electoralism

Vox is pushing her. They ask several people in south Carolina and only show one cite Palestine against wanting her to run again. One woman says no don't run, she's too smart so people won't like her.

The harshest criticism they give AIT time to is that somewhere around minute 28 a democratic insider says "the campaign needs to be Bye Bye Biden. Like the backstreet boys". But not for any reason other than the biden campaign being unpopular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux0Y9utkAkw

Ryan and Emily discuss NY signing a 1 year moratorium on data centers.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/64209

A wave of democratic socialist victories in primary elections across the United States suggests there has been a dramatic shift in the base of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, party leadership has maintained its commitment to many of its historic political positions, such as steadfast support for Israel. The recent primary contests have come to symbolize this accelerating collision.

Claire Valdez is a union organizer, a proud democratic socialist, and she just won the Democratic primary for New York’s seventh congressional district. With well over 50% of the vote, she beat the establishment’s chosen successor, Antonio Reynoso, by over 20 points, despite his backing by retiring incumbent Rep. Nydia Velásquez.

Come November, she is all but certain to become a member of Congress. Valdez sat down with Rania Khalek, chief correspondent at BreakThrough News, to discuss the changing political landscape that these victories underscore.

WATCH HERE:The socialist who beat AIPAC: Claire Valdez interview

BreakThrough News: These Democratic primaries across the country, including your own, continue to be defined by where candidates stand on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which you have been very outspoken about. Why do you think Palestine of all issues is playing such a central role in Democratic primaries from New York all the way to Colorado?

Claire Valdez: This is one of the great moral questions of our time and right now what people are really hungry for is consistency and honesty from politicians. People felt and continue to feel very pushed out of the democratic process. They don’t feel like their vote matters. And that is part and parcel of this bigger idea that our politicians are not serving us. They don’t care about what’s happening on the ground. There’s a general sense that if you can’t stand for Palestinian freedom and Palestinian human life and dignity, how on earth are you going to stand for the dignity of working-class people right here in your own district?

We want to see real consistency on this issue. We’ve seen the opinion shift on this as the genocide has unfolded. 75,000 people have been murdered. Millions have been displaced. Especially following the illegal bombing of Iran, the murder of hundreds of school children, the list of atrocities goes on and on. People are also seeing a direct impact on their pocketbooks. They’re seeing the price of gas and other household goods go up as a result of these forever wars and just a real deep sense that we have money to bomb poor people abroad, refugee camps abroad, but somehow we don’t have enough money for health care or for free higher public education. Our lives are not getting better and at the same time lives are being destroyed overseas. That dissonance is also something that people are really coming to in this moment. They want to see politicians who will have the political courage to say those things and to stand up against it.

BT: One thing I really love about your platform is that you talk about pushing to end all weapon sales and military aid to Israel. Could you talk about what that would actually look like? Some Democrats, for example, want to kind of split the difference. They’ll say, “Let’s block offensive weapons, but keep funding defensive weapons like the Iron Dome.” Is that a distinction that you accept?

CV: No, I don’t. I think we have to end all aid to Israel. And that’s following our own laws, too. You know, Israel is clearly and openly violating international law. They’ve been committing a genocide now for almost 3 years. This is really simple. Our tax dollars should not be going to uphold genocide, apartheid, occupation, point blank. So I don’t see a difference between offensive and defensive weaponry. All of that money is going toward enabling a state that is committing genocide, that is leading us into wars in Iran, that is displacing people in Lebanon. This is a result of a long history of the United States writing blank checks to Israel. And now the theater of their violence and their colonialism has spread to Lebanon, to Iran, to the rest of the region. That would not have been possible, as you said, without the United States funding it. And so, we have to remove all aid, period.

BT: Would you support a scenario where there are perhaps sanctions against Israel in the way that there were sanctions against apartheid South Africa?

CV: Absolutely. I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal and a lot of diplomatic tools. Sanctions can be diplomatic tools. In the same way that we sanctioned South Africa during their apartheid regime I think we should be looking at those tools now in this moment. And certainly we shouldn’t be punishing people who have been supporting boycott divestment sanctions here in the United States for a long time as, again, nonviolent efforts to make the Israeli government cease their operations in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, and and many other atrocities.

BT: You’ve connected the lack of adequate access to housing, healthcare, and other basic needs in the US to imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and heavily-funded domestic militarized forces like ICE. But we’ve seen figures like you get into Congress as Democrats before, only to see the establishment pressure slowly change the person’s politics (instead of the other way around). How would you avoid that? Is it DSA accountability, the union base, the movement outside Congress? What actually keeps you anchored?

CV: Absolutely, all the things you already said. I’m a proud member of the New York City DSA. I’ve been a member for seven years, was in chapter leadership, came through the rank and file of DSA, as we like to say. Same thing with my union. You know, I started as just a rank and file member of my union, became a bargaining committee member, shop steward. These are my political homes. These are the places that I learned how to be an organizer, that I built political power, um, not just for myself, but for, you know, the people on the shop floor with me. And I feel a real deep responsibility toward the movement that won me this seat. You know, I did not do this by myself. You know, thousands and thousands of people came out to volunteer, to donate, to spend time. I think real accountability means acknowledging that I’m not just some person. I’m part of a movement. I think there will be all kinds of pressure from the democratic establishment from lobbyists to vote in particular ways to behave in certain ways and my commitment is really to the movement to be making decisions in concert with folks on the outside because that’s how we build. That’s how we win. I can’t do this by myself and making sure that we’re staying grounded in the movements that we’re in constant communication and working with the colleagues that I’m going to be very excited to be working with: Darializa Avila Chevalier, Melat Kiros, Chris Rabb, Adam Hamawy. People are winning across the country right now and we have a really profoundly exciting freshman class that’s coming in very soon and so I think a lot of the work that I want to do too is make sure that we all stay together that we’re organizing together that we’re building power because we multiply that force when we do it together. There’s a few inside-outside strategies to kind of think through. But I also really hear people’s suspicion and worry about co-optation. We’ve seen it happen before. But I think the movement on the outside is in a very strong position right now to hold us accountable. And being strong on Palestine isn’t just morally right, it’s politically powerful right now. Those two things in concert really changed the game for what we can achieve.

BT: Among the left and some progressives, there is a feeling that the Democratic Party is this party of war, of genocide, of corporations, a place where historically we’ve watched social movements sometimes go to die. And therefore, at some point the working class would need to form its own party. There’s also a long-running debate within DSA about whether at some point there needs to be a break with the Democratic Party, maybe it’s a so-called dirty break that happens gradually, a clean break, or maybe no break at all. What is your perspective on this?

CV: Yeah I think it’s a complicated question and one that I’ve really grappled with in my time within DSA. I think for me I always come back to the power and the necessity of the labor movement. Right now, you know, at the height of the labor movement, it was like almost one in three workers was in a union. Now it’s like one in 10. It’s an absolute catastrophe. And I think as we’ve seen the decline of union density and labor power in the United States, we’ve seen the rise of the corporate Democratic Party. And so, we can’t even begin to tackle the idea of what the base for a new independent perhaps workers party would be at this point. I think we have to really focus on rebuilding the labor movement, organizing the working class in all the ways that we can. And make sure that that’s the real beating heart of whatever the future has in store for us. It’s one of the primary reasons I wanted to run for Congress in the first place. We can’t have a thriving democracy. We can’t beat fascism. We can’t win an anti-war movement if the labor movement is in decline and if working-class people are not empowered to take on the conditions that are immiserating themselves in their own workplace. That’s the thing that I think about the most. I think that is our most immediate task in front of us.

BT: You declined to commit to supporting Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House, saying there would need to be some conversations. Many on the left loved hearing that, since Jeffries is one of the biggest recipients of corporate PAC and of course AIPAC-aligned money in the party. His pro-Israel record reflects this. What would it take for Jeffries to get your vote for speaker? What are those conversations? Are there concrete demands on Palestine or anything else that Jeffries would have to meet?

CV: I think those considerations are still ongoing. I haven’t had that conversation with the speaker yet, so I don’t want to spill too much tea.. We have to stay strategic but I do think what we’re seeing across the country is all these progressive people are not just winning but they’re beating incumbents who have taken AIPAC money and the writing is on the wall. We’re demonstrating that in so many of these races but it also should be apparent at this point to the Democratic party leadership that AIPAC is toxic, that funding for Israel is deeply unpopular among the base and that changes need to happen.

We’ll have those conversations with congressmember Jeffries in the future, but I think every incumbent Democrat should be paying attention to this moment right now and would do well to understand where the base is.

BT: Axios reported last week that Kamala Harris called Mayor Zohran Mamdani and has been quietly meeting with pro-Palestine activists, including a co-founder of the uncommitted movement, basically laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run in 2028. The fact that she’s calling these people at all may represent an admission of the movement’s power. But this is also the same woman who wouldn’t move an inch on the genocide in Gaza, even if it was part of what lost her the election in 2024. If a Democrat like Harris is the nominee, let’s say in 2028, can you see yourself backing that person in the spirit of “blue no matter who” or does the movement have to set a price there, do you think?

I think we have to see where the movement lands and what the field shapes up to be. The work that I’m interested in doing right now over the next couple of years is setting the agenda for what the 2028 elections will look like no matter who runs. It will be unforgivable to me if the democratic primary field does not accept Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, ending funding for Israel – really basic and again deeply popular political demands from the working class around the country.

We have to be setting the tone for what that camp is and what those campaigns will look like. And if we have to paint every single candidate into a corner on this, that’s what we have to do.

But it’s really essential that the left, the progressives who are winning, while we have the wind at our backs, that we’re setting the agenda. And it has to be an agenda that centers working-class people, whether you live in New York or Nevada or if you live in Rafah, we have to be centering human life. We have to be centering the idea that these big corporations, these billionaires, our first trillionaire, are not friends of the working class. We have to take them on.

If these Democrats don’t understand that they’re going to lose this election again – we just don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for candidates to be mealy-mouthed about which side they’re on. It’s really straightforward. I’m committed to organizing as much as I can within the body, outside of the body, to make sure that this is the political program that we’re coming to 2028 with. And I won’t be backing a candidate if they are not part of that program.

BT: As socialist candidates are winning these Democratic primaries, over July 4th weekend, Trump basically turned America’s 250th birthday into a red scare. He warned of a communist menace that he calls a greater threat than 9/11. And he described the left as a cancer that needs to be cut out. You have Democrats like John Fetterman having echoed some of that rhetoric, claiming that Democrats are drifting firmly into communism. The Trump administration has already been attacking organizing and basically any speech to its left in really scary ways. How dangerous is this moment and what should the Democratic party be doing about it?

CV: I think it’s a really dangerous moment for honestly the entire working class. Trump, James Carville, John Fetterman, so many people are saying things like we’re this evil communist wave of people, we’re more dangerous than XYZ. The thing that’s actually endangering the working class, not just here, but around the world are these massive multi-billion dollar corporations. It’s the profound corporate greed of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s the union busting that’s happening, whether you work at Starbucks or Amazon or Walmart, this is the thing that is profoundly dangerous right now.

When I talk about how we don’t have time, I’m talking about the many different crises that we’re facing. Not just an affordability crisis, not just the forever wars, but climate change. We just endured 100-degree weather here in New York City for the past few days. There’s a huge heat wave in France that killed so many people. We’re not ready to face this. This is the profound crisis that is facing our planet right now. Republicans and Democrats want to point to the left as something that people should be frightened of. But we’re putting forward a program in which working-class people’s lives are centered. In which war profiteers don’t get to make billions of dollars displacing people and murdering people abroad. We’re talking about housing as a human right, healthcare as a human right, public education, public transit, a federal jobs guarantee, a 4-day work week. We’re talking about the good life for working-class people. And the Trump administration wants to do this divide-and-conquer rhetoric where they try and make us to be the bad guys or really scary, but the truth is they’re frightened because we’re winning.

We’re winning these elections, but we’re also winning over the working class right now. They should continue to be afraid. I’m glad they’re afraid. And we’ll keep organizing until we win the world we deserve.

BT: Part of your platform is taking a stand against imperialism. You mention Puerto Rican self-determination and condemn the murders by this administration in the Caribbean. You’ve called the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro illegal. You oppose the US blockade on Cuba. Can you talk more about your approach to Latin America and the Caribbean? We’ve seen figures with these politics be pressured to condemn some of these world leaders as dictators, which distracts from the primary issue that we are sanctioning and attacking these countries.

CV: I think people try to paint us into a corner on these issues but it’s very simple. We’re talking about the working class of the world. And the working class of Venezuela and Cuba, of Puerto Rico, deserve self-determination. They deserve a good life. They deserve a planet that is habitable. And we have so much more in common with them than we do with the billionaires who are trying to privatize Puerto Rico. The billionaires who are insisting on sanctioning Venezuela. This is really straightforward. And I’m going to stand with working-class people no matter where they live. I think it’s really important that we are electing candidates, we’re electing members of Congress in the belly of the beast who understand and grapple with the United States’ long history of empire and colonialism, of violent extraction, of coups, of forever wars, and takes that history really seriously because it’s here in our present.

I talked about this a little bit on the campaign, but this is really personal to me. I’m Native American. I’m Mexican-American. My family’s history was shaped by all of those same forces. We have so much more in common with each other than we do with the billionaires who are oppressing us. Until we really foreground that fact and understand this history, we can’t do anything to change it. I think that’s a really important perspective and I’m glad we’re electing people to Congress now who will grapple with that and will take it seriously and will not fall into these right-wing talking points that get us maybe out of the media cycle, but that don’t tell truth to power and don’t try to address the real root causes of displacement, immigration, mass poverty, and starvation that the United States has had a real hand in inflicting for over 250 years.

BT: You mentioned climate change earlier as the most urgent issue. Your platform calls for de-escalating the US cold war posture towards China and reducing US military bases. All of this in the context of climate change. What does this mean in practice as the Pentagon continues to signal that the coming war with China is the next most important event?

CV: I think there are talking heads and politicos who have a real vested interest in trying to foment a cold war, maybe even a hot war. I don’t think that the working class wins in either scenario. We have to be really focused on the things that are actually threats to humankind right now. Climate change, the possibility of future pandemics, and what that will require is real true global cooperation and solidarity and being a good neighbor. You know, the United States should be a good neighbor to the rest of the world. We have again had this long history of extraction and violence, colonialism. We can turn a page on that. We can draw down our military presence around the world. We can show that we want to be a good neighbor. In doing so, not only are we advancing, we’re moving the ball on climate change. We’re building relationships that will help really build democracy around the world. We’ll also be bringing the resources back to our communities that we so desperately need. We need hospitals and education. We need good union jobs. We need to be building climate resiliency here in the United States. All of that takes money and right now we’re just pouring it into bases around the world that have no purpose anymore. I think we need to be signaling to the rest of the world that we want to be cooperative and we want to join hands in this moment when there are true existential threats to this planet.

*This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Rania Khalek , July 13, 2026

From BT News via This RSS Feed.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been bandied about as a potential “socialist” candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 2028 Presidential race. She is a member of our own organization, Democratic Socialists of America, and her positions are widely seen as representative of our own in the eyes of many. Many of our comrades, for whatever reason, seem adamant that she enter the contest in 2028, and we commit time and resources to her run. This is a very bad idea for a myriad of reasons.

First, AOC is not a socialist. She is a social democrat. A socialist, in the Marxist sense, is one who fights for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the overthrow of the ruling class. In essence, a socialist puts the working class, the proletariat, in the driver’s seat, and does not see co-governance with the bourgeoisie as an ideal. This is not a purity test, this is the ABCs of Marxism. Without a firm foundation in Marxism, there is no socialism, no socialist party, no anything. To turn away from this foundation is to vulgarize and throw away centuries of class struggle and theoretical understanding purchased with the blood of millions of workers at home and abroad. AOC has identified her idea of socialism as a strong welfare state, akin to European monarchies such as Norway, Denmark, and the UK. Socialism deals with the question of power, class power, not individual power. Communists center our organizing around the struggle of power, in which our class must come out victorious. Failure to recognize this leads to opportunism and the continued march of imperialism across the world. It is a bourgeois habit to see power for celebrity politicians as being power for our class. Does AOC serve the people and our organization, or does she serve herself? If we endorse and work for her, will it be for the proletariat, the global proletariat, or will it be for the aggrandizement of a politician and a handful of connected people on her staff and in her circle? Is this proletarian politics? No.

Secondly, American imperialism will never let an actual socialist manage its affairs. In this country, real socialists, usually Black, do not get invitations to conferences in Munich, or the Met Gala, they get driven into exile, imprisoned, railroaded, driven insane, and shot dead. Imperialism is masterful when it comes to capturing energy and channeling it back towards dead ends, and centrists are already circling like vultures. The consequence of a few primary defeats will most likely be a call to endorse Gavin Newsom or whatever other ghoul rears their head for the nomination, in exchange for a trifling cabinet seat. This will not benefit DSA, it will embarrass us in front of the masses, and will serve to carry us down the road of right opportunism, when we need to be standing in front of the movement. Running a candidate, seriously, for the head of the US empire, as a Democrat, is a recipe for confusion and hypocrisy. Our task is to dismantle this empire, not seek to put one of our members at the head of it. America will never cease to manufacture death, it will never cease to exist on stolen land, it will never cease to steal and commit every type of crime the world over. Failure to understand this is failure to understand America, failure to understand America means that you are not a political actor, you are simply a rudderless boat tossed and turned on an ocean of blood.

Thirdly, continued waffling on Palestine. DSA should not make a habit of rewarding bad behavior with labor and endorsements. After announcing, to great fanfare, at a forum the other day that she intended to rectify her previous positions which attracted criticism, she went on to declare that she sees Israel as an ally and vomited up more soft Zionist slop. Israel still has the right to an Iron Dome, and to exist, it should just pay for it itself! Palestine is the compass, the North Star, not a “side issue” about which you can lie to the people to extract an endorsement. Instead of humbly accepting criticism from comrades in the organization that she continues to demand labor and endorsement from, and actually doing better, she habitually lashes out at comrades who seek to hold her accountable. This is the behavior of bourgeois politicians, not a people’s tribune.

In short, no, we should not endorse AOC for either Congress or a hypothetical run for President. Raise up proletarian politics and abandon mimicking the bourgeoisie with a socialist veneer. Cast away opportunist illusions, prepare for struggle.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63950

Zohran Mamdani celebrates with congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier during an election night watch party. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

It was the second week of May, and the Darializa Avila Chevalier campaign had just experienced its fourth consecutive session of extreme flaking (90%+) for our phonebanks. RSVPs across the board were “stable” in a key time we needed growth to meet our goals. Yet, it was in these moments—looking at a 20k list and wondering how we were going to call them all in 30 days—that one realizes the value a single person can bring, and the amount of effort required to get that person to take action and then come back to do it again.

Darializa was an exciting candidate in many ways and had firm political principles which extended beyond her recent DSA membership. Both in and beyond her endorsement forum people recounted their stories of her as a Zohran campaign field lead, and how she made them feel motivated to come back. She was an organizer during the Columbia University encampments, and months before her congressional candidacy she was using her position to advocate on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil.

NYC-DSA committed to 12 races, including Darializa and Claire Valdez’s congressional campaigns. This was ultimately a bet on whether the chapter could immediately tap into the base that propelled Zohran’s mayoral primary victory. Right up until election day, there were many signs that this bet was wrong. Campaigns across the organization competed to meet goals and recruit new volunteers. During Get Out the Vote, many leads reported being outnumbered by their opposition.

NYC-DSA leadership’s unilateral decision to block national DSA endorsement for the slate—which would have brought additional fundraising and volunteers from outside the city—compounded that struggle. DSA is not one chapter alone, but a national organization of over 120,000 members. This lack of engagement effectively meant that the other 105,000 DSA members—which had already turned out in the hundreds for Melat Kiros, Oliver Larkin and Chris Rabb—could not be directed to aid campaigns struggling just to get people on the phones.

Of course, 11 of our 12 races ended in victory, though not through “typical” means. Our membership had doubled in size, but our slate had also quadrupled since 2024 (when we ran 3 races for NY Assembly and lost 2 of them). Ultimately, I believe that we benefited from the broader pro-Palestine, leftward drift in national public opinion that delivered victory to Chris Rabb, Janeese Lewis George, and Melat Kiros.

As the coordinator for both Phonebanks and Volunteer Recruitment, I spent months putting together calls to plug people into our events, canvasses, and phonebanks. I also developed the weekly recruitment and phonebank scripts, organized and created lists, trained and onboarded leads, and recruited new members to the team to make more calls. Throughout the campaign about 20-25% of RSVPs were directly linked to recruitment calls, made while over the phone. Many more signed up via the text we sent out to missed calls.

Over time, we saw that people began to navigate to our website and RSVP on their own, which became common late in the campaign. As this paradoxically lowered the RSVP rate of our ongoing phonebanks, we shifted toward holding “power hours,” where we gathered everyone together to call a mega-list of non-RSVPs and push them toward a big canvass or event. These were successful, but also didn’t expand the volunteer list.

On May 28, Zohran Mamdani endorsed Darializa on an evening show of MS NOW. This was a breath of fresh air for the campaign. Even as previous polls showed NY-13 had no love for Adriano Espaillat, many more did not know Darializa. Zohran’s endorsement helped fill in the gaps in terms of not having enough people to make our case to the voters. The endorsement by the honeymooned Mayor also provided a sense of credibility and momentum to Darializa, who had never held a local office before her congressional run. Zohran also did a number of videos and appearances as well as joint canvasses and phonebanks.

Because of this we were able to recruit and mobilize growing numbers of volunteers to specific actions. Endorsements from other organizations, and their volunteer commitments, started rolling in. New York Progressive Action Network, which endorsed Espaillat as the “progressive” candidate early in the primary, switched their endorsement to Darializa over a lack of commitments on Palestine. In just a few days, there were dozens of phone bankers clearing calls by the thousands, and the canvassers to knock hundreds more doors per shift.

Darializa ultimately beat Espaillat by a 5-point margin. She won AD-70, the district where we ran Conrad Blackburn for State Assembly, by 15 points; the most of any Assembly District inside NY-13. While this paints a positive picture for another Conrad run in 2028, his loss underlines the importance of unified endorsements across the DSA slate. If Zohran had endorsed and included Conrad in the many Zohran-Darializa events he was iced out of, there’s good reason to believe that our slate would have had a clean sweep.

I write all of this in the context of several major events within NYC-DSA: the Anti-War Working Group (AWWG) OC elections, and the AOC re-endorsement earlier this Spring. In each case, Marxist Unity Group in NYC has had to fight against the anti-democratic tendencies demonstrated by our chapter leadership, in particular the sectarian belief that DSA would be better if political opponents were out of the organization.

Within AWWG, a few dozen abstainers led NYC-DSA’s Steering Committee to invalidate the Working Group’s elections and run an unprecedented citywide campaign to install their own approved candidates. Some Steering members even floated the word “decharter,” despite the fact that AWWG has been among the most active and fastest growing working groups in NYC-DSA.

During the re-endorsement discussion on AOC, I recall one alternate for the Citywide Leadership Committee saying: “I would rather 10,000 members quit over AOC being endorsed if it means there’s a chance she signs an arm shipment executive order.” This statement swirled around my mind as I scrapped for volunteers. If I and many of my comrades are purged, ejected through anti-democratic maneuvers, or were part of this hypothetical 10k that quit overnight, how many would be left to push our campaigns? The impact of just 1 canvasser often means 70 doors and 7 conversations each week. But as the AWWG episode demonstrated, the contributions of each member comes second to their perceived political value.

We need people, but what keeps them around? What kept dozens of DSA members burning the midnight oil as the work increased and volunteers plateaued on campaigns across the city?

The first is a feeling of ownership, which is dramatically increased through member democracy. When we are able to debate and discuss, the result is a culmination of efforts. When we endorse someone or launch a campaign, we should want to see these things through. Democracy is the lynchpin of our political project, and gives members control of the fate of DSA. A snapshot of this is found in the high attendance of endorsement meetings—the only major decision made by and large by members themselves—when compared to other meetings in the chapter.

The second factor is having candidates that embrace the platform and vision of DSA. We have to fight each and every election cycle to ensure that candidates we endorse identify as Democratic Socialists and embrace DSA’s platform. We also require that they endorse the slate. These commitments tie the fate of our candidates’ campaigns, and DSA as a political organization, together.

The Darializa campaign was an opportunity to elect a Socialist, and a seasoned organizer from the Palestinian Liberation movement, to national office. Yet it is not enough to simply rest on our laurels and assume that Darializa in office will represent an extension of our politics. Elected officials, especially within the halls of Congress, face incredible pressure from the Democratic Party to capitulate on their principles, including both threats and incentives: denial/revocation of committee seats, rejection of district funding, and obstruction of getting bills out of committee or amendments passed.

The only cure, the only way to ensure that DSA representatives continue to represent DSA, is through coordination with national DSA, the local chapter, and the rest of the DSA bloc in office, alongside the freedom of criticism. Our membership, the force that drove these candidates to victory, must also be the force that ensures they remain representatives of our program, willing and able to organize the working class into the Socialist movement. Fundamentally this means members should have a sense of how these relationships are going, which will allow them to apply support or pressure with the strength of 120,000 as opposed to this or that well-connected individual leader.

The success of our slate should serve as a reminder that these campaigns are ours; they belong to the DSA members that made them. We don’t just need people to run and staff campaigns. We need members in control who are ready to implement our political will and use the socialists we’ve elected to office as an extension of that will.

Unified endorsements, principles, and standards have all proved crucial to Darializa’s victory, and by extension, the victory of DSA. Socialism and democracy are the defining lines between us and the standard Democratic Party apparatus. Socialism commits us to the liberation of the working class, as opposed to the bribery of the capitalists. And through Democracy, where DSA members organize around collectively agreed-upon principles and are given a window into the rationale behind the actions of our elected officials, we create the opportunity for the working class to mold their own destiny through the Party; an opportunity which doesn’t exist anywhere else.

From The Socialist Tribune via This RSS Feed.

Analyzing the impact of democratic socialism on current political discourse and why some voters feel frustrated by elected officials.

https://xcancel.com/kwangress/status/2076234480059404496

Edit: The clip is from Cheney dying in November 2025

https://x.com/OGBlackRedGuard/status/2076003096006668606

The new rule, which will start on 1 October, promises hefty fines and aggressive enforcement for violators. Companies that do not provide a simple way to cancel could pay $525 per user subscription, back fees and additional fines.

The city is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”, according to a release shared with the Guardian.

New York would be the first US city to implement such a ban.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63702

Last month’s midterms were an earthquake for the Democratic establishment. Across the country, progressive challengers sailed to victory calling for abolishing ICE, reducing inequality, and addressing the crisis of affordability.

But one message rang particularly clear: After years of pro-Palestine mobilizations, U.S. voters are rejecting Zionist politicians.

Nowhere has this been clearer than in New York City, a Zionist stronghold and the epicenter of mobilizations for Gaza. Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier were outspoken about their support for Palestine, openly calling Israel’s assault a genocide. They defeated establishment Democratic opponents who in some cases received hundreds of thousands of dollars from pro-Israeli PACs. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, too, came to power in part due to his stance on Israel.

Pro-Palestine candidates are also racking up wins elsewhere. Melat Kiros (Colorado) and Chris Rabb (Pennsylvania) are poised to win House seats in November, while Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed may win the Democratic nomination for Senate.

In other words, unconditional support for Israel is becoming toxic for Democratic Party politicians. Radicalized by almost three years of livestreamed genocide in Gaza and increasing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, for many young people in particular, Palestine has become a central issue.

But the movement for Palestine can’t let up — especially since the Democrats see which way the wind is blowing.

Don’t Let the Democrats Fool You

The movement against the genocide has forced the Democratic Party to reckon with how their support for Israel is losing voters. In April, 40 Democratic senators supported a Bernie Sanders-backed resolution to cut weapons sales to the Zionist state. (The resolution failed.) More and more politicians are rejecting money from AIPAC, and some are going so far as to describe Israel’s actions as a genocide. A few days ago in Tel Aviv, Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Obama administration chief of staff, said “unconditional support” for Israel must end.

So, are Democrats becoming anti-Zionist? Not so fast!

While some may be softening their rhetoric and eschewing the most objectionable elements of the pro-Israel lobby (e.g., AIPAC), these actions don’t reflect a change of heart or meaningful policy change. Rather, they’re attempts to de-fang the movement for Palestine and channel disgruntled voters back into the Democratic Party.

Emanuel, who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, is a case in point. Like many other Democrats, he pins the blame squarely on Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than on the Zionist project. If Israel is engaging in something resembling mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing, the reasoning goes, it’s only because of the Israeli prime minister’s reckless “military-only approach,” and his “unwilling[ness] to plan for a day after in Gaza.” And Emanuel’s concern comes from a place of wanting stability and support for Israel, not from any support for Palestinian self-determination.

For evidence that Emanuel is not proposing a break with Israel, look no further than who applauded his speech: lifelong Zionist Hillary Clinton, and Democratic Majority For Israel, who said his words were “grounded in a sincere commitment to Israel’s future security and prosperity.”

In other words, to the extent that Democrats have harsh words for Israeli politicians, advocate sanctions on West Bank settlers, and call for an end to unconditional aid to Israel — with that last proposal supported by Netanyahu himself — it’s only in service of recouping the country’s lost support among Americans and the international community.

Reject the Whole Democratic Party

But why are establishment Democrats so invested in maintaining support for Israel, if their base is overwhelmingly voting them out of office and turning against Zionism?

The U.S. regime’s Zionism isn’t about any one individual’s beliefs, or even about AIPAC funding. Rather, the United States supports Israel because it acts as U.S. imperialism’s guard dog in the Middle East. The Zionist state, armed to the teeth, helps wage Washington’s wars in the region, including most recently the war against Iran. This is why U.S. policy toward Israel does not fundamentally change, whether under Obama, Trump, or Biden. And it’s why the Democrats will never fully abandon Zionism, even if they sand down its roughest edges.

This is just one reason why leftists cannot support the Democrats, and why we call for organizations like DSA to break with the Democratic Party. Lander, Valdez, and Chevalier’s open embrace of the Palestine movement is progressive, and their victories are an auspicious sign of the changing tides in U.S. society. But running as Democrats helps channel this progressive energy into — and rehabilitate — an imperialist, Zionist Party. And once in Congress, they will face enormous pressure to toe the Democratic Party line on Israel.

We have the power to keep the movement for Palestine moving, and to fight for liberation for all Palestinians. After all, it’s our protests, encampments, and mobilizations that have forced a reckoning among Democrats and even caused the labor movement, including the UAW, to take up the Palestinian cause. And we can go much further. Let’s keep it up — in the streets and in our workplaces!

The post Israel Is Becoming Toxic for Democrats. Let’s Keep It Up! appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63725

In a move proponents say will save constituents up to $162.5 million annually, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other New York City officials on Friday unveiled a "click-to-cancel" rule aimed at ensuring people can end online subscriptions as easily as they start them.

Days after entering office in January, Mamdani signed a pair of executive orders, "Combating Hidden Junk Fees" and "Fighting Subscription Tricks and Traps"—his 9th and 10th mayoral edicts—to protect consumers and make it easier "for New Yorkers to know the real price of what they are buying and to stop paying for the services they no longer want."

Following up on the orders, Mamdani and New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel A.A. Levine proposed a rule "requiring transparent, all-in pricing that bans hidden junk fees, alongside a final 'click to cancel' rule that guarantees consumers can cancel subscriptions as easily as they sign up for them."

The landmark proposal is part of Mamdani's affordability agenda, which includes the rent freeze and universal childcare programs he's partially enacted, as well as the free city buses, municipal grocery stores, affordable housing expansion, and redistributive taxation his administration is pursuing.

“For years, companies have built their business model around making it harder for working people to hold onto their money,” Mamdani said during a Friday press conference at Asser Levy Recreational Center in Manhattan's Kips Bay neighborhood. “Whether it’s hidden fees that suddenly appear at checkout or subscriptions that take one click to sign up for and a dozen steps to cancel, the result is the same: Working people pay more while corporations profit. That ends now. If you can sign up with one click, you can cancel with one click.”

Levine said that “these two rules will ensure that the price you see is the price you pay—no hidden charges, no endless subscription services, and no advantages for businesses that cheat. Requiring companies to compete on price will lower costs for all New Yorkers and level the playing field for honest businesses.”

Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su spoke at the press conference, saying, “Every dollar a family loses to a hidden fee or a subscription they couldn’t cancel is a dollar stolen from them, a dollar that could have gone toward rent, groceries, childcare, or anything else."

"And just as important, the hours spent trying to cancel a subscription or membership you no longer want is stolen time," the former acting US labor secretary added. “That’s what affordability means in practice—closing the small holes that drain people’s paychecks and their time month after month. These rules put New Yorkers back in control.”

Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan—who implemented a similar rule while serving in the role during the Biden administration before it was killed after President Donald Trump returned to office—also spoke Friday, arguing that “nobody should be trapped in subscriptions they can’t escape or stuck paying junk fees they can’t avoid."

“These predatory tactics cheat people out of billions of dollars each year," she added. "With today’s rules, Commissioner Levine and DCWP are cracking down on corporate ripoffs, protecting families and honest businesses alike. The Mamdani administration’s work to tackle the affordability crisis and promote economic fairness continues to set a new standard nationwide, modeling effective governance and a relentless focus on using all of the city’s levers to improve life for New Yorkers.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63684

Members of the Democratic Socialists of America circulated a letter calling on candidates and elected officials to refuse to work with the consultants who handled Graham Platner’s campaign, according to screenshots of the letter shared with The Intercept.

“We, the undersigned, call on DSA candidates and elected officials to no longer contract or work with Morris Katz or Fight Agency, his political consulting firm,” the letter reads.

Katz is not a member of DSA.

The letter also noted consultants at the agency like Rebecca Katz, who is not related to Morris, were also behind the campaign of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and said they continued to advise him even after he made a hard-right turn after entering the Senate.

Two sources with knowledge of the letter confirmed its authenticity.

“Morris Katz is one of the chief parties responsible for the catastrophic campaign of scandal-ridden Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner,” the letter says. “Billed as a top adviser to the campaign, Katz helped recruit Platner and supercharged his candidacy with slick video production, friendly media placements, and political connections.”

The letter circulated as pundits and observers pinned the failures of Platner’s campaign on Katz and others at Fight Agency, including Rebecca Katz. (A spokesperson for DSA’s national organization said they had not seen the letter. Neither Morris Katz nor Rebecca Katz immediately responded to requests for comment.)

[

Related

The People Who Stood By Graham Platner — Until He Was Accused ofremoved](https://theintercept.com/2026/07/07/graham-platner-maine-senate-democrats-midterms/)

The agency is also currently working with Maine Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is not affiliated with DSA. The Democratic socialist group has reportedly shifted resources to Michigan, where DSA is backing congressional candidate Donavan McKinney.

Katz’s Timeline

In a statement posted to X on Thursday, Katz said, “As soon as the team became aware of theremoved allegations against Graham Platner we advised he suspend his candidacy, and in the following days worked to wind down the campaign.”

CNN said the Platner campaign first denied the allegation in response to questions after an interview with the accuser, Jenny Racicot, whose allegation was first reported by Politico. The DSA members’ letter disputed Katz’s account.

“Even as the scandals mounted, Katz continued to put the full weight of his consultancy behind Platner’s candidacy.”

“According to reports, Katz and others on the campaign were aware of at least some of Platner’s disturbing history,” the letter reads. “Yet even as the scandals mounted, Katz continued to put the full weight of his consultancy behind Platner’s candidacy, foreclosing the possibility of replacing Platner with another candidate before the primary election. Katz also reportedly threatened a former Platner staffer for helping verify allegations and controversies surrounding the campaign.”

The alleged threat, first reported by the Bangor Daily News, targeted a Platner campaign staffer who had publicized an earlier sexting scandal and later left the campaign over Platner’s controversial Reddit posts.

Progressive Defenders

Some Democrats and progressives have pushed back against the criticisms of Katz and Fight Agency, arguing that Democratic consultants who worked with candidates they knew faced credible allegations of sexual misconduct, like former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. — or even former President Joe Biden — did not face the same kind of blacklisting.

“Did we go knives out for Eric Swalwell’s consultants?” said one progressive strategist who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.

Some of the moderate Democratic critics of Katz’s role in the Platner campaign worked for politicians with their own scandal-ridden histories.

“The political world is chock full of useless consultants. Nobody cares when they fuck up a race.”

“This is not a problem unique to the left,” the strategist said. “This comes down to holding candidates accountable, and I think it’s no surprise that the same consultants who have laundered even worse politicians through the Democratic Party are the loudest ones right now.”

“The political world is chock full of useless consultants. Nobody cares when they fuck up a race,” said another progressive strategist. “The knives are out for Morris and Fight, because they’re actually good at what they do.”

Fellow Traveler?

Fight Agency’s most notable work for a DSA candidate was creating ads for Zohran Mamdani’s successful run to become the mayor of New York City, a race where Katz served as a political adviser. Katz also worked on the campaign of state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, the DSA candidate who won a New York Democratic primary for a House seat last month.

In the wake of Platner’s downfall, the letter says, liberals and conservatives have tried to claim that Katz represents the left as a whole.

[

Related

There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist.](https://theintercept.com/2026/07/06/dsa-democrats-midterms-wisconsin-colorado-new-york/)

The letter said, “Katz is linked in the mind of the media and political class to NYC-DSA,” the local chapter that boosted winning, Mamdani-backed congressional primary candidates like Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier.

The letter noted that such claims were bad for DSA, its candidates, and its movement.

“Men like Platner must not represent the American Left, and those like Katz who push such candidates should have no role in our movement.”

“Our movement must be both ethical and strategic,” it says. “Katz has not shown an ability to be either. Any movement for democratic socialism in this country must be rooted in feminism and the multiracial working class, not archaic ideas of what constitutes a ‘worker.’ Allowing Katz an outsized influence in our movement undermines these ideals.”

The post DSA Members Urge Campaigns to Ditch Platner Consultant Who Advised Mamdani appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

So I have some inside experience with Maine's Democratic party from many years ago, I know I deserve a few decades of smashing rocks with a pickax in the gulag for this. Basically the lowest scum you can imagine, Republicans who (for the moment) tolerate the existence of gay (but not trans) people, are going to get together somewhere in the state and very transparently choose another smarmy milquetoast genocidal pedophileremoved to lose to Susan Collins in November. Regular voters will not be involved in this decision. The people at the caucus are going to be the exact same people whom I personally witnessed, with my very own eyes, stealing state delegates from Bernie at Maine's 2020 Democratic presidential caucus. I had heard about the Democrats pulling this shit before but, typical seppo that I am, I had to see it with my own eyes happening right in front of me before I would believe it. That was actually the last nail in the coffin of electoralism in the USA for me, since it happened many times to Bernie and the guy did not care.

Troy Jackson is seemingly the "progressive" (progressing toward what exactly?) frontrunner. Having just lost the primary for governor (coming in third place) after trying to ride Platner's coattails to victory, Jackson is now pretending to give a damn about the genocide in Palestine (Zionist source) despite having never mentioned this issue during his lengthy state senatorial career of sending state taxes to Bath Ironworks,* an arms manufacturer for the navy and the 3rd biggest employer in the state, so that the company's owner, General Dynamics, can build bombs that incinerate children around the world. The Democrats have had a trifecta in the state government for over seven years now and have virtually nothing to show for it save for a means-tested paid (and unpaid) family medical leave act which they just passed a few months ago, and which will be revoked the instant the Republicans return to power. The state has ranked-choice voting but not for governor or legislative races because they want to lose, so it could easily happen. The klan was huge in Maine in the 1920s, and the state even had some klan governors; people only started taking down their Platner signs a few days ago.

There are other candidates running to take Platner's place, but so far as I can tell, none of them stand for anything except the usual total fucking bullshit. Jackson does at least occasionally seem to mention policy sometimes. He's a former logger and union leader endorsed by none other than the AFL-CIA!

I know it's a bit of a stretch, but it does make me wonder if Platner was set up as a patsy to lose and clear the way for "the establishment" to keep either Collins or Collins-Lite in power. Recall that Biden had eight women accuse him of improper sexual conduct /removed, and no one of any prominence ever demanded that he drop out of the 2020 presidential race. I don't really know, I'm just throwing that out there; running Platner essentially meant that no other "progressives" were going to campaign for Collins's seat (except, apparently, for Jackson, who is a literal puppet of the military industrial complex). Platner comes from a wealthy family (with wikipedia pages) and his stepbrother Seth Frantzman has been photographed standing beside the president of "israel." I believe Platner was polling about 12 points ahead of Collins until this latestremoved allegation, which is pretty wild compared to the performance of the other Democrats who have tried to unseat her (Gideon lost by 9 points last time, Shenna Bellows lost by 30 points before that, and Bellows is now throwing in her hat to try again!).

*sources for this are paywalled but the subsidy was passed in either 2018 or 2019 when Jackson was president of the Maine State Senate; BIW celebrated receiving the subsidy by firing a bunch of workers (the state has given them about $200 million since 1997). Some years later, when Sara Gideon was busy losing the previous race to replace Susan Collins, she and Jackson pretended to have issues with the subsidy but didn't stop sending it to them. After losing the race by nine points, Gideon had almost fifteen million dollars leftover in her campaign's war chest, which, five, six years later, she still hasn't fully spent. Her campaign volunteers also weren't compensated 😀

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63495

PITTSBURGH, PA. - Yesterday, Payday Report learned that Congresswoman Summer Lee barred Moraff from her 2022 congressional campaign after receiving at least three complaints of sexual misconduct against Moraff.

Now, Moraff, who recruited Graham Platner to run for Senate in Maine, is at the center of a massive controversy after he admitted that he spent only a few days vetting Platner, who just withdrew from the Senate race after he was accused ofremoved.

Given the fact that both Congresswoman Lee and Justice Democrats stop working with Moraff following these accusations, questions have been raised about why so many on the left trusted him to give a thorough vetting and assessment of Platner.

“Birds of a feather flock together and Moraff and Platner were predators,” said one woman, who says she was sexually harassed while working to elect Congresswoman Lee.

The Toys “R’ Us Heir Who Broke the Costa Political Machine in Pittsburgh

Graham Platner’s guru and top strategist, Daniel Moraff, was the grandson of Seymour Ginsburg, the founder of Toys “R” Us and its first president. As the head of Toys “R” Us, Ginsburg was innovative, shaking up the toy market across the United States and helping make it one of the largest big-box toy stores of the 1990s.

His grandson, Daniel Moraff, likewise was an innovative force who shook up Pittsburgh politics. Moraff played a bold leadership role in beating the old Democratic machine in Western PA, electing a string of socialist magistrates and local elected officials.

In 2017, Moraff led efforts to recruit Summer Lee, then a local community organizer, to run for the State House from Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley. He then played an essential role in leading her campaign to defeat Paul Costa, a 20-year incumbent from a historic Democratic machine, whose family held four major elected offices, in a little less than one year.

However, by the end of 2022, Moraff was barred from participating in Lee’s historic run for Congress, in which she overcame $5 million in AIPAC spending to become the first Black woman elected to Congress from Western PA.

Payday Report has learned that Moraff was barred from Lee’s campaign following at least three complaints of sexual misconduct leveled against him, leading Lee to ban Moraff not just from his previous leadership positions in her campaign, but from even attending campaign events for Lee.

In the winter of 2022, consultants working for the group Justice Democrats, which was founded by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and was assisting Lee, told activists, staff, and volunteers to stop communicating with Moraff, despite his repeated attempts to contact them to influence Lee’s campaign.

Given that both Lee and Justice Democrats were refusing to work with Moraff after multiple sexual misconduct claims against him, questions are raised about what people in the movement should have done to address these

Platner Revived Moraff’s Career after Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Sanders with Platner May in Orono, Maine. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Following Lee’s dismissal, Moraff struggled to find work as a political consultant. He instead focused his efforts on attending Yale Law School.

In 2024, Moraff and his partner Leanne Fan traveled out to Nebraska to recruit Kellogg strike leader Dan Osborn to run for Senate as an independent. Riding the popular support he received as a strike leader, Osborne exceeded expectations in his race against two-term Republican Senator Deb Fischer, losing to her by a mere 6%.

Moraff, with his career revived, sought to build on his brand as a consultant by recruiting other unusual politicians who could appeal to white working class voters.

In the summer of 2025, Moraff was sent a video of Platner advocating against an industrial salmon fishing farm, where Platner lived in Frenchman Bay, Maine, a wealthy seaside community outside of Bar Harbor.

A marine combat veteran from an elite wealthy Maine family, Platner served four tours in combat overseas. After returning from combat, he attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., while working as a bartender at one of Capitol Hill’s most infamous dive bars, the Tune Inn.

Drop Site News founder Ryan Grim, who has drawn criticism for trying to debunk well-documentedremoved claims against Platner, admitted to first meeting Platner when Platner was a bartender at the Tune Inn.

On a "Breaking Points broadcast with his co-host Krystal Ball, Grim blushed about how Platner had been his bartender for many years at the Tune Inn.

"You would be maybe the second bartender serving in Congress, but you would be the first one that I knew when he was a bartender," said Grim as Platner smiled and laughed. "You worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights at - I was often there every Sunday night.

"I was basically there every Sunday and some Friday and Saturdays," Grim told his millions of viewers as Platner broke up a big smile.

In July of 2025, Moraff and his partner, Leanne Fan, traveled to meet with Platner and recruit him to run for the US Senate against Susan Collins. After a week of conversations, Moraff persuaded Platner that he could receive the backing of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and raise the millions needed to win the Senate seat.

A month later, on August 19, 2025, Platner launched his campaign for Senate.

“Everywhere I’ve gone it seems like the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians profiting off destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty, and crushing the middle class,” Platner said in his announcement video.

Less than two weeks later, Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Platner at a Labor Day rally in Portland on September 1, 2025, emailing millions of followers across the country, encouraging them to give to Platner

“We need senators in Washington who are prepared to take on the billionaire class and fight for working people,” said Sanders at Portland’s last Labor Day rally. “That is why I am proud to endorse Graham Platner for U.S. Senate."

Within a month, Platner had raised $3.2 million with Sanders’s backing. While other left candidates were considering running for Senate, Sanders’s political and financial backing of Platner dissuaded serious challengers, guaranteeing Platner the left lane of the Democratic primary against Maine Governor Janet Mills, who had angered many labor unions and progressives in the state.

Many on the left began to scratch their heads about why Sanders would endorse Platner so quickly given the combat veteran’s thin public record. However, Moraff assured Sanders that he had vetted Platner and thought he was solid. Given Moraff’s prior relationships with Summer Lee and Dan Osborne, operatives in Sanders’s political network decided to back Platner.

“Without Moraff’s assurance, there is no way Bernie backs Platner,” said one longtime political operative, who worked with Bernie, and refused to be named publicly for fear of retaliation.

Platner’s Persona Unravels Under Media Scrutiny

Platner fishing in the Bar Harbor community of Sullivan, where he lives in Maine

Quickly, though, questions began to emerge about how much work Sanders and Moraff had done in vetting Platner.

While campaign videos distributed by the Sanders campaign described Platner as a working-class oyster farmer, this was far from the truth. Platner’s grandfather, Warren Platner, was a wealthy interior designer and architect who designed the iconic restaurant Windows of the World on top of the World Trade Center and the headquarters of the Ford Foundation.

His father was a wealthy attorney and his mother owned a high-end restaurant outside of Bar Harbor, Maine. His father gave him the money to buy a house and his mother bought his oysters for her high-end restaurant outside of the tourist haven of Arcadia National Park. Platner lived on a $60,000-a-year military pension and by all accounts did not struggle to pay bills.

Then, in October, photos of Platner drunk, stripped down to his underwear, and dancing at a family member’s wedding went public. The photos revealed that Platner had a tattoo on his chest that resembled the Totenkopf, the symbol of the SS.

Platner claimed that he got the tattoo in Croatia in 2007 while drunk with other members of his Marine unit.

Many Zionists used photos of him drunkenly exposing his tattoo to claim that he was a Nazi. However, many anti-Zionist Jews, including myself, pointed out that the skull and crossbones symbol resembled many such symbols regularly used in the punk rock world.

Deleted Reddit posts began to emerge with Platner making various racist and misogynistic statements. In one post, Platner even mocked a video of an Army soldier, Teddy Daniels, who was wounded and crying for help in Afghanistan in 2012.

The video of Daniels pleading for his life was widely mocked and had over 23 million views on YouTube. Many soldiers, especially Marines, including Platner, mocked Daniels, a recent recruit, for failing to follow proper procedures.

​"This video never gets old," joked Platner in a 2019 Reddit post. "Dumb motherfucker didn't deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible shit decision possible when it comes to small unit combat."

Platner apologized, telling people that his disturbing posts years earlier were the result of PTSD and heavy drinking.

“I got out of the Army in 2012. I had PTSD, I had depression. I had all of the things that come with serving in a war, in two wars that I eventually began to not believe in at all. It left me feeling very unmoored,” said Platner. “And I think, like a lot of people, I went on the internet to post stupid things and get in fights and find some form of community in some way. Some outlet for my feelings, for my rage, for my isolation. It wasn’t until I found the actual community that all went away.”

Still, polls showed Platner soaring to a landslide Democratic primary victory. His opponent, Maine Governor Janet Mills, even suspended campaigning as she struggled to gain support.

However, eleven days before the primary election, news reports began to emerge that Platner, just a few months after his marriage, had sexted with multiple women in 2023. Platner’s wife Amy Gertner quickly posted a video on social media, saying that she and Graham had worked through their issues.

Many were upset at the time about how the leaks were unfair since Platner’s wife Amy Gerter had told a former campaign staffer about their infidelity issues in confidence.

Then, on June 4th, The New York Times came forward with the story that he was previously abusive to an ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield. However, The New York Times admitted that they could not corroborate the story. Many dismissed it quickly since Lyndsey Fifield had a history of lying about Palestinian activists. She had also led a group that was accused of lying about the sexual assault accusers of Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings.

Five days later, Platner soared to a 72% victory in the Maine Democratic primary for Senate.

Many took his victory as a sign that Mainers were willing to look past Platner’s faults and focus on his politics.

removed Accusations Emerge Against Platner*

Jenny Racicot accused Platner ofremoved her on CNN.

Then, on July 6th, Politico publishedremoved accusations against Platner leveled by an ex-girfrlend, Jenny Racicot .

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Raciot told POLITICO. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

Quickly, many urged Platner to drop out of the race. Senator Bernie Sanders, his chief sponsor, called on him to drop out.

Quickly, many began to wonder why Bernie had cleared the left lane for Platner so quickly. Activists pointed the finger at Moraff for doing an expedited vetting of Platner. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Moraff admitted that he spent only a few days researching Platner before approving him.

The interview with Moraff sitting next to his partner Leanne Fan, laughing as they described how they saved thousands of dollars by doing a quick vet, was quickly mocked online.

“We're going to be led off a cliff by people doing ‘’what if JD Vance was in a Portlandia’ skit’ fuckass cosplay,” wrote the host of Executive Dysfunction podcast Amanda Nelson to her 350,000 followers on Threads.

In Pittsburgh, some activists began contacting Payday saying that it was no coincidence that Moraff would so quickly approve Platner without doing the type of deep background research needed for a candidate for that office.

Worse, many speculated that Moraff may have overlooked Platner’s record while vetting him given Moraff’s own record of sexual misconduct, which ultimately led Congresswoman Summer Lee to ban Moraff from participating in her campaign or attending her events in her first run for Congress in 2022.

Payday Report has learned that during Summer Lee’s 2022 campaign for Congress Lee received at least three sexual harassment complaints against Moraff. At the time, Moraff was attending Yale Law School, and the heir to the Toys “R” Us fortune was working on a pro bono basis on Lee’s campaign.

Due to his family wealth, Moraff did not need a job like most Pittsburgh activists, and arrived in the city in 2017 after working on several controversial campaigns in New York City. In 2016, Moraff managed the losing campaign of left-wing organizer Debbie Medina, who admitted on record to beating her son. She lost terribly.

Then, he moved out to Pittsburgh and managed the successful campaign of socialist Mik Pappas to be elected as magistrate in Pittsburgh’s East End. Following that success, he steered the election efforts of now-Congresswoman Summer Lee in her first election for State Representative, successfully defeating 20-year incumbent Paul Costa in Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley. He also helped to defeat Paul’s cousin Dom in a state representative election in the hipster neighborhoods of Pittsburgh’s East End.

As a workaholic and unconventional organizer, who had defeated one of Pittsburgh’s oldest family political machines to elect socialists, Moraff quickly became a rockstar.

“I had spent about a decade organizing in Pittsburgh before he came to town, and I never saw so much true movement of power in such a short time. Not even close,” said one female organizer, who said she later experienced Moraff yelling regularly at her and others for not living up to his expectations when working on Congresswoman Summer Lee’s first campaign for Congress in 2022.

Full disclosure, Summer Lee and I attended Woodland Hills High School together. She was a year younger than me, and we were mere acquaintances. I reached out to Congresswoman Lee for comment late in the day on Tuesday, but have not heard back from her yet.

However, the story is confirmed by seven well-respected activists who worked to elect Lee to Congress and supported Lee’s decision to ban Moraff from her campaign events back in 2022.

Congresswoman Summer Lee launches her campaign in October of 2021

During Lee’s first run for Congress in 2022, Moraff was attending Yale Law School and not formally employed on the campaign. However, he was calling in regularly, phone calls where Moraff would regularly yell at activists and staffers who had less experience working with Lee.

At one point on a conference call in the winter of 2022, when Moraff began berating a key staffer, Lee interrupted Moraff, telling him that if he continued to treat her staff in that manner, he would no longer be welcome to be involved in her campaign.

Around the same time, Lee’s campaign manager Annie Weinberg and consultants from Justice Democrats began weighing what to do about the multiple sexual harassment complaints that they had received against Moraff over the years. They began receiving multiple complaints that Moraff was sexually aggressive with volunteers and activists on the campaign.

Summer Lee’s campaign received complaints from at least three women, and he was dismissed. One woman, who complained about his sexual misconduct while organizing in Pittsburgh, said she wasn’t surprised that Moraff would have championed someone like Platner.

“None of his current embroilment really surprises me because he doesn’t have boundaries with women, nor much of an ethical code,” said one woman.

Still, despite many of these Pittsburgh activists complaining about Moraff’s conduct, they also expressed respect and a desire that he fix his ways, as one woman, who found him abusive, asked that I put in this story.

“[Moraff] as a person didn't make a good impression,’ said one activist, who worked for Lee.  “But the work and movement he ignited was incredibly valuable and he was instrumental in that. Honestly I still think he transformed Pittsburgh politics in a way that was sorely needed and wasn't happening otherwise,” she wrote in a message. “It ignited something that was needed. An important igniter, not the person (that) needed (to) continue the work imho.”

Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter, who founded Payday Report with an NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing at POLITICO. The New York Times once described him as an "abrasive gadfly” for taking on sexual assault in the labor movement.

If you have information about sexual misconduct in Pittsburgh or the movement, you can contact us anonymously on Signal at 412 613 8423 or email melk@paydayreport.com.

For sexual assault survivors looking for assistance, the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800- 656-4673 is run by theremoved*, Abuse, Incest National Network, and* they offer a list of resources online. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania offers guidance and resources for those in an unsafe and inequitable workplace and who wish to file a complaint with the PHRC or U.S. EEOC.

From Payday Report via This RSS Feed.

Daniel Moraff and his fiance Leeane Fan.

Moraff was a longtime DSA organizer. Now, he and Fan run a consultancy.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/63112

Graham Platner's campaign manager on Wednesday accused the Maine Democratic Party of coordinating with national Democrats "behind closed doors" and cutting the embattled US Senate nominee's supporters out of the process to determine his potential replacement in the wake of a sexual assault allegation—and amid expectations that he will soon drop out of the race.

In a text message sent to Platner supporters, campaign chief Ben Chin wrote that the Maine Democratic Party "allowed the DC-based Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to send staffers to plan a potential nominating process behind closed doors. Both the state and national parties cut our team, our volunteers, and our vast networks of supporters out of the conversation completely."

"We firmly believe that the supporters and volunteers who built this movement deserve to have a real role in any nomination process," Chin's message continued. "If the Maine Democratic Party hopes to harness our movement, and avoid disillusioning the hundreds of thousands of supporters who came into the fray because of our movement’s policies, it must consult the feedback and proposals of the people who built and sustained this."

The text included a link to a two-question survey asking Platner volunteers, "What message do you have for the Democratic Party?" and, "What message do you have for Graham?"

The defiant message came as Platner's campaign was reportedly planning the nominee's exit from the US Senate race to pave the way for a different Democratic candidate to take on five-term Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November. Platner has denied the sexual assault allegation that prompted mass calls for him to exit the race, including from his most prominent supporters such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Chin's text message was circulated a day after Devon Murphy-Anderson, the Maine Democratic Party's executive director, said in a video posted to social media that the party has been "working around the clock" to develop a plan to replace Platner that is "open, inclusive, transparent, and fair." The party has not yet publicly specified what that plan could entail, saying Platner must formally withdraw from the race first.

Murphy-Anderson accused Platner's team of "repeatedly reach[ing] out" to the Maine Democratic Party "in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like."

"We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner's team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the US Senate," Murphy-Anderson added.

In response to Murphy-Anderson's statement, the Platner campaign denied that it has attempted to exert influence over the replacement process, saying it simply "reached out to the party to try and understand what this process would look like."

"Over 150,000 Mainers voted for this movement, and over 15,000 Mainers volunteered their time and energy to it," an unnamed Platner campaign official told NBC News late Tuesday. "While Graham wouldn't want to be a part of the process, he would want to make sure the voters and volunteers make this decision—not the political establishment."

On Wednesday, the Maine Democratic Party issued a new statement decrying what it called the Platner team's "false accusations against us" while also expressing gratitude for "his supporters and all of their efforts to defeat Susan Collins."

"They are a vital part of our party and deserve to participate in an open process to select Platner’s replacement," said Maine Democrats.

CNN reported that Platner is "expected to announce his decision" on his candidacy "through a recorded video, which could come later Wednesday."

Platner must drop out of the race by July 13 if he's to be replaced on the November ballot. If he exits the race, an alternative must be selected by July 27.

Politico reported that Platner "quietly fielded a poll Tuesday gauging the strength of people who could replace him on the ballot."

"The flash poll, obtained by Politico, was conducted by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by Platner’s campaign," the outlet reported. "It tested head-to-head match-ups between Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Platner, along with five possible Democratic replacements for Platner, including former Maine state Senate President Troy Jackson and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows."

"Of the Democrats tested, Jackson performed the best, leading Collins 49% to 44%, with 7% of voters undecided," Politico reported. The outlet also noted that the poll, conducted the day after the sexual assault allegation against Platner was first reported by Politico, showed Platner trailing Collins 47% to 42%.

Jackson has filed paperwork to explore a Senate bid in preparation for Platner's expected exit, and Bellows—who lost badly to Collins in 2014—has said she would "seriously consider entering this race." Nirav Shah, former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is also weighing a Senate bid.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Farage is doing some "i can win against the establishment" thing and labour gave up before even trying so now Count Binface is the only opposition of Farage

BREAKING: Labour says it won't stand against Nigel Farage in the Clacton by-election

As it stands, only Count Binface will run against Farage

They are trying to silence him

🚨 NEW: Parliament has confirmed Count Binface will not be allowed to sit in the Commons wearing his space costume and bin head

Farage vs Count Binface: hard-right leader's UK poll gambit

London (AFP) – British anti-immigrant politician Nigel Farage faces the embarrassing prospect of going head-to-head with perennial joke candidate Count Binface in a by-election after he decided to quit parliament.

His surprise move threatened to backfire Wednesday after other heavyweight parties confirmed they would not contest the vote for Farage's seat in southeast England.

Count Binface, a self-described "intergalactic space warrior", is the only other person to have said so far that they would run.

The key info is that she texted him "I need a glute massage". He said he was coming over, she told him not to. Somehow this is supposed to matter.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/62829

You may have seen the headlines: the rent in New York City is frozen! Mayor Zohran Mamdani has achieved one of his major campaign proposals. But the text underneath the headlines reveals the limits and complications, well known to those familiar with New York’s rent stabilization system, yet opaque to others.

The rent freeze will bring welcome relief to many tenants, and was only made possible through the organizing of thousands of New Yorkers who are fighting for a more affordable city for themselves and their neighbors. Yet the rent freeze alone will not fix New York’s crisis of affordable housing. We need a socialist approach that goes beyond what is achievable within the current system during one mayor’s term.

How New York’s Rent Stabilization System Works

New York has two types of regulated housing: rent controlled and rent stabilized. Rent-controlled apartments are few and far between, and are limited to tenants who have been in continuous occupancy since 1971 or their cohabiting descendants. Rent-stabilized apartments, however, make up about 43 percent of the total housing stock in New York City.

The mayor appoints all nine members of the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), who serve on rotating terms. Mamdani has appointed six of the current board members. Every year, the RGB reviews economic data and holds a series of hearings before voting on rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments. There is one increase rate for 1-year leases/renewals, and one increase rate for 2-year leases/renewals. Tenants renewing a lease choose between the 1-year and the 2-year options. Often (but not always), a 2-year rate is a higher rent that applies to both years, allowing tenants to effectively guarantee themselves no increase in the following year at the cost of a higher rate in the meantime.

This is not the first time the Board has voted for a rent freeze. Under Mayor Bill DeBlasio, the Board froze the rent for 1-year leases three times, and overall kept increases consistently lower than boards appointed by every other mayor until Zohran Mamdani.

While rent-stabilized apartments tend to be cheaper than unregulated apartments, that doesn’t mean they are affordable for most individuals, couples, or families. For example, Mamdani’s own rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, where he lived with his wife until becoming mayor, had a rent of $2,300 per month, which would require an annual income of $92,000 to be considered affordable — $7,000 higher than the median household income for the city.

Who Actually Benefits from the Rent Freeze?

Although 40 percent of New Yorkers live in rent-stabilized apartments, the freeze passed by the Rent Guidelines Board in June will only apply to all rent-stabilized tenants signing renewal leases with terms beginning October 2026 through September 2027. This means it only applies to tenants who signed 1-year leases within the last year. Tenants who signed 2-year renewals during that time will not be eligible for the rent freeze, and will have to cross their fingers that the board will freeze the rent again next year. So, less than 40 percent of the city will benefit from this rent freeze.

Some neighborhoods, such as in Upper Manhattan and southwest Bronx, have very high rates of rent stabilization, above 80 percent as of 2011. The rent freeze will disproportionately benefit people in these neighborhoods, although rent-stabilized apartments exist all over the city. Rent-stabilized tenants are more likely than tenants in unregulated buildings to be low income, seniors, and/or long-time city residents.

How much will a rent freeze benefit tenants? Let’s use Mamdani’s pre-mayoral rent of $2,300, which is a few bucks cheaper than the 2024 median rent-stabilized rent in buildings built after 1974. If someone in a similar apartment signed a 1-year lease earlier this year in anticipation of a rent freeze, they would see their rent raised to $2,369. Tenants who signed a 2-year lease would be paying $2,403 now, $414 higher per year. Those who chose a 1-year renewal this year will then get a 2-year rent freeze, locking in that lower rate for a total of three years. Let’s assume those with a 2-year renewal now get a freeze in the third year as well, but will be frozen at the higher rate. Those who are getting the 2-year rent freeze this year will save $1,242 over three years compared to those with the same starting rent who missed out. That’s enough to pay out of pocket for two community college courses. For tenants with higher-than-median rents, the savings will be even greater.

Will a Rent Freeze Hurt New York City Housing in the Long Run?

Many people are claiming that a rent freeze will send landlords into financial distress, rendering them unable to pay for operating costs. They also argue that landlords will refrain from building maintenance, allowing buildings to fall into greater disrepair over time, and perhaps increasing the rates of warehousing (the practice of intentionally allowing apartments to remain vacant in order to avoid the cost of preparing the apartments for re-rental).

However, a 2026 report from the New York City Independent Budget Office found that conditions in most rent-stabilized buildings are comparable to or better than housing conditions in non-regulated buildings, even within rent-stabilized housing stock that have higher rates of poor conditions and financial distress (buildings built prior to 1974 and buildings with high numbers of rent-stabilized apartments). Additionally, a decrease in landlord profits is not the same as landlords not being able to afford actual operating costs, such as maintenance, water bills, and property taxes.

Furthermore, JW Mason, professor of economics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (part of the City University of New York), argued earlier this year that “the great majority” of rent-stabilized buildings bring in more money than their operating costs and could continue to turn a profit even with lower rents, not just frozen rents. The problem, he says, is not operating costs, but mortgages and other debts taken on by landlords looking to expand their portfolios with the assumption of a certain rate of rent increases per year. Mason points out that the “Abundance” method — easing regulations to make new housing easier and cheaper to build, theoretically lowering citywide rents — would result in the same problem for these landlords: lower-than-anticipated future rent increases to pay off the mortgage, rather than an actual lack of operating funds.

The RGB’s own study, published in early 2026, found that the number of distressed buildings (those unable to pay their actual operating costs with rental income) was only 9.2 percent of all rent-stabilized buildings, and that this portion was declining over time, not increasing. Furthermore, net operating income (revenues after all operating expenses are paid) per unit for rent stabilized buildings has increased by 56.6 percent since 1990 after adjusting for inflation. This report is the key data summary and analysis that the board uses when determining rent increases for the coming year. Not only are landlords profiting off of housing (of course they are, that’s why people become landlords), but their average rate of profit is growing over time.

Mason argues for public ownership of the genuinely distressed buildings, the ones that really don’t generate enough rental income to cover operating costs, and for the city to intervene to negotiate debt relief for landlords facing foreclosures in exchange for hard commitments to better maintenance, to ensure that tenants don’t bear the cost of the landlords’ mortgage decisions.

But what about a socialist approach to housing?

A Socialist Approach to Housing

There are many ways to go beyond freezing the rent within the bounds of New York’s existing rent stabilization system, even within the limits of capitalist economies.

Last year, shortly before the mayoral election, my comrade Nathaniel Flakin argued that New York “does not actually have a housing crisis — it only has an affordable housing crisis.” Many luxury condos don’t have owners, and even more are pied-a-terres, apartments that are owned by wealthy people who do not live in them. As readers might remember from lockdown, “return to office” mandates were based in part on companies wanting to make use of office space they either owned or rented. However, recent data suggests that while only 20 percent of workers worked remotely at least some of the time in 2023, a far greater number of workers are interested in working remotely some or all of the time, particularly through hybrid arrangements. If office space was reduced to fit the actual needs of workers who want to (or must, depending on their job) work in-person, the remaining office space plus empty luxury apartments could be converted into publicly owned, affordable housing units.

Flakin also wrote:

In 2021 in Berlin, 59 percent voted for the expropriation of big corporate landlords. Under the proposal that activists got onto the ballot with an enormous signature campaign, any for-profit company with more than 3,000 units would be put into public ownership, with control being exercised by elected representatives of renters. Over a million voters back this idea — yet Berlin’s subsequent governments simply ignored the decision. This shows that radical proposals can generate mass enthusiasm — and also that the capitalist state cannot accept them.

Another example —- that did get implemented — is Vienna. Nearly a quarter of the Austrian capital’s residents live in publicly owned apartments, and more than half the population lives in either publicly-owned apartments or buildings owned by non-profits that were built with public subsidies. Most apartments are rent regulated, with the city establishing a complex system of determining the maximum allowable rent for each unit and allowable annual increases linked to inflation.

The Viennese system was built over the course of several decades, much longer than any one mayor’s tenure. And even if Mamdani-appointed board members continue voting for rent freezes for the duration of their terms, there’s nothing to stop future boards from reversing these savings by imposing higher rent increases in future years, displacing some tenants. The rent freeze was so easily possible precisely because it relies on a pre-existing, top-down mechanism over which the mayor has substantial influence. It did not require a strong, class-independent tenant movement, which, while some tenant organizations do exist, New York City is sorely lacking.

Furthermore, even though the rent freeze will benefit rent-stabilized tenants, Mamdani has also expressed support for the supply-side approach to housing advocated for by the “abundance” school of thought. Incentivizing developers to build more apartment buildings — even with a portion of the apartments set aside for “affordable” housing — which, through the housing lottery, can rent for over $4,000, unaffordable even for many middle class people — does nothing to disrupt a housing system fundamentally built on profit and tenant exploitation.

As Flakin said, quoting Bertolt Brecht, creating a housing system that serves tenants rather than landlords is a “simple thing that’s hard to do” and will require significant organizing to achieve, through the vehicle of a working class party supported by a mass movement, rather than isolated leftists attempting to work within a hostile Democratic Party. While we celebrate the relief the rent freeze will bring to our neighbors (or, for the lucky ones, ourselves), we must keep our eyes on the horizon of the much bigger reforms needed to make a more meaningful impact on New York’s housing crisis and organize to achieve them; it might take decades, but we must begin now.

The post New York City’s Rent Freeze: Who Benefits, and What’s Next? appeared first on Left Voice.

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More info: Only Count Binface willing to take on Farage's 'fake and pathetic' by-election