I’m so excited to be here with you all. It feels to me that this is the political moment so many of us have been waiting for and working to build for years.
We’re a month away from one of our comrades becoming mayor. We’ve built a network of socialist elected officials, we have a real organization to call home, and there’s a growing base of support in this city for our immediate demand of taxing the rich to expand public goods.
This moment extends beyond New York — we have a huge political opening in the United States as whole. But we know that we have that opportunity because millions of people are living through hard times. We have an erratic and authoritarian president, we have an affordability crisis, with millions struggling to pay their bills and to live lives where they’re treated with dignity and respect. We’ve seen the return of forms of nativism and racism that should have been long vanquished by now.
And at a social and economic level, things may get worse very soon.
The country — not just this city — is crying out for principled political leadership. Not just a kind of populist leadership through great figures, though I’m grateful we have one of the greatest figures on our side. I mean class leadership through organization.
The leadership that says that the disparities that we see in our country and the world are not the natural laws of God but the result of a world that human beings have created. The leadership that says that the interests of the working-class majority are distinct from the interest of capitalist elites, and that we need to organize around those interests to win not only a better distribution of wealth within capitalism but a different type of society all together.
I joined the Democratic Socialists of America when I was seventeen years old. I don’t need to tell you what DSA was in New York back in 2007. Some of you here remember it. I made so many good friends, but we were lucky if a dozen people showed up to…
Auteur: Bhaskar Sunkara
