Leftists Get Schooled by Marianne in Organizing Working Class Into Broader Coalitions

The lack of strategy and misguided purity is so beyond unworkable that the average person cannot even relate to the positions the left is taking.... Alessandra Biaggi in response to DSA pulling support for AOC

Ocasio-Cortez, Once an Outsider, Takes Center Stage at Convention

Full speech

 Let's be careful about branding the "left" as monolithic as Biaggi and many others tend to do -- even I do it without thinking. I usually say "certain segments of the left."....Norm

Just Win Baby, Win! ... Al Davis

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

I get a high-five by a retired NYC fireman in a hot yoga class over the RA victory in the chapter election. Of course he and his pals all know about the NYC Retirees and the chief organizer Marianne Pizzitola. 

I've been getting get-well calls from many people and one of the more interesting ones was from an old oppo war-horse CL and UFT Exec Bd member, a hard-core lifetime leftist who retired a long time ago. He is one of the 300 newly elected delegates in the RA chapter election. And of course he has followed the Medicare story.

He said something so interesting. That Marianne Pizzitola, who came out of nowhere and is far from a leftist, has taught the left a lesson on how to organize a broad base of working class and beyond, uniting left and right in the battle. Knowing the left as I do (and I consider myself part of the left), that will be a lesson unlearned. On much of the left, ideology trumps practicality and often, winning.

Yes, sometimes winning is important. I remember certain segments of the left making the case against trying to win in UFT or NYSUT elections as being a waste of time. With the big retiree win in the UFT, views may be changing with a unique opportunity to be in serious contention for leadership of the UFT for the first time in its history. A key question is how far will some segments on the left go to mess it up by pushing for their particular ideology even if that reduces the chances of winning. I know that in Retiree Advocate, we knew we were trying to build a winning coalition based on the healthcare issue and avoided getting into ideological entanglements. Thus, our 300 elected delegates have a broad range of political views.

Some on the left are beginning to look askance at some of their fellows and dames as the Biaggi (not a hard core lefty) says above. 

Shockingly, there are still so-called leftists who often line up on the right who claim Trump is more the peace candidate than Biden --- do they actually believe this guy is not lying about everything? Yes, some claiming to be leftists can also be naive.

I am still a member of DSA because left politics (and accompanying infighting) interests me. You know the old joke -- put 2 of them in a room and get 3 groups. Splitting into sects and factions seems to be endemic.

But all too often some elements in DSA, a conglomeration of just about every left sect with numerous caucuses, seem off the rails. Remember how they cancelled Jamaal Bowman for daring to visit Israel on a fact-finding mission? When it was clear that right winger George Latimer backed by AIPAC was way ahead, DSA reversed itself but too late to make a difference.

Inside the UFT, we saw MORE, a segment of the left, sit out the TRS election because they heard a baseless ideological-based rumor about a candidate. "Better Unity"? In essence, the message. Or we on the left don't really care about winning but about making a point. Despite that the non-Unity candidate still got one third of the vote. 

With upcoming UFT elections, will we see an ideological war break out inside oppo forces or will we see a broad front inclusive enough to defeat Unity.

And by the way, AOC made the most dynamic speech last night at the convention. You can see her future as the heir to Bernie while DSA will remain sanctimonious. 

--------

Another segment of the DSA cancelled Adolf Reed, Jr. Reed who focuses on class more than race and that is a big cancel on the left.

A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury.

The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?

By Michael Powell

Published Aug. 14, 2020Updated Aug. 18, 2020

Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.

Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working-class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.

Bhaskar Sunkara on divisions on the Left - Stop talking to yourselves -- Jacobin Video

Our main goal is to organize working class people around a broadly economic platform that ties in social issues into core economic issues... we want candidates that focus on class.... willing to take on the establishment power structure ---- roughly 17 minute mark of video - Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin, interviewed by Jen Pan

 

https://youtu.be/oMBox6D1wB4

I ran across this enlightening interview on Jacobin you tube where Jen Pan talked to Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara who talks about class and race on the left and then on dysfunction on the left. He talks about the cultural divides where some want to focus on bread and butter issues and others want to talk about race as race as a free standing system. He also points to a cleavage on how some liberal-left people want to talk about economic policy in a certain way - say Elizabeth Warren - vs a Bernie type analysis. 

I've actually lived though some of the divisions in groups where there's a race vs class divide in terms of analysis -- every socialist doesn't avoid class and economics - but the roots of continuing racism is often at issue. 

 

The mostly united pro-Bernie front on the left seems to have come apart.

 

So I've been following discussions on divisions on the left -- I'm a fan of Krystal Ball and Sam Seder and they often seem to be coming at things from different places. The Young Turks and Jimmy Dore wars. Many of my colleagues in UFT oppo politics are Jimmy Dore, Glen Greenwald, Useful Idiots - Aaron Mate fans - skeptical of the support fot Ukraine and often taking a Putin point of view.  Sam Seder calls these people essentially right wing. 

One of the most intersting parts of the interview come at the 21 minute mark where Jen Pan raises the issue of the class composition of the left, which is far from the working class - and I mean the black and white working class. The old left of the 30s was very working class. Now not at all. (Even Starbucks union movement is pushed by college educated). She says since the 60s the left has become more professional nanagerial class and lost its working class base. She asks what is the biggest obstacle to the left getting back to its working class roots - is it the cultural, rhetorical, linguistic ticks? 

 

And I have to say, I get very turned off when I hear rhetoric with no analysis. Like if you are a a socialist who believes capitalism must end where is the analysis of what exactly takes its place? Or the process of destruction and mayhem in dismantling capitalism. I asked this wuestion of two hard core socialists -- can you have democracy and your vision of socialism where you cannot have a two party system that can reverse say nationalization of certain industries every 4 years. One said maybe a multiparty system of only socialist parties. Have you seen socialists of differing opinions in action?

 

Baskar's answer seems to agree about rhetoric on the left being wrong but he attributes that to the many defeats the left has faced. He calls it the ghetto of the left -- like when do leftists get to talk to non-leftists, especially working class? I remember one early leader of a caucus I was in tell me he has no non-leftist people he talks to. Baskar talks about being in small socialist groups or caucuses where you hear only one real voice --- where if you disagree with anything you get slammed as being discordant - I've actually seen people claim to feel unsafe when a loud disagreement over a political issue breaks out. A few of us looked at each other and wondered how snow flakes intend to take on the power structure of the UFT.

Baskar mocks some of the disagreements on the left as to what year the Soviet state changed into Stalinism. Working class voters prefer candidates who focus primarily on economic issues. Their not against talking about racism but want these issues framed in univeral terms. Bernie tried to do that and got slammed by the left cultural warriors. 

 

Health care is good because it helps everyone - not just framed as a racial justice issue for one segment of the population. Right now John Fetterman seems to me the only candidate I've seen who has the ability to do this.

I love this: 

"even if we are reliant on an activist base to begin with, we are not just stuck with this space forever."

Apply this point to organizing in the UFT -- the hopeful realization by the activist left base that they will never win even a segment of power in the UFT without broadening that base -- maybe the emergence of United for Change was a sign but those who know the left from experience are always prepared to see things slip back for the interests of sectarian politics.

Stop talking to each other but reach out to people not only on the fence but on the other side of the fence. 

He asks people to look around whatever groups people are in and ask if that group is equipped to have an influx of 5 thousand working class people. We should be building the shells of organizations that can be truly mass.

I remember once at a joint rally over the 2005 conract talking to someone from another caucus and saying wouldn't it be wonderful if we had even 50 hard core activists in the UFT and the response was: If they are the right kind -- that was a warning sign to me of the kind of exclusivity some gtoups try to enforce internally.

Here's where he nails it:

We shouldn't be building groups that are so sensitive that a few interpersonal things or a few controversies gets it destroyed or they spend so long inwardly debating with each other and then deciding when the next meeting is - a kind of inaction group --

Boy have I seen this - groups that talk to and at themselves and often morph into a small oligarchy of control by a few and even their own mass begins to lose interest and becomes perfectly content to let them run things.  talk talk talk - make up some action event to simulate organizing - but keep the rhetorical and procedural gates up to keep the "wrong" kind of people out...

 

Trust me -- I've been guilty of this idea of we want to be in a "comfortable" space with like-minded people. ICE was a more open group but talk talk talk was certainly frustratign to people who wanted action. I was very comfortable talking and debating. ICE could never be an major organizing force alone in the UFT - though some people seemed to think so. In fact the founding of GEM in 2009 was a reaction to ICE inaction -- but I also think ICE is the only group that offered a relaxed space over rice pudding to just talk, dispute, argue over issues etc and work for consensus and no matter how hard you fought you walk out colleagues.  I think that is also really needed.

Bhaskar points to DSA which is more action oriented and seems to be a clearing house of sorts for various points of view but there is also an avoidance of taking on such divisive issues. -- ie - witness the cancellation of Black scholar with a heavy class analysis Adolph Reed, Jr. 

 

I'll leave you with these links so you can see the dysfunction of the left in action.

DSA Cancels Adolph Reed - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com › watch

Jun 1, 2020 — Ben Burgis tells the story of the DSA cancellation of Adolph Reed and critiques the concept of class reductionism and a category that ...

Missing: read ‎| Must include: read

The Canceling of Adolph Reed - Hannah Arendt Center

https://hac.bard.edu › amor-mundi › the-canceling-of-a...

Aug 16, 2020 — Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps ...

A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited ...

https://www.nytimes.com › adolph-reed-controversy

• Aug 18, 2020 — Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps ...
• 
  

  The background to the NY Times article on Adolph Reed Jr ...

  https://louisproyect.wordpress.com › 2020/08/17 › the-...

Aug 17, 2020 — His article concluded: “Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking ...

AOC and the Left - She's Not Everyone's Darling

This is what we mean when we talk about the Democratic Party’s extraordinary capacity to co-opt progressives, social movements and radicals who don’t have a clear class perspective. If the DSA wants to remain a potentially disruptive element in U.S. politics and avoid being rapidly folded into the Democratic Party machine, its members must urgently reassess their electoral strategy. Working-class independence should be the starting point of any organization that claims to fight capitalism. The DSA leadership body has remained silent on Ocasio-Cortez’s most conservative remarks, as well as on her open strategy of revitalizing the Democratic Party. In her role as the celebrated face of American democratic socialism, Ocasio-Cortez portrays the DSA as an organization that aspires to serve as the left wing of the Democratic Party. Without a rapid course correction, that is what it will become.... Juan Cruz Ferre. Left Voice.

I am fascinated by the attacks on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez coming not from the right but from the left. Here are two pieces, one by Micah Uetrecht at Jacobin, a leading left journal, celebrating AOC calling out Democrats but warning her about her wavering and being brought back into the fold. His piece, Welcome Their Hatred, appears in Jacobin which seems to be non-sectarian and open to various ideas on the left and I imagine he sees her as someone who will push the Dems to the left -- ie, a reformer of the party.

Democratic leaders are outraged at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s actions in Congress and are trying to reel her in. It’s a clear sign she’s antagonizing all the right forces in the party.

If Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weren’t provoking outrage from her Democratic colleagues within her first days in Congress, she wouldn’t be doing it right.
Politico ran a very revealing story this morning about the socialist congresswoman, summed up in its headline: “Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez.” House Dems’ grievances include high crimes like encouraging primary challenges to centrist, pro-corporate Democrats and pushing for (gasp!) a committee appointment they don’t think she deserves....

Breaking News: March 29, 2007

UFT vote count all day at Park Central Hotel, 7th Ave & 55th St. Election committee announced that mail received today will be counted. We may ask for Friday's mail also to be accepted. I will be there with Kit Wainer and Josh Kahn from TJC.

ICE meeting at Murray Bergtraum HS, Friday, March 30 at 4:15 to analyze election results, with a scavenger hunt to follow to find a restaurant in Chinatown.

When a question was raised at the DA yesterday about the red-baiting flyer Unity sent out, Randi as usual cried about how she has stood up to such terrible personal attacks -- like questions about her teaching credentials and said she lives as honest a life as anyone she knows. (Except for that statement on NY 1 she made not long ago claiming she taught 5 periods a day for 6 years.) Randi then gave Unity head Jeff Zahler the floor to engage in another round of red-baiting, saying he was proud to have sent that out and reading excerpts in an attack on Kit Wainer. He said accusations of McCarthyism are not true because in those times Kit would be thrown out of the union and not even have a job. He attacked Kit for criticizing Al Shanker for supporting American foreign policy (like the was in Vietnam, which apparently in retrospect Zahler must also support. When he started frothing at the mouth Randi signaled "enough" and he sat down like a good boy.

Kit tool a point of personal privilege but didn't go beyond referring to the TJC response on their web site. Many thought he should have gone on the attack the way NYC Educator did and said he was proud to be a socialist who is willing to fight for a strong union and if Randi was a socialist our people wouldn't be in such trouble.

By the way, not one New Action member said a word or tried to say a word. so ironic since Unity had always red-baited them. I had a brief confrontation with some New Action people before the meeting when I castigated them for lying down with snakes and for not standing up. They argued they had sent a strongly-worded protest to Weingarten and said something on their web site. Whoopdee-doo! They should have come to the DA and handed out a leaflet. No guts, no glory! They also said they objected to the counter red-baiting in TJC's response. Let's see what Zahler and his friends in New Action have to say when his Unity faithful finds out they have elected members of a certain leftist organization who ran on the Unity slate to the Executive Board. Call this counter red-baiting if you want. If you lie down with snakes, expect to get bitten.

Having been involved with people from the left in union politics for a long time, I always feel people should be open about their political affiliations, especially if they are associated with a party which can have such a major impact on their political stance. That goes for people in TJC and in New Action. The word "Independent" in ICE has a lot of meaning. There are a lot of left people in the group but they are truly independent, people not comfortable with left party ideology. At least the 3 Progressive Labor Party members in ICE are out front, though sometimes in an awkward way.

Speaking of which....

Ironically, Jonathan Lessuck from the Progressive Labor Party (and ICE) got up right after Kit on a point of order to make the annual PLP May Day motion because Randi had shunted the New Motion period to the end of the meeting as she usually manipulates that time. She began that with me back in 2000 when she didn't want one of my motions in front of the body and actually called me outside to apologize. She was fairly new, with a Unity party still loyal to Sandy and looking for allies - not nearly as arrogant as she has become. That was my first indication (ok, I was slow) of how manipulative she was.

Jonathan has proven very adept at handling himself in these sticky situations. I was almost hoping he would say what Kit wouldn't in a rigorous defense of left activism in the union but when Randi engaged in an attack on him for daring to upset the democratic process because there is a backlog of so many motions (due to her long reports, invitations to DA's to politicians and DOE officials, etc.) but as usual, she tried to blame Jonathan. But he turned the tables on her when he called her Dusty, followed by "oops! When under pressure I get mixed up with my repressive, dictatorial principal." The place rolled with laughter and even Weingarten had to laugh. Humor is the best way to work this crowd and unfortunately few use it. Kudos to Jonathan.

When his first sentence of the May Day resolution mentioned the word Communist I said "Uh, oh!" but he saved the day with a great case for celebrating May Day as a way to reinvigorate the labor movement. When the vote was taken even Randi said it was 70-30 against. 30% of the DA FOR the May Day motion? Holy Cow! We must be moving left. More kudos to Jonathan.

When people ask how it is to have PL people (Jonathan, Carolyn and Joan) working with ICE I answer that it has been a pleasure to have their viewpoint which is very pro-student, presented. (I know I'm simplifying - I object to them pinning every ill in the world on racism.) All to often, all you hear from teachers is the bad stuff about students. One of the reasons PL and ICE can work together is that we have always tried to deal with the rights of teachers and students (and parents.) Sometimes people, even in ICE arecritical, saying a caucus should only worry about teachers. My view is that is not a caucus I am interested in. Again, kudos to Jonathan.

I hung out in the back of the DA with Josh Heisler a teacher at Vanguard HS in the Julia Richman complex. Josh works with NYCORE (New York Collection of Radical Educators.) I met Josh through Sally Lee from NYCORE and Teachers Unite. Josh is doing work on anti-military recruitment. It was Josh's outrage at receiving the Unity red-baiting attack that spurred NYCORE, which usually doesn't get involved in UFT internal struggles, to endorse the ICE-TJC slate to their very large mailing list. I'm hoping we can get Josh to work with us in ICE.

The more I meet people like Josh and Sally, the more I appreciate the fact that there are still young leftists (Peter, Megan, Ellen from TJC) out there battling. Change in the UFT will only come from being spurred by the left and there is hope. I know there is a right-wing anti-Unity sentiment out there but it is not organized and frankly, I don't see that happening. If the right wants to get rid of Unity it will have create a caucus, join with the left, or sit on the sideline. Though I do not view myself as a leftist, I love meeting and working with them and there is a glimmer of a future for a movement.