This post was originally published on this site.
Good evening, bonsoir, buonasera, buenas noches, guten abend. My name is Frankie and I am honored to join you as a representative from the declining, crisis-ridden empire that is the United States.
I have been a militant of Left Voice for six years. I live in Brooklyn, just two subway stops away from the federal prison where Maduro of Venezuela is being held as a political prisoner. This is just one of many examples of my country’s imperialist warmongering for capitalist goals, like in Iran, as well.
To be clear – we are for the defeat of the United States in Iran: imperialists out of the Middle East! This would be a win for all oppressed peoples. And we don’t have illusions in the Iranian government either, who ultimately want to make deals with imperialism. This war is incredibly unpopular, most people in the U.S. never wanted it. More Americans have been killed by ICE in the last year than by Iran. We need to unite the anti-war movement with the anti-ICE movement.
Also close to where I live is Delaney Hall, the ICE concentration camp in New Jersey. Trump’s authoritarian and racist war against immigrants has cost so many lives already, and we know it is a symptom of a state desperate to regain control, using aggression abroad and at home in an attempt to restabilize their hegemony.
For example, in Cuba, we take the strongest stance against U.S. interference and the blockade. Following the U.S.’s kidnapping of Maduro and attempts to transform Venezuela into a protectorate, we are seeing a similar endeavor play out in Cuba. Trump and Rubio are deploying a virile anticommunism to attack the island. But at the same time, we have no illusions in the Cuban Communist Party that is continuing to play an active role in overturning the gains of the revolution to appease imperialism; They too have a bureaucratic caste that has enriched themselves, while working class Cubans face deep crisis. The real solution belongs to the unity of the working class and youth, across Latin America and in the United States, fighting against imperialist intervention, defending the gains of the revolution, and fighting for a workers’ state.
So, keeping in mind that a major aspect of the socialist solution is found in the belly of the beast, I return to a discussion of my hometown. Do you all know Zohran Mamdani? Yes, I thought so. Why did Mamdani go to Delaney Hall ICE detention center while he was campaigning, but never once as Mayor, when they have suffered in a heatwave with no air-conditioning, and even had a hunger strike?
He also went back on his word to defund the NYPD – one of the biggest police departments on the planet – and has turned his back on the movement for Palestine. In the public City University of New York, CUNY, there is still a professor fighting to get her job back after being fired for pro-Palestine activism. Mamdani’s choices expose the limits of attempting to transform society while working within the Democratic Party.
As long as the political horizon remains administrating the capitalist state, pressure from below will give way to institutional pressure to preserve the existing order. Mamdani’s victory points to the space for discussion of political alternatives. Debates about the possibility of a “third party” are growing. For example, around the topic of Palestine, and also broader questions of socialism, there has been an ideological shift to the left. I am a fourth generation Jewish New Yorker, and I have been anti-Zionist since I was fourteen. In the past three years, I have seen the Jewish anti-Zionist movement in New York grow in incredible ways.
A personal anecdote: my 95-year-old grandmother saw the ethnostate of Israel created while she was in university, and her father – my great grandfather – sent money from New York for arms contributing to the original Nakba. Now, she mourns Palestinian children and says, “Israel is an apartheid state that is committing genocide.”
At the same time, many anti-Zionist Jews helped to elect Mamdani, who has already begun to betray them, and whose reforms have no guarantee of lasting. But this is evidence of a real progressive force, and also shows the importance of convincing others that there is a way to resist Trump that is not just the lesser evil. Tens of thousands of young people in the U.S. are eager to organize, to fight for socialism and against imperialism. They see the DSA and Mamdani as an alternative, because they detest the Democratic Party establishment. We believe that this energy can be the basis towards breaking once and for all with the Democrats, because we know that revolutionary socialism is not possible through the means of capitalist government.
Today, we are here because we know the way out of this violent system. We need an independent, working class party that fights for revolutionary international socialism. Class struggle is the motor of history and is central to our liberation. Like in Minneapolis, where, in the bone-chilling cold, over one hundred thousand people took to the streets to demand “ICE out.” Schools closed, hundreds of small businesses shut down, and tens of thousands of workers did not go to work. Hundreds gathered in a workers’ assembly to debate and vote on the next steps for the movement. Such assemblies have the potential to organize the creativity and power of the working class through truly participatory democracy.
Movements like this are not bargaining chips. We do not need to beg for scraps from capitalists. The way forward is democratic and class independent. We need a party that takes seriously the task of transforming society, and knows that it is the workers who have the power to do so.
I’m so thrilled to be here, fighting alongside all of you from around the world to build this future, which we can see so clearly. Thank you so much for welcoming me to Germany. Let’s have a revolutionary weekend!
The post “We Know the Way Out of this Violent System”: Speech from a Socialist Summer Camp in Germany appeared first on Left Voice.