Gimme a Break!
The official podcast of the Just Break Already Caucus.
Gimme a Break!
Let’s talk DSA-LA: Why we’re not knocking doors for Zionist, pro-cop Nithya and you shouldn’t either!
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Lital and Edward are joined by Julie from JBA-LA and Lindsay from International Socialist Alternative (Revolutionary) to talk about the battle in DSA-LA over endorsing Zionist cop-lover Nithya Raman for mayor. Despite a spirited effort by these comrades and even a split on the DSA Right (who'd have thought?), Raman was endorsed by the LA branch and is facing off against another "progressive" Dem, Karen Bass (supported by every DSAer on the city council) in November. We talk about the situation in LA today, what socialists should be doing instead of door-knocking for Dems, and much, much more!
You can find all of ISA-R's publications on their Linktree. They are on X @Intl_SocAlt_Rev and on Instagram @isa_revolutionary.
As always, you kind find all of JBA's resolutions, petitions, statements and everything else we're up to at our Linktree! Follow us on X @cleanbreaknow and on Instagram @dsa_justbreakalready.
We are also proud to announce we have launched the United Front for a Clean Break with comrades from ISA-R and Labor Militant. If you want to join the fight for a clean break, check out our points of unity on our X and Instagram accounts!
We're always up for debate! Send us a DM if you're with another DSA Left caucus and want to debate the way forward or to send us your feedback, comments, criticisms, fan mail and hate mail. We read all our comments–leave us a review, it helps boost us in the algorithim–and share with your friends inside and outside DSA!
Oh George, you gotta think I want to say first that I wasn't in the building, unfortunately, on Monday morning. But we do have two people here who are who are not in the building, but they were in one of the trees. That's been created here by nine called. They were also out of the black community last night. They surrounded the area. And the squad is called special weapons and uh captive squad. The squad is working at uh the metric squad and the chat squad up in San Francisco. And this is just one of the newer armies that have been brought into the uh black community, and as we have been saying, the Black Panther Party is a prime target, but they are rapidly moving on the rest of the black community, and that is why we are united, and that is why we must unite, because we cannot stand these oppressive foreign troops in our community.
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to another episode of Gimme a Break, the podcast of the Just Break Ality Caucus in the DSA. I'm your host, Lee Tal, here with my co-host Edward.
SPEAKER_05Hello.
SPEAKER_01And the audio you heard at the beginning is from the Black Panther Party protest on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on December 11, 1969. After the Panthers became the targets of the world's first major raid by a special weapons and tactics or SWAT team. More than 350 officers took on 13 Panthers. The LAPD actually created the nation's first SWAT team, and the raids resulted in 13 arrests and a total of 72 criminal counts being filed. Police detonated explosives on the Panthers' roof and six Panthers were wounded. Combined, the two sides exchanged more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition. But at the trial, the Panthers' attorneys, including a young Johnny Cochrane, later of O.J. Simpson Faye, argued that the group had acted in self-defense. SWAT had entered the building unannounced with guns blazing. And a multiracial jury agreed, finding the Panther defendants not guilty on almost all charges, including the most serious ones of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to murder policemen. And last weekend was also the 56th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, which was a mass protest of 30,000 in LA against the high casualty rate of Chicanos as cannon fodder in the Vietnam War, and where the same LAPD pigs killed three, including journalist Ruben Salazar. Now this history is little known about today, but there is a proud history in LA of fighting the powers that be and the police that serve and protect the bosses. And there are lessons to be learned from this history for the struggles of the black, brown, and working class people of LA today, a city which, if people know me, is dear and near to my heart. So this episode is focused on what's happening in LA today. In the November mayoral elections, we have Karen Bass facing off against Nithya Rahman, and the LA DSA just voted by 60% to endorse Nithya Rahman. Meanwhile, the other three DSA electeds on LA City Council are supporting Bass. For us in the JBA, we see both Bass and Nithia as Democratic Party tools that have maintained the rotten status quo and that both fundamentally represent the interests of the capitalists. And of course, in doing so, they support the racist LAPD cops that are necessary for this. So to delve into this topic, we have two special guests active in LA, Julie from JBA and Lindsay from the International Socialist Alternative Revolutionary. So welcome guys. Hello. So JBA and ISAR put out a statement before the vote that said, quote, for DSA leftists and socialists, there can be only one choice. No vote for any Democrat, no vote for Rahman, a Zionist pro-Cop Democrat in the hip pocket of the city's powerful real estate interests. Many DSA leftists want working class independence, but that's impossible with a candidate like Ramon, who has made her career within the Democratic Party. In trying to get along with Karen Bass, the city council, and local real estate interests, she's betrayed everything that Angelino's initially liked about her. It's no accident that her campaign promises to address the housing crisis and defund the police haven't materialized. Trying to beat back cop terror and parasitic landlords is impossible from within a party that's funded by corporate interests that created these problems. The only real path forward is to break DSA from the Democrats and expel Democratic electeds. So that's from your the statement. And then you guys lay out why Ramont is a sellout and the three key reasons that, you know, for that. She's pro cop, Zionists, and pro-real estate interests.
SPEAKER_05So let's talk about some of the background here before we get into the controversy over Nithya in the SA. Karen Bass has been mayor for almost four years. She was elected as a quote-unquote community organizer and a progressive. Today she's very unpopular. So what what's going on? Like what happened in LA since she became mayor that led to this situation? What are some of the key concerns for the working class in LA?
SPEAKER_04I can take a stab at that. So, I mean, one of the things that's been kind of a big issue in the mayoral elections is how Bass handled the wildfires in 2025. Not only was she out of town when the fires were happening, but she was also responsible for like cuts to the fire department that made the fire so devastating. Because the fire department does a lot more than like put out fires. They also spent off season clearing brush to help limit the spread during the summer months. And so she cut this funding for brush clearance, which is part of why the fires in Al Tadena and the Palisades were so devastating. And then she tried to blame the fire chief for it. Um so that was pretty high profile. People were really mad about it. Something that's a little closer to me is that she also helped broker the sell-out tent between LAUSD and SEIU Local 99 earlier this year. So the TA went through just a couple of hours before the strike was supposed to start. So workers didn't really have a chance to read it and see what was actually in there. But the union leadership said it would ensure job security because it rolled back 200 planned layoffs. And so workers voted yes because they needed their back pay and they thought their jobs would be safe. But now that the school year has started, a ton of educators have been laid off because there actually were no protections against future layoffs. So that isn't just cutting funds for crucial public services. She's also trying to reduce the cost of those services by undermining union power and forcing workers to accept less than they need to survive.
SPEAKER_01I think what you laid out, Lindsay, is totally accurate of the reasons why she's very unpopular. In the LA Times, there was an article that was I think it was called groceries, gas and rent, and like why everything's gotten worse. Like the conditions, everything is so expensive in LA, and it's just like getting worse and worse. And I think the question of housing too is a big source of anger at Bass. There's the general like unaffordability of housing, but then there's also the homeless crisis where I think Bass promised to relieve the situation to some degree. But my understanding is if anything, the homeless crisis has gotten worse.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean I think like the the local government will trot out statistics and claim that it's getting better, but I mean anyone who like walks around the city can see that that's not actually the case, that doing sweeps to clear up clear out encampments just like moves them somewhere else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing that there was this whole kerfluffle between like Nithya, from what I remember, Nithya Raman is on the housing and homelessness committee or something. And I think Karen Bass just kicked her off.
SPEAKER_01And then I think Karen Bass just resigned or something yesterday from that, too.
SPEAKER_03Wow, okay, I missed that. Yeah, you can't underestimate the the uh impact of the housing and homelessness crisis in the city. Um, I mean, for years and years and years, working class people have just been having to move further and further out of the city and commute further and further in. And of course, this just went on steroids during the during the um COVID crisis. So this is a reason why a very large number of working people hate Raman, just hate all of the Democrats in the city because it just keeps getting worse and worse every year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's a pretty good picture of the situation in the last few years under Karen Bass's tenure. She she was elected similar, I think, to Brendan Johnson in Chicago, who was elected at the same time as like a progressive politician. And it's been very clear in the last few years just how much that is not was not true, and that she really just worked to maintain the status quo in LA. But there's also the city council, including NIFIA. There's four DSA electeds on LA City Council. It that includes Hugo Soto Martinez, Ulysses Hernandez, and Isabel Jirado. And so that makes up like a third of LA City Council is DSA elected.
SPEAKER_03Those three electeds are supporting Bass. Right. Yeah. So here you have the DSA. Three of their electeds are supporting Bass, and Nithya is running on her own. Right. Against Bass. Right.
SPEAKER_01Nithya's running against Bass, but that was a very last-minute decision. And like previous to that, Nithia was one of Bass's biggest backers in in conjunction with these other DSA electeds. And these electeds have been themselves pretty discredited in their tenures, especially in regards to housing fights. UNICE tried to sell out her constituents who organized a tenants' union. They had been on a rent strike for almost five years, and UNICES made a deal that favored the landlords at the expense of the tenants. Or you could take Isabel Herrado, who was recently shouted down, along with Karen Bass at a town hall meeting in Boyle Heights, where residents were protesting, being poisoned by the lineage bosses. I guess the question is, how does the trajectory of these DSA Dem electeds who all campaigned as socialist Democrats and that they were against the status quo and they were going to change things in the city? How does this really show that this isn't just a ballot line and that they have really become like a shield between the people and the bosses?
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, they're enforcing all of the bosses' dictates on workers and minorities in LA. And I think you it was just recently was most shown, as you mentioned, with the whole lineage warehouse disaster, which is still going on. I'm glad you spoke about that, Lital, because that is sort of like one of the things that's been on the minds of of working people and Latinos in in Boyle Heights, which is a working class section of the city, very segregated part of historic East LA.
SPEAKER_01Can you just tell listeners what happened at Lineage in case they don't know?
SPEAKER_04I think the lineage disaster was really instructive on the role of these DSA electeds. There was a a fire in a warehouse in Boyle Heights, and uh there was this freezer that had a bunch of food in it. And then after the fire was put out, basically 85 million pounds of food just sat there rotting in the warehouse for weeks and weeks throughout all this. Bass is refusing to clean it up, ostensibly because she wants Lineage, the company, to pay for it. But this is a a huge health hazard for the residents of Boyle Heights, who are mostly working class uh Latino residents. All well and good to try to force Lineage to pay for the cleanup. But Bass was basically taking her time getting contracts and negotiating and using the legal system to try to like sort out who's gonna pay for this crisis, and it totally hung residents out to dry. A socialist would have used class struggle methods to address like the pressing needs of workers to clean up this massive health hazard that's spreading bugs and rats, and it smelled horrible all over the city.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, and sending people to the hospital because of the horrible smells and the toxins in the air, too. I mean, it wasn't just the smell of the food, but the fire itself put a lot of toxins in the air that people were breathing. And this is right smack in the middle of a resident a large residential neighborhood.
SPEAKER_04It was like disgusting, huge health hazard. A proper socialist could have like addressed this pressing need by having like city sanitation workers clean up the mess and then mobilizing mass protest and strike action by like Boyle Heights residents and lineage workers to force lineage to pay for it later. But you have Isabel Herado, who's the council member for Boyle Heights, instead of standing against Bass and her legal strategy here, she just went along with what Bass was doing. And now that the cleanup is like, I mean, it's not completely done, but it's it's made progress. It's mostly completed. Um, she's introducing this bill into city council that's basically trying to get some aid to Boyle Heights residents for like pest control and site remediation. But like it's entirely at the feet of the local Democrats for that even being necessary in the first place. This has gotten so much worse because of how long it's been able to sit there. So I'm sure the aid will be welcome if it passes, but like it's totally a distraction from how the Democrats like caused this situation to spin out of control. Like it's trying to hide who the enemy is from workers. That's really been the role of the DSA electeds on city council for years now.
SPEAKER_01The anger that came out with against lineage and the community also reflected just years of worsening conditions for Latinos in in Boyle Heights. There's gentrification pushes there, the question of health care, access, education, all of that. So it kind of all culminated in this situation where they literally were being poisoned. And and then I think Bass and people said the air was fine and they did not evacuate anyone. It was really just a horrible mess. And but it really just showed that these uh electeds really have no have nothing to like offer actually when these kind of things happen. Um take care of the their their constituents and make sure that that they're not poisoned.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean what they have to offer is is left cover for the Democrats. Like, you know, maybe you'll get an aid package later after you've been poisoned.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. And that's really the history of LA. For a long, long time it's been run by one Democratic Party politician after another, giving cover to the worsening conditions. And meanwhile, the LA elites have just been getting wealthier and wealthier.
SPEAKER_04I think there's probably gonna be uh some sort of thought that oh well, Isabel Herado, she's just on city council. If she really opposes Karen Bass too strongly, that's gonna mean her job is gonna make it harder for her to get other stuff done later. That is probably true, but it's because like she's not basing herself on the power of the working class. It's because she's basing herself on the Democratic Party machine, right? If you're able to mobilize workers and like Boyle Heights residents and whatnot to demand that this be fixed and use our actual power as workers to protest and strike and whatnot, that's essentially what protects your job and makes it possible for you to get things done. So building an actual opposition to the Democrats as a city council member is completely possible. It just hasn't happened.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's not the political program of these DSA electeds to do that, right? Oh, I mean, their job is to take the Democratic Party money. I think Lindsay said it well. I just read Bolsheviks and the Tsarist Duma recently, and that was like a really good example of how real socialists in acting as oppositionists and fighting against for workers' revolution against the capitalist government, they were actually based on the workers in the factories, and they their whole job was to fight the power instead of work with it and in it and for it and take its money. They weren't taking money from the capitalist government.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, I think you also see in LA, I mean, not just LA in New York too and other places, but there's this there's this really big divide between like the working class in this city and the DSA in general and these electeds. And when they do this kind of stuff, it gives such a bad name to socialism that it's like, oh, this is what the socialists are doing. Why would you want socialists in office then if they're gonna basically just do the same thing that Karen Bass and the other establishment mainstream Dems do? It actually hurts socialism when you have these people that say they're socialists and carry out the same kinds of betrayals against the working people in the city.
SPEAKER_04Well, and it totally cedes ground to the growing right wing because LA's been this Democratic Party stronghold for decades, but we're actually seeing right populism emerge through these mayoral races, first with Rick Caruso a couple years ago and now with Spencer Pratt.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04And if you look at the electoral map of the primaries, Ramen is not winning support from Spencer Pratt voters or areas that have gone for the right populace in the past. She's winning support away from Karen Bass, which of course is why Karen Bass finds her threatening. But she's not able to speak to the concerns of workers who are mobilized by Spencer Pratt because they're mad about the fires. That's his big thing. Because she was complicit in the fires, so she can't actually speak to the issues that are feeding the growth of the right wing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think it was so telling, just kind of crazy that Spencer Pratt for a minute was number two for the primaries, because I mean Nithya Rahman pulled ahead and she ended up being one of the two with Bass. But the idea that even that Spencer Pratt got so many votes and that he could have been the one, that's not happened for a long time in LA. And I think that is the thing when socialists are leftists, they push Bass or the Democratic Party stuff that drives workers, pushes them to the right and towards right populism. And I think you saw that with the support for Spencer Pratt, who is a total elitist reactionary politician. Well, he's a reality star or whatever he is, but trying to be a politician. Alright, so before we get into the details of the current controversy over Nithia Rahman, um, there was a primary. And in the primary, DSA did not endorse anyone, but they quote recommended a vote for Nithia. And this has kind of become common procedure, especially in California. They did that with billionaire Steyr in the in the governor election, where they did not, quote, endorse anyone, but they quote recommended Steyr. Maybe one of you guys can describe that a little and just how bureaucratic the procedure was, um, but also the politics behind kind of the bureaucratic lengths DSA LA leadership will go to to stifle debate in DSA, including over Ray Huang, who was running in the primary against Bass and Nithya and Spencer Pratt.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was totally surprising to any of us that they recommended Tom Steyr because that never came up in any of the huge branch meetings that I attended. So it was just like, where did that come from? Who voted for that? So yeah, you talk to anybody and they'll tell you how bureaucratically run the DSA stuff is. Like you have five people who are in the the Ed Paul committee that's deciding everything and then going to these to this meeting for run AOC run or for this primary that you were talking about. And they wouldn't even let Ray Wong address the meeting that we went to where we were having a debate about whether or not to open up the discussion to endorse or not endorse somebody. Ray Wong was a DSA member. It was extremely bureaucratic, and the whole fight between Groundworks and the socialist majority caucus, which are both right-wing caucuses, wasn't about the politics. It was all about should we open discussion on endorsing NITI or not? And one side was like, no, we don't want to open up the discussion. It was just you know Yeah, like don't even have a discussion. Right. Trying to prevent them the membership from even having a discussion about having a discussion.
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, and I think to because that can seem confusing for people, like DSA loves to tout how like democratic it is. So I think to understand how the bureaucracy Functions. Um, we really have to understand what politically the Ray Huang versus Nithya Raman debate that didn't happen represented. Because like Huang's also a Democrat. She's not actually an independent. But her program was more to the left than Ramen's, especially on the issue of like LAPD funding. They're both calling for like funding response teams for mental health-related crises without reducing LAPD's budget, which amounts to a budget increase for LAPD, taking away responsibilities but leaving their funding intact. But Kong was pretty clear that she's against further budget increases. And Nithya Raman, you can find a ton of sources of her just being very cagey where she's like, Well, I'm against budget increases that the city can't afford. I don't even really know what that means because we should be spending all of that money on like education and healthcare and better things. But she's she's been pretty cagey about it because the fact is she's voted for increasing police funding and whatnot. So Huang was like the more left option here. And the DSA leadership found that threatening, even though she's still a Democrat, because ultimately they're very happy to be Democrats. Nithya Raman actually said it well herself. I was listening to this interview earlier, and the interviewer and an interviewer asked her, I'm paraphrasing here, but okay, so your politics are pretty familiar to me. They're pretty standard progressive Democrat positions. So why work with DSA? Is it just a branding question? And Ramon was like kind of spluttering through her response because she didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't convincing at all.
SPEAKER_01Like, yes, exactly. So very revealing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so that's why because there isn't a clear political argument here, except, yeah, we just want to be democrats, which the membership doesn't support at all. And so they have to resort to these underhanded bureaucratic maneuvers instead of making clear political arguments to like essentially block a Ray Huang endorsement.
SPEAKER_05I think that's a good segue to get into some of the arguments you make against uh DSA endorsing Nithya Rahman in your the L A J B A ISAR statement. Uh you guys put forward that she's a sellout, she's pro-cop, pro-Zionist, pro-real estate interest. So maybe you could lay that all those points out in a little more detail for our listeners.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what's wrong with Nithya Rahman?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, one of the things to remember about Raman is that she got elected uh in 2020 when all of the Black Lives Matter protests were going on, and the whole city was in a huge uproar over police brutality. And so she really got elected because she said she was gonna defund the police. That's why people liked her. And she threw in I'll also solve homelessness and the housing crisis, right? And she's done exactly none of that, to be clear. We've also since then seen her take funding from Democrats for Israel, which is obviously a pro-Zionist organization. And so I think it's really clear just from the complete betrayal of her campaign promises and all of the things that made people say, okay, let's give her a shot, um, by you know, voting for police funding, by using housing policies to actually just funnel taxpayer dollars to real estate interests, and then essentially shoring up her base of support as working people became less supportive of her, shoring up her base of support through Zionist money. So that's really been, I think, what her tenure was.
SPEAKER_03Right. What was interesting is that at this last meeting that we just had, well, the supposed debate two and two and four, the supposed debate whether or not to endorse or not Nithya, she was questioned very aggressively by a number of DSA members who are asking her like very sharp questions about what did she think about the demonstration against the illegal sales of Palestinian land at a local synagogue? Did she think that pro-Palestinian groups have the right to carry out pro-BDS protests and why should Palestinians trust her? And she condemned the violence at UCLA and had said that Israel has the right to exist.
SPEAKER_01She'd be very honestly elected that the violence, violent physical attacks by Zionists against the student encampments against genocide.
SPEAKER_03Oh, they were horrible. You had these Zionists like camping right next to them and torturing the student protesters playing tapes of like screaming rabbit to keep them awake all night. Like this was not minor violence. This was like major, well-funded violence against these students.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And she was also censured by the LA DSA for being a Zionist and for getting the endorsement of Democrats for Israel during the genocide.
SPEAKER_05There was also a motion to censure her up at the floor at the 2025 DSA National Convention. It of course it didn't get debated because time ran out or whatever. But yeah, her and AOC both, there were national resolutions that got enough signatures to make it to the convention to be considered.
SPEAKER_01Right. She's a pretty known quantity for her pro-Zionist positions. You guys laid out on the cop question. She's voted to fund the cops a number of times, but she's also voted in favor of appointing Jim McDonnell as the police chief. Who's kind of an old style for LA, like white racist police chief, but under him, the LAPD uh has been cooperating with ICE and has also significantly increased the shootings and killings of black and brown people in the city. She's very clear where she stands on that. Why don't you guys talk a little more about the housing angle? I gather that she's one of the biggest strikes against her, is that she exempted some constructed like apartment buildings from the quote mansion tax.
SPEAKER_03When we'll there's a planned demolition of the William Meade Homes public housing project near Chinatown. And this is in her district. She hasn't done anything. She's not lifted a finger. She's not said a word against it. It's just not a minor question. For for people who aren't that familiar with Los Angeles, there's very little public housing here. There are very few apartment buildings, a huge part of the city single-family zone zoning. Like it's very unusual to see apartment buildings. This demolition, these public housing homes to be taken down, is a really big deal. She hasn't done anything about that. Her exempting buildings from the mansion tax is a blatant tax break for real estate tycoon. I mean, that's not what a real socialist should be doing. We should be having public housing. This is one thing that we said during the pandemic is that people should take over the empty apartments and all the buildings downtown. That would take care of housing. When I was young, I saw the movie what was it, with uh Warren Beatty. Doctors in Dr. Chivago, like one of the good scenes in Dr. Chivago, it showed them like taking this mansion away. I know I'm giving my wage away. Sorry. But you know, they took over they they basically took over this mansion and you know, every single carved it up and had like 40 people living in it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It's not a question of there's a lot of vacant housing and luxury housing in LA, but who's who has access to it is really the issue.
SPEAKER_04I think something that Ramon will cite for her housing policies is that LA has fewer vacant units actually than like comparably sized and developed cities like New York. But that's a very capitalist way of looking at it because the fact is LA has like 90 something thousand like vacant apartments and fewer homeless people than that. So we could actually just house everybody, right? But this idea that we need to just build, build, build, build more housing um is based on this entire like market dynamic strategy. And frankly, that's just not a a socialist understanding of the question. And that's why it leads her to essentially sell out things like this mansion tax that's supposed to go towards funding low-income housing in order to get developers to just get a tax break and build things faster and faster. So unless you're taking an actually socialist approach and not trying to make market dynamics work for you or whatever, you're gonna come up against these pressures to even oppose things that some elements of the Democratic Party are fine with.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah. Yeah, so I think you guys have laid out pretty clearly what's wrong with Anithia Ramon. But and there's also been a lot of controversy over Rahman's endorsement. Um there was even a split in the DSA right over endorsing her. Um Geese Magazine has become like the clearinghouse for this discussion, and the people that run Geese Magazine are very hard pushers of vote dems or death kind of line. Um but first there was a socialist majority caucuses, uh Noah Suarez Sykes, along with a few of the Geese writers. They had a piece, quote, first New York, now Los Angeles, DSA LA should endorse Nithya Ramon for mayor. Then Groundwork put out an article, quote, Nithya Ramon has not earned the endorsement of DSA LA. And for Groundwork's part, they said that she was the best candidate, that Nithya Ramon was the best candidate, and that they would personally vote for her, but endorsing her doesn't build DSA. And then Noah writes another piece, this time with surprisingly a DSA leftist in tow, uh, Sean from the Maoist Liberation Caucus. And that piece was called To Win Workers. We need a city that works. Nithya Ramon is our pothole populist. Now, of course, fixing potholes is especially needed in a car city metropolis like Los Angeles, but don't we have a higher bar than potholes? Can you guys help us make sense of what is going on here? Why is there this division in the DSA right? Is there something else going on here since they all will vote for her and support her?
SPEAKER_03That's a really good question. The one thing that I've been able to figure out that some of the people I talked to that they opposed her because she was one of the first DSA electeds to get elected in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01She was one of the first to get elected, so she's been the longest in office to be seen. What her betrayal?
SPEAKER_03That's that's my understanding. Some people who I overheard speaking were saying she doesn't align with the DSA. She uh she doesn't identify publicly as a democratic socialist, her dues have dropped had lapsed. I mean, it was all very sub-political bickering. All of that applies to AOC, who they are.
SPEAKER_01Both wings of the right are endorsing AOC, no question. So why did they decide to wait a little thing over Ramon?
SPEAKER_04I think the AOC thing is crucial here, right? Because essentially what you have is is groundworks trying to enact some sort of accountability over Ramon, or say, anyways, we shouldn't endorse her because she's not letting herself be held accountable, right? That's why there's all this talk about like, oh, she hasn't been a good SIO, she doesn't take DSA seriously, she won't publicly identify as a socialist, right? Because DSA desperately does need a mechanism for holding elected officials accountable. But that's not like people who are nice enough that will allow themselves to be held accountable. The basic step to real accountability is breaking from the Democrats. The fact is, Nithya doesn't need DSA's support to win, so why would she take us seriously when DSA tries to push her to be a little more progressive? This is exactly the same argument that's happening over AOC as you guys kind of noted there. I think there's probably some sort of calculus going on of if we demonstrate that we can actually try to exert accountability or or pull support from NIPA, then people will like trust our judgment when we say like AOC is is not like that. You know, I think it's a bit of like which office is more important here.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. And maybe to give the groundwork, like to present themselves as having a little more standards as socialists or whatever, to have credibility and then more street cred that AOC is more aligned with that somehow.
SPEAKER_04And to recapture all of the kind of left-wing anger that's coming out through this whole AOC fight, it's literally over the same issues. They're both Zionists. That's what people are mad about.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you guys both went to meetings to discuss both the Nithia endorsement and the resolution run AOC Run, which also passed a few weeks ago in LA. And outside of LA, a lot of DSA left folks on Twitter have been very upset that NITHIA's DSA LA endorsed NITHIA, that it violates RS 22, which is the anti-Zionist resolution passed at the last national convention. I think one guy even tweeted that the entire LA DSA should be expelled from DSA. And so there was a lot initially when it happened, there was a lot of anger from people who, you know, it was like NIFIA kind of is is too much. She's too much of a Zionist. It just goes too far, even as far as the electeds go. So can you guys talk about like what the discussions are like inside LA DSA? I mean, NIFIA was endorsed by 60%, I understand. So that means 40% or so did not.
SPEAKER_03Well, actually, where you had asked about bureaucratic stuff about the LA DSA. So the big difference I saw between the run AOC run, big meeting that we attended, and spoke against run AOC run and told everyone, look, we should not be supporting AOC. She's a Zionist, she's a Democrat, no AOC, hell no. That meeting, we were able to vote in that meeting with card. So you could see who was voting, and it was like an open vote. But interestingly enough, and I think this is not an accident, even though the debate over voting or not voting, where you know SMC was on one side and Groundworks was on the other, this one was not an open vote. This one you weren't it it was all by online polling.
SPEAKER_01So number one, in New York, that's the only way they do votes is online because they don't really have branch wide meetings, chapter-wide meetings.
SPEAKER_03Sure, but in LA they do. And this was a chapter-wide meeting. And so that's why it made it even more egregious. They figured out ramming stuff through. Well, it was the perfect way of ramming stuff through because number one, you couldn't see that in fact how many people were actually voting. But did they say how many people voted? Yeah, it was something, it was something like 900 and something were for omnithia, and is it like 400 against or something like that? Uh-huh.
unknownInteresting. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_03I mean, the whole local is all like 4,000 or 5,000 or something like that. I think it was. So it was it was actually a very small percentage voted. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I will say on the paper card voting, I think the the kind of ostensible reason they did that at the citywide meeting a couple months ago, um, was because they were having tech issues. They wanted us to vote online at that meeting, but they couldn't get the Wi-Fi working. So they had to go to cards. And so I I think what that really showed was like how many proxy votes people are bringing in because it's what roughly 25-ish percent voted against the run, AOC run. But if you looked at the actual hands in the the convention hall there, the votes for the resolution, there's a lot of proxy votes. There's people with like fistfuls of cards up.
SPEAKER_01So you mean you can you can bring into the meeting proxy votes that you can hold up for all these people who are not there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you just have to fill out like some form online and you can have someone designate this person can vote for me, and there's no limit on how many proxy votes you can bring in. So you got people with like five, six, seven cards that they're on. It's always like that, or it's just I think so. Yeah, well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03This run AOC run meeting was the first time we'd seen that, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Well, this sheds some light onto why they had to such a problem with the LA delegate elections to the 2025 convention.
SPEAKER_01What happened? They had to redo it.
SPEAKER_05Well, they got challenged. Yeah, there was there was something about now, granted, it's been about a year, but I know there were some issues with the credentials of the LA delegates based on how they ran the elections.
SPEAKER_01Because they probably had all these proxies.
SPEAKER_05Right. Based on how they ran the elections in the LA branch. Yeah, there were some voting we should say voting irregularities. Right.
SPEAKER_03Hanging chat.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was probably mail in ballots or something.
SPEAKER_04Kind of hard not to have voting irregularities with a system that crazy.
SPEAKER_01Right. Right. So and was there anything like interesting in the discussions with people or comments people had at the meeting? Because she came, right?
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, Nithya came and she spoke. It there was a very long line of questions to her. There's a lot of questions that were very pointed and angry about her Zionism. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and she basically kind of defended her record while she's saying she's against genocide.
SPEAKER_04Well, she tried to make it about free speech and not genocide.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Right. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04She was saying I support the right of people to protest, which, like, that's not the question. The question is, are you a Zionist? The question is, what do you think of the political arguments these protests were taking up, not do you think people have a right to protest?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right. There was a lot of really, really sharp good points, examples of Rahman's many, many betrayals and people saying this is wrong, let's not endorse her. But the arguments kind of stopped there. They didn't draw out that taking donations from Democrats for Israel. It's not just Democrats for Israel that sides with Israel instead of opposing the Palestinian genocide. The entire Democratic Party sides with Israel, right? The whole reason Israel exists is to be an imperialist attack dog in the Middle East. So it's super absurd to act like funding from Democrats for Israel is the only betrayal here of the fight for Palestinian liberation. Like any funding from the Democratic Party betrays this fight. So I think on the one hand, it's really good that people are recognizing that endorsements and funding matter. But we need to be really clear that that's like true of all funding and endorsements from the Democratic Party.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Is there a really big difference between that and AOC getting on stage at the DNC and supporting Genocide Joe and Kamala Harris and saying that they're working tirelessly for a ceasefire? These are the enablers, funders of genocide. What is the real difference between that and getting support from Democrats for Israel?
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly. It's particularly striking because there's so many that will claim, oh, it's just a ballot line, but suddenly when it comes to Democrats for Israel, endorsements and stuff do matter, you know? Right, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We were talking about Nithya and the defund the police question. During the time of BLM, you had a lot of Democrats that were saying that, but it was clearly to count down protest. But it quickly became very clear that that was like not a thing that Democrats would ever do. The whole thing about the Democratic Party is as a party of capitalist rule and capitalist exploitation, the role of the cops is to protect private property and to do that. And so you can't be in a capitalist party and consistently oppose the police force that it literally exists to defend private property and to maintain segregation and oppressive conditions that enable the capitalists to continue to exploit and divide the working class.
SPEAKER_04Here in LA, I think they decreased LAPD's budget by a tiny bit, and then they used our like emergency COVID funding to restore it and actually give them a raise.
SPEAKER_01So Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, yeah, I think it's pretty clear that like posturing as anti-police was really just a way to try to recapture all of the momentum that the protests had picked up and convince people to settle for a progressive Democrat in office instead of like a real answer to the question of police brutality.
SPEAKER_01Um the joint statement that you guys put out against support to Ramon ends with quote, endorsing Ramon would mean DSALA committing chapter resources to supporting her campaign, usually through door knocking and soliciting donations. Instead of wasting our time, money, and reputation to be complicit in another Democrat's crimes, let's use those resources to fight landlords, organize tenants, back genuinely independent socialist candidates, and undermine the real estate interests that strangle our city. So while it's it is unfortunately true that there is no one to vote for in November in these mayoral elections, what should socialists be doing in LA right now? And how can um listeners get involved in the work that you guys are doing?
SPEAKER_03Well, there is one independent socialist candidate that was supposed to be on the DSA endorsement list and got kicked off at the last minute. His name is Aaron Ravellis, and he was he's he was running as an independent and a socialist, I think for Montebello.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's Montebello school, right? School board.
SPEAKER_03I believe so, yeah. Yeah. And so that's something that you know we think that um not just DSAs, but people in general are should endorse and support and vote for independent socialist candidates. And we wish there were more of them. Right. We wish that the DSA had backed Sawant when she was running, but they basically refused to endorse. Her, even though she was a DSA member and had been in Seattle City Council, her bid is over now. But that's kind of what we think we should be doing, not doing campaigns for for democrats, whether it's you know Raman or any of these other people that were just got endorsed who were all Democrats. Right. The same time as Nithi.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think because Aaron Rebellius is running on the Peace and Freedom Party ballot line, which is actually independent and not a Democratic Party ballot line.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04And we talked a little bit earlier about how the leadership undermined this vote on endorsing Ray Huang versus Raman in the primaries. And as a someone who's actually an independent candidate, I think this has been even clearer for Ravellis here because he got enough signatures to qualify to be a part of the endorsement forum. And then at the last second, they like scrutinized a map and decided that a couple of them were like a block outside of some zone like demarcation that like was in question, and they just decided, oh, we're gonna err on the side of keeping him out, which is right very, very shady of them. And of course, because he didn't.
SPEAKER_03And they didn't have to do that either. He knows, of course.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, but the thing is because they did, most DSA members don't even really know that he's running because he's on the ballot, like you can vote for him. DSA just didn't get a chance to endorse him. And I I think it's really clear that like these independent.
SPEAKER_03The DSA membership was prevented from the chance of endorsing him.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Right, exactly.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And yeah, I think it's really clear that there's a lot of folks in DSA who are like supportive of breaking with the Democrats, but they say not right now. And I think like the question is what steps are we taking to get there? And I think endorsing independent candidates is one of them. Because the fact is, if being independent means that organizations like DSA won't even give you the time of day, then it's gonna be even harder to run as an independent. DSA has significant weight to throw around in terms of like door knocking support, potentially financial resources for endorsements, those sorts of things. Um lot of members who are in unions who can fight to have unions endorse independent candidates, all of these things. But if they're unwilling to even like allow independent candidates to seek endorsement, then how on earth are we ever going to get to a place where for the dirty breakers, launching an independent party makes sense? So I think regardless of when you think this break should happen, campaigning for independent candidates is a way to actually like push that struggle and that perspective forward instead of allowing the right wing to just continue kind of maneuvering behind the scenes to keep it from being a question.
SPEAKER_01That's kind of what's on the election electoral front. And that sounds good and correct. We should all be doing what we can to help get Aaron Rivellas elected in Montebello. Um, there's also other struggles going on. There's housing, which I think there's a maybe a DSA meeting coming up of the tenants groups that are gonna be talking about public housing, and so I think that's what socialists should be like participating in and joining the struggle against that, against destroying public housing. Um, there's also struggles against police terror in LA and in the surrounding areas, which are constant. There's the cause of Brian Bostick, who is a black 37-year-old Compton man who died in police custody on March 10th this year after police arrested him during a traffic stop. His family, of course, wants answers and justice, and there's a six-month anniversary of his death at the hands of the cops this Sunday. There's a march and rally this Sunday that anyone who says they're a socialist and wants to fight against cop terrorist should definitely be at. We're gonna be there. This episode will air after that. But anyway, people should continue to be part of those kind of struggles that are pretty small right now in LA. Um, and I think a big part of why that is is because of what you guys say at the end of your thing. Instead of DSA resources and energy going to supporting causes like the fight against police brutality, the fight against the destruction of public housing, it goes towards the presentation towards towards Nithia Ramont so she can continue to cover for the crimes of the bosses and the real estate interests. There's plenty of work to do in this city. Um, and that's kind of a big part of uh fighting inside the DSA is to actually get the DSA to to support that kind of work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'll just say like I think you gave a good summary of some stuff that's coming up in the next like couple of weeks here with the the anniversary of Brian Bostick's murder and actions around like the William Meade housing project and and things like that, as well as we spoke about the kind of ongoing door knocking for Aaron Rivellis that's gonna be happening over the next couple of months.
SPEAKER_05So before we go, Lindsay, maybe you could let our listeners know how they can follow the work of ISAR.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we have an Instagram. It's ISA underscore revolutionary. There's a link to our website and whatnot on there. We have a new issue of our paper, the class line, coming out in the next week or so. So there's gonna be some new material on there very soon. And you can DM us on Instagram or or contact us through the the Substack if you want to get involved in the the work that we're doing in LA.
SPEAKER_05Cool. Last week we launched the United Front for a Clean Break in DSA with comrades from ISAR and Labor Militant. Uh the United Front for a Clean Break has its own Instagram and X. Both of those are at DSA for a clean break. You can read our statement and join the fight. You don't have to be a supporter of any of the caucuses involved to join us to fight for a clean break, to break that chain tying DSA to the Imperialist Democrats. Our points of unity are on Instagram, on our X. Uh, comrades from the United Front for a Clean Break have introduced a resolution both in New York and Chicago called Just Say No, which is against DSA endorsing an AOC presidential campaign, which you will be able to find and copy and paste, introduce in your own branch on our socials as well. That concludes this episode of Give Me a Break. You can follow all of the work of the Just Break Already caucus at our Linktree, which is at linktree.com slash DSA underscore just break already. There you will find all of our resolutions, petitions statements, and everything else we've been up to lately. You can follow us on X at Clean Break Now and on Instagram at DSA underscore just break already. We love to get your love letters, hate mail, comments, criticisms, debate challenges, and anything else you feel like sending our way. We do want to have some debates on this podcast with supporters of other DSA caucuses on which way forward in DSA, so hit us up. Our DMs are always open. And please leave us a rating and review, share, give me a break with your friends in DSA, your friends who hate DSA, anybody else you know, it helps us pop up in the algorithm. And see you next week.
SPEAKER_03Bye.
SPEAKER_05Bye.
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