Mamdani 's Rapid Capitulation to Big Capital

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

2-20-26

It doesn’t take long does it! We have seen this so many times by now. Mamdani’s election was uplifting but this lesser evilism has finally lost any meaning and it’s experiences like this that has led over time to 100 million or more people opting out of the electoral process altogether. Many others moved right in the desperate hope that an angry con man might shake things up and we can see how that’s played out. Working people have no political voice in the US.

 

The US working class is disgusted with the two parties of capitalism and the political system in general. Workers often make the mistake of seeing the political crisis as a production of corruption or character flaws or greed in the abstract, and the Democratic Party and its allies atop organised labor do nothing of substance to alter this view. But that is not the issue. The Democratic party “aligns itself”’ with corporations a critic wrote recently, but it’s more than that. “We’re capitalist”, Nancy Pelosi reminded a rather naïve young DSA member at a Town Hall meeting. It’s not that this party aligns itself with big business, it is “their” party.

 

The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez  (AOC) was an exciting event too as she defeated an incumbent Democratic Party machine member in a Congressional election but she’s crossed the line and is a rising star in the party.

 

It is not that Mamdani or AOC are rotten, or are misleading their constituents. They may or may not be. The reason they and so many others have betrayed working people is that they are reformers, they believe capitalism can be “made nice” but it can’t. “If only the bosses' would be less aggressive” many labor tops say in private, and more often than not in public; they just want the American Dream back. 

But the material base for that dream which was not a dream for everyone and a nightmare for millions has gone and is not returning. 

The DSA, which had about 6000 members, a left rump in the Democratic Party prior to Bernie Sanders and the 2016 election, had 90,000 at one point. But DSA and so many people calling themselves DSA members are simply left liberals, more like Social Democrats I would say and its leadership is still overwhelmingly linked to the Democratic Party and they brought in Labor Notes types to direct the approach to labor relations which was a major mistake.

 

The first major obstacle to Mamdani’s very mild reforms was and is the Democratic Party itself. It cannot change its spots. 

 

Political parties, like the state apparatus (government) have class content, they are not empty vessels. In the US, the Democrats, a political party that is a major global capitalist party that millions of workers have looked to to defend our rights and living standards, has failed to do so. This rhetoric can’t last forever in the face of material reality.

Mamdani had built a base of over 100,000 activists I understand. This is a significant starting point but what that base represented to Mandani was an electoral force. It was a base built to win elections and it succeeded. The gains for working people stopped there, trapped in the back hole. Like Sanders, describing themselves as socialists they have both been great recruiters for a Wall Street party that has failed working people time and time again. The Democratic Party, and its agents atop organized labor share a huge responsibility for the election of the degenerate gangster capitalist, paedophile and convicted felon that sits in the Oval Office.

The big split in the AFL-CIO back in 2005 when the Fight to Win Coalition was formed was not over any substantial economic issues, either. There was no throwing out of the Team Concept by the “radicals”  it was all about organizing new members to increase the bureaucracy’s clout with the Democratic Party providing increased support at election time.

 

So for many of us Mamdani’s experience is just another betrayal. This will lead to a split in Democratic Party at some point in the not so distant future I would think. It seems likely that voters will seek relief in the Mid-Terms and the Dems may win control of the house, after all, where else can folks go when it comes to elections. It's hard to tell, what will happen but either way, we'll be back at square one.

 

Sanders has betrayed the millions of young people that looked to him for change back in 2016 repeatedly herding them in to the Democratic Party, supporting the war criminal Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Jo Biden in 2020, the man that laid waste to Gaza and denied US workers the right to strike defending the rail bosses' profits. This left many in despair, some dropping out of politics altogether. Mamdani had the numbers too. In the past 10 years opportunity after opportunity has been wasted.

 

Sanders, AOC, Mamdani have had mass popular support. Mamdani’s hundreds of thousands of supporters could have been channeled in to building community committees throughout the districts that can take up community defense, crime, educating the young people and organizing direct action activity like occupations of slumlords property, fighting for squatters rights, for new housing, and against the capital management companies that are the biggest landlords in the country today. This rather than just numbers at the ballot box. 

Reaching out to other cities and generalising the struggle against the billionaires who used every tool in their arsenal to defeat Mamdani is a necessity if we are serious about changing the balance of class focus in society.

 

Winning elections is fine, but not in order to put Democrats in power. While we must defend the right to vote as we won it from them, we must also be clear that we have won precious little through the ballot box. The legislation workers won in the 1930’s was a result of the mass occupations of industry and the rise of industrial unionism (CIO), and in the period that followed, a response due to the Black Revolt that shook the US to its foundations and embarrassed it in the eyes of the people of the world. Politicians merely codified what US workers had already won in the streets, workplaces and education institutions of America.

The reality is and has been that the time is right for significant change in US society. How to combat the capitalist offensive, in its most brutal form through the state’s security apparatus was revealed in the heroic defense of their communities and their neighbors by the people of Minneapolis. Make no bones about it, the lull in the offensive there and the undermining of the Trump Administration over the past period is a direct result of that battle.

 

In the end days of the capitalist system and as US, capitalism, the world’s most powerful and violent nation, faces serious competition in the global stage particularly from China, there is no room for even the mild reform platform that put Zohran Mamdani  the mayor’s seat of one of the world’s most important citiy and major financial center. 

 

The struggle for a democratic socialist society means taking in to public ownership the dominant corporations that control the political and economic life of the nation. This has to include the financial industry, health care, transportation, the production of life’s necessities and electorally building a political party of our own based on our organizations, our communities and workers from outside our borders, our international allies.

These should be our goals and building a mass movement that can win them is the key.

Mamdani Reverses Campaign Promise to Expand Rental Assistance

A rental voucher program costs more than $1 billion. The mayor’s decision to curtail its expansion reflects the clash between his ideology and the realities of managing the city.

Reprinted from the New York Times

·       

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who faces a budget deficit, said expanding a costly rental voucher program might not be feasible.Credit...Kent J. Edwards for The New York Times

By Sally Goldenberg and Mihir Zaveri

Feb. 12, 2026

Expanding a New York City program to help struggling tenants pay rent seemed like an obvious campaign promise for Zohran Mamdani, who staked his insurgent candidacy last year on making life more affordable in the five boroughs.

Now, confronting a grim fiscal picture in his second month as mayor, Mr. Mamdani no longer intends to back the growth of the $1 billion-plus initiative known as CityFHEPS, despite a plan passed by the City Council and upheld in court.

The reversal marks the clearest example yet of the clash between the ideology of his democratic socialist campaign and the tough realities of managing a sprawling, costly bureaucracy.

During a recent news conference, as the mayor lamented a looming budget deficit that on Wednesday he pegged at $7 billion over two years, he suggested the program’s full expansion may be too expensive.  Read the full NYT  article here.

 

Former Labor Notes and UAW Staffer Chris Brooks at Jacobin. Union Members Are Better Off Without Him.

Source: Chattanooga Times

Richard Mellor

Affscme Local 444 retired
HEO/GED

2-12-26

I’m reading an article in Jacobin by Chris Brooks, the former Labor Notes Staffer who made it to where he wanted to be, a mover and shaker in the UAW before he was fired. Brooks and other former so-called labor experts like Jane MacAlvey have nothing but contempt for working people. Jacobin is full of experts on unions and workers struggles that have never spent more than a day or two on the job fighting in the workplace. There’s a few more of them. They have no shame at all these people as so many of us witnessed them kissing up to the union hierarchy in an effort to work their way in to the labor bureaucracy.

 

Brooks Jacobin article is titled: Unions Are Going to Die Unless Something Big Changes Soon. This is the title from a desperate aspiring bureaucrat who has no understanding about how workers or union members think and why we act in ways that we do.

This depressing article is enough to put you off your supper and shows how ignorant Brooks is about history and how little he understands working people. After all, he’s not now or never has been one. 

Brooks writes:
"Unfortunately, the vast majority of the 115.5 million nonunion private sector workers out there have little to no idea what the NLRB is, what their rights are, or the extreme hostility they will face from their employer once they start talking to their coworkers about why unionizing makes sense. "

This is standard arrogant garbage from people like Brooks and other Labor Notes types who think they were born to lead the working class as we are too stupid to recognize we’re opressed. Workers might not know what the NLRB is or their union leadership, but why would they? Neither produces the goods so they appear to play no role in the workplace or in members’ lives. Wages and benefits decline and union dues rise, go figure.

 

But we know very well how "hostile" the boss can be as we are in the workplace every day. That statement just confirms my point that people like Brooks have no right to lecture workers about any aspect of the workplace, him and others like him have been part of the problem; an obstacle to organising because to change the nature of our unions we will have to have an open confrontation with the present leadership and from Brooks et al, that has to be avoided at all costs; you might not get a staffers job.

 

I remember someone making the point about how workers just didn’t get it when they voted the union down at the Amazon factory in Bessemer Alabama twice. “What’s the matter with them” this very trendy lefty said to me. Well, those workers that don’t know how hostile the boss can be knew how hostile the boss can be. They knew very well that if they voted “yes” to unionization the boss would go on the offensive. They also had a good idea what the union leadership’s response would be; a letter writing campaign perhaps, or have an informational picket line or have Bernie Sanders stop by the town for a public photo op and they knew the boss, in this case Jeff Bezos, would not find that threatening at all. So they played safe. The worker knows that if you want us to stand up in the workplace, put our job and families welfare on the line, you better shut this bastard down. You’d better bring some real power to the table.

 

I am writing this very quickly as I have little time. But there is one other very important point to mention about Brook’s Jacobin article and I have made this point many times in general when Brooks was writing about the UAW organizing drive at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. As far as I can see in the Jacobin article, Brooks never mentioned the labor leadership, leaders, or the word “leadership” with regards to the hierarchy and the policies of the organization. Brookes refers only to “the union” when he tells us how desperate and weak the union is and why union density is so low.  

 

This is not an accident. It is a deliberate tactic to avoid the inevitable conflict that will arise if he places the blame for the failure to organize more members and win major material gains where it belongs, the group that develops these policies, the trade union leadership.

 

I took this up with him a long time ago in a previous piece on the trade unions and groups like DSA and Labor Notes. One explained my view on  why the present leadership refuses to fight and that a new militant leadership will not be built by Labor Notes or DSA and their staffers or the academics that claim to be labor experts and are regularly sought out by the mass media during labor disputes.  

 

In response to Brooks explanation for why the “unions” organizing drive at the UAW plant failed I wrote:

“…in this latest report Brother brooks again, when raising failed tactics and strategies, refers to the UAW as opposed to the UAW leadership. But the tactics are not developed by the UAW; they are determined by the leadership of the UAW. The only way the unions will be made into democratic fighting organizations and the unorganized will be organized, is if we look at the policies of the union leadership as distinct from what is in the interests of the union membership.”

Jane McAlvey has the same approach when she mentions the VW defeat writing that in “…. Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the United Auto Workers were out-organized in 2014 during the Volkswagen campaign…”

 

I have the same response to this, “Again, the “workers” in the UAW, the rank and file of the UAW, were not “out-organized”. It was the leadership of the UAW that developed the disastrous strategy that led to three defeats at the Chattanooga plant, the UAW leadership is responsible for that defeat, not the membership.

 

To point to the real cause of the defeats and the present state of the unions would ruin any chance of these characters from making any headway at all in the ranks of the labor hierarchy which is their goal. So they blame the “union” which means the members and the real culprits are off the hot seat. They are a left cover for a right wing class collaborationist bureaucracy to which they all aspire to penetrate.

 

Brooks is a labor faker and unfortunately the left, in many of its forms is full of them

 

Here’s a couple of pieces relating to this subject.

A Fighting Union Leadership Will be Built by Rank and File Activists

14 million Union Members: Why Their Leadership Won't Fight

A Payday Report article about Brooks firing at the UAW 

ken Klippenstein: Mangione, Mamdani and the Media

 Mangione, Mamdani and the Media

Ken Klippenstein Nov 3 2025

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Zohran Mamdani looks poised to become mayor of the most important city in the world tomorrow, despite the New York Times (and other major media) doing its best to smother his campaign in its crib.

If that’s not enough of a sign that the media are losing their gatekeeping power over what people think, there’s also the Times’ recent decision to publish Luigi Mangione’s diary entries — a striking reversal from their earlier refusal to publish his manifesto. Gone are all the supposed concerns about a killer’s writings inspiring copycat attacks, social contagion and the like. That’s the thing about media “standards”: they’re not that standard.

Luigi Mangione’s diary

Luigi Mangione’s diary

I asked the Times how it could publish the diary entries when it earlier declined, as did all major media, to publish his manifesto in full.

“Our coverage of the killing of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. has been comprehensive and has included quotes from the 262-word manifesto when relevant,” a spokesperson for the Times, Danielle Rhoades Ha, told me in an email. “Yesterday, we published a deeply reported investigation … based on interviews with Mangione’s acquaintances, private messages and diary entries that help readers understand his mindset.”

The “deeply reported investigation” she’s referring to is a Times article that has little to say about the political dimension to Mangione’s alleged act. The piece instead focuses on some misty Japanese mountains he traveled to before the killing, the kind of thumb-sucking feature that the media loves to showcase instead of what most people would prefer to know: basic facts about what happened. 

“Luigi Mangione was imbued with the dark powers of an assassin after climbing the sacred mountain Omine,” a representative sentence in the Times piece reads. 

Good for a literary awards committee, I suppose, but the key words and phrases, in the mind of the Times, are “relevant” and “help readers understand.” The standard, in other words, is that we, the media, decide what is relevant and in need of explanation to a helpless public. The paternalism at play here really cannot be exaggerated. 

Ask just about anyone outside of the hermit kingdom that is legacy media about Mangione and they’ll know all about the grotesque cost of healthcare at the heart of this story. No explanation needed. 

Still, the diary entries the Times published do help readers understand Mangione’s mindset. In particular they shed light on his deep concern with how the killing would be perceived and how to maximize its political impact.

“This investor conference is a true windfall,” Mangione writes, referring to the corporate meeting in Midtown where the murder would later occur. “It embodies everything wrong with our health system, and — most importantly — the message becomes self-evident.”

At one point, Mangione explicitly lays out his hope that the murder will give rise to public discussion about the role of “greed” in the healthcare system.

“Members of the public can focus on greed, on the event, through reasonable, acceptable discussion,” Mangione writes.

His clear-eyed reflection on the murder flies in the face of the depiction of him as a nihilist — including by the Times itself! —and is a good illustration of why it’s important to publish these materials. It’s worth asking why someone like Mangione, an Ivy-educated young man who, by all accounts, seemed to have a future, allegedly felt that the only way to effectively express his political critique of the healthcare system was with a grisly murder. What is America’s politics lacking that makes people feel it is not worth engaging? 

But that discussion can only happen if you accept that there’s an internal logic to the killing, and that it wasn’t some random, senseless act, as these incidents are often dismissed.

In any case, newspaper’s decision to publish the actual photos of Mangione’s diary entries was the right move and a sign that the, uh, Times are a-changing. Many people were angry at the media’s refusal to publish the manifesto, including their own staffers, as I wrote at the time. The outrage was itself an indication that the public doesn’t see the media as a legitimate gatekeeper; and the publication of Mangione’s diary a likely concession to people’s frustration. 

New York City’s mayoral election tomorrow represents another example of how the media’s gatekeeper status is slipping away. There too, the Times tried and failed to play gatekeeper when its editorial board released a statement warning readers against voting for Mamdani. 

“Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges,” the Times’ editorial board solemnly declared shortly before the primary election. “He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance.”

The editorial board statement acknowledged former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “shortcomings” — including his resignation over allegations of sexual harassment from 11 women — before concluding that Cuomo was the best candidate. 

The Times’ issue with Mamdani was exactly what propelled him to victory: his willingness to think big and forgo the piecemeal for the ambitious, like his “freeze the rent” slogan. The Times’ gripe is basically that he isn’t “realistic” (i.e. small bore) enough something that New Yorkers rejected in the primary election and look poised to do so again tomorrow.

Evidently people are tired of letting the media decide the limits of political possibility. Let’s hope Mamdani’s election will equally signal to a moribund (both literally and figuratively) Democrat Party that they’d better mend their ways if they want to be relevant.

Subscribe if you’re sick of gatekeepers

Opportunity Knocks for Zohran Mamdani. Will He Open The Door?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

6-29-25

 

“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.” – Martin Luther King 1966.

 

The stunning victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary for New York City last week, has without doubt driven the US ruling class and the Democratic Party bigwigs in to a frenzy.

 

Not only is Mamdani a Muslim, his condemnation of Israel and calling the Zionist regime’s actions against the Palestinian people a genocide, did not upend his campaign despite numerous attempts by the big business media to do so; and this is in the city that is second only to Tel Aviv in its Jewish population.   

This comes as no surprise. Israel’s barbaric slaughter of Palestinians, perhaps as many as 400,000 have been murdered over 20 months of relentless bombings, has had a huge effect on the US population, young Jews in particular. According to a Pew Research poll, 71percent of Democrats of ages 18–49 have a negative view of Israel in 2025, and 66 percent of Democrats 50 or older do too.

 

But it is Mamdani’s reform platform that was key to his victory and eventually led to a campaign of 50,000 volunteers, many of them rank and file union members, knocking door to door and visiting working class communities. He spoke directly to the needs and desires of the vast majority of the people in New York City. 

 

His Proposals
He proposes to make all city buses free by 2027 and introduce a rent freeze on all rent-stabilised apartments. Rent freezes are not new and have been introduced by prior mayors. The average rent for a two-room apartment in New York City can vary between $4000 and $7000 a month depending on location. In addition, Mamdani is planning to establish a Social Housing Development Agency that would build publicly-owned, permanently affordable housing according to reports in the media. He also intends to create a new Department of Community Safety staffed by mental health professionals, crisis responders and outreach workers and has pledged to expand free school-meal programs to include city colleges, and to offer universal childcare and early education programs.

 

On immigrant rights, he will not allow the NYPD to assist ICE in rounding up immigrants for deportation and will defend New York City’s pledge as a sanctuary city.

 

He is also campaigning for a $30 an hour minimum wage.

 

Mamdani says his social reforms can be paid for by raising the corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent which would put it on par with the corporate rate in neighboring New Jersey, and imposing a 2 percent surcharge on individuals earning more than $1m per year. 

He says these measures could bring in over $9 billion annually. 

 

His platform is a relatively mild reformist program and is certainly not enough to bankrupt the city of New York. But we are in the belly of the capitalist beast here in the US so any attempt to return the wealth of the country that workers produce to us in the form of social services, is attacked as communism and anti-American. 

 

As usual, the trade union leadership is relatively quiet but the UAW did endorse Mamdani back in December last year and Afscme Council 37 in NYC endorsed three candidates in the primary which has ranked choice voting so it will likely endorse him in November. Afscme is my former union and DC 37 is the largest council in the country.

 

There is a strong chance that Mamdani will prevail in the Mayoral election in November but there are already plans being hatched in the big business community to derail the campaign. The defeated Cuomo is staying on the ballot for that election and deciding whether he will run or not as an Independent.  

 

Former mayor, and ex-cop Eric Adams, a Democrat, announced he will be running as an independent claiming Mamdani as lacking experience among other things. Adams was indicted for bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, (what’s AIPAC for heaven’s sake. By that measure the entire US political establishment is accepting illegal foreign campaign donations)

 

As for his tax proposals, they have to be approved by the legislature and in the interview above with CNN he gives some examples of the costs and effects on the big business community. While the interviewer was not openly hostile, CNN is compelled to make sure when he is talking about state run grocery stores, “….you're not looking at some, like Soviet Union, grocery stores on every corner that are going to be run by the government.?”.  This country's mass media is something else. Mind you, the BBC is no different. 

 

Despite what is really a mild reform platform, the level of panic from the capitalist class and its political representative, is formidable. Beside the name calling, Trump referred to Mamdani as "100% Communist Lunatic" and Adams has called Mamdani a “Snake oil salesman”, Mamdani has faced all the Islamophobic slurs and will no doubt have more to deal with as he picks up steam.

 

New York City’s money men are going on the offensive in the aftermath of the primaries result and are preparing to bankroll a candidate to stop his campaign in November. It appears likely to be Adams, and a judge dropped Adams’ indictment under pressure from Trump allegedly; what a coincidence.

 

Eric Adams and hedge fund manager, Democrat Daniel Loeb, (worth $3 billion plus), met with other business leaders and political brokers to discuss how to stop Zohran Mamdani’s forward motion according to reports in the press. From what I understand Loeb is a staunch supporter of the Israeli Apartheid regime like many billionaires. Billions of US taxpayer dollars to slaughter innocent people is no problem for them

 

“You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,” says Scott Rechler CEO of a Real Estate firm, “It’s the capital of capitalism.”  The City 6-26-25

 

GOP megadonor John Catsimatidis (worth $4.1 billion) is organizing other billionaires in a united front for November and Bill Ackman (worth $9.1billion) another, social parasite, hedge fund manager, and Trump supporter has made it clear there are millions of dollars available to derail Mamdani’s Mayoral aspirations. Ackman makes his views very clear: "The problem, however, is that his policies would be disastrous for NYC. Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country,"  

Not only is Ackman wrong about Mamdani’s policies being socialist, they are certainly far from a disaster for NYC, even for billionaires like Ackman. Ackman and the big capitalists concern is that any steps that favor even in the slightest, the worker over the capitalist, or the public over the private, are a dangerous precedent to set. The anger he knows exists among millions of US workers and poor is always in danger of bursting on to the scene with a vengeance.

 

But this early offensive is just the shot across the bow. If Mamdani wins the Mayoral race in November, there will be as major offensive from the entire US capitalist class, its media, its political parties, the pulpits of the Evangelical Protestant movement and some other religious institutions, along with the right-wing podcasters and talk show hosts. 

 

And this is to unseat or block the policies of a candidate in a capitalist party and who is a supporter of the capitalist system.

 

Mamdani will have to have a plan to confront this “shock and Awe” approach from the US ruling class if he does not want to end up in the same sinking ship as Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. He needs to stand apart from their approach. He is in the Democratic Party which is an obstacle but he must make it loud and clear in his speeches and to his supporters that he will be facing an all out capitalist offensive in November and particularly after, if he emerges victorious.

 

He has an opportunity, like Sanders did in 2016 and beyond, to open a pathway to a genuine working class movement against the intensifying offensive of capital in the US. He needs to spread the campaign to other cities and turn 50,000 volunteers in to 5 million and begin a process of building links between different areas of the country.

 

New York City cannot function without the support of the city’s unions, particularly the public sector, but also the dock workers for example. Mamdani must appeal to the rank and file support he has to wage a campaign within their unions to join this movement. One way or another he has to point to the immense potential power of organized labor and how that power combined with the unorganized and the rest of the working class is unstoppable. The first Amazon union was won in New York City. This power must be mobilized, his enemies are mobilizing as I write.

 

He needs to demand without apology, that society provides, and can provide, what people need to live a decent and secure existence. He must clearly explain and condemn the likes of Ackman and the capitalist class for denying the American people, not only happiness, but the pursuit of it.

 

Another major enemy is the Democratic Party old guard. In my view this major capitalist party will not be the party through which the working class and all oppressed people can resolve the crisis of capitalism that is the root cause of the problems Mamdani is claiming to resolve. He can point this out ahead of time and make it clear that if the party old guard is in the way then a break from that party and the building of an independent working class alternative to the two big business parties will be on the agenda.

 

One of the reasons some workers are attracted to right wing ideas and authoritarian leading figures is, the weak, super woke, identity politics alternative of the Democrats. Power attracts, and most workers know that we are in for a serious battle, look at how our own government treats us. Where are the union leaders or workers’ leaders that are calling for mass violation of anti-union anti-worker laws?  They see the right wing and Trump quite willing to do what they want regardless of the US constitution which is a revered, almost divine document to many Americans. Act first and see what happens, is their approach.

 

Mamdani and anyone like him must not only warn workers and his supporters that we are up against a ruthless foe and we have to act accordingly. We have the numbers, we have the power. 

 

It is positive that Mr. Mamdani doesn’t shy away from being a Democratic Socialist. He needs to champion equally as much the socialist aspect of this. Capitalism is a wasteful system. It cannot feed people. It cannot provide health care to people. It cannot address the climate crisis. It cannot put people to work, provide decent education or transportation.

 

The US post office (USPS) is the most efficient business in the US. It delivers mail to you wherever you live in this country. It doesn’t have to make a profit, it’s a public service. Our public services are poor when compared to other industrialized countries. The likes of Ackman, Gates, Musk, all the billionaires, have no qualms defending policies and laws that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year.  While I reject his failed methods, the guy that assassinated the health care CEO had tremendous support from millions of US workers as health care is such a disgrace here. 

 

If the private sector can’t provide jobs, provide mass transit, health care, decent public education and the necessities we need to live a decent life, then the major corporations here that are practically a dictatorship over US economic life must be taken under public ownership. 

 

As the battle heats up the billionaires, and others, will go on a strike of capital or withdraw it completely. They will threaten to move house. They have no loyalty to any country or any community, their world is global and they will take their capital elsewhere. The answer to that must be to stop them, to take under public ownership the financial industry, banks etc. They don’t hesitate to take your house and home so don’t fret it. 

 

They have a right to live a decent life but not if it results in. users for millions of others. 

 

The rich are hated in this country. There is a serious mood for change and people like Mamdani, the politic representatives of capital and the trade union leadership know this and are also afraid of it. The so-called liberal elements, like the labor hierarchy  are forced to appeal to this immense social power to wring concessions from the bosses’, and it has amounted to a slower death as they always have to keep this power contained; they just need to let off some steam.  Workers have had enough of that. The Democratic party electorally is one way and the massive increase of the security state, as exampled by ICE is another form of this containment.

 

Another opportunity knocks, this time for Zohran Mamdani. It’s up to him whether he takes it or not.  

Interview: Teamster President Sean O'Brien's "Militant" Strategy Explained.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

3-30-22

Here is a December 2021 interview with Sean O’ Brien, the new president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) after defeating Jimmy Hoffa and his slate in the national election in October. The Hoffa regime ran the union for 23 years. Hoffa is the son of Jimmy Hoffa who was killed and his body never found. He is a lawyer by trade.

 

While it is positive that there has been a change in leadership at one of the largest and most important unions in the US. It is important not to get carried away here. In fact, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the vast majority of Teamster members never bothered to vote, the turnout was a mere 14%.  After decades of sell outs, concessionary contracts, and top officials lining their own pockets, the rank and file of the Teamsters, and of organized labor in general are clearly not convinced that much if anything will change.

 

Teamsters For a Democratic Union, the reform group in the union is very supportive and also in coalition with the Obrien team known as the OZ slate or Teamsters United.  A major battle for Teamsters United will be the United Parcel Contract (UPS) coming up in 2023 and also organizing Amazon workers.

 

It is not insignificant that this election victory has taken place in the midst of the pandemic which has revealed who are important or “essential” workers in society and this has given workers increased confidence. This praising of the worker in the mass media will make it difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.

 

There has been an uptick in strike activity within organized labor and among the unorganized seeking to unionize so it’s not inconceivable that an aggressive strategy in disputes could win some temporary reforms from the bosses; workers are angry. The same is true of the unorganized as there have been increased walk-outs and protests as some of the most exploited workers try to join or form unions.

 

But a major obstacle in the way of a rank and file revolt within organized labor has been the labor officialdom itself, and Sean O’ Brien is part of that historical blockage. I don’t have to go in to detail again here, but it is my view that what lies behind the betrayals and outright class collaboration of labor’s leadership at the highest levels is not simply corruption or their obscene salaries, but their view of the world; the former are secondary features and consequences not causes. They believe the market is the answer to all things and that there is no alternative to capitalism, so when capitalism enters a profitability crisis, the union bureaucracy’s first move is to bail it out. This view is enshrined in the Team Concept, called labor/ management cooperation, Quality of Life Circles, Total Quality Management (TQM), Employee Empowerment, Employee Participation and more. It’s been a disaster for us and any union opposition has little credibility if it doesn’t openly campaign against it.

 

It is important not to dismiss why workers don’t vote in national elections for capitalist parties and their representatives, or why only 14% of those eligible voted in the Teamsters election. In both cases, voting is not an exercise in civics, it is in order to improve our material conditions. If that doesn’t work, people withdraw. Why pay union dues when dues go up and wages and benefits go down.

 

If you listen to Sean O’ Brien in the interview above one has to gasp at Sean Orr, the chair of DSA’s Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) reference to the new Teamster leadership as, “the militant O'Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United Slate” (my added emphasis) as there is little evidence that the term “militant” would apply here. This is the result of DSA’s inexperience in the labor movement and its very middle-class composition. As I wrote in a previous commentary, this political current, isolated in the main from the rank and file of organized labor as most of the self-styled socialist organizations are, and who don’t really orient to the rank and file union worker, see in the slightest leftward shift (primarily in rhetoric) in the entrenched bureaucracy as a revolutionary upsurge.

 

Sean O’ Brien says nothing about the Team Concept at all other than to confirm that he will continue to practice it in politics continuing his relationship with the Democratic Party. He will “energize politicians” “influence” them and local government (Democrats). He even flew in the same plane with Biden’s Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, the Democratic mayor of Boston and former top union official. “Marty comes to this with a closeness to the president-elect and an ability to get things done,” says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Talk to some genuinely “militant” teachers about Randi Weingarten. Obrien refers to yet another Democratic Party administration and its president as pro-union despite knowing that under Democrat and Republican alike US workers and our unions have been driven backwards. Carter used the Taft Hartley against the mineworkers, Clinton threw people off welfare in to union jobs without the same pay and benefits. In California we are in a one party state the Democrats have such power, yet we have the same problems that plague the rest of the country.

 

Only 6% of the private sector is unionized which is one of the reasons why unions like the Teamsters and the UAW are orienting more to the public sector which has around a 35% unionization rate and is considered easier to organize. The union density is why the public sector is under such a savage assault. I should add this as well, it is the decline of the public sector that contributes immensely to the poverty and declining living standards of all workers and even more so, the lack of opportunity in communities of color. See Tauré Reeds book, Toward Freedom, The Case Against Race Reductionism for more on this.

 

The main point is this interview with O’Brien is that there is nothing new in it. He wants to change the law to make organizing easier he says.  In other words, get democrats elected. Obama betrayed the union hierarchy not passing EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act. They were hanging their hat on his producing this as it meant less work for them as getting out there and organizing workers using the real power of workers on the ground could be avoided, and it would bring in more revenue for the business. They see the unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO’s.

 

O’brien prioritizes rebuilding the middle class (there’s no working class in the US apparently). Organizing the unorganized. Negotiating great contracts, educating workers; all the usual platitudes.

 

I want to clarify. I do not say there is no difference at all between Democrats and Republicans. But on the main points they both will defend the interests of capital and not labor. If O’Brien was anything of a militant he would be raising the issue of the dire need for an independent political party of the working class and threatening to campaign and build for it among his members and the wider movement. Organized labor has the structure, resources and money. There is no way forward for workers through the Democratic Party.

 

I think he mentions the word strike once in this interview.

 

I am not saying that some reforms might be wrested from Biden, or a Republican administration given the present climate and a little more aggression than usual from the labor bureaucracy. Let us not forget that in 2018, rank and file teachers/educators in West Virginia won a 5% raise against opposition from the legislature, struck in a right to work state against their own leadership’s recommendations and won a 5% increase for every state worker involved in the strike or not. This and the fairly successful actions in education that followed, mostly in Republican states, was not taken up and built on by the trade union hierarchy for reasons I have outlined here, and in the past, or by the Labor Notes organization and DSA that have some significant resources but are both reluctant to openly confront the existing leadership or in some cases occupy the lower ranks of it. In the case of DSA, my experience has been that DSA acts as cheerleaders.

 

As for the Teamsters, I hope this change in leadership will play a role in not only transforming this union but in transforming organized labor as a whole and the balance of forces between labor and capital in US society.