Blocking the Right, Building the Base – Live from Socialism 2025

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:24] This week on the show, we’re featuring a recording of a panel I hosted July 4th. At the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, entitled, blocking the Right, building the Base, the Work of Building Left Unity in 2025. The panelists feature leaders from Liberation Road, north Star Socialist Organization, the Socialist Majority Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America Rising Majority, and the Movement for Black Lives, discussing how they envision aligning their work to a block and build strategy, and the need for both building membership bases and developing functional cross-sector unity.

[00:00:53] Enjoy their conversation.

[00:01:00] My name is Cayden. I am the publisher Convergence Magazine, and I am excited to be chairing this session with four of my comrades. Thank you for coming our panel today. I’ll start with all the way on the left. Here is Montega Simmons, who is the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Movement for Black Lives, and also a member of the leadership team at The Rising Majority.

[00:01:21] We are also joined by David Alday, a member of the Democratic Socialist of America’s Socialist Majority Caucus, and a member of its editorial board Bennett Carpenter, who is a member of the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road. And last but certainly not least, JNI Webster, a member and national leader of North Star Socialist Organization.

[00:01:40] I just wanna say a couple of quick words setting us up here about why we wanted to put this. Discussion together here in particular and a little like setting up a little bit of what we’re gonna talk about. Alright, so as early as 2021, the chair of our editorial board, max Elba, who some of you may know, started really talking about block and build as a framework and approach to grappling with the threat posed by Trump and the Make America Great again, movement Max and our editorial board have for a really long time, identified this threat as more than just a flash in the pan, but the culmination of decades of intentional investment by the far right in a political and cultural project that is bent on, seizing and weaponizing state power.

[00:02:21] Surprise, surprise. Here we are. Our small team has really been doing everything we can to help our movements orient towards a strategic politics in this fraught time. And last year we developed a syllabus, which I know a number of grassroots organizations used for group study to help organizations sit with the challenges and contradictions.

[00:02:40] Of that period of time and further articulate, block and build as a coherent rally and cry for our work within a broad front united against Fascism. And block and Build is a strategic orientation that at its core is really about looking for strategies that will simultaneously and I think the and is really important block authoritarianism from seizing and now consolidating power while building our ability to exercise meaningful left leadership, not simply to resist, but to start our long journey together down a road to what some friends of the magazine, including our comrades here at Liberation Road, describes a third reconstruction.

[00:03:15] A functional, multiracial, gender inclusive democratic project that has never been fully realized in this country. Again, I will emphasize that to me, the crux of block and build truly is the, and I personally don’t think that we can do it one without the other, especially at this historical moment.

[00:03:29] Because without blocking, we won’t have space for our build strategies to take hold and without building our blocking will remain stuck in a pattern of rear guard action that will burn out our people and ultimately seed territory to the white supremacist Christian nationalists who are in government right now.

[00:03:44] So now that we’re sitting here in 2025 I know that it’s gonna be really difficult going for the foreseeable future. I also think that we are and will be presented with exciting opportunities over the coming months and years, and how we’re able to leverage those opportunities has a lot to do with how the world will look on the other side of this.

[00:04:02] So I wanna start this discussion with a couple of points of unity that our four respondents and I have discussed over the past months as we’ve prepared for this discussion. First, we do have functional unity here that is about fighting the right building, the left, that is of course, what we’re here to talk about, it’s title of our session.

[00:04:17] And I’m excited about getting into some of the nitty gritty of what that means for the folks on the panel momentarily. Second. We agree that defeating the right is gonna require some form of mass politics. That means membership organizations in community or in labor. It also means engaging on some level in the messy work of politics, right?

[00:04:38] Politics is not cute. It’s often very ugly. And finally, we have alignment around the need and possibility for the left to lead within a united front, and not just to be a junior partner to corporate Dems and some real or even imagined center, right? This is an opportunity to pull people towards us and our ideas and to utilize the de alignment that we’re seeing to create some new openings for the left to win and to govern.

[00:05:04] And I also just wanna say that when we talk about a united front, we are explicitly not talking about a formalized coalition between organizations or parties, but an informal alignment between forces that are generally working to oppose fascism. Participation in the United Front for all of us, is not about working together explicitly or even on purpose, but understanding that it’s gonna take a really broad engagement across society to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power.

[00:05:29] And finally I do wanna emphasize that the thing that we do also agree on is that we have a shared responsibility right now as the left to really engage in these critical questions about what this all looks like. And also, if we knew what would work, we would’ve already done it and we would not be in the place we’re now.

[00:05:45] So in a lot of ways, we come in a spirit of humility. And we hope that you will also. So for our discussion today, I wanna start out with two big questions for each of our panelists. I’ll give them a small amount of time to respond, and then after the panel discussion, we’ll like probably take a stack of questions from the audience and then give our panelists time to, to digest and respond.

[00:06:09] The first question is, what do each of your organizations see as the key tasks within the larger container of block and build? Which is something that each of our organizations has used to understand the challenges and contradictions of our political moment. And I’m gonna start with you, Gianni. 

[00:06:24] Jayanni Webster: All right.

[00:06:25] Hey, y’all a little better. Hey, y’all. That’s right. So again, my name is Jni. I’m with North Star Socialist Organization and North Star is a brand new revolutionary socialist cadre organization. And we aim to play a specific and constructive role in our movement ecosystem. We wanna create the conditions to win 21st century socialism.

[00:06:51] And like all the distinct organizations on our panel, we wanna make it more possible to win the liberation that all people and the planet deserve. As a new left project. We recently underwent a deep org-wide and democratic process to revisit our overall assessment of this political moment to debate.

[00:07:14] The primary contradiction of this period and to name the main enemy. And this is for the sake of understanding the task of the larger movement and our role within it. In fact, north Star members just voted this past Sunday on what we see as the key task at this moment. So y’all are hearing something quite new and hot off the press.

[00:07:39] We have not shared this beyond our organization, and we are honored to do it today. So I’m gonna use my limited time to be precise about what we are putting out for organizations on the left, for the movement at large, we believe it’s imperative just as it was prior to November, 2024, to break the further consolidation of the far right.

[00:08:04] This must be done within a broad front and in a way that strengthens the left. I think to many this sort of assertion, given what is happening and who is leading government right now, seems obvious, but that was not the case last year or the year before. Or the year before, and it still may not be the case for many on the left right now.

[00:08:26] There are debates, but comrades, the far particularly the authoritarian, right? Who is leading the Republican party right now who is the dominant political force in the US by orders of magnitude, is an existential threat. We cannot ignore this and afford to treat the party like a monolith, nor can we continue to mis assess the meaningful and strategic differences between the far right and the liberal center.

[00:08:57] They’re both our enemies, but one is the main enemy right now. Our ability to survive long enough to make socialism depends on being clear about this. So the main in enemy authoritarian right front, right? That’s a choice to name them as. So a choice that points us in a certain direction. And let me tell you, this front is made up of several far right factions, including Neoreactionaries and the new Confederacy.

[00:09:24] And they are tied to key sectors of capital like tech. But while they are powerful, this is really important, they have one leadership of the Republican party and captured national governing power. They are not yet consolidated. They are dominant, yet they have vulnerabilities. So the right has a basis of unity on some things, but not all things, right?

[00:09:48] They have unity on schemes to reorganize wealth in this country towards the 1%. To protect and expand extractive industries. And they agree on extreme austerity, but these measures will also simultaneously alienate SEC sections of their base. It also may continue to cause rifts within some white nationalist forces.

[00:10:10] Thank you. And increasing state surveillance will also cause ruptures within the libertarian factions. So they don’t see eye to eye on everything, and that’s critical. And so we need to make sure that we don’t allow them the political room to resolve their differences and to reach internal cohesion, we have to disrupt their ability to reach higher levels of unity.

[00:10:32] And we need a plan now. So when we say we wanna break their consolidation, that’s the block piece we are offering. And when we say we want to build, we mean build a left that is capable of becoming a viable alternative in areas across the country emerging from this period in a stronger position to fight our long-term enemies.

[00:10:54] So a stronger left allows us to peel away sections of the far right space. It requires we address our own internal weaknesses as a US left and it calls for us to contest for power. And I think the kind of last thing that I wanna talk about is this contestation, right? Asha on the panel last night reminded us we are contesting for what the alternative to neoliberalism will be, what’s next?

[00:11:17] We are contesting for legitimacy amongst and for the trust of the multiracial working class. So a lot is up for grabs right now. And if you’re still rocking with me so far, comrades, you also agree that there’s no one single political force capable of stopping the authoritarian, right? We cannot leave it up to the liberal center.

[00:11:36] Neither is the left strong enough to do it by ourself. So we have to be in a broad front to break their consolidation. And we have a crucial time limit window. To prevent what will be a history altering wave of fascism. This is immediate. This is urgent, and this is our primary task.

[00:11:56] Thank you. 

[00:11:57] Sound on Tape: Thanks, Janni

[00:12:02] Bennett Carpenter: Bennett. Hey, y’all. Thrilled to be here with you. My name’s Bennett Carpenter. I use they, them pronouns. I’m on the National Executive Committee of Liberation Road. Both I and the organization turned 40 this year. We were both, both founded or born in 1985. And we’re just coming from our 14th organizational Congress.

[00:12:22] We hold them every three years. Where we had some of the same debates we’re having in these spaces, what needs to be done in this moment and voted and adopted our strategic orientation for the next three year period, which we will make public by the end of the month. So what I’m gonna share today is just bits of what’s in that strategic orientation.

[00:12:41] Also, just wanna say, grateful to be here with so many different amazing comrades from so many sectors of struggle. And I think building alignment across our formations and our organizations is really critical right now. So grateful to convergence for helping us do that block. We didn’t manage to block Trump and MAGA from taking hold of federal power and power at many states.

[00:13:05] So our task remains to block them, but it’s now much more difficult. We have to block them from using that power to transform our flawed and imperfect to democracy, our multiracial democracy. Into a white Christian nationalist autocracy which we have long called a new Confederacy. So about a decade ago, liberation Road identified what we call the new Confederacy as the main enemy in this political period and the dominant forest shaping the US political terrain.

[00:13:34] In this moment, we argued that it was composed of the most reactionary factions of capital allied with racist nativist, Christian nationalist, right-wing populist forces who had managed to really take over the Republican party as the political expression of that alliance. And today the new Confederacy aims to overthrow multiracial democracy and replace it with a new authoritarian regime.

[00:13:57] So it’s very important to understand that this is not a conservative movement, y’all. They’re not trying to conserve anything. This is a right wing revolutionary movement that is trying to overthrow the system that we have and replace it with something even worse. And our sense is that if they manage to do they’re going to consolidate a regime that we call autocracy.

[00:14:17] Other people use terms like a liberal democracy or competitive authoritarianism. I don’t think that particular. Word is the most important thing. But what is important is that fascism in this country is not gonna look like it did in 1930s Germany. And there will remain nominally competitive elections, and there will remain a legal political opposition even as we face intensified repression and the transformation of our country into something that isn’t even the limited democracy we had.

[00:14:45] And again, we use the term new confederacy because we think we can look to our own history in the US to find analogs and particularly the Confederacy, A system that called itself a democracy, but in which black people and non black people of color, women and other gender oppressed people and poor and working class white people didn’t have rights, including political rights.

[00:15:02] Okay. So I’ll try and move quickly. In terms of the block we think there’s two key mechanisms to block these fascists from consolidating autocracy, and I should name. A good thing is they don’t actually have. Widespread social support for their project in this moment, which is important. So over the next years, we think we need to be blocking this on the level of a sort of political strategic defense and what some call a social self defense.

[00:15:28] So defense of the autonomy of civil society. So politically, we need to be defending the autonomy of the different branches of government, the different levels of government federal, state and local, and the levers of government. So the administrative autonomy of different departments, the autonomy wielded by staff federal workforce.

[00:15:47] This stuff doesn’t sound sexy. It makes you think of your civics class back in high school. But what the fascists are trying to do is consolidate control over all of those levers of government under a single vertical. Of. Okay. And we need to stop them from doing that. And then socially, we need to defend the autonomy of institutions of civil society, broadly defined as all of the groups and organizations and institutions in the United States that are not part of the train of government.

[00:16:14] So I’m talking about our left organizations, but our labor unions, our churches our universities. We’re seeing that, Trump and MAGA are trying to consolidate control over those. And so defensive battles to preserve their independence is critical in terms of the build while in and through those struggles.

[00:16:29] We need to be building the power to wage a three year strategic counteroffensive to defeat maga unseat maga, and lay the foundations to implement a transformative political program that we term a third reconstruction. Again, the name isn’t the most important. I think what’s important is this is not yet, we’re not yet in a transition to a classless society, but what we are in is a moment where we think we can lay the foundations to make, a real wide range of transformative reforms that shift the balance of power away from the white male and wealthy few towards a broad united front, led by left forces rooted in an organized social base of the multiracial working class, the oppressed nationalities and oppressed gender people as one stage in that longer term struggle towards socialism.

[00:17:13] So there is absolutely an electoral component to that. We can talk about that more. But there’s also a social component of how within and across that are we rebuilding democracy within our civil society and our institutions, and how are we actually like building a popular program in and through mass struggle that people re, that people can recognize as their own program.

[00:17:33] So that when we win our defeat maga, which we will do, and when we implement that agenda, people will recognize it as their own and claim it as their own. Thank you.

[00:17:48] David Duhalde: I’m David Alday. I am here representing Socialist Majority Caucus of the Democratic Socialist America. So I wanna make that clear in the sense that DSA is like an 80,000 person organization. It’s multi-tenancy, it’s a national group. And socialist Majority is just a, like many DSA caucus is only just several hundred people that’s operating within that organization.

[00:18:09] So I’m not here representing DSA and I think that’s, I just wanna do that important caveat. So I’m here to discuss how my caucus specifically is engaging in an adjacent block and build strategy specifically around an internal work within the Democratic Socialist of America. But that has like domestic and PO international political viewpoints and perspectives so critically, in about a month about a thousand delegates are gonna come from Democratic socials America to this fair city again, to vote on resolutions and set the direction of the organization for the next two years. SMC is looking at what resolutions we’re supporting, and I’m selecting four, two that kind of represent the block elements of the strategy and two that represent the build.

[00:18:56] So for blocking, specifically, we’re talking about, as they were, what Conrad sets like about how are we stopping fascism. So one is resolution is like we’re is to defeat Trump, turning to the masses. So this is an explicit call at the convention to have DSA. Really try to officially become part of the united front as they were describing.

[00:19:16] So with organizations like Indivisible, people’s Action, popular Democracy orienting to that kind of anti-Trump, anti-fascist work that you can also see exemplified independently by the anti oligarchy tours that Sanders and a OC were doing, which are anti-Trump in nature. But we’re independent of any organizational structure.

[00:19:37] And then there’s work we are pushing on resolution specifically around. International work, specifically trying to connect a way to do domestic politics and stop like anti Palestinian legislation or anti Palestinian activism legislation more specifically. And also critically, which is very more recent in terms of the scaled up repression, like the anti-ice work and connecting that to a broader internationalist view.

[00:20:02] But we as we have to build towards something, we can’t just be blocking or fighting. So one thing is that we are trying to, internally reify is like continuing to build what we view as like a strategy that is working which is like to continue to have DSA be independent structure that is trying to influence elections through primaries and also building our own internal mechanisms.

[00:20:24] So I think it, and I’ll conclude on this, which I think is important is really pushing union members, leaders to run for office. This is actually a big socialist tradition. Since the socialist Labor party I’ve been reading in a separate project. Original documents where they say they’re like, we have all these people running who are from these labor unions.

[00:20:41] And that’s fallen to the wayside where we’ve, we have recruiting county recruitment hasn’t necessarily focused on who are organic leaders in the labor movement. And I think that’s something we wanna build up because that’s a real important bridge to make is connecting like socialists, being that bridge between the labor movement and electoral movement.

[00:20:58] So I’m gonna hand it over to my comrade now. 

[00:21:01] Sound on Tape: Thank you.

[00:21:07] Montague Simmons: Thank you. I’m gonna try and use this so I can stay on script, so to speak. My name’s Montega Simmons. I, you see him pronouns. I am excited to be here with my comrades and to dig into this. It’s a critical moment. So first I think it’s important for me to name I entered this conversation wearing two hats.

[00:21:28] First one squarely rooted in black organizing and the black radical tradition on behalf of the movement for black lives. The second one is actually a tangible extension embodied in the rising majority. The formations, like both are actually multi-tenancy, but their politics and practice is all shaped by a core of folks who hold deep left politics, but it’s multi-tenancy, so they’re all over the place.

[00:21:52] While both formations are actually in alignment with defeating the far right and explicitly preventing its consolidation in this political moment, working in both spaces forces us to actually navigate the needs and tensions between organizing at the macro like these national strategies, but also the micro, like what you’re experiencing with social movement organizations in your cities are very different.

[00:22:14] It’s very different in Chicago and St. Louis and Memphis and la and in each case there’s a myriad of contradictions. First. I don’t wanna actually assume that everybody here knows what rising majority is. RM as a project first emerged in the wake of the 2016 elections. Honestly, there was a recognition of the honest relative weakness of the left and a need for coherent long-term strategy.

[00:22:40] So some member leaders within the movement for Black Lives convened comrades and surfaced a shared commitment toward cohering and uniting progressive and left forces who are committed to organizing toward a fundamentally different democracy economy, society that’s rooted in principles of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and pro feminism.

[00:23:02] So we’re grounded in the struggle between what’s actually politically feasible, specifically in the next 25 years, and a longer term vision that extends beyond that. Our attempt at developing a 2050 vision and 10 year strategy is to clarify what our existing power is. Which we understand is very limited and insufficient especially given this moment and what’s actually needed to make the changes we want.

[00:23:28] So ultimately, the course of history in the next 20, 50, a hundred years is gonna depend on if the social movement left alongside millions and millions of people of the multiracial, multinational working class are aligned to build power and shift the balance of forces. Now all that being said, the terrain of 2017 help, even we’re talking about 2020 is just dramatically different.

[00:23:53] The moment that we’re in is actually requiring us that we stretch, experiment, and fail. But without those experiments, we’re never gonna learn what we’re actually capable of, what we’re actually may be able to unlock. So rising majorities like leadership team, which is a myriad of organizations and staff strengthen the program with that understanding.

[00:24:14] And remember, like moving together is what gives us the best chance at materializing the future that we’re aiming for. So the current program maintains specific commitments toward one, continuing the work of coherent all these movement and member organizations toward broader social movement, left also experimenting together in courageous ways, and then building our muscles to respond collectively to ongoing attacks that are facing our movements, our peoples and our community through sectoral coherence and cross-sector collaboration.

[00:24:47] So for us, the build or the offensive pro of the program. Is being executed through what we’re calling like spaces of practice. So practice tables that hold joint work between different member organizations inside the rising majority and strategic partners who may not be members but are doing adjacent work toward concrete, measurable goals.

[00:25:07] Like right now, the focus are divest, invest, strengthening, base building, which if we’re honest, like not everybody who calls themselves left is actually doing socializing our vision, like making it clear and tangible so folks don’t plug in. And then yes, experimenting with co-governance. Now specifically, a lot of that is embodied in what we’re doing around people’s assemblies.

[00:25:30] For M four BL, the Movement for Black Lives, a lot of that is actually rooted in the framework of the plan for Jackson Cush, which emerged from Malcolm X grassroots and the new African People’s Organization. So it’s not just about electoral power. The program was specifically about recognizing the powers of communities to see identify solutions and organize toward that reality.

[00:25:54] So it’s building literally competing power and co-governance to control the things that they do. The blocking side for us is rooted again in this sectoral interactions. So if you’re actually in labor, the things we can actually do together for folks that are working on environment, there’s opportunities when we actually have more coherence, especially folks that have a left politics that are in spaces that aren’t always left.

[00:26:17] So I’ll stop and just say our orientation is specifically focused on protecting our people, organizations in the games that we’ve had in this rising time of fasc. Yeah. I’ll stop there. 

[00:26:29] Sound on Tape: Great. Thank you so much, man. Take it.

[00:26:35] I hope you’re enjoying this presentation from our panel at socialism 2025. I wanna take a moment to let you know about our 2025 summer fund drive. Every summer, we make a focused effort to raise money to sustain our publishing, and this year we’ve set an ambitious goal of a hundred thousand dollars for movement media.

[00:26:51] Anyone who starts an annual or monthly subscription gives $25 or more, or upgrades, their existing subscription will receive a special thank you gift. I wanna invite you to head over to bit ly slash summer fund drive, all one word, all lowercase to make your contribution today. And of course there will be a link in the show notes.

[00:27:13] My second question for our panel is, how have you and your organizations approached the way that you do your work to address the task that you’ve taken up? And what are the key interventions that you and your organization are taking responsibility for within both your organization and within the broader left?

[00:27:28] And why do you think. Those interventions are important, and we’ll start again with Gianni. 

[00:27:33] Jayanni Webster: Yeah. Thank you for the question. We’ve already named, we need to break the consolidation of the far through a broad front and in a way that can strengthen us. That’s the basis of unity that all of these unique organizations share on the stage.

[00:27:49] And what the authoritarian right has, in the Trump re regime has been able to accomplish in the first months of office of the second term have truly been horrific, right? This big ugly bill that just passed is devastating, right? The kidnapping of immigrants and political leaders in the Palestinian movement is unconscionable and extremely alarming.

[00:28:11] They plan to make it much worse. This is an increasingly volatile terrain to organize in. It will not be easy on any of us. It will stretch likely every capacity of our existing movement. Suffering will deepen. That should worry. All of us, and especially for communities that already know, it has been a horror show for racially oppressed and gender oppressed communities for a very long time.

[00:28:42] Especially due to the violence of neoliberalism. And so if it, if you are wondering if things could get worse, yes they can. And since North Star just voted on our key task document we are currently in the process of creating a program for our cadres and our organization as a whole to carry out.

[00:29:02] So I’m not prepared to talk about our program today, but I can discuss some broad strokes. Of what Cayden is referring to as an approach. Is that okay with folks? Okay. And I’m lucky that my comrades can get into more details about their work. So y’all can critique that. I’m just kidding.

[00:29:19] So approach one. So we know we need to cohere abroad front capable of undermining the political and social power of this authoritarian, right? We need to do this consciously, right? The front exists objectively. We need to bring a conscious, subjective element to it and we’ll need to mobilize large numbers of everyday people.

[00:29:42] And the left has to take some responsibility for that. Within this approach, we have to peel away sections of the right social base, including sections of the multiracial working class, right? We gotta win our people back. We have to promote defections of individuals and institutions that can erode the rights pillars of support, right?

[00:30:06] Think about federal workers right now. We also have to turn back their governing power in key places, right? Including at the state level and all across the federal level. And yes, it will require electoral organizing, but not solely. And no, I don’t think we actually need to continue to debate whether or not we’re gonna engage in elections and use them as tools.

[00:30:26] We actually have no choice. We will need to organize and support legal and governmental challenges to MAGA initiatives, right? Mobilize popular opposition to far right proposals, right? For example. Beefing up anti-war organizing or tofu up. I don’t know which one we’re using, but anti ice organizing, right?

[00:30:48] I actually love tofu. ProPublic good organizing, right? We’ll need to organize popular opposition to their proposals, right? Bennett talked about right when we are winning power that people actually identify with the alternatives that we have been putting forth. We’ll need to disrupt the authoritarian rights access to as sources of power, right?

[00:31:11] So capital specifically focusing on disrupting sectors where they draw a lot of their power. I said tech earlier, but there’s also ener energy extraction and financial capital. And we will need to undermine the resonance of their agenda, right? Some things are deeply unpopular about their agenda, which is why they’re trying to whittle away a democracy.

[00:31:34] But some ideas are pretty popular. And we cannot continue to allow YouTube conspiracy theories to out organize the left. We cannot continue to allow conservative podcasts to raise more consciousness than we are able to when we’re in our communities talking to our people. So that’s the first approach.

[00:31:52] The second approach is we need to do some organizing of ourselves. What I’ve mentioned so far is largely defensive, but this work is not exclusively defensive, right? We will need to organize ourselves and we have a specific critical role to play in this broad front, so we have to address our weaknesses.

[00:32:13] And so in terms of addressing our weaknesses, we’re gonna have to be choiceful comrades. There is immediate work to be done to protect and safeguard the organizations under attack right now, and not just protect them, but maximize their ability to be effective at resisting the worst aspects of the MAGA agenda.

[00:32:34] Most of the organizations that received a letter in the last few weeks were immigrant justice organizations. No organization needs to feel alone right now. Okay. That isolation should be over. We need to focus on deepening organizing and base building. Over the next three years. We are not well connected to our social base, to the mot of the multiracial class.

[00:32:57] I’m getting a warning, y’all. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna try to be quick. We have to build base building organizations deeply and widely, right? We are in a crisis of base building. Everyone talks about it, but no one can tell us how many members are in their organization, right? And I’m not pointing the finger at y’all.

[00:33:12] I’m pointing the finger at me. I’ve been organizing for 15 years. We are all part of what has been mistakes of rebuilding a revolutionary movement. We need to craft a positive vision and platform that connects sections of our movement and the left so that we can have a basis of unity in the left, right?

[00:33:29] ‘Cause right? Everyone knows that we don’t have no differences in the left, right? Okay, so we actually need a basis of unity if we gonna be in this broad front with the liberal center. So I’m running outta time. Just quick three things. We have to break the patterns of ultra pragmatism fostered by the non-profit, profit industrial complex, right?

[00:33:48] Funder driven work. We have to dra, have to break, right? Choosing work just because it’s fundable. And we also need to break the practice of ultra purism that is fostered by a lack of strategy. And this over commitment to having a correct idea versus actually building power, right? We have to be in proximity to the class.

[00:34:08] And lastly as different organizations, we need to understand our role. We are a cadre organization, liberation Road, north Side Cadre Organization. DSA is a mass socialist project and very society facing Rising Majority is made up of organizations doing different sectoral organizing on the front lines in a lot of ways.

[00:34:27] But due to our weaknesses, many organizations take on roles that they should not be playing. So we need to be clear about what form is for what, so that we can actually work in a strengthened left ecosystem and be able to do what is appropriate for our role and be stronger together. Thank you.

[00:34:44] Sound on Tape: It’s hard to stop jni ’cause I’m just like, just let her cook, let her cook. Thank you. Bennett. 

[00:34:53] Bennett Carpenter: Hey. Okay. First lemme just say a couple things about Liberation Road and how we approach our work in general. There’s a couple things that really define us. One is our consistent focus since our founding on struggles around race, nationality, and gender.

[00:35:06] And struggles around class. Because of our assessment of this sort of central structuring role that white supremacy has played in this specific construction of US racial capitalism. We believe winning revolutionary transformation in this country requires building a strategic alliance between the multiracial working class, which is there is no white working class, there are white members of a multiracial working class, but a strategic alliance between the multiracial working class and the oppressed nationalities in this country, which includes all the first nations of the territory claimed by the United States as well as the black nation, the Chicano nation, the Hawaiian nation, the Puerto Rican nation.

[00:35:41] And since 1985, we have centered gender liberation in all of our work, including the liberation of cis and trans women and all trans people and L-G-B-T-Q people. And that may both that and our focus on race racial oppression, I think have become much more. Widespread on the left today. They were not in 1985.

[00:36:00] So I’m proud that we have consistently upheld those things for our 40 year history. And it’s an example where I think we were really leading the way. Two other things that were foundational to our organization. Our organization came out of, of first of the Black Panthers and the new left groups like SDS and Laura and Uni, but then came through the sort of 1970s new communist movement and our founders came out of the new communist movement.

[00:36:25] The new communist movement brought many great things and it made two real mistakes. Misas assessments it, all these little different new communist movement groups or group of schools thought that revolution was right around the corner. And they all thought that their little tiny group was the revolutionary Vanguard party that was going to be the thing that built and led that revolution.

[00:36:46] Instead, we had the Reagan Counter Revolution and many of those little groups got even smaller or collapsed. Liberation Road was founded in 1985. So in that moment, and so core to our belief, the folks who came together around that, a lot of our folks were involved in the Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition at that time, but is Nons sectarianism and a United Front approach to our work.

[00:37:08] So by non sectarianism, we think we’re cool. We are also clear that we are not the party and we wanna work with many other organizations and forces to do something together. That’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to be doing this work here with everyone here. And by United Front approach, we think that the way to win transformation in this country is to work within the broadest possible front, against the narrowest possible enemy.

[00:37:30] Which means that this stage of the struggle, we are going to have to work with many forces who are not socialists and with some forces with whom we have pretty deep disagreements, but around where we can agree, which is, Hey, can we agree? We need to get, these folks gone and, and start to build power.

[00:37:45] And again, the Rainbow Coalition Essie Jackson’s campaign was a good, like example of that. Okay. In terms of how we see our role in tasks one role is to develop a shared analysis and strategy as the basis of our work. Some of what I’ve been presenting here today comes from components of our 2025 to 2028 strategic orientation that we just adopted.

[00:38:03] It’ll, it will be out by the end of the month. If you wanted an advanced copy, come talk to me after the thing and I can get you one right now if you can’t wait to read it. It’s really good if I say so myself. And we developed those strategies on the basis of collective analysis, but also collective summation of our work over the past three years and more broadly collective kind of analysis of the political conjuncture and then debate about what we need to get up to.

[00:38:25] We carry out our strategy through two interrelated avenues. One of them is red work, helping develop the left’s collective strategic coherence, organizational infrastructure, and ideological clarity. Some of that is internal red work within our own organization. Some of it is external work. Me being here with y’all right now.

[00:38:41] But by far the bulk of our work is what we call red mass work, which is organizing collective interventions within and across mass movement organizations where we have groups of our cadre working together and we define red mass work as work that’s carried out collectively with other comrades inside those sectors of struggle or those organizations.

[00:39:01] And that inside of which we work together to raise transformational demands in which our comrades are struggling for leadership, or in which our line leads and which we have clear collective internal accountability and planning, as well as accountability to the org and which is summed up according to common criteria, I wanna say, in trying to win leadership inside organizations.

[00:39:19] This is not a fronted approach. Winning leadership means we have to win that democratically by winning people over to our line through effective organizing. So we are opposed to front them in all forms. We strive to be transparent about it, but we also wanna help mass organizations get. They’re shit together.

[00:39:35] Okay. Our largest concentration of red rest work is in the labor movement where we have a lot of cadre active and many unions and struggles. We have a strong historic concentration in movements of the oppressed nationalities and some oppressed gender work. And in recent years we’ve had many cadre active and red mass work inside independent political organizations.

[00:39:51] So trying to build sort of political vehicles that can connect the people’s movements to an electoral strategy. Maybe we can talk about that later. For this coming period, we adopted as our organization, central Task. Our central task is to help cohere the most advanced mass leaders, organizers, and strategists of our left progressive block around shared interventions to defend the people’s rights, defeat new confederate autocracy, and set the stage for a third reconstruction.

[00:40:16] So what we’re doing is supporting all of our cadre and these very different sectors of struggle, different geographic terrains in identifying who are the most advanced forces here, and how can we actually align not just theoretically or in, in strategy, but like around very concrete shared interventions that we can carry out together to build power and force.

[00:40:35] One defensive intervention we’ve adopted across the whole organization at our Congress was the defense of our immigrant communities from ice. We think this is a crucial defensive struggle in this moment. It is one of the front lines of how MAGA is trying to consolidate fascist autocracy, and in all terrains, whether you’re working in labor or in movements, whether you’re in a blue state or a red state, this is something that everyone can carry out.

[00:40:56] But some of the other critical defensive and strategic counteroffensive struggles are gonna vary based on the time, place, and conditions. This is a huge country, and so the critical battle in for our comrades in Tennessee might be a different one than the battle for our comrades in California or our comrades in a particular union, so what we’re going to do is work with our folks to support them in translating that into critical interventions that can build power through defensive struggles and start to leverage it towards a strategic counter offensive. And we can talk more about that later on. Thank you. 

[00:41:28] Sound on Tape: Awesome. Thanks Bennett.

[00:41:33] Great, David. 

[00:41:34] David Duhalde: Thank you. So I think the key word that I wanna reemphasize is intervention. So we’re talking about. How do we intervene in our different organizations? And as Jay was saying, everyone we’re very distinct organizations and structure. That’s not a controversial position. So what I am the interventions I’ll be talking about more specifically are interventions internal to DSA.

[00:41:58] So one thing that’s been happening for us is how do we as a caucus try to advance how we define mass politics? As I think Bennett was describing, which I agreed with, there’s like politics that orients towards mass member organizations. Not just labor, but community groups, tenant groups that are like broad, that aren’t necessarily left in nature but are, would be part of any coalition that would bring about a socialist world.

[00:42:26] And for us, that also includes and I think as the other congress has been saying, it’s like blocking. So that’s why we find that relating to the anti-Trump, which we view as part of like broadly anti-fascists is very important. Even if there are political limitations and things, we would disagree with how those formations take place.

[00:42:45] So there’s two mass days of action that have happened since the spring. One is, which happened I believe on April 5th, which was the idea as someone who was a public sector worker in a state job, originated someone in the hands off the federal government, was that there was such an onslaught of attacks.

[00:43:01] On federal programmings, federal workers that we were, that the call was just to get hands off. And so it was massive demonstrations around the country. And DSA did endorse hands off. But there was language that I think people in this room, I would assume, don’t, they were good to assume, but I’ll just be safe here.

[00:43:18] That wasn’t great. And I remember walking with my union and this guy and one of the, I think it was like someone in our union, but it’s almost irrelevant. It was who it was actually said. He was like, hands off Gaza, hands off nato. And it just was like epitomized, like this kind of like very median voter as the joke you would say.

[00:43:34] Like the person who holds these two incredibly contradictory views in their head, but to them is like totally consistent and like that. I just was like an unforgettable moment of this is who this base is like, they’re just reacting in good ways about Trump’s foreign policy, but then they’re also reacting just to Trump’s foreign policy.

[00:43:51] And that they’re like, Trump is against nato, so then I’m for nato. And I think that’s those are the contradictions we were in. What I would argue and I think what we would view as the mass politics that like, we have to help those people grapple with those contradictions and we don’t wanna be away from them.

[00:44:05] And I think that there was a tendency that won out with the No Kings March, which happened on June 14th, which was about that Trump was essentially throwing himself a birthday party by host by, ’cause his birthday coincidentally, was on Flag Day and it was the two on, so he, they was like, why don’t we have a military parade that coincidentally is for my birthday too.

[00:44:22] And so the idea was like we would do, there were no Kings Day new and I actually was very pessimistic about no Kings Day because I felt. It was like we just had hands off. People are tired once again, projecting my own feelings of the moment. And no Kings Day arguably was like, and I think it’s emphasis arguably, but I’ve seen people say it was the largest like mass national demonstration in US history.

[00:44:43] It was just ’cause it was a massive amount of people turned out and DSA totally. National DSA didn’t participate at all. Some of the local chapters did, New York did, Chicago did. So it wasn’t even, and that’s an interesting contradicting to see in the organization itself. But the arguments that were made I didn’t feel were like legitimate political arguments.

[00:45:01] They’re like, it’s too patriotic, it’s too this, it’s too like maybe King George wasn’t so bad and compared ’cause King George. ’cause there was always this great point that people did bring up in this, which I think is something I didn’t learn until I was an adult, was that the English would call out the American independence fighters as being hypocrites because they were pressing slaves and they were, and the British were like, aren’t you hypocritical?

[00:45:22] And it’s just something we’ve just conveniently don’t talk about when we’re learning history about that was like, that was an argument made against independence. And I think that was like, that’s an interesting argument, but it is divorcing yourself away from what is the broader, immediate political question at the time.

[00:45:37] So SMC for example though, wouldn’t have someone asked us and they said would you guys endorse. No kings. I said, no. I think we think that the organization has to reach a democratic decision. There was a democratic vote, people said no chapters could still participate. There are ways to intervene without circumventing that process where we did provide alternatives with a, there’s another caucus where aligned with called groundwork.

[00:45:59] And like in the general election in 2024, we did, because there was no alternative presented. There was like, we did create this program called socialism, beats fascism with groups, a lot of groups at this table where I went to Phil, I’m living in New York, I think I mentioned, but I went to Philadelphia.

[00:46:15] Like we would organize people to go to do geo TV work to defeat Trump. And it and it was unique to where you were. So it wasn’t necessarily for Harris, it could be for like a local Democrat who was just trying to get up the vote. So we are willing to do that when we feel there’s no absence, but I think that’s what we’re our internal thing is what we want to get to a point where DSA is presenting something and it’s not just abstaining.

[00:46:37] And I think that’s the kind of intervention I think is most valuable right now, I think. And it’s like why I have to be very careful ’cause of my day job. So I’ll to say broadly I think like it’s actually important as groups like DSA grow to figure out how you engage in executive races. So that’s like governor.

[00:46:53] President where I would’ve 10 years ago, I was totally in the camp of we’re too small. That’s beyond it’s like kind of humoristic. But the truth is lots of people engage in politics through these, through the lens of these executive races and say nothing. You can’t say you’re gonna be a part of the leadership of the working class and then have really nothing to say.

[00:47:10] You can even if he is you could say don’t vote for this per, you could do. You have to just have some intervention that shows some leadership. And that’s what I just, that I think is the key task of socialist broadly right now. And I’ll stop there. 

[00:47:22] Sound on Tape: Thanks David.

[00:47:29] Montague Simmons: Thank you. Okay. You hear me? This time better. All right. So yeah, it also feels important before I start, like you, I’m also, I’m a staffer of N four B, but I also come from the ranks like my, I got attached based on work we did in St. Louis. So I wanna forecast that like M four BL. Okay, thank you. M four BL We’re actually inside of our 10th year, which meant that we’re also like in deep reflection over who we’ve been and who we need to be in this moment.

[00:48:01] I say that because part of what I’m about to share hasn’t been fully decided. We’re also about to go through our own internal process. But some of these thoughts are still like deeply alive in our space. So M four B was a product in 20 14 15 of both necessity and a political statement. So specifically in the wake of police killings of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor black communities across the US erupted in rebellions protests and demands for systemic change.

[00:48:33] That period, which builds on decades of abolitionists and anti-policing work included mem including. Stuff led by MXGM, Malcolm X, grassroots critical resistance, and so many others. It emerged as a front that not only explicitly advanced abolitionists and anti-capitalist politics, it advanced the leaderships and voices of black women and queer and gender non-conforming folks.

[00:48:59] And while that’s been a powerful advance in the long arc, in many cases, especially at the local level, it left us often intention with large segments of our community, not only because of patriarchy, anti-black bias and racism, but honestly, in many ways the politics of our movements got ahead of our people.

[00:49:20] The organizing didn’t always keep up and left segments of our community questioning whether the movements itself was really for them. Questioning whether the work was really another manifestation of attention sinking or versus being that actual continuation of what they knew for black liberation.

[00:49:41] So as powerful as we showed up in 2020, like Juneteenth 2020, it felt like everybody was in the streets. Everybody was using our language, and it felt like a moment like we could really pivot into something bigger. Now we’re navigating a very different landscape and it’s in our own communities, narratives that have actually grown out of corners of social isolation.

[00:50:04] And honestly, the tensions of transformation. The narratives that you’re seeing right now online of the 92% are folks calling themselves fundamental. Black Americans have roots that have actually sprung up from work of stuff that we saw during that period. I’m thinking explicitly of someone we call eight.

[00:50:23] So Americans descendant of slaves. That help deepen the wedges between our own visionary frames of liberation and American idealism. One vision’s rooted in undermining anti-blackness, patriarchy, and capitalist exploitation, while the other relies on those same systems to advance their own version of the American Dream.

[00:50:44] So all that means that black movement, like the rest of the left, is in a period where we’re actually required to fight for our own legitimacy, even during a period where the eyes of empire are squarely focused on our movements and our community. So from the inside, I can say the vision for Black Lives has proven prescient.

[00:51:04] In more ways than I can actually count from asserting the ways that mass criminalization in the US constituted an undeclared war on black people to its demands for divestment from policing and warmaking and explicit assertions, again, outta step with the mainstream. In 2016, that Israeli Israel’s behavior, what constituted genocide, what we now call stop cop city, didn’t just appear out of the blue.

[00:51:32] The shift of funds into ice, the billions that are now flowing into from NATO into military industrial project, is an escalation of the same program that they’ve been moving for the last decade. In this moment, our ecosystem, it’s the ecosystem of organizations, is in deep self-reflection and learning.

[00:51:49] And while it’s important for me to say that we are a member led formation, so the final lead about strategy will be decided by our members. We recognize that our enemy and the clock is unforgiving. So on one hand we’re in deep alignment. Again, with rising majority, we have to fortify our base of organizations and their ability to do base building.

[00:52:12] We are also experimenting, again, co-governance via people’s assembly and bolstering the way that we’re speaking broadly narratively. We’re also inside. This is around like what’s the governing hypothesis for us for this moment? If we actually grow and there’s a tension between in four B as a thing and the constellation of organizations that are there.

[00:52:36] But if we grow our social and cultural power by establishing greater legitimacy, by deepening these connections, building mutual aid, survival strategies, cultural interventions, are we gonna be able and better positioned to actually grow a base of people that see themselves as part of this broader front that’s fighting against the new Confederacy, and help us build dual and competing power.

[00:53:00] So it, for us, it’s a test. The main objectives, I think on the second line, beyond just stopping consolidation, we’ve gotta expose and interrupt the tactics that are using criminalization of our people and make them vulnerable to white, to right wing oppression. So the same thing we’ve been fighting for 10 years is exactly what we’re seeing manifested at the global scale right now against migrants.

[00:53:22] And we see them slowly consolidating that. Now they’re opening it up against Haitians and there’s questions around folks who are citizens who could easily be disappeared. We’ve got to rebuild layers of trust, both inside and outside for us, the black community, what we’re charged with explicitly helping them see themselves as part of a shared vision part of which is to help restore the collective relationship between folks that are system impacted.

[00:53:46] And criminal criminalization, again, is the elixir. Of this moment. They’re using it to blunt the responses to their attacks on migrants. You hear over and over, people say they went after, those folks are criminal. We’ve got to uproot that. And they’ve used the same things on student actions on campuses.

[00:54:06] And soon they’re gonna use it to paint targets on everybody. Our goal is like everyone else is here, it’s a commitment specifically to organize and mobilize black folks so they see themselves as part of a shared vision that actually takes them away from this other idea of what American dream could be.

[00:54:25] And co-governance for us is not just a vehicle for elections. Our people don’t trust the existing parties and systems. So we have to actually build systems and capacities for self-governance so they can actually see themselves as part of this broader front and be able to effectively participate. 

[00:54:42] Sound on Tape: Amazing. Thank you. Let’s good up for our panel at this juncture. I’m sure many of you have questions. Let’s try and get like three questions. I’m gonna ask, I see a hand here. I see a hand there. I see a hand here. I see a hand there. Great. Four and then the fifth one. And we’ll just pass off the mic to like these four or five question askers.

[00:55:05] And then this will, it’ll give our panel a second to compose their thoughts as they’re listening. And then we’ll go from there. Sorry, I don’t move as fast as I used to. Just for self-identification, I’m a holdover from 1960s activism and have been going on it since then. The question that I have is.

[00:55:24] The speakers on this panel represent somewhat different organizational forms. Some are cadre organizations and DSA as a open democratic socialist organization. I’d like to hear their comments on the relative merits and problems of those quite different forms. Historically those two tendencies on the global left have typically been in sharp conflict.

[00:55:50] They seem to be speaking to each other now, which I think is a good development. But they’re different. They really are different. And I wonder what they would say about the relative advantages and disadvantages. Yeah. Let’s pass it off to the next questionnaire. Thanks. I think what we need is the Communist Party of the 1930s without Stalin.

[00:56:15] And I think the steps to get there. We need it yesterday, but it is, it’s not here. We have a long way to go. We tried that party building stuff with Oh, we tied that party building stuff that, people were talking about. I was involved in that. But I think the first step is really to unite the left.

[00:56:33] And this panel is an example of the direction we need to go in terms of uniting the left. I’ve been actually talking to people in both and I suddenly forget all the convergence and liberation Road about, ways that bringing in other, you know, communist party, USA now very small c committees of correspondence.

[00:56:52] There’s a lot of other organizations that I think we have a lot to share with. So that’s what I’d like to see coming in the next year or so. That these, that the, that all of the organizations that have a broad agreement. Come together and at least form a coalition that could ultimately become the party that we need.

[00:57:11] Because I haven’t seen anywhere where a revolution was done by any other kind of party. Thank you. I wrote it down so I’d be quick. When you are in the opposition block and build feels very natural. I came into the movement during Trump’s first term, and everyone loves to say abolish ice when Trump is in power.

[00:57:30] But once the right is pushed out of power, they never raise the taxes or repair the decimation of the public good. Of course, the hope is that socialists win leadership of the broad front in 2028 and move into the halls of power. But we could easily find ourselves in a similar situation as 2020 as a junior partner, where the center liberals refuse to repair any of the damage or.

[00:57:55] Do anything. And I am, I’m terrified that we are on a pendulum where the right makes things worse and the center wins and fails to repair any of the damage, and then the right comes back into power. I grew up with, back to back two term presidents. I feel like I’m never gonna see it again. It’s just going to be back and forth forever.

[00:58:15] How do we prevent that nightmare from becoming our endless cycle? Thank you, rich. Thank you.

[00:58:24] Had to say what’s up to my brother, fellow, and for er I’ll build off of that question. ‘Cause when we’re saying center liberal, let’s just be honest. We’re talking about the fucking Democrat party and I just, my question is everything that we’re naming Trump.

[00:58:38] But how do we name Trump without. Naming the party that created Trump via NAFTA via neoliberalism. And how does this all work? Like this massive contradiction of DSA, even, we’re having our internal discussions as well. How do we do this with a straight face and still try to get people to work with, vote for a Democrat party that is like responsible for genocide, re responsible for eco side response.

[00:59:05] It, it just doesn’t make sense to me. And at what point do we say fuck the Democrat party and we’re, it’s speaking of experimentation and we have to do our own shit by net necessity. Yeah. Thanks Ebony.

[00:59:22] Hey, thanks everyone. This is a great panel. This is what this conference needs and what the left needs. So I think what we’ve heard from the panel is an excellent explanation, articulation of. The first and most central task of the left, which is the articulation of a strategy. And it’s amazing to see so many organizations come together around a concrete strategy that reads the moment, that reads the conjuncture, the social forces, the primary contradictions, and all the rest.

[00:59:51] Now, I think also the panel has gestured at our second task, and that task is the popular articulation of the strategy. And I think everyone here recognizes the need for that popular articulation that makes the strategy speak a language. To put it in the language of Podemos in Spain that does not yet exist.

[01:00:13] A language that does not yet exist, but that speaks to the common sense that does exist. And this is what Trump has done. This is what MAGA is. That’s a popular articulation of a political project around which a broad coalition is coal. That’s to me the task that I think everyone here is interested in and that all of us should be interested in.

[01:00:36] And I want to hear from the panel what does that popular articulation look like? What does that linguistic arsenal that we put into play the slogans? What are our slogans? I heard the third reconstruction. I think that’s a good strategic framework for what we need. We need to put that into popular language.

[01:00:54] What’s our narrative for citizenship? For example, the right has a narrative. The liberal center has a narrative. What’s our narrative of citizenship and how do we connect that to this third reconstruction, this broader vision that unites the forces we need to unite, and that puts workers in control of a new popular movement.

[01:01:13] Thank you so much. Thanks.

[01:01:19] First of all, I just wanna thank you all so much for doing this really important community work and being such amazing community leaders. I really wanna build it on alia’s question actually. Which has to do with MAGA has just an endless clown car of sauce list losers that are like at the forefront of their message, like Elon and de Rogan.

[01:01:40] And these people actually have power, like they have huge followings and I just don’t feel like the left ever talks about our ministry of propaganda situation. Like we need yeah, a popular message. We need people who are gonna lead the movement in a way where young people actually are like, this is cool.

[01:01:58] I wanna follow this. So what does the left have to offer in that arena? Or like how are we thinking about combating the rights? Like huge head start on this front. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you all so much for those super rich questions. We were, when we were prepping for this morning doing our final prep, we were like, we wish we had a full day to talk about this because damn is there a lot.

[01:02:23] Okay, so I heard a couple of things. One was a question about organizational forms and I think that the second question about party building does also feel related because one thing that is I think has not yet come up in our discussion is the question of independent political organizations. And that feels like an important strategic piece of the puzzle here.

[01:02:41] Clearly there’s the question about how things feel easy when we’re the opposition, but then how that may set off this endless cycle of reaction. And I think Anthony’s really good question about how do we relate to the party system and how it produced Trump and the neoliberal consensus. And how do we interact with democratic party that is like.

[01:03:00] Kind of radioactive in a lot of ways for good reason. And then finally, this question about the popular articulation, the Ministry of Propaganda. And I do just wanna say low key read Convergence Magazine. But

[01:03:15] aside from, in addition to that, there’s other work to be done. We cannot do it by ourselves, right? I will just say that that was a lot, there’s a lot of question there. Montega, do you wanna kick us off? 

[01:03:26] Montague Simmons: Good. Good to see fam in the room and spaces like this. And one, thank you for the agitation.

[01:03:31] I don’t think we’re often honest enough, like when we talk about the, during consolidation, that does not happen without complicity. It happens both at the national level and at the local level. And when we actually point to especially specifically from like my lane, like what I experienced in St.

[01:03:46] Louis, what many of those uprising spaces is, we weren’t always fighting just against the right. We were very much fighting against systems and cities that are often controlled by the other party. And if we’re not actually honest for that, then that actually leads us to move inside of an era. So I think one, I agree, like being very clear about that, that we ain’t got no friends in that space, is honest, but also being very clear about what we do have and don’t have in terms of power is also part of that equation that we cannot invisibilize for me, like part of the reckoning I’ll take it back home, like Co Bush actually emerged directly out of an upli uprising.

[01:04:27] Advanced, a lot of movement shit. And then literally got wiped out, not by the right wing, but by the Democratic party as part,

[01:04:41] as part and parcel to the overall empire that we’re talking about. Now, part of what we have to name is like when we talk about the empire we face, it’s not just maga. There is literally an industry behind it. Trump is literally one mouthpiece, but he’s not the only one. And the different tendencies that Gianni raised up before, there’s literally a right wing tendency of races.

[01:05:03] There’s an industrial tendencies, there’s techno fascists that are all playing at their game. And our own systemic weakness is what I think we have to wrestle with. So part of the reason that we’re actually looking at the ground and thinking specifically about how do we actually situate our people to think about governance and power differently is because they will be the answer.

[01:05:21] And some of this is not just about them participating directly inside of formal elections. The question is like, what can we capture at the local level? What can we actually control? How do we actually build that appetite to capture something else and resist? And yes, like what pieces of governance, what pieces of your neighborhood, what blocks in your neighborhood can you have more control over than your local governance structures?

[01:05:47] Honestly, I gotta be frank, like that’s not gonna happen in the next week. It’s not gonna happen in the next month or next year. And part of what has to happen, like when we say we contended for space. I think part of that is actually muting their ability to actually block us out of controlling our own spaces.

[01:06:06] So yeah. I’m inside the same question. I don’t think Asha alluded to the notion like, should we be fighting to take over the machine or the existing party? Like one, that’s another structural reality. I think all of us need to be inside of, because the way the Dems have actually played chess with it, and they played directly again, in tandem with the Republicans to block out third parties.

[01:06:28] Like she couldn’t run on A-A-W-F-P line in Missouri because they’re restricted from it. So building an actual counterforce is gonna take deep work from the bottom up to actually force this. And to be frank, I hate to use their language. Some of it’s their language, some of it’s ours. But in chaos there is opportunity.

[01:06:52] There is very much an opportunity in this moment where they’re literally going to take us through a crucible of pain where we can actually not only make some assertions, but I think we could actually create some crisis that actually offers space for alternatives and captures the imagination of our people in ways that our normal organizer just 

[01:07:13] Sound on Tape: has.

[01:07:14] I love that. I love that. 

[01:07:17] David Duhalde: David Jani. So I’ll respond to three or four. I think what I’ll push back on, I’ll be that guy is I think that it’s easy to be like the Democrats created Trump. I think it’s, you have to remember that there, what we are not seeing as much as people who live in this country, because our.

[01:07:35] Two major parties are so weak as compared to in terms of what they control. So those parties aren’t technically collapsing. If you go almost in any other country, the major parties are collapsing. And so what in the Republican party, which would be analogous to that, is the establishment collapsed and they couldn’t stop Trump.

[01:07:52] George W. Bush went from being a incredibly popular president for those who are over 35 and can remember in his own party to now being like totally isolated. I mean that Dick Cheney’s daughter would be speaking a Democrat event shows like it’s a, there’s a collapse of the demo of the Republican establishment.

[01:08:08] And what that is partly is getting on what Aaron said, which I think is really important, is that we have like this what sometimes seems great. You’re like, oh wait, our side won. What’s actually, it’s just ’cause there’s this anti incumbency bias, which is inflating sometimes our numbers to be like, oh, we won.

[01:08:25] It’s actually you won because it’s just the voters are just throwing the bums out. Every election and that’s like really problematic to build something long term. ’cause you can’t, ’cause people are being that fickle. So what. Why I think it’s really important getting at to what I, why I’ll push back against Cayden, like I did bring up like independent political organization.

[01:08:43] I think DSA is an important organization to join, even if you disagree with me, because I think what I’ll conclude on with my brother also David, who I know from other work, like DSA, is effectively a coalition now. It’s a coalition of socialist organizations. By that was like, they could be caucuses, interest groups, ethnic groups too.

[01:09:00] Like I’m in Latino socialista in New York, it’s like very much like the old socialist party. It’s something I’m actually gonna write about and you guys will read in a few weeks if you see it on Rosa Lurg. I think that’s a really important thing to keep in mind and it’s it’s a different role than a cadre organization where DSA very much used to be, as the brother described over there.

[01:09:15] It used to be bism, which is without loyalty to the Soviet Union, which that just for people who know, it’s like kind of popular front politics, like building within the Democratic party, but it’s very much a unite that was like the consensus of the organization. There isn’t a consensus necessarily in the organization now, so I think.

[01:09:29] It’s really important to, if you’re a socialist, to be in DSA, to fight your own fight, you can, even if you disagree with me, because I think it is an independent political organization itself. And I think how you shift that organization is really important. I’m not personally joining a Kaja organization.

[01:09:43] That’s my life choice, but I don’t think, I don’t see a problem in that. And I think that’s something a hump we have to get over. And I think the true last thing I’ll say is with the guy who brought about language, I think somewhat, I think we’ve run out of names for organizations, but we actually haven’t run out of name like good phrases.

[01:09:58] And I think Birdie Sanders 2020 campaign, like I’ll help somebody. I don’t know. That’s a very powerful description of what socialism is on in a very simple way to, that people can understand. It’s like that you have solidarity with someone who you won’t even know. And I think those are, that was a really, I was very moved by that when that was said, and I’ve been a jaded socialist for a long time.

[01:10:18] Sound on Tape: Thanks David. Jenny, you wanna. 

[01:10:20] Jayanni Webster: Yeah. Ooh. Thank y’all so much for the questions. I am struggling like, where to start, so I may just touch on a few different things and I appreciate the patience. Also, just wanna highlight two people in the room who mean a lot to me. My professors from college, Trisha and Randy are here.

[01:10:36] I know they don’t want me to do this, but y’all, I would not be here without them. So thank y’all. They were surprised they came in the room and made me cry and yeah. So I’d rather cry about that than not being able to win enough power to defeat these motherfuckers. So let’s start there.

[01:10:51] I don’t think block and build is just appropriate because of these particular conditions. Even if we have power, we will be trying to block someone from knocking us down. Socialism is a process, right? We will always be in the process of building it, and we will be in a process of defending it from forces that want a different type of political and social order.

[01:11:19] So I do think that the defensive posture that we’re in now, even while we’re also trying to play an offensive role, which we’ve gone off, gone over in some levels of details. Is I think a framework that is gonna continue to be useful as we gain more and more governing power. So I think that answers one of the questions that came up.

[01:11:41] Maybe not sufficiently for the person that an that asked it, but that’s okay. I welcome folks to come and talk to me afterwards. Also, I think they address it, right? The Democrats are not a monolith. I think it’s just so important for us to understand, right? Like that there are differences within that party.

[01:11:58] We need to build some type of influence both inside and outside of it, but. I don’t think any of the panelists named Trump named the authoritarian front the authoritarian right front and didn’t name how we got here. Okay. So neoliberalism created the conditions for the right to be seen as a viable force in this country.

[01:12:20] But that actually doesn’t change who the main enemy is in this period. They are here, they will make things worse, and the terrain in which to get to socialism will be much harder if they are able to consolidate. And so I, I invite when we talk about the Dems and watch the liberal center is not just made up of the Democratic party.

[01:12:41] What is the other strategy? And I ask it sincerely as a comrade, willing to engage and struggle with everyone in this room. Is it that we fight all of them the same with our limited capacity and our limited resources? I wanna actually wanna understand, so I ask the question back what is the other strategy that we can be in Comrad relationship to and support?

[01:13:09] I also think that, revolutionary history is littered with examples of the usefulness of a broad tactical front. A broad united front was necessary to defeat the apartheid regime in South Africa. The South African Communist party ally with the a NC to defeat the apartheid regime. We can talk about what happened afterwards, right? You warning is about that we carry those lessons. Though if that had not happened, we would not have the lesson of how to avoid capture. A united front was necessary to overthrow the National Party, right? In China, it was the sole ruling party in the country from the twenties to the forties.

[01:13:51] It was overthrown by the Chinese Communist Party, but not before the National Party killed. MA’s wife killed an incredible amount of communists in China. After that happened, the Japanese tried to invade China and the Chinese Communist Party decided we need to ally, essentially will be the equivalent of their liberal center to defeat Japanese imperialism.

[01:14:17] After they defeated Japanese imperialism in this tactical front, they were able to defeat the National Party and then become the ruling party. So I say that because these are not perfect examples. We cannot copy and paste. I think we can draw inspiration, but I give these examples because revolutionary history is littered.

[01:14:37] With successful examples of what a broad front can do. And I think we need to take those seriously because I have not seen any successful challenge to fascism that did not involve people who are trying to kill us. And we have to be serious about that. And we have to confront the question of what it means to be, have, build some tactical unity right now to be able to make more possible, more room for us to be able to outmaneuver them out, organize them, and come out on top in this incredibly volatile period.

[01:15:14] And I didn’t get to answer the question of the inherent differences, advantages to cadre organizations or mass organizations. Let’s talk about that a little bit later. ’cause there are but we cannot exist independently. Cadre Organizations need mass organizations. Mass organizations need cadre organizations.

[01:15:31] So just wanna say that 

[01:15:39] Bennett Carpenter: let me start with that one then. The merits and demerits of mass and organization, mass socialist organizations and cadre socialist organizations. And so bear with me. When I got married, my 90-year-old grandma asked whether my now husband and I had done premarital counseling, and I was like.

[01:15:56] No. And she said very sweetly, but what? She’s that’s okay. You’ll just fight it out afterwards, I say that because to me, mass socialist organizations, you get married first and then you fight it out afterwards. And so I think DSA is a really great example of, hey, if you’ve got $5 and you call yourself a socialist, let’s all get together.

[01:16:13] And that’s really powerful and has allowed it to grow to be a hundred thousand person organization in a moment where there’s renewed interest in socialism. I think there’s real strengths to that. It also means that there’s an incredible heterogeneity of what people understand it means to be a socialist and how to carry out strategy.

[01:16:29] And just a zillion things that then. Have to be figured out and can sometimes I think, suck capacity from the ability to do stuff externally. But the advantage is the strength, the numbers, the, and the ability to bring people in. To me, cadre, at least Liberation Road as a cadre socialist organization is the opposite end of that.

[01:16:46] We’re much, much smaller, but we start with a much higher degree of alignment and unity. And so that means that I think the advantage, the disadvantage there is we’re small and we mostly work in and through organizations. So we don’t get to stand up there and say, Hey, look at the great work we’re doing.

[01:17:01] We’re actually very principled about not claiming that work because we’re doing it through democratic people’s organizations that we’ve helped build. But the advantage of being small and highly united is I think that we have that strategic coherence. So I think there’s a role for both and we need to be in relation in terms of building this sort of mass party.

[01:17:20] We need, yes. And the road has long prioritized that we are in relationship with the Communist Party, USA. For a long time we helped coordinate a group called the Inside Outside Project that brought together C-P-U-S-A, folks from DSA, what was then Left Roots and some other organizations to be like, Hey, can we actually find this common unity?

[01:17:40] To me, the interesting contradiction is everyone agreed yes, we’re actually strategically aligned and everyone agreed, yes, we need a single coherent political vehicle. And from my perspective, everyone else said, and that vehicle is our vehicle. So C-P-U-S-A was like, and we are that, we’re the C-P-U-S-A, everyone should just join us.

[01:17:55] We’re, this legacy thing. And DSA was like, everyone should join DSA and left roots was like, everyone should participate in our very intentional process that will happen according to these five steps over the next five years, and although we all agreed on the need for a thing, it was actually.

[01:18:09] The devil was in the details of how to do it and with whom. And that sort of connected to the pivot, I think Liberation Road has made in our central task of let’s actually start cohering around doing some shit together. It’s because when we get fixated on can we merge or can we join or can we become one thing that is hard, but we say, okay, let’s leave that to the side.

[01:18:27] Can we actually coordinate very specifically around immigrant defense or can we coordinate very specifically around in these places where we overlap recruiting a slate of left progressive candidates to run on a common platform? Or can we, and that those concrete, programmatic and pragmatic interventions we hope can then be the seeds that can lead us to figure out those bigger questions about.

[01:18:48] Unity. Okay. Do. I’m not gonna talk about the Democratic Party because if you wanna hear my thoughts, I’ll be on a panel on Sunday at noon debating with Howie Hawkins from the Green Party and someone from Groundwork and someone from Tempest about the Democratic Party. Hot Take. I don’t think the Democratic Party exists, but you can find out more then.

[01:19:07] And how do we avoid repeating 2020? Our main political report is now out, we’ve been publishing it in installments on our substack. I recommend reading it. We have a lot of assessments of the past three year period including the fact that I think the left has to grapple with the fact that actually going into the Biden administration, we were stronger and did better and got more than I think we ever thought we would have.

[01:19:27] The climate package as imperfect as it was, not only on climate, but also on like reparations and racial justice, I think was a huge advance in win. We didn’t get everything. We didn’t get the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. We didn’t get democratic reconstruction and voting rights and the things that are now eroding the thing, what we need.

[01:19:45] But even with all the contradictions of that moment, I think we actually got a fair bit. To me, the biggest problem was we had not built a mass movement base of organized people who recognize those wins as their own and who recognize when we didn’t win. Oh, shoot. Understood the contradictions and challenges.

[01:20:02] And so to me that’s where I’m like, how do we. In 2028 how have we done the work to build mass movement organizations and to organize our people so that when we get in and have to struggle with those contradictions, we can bring the mass movement along? Because the difference between the, the new deal came about in response to a militant mass labor movement that was pushing for demands.

[01:20:23] What Biden put through the Green New Deal was a response to the historic weakness of the multiracial working class in this moment. And so I think we need to grapple with how do we actually strengthen that and on the slogans okay, so very quickly yes, we need popular slogans. We need something like a 10 point program like the Black Panthers had back in the day.

[01:20:42] We need, what is our 10 point program in Liberation Road? We debated, we’re like, should we actually come up with the 10 point program? And then we’re like, no. ’cause then we’re just gonna be this small little group of leftist thing. Here’s our program. And we’re like, actually that program has to be built through.

[01:20:55] Movement dialogue and struggle. And so we’d love to be, I know one of our comrades, bill Fletcher, has been saying to Working Families Party, we need a 10 point program. Can you help build it? I’d love to be in conversation with Rising Majority, with the movement for Black Lives, with all with NSSO, with DSA, of like, how can we actually collectively generate that together because I think that will increase the chances that we’re able to actually really make it a genuinely mass popular thing.

[01:21:17] Sound on Tape: Yeah. Yeah. That seems about right to me. 

[01:21:20] Jayanni Webster: Support IPOs, independent political organizations. Okay, thank you. 

[01:21:24] Sound on Tape: I do just wanna say in closing that this is the kind of conversation that is like our bread and butter, our life’s work at Convergence Magazine. If you want more discussions like this, come check us out.

[01:21:35] These are all comrades that we have been in conversation with for a very long time. I hope also, if any of their organizations and approaches. Speak to you, and you are also not currently in a political organization. You come talk to these folks about joining theirs, because being in an organization right now I think is one of the biggest things that we can be doing to building the strength of the left.

[01:21:55] Thank you so much for joining us today. We’ll be here if you wanna chit chat at all. Thank you.

[01:22:03] My thanks again to our panelists, Montega, David Bennett and jni. We’ll include links to each of their organizations in the show notes. And thank you so much to the folks at Socialism 2025 and Haymarket books for having us and providing the platform as well as everyone who attended this panel live, including those folks who shared their questions and insights with us.

[01:22:22] This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Kaden Mak, and our producer is Josh Stro. Kimie David designed our cover art, and Logan Gross is our intern. If you have something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that will consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at [email protected].

[01:22:40] And of course, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bring our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment. You can become a [email protected] slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements.

[01:22:59] I hope this helps.