Upstream - [TEASER] Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia de la Cruz & Karina Garcia

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

You can listen to the full episode with Doug Henwood by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you. There’s that saying that you’ve probably heard a million times: doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign of psychosis. Whether or not that’s something you might find in the DSM-5 manual, it certainly has a strong ring of truth to it. And it’s also something that rings profoundly true when we think about much of the broader left and liberal left strategy when it comes to presidential elections in the United States: just keep voting for the lesser of two evils and eventually things will sort themselves out. But all it takes is one brief look at our current conditions to understand that that attitude is, well, not exactly aligned with reality. When we survey either our current political, economic, ecological—really, any landscape, it’s beyond doubt that conditions have deteriorated—drastically. The far right, the hegemony of capitalism and imperialism, and the forces of reaction have all continued to grow in strength as we continue to acquiesce to the Democratic Party’s insistence that they are the bulwark against these forces and that by voting for the Democrats, we’re assuring that our democracy stays in tact. So we keep voting for them, and they keep breaking their promises—in fact, they don’t even really bother to promise much anymore because they know they’ve got us cornered—there’s nowhere else to go.  But what if we could break this cycle? What if there was somewhere else to go? In this Patreon episode, we’re exploring an alternative to the two-party duopoly, an alternative to the two factions of capital that call themselves the Democrats and the Republicans.  Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are running for President and Vice President with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL. In this conversion, we explore why Claudia and Karina are running, what platform they’re running on and what policies they’re proposing, and why it’s more important than ever for the working class to start building power and building its own party as an instrument for not just participating in electoral politics, but for building class consciousness, getting folks involved in organizing, and in providing a platform for political education that presents a clear alternative to the dismal and defeatist messages coming from the two corporate parties that rule over us on behalf of capital. Further Resources: Claudia and Karina 2024  Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz 

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this, and it also allows us to provide most of our content for free so we can continue to provide political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you, comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. provide political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you comrades, we hope you enjoy this conversation. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and ultimately they're safeguarding the same project. The only way we can actually get out of this cycle,

which is a murderous cycle, is building our own political instruments where we have participation in our interest as working class people are represented and at the heart of the work that is being done and the policies that are being developed. If we continue to do what the ruling class expects us to do, then we will never do what we urgently need to do as a class. And so this narrative of the lesser

of two evils splitting the vote, democracies on the ballot, again, this is all a narrative that has been developed by the ruling class, by our enemies, by our class enemies, to continue to engage us in this choosing poison, packaged differently,ison in red or poison in blue. And whether you pick one or the next, you're going to die anyway. And so we need to choose life. We need to choose other ways of doing things. You are listening to upstream upstream upstream upstream upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan.

And I'm Robert Rehm. There's a saying that you've probably heard a million times, that doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign of psychosis. Whether or not that's something we'd actually find in the DSM-5 manual, it certainly has a strong ring of truth to it. And it's also something that rings profoundly true when we think about much of the broader left and liberal left strategy when it comes to the presidential elections of the United States. Just keep voting for the lesser of two evils and eventually things will sort themselves out. But it just takes one brief look at our current conditions to understand that that attitude is, well, not exactly aligned with reality.

When we survey either our current political, economic, ecological, or really any landscape, it's beyond a doubt that conditions have deteriorated drastically. The far right, the hegemony of capitalism and imperialism, and the forces of reaction, have all continued to grow in strength as we continue to acquiesce to the Democratic Party's insistence that they are the bulwark against these forces, and that by voting for the Democrats, we are assuring that our democracy stays intact. So we keep voting for them, and they keep breaking their promises. In fact, they don't even really bother to promise much anymore because they know they've got us cornered.

There's nowhere else to go. But what if we could break this cycle? What if there was somewhere else to go? In this Patreon episode, we're exploring an alternative to the two-party duopoly, an alternative to the two factions of capital that call themselves the Democrats and the Republicans. Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia

are running for president and vice president with the party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL. In this conversation, we explore why Claudia and Karina are running, what platform they're running on and what policies they're proposing, and why it's more important than ever for the working class to start building power and building its own party as an instrument for not just participating in electoral politics, but for building class consciousness, getting folks involved in organizing, and in providing a platform for political education that presents a clear

alternative to the dismal and defeatist messages coming from the two corporate parties that rule over us on behalf of Capital. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Claudia de la Cruz and Karina, it's really a genuine pleasure to have both of you on the show. And I'm wondering if you could both maybe start by introducing yourselves for our listeners and talking maybe a little bit about how you came to do the work that you're doing. Well, thank you, Robert, for having us. It's a pleasure to be here. I come from a working-class family. My dad was a construction worker. My mother was an educator for 30-plus years in the New York City Department of Education. And I started doing organizing and popular education work at the age of 13. I was a very curious person and I was mostly curious about the conditions in my community. I was born in the South Bronx and I lived there for a good chunk of my life. And the South Bronx is one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States. I entered socialist politics through the church,

and I was active and politically formed in a church that was grounded in the philosophy of liberation theology. And there I found many organizers, educators, and some political exiles from Colombia, El Salvador, and other countries where U.S. intervention has completely destabilized economies and just society as a whole. And these folks participated in social movements and political parties in and outside of the

United States. Most of them were atheists, which is really interesting and extremely committed to doing the good work to advance people's struggles. I found a lot of the answers that I had in relationship to poverty and how was it possible that my parents working the amount of hours that they did couldn't afford to make ends meet. And I developed new questions, right?

Like, if they're not poor because they're deficient, then who creates poverty? And how is it possible that some folks have more than others and what about racial oppression and why are there political prisoners? And my consciousness was sharpened by being part of this community, being part of this collective of people who had the same vision of the world. I found a lot of the answers we could build in struggle. And some of the campaigns that I came into as a teenager

were campaigns to free the Puerto Rican political prisoners. So I wanted to learn more about the colonial question in Puerto Rico. I started doing that work with an organization called Pro Libertad in the 1990s, which is the same decade in which some of the Puerto Rican political prisoners that had been in prison for almost 25, 30 years were pardoned and only Oscar Lopez Rivera and another comrade stayed behind. Then there came the campaigns around the Fremomía of Bujammal

and other political prisoners doing work with the Fremomia Coalition and the New York City Jericho movement and doing work around police brutality with the Mothers Against Police brutality specifically around the cases of Amadou Diallo and Anthony Baez and others and again became more and more politicized through the struggle and through the connection and engagement with several of these communities. I worked really closely and continue to do a lot of work on solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela and internationalist work, understanding that socialism is something that we aspire and we work towards at an international level to be able to defend and build revolution

all around the world. I co-founded an organization that did leadership development with young women in Washington Heights and the Bronx and did a lot of work around political education with cultural workers in the Bronx as well to deepen the consciousness around the connection of working class movement building and the work of the artist drawing from people like Paul Robeson and Nina Simone and others, Claudia Jones. And that all culminated, I think, in some ways in co-founding the People's Forum, which is pretty much a reflection of the struggles that I have come out of and other

comrades who co-founded the organization have also experienced. And I've been doing this work for almost 30 years. I've been part and accountable to organizations all my life. And so this electoral process is a new challenge, but it's part of a larger commitment to struggle. And I've been doing this for 30 years before this electoral year, and I'll continue to do it after the electoral year. And it's my part of contributing to uprooting capitalism and building the movement that will make a socialist revolution happen in this country. Incredible.

Thank you so much for that. And how about you, Karina? Yeah. Thank you so much for that. And how about you, Karina? Yeah, thank you for having us. So I'm a Chicana from Southern California. My family are Mexican immigrants. My dad came to this country when he was 16 years old. He was undocumented. He worked his entire life in metals and manufacturing and big warehouses. And then now he's in his sixties and he's a roofer. big warehouses and then now he's in his 60s and he's a roofer. One of the most dangerous jobs. But yeah, so my whole family has

similar stories of working, you know, 30, 40 years in this country and basically staying in the same place and that's not really unique to us. We know that that's actually the situation for millions of working class families who no matter how hard they work are unable to really retire, unable to access basic dental care, honestly. Like, my family's a little bit lucky, some of them, because they can, like, you know, travel to Mexico, but that's not the case for everybody.

So that's kind of like what my family background is. And then when I was 18 years old, I was very fortunate. I was able to get like a full financial aid to be able to go to college. And so I moved to New York and I went to Columbia when I was 18 years old. And that's really where like my organizing really took hold, I guess, of my life.

It started off sort of like, you know, I was really grateful that I was able to go to college. I knew how difficult it was for somebody from my class background to be able to go to college. So I was real grateful. And then once I started to learn more about capitalism, then that humility started to turn more into a kind of humiliation, you know, because I started to realize that all of the suffering that my family was going through was unnecessary, was completely unnecessary and actually very cruel, because we do live in the richest country in the world and they know exactly why we came to this

country. It's a consequence of US imperialism and the consequence of US corporations exploiting imperialism and the consequence of US corporations exploiting the resources, the labor, and the land of the entire globe. But I really learned that through being in the party. I joined the party for socialism and liberation when I was 20. I was already doing a lot of activism around sweatshops and student labor solidarity campaigns with the United Tunisian sweatshops. But the party really brought together all of the different struggles that I was involved in, including at that point in 2006,

the mega marches for immigrant rights. So, you know, those were the biggest demonstrations at that point in US history from the people that everybody said were too afraid to organize, too afraid to stand up for themselves, undocumented people, and the party was involved in that struggle and it was involved in every other struggle, even though it was small at that time. And, you know, since then, when I graduated, I became a high school math teacher, and we were organizing a high school event against budget cuts, framerator rides. You know, this is a time when Trayvon Martin was killed. We were bringing students out against budget cuts, framerator rides. You know this is a time when Trayvon Martin was

killed, we were bringing students out against police brutality and then after working as a teacher for a few years I worked for a national reproductive justice organization that focused around Latinas and I was basically for the last 10 years I was traveling around the country in southern states, particularly in Texas and Florida but all over the country really southern states, particularly in Texas and Florida, but all over the country really, and organizing around reproductive justice, which brings together women's rights as workers, as people who can be pregnant in this country, who need child care, who need everything basically. So yeah, those are the struggles that I was involved in. So I'm wondering if you could maybe both talk a little bit

about the process that led you both to run as president and vice president with the party for socialism and liberation, which you mentioned, PSL. And maybe in the same question, I'd love it if you could talk a little bit about PSL, just for folks who might not be familiar. Yes, we're part of the PSL, which is the Party for Socialism and Liberation,

and we're both in the leadership of the party. The party has been running candidates for years, and it was agreed in our last Congress that we would do it again this year. And Karina and I were asked to take on the task and then voted in to be candidates. It's an organization that has been around for 20 years. I joined the PSL in 2020 but have been doing a lot of the work that I shared in my intro along the side of PSL for a good part of 19 years.

And I think the process of joining this challenge and embarking in this process of election year as candidates was something that Karina and I didn't plan for. I could speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure. I kind of feel the same way. We didn't plan for it. We didn't come to it as a desire to be

in any type of limelight or to build a political career. Like it happens with politicians in this bourgeois system. It was taken up as a task, as a responsibility on behalf of the PSL, on behalf of the party for socialism and liberation. Understanding that democracy in this country is a sham, understanding that when we're talking

about the duopoly, the ruling class parties, we're talking about parties that respond to Wall Street, to corporations that advance ruling class interest. And so in the tradition of socialist parties, we understood that it was necessary to intervene in the discussions around the electoral process, to intervene running candidates that would put a poll, put a flag up and say, we are socialists proudly. And it's highly significant to do that in a context where we know the majority of the people in this country don't see themselves represented in that duopoly, and yet are forced to and fear-mongered into participating and legitimizing the ruling class

parties. And so for us, it was really important to take up the task, understanding that we're doing this to build a political instrument of the working class, that we're doing this to build a political instrument of the working class, that we're doing this to contribute in building an independent movement of working class people in this country, in a context where the gaze has been lifted from a lot of people, and people understand that bourgeois democracy doesn't work for them, that it doesn't respond to them, at the local level and at the national level. And decisions are made every day so-called on behalf of the people, but do not benefit the people of this country or the people of the world for that matter. And so for us intervening in this electoral campaign is a way of building the strength of working class people, accumulating the forces of working class people,

to create the political instrument that will allow us to make the transformation that is necessary in this country for working class people. And we understand that all achievements and advancements we have gained as working class people have been as understand that all achievements and advancements we have gained as working class people have been as a result of movement. And so this campaign is part of a larger strategy of movement building. It's part of a larger strategy of building political instruments

of working class people. There has been nothing that has been given by the ruling class, politicians, out of benevolence. It has all been as a result of struggle. So we can continue to legitimize them. And in doing so, the prospects of us becoming free and actually having a people's democracy seems further. And so we understand as a party and we understand as candidates that this is the time to intervene because we don't have time to waste and people's consciousness are actually awakened. People are understanding that again the ruling class, Dwaapili, just doesn't work for us. It hasn't never worked for us really. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia who are

running for the President and Vice President of the United States with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL. You can listen to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a on keep this project going. Find out more and subscribe at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast or at upstream podcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.