cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/72561
In 2020, a record number of people across the United States took to the streets in the movement for Black lives, demanding justice for George Floyd and victims of police violence. Last week, two of the country’s most popular progressives — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — threw this historic movement under the bus.
Speaking to ABC, AOC said that, “Woke 1 was crazy” — a phrase attributed to a tweet by New York City Council member Chi Ossé, referencing his social media posts from 2020. Days later, Mamdani more explicitly repudiated a key demand of the uprising, saying: “I’ve made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police.”
But what’s actually “crazy” is calling yourself a socialist while believing in peaceful coexistence with the police.
Betraying Black Lives Matter and the Working Class
As many as 26 million people participated in protests in 2020 with the central demand of defunding the police. Many realized that cops — descendants of slave catchers and strike breakers — have nothing to do with public safety, and only exist to protect private property and repress the working class, including breaking strikes and brutalizing Black and Brown people, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.
AOC and Mamdani’s statements are a betrayal of this generation of people who have only seen police budgets and murders grow, with the backing of progressive Democrats. In fact, it was precisely this young, multi-racial coalition that brought progressives like Mamdani to power. The politics of these sectors were irrevocably forged in the fires of the BLM uprising, and we cannot separate the uprisings in 2020 from the movements of the following years — like the massive strikes and unionization efforts that led 2021 to be dubbed “the year of the worker,” the movement for Palestine that have shaken U.S. institutions and both parties to their core, and the fight against ICE.
To the extent that there were laughable aspects of 2020, they exposed the absurd notion that capitalist institutions can meaningfully address oppression. Like cops taking a knee before beating protesters, Democratic lawmakers draped in Kente cloth while brutally repressing protests, and brands posting hashtags in solidarity with Black struggle, only to reject any semblance of “woke” as soon as the political winds shifted.
But overwhelmingly, nothing materially changed — no excessively progressive policies were even implemented. As lawyer and organizer Dericka Purnell points out in The Guardian, “Ossé and AOC did not introduce any ‘woke 1’ legislation or resolutions that they now have to retract.” Mamdani, for his part, immediately began backtracking on his campaign promises, and only reversed course on expanding the police following immense pressure from the Democratic Socialists of America.
In this sense, as Maryam Alaniz explained, AOC and Mamdani “expose the political limits and contradictions of attempting to transform society while remaining inside the Democratic Party and administering institutions built to defend capitalist rule,” like the police. By governing as Democrats and facing the pressures of the political establishment and state apparatus, progressives betray both their supposed values and the masses who brought them to power with the hope of reforming this exploitative, oppressive system.
Why Leftists Must Be “Woke”
AOC and Mamdani’s supporters may argue that the two are simply being politically savvy. After all, many voters oppose defunding the police, so why not soften or outright abandon our more radical positions to gain popular support?
This logic is part of a broader perspective among reformist sectors, like those represented by Jacobin, that advocate focusing on economic, bread-and-butter demands at the expense of social issues in order to “win” sectors of the working class. But this perspective is incompatible with socialism, and counterproductive to building working-class power.
The working class is full of oppressed people, whether Black, Brown, or queer. This means that it is composed of the very sectors that police, in particular, exist to violently repress. And at the heart of socialism lies the notion that the working class holds a strategic position under capitalism due to its ability to grind the system — and profits — to a halt. As I wrote with my comrade Sybil Davis:
By organizing and withholding their labor, workers have the power to win key demands and force concessions from capitalists. Working-class unity is only possible by fighting against all these forms of oppression, taking up historical and theoretical studies of these different oppressions to better understand them, and taking up the specific demands of these marginalized groups, who often contain the most active and combative workers.
In other words, the fight against oppression, and against the police, cannot be separated from the fight against capitalist exploitation. This means that we must fight efforts by AOC, Mamdani, and others to reject the legacy of 2020 and minimize the struggle against oppression. And at a moment when record numbers of people are drawn to socialist ideas precisely because they help explain the brutal realities of capitalism, including policing, we need to seize the opportunity to break with the capitalist Democratic Party.
The post AOC and Mamdani Should Stop Throwing the Black Lives Matter Movement Under the Bus appeared first on Left Voice.
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Are you saying we shouldn't pressure our electeds? That we should just be happy with what we get and shut up?
This gets everything backwards! A politician picks their battles based, in part, on what they're hearing from voters. If you just shut up and let them do whatever they want, you should expect them to ignore you in favor of the people who make their voices heard.
No point in winning every side battle if it means you don't win the war.
It's easy to call police brutality a side issue when it isn't your son being murdered.
Fighting the only people who might possibly ever be in a position to change it is a strange decision if it means so much to you.
No, no, you already told this person it’s a side battle that’s able to take a backseat just to get the DSA in that position, now you’re backtracking saying they’re the only ones that will do anything. This person is proving that you, the voting base for the DFL/DSA, will toss these issues to the side and pretend to care and when faced with it you will move on to lie and say the DSA are focused on it.
So which is it, are they picking and choosing their “side battles to win the war” or are these issues not just side issues and what we actually should be voting for?
Because if you aren’t voting on the “side battles” but these people are “the only people able to get into a position to change it” then why are we even voting for them if they don’t fight the battles you’ve listed as “side battles”?? See how you’re moving the goalposts more and more right to defend the candidates instead of defending the positions themselves?
This is childish. You have to be prepared to do politics to win at politics. That means building bridges with people who share only some of your ideas and finding compromise where you can. It's very clear that the more fundamental sections of the left are unwilling and unprepared to do this work which is why they remain on the outside looking in. All you are doing is quite literally ensuring none of your ideas ever see the light of day. It's a losing strategy. It's also why you don't recognise the DSA playing this game and get butt hurt when they don't take the hard line on every topic.
So I’m unwilling to compromise on things like: Defund/Abolish police & ICE, force huge companies to bow to their unions instead of letting them bust & close down entire shops after unionizing, hard line anti Zionist positions from the bottom up (no compromising or working alongside them in any capacity), NO WAR OR WAR FUNDING (non military aid only), etc. some Dems are straight up running on pro war pro US imperialism (Flanagan, MN)
This is what the DSA is running on, They claim to be the ones to put the policies I actually believe in forth, and the voter base (people like you) will constantly move the goal posts when YOUR PARTY is the one “unwilling to do the work”. I’m willing to fight for these candidates to get a seat in wherever they show up as long as they talk the talk (and aren’t a veteran fuck you platner).
We have to keep pushing beyond that, otherwise people like you will brush police violence into being a “side battle” (your own words) and then call people childish when you try to act like you care about it after calling it a side battle not worth focusing on to get the seat. All we worry about on the left is making these politicians serve us. They won’t unless you force them to, DSA or not.
Promise something leftists want and they'll show up. They showed up to vote for Mamdani because of the policies he promised, and he's not even that radical.