpoliticized basis to form this the organization Revolutionary Workers, and then Labor Militant, who you guys had on the pod a few weeks back. They got expelled from Revolutionary Workers a few months ago before we got expelled from ISA. There's now four Trotsky historians in Seattle, who three years ago, I'll be straight up, it's an embarrassing and unserious situation. And I think it's a particularly egregious case of this extremely politically destructive and unclarifying tendency among revolutionary sects. We need to be able to work together and clarify our political differences without splintering, if there's ever going to be a revolutionary force that can actually provide leadership to the working class struggle. That's why we at ISAR share a perspective with the Starcast League about the need for revolutionary improvement. It's been a pleasure working with JDA and Labour Militant on things like fighting for a clean break in the DSA. So, yeah, thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_01In your article, you write, quote, in terms of combating the reactionary forces in power through popularizing the socialist politics DSA professes to be building, endorsing Shamasawant's campaign against Adam Smith should have been an obvious decision. So why did it cause so much controversy within the Seattle DSA chapter, and why did its annual local convention decide not to side with an independent socialist calling to end the Palestinian genocide? End quote. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? Uh I know right before the election, Megan Roomer, who's part of the Red Star, the so-called Marxist-Leninist Caucus, co-chair of National DSA, was on Brianna Joy Gray's show, and Brianna asked her why they didn't endorse Shama. And it was really lame. She said Shamma didn't ask for an endorsement, which is of course false. And after the election, Twitter was full of people on the DSA right and the left gloating about how Sawant lost because she sucks, because she hates DSA, and various really, really defensive arguments for why DSA couldn't endorse her. The most cynical version, of course, was that she was against BDS as a tactic, so you shouldn't support a genocidal pig winning because Sawant is not for BDS. Which is really ludicrous given that their leading candidate uh for president in 2028 voted present when the Iron Dome came up for a vote in Congress. That was ludicrous, but maybe you want to break that down. What actually happened at that DSA meeting and what were some of the so-called good faith arguments that were raised for not endorsing Shama?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is great to get into, because I feel like Seattle DSA is kind of a microcosm of DSA's contradictions as a whole. There is a big contingent of the classic Democrat Party aligned NGO types who essentially want DSA to be an electoral machine for the Democrats. But there's also quite a big presence of dirty breakers and people who I think genuinely want to build DSA into some kind of force for class struggle, but go about this in a deeply confused way. For example, Red Star, they have a presence in Seattle, and most of the time, it's not like a just a completely anti-electoral line. They're like electoral politics in general is a distraction from doing real issues on the ground. But what it means is that you have DSA members who land in all kinds of weird places. So whereas in some more right-wing chapters like New York City, there's clarity on what they're trying to do, this whole electoral project propping up a left wing of the Democratic Party. In Seattle, there's no such thing. And I I think that means Seattle can sort of stumble its way into the correct position at times. So for example, Seattle DSA does have a history of endorsing Shaw. And when they do endorse, they do mobilize, they took part in stuff like the tax Amazon fight and the fight against the recall campaign. Last year, they had a fight about endorsing Democrat Katie Wilson for mayor, and they voted not to endorse Wilson, despite the fight being waged by the right winners who essentially were saying Katie Wilson is gonna be our Zorok here. And I bring this up because uh it's important to kind of look at the basis on which this fight was won against endorsing Katie Wilson. Like the main takeaway SLDSA members got from that was that Katie Wilson's an entryist, she cynically became a DSA member to seek endorsement and support. It was very constantly done, and the members saw through it and pretty much said, buzz off, don't use DSA to further your own political ambitions. And the problem with this is that some basic political points, such as that as a Democrat, Katie Wilson's gonna do things that she has now done as mayor, like restarting the homeless deck and cannon sweeps or pushing through an austerity budget, etc. These are the reasons why DSA should oppose her. And that largely got lost for this whole concern over entryism. Part of the reason this is really bad is that this whole concern about entryism, it got grafted onto the question of endorsing Shama, and that completely allowed the right wing to hide the fact that in reality their opposition to endorsing Shama was that if DSA endorses someone who's actually principled on the question of the Democratic Party and will consistently call out that the Democrats attacks on working people and depressed, this will harm DSA's ability to continue trying to build with the Democratic Party. And instead, the right wing was able to make this fight about like, is Shuma actually interested in building DSA? She's a hostile actor, is she just trying to use us to further her own political career? And that really obfuscated the issue. Now, to be clear, Shuma has her fair share of blame for this socialist alternative, the board that Show and I used to be in. We had to drag DSA into endorsing past races, then salted this really clumsy intervention into I think it was either the 21 or 22 National Convention, and essentially pulled out of DSA after making themselves look like a bunch of hostile actors who had just entered to poach and recruitment of DSA members on a clean break line, because that's essentially what happened. So then a few years pass, and some very embarrassing stuff happens with SALT, uh, Shama splits, and she comes back saying, hey, endorse me for this congressional run. And the way these Seattle DSA members are reading it is you left the council office, you split from your party to start a podcast, and now you're asked running for Congress, you're a drifter. I don't think this is a politically clarifying way of looking at things, but it certainly wasn't a good look for Shama. And on top of that, Shuma is sectarian. Like uh the the lady militant guests talked about this uh when they were on. It's extremely hard to work with her campaigns if you're not in her organization. Even when DSA did mobilize for things like tax Amazon or previous elections, overwhelmingly what that looked like was just two completely separate operations. There's no real political or organizational coordination. And this doesn't even get into some of the horrifically sectarian things that Shuma's campaign did with Labor Militant, where they told them don't show up to our campaigns. They made it a point to publicly attack them for launching this movement for Shuma formation to facilitate independent critical. I mean, all that is legitimately very damaging both to Shuma's own campaign and it does raise fair concerns about what it'll be like trying to work with Shuma's campaign. But I think ultimately, if you're gonna ignore the political questions here and say, I guess we can't endorse Shuma because she's hard to work with and isn't legitimately interested in building DSA, that's just DSA being sectarian. Like that's just putting DSA's own organizational interests, the interest of building DSA above that of the class struggle, above the task of uniting the working class in Seattle against a clear common enemy, like imperialist Adam Smith. And this is a this is a big point we're trying to push. You can critically support candidates and legitimately fight for them to win against someone like Adams, while pointing out that yes, there are huge problems with Shuma's campaign. There are huge problems with her methods, they do negatively impact the class struggle. And this is how you can clarify to working people what's needed to actually hold someone like Shema accountable, a socialist figure who's trying to become a leader of the working class struggle. But you can't do that if you abstain from this fight and you refuse to pick the side with an independent socialist against Adam Smith.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what was Red Star's position on it was they just argued like on the electoral level to not get involved?
SPEAKER_00You're all probably familiar with these DSA debates, it's horrible because there's not actually enough time for people to talk.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it's like at the end and yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if Red Star even had someone up on the stack. I don't remember, but I do know talking to Red Star members, they all opposed endorsing Shuma because, at least in Seattle, they essentially oppose endorsing Eddie. Actually, now that I think of it, I do remember actually. Someone did go up from Red Star and pretty much said this entire thing is a waste of time to even be thinking about what we endorsed. We should build the actual struggle on the ground or something like that.
SPEAKER_03Right. But there do they say that when a Democrat is up for endorsement?
SPEAKER_00At this Seattle one, they actually did about uh Scott. You know, uh oh yeah, that's what I was wondering. Yeah, because I know that this is why I was saying Seattle DSA, it's really got everything going on there. I think it it kind of represents a wide range of strange political positions people take. Yeah it comes out in very confusing ways sometimes.
SPEAKER_03I noticed with Megan Romer when she was on um Brianna Joy Gray's podcast, she basically like she didn't ask for an endorsement, which I think she would know that she did if she was Red Star, especially, is in Seattle, but she didn't give arguments why not to endorse Shama. She just kind of left it at that. And then when when Brianna Joy Gray was asking her about how they just endorse Democrats, she basically gave that argument as just a ballot line. And then she referenced madmen, Don Draper, being in an elevator famous scene where he's like, I don't think about you at all. And she literally said that. She doesn't think about the Democratic Party at all. It's just so ludicrous. Everything in in the news, everywhere, it's all about the DSA red wave, refurbishing, rebranding, whatever the Democratic Party. That's the whole discourse. It takes a lot of um effort to act like that is not something you are familiar with is happening. But I think that is some of the contradictions with the way that the some of the DSA left tries to uh straddle these very incompatible positions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think that's a good way of putting it straddling these incompatible positions, and we'll probably get into this later as we talk more about the dirty breakers. But I think especially when you look at MPC members in these dirty break caucuses, the pressure to essentially cover for the DSA right to avoid conflict with them really starts to come out. Yeah. And the kinds of lines they use for it, it reflects their way of trying to maintain some kind of left-wing line. Like, I don't even care about the Democrats, I care about the struggle or something. And obviously it's very politically incoherent.
SPEAKER_03Anyone who's in DSA knows, especially now, that so much of everything is the electoral stuff, right? Even if you're part of different working groups, like we all are, everything goes towards, especially with the midterms and then now the presidential election. In your article, you point out that Duhalde's case against endorsing Shama rests upon a double standard when compared to other DSA candidates. And you write that, quote, his article is as much a defense of running candidates within the Democratic Party as it is a polemic against endorsing Sawant, end quote. And that, quote, Duhalde summarizes his argument against endorsing Sawant as such. She has not reciprocated DSA's solidarity nor acted as a productive leader in our organization since becoming a member. Can the same not be said about AOC? Similarly, Duhalde has nothing to say about the various controversies around Zoran Mamdani since he assumed office as mayor of New York City, including, but not limited to reappointing known Zionist Jessica Tisch as New York PD Commissioner, endorsing Kathy Hokel, and betraying a campaign promise to end the 24-hour workday. With Mam Dani, doesn't DSA deserve better? End quote. I particularly like this part of the letter. Maybe you can elaborate on this some more as well, this double standard, um, which is quite relevant with the discussion over endorsing AOC for president, that's going on pretty much in every chapter of DSA right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like it's kind of a big elephant in the room, right? If you're gonna make these arguments against uh endorsing Shaba, what the hell is the deal with AOC and Dora Mogdani? Even if you accept Duhaldi's framework where you judge a DSA candidate endorsement on the basis of their working relationship with DSA, you can see that Democrats have violated this over and over. Another simple example, Jamal Bowman, he's another DSA Democrat who's caught similar for taking pro-Israel position, as Democrats do. Bowman publicly on an interview insinuated that there's infiltration of the DSA by the feds, which is an insane thing to say publicly. It's incredibly damaging and irresponsible for a high-profile DSA members to make an accusation like that. Like that's hard to overstate. It's way worse than anything Shauna has ever done, where she's very consistently criticized DSA, but for failing to actually build socialism or the working class struggle by continuing to support Democrats. I want to hammer this point because it is nice to catch all a socialist majority caucus with their pants down on a gotcha like this. But to DSA members broadly, these questions about AOC and Mundanica, they're in front of you right now. You have to contend with this because the face of your organization right now, Roman Mamdanica, he's out there spewing propaganda, he's privatizing the projects, he's breaking strikes. There's a huge contingent in DSA that's mobilizing and preparing for an AOC presidential run. LA DSA just had its convention recently, and they passed a run AOC run motion that's literally resolving to pressure AOC to run for president. SMC and Groundwork, they're publishing articles on how to build power for socialism, DSA should endorse AOC on day one. This is happening. We gotta deal with this. So fine, even if you do find these kinds of arguments about the problems with Shama and her working relation to DSA compelling, then you should also impose an AOC endorsement. In fact, you should oppose any Democrat endorsement because these problems, these concerns about a working or destructive relationship with the DSA they're gonna arise. These Democrats are gonna be subject to party discipline from the Democratic Party, which is one of the oldest and most established bourgeois political machines in the world. And That's going to force these Democrats to put the interests of the imperialists over the interests of DSA. And more importantly, they're going to put the interests of the imperialists over the interests of the working class and the struggle.
SPEAKER_03So you're saying that the Democratic Party is not just a ballot line?
SPEAKER_00As it turns out.
SPEAKER_03That it is not a real party with discipline.
SPEAKER_00With its hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire donors and its political machinery that has like had decades of you know integration into all kinds of social movements and you know non-profit orgs, and lo and behold, yes, it has a party machinery. It has means of enacting party discipline. It has means of enacting its pro-imperialist party model.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Mom Donnie gave us spoke at something recently, and they asked him about woke one and the police, and he gave a whole thing about how people, like politicians, people can evolve, and how he like appreciates the cops so much for public safety. Which honestly, like that has been his tune for a while, but there was just all this shocked outrage on Twitter from leftists and others, like, like, why is he doing this to us now? That's what it means to be Democratic Party mayor of New York City. I was just actually at a protest before this uh defend public housing protest across the street of from Gracie Mansion, where Mom Dani lives. There were a lot of residents from the projects at it. It was a pretty small demo, it was only like 30 people maybe, but most of them were residents from the projects, and their speeches were so hard-hitting against Mamdanny. One of the guys took out AOC too, but they're just like, this isn't socialism. How can socialism be privatization? That's not what we voted for. One of the guys was like, I voted for Mamdani. Other people in the projects voted for Mamdani. We thought he was gonna help us and he's pushing us out of our houses. And one person spoke to how this is this is really what the Democrats do. They spoke about de Blasio and Adams and how Mamdani's really just doing the same stuff. Why is that? I don't think it's because in his heart of hearts he wants to be evil, but it does go hand in hand with running the Cat Wall Street Capitol for a capitalist party. That's who you serve.
SPEAKER_00And I would just add on to that this idea of the Democratic Party actually being a party and not just a ballot line. Because I know certain dirty breakers, they had this line of, well, the real problem with Mongdani or AOC is that they're running for executive office, and that puts them in a position where they have to oversee the cops. Yeah. But I think another instructive example is a couple of years ago, uh, this was in Nevada, the the Las Vegas DSA chapter, and they managed to get a slate of their candidates to pretty much control, I forget if it was like city council or maybe state congress, and they tried pushing some left-wing policies, and the Democrats, what they did was, because they all ran as Democrats, uh, the Democratic Party just pulled the rug out from under them. They they took all the funding, yeah, they took all the Act Blue door knocking lists and stuff, and these candidates one by one crumbled under that pressure because oh, this this infrastructure that we've been relying on for our political project just got completely pulled out from under us. They completely capitulated and eventually alienated themselves even from the Las Vegas DSA chapter. And so even when you're at these municipal local levels, it's a party, it's a machinery. And there are material things it can do to enforce its party discipline, and that's a reality that DSA really needs to contend with if it's gonna talk about being able to hold elected accountable to DSA.
SPEAKER_01That's a pretty good segue into talking a little bit more about the DSA left. Uh in your article, you mentioned the Marsh Unity Group, Mug, which I guess it's been, at least to us, a bit surprising how vociferously nasty mug has been about Sawan. Megan Romer said she didn't want Adam Smith to win. But there have been these tweets from Amy and Mug. She's also on the NPC. In June, Sawant criticized Jacobin's hit piece against Chris Smalls, and her quote on that was uh quote, you take any excuse to shit on us and then ask for our help canvassing, fuck off. This is a big reason nobody wanted to endorse you this time around. So why does a caucus that has point one of its points of unity, which is political independence, where they say Marxist Unity Group calls for immediate steps toward political independence. We become a party by acting like one. For us, the break with the Democratic Party is a continuous process that must begin in earnest right now. This will require courage and our faith in our ability to succeed as an independent movement. We believe that the socialist movement is worthy of that faith. We support a transition toward independent campaigns. Forever ballot access laws make this readily achievable. Even if this causes a temporary decrease in the number of our electoral victories, end quote. So you want to try to explain that contradiction?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because I think it's really important to understand what the kind of dynamics are and the pressures acting on formations like MUG and other dirty breakers. Uh, this mug NPC member, Amy, in Seattle, she has been endlessly critical of Shama and covering for DSA not endorsing her by saying Shuma's not a good candidate, her campaign was unserious, uh, her position on Palestine. Yeah, it sucks. But here's a very interesting thing that gets into the confusions, but I think once you work it out, kind of clarifies the deal with Mug. As far as we can tell, Mug in Seattle was actually split on the question of endorsing Salat, with a lot of members leading in favor. I personally know some Mug members in Seattle who voted in favor of that resolution at the Seattle DSA Convention to open up Shuma's endorsement process. And actually, Amy, that MPC member at the convention, who again is loudly shitting on Shuma post-election after the fact, being like, fuck off, how dare you come and ask us for endorsement. She actually got on stack at the convention to speak up in favor of this particular motion. But as stacks happened in DSA, it got cut.
SPEAKER_03So Really? Because I think that quote is from June.
SPEAKER_00Well, here's the thing. Again, she spoke in favor of a motion for opening the endorsement process. And I didn't hear what she said, but I I suspect it would be we should go through this process. But she would remain completely agnostic on the question of actually endorsing someone. Because the thing about mug is that they're partyists. Their first point of unity is political independence, but they think the path to this is making DSA into a party that acts like a party. And when they say something like act like a party, or when they're talking about a party, there's very little political or class content to that. It's all like organizational and procedural terms. So if the question being posed is, do we want Shumma to go through the Seattle DSA endorsement procedures where you do a candidate questionnaire, and then there's a QA with the Socialists in Office Committee, and then you do another candidate forum with the membership, and then down the line, DSA votes on endorsing Shumma, Mugg will be like, sure, yes, we should do this. That's the DSA members acting like a party. We'll build up important organizational muscles from doing this, and it'll strengthen DSA as a party, whether or not we end up endorsing Shuma. But when, as what happened, the motion fails and DSA starts catching flack for this obvious political problem of not siding with an independent socialist against Adam Fucking Smith, that's when an MPC member starts to come out and cover for the organization and attacking Shuma. I think this is indicative of how Mugg, and I suspect, you know, a lot of other doctor breakers, they put these central political questions on the backbird. Instead, the main priority is building DSA as an organization as a party, because it's just taken for granted like, hey, DSA is the biggest socialist force, that's what we gotta build. I think it this has its own parallels with sectarianism, where the class struggle is not as important as the building of the organization. And it's a really dangerous political obfuscation because you can land on the correct side of some particular questions. But what we'll see consistently is that these dirty breakers, they won't put up a fight against right-wing or bourgeois or class collaborationist elements in DSA. So it's looking like mug, they're going to take up the fight against endorsing AOC. I'm basing that off of like publications they put online arguing a just say no line. Also a couple days ago there was a SDSA Presidential Candidate Endorsement Forum, where, again, the opinions were very mixed, and I would not be surprised at all if Seattle DSA ended up voting against an AOC endorsement. But if you looked at the arguments that were being made against endorsing AOC, it would be stuff like, well, it'll be a disaster for DSA if AOC wins. Because we're not ready for a presidential administration. We don't have the manpower and experience to have a socialist administration that has to oversee the declining American Empire. And I was sitting there like, what? Dog, you're you're putting the card before the horse here, you know? First of all, if AOC wins, she's just gonna have an administration of pro-imperialist democrats. What are you talking about? And before we even get to that, if you endorse AOC, you'll have endorsed an imperialist copaganda spewing strikebreaker. Forget what happens with the race. Like, that's completely delegitimizes DSA to the working class and oppressive.
SPEAKER_03But that makes her electable. That makes her viable as a Democratic Party candidate.
SPEAKER_00Frankly, she's already quote-unquote electable and viable, whether or not DSA endorses her.
SPEAKER_03I don't think she is very much.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, maybe we should get into perspectives about what's going on in the Democratic Party because I do think there is this realignment and there's significant forces there that think this Mundani AOC thing, this might be Maybe.
SPEAKER_03I just I'm just saying it's a big country, and there's a lot of workers that really hate AOC, hate DSA, hate liberalism. How much she would win their hearts is a really big well, definitely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The fact that her track record is championing liberalism and all those kinds of quote unquote left-flavored liberal identity politics has really alienated much of the working class. Yeah. But I think when you look at But she's dumping a lot of that right now for this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's because, you know, she's moving in this direction of trying to provide a path forward for the Democratic Party. But that's the thing. You dump that, you start alienating other parts of the working class. That had illusions. Well, I thought you were against ICE. I thought you were against cruel measures at the border. Back to the question of DSA and the way these dirty breakers are thinking about the AOC problem. Like, for just one second, forget about DSA the organization. Forget about whether it's not it's ready for a presidential run. And think about the struggle that's currently existing against the boss, against imperialism, against cop brutality, ice terror, queer women's oppression. If you endorse this pro-imperialist cop defender, that's what's going to be extremely disorienting to these kinds of movements. That's what's important here, and that's what's at risk if you endorse AOC or any other Democrat for a president.
SPEAKER_03I think there's different things going on here. There's a general framework which Mugg shares with the rest of the caucuses, whatever the SA is this generally electoral framework that you're gonna bring socialism about through elections. And part of the argument about not running, like we're not ready for executive office right now, is because we don't have enough legislative support. Um, I know that they had argued that, I think, about Mamdani before he ran for mayor. There was this piece in um cosmonaut, I think Noah Emkey is his name. I think it was just a no to supporting AFC. And I thought it was interesting because the guy is mug, it says. But in this piece, he actually says, we need to learn to say no. We have no power because we have no boundaries. For a great lesson on the power of boundaries, we should look to the Democratic Party. And then he says, no matter how oppositional a candidate is when they are being elected, once they are actually in office, the democratic establishment has power over them. A politician's place in key committees and caucuses and thus their power is dependent on their standing within their own party. This is the point of a political party. It is an institution designed to wield power by providing organization structure and discipline. And I just thought that was really funny because mug in their perspectives document, they say the opposite that the Democratic Party is a ballot line. It is not a party like a normal party. Anyone can basically run, you can have any politics and run on it, and it doesn't matter, which I think we've seen so many examples of why that's just totally false. But they're in these midterms, they have been campaign organizers and pushing Democrats in Florida. The next like big race happening is Oliver Larkin in uh South Florida and like Miami, Palm Beach, whatever area. You know, I think there's a lot of like Democratic Party New Yorkers and others, I guess, you know, that live down there. Yeah, and I guess he's neck and neck with the other guy, Zionist guy, uh, but he's a Democrat. He says a lot of good stuff. He holds up a lot better in some of these like Fox interviews than some of the other ones, but but he's a Democrat. On one hand, they're actually pushing these Democratic Party candidates in Philadelphia and Florida, but then also they're like opposing independent socialist candidates like Sawant. They were also opposed to the Akron Ohio DSA endorsing Greg Levy, a PSL candidate there. There is really a huge gulf between what they're saying, which sounds good, and then what they're actually doing, like the thing that Edward quoted earlier about it requires courage and faith in our ability to succeed as an independent movement. Anyone who does work in the DSA knows that it does require courage to actually like take on the right and make a real fight for a break with this imperialist genocidal party. If we have any mug listeners, well, of course, we'd always love to have you on and and to discuss this more. But I guess just how do you reckon that's it's a very big contradiction. How do they reconcile that?
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, that piece from Noah and especially that portion where he's talking about the Democratic Party and the fact that it is a party with pretty disciplined like good that you're writing that. Yeah, I think it's a reflection of the fact that mug and the Dirty Breakers, because of AOC, they're being forced to try to contend with the contradictions of their position. And the thing about Mugg, I guess if you wanted to use a simple Shiblef your one-word description of them, they're Neokalskiists, they're popular frontists. They have this conception of as long as we build power for the socialist movement and the socialist organization or moving towards socialism, and it what's lost in there is the idea that you have to draw class lines when you're doing this. You have to be able to say that if someone's a representative of the ruling class and the ruling class's interests, they shouldn't be in here. The just say no article is evidence of the fact that just the egregiousness of AOC's track record and the fact that so much of the DSA is trying to line up behind her, it's kind of forcing them to recognize that a Democratic Party politician is under party discipline from the Democrats. And I suspect there's contradictions within the MUG. I suspect there's a lot of MUG as well, which is definitely something to look into. But definitely what I haven't seen so far is that they're then able to apply this logic within DSA itself. If you have all these forces in DSA who insist on running Democrats, who insist on working within the Democrats, can we actually work together to build towards socialism? Build towards a working class party? It's becoming evident that this this runs into a wall.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There was also another article recently. I think his name was Omar Hagazi. That's right. Anyways, it was another similar article by a mug member. Most of it sounded very good, made a lot of good arguments about why not to run on the Democratic Party ballot line. And then again, speaking of courage, it really like lost the courage of its conviction at the end and basically was like, well, slowly, it was basically a dirty break ending. It was making all the clean break arguments and then it concluded with a dirty break argument. It's the contradiction, I think, is really kind of coming to a head more and more. I think the AOC endorsement is gonna really pose a lot of these questions very concretely. A lot of leftists in the SD don't like AOC for various reasons. They have other preferred DSA Democrat candidates they want for president. It's not on a basis of the class line, like you were saying, Dan. But part of what we have to do is because again, like Sawant, Sawant was very clear on the class line in her campaign. It wasn't because we thought she was the nicest or greatest person ever who's done the best ever of any Marxist ever on in history. That's not why we were giving her support, is that she was running an independent principled campaign against the Democrats and against Adam Smith.
SPEAKER_00Well, on that point, because you brought up the Omar Hagazi article, and I think that's another indication of like the pressures that are acting on Mugg and the Dirty Breakers. Because again, I think it's really crucial for revolutionaries and those with a clean break perspective to go into things like the AOC endorsement fight and clarify where the dirty break line is falling short, especially these dirty breakers who are really starting to move in this direction. Because, like you said, Omar Hagazi makes all these great arguments against endorsing Democrats, and then he's like, maybe we should try entryism in the working families party or something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is the Democratic Party.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the Working Families Party, that's actually just a ballot lot. They're actually integrated into the Democratic Party machinery. And the Green Party, I think in the US it's a little bit more confusing, but if you look at the Green Party's track record in like Europe, all those European Green parties, they they just do the same exact things as any other establishment party. They represent pro-imperialist ruling class interests. I think the point to make to these dirty breakers and people in DSA is okay, fine, you have a perspective about DSA becoming the workers' party in America, sure. I don't know if I agree that's how it'll pan out, but I've got opposed to concept. And if you think endorsing AOC and Dems is bad for that project, cool, let's fight together against that. But if you're serious about building a workers' party that will advance the class struggle, you have to be willing to draw red lines and actually act on them. We can't be building a popular front here. We have to be able to break with elements of the existing movements or organizations that are representing ruling class interests on the basis of the damage they're doing to the workers' movement. So some basic examples are just like, not one cent towards imperialist weapons of war and no support for imperialism. If AOC's out here voting for Iron Dome funding, if Jamal Bowman's out here covering for the genocide in Gaza, then get the hell out of our movements. If you're trying to build a socialist workers' party and in theory recognize that the power to change the world comes from the working class and its role in production, you can't be a strike breaker like AOC and Mundani and the Democrats are. You can't be saying, oh, I'm in an elected position now and I have to abide by bourgeois labor laws that disallow public sector workers from striking, or workers from doing solidarity strikes or political strikes. If you're standing in the way at all of something like teachers or nurses who want to strike against ICE being in their schools and hospitals, then you're standing in the way of the working class and oppressed. You're standing with the boss and the capitalist state, and you should be out of the socialist movement. And so red lines mean red lines. If you cross it, there's actual consequences beyond people getting off pissed off at Twitter and being like, why the hell is AOC doing this? If you're gonna be a Democrat or caucus with them and vote along their pro-imperialist strike breaking lines, then get out of the movement, get out of our party, you're denounced, renounced, and expelled. And I think that's the part where the dirty breakers, that's the step they're afraid to take because they want this unity of a movement. They want DSA to grow as big and strong as possible to take on the capitalists, and there might be something of a positive instinct in there, but it's kind of a vulgar understanding that sectarianism and splintering of the socialist movement is bad. This is something I really wanted to drive at with the Duhalde articles. Whatever unity you try to build, even if it's in like a multi-tendency quote-unquote Big Ten thing like DSA, it has to have some basic class lines, like what's in the interest of the working class versus what's in the interest of the ruling class. Uh, because if you don't, you're not gonna unite the working class. We can look at some examples of what's happened in here to see where things will go. If you just try to build a party on a vaguely left socialist, anti-imperialist basis, but then Da Linka immediately supports the Merit's government and is entering coalitions with the SDP and the Greens and doing the exact same policies the working class hates. You're not gonna stop the growth of the right. You're not going to grow the workers' movement in the fight against oppression.
SPEAKER_03We're working on having an episode, having a debate on the Green Party. A number of people have like written to us who are support the Greens but really like what we're doing in the DSA and want to be part of that because they really hate the Democrats. And they think the Greens are an alternative to that, or socialist, whatever. It comes up a lot with even Rihanna Joy Gray. She's been lately very like uh fire against the Democratic Party, but she's also all about the Greens, as far as I understand. I know that there was a post-election socialist town hall in Seattle last weekend. It was uh put on by the United Front for a workers' party. I know you guys participated in it, as well as Labor Militant. Maybe there were some other groups too. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what that was like, the discussion there, and where do we go from here?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, United Front for a Workers' Party. I think this is a Pretty interesting development that's been coming along for the past few months that we've been taking part in as part of our pursuit for revolutionary recruitment. United Front for the Workers' Party came out of a movement for Shamba as a way to try to cohere a way for working people and other left orgs that wanted to do independent critical support of SHA. And it's become a nice space for having discussions about what is the path towards building a socialist workers' party. Other groups locally here in Seattle have taken part, like Seattle Revolutionary Socialist and Freedom Socialist Party. We've had some debates over what is the role of electoral politics in building the forces of revolution. Should we be spending time in DSA or not as revolutionaries? I think we should, but Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm not sure. No, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_00Courage.
SPEAKER_03Courage and courage. Courage! Courage! We need courage, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and it's also this United Fund, it's been a good vehicle for joint work. I think our next big project will be trying to mobilize forces to build an organized fight back against this incoming austerity budget here in Seattle. And there's a lot of different forces uh taking part, so it's necessary to be able to clarify political and tactical questions about what kind of program should we be putting forward. How do we try to bring more forces like DSA into the fight uh against the austerity budgets in a way that advances the struggle? When we're trying to draw other forces like SRS or FSP into this fight within the DSA for a clean break, I think it's it's really important to clarify this notion of like we need a political break from the Democrats and their liberalism. And this gets kind of to some of the stuff you mentioned about agreement. We'd want to put the question to Green Party candidates also are you going to actually oppose imperialism? Can we hold you to the standard of not one sent to imperialist war? Can we hold you to the standard of no strike breaking? And I think that might be able to expose some of the contradictions with the Green Party and their reformist, frankly pro-capitalist path delivering reforms. I think that that could be a good way to like cut across some of the notions that are floating around in DSA that the clean break from the Democrats, which is this matter of political puritanism or socialist identitarianism, or whatever stupid labels that the DSA right likes to throw out. If you've got these independent formations coming up, if you've got these progressive candidates who might be running on the Green Party line, can we set down some basic rules of what is or isn't allowed within the socialist organization or movement? That doesn't stop you from being a multi-tenancy, broader socialist formation like the DSA is. It doesn't require becoming a democratic centralist cadre or a sect, or those who insist on putting that connotation on us. We'll still have debates over things like how do we talk about a Cuban government when raising a defense of Cuba against US imperialism, or how exactly should we mobilize when there's a strike going on? There's all kinds of political questions where it's a perfectly healthy thing for socialists to disagree but continue working together. But you can't have someone literally representing bourgeois interests in the socialist movement.
SPEAKER_04Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think that's something that any self-described revolutionary can agree to. I would love to see any self-proclaimed socialist argue it's okay for the socialist organization to vote for someone who's voting for iron dome funding.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's clear to us, right? That's clear to a lot of people in Marxist organizations. It's not clear in the DSA. So we should all be in the largest socialist organization in America trying to make it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and fight to make that clear. I think it's becoming a little clearer. And I think our job is to try to the people who are questioning it and doubting it, which every new interview from AOC or Mam Dani or whichever candidate increases that disaffection. So I think that's important to try to reach. I think what you were saying about the big tent, we want to get the I was gonna say elephant, but it's the donkey, right? We want to get the donkey out of the room. We want to get rid of the donkey so then we can have all of our debates about Kotskyism and partyism and Trotskyism and Maoism and whatever. We're still gonna have those and we're gonna fight for what we think is the correct revolutionary program, but you can't actually have that like fight in the left with the imperialist democratic party in there. And I think that's just kind of the basic point of that for the mug and the a lot of these other caucuses. But DSA right is terrible to them. They're terrible. They try to put forward stuff to try to make it more quote, democratic. And I mean, at least in New York, my experience here is just so much stuff just gets shot down. And so, and so then the answer is seen, oh well, let's like not look like let's fight for these things that we care about, like public housing, like these other things, but like not do it inside the DSA, because I think generally people think it's impossible to take on the New York City leadership. But I mean, what if we try? Because money has a lot of people, there are a lot of people that look to them and think that they are Marxist. Um, I mean, some people think they're clean break. You know, I've seen that. I don't know why, but they do. I've seen people like, oh, I thought these guys were clean break. Why are they saying this? Anyways, but because they put out a lot of stuff, like we just talked about, these two articles that do make a number of correct arguments. What if we didn't get the courage to actually unite forces to actually try to have a real socialist organization that workers would recognize as a pro-working class organization?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this is why I'm actually quite curious because I saw in New York that uh Mugg had actually put forward this resolution or statement about Mundani's privatization projects and JDA, they boosted it, signed off. Yeah. Because Mondani, like him being in mayor, just creates again all these situations that if you're a dirty breaker who's trying to straddle this line, suddenly you're forced to confront it. If you're gonna say, well, I'm gonna fight for the thing I actually care about, protecting social housing, gone eventually, it's unavoidable.
SPEAKER_03I feel like they had courage to do a petition statement that we and others have signed, but it's not a resolution that is being raised for a vote inside DSA. And I'm not saying they won't ever do that or won't do that, I don't know, but I feel like for our part, that's what we would be pushing to actually make it a fight inside DSA. Because, like I said, there was this demo today, it was very small, but I know that in the branch I'm at, which is like the Upper Manhattan Bronx branch, where there's a lot of projects in those areas, and a lot of the people in the branch care about this question a lot. Some of them actually grew up here and grew up in public housing. So if there was actually a force that had real influence, which MUG does, and if they fought for that inside, then that would give a lot of support to the struggle. That's what I'm saying. A number of these speakers at the rally today, they do not like the DSA and they do not like Mamdani, and they were very upset. Well, why would they if if that's what's you know, if it's seen as like what it is? He's privatizing, he's taking away their homes. He's literally demolishing their homes. They're like, why is why is he doing this? So if you're DSA, you're associated with that because the DSA, everyone knows, is Mamdani, his his backers. That's the thing. And we've run into that a lot. There's a lot of good impulses, correct things that they do try to fight for to a certain degree. But when it comes to waging like a real hard fight inside, that's where they don't want to break the unity between the right and the left, which is what that will mean, because the right wing in the New York City DSA will not broker that kind of opposition to Mam Dani.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00These kinds of problems of how do we as revolutionaries try to connect up with whatever positive, progressive tendencies there are and drag Mugg into actually putting up a fight or expose the fact that they won't. That's the kind of stuff that, like, I think we're all still trying to figure out in terms of operating in the DSA. And I'm excited that things like United Front for a Workers' Party are coming up for all of us to share notes, discuss, debate out how exactly do we do this? Because goddamn, operating in the DSA is a confusing and disorienting kind of environment sometimes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's a pressure cooker. There's no more elections, right, for Seattle for the midterms. This is it as far as any independent candidates, because these were non-partisan primaries, right? So now it's November is just the top two.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think in this coming general membership meeting, actually, there is a motion being put forward incidentally for TSA to endorse the Southern Democrat for primaries and run it as a slate along Jalen Scott. And so we're gonna be opposing that. It'll be interesting to see how that one pands out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but the big thing right now is the ASC question.
SPEAKER_00The upcoming uh DSA National Convention and everything before that, like there's no questions about how do we coalesce these forces in a way that's really publicly clarifying.
SPEAKER_01I think we've covered just about everything we wanted to talk about today. If you haven't read Daniel's article yet, we are going to post it in our show notes. You definitely should. It's great. Uh that is available at Cosmonaut. We uh have our very first in-person event for JBA coming up in Chicago. So if you're in Chicago, we'll also put this in the show notes. But there is a link to register. It's gonna be August 22nd from 4 to 6 p.m. You should go to it and not the DSA for AOC one being organized by the right wing at the same time, same day. I guess they got I guess they got jealous once they saw us handing out flyers for it at the Chicago endorsement forum that just happened.
SPEAKER_03So, how do people know if they're going to the right one?
SPEAKER_01The right wing one is called DSA for AOC. So come to DSA against AOC on August 22nd. You can follow the Just Break Already caucus at Clean Break Now on X and at DSA underscore just break already on Instagram. We have a link tree where we post all of our petitions, resolution statements, everything else we're up to lately. That is linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already. We also post all these episodes on YouTube, which is at just break already caucus on YouTube. We love to get comments, uh review the podcast, that'd be great. It helps boost us. Share it with your friend in DSA or your friends who aren't in DSA and tell them to join DSA and help us fight for a clean break. We're looking forward to anybody who would like to come on the show and debate us. Uh, like Letal said, we're gonna try to get a debate on the Green Party uh coming up in the near future. But if you're in mug, if you're in R or any of the other left caucuses, we'd love to have you on and have a debate as well. We can talk about AOC and why you shouldn't endorse it for president or anything else. So shoot us a DM. We check those pretty regularly. Daniel, is there anything you would like to share how folks can find the ISA?
SPEAKER_00You can find us on Instagram. It's ISA. The letter is ISA underscore revolutionary. Um you can also find us on Twitter. INTL underscore S O C A L T underscore R-E-F. That's International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary. And if you're in Seattle and you want to come out and meet us, we'll come to Seattle DSA meetings. But also um, you know, in front for a workers' party, there's going to be a September monthly meeting on the 12th, where uh again, we're gonna discuss what's the way forward for this fight against the budget cuts in Seattle. I think that'll be a good place to see what kinds of political discussions and debates are happening in the UK right now.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. All right, well, that was a really great discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today.
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