Ep 2: Trans Rights & the Working Class

0:00:00

Why the working class is so important isn't because it's like a good moral position to be in. But these are the people that have both the ability through their position as workers and who are responsible for the profits the boss makes, and the incentive. They're not personally seeing that profit they're not making that money to change the system. The vast majority of people in the democracy are working class, so we potentially have the ability to decide you know, what our country's gonna look like. Welcome to left on red where a Gen X mom and gay millennial do socialism and I'm Susan. And I'm Scott. This is socialist views on news you can use. There was an additional part to that tongue twister, but I forgot it. That's alright. We'll figure it out next time. Let's get into it.

0:01:24

So one of the things that have been really big in the news these past couple of weeks. I'm seeing it a lot on Twitter. I'm seeing it all over different media outlets. I see it on the TV news, actually. Is there's a lot of agitator around gender, around drag, Queen story hour, around drag queens, doing performances and shows for kids, around transgender, issues. There's a lot of transphobia coming out from the right. And just this kind of generalized anti trans sentiment. And I I actually have not figured out exactly where it was coming from this week, but Susan, you are telling me that you had seen the it's like kind of central genesis of this for this week's news. I I guess it was a CPAC conference, and that's where the conservatives get together. It's kinda like their version of Burning Man. And Yeah. It's it's as exciting as you get and where that's where they all sort of decide that the biggest threat right now was gender.

0:02:25

So and so as a mom, as a not the millennial, as the gen x mom, I know, it's very interesting to see the way that this became about parents. Right? Because if you think about it, the whole fight about gender is about our kids can't be exposed idea. That gender isn't a fixed biological THING THAT'S LIKE SUCH A THREAT ACCORDING TO THIS NARRATIVE. Adrienne: AND I MEAN, LET'S NOT DISCOUNTA, THEY'RE ALSO Anti ADULTS who have thoughts about their gender. Right? The conservatives are basically declaring war on any kind of non SIS Hetero gender presentation.

0:03:03

I think it's really I agree with you that I think an incredible focus of it is on schools and children and trying to motivate parents around this issue. But I also think it's important just for all of us to know that This is one of many very typical far right playbook actions that happened in Nazi Germany. You know, a lot of people are making this connection on Twitter one of the first things the Nazi party did that really made it in the news at the time was that they burned down this Institute of Sex, this professor I don't remember his name, but at the time was his leading German professor on sexuality and gender studies, and Nazis burned down all of these books. The building that he used to work in. It was very clearly the far right identified the family as this central social unit to society and they tried to drive an incredible wedge between left and right using the family and gender and sexuality was one of those things that they used. Yeah. And it's it's so interesting to me that the family is so sanctified by the right, but, you know, any of the actual policies that we as socialist might like to pass to actually help families out like, you know, universal paid family leave or universal child care. Those things are not how we protect families or how we protect children, how we, you know, lessen the burden on working parents it's all about like no no children shouldn't be exposed to any ideas that we don't like at schools. They shouldn't be exposed to performers that don't fit our ideology because that's really bad for them.

0:04:39

And, you know, interestingly enough, I was at this huge protest in the Jackson Heights library because my friend is one of the drag performers and asked us to all come. And, you know, in a place like New York City and Jackson Heights, which is a queer, like, I guess, historically queer neighborhood, that's where Queen's pride is. You would think it would be a non issue, but the Pride Boys did show up. They were not from Jackson Heights, and then the counter protesters were crazy. There were actually a lot of, you know, people that we know too Crazy in a good way.

0:05:06

Yeah. Well, no. No. It it was it was great to see from that. From upstairs. Right? But I mean, what's I'm not really sure what the fight is. Like, it's like, okay. Well, the libraries might provide some funding for these activities. So it's a fight over public funding. Right? Or yeah.

0:05:22

So it's it's very interesting for me as a parent who feels overwhelmed and anxious all the time. And I think that that's something that the right realizes. It's very hard to be a parent in America. You feel anxious about your children's future. You know, you're worried about their health, their well-being. And so they're trying to capitalize on that, which is broad, right, a widespread sentiment. Even though according to, I guess, polling data, most people don't care about trans issues. They don't think it's something that needs to be legislated, even though states are passing these laws, something like seventy five percent of Americans polled just don't think it's a big deal. It's the parent thread.

0:05:57

I feel like we have to explore for it could probably take up its whole own episode because I have always held, you know, you are a parent. I love parents. I know many parents. But I've always held that in the United States parent can be one of the most reactionary positions a person can take. And part of that is because for all of the things that you want for your children, you feel this incredible sense of I need to control everything in my child's environment. To give them the best possible life and world possible, and I need to fight against all of these intangible threats. I feel like Over the last several decades, American parents have been scare mongered into feeling like everything in the world is a threat to their children.

0:06:40

You don't want your kids out after dark. You don't want your kids walking around by themselves. There might be a stranger who wants to steal and kidnapped your child. Who wants to molest your child. There might be someone that your child can't trust who's gonna poison them. There might be someone that's gonna teach your child demonic ideas someone that's gonna trends your child. You know, all of these terrifying lies about what might happen to kids And I feel like this is what exactly what you were saying. The right is capitalizing on this. They don't wanna give anything good to parents. They don't wanna give parents universal child care or excellent public services and make it easier to be a parent, but they know that they can create these wedge issues that terrify parents that scare them to their core and turn what might sometimes otherwise be reasonable people into you know, right wing Republicans who are terrified that there's this new thing they don't understand that's gonna hurt their children. And, yeah, I think that that's exactly what happened in, like, Virginia when, I guess, young king was able to sort of take all this parental anger The parents really mad about COVID.

0:07:48

There were schools that were shut down and they were like having to work their jobs and take care of their kids and provide educations for them. And you know, I'm not a teacher. I'm not qualified to do remote learning for my kids. I learned that right off the bat. I was like, what? It was really, really humbling for me. And also, difficult, but I had a flexible job and a really great boss who helped me manage all those things, not everyone had that.

0:08:10

And then, of course, a lot of people on the left were like, you don't like your pair your kids. Like, there wasn't a good left response either to people feeling frustrated about schools being shut down. I taught a lot of those. Right. And it wasn't helpful. Right?

0:08:22

And then so what the right was actually affected at responding to them and saying, you know who's fault this is? It's teacher unions. They're the ones who don't want your kids in schools. They're the ones who wanna make it, so you can't work. Right? So they're wrong. Right? The Republicans are wrong, but the Republicans were effective at mobilizing this parental frustration. A lot of the left or the democrats didn't take that seriously. And they ended up winning in Virginia like a a state that had gone for Biden the year before. Right?

0:08:50

So that's, like, bad on the left, that's battle the democrats, like, parental frustrations are real, but we need to respond to them with you know, universal policies. Like, are you worried about your kid? Like, yeah. Well, we think that there should be like a jobs program that promotes a just transition we want them to to be training. Would there be, you know, universal k through sixteen? Right? Like education higher education should be a right. Like, those frustrations should be met with like social programs and like greater security for all American families, not just like you know, homeschool your kids, privatize your kids education. Like, that's not the answer for anybody. It's a great point, I feel like every single time I see some new culture war issue from Republicans, it's a privatization effort in disguise.

0:09:38

Where they use some form of culture war, whether it's around gender and sexuality, whether it's around what your kids might maybe listening to I'm like, did you notice that a critical race theory disappeared? Oh, yeah. We're talking about that anymore. And people tried to make young king about critical race theory, but it really was about people being pissed. That school being so good. Right? I know when people we forgot about critical race theory. Because we don't talk about it anymore. You're a thousand percent correct. Now it's all it's all gender panic.

0:10:06

There is we don't have enough time to get into this, but there was this great in-depth article from one of our comrades here, Matt Thomas, who explained how one of the biggest groups, most well funded groups Pushing critical race theory was linked to Betsy DeVos and all of these national charters because they knew it was this wedge issue that they could use to make parents hate teachers and distrust this school system. We're seeing the same thing happen right now with gender and sexuality. And it's you know, let's be very clear. There is also an incredibly horrific strain of transphobic hatred. On the right. This is not just their attempt to ruin public schools. They also genuinely hate trans people and they have no, like, human compassion for what a person might be going through in this in this kind of way. Right.

0:10:56

And of course, I have a theory about this, which is I think a lot of people are angry about it because frankly, gender doesn't serve anybody, but they're mad because they have to conform. And so there's idea like, well, if I have to conform to gender, you have to conform to gender too. Like, it's kinda like when things get relaxed in the military. So I I was at the Air Force Academy for six months. Some some of you know. And, like, it was really rough, but they were used to be harder. Right? People used to die. And I'm like, why are we proud of that? And then since then, they've made it even, like, less harsh. And then there's a lot of angry people who are like, well, we used to basically be able to do these kinds of use abusive things to cadets. Yeah.

0:11:32

Like, there's a whole, like, desire to keep things traditional not for any reason reason except for that, that's how things are done. Why not let anybody, a child, an adult, figure out who they want to be. Like, just let people be free. It doesn't affect you. It has nothing to do with you. Yeah. I don't really understand why people are mad that some people transition their genders. Why people are mad that some people are happier with medical care that is gender affirming, I don't get it. And I don't think I ever will.

0:12:05

But I'll also say that was we're talking about all of these things, why is this important from a socialist perspective besides just you know, you wanna be a decent person and support, marginalized people who deserve support and care and you know, they're not harming anybody. It's also important that as socialists, we lean into exactly what you were just talking about, breaking harmful traditions. That we lean into this type of liberatory way of living your life. That if being a trans person liberates you from oppression, from difficulty in your life, or some form of danger to you, that socialist must support that. It's incumbent on us to support liberty ways of moving through the world to break down you know, as Mark said, you have nothing to lose but your chains. If gender is a chain, then socialist must be responsible for breaking that chain. Yeah.

0:13:01

And one of the things that people often debate about, like, on the left, is, like, oh, do we care about these culture issues? Shouldn't we only care about redistribution? And I think that that's a really, you know, narrow way of thinking about ideology. Because not just about, like, do we reign in capitalism or do we reduce attribute. Like, that's only one part of the, I guess, the political ideological spectrum. And I'm taking this from a political scientist called Herbert Cashfeld. I I just black butchers name.

0:13:28

But there's another dimension too. Right? One of them is like, should our policy be expansive or limited? And that has to do with immigration. Right? So rights for people who are not born here. Which we'll talk about later.

0:13:38

And then a a third dimension is individual freedom. And you might think this is like like a half had to do with capitalism, but it's not it's not about like you know, being a libertarian. What it is is about should people be able to be who they wanna be irrespective of, like, traditional ideas about gender, about families, about, you know, other kind of social norms, not not ones about abuse. But, you know, anything about, like, you know, or should you allow to be to be free if you don't fit what society traditionally thought you were supposed to be, whether it's a woman who doesn't wanna have a child or get married, if you're someone who wants to love someone who you're told you're not supposed to love. It's anybody who doesn't fit those heteronormative structures at all. We're all not safe if you think that the liberation of trans people is not important to you, which is why JK Rowling deserves all the hate.

0:14:32

That's a that's a good ending. But that's a I I appreciate the reminder that this liberation is also our liberation. I think a lot of people traditionally go into like the ally language. I'm an ally because, you know, maybe that was their first foray into social justice and that's what they learned. But it's really critical that This is not a separate fight. The fight for trans liberation and supporting trans people is also the fight for gay liberation end the fight for if you are straight and you don't wanna live the traditional life where you get married, you have kids, and then you die. All of these things are linked together. We are all in the same fight.

0:15:13

And speaking of, that's like an extremely good segue to I think what we wanna talk about next, which is, as we're talking about all of these issues and we're talking about whether or not socialism is just about economics and just distributive or whether or not it includes this cultural component and obviously we think that it does, then it brings us to what is the working class. Part of the reason I think this is a really good segue is I think recently as we've seen through Starbucks workers unionizing And through a lot of members in DSA, by the way, an incredible force at the forefront of all of these efforts is actually trans people. There are incredible number of trans organizers at Starbucks Workers United, both workers on the ground, workers working in the union, And the Democratic socialist of America is probably the socialist Oregon United States that has by and far the most trans people as members and leaders. And that's an important thing to note that obviously there is a connection between this type of politics of economic distribution and this way of living and this, you know, liberatory attempt to go away from old cultural traditions around what you can in cannot be. But all that being said, I feel like we need to do a quick primer. So Susan, you tell me because I feel like we all have, like, similar, but maybe different definitions. What does it mean to be working class? Alright, Teresa. Talk this all the time in grad school. And I went to grad school in the two thousands, so, you know, ancient history. But so the working definition that I kind of came up with. Well, I agree with that one of my professors came up with. And he was like a scholar, social democracy, was that you're a working class person.

0:16:59

If when you fire taxes, you know, it's getting to be tax season. Right? Most of your income, is it coming from the wages, from the work that you do? Or is it coming from, like, your investments for the money and the resources you already have? And so that's the things that people are like, oh, but I make a decent living. Right? They don't think they're working class. Like, oh, if you lost your job, how long would it be before you were homeless? Before you were, like, you know, living off credit cards. Right?

0:17:26

I think I read somewhere like sixty percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck including people who make six figures. Because most of people are living in high cost of living areas. Right? So many people are, you know, living very precariously with, like, things like inflation, the cost of, like, housing is ridiculous, health care, where, you know, people have a lot of debt. And I think that most Americans, vast majority of us, are working class. I'll put it even simpler, I think.

0:17:56

My definition is if you work for a living, you're working class. I feel like it's in the name. And we got this definition from Karl Marx Right? Well, I don't know if someone wrote about it before him. I I did not go to grad school. So I don't know who came up with the phrase working class. But part of the reason that this is an important phrase and that we talk about it a lot when we talk about socials politics isn't just of whether or not your life is precarious, whether or not you have a hard time making a living because there's actually a lot of working class people, like Susan just pointed out, that make a lot of money.

0:18:34

What it means to be working class is that you have a boss that kind of dictates to you what you do with your life. Right? That you don't have freedom at the workplace. You have to report to someone who instructs you on what to do, and then you have to do that in order to make a living. And inherent in part of that is you're making money, doing your productive activity at work, but you're not seeing all of that money. Someone much much much higher than you is making is taking the profit that you're making, and they're taking it for themselves, and they're giving you a wage. So if you work for a wage and you have this kind of generalized structure, I think you're a working class. And all of that is important because that means that you have some level of power at the workplace. That ultimately, there is a capitalist boss who relies on you to make a profit. Why the working class is so important isn't because it's like a good moral position to be in, but these are the people that have both the ability through their position as workers and who are responsible for the profits the boss makes. And the incentive. They're not personally seeing that profit. They're not making that money to change the system.

0:19:49

When we talk about, like, socialist revolution and we talk about capitalism, the people that have both the ability and the desire to change the system are the workers. We are the people that can join together in a union, whether that's formal or informal. And make decisions on production so that the boss is affected. We together have the power to change the overall system in this country, in this world. Right. So what's interesting to me about work the working class is that the vast majority of people in the democracy are working class So we potentially have the ability to decide, you know, what our country's gonna look like. Right? What what are who are we electing? Right? Like, what what are the outcomes that we want But of course, it's not that simple for a lot of reasons.

0:20:36

But, you know, we do these canvases for TaxRich. So we had a really successful one this past Sunday. We did. Yeah. It was very windy since it was kind of, like, there's, like, a little drama festival. Yeah. And, like, it was funny because I did, you know, stop and talk someone.

0:20:51

There's people who have like decent lives who live in Jackson Heights where where I live. And I was like, you know, we're wanna raise taxes on the richest New Yorkers. And one of the guys was like, what does that mean? I was like, not you. I was like, you're shopping for your own groceries. No. I don't think so. Right? But, like, people think, oh, I'm doing okay. So I'm not part of it. You know, I'm I'm I'm well off or I'm I'm part of the rich. And it's like, no, you probably aren't. Right? Like, the people who are the top one percent that we're seeking to tax, like, people who, like, have, like, crazy investments and crazy incomes, you're not probably part of that. Like, this is well, this is a tactic. Right?

0:21:26

This is a tactic the wealthy used to divide working people. They want you to think that if you have an education or if you have a white collar job or if you make a lot of money. You have a nice house. Yeah. All of those things, they want you to think that that sets you apart. Or much more insidious ways like race and gender are means of dividing the working class also that they create The wealthy, the one percent, the ruling class, capitalists, create these structures that divide us based on race, based on gender, based on the amount of money that we make, the living that we're allowed, and separate working people because they know Together, working people constitute the greatest threat to their profits. And a lot of cases we buy those lines hook and Tinker. Right? All those people were worried that they see themselves as rich. One of, you know, when we're talking about DSA and people that might listen to a podcast.

0:22:24

One of the most insidious categories I think is this idea of professional managerial class or PMC. And this is a concept of I don't actually know the concept myself like perfectly, but I my understanding is that It's generally meant to refer to educated people who don't make that much money but kind of work in these white collar jobs that could be done remotely. Mhmm. Right? And I feel like PMC is kind of a a bullshit category because I think a lot of people use it to kind of feel guilty about, oh, I'm not really working class. I have a degree. I'm working in an office. But there are so many working class people that make a lot more money than most office workers, including potentially unionized construction workers, union eyes to healthcare workers. Electricity. Electricity. Oh, yeah. And we have no problem identifying those people as working class. Right? And the the difference I think is real. It's cultural and it's social category. Yeah. So it's like tastes. Yeah. But ultimately, economically, I feel like we're still all the same. Mhmm. And, like, in that That's one of the interesting things that when we do canvassing for DSA candidates, we sort of recognize some communities, some buildings, might be full of people with more PMC identities, and we might just maybe change our pitch a little bit.

0:23:51

So for example, when we did canvassing in Lyon City, we have a funny moment where we got these really tall buildings with fifty floors. And you couldn't use the elevators because you needed an ID card for the elevator to go up the floor. But I was dedicated I walked up forty eight flights of stairs. I got I was able to use elevator. I did not. So Susan passed as PMC, and they they didn't let me in. They didn't let me use the elevator. But yeah, but here's the thing is that in a lot of own city, you have a lot of tech workers, a lot of PMC folks. They're still interested in climate change. They're still interested in, like, properly funding transit. They're still interested in things like funding our schools. Right? Because ultimately, they're part of our community, and they, you know, we do we did very well in line with city.

0:24:40

Because at the end of the day, that core relationship that makes you work in class holds the same. Which is do you work for a living? Is your work life forty hours a week or probably more to be honest? Mhmm. Your majority of your day Is that controlled by somebody else? Are your wages being given to you from someone who's taking the majority of the work product you're making? The answer is yes. In all of these cases, we remain working class totally and together because of that core relations.

0:25:13

I I think that the category working class is something that Americans need to recognize and embrace for themselves. And we're working class people even if, for example, I have a PhD I'm working class. I'm active in my union. I know that, you know, the conditions of my work are something that I have a say in changing only by working with the other people in my workplace. I try to organize my workplace. I try to organize the students. And that's something that, you know, matters very much. From a socialist perspective. One very fun thing that we'd love to talk about are the Democrats and the Democratic We love we love to talk about the Democrats. We love the democrats. Mhmm.

0:26:09

And I think something that was really instructive for a lot of people paying attention to national politics and the differences and similarities between the two parties Democrats and Republicans in the United States was what happened recently with the DC laws that have been voted to get overturned in the house. So as a quick primer, Washington DC, city council voted in for two separate laws. One was a rewrite of their criminal code, made it not perfect, but much more left, much more lenient. A lot better than what it currently is today, and another law that passed to allow non citizens to vote in local elections. Both of these passed with overwhelming support. The mayor attempted to veto both bills and the city council voted down the veto twelve to one. So we see a very clear all the city council members except for one are united behind these laws indicating the people of DC probably all really like these bills. And what happened this week was the United States House voted to overturn these rules. So these laws, they were able to do that because DC is not a state So it kind of has a limited amount of home rule that congress is allowed to give it. And when the US House voted to do this, It wasn't just Republicans. I think a little bit over thirty Democrats voted to overturn the criminal code and a little over forty Democrats. Voted to overturn the law that would allow non citizens to vote.

0:27:45

Howard Bauchner: Yeah, so this is just a perfect example of the Democrats trying to out republican the Republicans, and it fails every time. It doesn't help them get more votes. Like, there's there's like a there's some kind of, like, voice in their heads of saying, we're gonna win the moderate voters if we just go more right, but it doesn't work. Right? Because you can't Republican Republicans because they actually have the moral high ground when it comes to being reactionary. Like, just stop. Right? It's you're not good at it. Like, you know, I I kinda feel like a parent who's, like, got a child who keeps trying to do something and it's, like, not quite working. You're, like, we gotta figure out a different strategy. Like, this isn't this isn't working. So, you know, this isn't directly related to DC, but I I think the same thing happened in New York.

0:28:28

Where our current mayor mayor, mayor Adams Eric Adams, was a former police officer, but an MGA cop. So he, you know, he act like he was like, a homicide guy, but he was he was a trained cop. He really went hard on law in order in two thousand and one during the Democratic primary, and basically, he won barely over forty percent, which is what you need to win in a male primary New York City. Otherwise, it goes to a runoff. He barely won because basically the other candidates were just like a mess, not because he was so great, but he had a unified message. It was clear is blaming New York's problems on crime, and he was gonna be the guy who fixed it. Not because he was like some like a great leader or like a policy expert on criminal justice because he had biniform cock himself, and that he also really thought that he knew what he was doing. And of course, he has not demonstrated at all, that he knows what he's doing.

0:29:22

And in fact, many observers, regular moderate democrats have said that the reason why the Democrats even lost the US House was because Eric Adams made law and order really politically salient in New York State. And as a result, it made it a big difference in in state politics and then Kathy Hockel who is our current governor when she ran for election in twenty twenty two, she just failed to have coattails. Right? She failed. She failed to bring about decisive Democratic victories. And there's there's other reasons too. There's actually a graph or there's a tweet that included a picture that showed a right word shift amongst essentially the New York City media market. Almost everywhere else in the last midterms went a little bit further to the left in favor of Democratic or liberal candidates except for the New York media market and I think regions of California.

0:30:20

And this is like an extremely, like, clear correlation of this insane crime panic that Democrats are fueling is, in fact, causing voters to vote Republican. That's one element of it. There's obviously others. But I'll also say that I, you know, I love the image of Democrats as the child that you have to sculpt, but I think they're doing it on purpose. I think there is this intentional effect, especially in New York. Where the socialist left is rising and poses a credible threat to a lot of Democrats in power, I think Democrats want Republicans to do better in elections. I think a lot of Democrats like Kathy Hockel really want Republican opponents to be really evil and really credible. Because if there is this credible threat of this evil Republican, like Donald Trump, who's gonna maybe beat the shitty Democrat mayor or governor or president, then the shitty Democrat candidate suddenly gets this big boost from all these people who rationally don't want someone like Donald Trump to win.

0:31:26

Generally, a lot of reasonable people in the United States seem to have a lot of disdain for Republicans. It seems like the right wing isn't all that popular, but the Democrats really want them to be popular so that they can continue putting up these very moderate, very conservative, really pro business capitalist candidates and keep winning elections. But it's such a losing strategy, though. Like, not that I'm a numbers person, but, like, if you look at the numbers of voters, The largest single voting block in the United States are young people. Right? So young ish. So millennials, Gen Z, have now replaced like the boomers and the Gen Xers as the largest potential voting block. So we're talking about people who are eligible to vote. Right? And they poll very progressive. They poll, like, they would all vote, like, not all vote, but they vote majority democratic. Right? So by merely having a campaign strategy of the Republicans are really bad, then, you know, Democrats don't have to offer anything. And then by failing to offer anything to young people, nobody turns out to vote. Right?

0:32:30

So and and in the end, did the Democrats really want the Republicans to get control of the US House of Representatives. It was that part of the plan? Because I believe you that there's that there was definitely No. I don't think it was because I the whole the democratic plan was to win the House by making sure that New York and Illinois can maximize their congressional seats with the Democrats. I don't think that it there was this twelve dimensional chest thing going on. They're just not that smart. You're you're okay. They're definitely not that And so you're probably right that ostensibly, you know, they do want to win a little bit.

0:33:06

But I I definitely think there's an element of they wanna depress use voters. You know, the same thing about younger voters being a lot more liberal or left. Isn't just making them Democratic voters. It makes them Bernie voters. Right? A lot of those voters in poll after poll have a majority support for socialism. And I I'm not gonna try and say what I think Democrats are thinking. You know, I think both political parties are parties of capital. Their interests are capitalism. Right? And that's what they wanna support first and foremost.

0:33:39

But I noticed that Democrats the machine, all the candidates, and a lot of the base united really strongly against Bernie in both presidential primaries. And in local and state elections unite really strongly against progressive challengers. Local destroyed Jimani Williams who challenged her in the primary. And fair, he didn't run-in very good primary, but she raised an incredible amount of money. She spent a lot of it. Democrats seem to act so much stronger against left challenges than they do against right challenges, which makes me think yeah, they probably still wanna win you're right, but I think they don't wanna win too much because they don't want to do all of the things they promise they'll do for people. They want a credible opposition to keep them kind of give them an excuse for them not having to do anything. I mean You disagree. Yeah. I I disagree. I don't think they're that smart. So for example, you could offer us nothing and still have done better. Cathy Hockel. So for example, Kathy Hockel, she just wanted to be like, you can't you don't want you know, I forgot his name already. That guy who does Yeah. You don't you don't lead Eldon to win because he's bad on women's rights.

0:34:58

She could have gotten a bunch of, like, TikTok influencers in New York state to put out ads as her surrogates to be like, this guy doesn't even know what a uterus is. Right? She could have just kept on her existing message but tried to appeal to youth. But she didn't because she stupid, lazy, has really bad advisors. Right? But she could have pushed her message in New York. I didn't see anything in New York. Right? I didn't see a single hocal sign. If I saw all these Lee's Eldon signs, like, no, that wasn't just about not wanting to create an expansive political platform that would over promised to the youth and to the progressive wing. That was just really bad politics.

0:35:36

I'm sorry, I cannot allow you to give the local democrats is that much credit. Like, they're just not that smart. They're just idiots. Right? It's this is the same logic that meant, like, we don't you know, we we you know, the Hillary campaign doesn't go to, like, Michigan or Wisconsin to do any campaigning. Right? Because they were just seen as, like, obviously, New York City will vote for Hokul, obviously, you know, Michigan and, like, Wisconsin's gonna vote in twenty sixteen.

0:36:01

I will revise my statement. You're right that I think all of these people we're talking about are not smart. I think Kathy Hockel is not good at politics. I think these democrats in congress that voted against the DC laws are stupid. You're right. I think you're right. I do still think there is an element of they they don't want to do good left things. I think a lot of Democrats in the party right now don't agree with a lot of elements in the platform. And I think a lot of them are more motivated to fight the left and socialism than they are to fight the right and right wing fascism.

0:36:41

And here's sort of my like. Last thing I wanna say about this is that young people aren't gonna be like, well, well, the democrats are delivering. So I guess I'll vote for the Republican. I guess that's not gonna happen. Right? Because Republicans are just discussing to them. They're just gonna be like, you know, what's the point of democracy. Right? They they just get bitter and they'll distrust the government, and they'll just sort of, like, drop out. So, like, the democrats are, like, you you guys are idiots. Like, you you know, the the name of their party is the democrats. Right? Do you believe a democracy or not? Like, are you you're creating a generation of disaffective use?

0:37:15

That's the brand of American democracy, apathy. It's the number one thing I experienced when I'm talking to people on the street. You saw it on our, you know, we had a really good tax origin canvas and tabling but the number one response I usually get from people is, will this really do anything? Do our politicians really care? We have a system that has built apathy into the average person. Because what did we say earlier? The number one thing capital is terrified of. The capitalists and business are terrified of. Are working class people developing consciousness, you know, getting a clue, and getting together to change the system. And so their best bet right now is to divide us, to hate monger, and to generate apathy so that people don't care.

0:38:03

And as like an academic, there's a lot of views from, like, experts. Like, these idiots don't vote. Like, there's, like, kind of, a scorn or disdain to those who don't participate in democracy, and that's wrong. What the starting position as organized should be is that it's rational to think that not participating in politics is the smart thing to do. It's rational to think that you as an individual cannot make a difference so I might all stay home. It's cold. Right? It's rational. So that's what we do as organizers, is that we have to, you know, understand that, have sympathy that position and then we can connect with them because if you're connecting with people who don't participate and don't vote in such a in a scornful way like, oh, you dumb peasants. Could you not vote? You idiot, which I think is one of my former professors kinda actually has that position. And it's wrong because it's the wrong way to approach a problem that we both agree as a problem. Right.

0:38:55

You need to meet people where they're at, you know. And what do we do? How do we meet people where they're at? How do we I was gonna say, you know, I wanted to pick up the dumb peasant joke. I wanted to remind everybody that I come from peasant ancestors. Same. Just look at look my lower body pills. Yeah. My my peasant body, both of my parents were, you know, peasants, you know, that's what their parents want. I have a body made for squatting a rice yields for twelve hours a day. Yeah. In hot sun. That's why I'm always dragging Sohanna to the beach. Yeah. We love the beach. But Okay.

0:39:28

You wanna be an organizer. You wanna meet people where they're at. You wanna help people get over their very rational apathy about a system that doesn't deliver the things that people want. And if you're still listening, you might be one of those people. So you know what you should do, you should join the Democratic socialist of America or DSA.

0:39:48

All of the things that we talked about today are problems that DSA is actively working on nationally and probably at your local chapter. And especially when we talk about Democrats and this attempt to move towards the right, DSA is working right now on building this kind of alternative left power to the Democrats. And, you know, there's some debates about that that we might get into at a later episode in terms of Debit are good. They're good. Debates are good. Right. It's nice to have a debate and discussion with people that respect each other. And, like, we all share the same goal too. We just sort of disagree on, like, how to move forward. And that's Amazing. Exactly. So you should join DSA. We'll put a link to join in the show notes for you to check out. And as always, you can email us any questions you have about the Democratic socialist of America or your local chapter or anything that we talked about at left on red n y c at gmail dot com.