https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
I know I pop up on almost every post about AOC but I helped work with her election campaigns here in Queens as well her predecessors and she’s honestly so much better. YES she is a shitlib. YES electoralism is BS.
But she is leaps and bounds better. She WEAKENS the democrats. Yes she works with them, but she regularly voices her grudges and dissent in this otherwise hegemonic party over the American “””“left”””” and that is what starts to radicalize people. Anecdotally, it is what happened to me, who used to be a libertarian, after seeing the old Bernie’s speeches. This huge spotlight has brought the young people who don’t care out in DROVES.
I did a few AOC backed food drives to feed the community in the last couple years. I’ve been participating in these for YEARS. Before AOC, we would get a showing on the strongest of days with the best weather of about 15 people, which is awesome. In the last two years when AOC literally only attached her name to these things, we have had such overwhelming support that we’ve gotten (and our community has gotten) the privilege of adding extra food drive and community organization events just to fit all of the people who want to help into the schedule. We are talking well into the HUNDREDS of people I’ve never met at these events before, we are talking about people I watched these previous events benefit come back to now participate in them.
At the beginning of the pandemic, AOC was out here on the streets directly delivering real door to door aid to her constituents with us while other politicians were hiding away. When I say real aid I mean she was out here for days, hours at a time with no cameras, no press, nothing but the community. She has directly had an effect on this community’s organization. If there are any politicians in the US doing actual praxis right now, she is one of them and whether she means to or not, whether she is a lib or not, our community has organized and gotten several demsoc candidates into local/state elections. Over 10% of the NY state legislature is demsoc and it is trending upward with each cycle. Our city council has seen massively increased representation of grassroots campaigns by actual members of the working class.
It’s not all AOC, but unlike the rest of the Dems, she isn’t actively trying to undermine this movement. That is sometimes all it takes. Don’t get me wrong, I hope one day we remove AOC by primarying her from the left, but for now this is enough to not just keep actual action and organization alive, but to grow.
AOC is good because she's a good dem, and makes all other Dems look that much worse in comparison.
She's a Congressperson - an attractive, articulate, energetic one - who grabs media attention regardless of what she says or does. She's hard to ignore.
Keeping some dipshit like Anthony Weiner out of the seat is it's own reward. Promoting a voice that doesn't suck, even if her votes suck, is good. And backhanding the corporate weasel that Dems tried to run against her in the primary is good. And building a base of power in a major metro area is good.
It feels good, man.
:volcel-vanguard: Volcel Vanguard is on the scene, please maintain your vital essences as these will be needed after the revolution that is definitely happening.
thank you for your service, defender of the people
Exactly. There is real organization by leftists on the ground here in queens that I never imagined I’d see. It obviously isn’t radical, but it’s the kind that brings our people out into the public eye and makes us look good. It’s won so many people over with just the most basic implementation of our ideology that once a big enough base is built up (and that base is SERIOUSLY building up, we are even getting political representation) we will be able to create real change
AOC is good because she's continuing to work with grass roots organizations and empowering new ones. A far cry from soviets and syndicates, but objectively better than typical Dems who move into the party fundraising once elected.
Yeah this is the tldr I couldn’t write
this post is the moment before the post heard round the world, take it in folks. soon the mods’ giving to RW pigpoopballs will be a long honored tradition, immortalized in time on the banner.
And makes chuds mad
Strasseris good because he's a good nazi, makes all the other Nazis look that much worse in comparison.
Jesus. This shit is so eye roll.
fuck you lib
Everyone is a Nazi. Mmmhmmm. We're all sane here on this board.
the point was to show that just because you're slightly better than your fellows doesn't make you fucking good. eat shit liberal
"Why is the American left 70,000 people in the DSA?" in one message board exchange.
back to reddit with you
That would make sense if the Dems were a unified bloc, like the Nazis were.
orly?
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ah yes, coungtering pro sucdemm pro elecotralism propaganda, the libbest lib of lib
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Libs aren’t radical, and they don’t radicalize people,
You’re right that libs don’t radicalize people, but the system can and we can if the libs aren’t actively trying to stop us, which was the intention of my comment. AOC is a lib who hasn’t tried to stop our local community from organizing and now we do hold some tangible power
maybe not our community.
I already told you this isn’t about AOC being objectively good, it’s about the fact that she allows materially better conditions for actual leftist organization here on the ground in our district.
She’s infinitely better than any of the other neoliberal ghouls who have represented this district in the last 40 years and I implore you to actually read what I wrote saying I hope we one day primary AOC from the left and win, something that would not be possible had we not been able to organize locally during AOC’s tenure as our elected official.
If I could I’d be part of the First Peoples Regiment of the NYC Liberation Army tomorrow to establish the People’s Republic of Greater NY but it’s not happening and not possible yet, so I’m building the conditions to allow it to happen. What are you doing you fucking lib?
better than a neo-lib doesn't make you fucking good. it doesn't even really allow material conditions to be better. what it does is stifle an actual movement.
Ok and again I am BEGGING you to read where I directly say AOC is not good.
But god you in your fucking ivory tower. You know what’s not happening? People rising up in New York while the NYPD has a SIX BILLION dollar budget. You know the only way to change that? Either rising up and physically dismantling it or legislating that money away and enabling the EXACT CONDITIONS YOURE TALKING ABOUT.
You know how we are trying to do away with that budget? By ensuring we have representation on the inside ready to work to get rid of it, something that isn’t happening if you have Giuliani or Bloomberg running the city.
Me: “Here are how material conditions in our local community have improved since and because of AOC, allowing for us leftists to directly organize in ways we weren’t before”
@RandomWords: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS?!?!???!?"
my 'ivory towers' got a fuckin staircase and a welcome mat you stupid fuck. elevate yourself. you said specifically that "the system can" which is only true if enough people get pissed off at it's existence, and the entire point of this post which your replying to is to fucking boost up fucking aoc, which you're helping to promote with this fucking bullshit. you know how e're going to do away with a budget? is that the fucking goal? are we doing local revolutions now? is that the fucking point that we're going to try to achieve? cause taht shits going to get immediately squashed.
AOC serves a fucking purpose in congress or she wouldn't be there. she a fucking token progressive, just like bernie was. they serve a fucking purpose. a fucking "manufactured consent" of representation.
Local organization leads to revolutions you absolute imbecile. You cry and whine and moan about material conditions and when I tell you they’ve improved you deflect and make it about AOC. Fucking newsflash, political offices hold immense sway and power and when they’re not being used to undermine the left like they have through all of American political history the left is able to organize and increase the power base of the left.
I WANT TO REMOVE AOC FROM THE LEFT. How many damn times am I going to have to tell you this? AOC IS NOT GOOD but she is better for the left than anybody else and it has improved material conditions for the left. We aren’t electing MLs yet, we aren’t dismantling our political system yet, so why is it bad that we do what we can strategically to build up the left?
Do you understand how shortsighted you are being? This is why I’m saying you live in this ivory tower. We are on the ground doing praxis and telling you it is only possible because material conditions have improved as a direct result of AOC and you’re telling us that’s bad. What is good enough for you? What’s your plan? Because I’ve not yet seen it.
AOC undermines the socialist movement by encouraging would-be socialists to vote for and therefore compromise with Democrats, which is class-collaborationist because the Democrats are a 100% bourgeois-controlled party with no mass membership or internal democracy. Her and Bernie's entryism has allowed us to draw important conclusions about the Democrats being ghoulish libs at their core, but this entryism was an avoidable mistake. We should have already learned this lesson from the Jesse Jackson campaign in 1988 that eventually turned Black and Rainbow Coalition Dem-entryists (some with even Maoist and Black Panther backgrounds!) into Obama-supporting liberals and Democrats. Even Angela Davis critically endorsed Biden!
If AOC and The Squad remain in the Democratic Party, they will follow the same trajectory and repeatedly betray their working class supporters, misleading the masses into thinking they can have any consistent or meaningful control over Democratic Party policy the whole time.
AOC is damaging the Democratic Party and enabling us to organize leftist and recruit new ones.
Electoralism fucking sucks, I’ve openly acknowledged that. But elected officials by design wield serious power, and when that power is not actively being used to undermine the left on a local level, it enables leftist growth. This is the reason the American left has been so silent for so long. The simple fact that she is coordinating with our local leftist groups for direct community organization has grown our groups from a few dozen organized people to hundreds, not only wielding actual local power but holding elected power which is a powerful tool for either fostering or destroying leftist organization.
I’m glad the power AOC holds has allowed our leftist community to grow. To say this has undermined us simply because AOC is participating in politics while ignoring the fact that it has actively organized and fostered our leftist community is an ivory tower so white I had to put on sunglasses to read your response.
You don’t have to like AOC or her politics. I’ve worked with the campaign and I personally don’t. I know many others who have and still work with her who aren’t fond of it either. But it has given us a strategic ally that (on the local level) doesn’t endorse the typical centrist Dems, and instead has brought working class people into positions of power and writing policy instead of more bourgeoisie attempting to disenfranchise the working class. Cry about electoralism all you want, I’ve watched my leftist and mutual aid community grow exponentially in the last 3 years alone, and every member of this group knows that the system can not be reformed from within. What we do know is that now a few people working from within are not actively conspiring against us and it has allowed us to grow a tangible power base that exists almost nowhere else in this country.
AOC's participation in politics and helping to grow community organizations isn't the problem. Her doing so while running as and governing as a Democrat is the problem. I want to make it crystal clear that I don't favor an ultraleft abstentionist approach to electoral politics here.
As problematic as Kshama Sawant has become, she's repeatedly demonstrated that it's possible to "grow the left" organically and run a candidacy without running as a Dem, and still win under similar conditions. It is also possible to grow the left in a similar fashion and organize with DSA members and other liberals on a united front basis without conceding to shortcomings in consciousness that tend towards time-wasting class-collaborationist bullshit, without endorsing or encouraging their obvious mistakes. The key is to focus on the issues and not the candidates - organizing around demands rooted in a principled Marxist program, including the call to abolish ICE, or calls for M4A or the GND, the Fight for 15 campaign, and so on.
AOC helping to popularize the demands for abolishing ICE and for the GND is good, and we should encourage AOC's supporters to still fight for these demands, but as Marxists we shouldn't reinforce or encourage their delusion that AOC is going to pull Dems to the left, or legislate a transition from capitalism to socialism. This is where Kshama screwed up and erred on the side of opportunism.
Instead of misleading people, we should seek ways to organize the working class and the oppressed to fight for these demands outside the reach of liberal and bourgie saboteurs, which means building alternative to the repeatedly failed Dem-entryist approach, including immediate tasks like forming an independent mass worker's party while simultaneously developing the embryo of the revolutionary party.
This is why the phrase "critical support" exists. Support her for good intentions and the good results she actually helps produce, openly criticizer her bad foreign policy takes and votes. AOC's followers are definitely closer to radicalization than the Khive or Warren stans, it's our job now to move them away from electoralism. Same as Sanders, she is useful to a point but not th end goal.
Unfortunately, because of the role Dem entryists play (unwittingly or otherwise) in sheepdogging would-be socialists into critically and then "critically" endorsing increasingly worse neoliberals and imperialists, critically supporting Dem entryists has the same effect as uncritically supporting Dems in general. AOC and the others are ultimately dragged by the party's puppet strings, regardless of how radical or correct their messaging or demands might be. The experiences of 2015-2020 are more than sufficient to conclude that the Dem entryists have outlived their usefulness, if they were ever useful at all.
Right the politicians themselves are opportunists and we cannot expect to "pull them left" other than in cases of extreme solidarity where they fear for their positions (like MN after George Floyd). However, radicalizing regular on the ground AOC fans and Berniecrats is a viable tactic, especially right now. A huge group of young people just got involved in politics for the very first time this election cycle and got FUCKED by both parties. I know I personally lost faith in electoralism after dedicating hours of my life to a guy who endorsed the enemy, so I expect there are others who feel the same.
Anyway four dollars a pound, I'm not gonna die on a hill for entryism since most people don't even fucking vote.
I agree and this is not what I’m trying to say. I’m also not saying AOC is the best possible elected official participating in our political system.
What I am saying is that material conditions have improved locally to the point that we are organically growing our power base and as an ML it pains me to say that a non-insignificant amount has come from AOC attaching her name to things like our food drives and labor organization, then at the events and over time the actual leftists who participate in them like myself have recruited people and those people have recruited people to the point that in the last ten years before AOC we had a few dozen people at the most to hundreds of people after we had a well known political figure attach their name to us.
Don’t get me wrong, AOC is NOT radicalizing people, but the pipeline is real and working in ways I never thought possible with such efficiency. Our groups have grown exponentially and now are growing organically. The aid we’ve set up to help people has recruited those people into our movement. Our ideology, because of praxis possible due to AOC’s willingness not to persecute the left and instead nominally attach herself to it, are winning the hearts and minds of people. They see US as the champions of these issues in our community, NOT AOC, and that’s the critical difference and tipping point. They may not see the system as incapable of meaningful reform yet, but they do see direct action as MORE capable of reform.
I hope this clears up what my intention was in writing this
I mean she's not even saying she would abolish ICE how people understand that, she wants to replace it a more civil INS-type institution.