“In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they (Communists) always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.” (Communist Manifesto) 

Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected and popular Mayor of New York, is the leader of a diverse and powerful coalition that stretches across the city. It was this coalition that elected him and sent former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo into retirement. At the same time he is the (unelected) leader of Democratic Socialist of America here. When he speaks, New York DSA members listen. Said differently, he wears two political hats, representing two different and overlapping constituencies. In most instances — not least his victorious election campaign — it presents no problems.

But it can. And it did in the recent primary elections in New York in which two DSA members, Darializa Avila Chevalier and first term State Assembly member Claire Valdez ran against two progressive Democrats.

One was Adriano Espaillat, the leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who has served five terms and earned the endorsement of much of NY’s labor movement. The other was Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a former community organizer and New York City Council member. Reynoso also received labor endorsements and the support of Working Families Party. He had the backing as well of front line fighter against the Trump administration NY Attorney General Letitia James and the revered and long term progressive Nydia Velazquez, who is stepping down as the congresswoman in that district. 

Neither candidate was an “establishment” or “corporate” Democrat. To say otherwise is to empty the terms of any meaning and turn them into a specious slur against your opponents no matter what their politics are. Nor did either candidate support the ongoing genocidal policies of the Netanyahu government against the Palestinian people.

Although early in the primary process, there was an informal understanding that Mamdani would endorse Espaillet, who supported him in his successful run for Mayor less than a year ago, things changed in the closing weeks of the campaign when Mamdani swung his support to Chevalier and Valdez. Predictably this surprised and likely angered Espaillet and Reynoso and their supporters in the labor movement and Black and brown communities. 

As it turned out, both DSA candidates won, one narrowly, the other by a bigger margin, thanks largely to Mamdani’s endorsement and a turnout that skewed toward young and white college educated voters. What is more, it didn’t help that the turnout across the city was around 17 per cent, with significant sections of the Black and Latino communities not voting. No doubt this gave an advantage to the winning DSA candidates.

Not surprisingly, the outcome left some bitter feelings on the losing side. It caused some fissures in the coalition that elected Mamdani, that is, among sections of the labor movement and Black and Latino communities. 

How long these fissures will last is anybody’s guess at this moment. Unlike Senator Bernie Sanders who is from a small state and secure in his position, Mamdani is a new mayor of a city that is infinitely bigger, infinitely more diverse, and infinitely more complex. 

In these circumstances, the mayor’s success in moving forward his ambitious agenda turns, I would argue, on his success in maintaining, growing, uniting, and mobilizing the heterogeneous coalition that elected him, especially the Black, Latino, and labor communities. But in endorsing his DSA comrades, one has to wonder if he has made an unforced, if not long term, error. Sometimes you can lose by winning.

Let’s hope that isn’t the case and doesn’t come back to bite the mayor, DSA, and the larger movement he will depend on going forward. My guess is that it won’t.

The election of Trump and his embrace of white christian authoritarian governance couldn’t have happened without the intensification of racism. The two go hand in hand.What triggered such an intensification? There were, I’m sure, multiple causes, but three things immediately come to mind: The first is, ironically, the election of Barack Obama in 2008. His victory was greeted at the time with buckets of joy by tens of millions of Americans of different backgrounds. It felt like better days were ahead. A river had been crossed. Freedom bells were ringing.

But that wasn’t the only reaction to the election of our country’s first Black president. Less reported, millions of others, including representatives of the capitalist class, felt their world had been turned upside down, their way of life upended. Racial bitterness not joy were widespread in this crowd.This racially charged environment was the force field in which the Tea Party, a precursor to the MAGA movement, was born. While its ostensible target was the unfairness of the tax system, its racist venom was directed at Obama and his political agenda. Short of impeaching him, the hope of Tea Party leaders and activists was to sabotage his presidency.

While claiming to be a continuation of the spirit and traditions of the American Revolution, it’s more accurate to say that the Tea Party’s vile rhetoric and practice drew its inspiration from the bloody counterrevolution in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. That counterrevolution, beginning in 1877, violently overturned Reconstruction and its many democratic and working class achievements. It restored rule of the former slaveholding class and imposed by bloody force a system of systemic racism and heightened class exploitation — Jim Crow. This reign of terror came to a close nine decades later and only because of the heroic struggles of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement.

Meanwhile around the time of the rise of the Tea Party, new demographic studies were released showing that the country would be “majority minority” by the century’s midpoint or sooner. While these studies went unnoticed by many people, they set off alarm bells and white panic among the mass base and leaders of the extreme right.

If all this wasn’t enough to churn the racist stew, right wing extremist ideologues like Tucker Carlson began peddling the discredited “Great Replacement Theory.” According to this theory, the immigration of people from the global south will sooner rather than later “replace” white people, turning them into a subordinate and shrinking group assigned to the edges of a society in which people of color are dominant and occupy every position of power.

If this theory were confined to the narrow fringes of society it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But that isn’t the case. According to one study nearly a third of white Americans were on board with it. And when combined with the election of a Black president and the prediction of a majority minority population, it fueled the intensification of racism and greased the political skids for Trump’s successful presidential runs.

In Trump, this far flung, multiclass coalition (with the billionaires in the driver’s seat) found a self aggrandizing and resentful demagogue who deployed racism to press for an authoritarian white christian nationalist agenda, while enriching himself, his family, and his corporate friends in the process. If his election in 2016 signified a fracture in and assault on the existing democratic order, his reelection eight years later turned into a systematic, racialized, fascistic onslaught on the whole panoply of democratic rights and structures of governance at the national and global level.

The good news is that this onslaught is meeting growing resistance at the ballot box and on the street.

Entwined with the unprecedented turn of politics in a fascistic direction is the emergence of a broad people’s anti-fascist coalition that stretches from Angela Davis on the left to Never Trumpers on the right.

While it doesn’t — actually never does — develop fully formed, it brings together a diverse array of people and organizations that share, notwithstanding their differences, the political objective of defeating Trump and his fascist designs.

Said differently, it’s not a coalition of the left (although some on the left act as if it is) or a coalition of left and progressive activists (although some on the left believe it is) or a coalition of the left and the center. To narrow its reach is a prescription for defeat in November and beyond.

Of course, struggle within this broad and diverse coalition won’t cease. It would be politically harmful and unnatural if that were the case. But struggle should take place in the context of the unity imperative if we hope to defeat the fascist danger.

And yet, it strikes me that this rule of thumb hasn’t been fully digested by many on the left.

With the elections roughly 6 months ago, we would do well to remember that that an anti-fascist, anti-Trump election coalition includes Liz Cheney on one end and Angela Davis on the other and tens of millions of people in between. It isn’t a coaliton of the left or a coalition of the left and progressives or a coalition of left, progressive, and liberal people.

To narrow its reach is to a prescription for defeat in November. Of course, struggle within this broad and diverse coalition goes on. It would be politically harmful if that were not the case. But this dynamic should take place in the context of the unity imperative if we hope to win in November and advance class and democratic interests beyond November.

Memorial Day (I post this on my blog every Memorial Day to remember my two friends who died in the Vietnam War. SW)

Today, I will again drink a glass of beer in memory of my two friends and their comrades who died in Vietnam.

I honor them without honoring the unjust war in which they fought. I don’t know their reasons for joining the military, maybe it was simply that the draft gave them no choice, but it really doesn’t matter now. What I do know is that their lives were cruelly cut short.

As a young peace activist in the late 60s, I probably didn’t always make a distinction between the soldiers fighting the war and the war itself. The soldier and the general were equally responsible as I saw it. But I think differently now. I place the main responsibility for war on its architects in high places and a social system – capitalism – whose logic is to expand, dominate, and, when necessary, make war.

Ricky and Cotter were near the bottom of the food chain of war making, nothing but cannon fodder. They were working class kids whose lives didn’t count for much in our government’s war plans. Neither was born with a silver spoon in their mouths, which is why they ended up with a gun in their hands, far away from their hometowns.

I will always wonder what kind of lives they would have lived had they safely returned. With no hero’s welcome, no counseling waiting for them, no easy slide into a well paying job, I can’t help but wonder if they would have had the internal resources and external support to come to terms with their war experience and live productive lives?

After all, they were not that much different than me, and I have no confidence that I could have. It was hard enough to grow up at that time without a tour of duty in Vietnam on my emotional resume. I wish, though, that they had that chance. I wish their lives hadn’t been senselessly erased doing things that no one should do. I wish they had the opportunity to live long and joyful lives.I miss them. I celebrate them. They were “my buddies.”

I wish they could join me for a beer today, although knowing them a single beer wouldn’t quite satisfy them. Or me.

I also hope that we could toast to the millions in our generation who opposed the war as well their comrades who also never made it back from Vietnam. Both deserve to be honored.

Finally, I like to think that the three of us could clink glasses to the people of Vietnam who suffered so much during and after the war, and are now rebuilding their country in conditions of peace. Maybe that would be too much to expect. Unfortunately, I will never know. They will join me only in memory this afternoon, as I wash down a glass of beer.