Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small help from small, small human areas. Small It's so funky.
We're back.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's another episode of Small Doses podcast. I'm Amanda Seals,
and the political climate in the United States is just
every day so overwhelming. That being said, a lot of
words are being placed into people zeitgeist on a more
regular basis than I think they are accustomed to.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And one of those words is socialism.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So as we find ourselves in the throes of a
fascist dictatorship taking over, people are throwing out words like
socialism on a regular basis. And a lot of times
that people throwing out those words are the fascist dictators
because they know that the words socialism and communism have
been really very successfully indoctrinated as having negative connotations for Americans.
(01:08):
And this has been going on for years and years
and years and years. People don't even know why they
feel some type of way when they hear the word socialism.
They don't even know why they feel some type of
way when they hear the word communism. They just hear
those words and think enemy. They hear those words and
think opposite or danger or something counter to what they
(01:29):
would want for themselves. We see this in the way
that Republicans love to say that Democrats.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Are socialist leftists.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
First of all, Democrats are absolutely far from being socialist leftists.
But the consideration of what a socialist leftist is is
something that you should be doing, because if they're saying
that they're so terrible that they're the opposite of them,
then have we ever considered that maybe the opposite of
them is the better option. Well, if you've been wondering,
(01:57):
or maybe you didn't wonder, but now you're here today,
we're going to talk about side effective socialism with somebody
who really knows what they talk about when they talk
about socialism. Claudia de la Cruz was the presidential nominee
for the Socialist Party here in the United States, and
she is very involved with the continuing religious and education
(02:19):
of politics in both spaces. And I really am so
glad that I finally got to meet her because I
was very persistent. I got her email, I emailed her
about linking, and this was last year and it would
just kind of fell off, but I was still living
in California.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
When I moved back to New York.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I reached out again and said, I have a feeling
I think that you're based in New York and if so,
I apologize for falling off, but I would love to
get up.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
No response, I said, no, I'm supposed to hit her,
And so I hit her two more times. Yeah, I
was harassing her.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And the third time I hit her said, I know
that this is like harassment at this point, and I'm
just being persistent because my gut is telling me you're
worth it. And she was like, you know, I really
appreciate you being persistent, and she had been traveling a lot. Nonetheless,
we ended up getting up for lunch, and immediately there
was a shared understanding of where we are and where
(03:16):
we're going. And I was really happy that she was
interested in coming on Small Doses podcast to do what
she does really well, which is provide political education to
folks who are curious and want to know.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Providing political education to people who are committed to misunderstanding
you and who are committed to making a villain. There's
nothing worth that, you know. I know some people really
enjoy doing that. I don't think that's a use of
my time, but it's a great use of our time
to be here with Corriera La Cruz because she is
going to talk to those of us who are listening
(03:51):
to learn, and I know that that is so many
of you right here at Small Dose's podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's so good to be there, you guys today the
smile Today, we have a guest that I persisted. I
persisted because I just feel like there's a lot of
whack people walking around and something said to me like
this lady ain't wag. So I'm I'm glad, ain't you know?
(04:26):
And I don't believe that you're gonna be whack. Some
people be surprising me, but I don't think. I don't.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I don't get it from you. I don't. And I'm
met a man and he ain't whacked neither.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
That says a lot because.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Sometimes you meet somebody man and you like, if this
young man, what's that say about you? Which is also
when I reflect back at my choices, I'm like, oh wow,
what did that say about me?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And so I was a good And that's another episode.
That's another episode.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
That was a moment because you know what, things change, Yes,
the only constant thing in life has changed, and so
that in life we're over with that.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yes, you bet a parable of the sour Us.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yes, okay, Lauren Olamina and God is changed.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
We are here with Claudia de la Cruz.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But Claudia, I was like, what is the title that
I get? Plenty because you are so many things and
you're organizing in different spaces and with different groups, Like
right now, I know that you have been given the
mantle to reinvigorate the organization that come on every time
you say it.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I'm like, memorize it. Memorize it. Memorize it. While she's
saying it, memorize it.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
It's if go for peace, that's just for peace.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Have you ever read Chris Hedges book about It's like
Christian fascists or something?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
No, I think I sent it to you. I sent
it to you on signal.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yuah, huh, I haven't read it.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I send it to you because I wanted to find
out from you if like his point of view of
how he was raised in christian is similar to what
I understand, like your point of view of how you
were raising Christianity to be. But hearing it from like
an old white man was like, okay, I just try
and keep a log of the high quality whites.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
That's necessary.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We need a log we need a database.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
We need a database. Yeah, we need a database of
the high quality whites.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But a lot of people came to know you through
your presidential run with the People's Socialists and.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The Party for Socialism and Liberation. Okay, can I be honest,
you could be honest.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think that perimenopause has really settled in with me
in my memory because I used to be able to
remember everything, and like I can't remember names.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It's two of us. At some point we're going to
have to make a show about perimenopause.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, it's very many. Yeah, because honey, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I'm like, I don't remember the name of that and
why not? Like, why not it's the name of a party,
Like you should be able to really pull that from
the sky, and unless it's like something I'm reading for
like very particular reason to memorize, like these facts about
this story, to relay it.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
In one lock and write out the other.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It happens. It happens to the best of us.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And we are the best of us.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
We are the best of us.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So we are very fortunate today to be getting this
lesson from you because you were that.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Girl I don't know, and you know these things.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know these things, so first and foremost, can you
just contextualize for people how you became a part of
the party, how you became informed and impassioned about socialism
and able to educate your community and the comrades.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Well, I came into the organizing world, the organizing sphere
in the United States, at the age of thirteen, and
it started with a lot of questions. I mean, I
was born and raised in the poorest congressional district in
the United States, the South Bronx where hip hop was
born South South Bronx. Yeah, and there were many questions.
You know, people speak often about poor communities that are
(08:03):
flooded with violence, that are lacking so many things and
in so many ways. I didn't necessarily know that I
was poor until it was made clear to me by
others that I was poor because my parents were working
class and they did everything they could to feed me,
to clothe me. You know, they are immigrants from the
Dominican Republic. There's a certain set of values that come
(08:23):
with that, in terms of what the expectations are for
you in school, for you at work. And so I
understood the world differently in many ways because of my
Caribbean background, and I understood my relationship to this country
differently as well, because I came from a Caribbean background.
I came from a place that was invaded politically, militarily,
(08:44):
economically by the United States several times. And my parents were,
you know, hit by that economic and political instability and
forced to move to the United States. And so I
have many questions, you know, questions around police brutality, I
mean talking about in the eighties and nineties, a whole
lot of things were happening in the South, Bronx, questions
around patriarchy, and my parents didn't necessarily know how to answer.
(09:07):
But one of the things my parents, to their credit,
had very clear was that they didn't have any money
to leave me, but they would definitely leave me educated.
They would definitely leave me in a space where I
could do better, not necessarily economically, but just in terms
of knowledge and in terms of access. Then they did,
and so they started looking for a spot to take
(09:28):
me to answer all these political and economic questions, and
they came. They came to church because they thought, you know,
maybe if she finds Jesus, I'll do it. Maybe she'll
stop causing havoc and find her path. And I found
a socialist priest Puerto Rican.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And I can promise you that somebody in their car
listened to this just went how that worked. I promised
you somebody just went what Because the goal of this
episode I already told you on the intro. The goal
of this episode is to give you a foundational unders
standing of what this is, because whatever you've been told
by the mainstream media or by most institutions probably ain't
(10:07):
even the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Well I know, if it's mainstream media, it's not the truth.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
But this man who understood that Puerto Rico had been
colonized or continues to be colonized, is the last colony
in this hemisphere by the United States and was engaged
in liberation movements in the sixties, seventies, eighties, took me
in and said, you know, you're looking for Jesus. You
need to find the revolutionary Jesus. He was also a socialist,
(10:30):
and I was like, okay.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Dang is he from the Caribbean.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
He's Puerto Rican. And so the question of Chris Hedges.
That's where I found liberation theology, and I started studying
liberation theology and started studying how people's faith starting with
Haiti eighteen oh four, the Haitian Revolution, people's faith were
(10:55):
part of the independent struggles. And so I was very looking,
you're going to pull out a book.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I'm gonna wait because I'm really because I love when
things started to come together, because I literally had just
talked about a quote from Chris Hedges's book where he
said religion is good for good people and it's bad
for bad people, and like that was.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Like such a just like yeah, simple, simple, yeah, but
that's why I sent it to you.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And then you're like, yeah, that's how I found liberation
and theology because everything he described about his upbringing was
that was like, no, the Bible is not meant to
be taken literally, but it is supposed to teach you,
and that there are so many aspects of the Bible
that are grounded in community building and all the things
that people are talking about when they talk about socialism.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
That's right, I mean, And if you want to think
about like the primitive communalism, the ways in which we
understand communal living, right, they're pretty much principles and values
that come from faith tre additions, not only Christianity of course,
you know, but the sense of humanitarian humanism come from
those principles, those tendants of liberation theologies, the faith that liberates,
(12:10):
you know. And so when I came in contact to that,
I understood that faith didn't have to be passive either,
because this church was involved in so many different campaigns,
campaigns to free political prisoners were talking about at that time.
You had Puerto Rican political prisoners. You had Leonard Peltier
who was just released from prison a long ago, but
I'm talking about fifty years in prison for the simple
(12:33):
fact of uplifting the need to liberate indigenous communities in
this country. Native indigenous communities. You have Mumiabu Jamal, you know,
there were so many at that time, and so I
engaged in the process of developing and working in the
campaigns to free political prisoners. Then it was the anti
police brutality movement. Then it was an immigrant rights movement,
(12:55):
and so but this all came out of faith in action.
How do you put your faith into practice and understanding
that church is a moment. You go into the space
to reflect, but the service starts during the week and
you come back and you replenish, and then you go
back back to work, and so that politicized me heavily.
And then by the age of seventeen, folks were handing
(13:17):
capital with me. You know, read some marks, read some lenen,
and then I had questions. And then they were like, Okay,
I think you're ready to go to Cuba. And I
was like, bet, let's go. Yeah, Let's go to Cuba.
And I got sick. In Cuba, I got a stomach
like a parasite because you know, I'm Caribbean. So I
(13:37):
was like I lived in them in the current public.
I traveled to this why can I drink water? And
people were like, you cannot drink this? And I drank
water and I got sick, and so I was really
concerned because in my mind it didn't click like I'm
going to go to this hospital, but I don't have
health insurance and how am I gonna you know, So
my mindset in the United States, in a capitalist societ
(14:00):
that asks you the first you know, as soon as
you get into that hospital or clinic, the first question
is what's your coverage. I was panicking, and the comrades
and friends there were like, you're good, and you look
like you're Cuban and so when I when I walked in,
the lady that was at the dust said, you know,
what are your symptoms? How are you feeling? And I
(14:22):
went into shock because I was like, is she not
going to ask me? And he said, you're in socialist Cuba.
Medicine is free. Here, healthcare is free. And then I
started having conversations with other folks. I was considering the
college applications at that moment, and I was like, I
don't know. I mean, I'm going to have to ask
for financial aid because my parents can't afford to pay
(14:43):
my tuition and I'm going to go into debt. And
they were like debt for school. We get free education here.
They're like where do you do that? Like what? And
how much money would you calculate you being debted to it?
Right now, I have over one hundred thousand dollars worth
of debt with Columbia. You know, breathe, I know you
was there too. I was there, he was there too.
(15:05):
And so all these things made me realize in so
many ways how different society could be organized economically, politically
to serve the people. And when I came back, I
was set. I was like, this is what I'm fighting
for and ultimately I live in the wealthiest country in
the world, with the most access to so many things
and the production of so much wealth. What socialism could
(15:28):
look like in the United States is not what it
looks like in Gula. It's not what it looks like
in Venezuela. You know, we're talking about abundance in the
hands of the people. And so at seventeen I was sold.
I started reading everything and anything I could find on
the socialist tradition, as back as w Web and as
back as Paul Ropes and Claudia Jones.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I see Ropes right over your shoulder, Yes.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Because for me it was also a way of understanding
that it's a science. When we're talking about socialism, or
we're talking about marx Is a science, is not something
that is based on an identity specifically or a culture.
Many different cultures have adopted Marxism to their context and
in a lot of ways. When we learn about socialism
(16:13):
and communism, we learn it from a space of referencing
countries that have lived the attacks of eus imperialism, that
have been unfortunately victims of strangled economies, of invasions of coups.
We haven't experienced that in the United States. Therefore, our
possibility of creating real socialism, a socialism that actually speaks
(16:37):
in the needs of the people, that restores the level
of damage and violence it has imposed on other people.
We could do that because we are in a space
to be able to do that in terms of like
just how advanced we have become. Also in terms of
production technology, Like we could do a lot, but we've
taught to fear.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
What are some of the biggest misconceptions around socialism.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Girl, there's so many, Like I'll share one. You know,
socialists are going to eliminate private property. Therefore, if I
own a house, they're going to take the house. Or
if I own this, they're gonna take this. Yes, socialism
and communism are against private ownership. But let's consider this.
When you buy a home, you got to get indebted
(17:31):
to buy a home, so the bank actually owns your home,
which means that the desire of socialism is to take
the profit motive out in that transaction. Every human being
deserves to have housing. Therefore, housing is a human right,
and you wouldn't have to pay sixty seventy percent of
your income to a bank to keep your house that's
(17:53):
what we mean when we're talking about eliminating certain things
with regards to private property. We're talking about the profit motive.
Why do we need health insurance to get health care?
I mean someone's getting a lot of loop, someone's getting
a lot of money because people are sick. That shouldn't
be a profit making industry. It should be accessible in
(18:16):
freedom people to get health care. And it is possible
if you eliminate the health insurance companies like who often
just deny your claims anyway and make it really difficult
for you to access the health care you need. We
live in a society where we have food deserts, yes,
and it's not that we're not producing what people should
(18:38):
be and can eat. Like the Bronx, the South Bronx
where I'm from, has the marketa the Margeta is the
market that actually distributes fresh produce to the rest of
the city. And yet my community in the South Bronx
is a food desert. We're the last ones to receive
fresh produce. The children living in the South Browns are
(19:01):
living in poverty and are food and secure. Come on,
but then you have Jeff Bezos taking I don't know
how many women they have none of do that have
none animal? You know what I'm say, anything on nine
to do with nothing, But he gets to do that
and gets to also steal from workers seven point nine
million dollars an hour.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So when we see this level of inequality, that is
very intentional, and it's only for the service of a
very small group of people that get to live their
lives lavishly while the majority of people in the world,
not only in this country, in the world, are suffering
all sorts of mysteries. It's inconceivable. It's something that should
(19:42):
not be normalized. It's something that should be criminalized. Actually,
like we don't need billionaires. Who the hell needs billionaires?
O don't know, they shouldn't exist.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean that's the part for me, you know, the
the cash twenty two for me is that I think
government serves a valid purpose. But we've never gotten to
see in large economies the government serve the people, that's right, right, So,
like I do believe that you should be able to
own your house, Like I don't think that the government
(20:12):
should have to own my house. However, I do also
believe there should be guardrails, right that keep me from
owning ten houses.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
When people can't have a home, when people don't have
a room to sleep in.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Yeah, that's what we're talking about. I mean, we're talking
about the same thing. Ultimately, there should be a way
in which those people who cannot afford to buy a
house should also be sheltered. Like in New York City
right now, there are people who have salary jobs who
are living out of shelters. The New York Times just
came out with an article about that. We're talking about
thousands of people that are living out of shelters who
(20:47):
have full time jobs. And so we're talking about a
society that literally does not put as a priority human needs.
It doesn't prioritize human needs at all. We're talking about
out the increasing of electricity bills, the increasing of meals
and food primary stuff too, like eggs, like milk.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, it's not like we're talking about filet mignon.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, like the very bigs, cheese, bread, you know what
I'm saying, Like very essential things.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
And the government could actually put a cap on price gouging.
They've done it before, they did it during nexent the
Nixon era, they did it, but Democrats and Republicans could
care less at this point about how people are living.
And so I think, you know, there's a high level
of discontent that comes with the crimes of capitalism. Capitalism
(21:39):
has done that to us. But yet we're told that
what we should fear are the communists. We have not
experienced communism in this country.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
How does socialism relate to communism? Because I don't think
people for a lot of us, I feel like these
are just words that have been kind of thrown around
in the orbit, and until you make it your business
to actually parse out the nuances and the truths about them,
they end up being used and weaponized.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I mean, we still to this day hear people saying
like such and such as a communist, and I think
a lot of people, without even realizing it, have been
indoctrinated to see that as a negative or as a
character trait that makes them worthy of whatever harm they
ended up perceiving on the other end of it. Yeah,
So how do communism and socialism relate?
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Well, you know, there are different economic systems that historically
have kind of been built one on top of the other.
Like if you think about feudalism, then you're thinking about
how feudalism as a society. Yeah, the serves, they were
obviously opposing relationships. You have the landowner, you have the
serves capitalism, you have the workers, and you have the
(22:45):
owners of the means of production. Just as everything changes
in society and the world, history has proven that this
economic and political patterns in history do also shift as
a result of a revolution, and revolutions have looked different
ways in different moments in history. And so when we're
talking about socialism, we're talking about the inherent next step
(23:08):
from a failed capitalist system. Socialism means you would still
have a government, you would still have a state, and
the state now deals with the people differently. It's not
in the benefit of capital and capitalists, but it's in
the benefit of the people. So you socialize things like healthcare,
you socialize things like education, you socialize things like housing.
(23:32):
And by socializing, I mean that the wealth that is
created is for the majority of people's benefit. Therefore, these
things could be free and accessible in a socialist society.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And further record, let me just say real quick, so
when you keep hearing about privatize, y'all, and this concept
of privatizing, which is what's happening in the United States,
it's the antithesis of socialize, which is we're going to
make it so that only one person or some conglomerate
can amass all the wealth from this necessity. And so
(24:04):
that's where you see the privatizing of schools, hospitals.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Girl, they're trying to privatize tampons.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, if they could figure out a way to
make you have to pay for somebody to put it in,
they would do.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
It, that's right. And when we talk about privatization of education,
so there are certain things under the capitalist system, they
actually make certain things fail so that they can then
push after privatization. So, for example, public education is not
failing simply because public education is a failure. It's simply
(24:34):
because it's underfunded. My mom was an educator. She was
a public school teacher for thirty five years. My mom
had to purchase thank you for Nervous, and she loved
it so much, and she was so committed to her
students that she would actually buy materials to bring into
the classroom. Because it was a very underfunded school in
a very poor working class community in the Bronx, So
(24:56):
she didn't receive new books, she didn't receive new tech knowledgies.
You didn't receive all the things that young people should
have accessible for them to be able to learn and
to be able to be in dialogue with the rest
of the world. We don't do that. We don't fund
public education. What we do is that we fund war,
we give tax breaks to corporations. That's what the capitalist
(25:19):
structure and the economic system is. And so when we
talk about privatization, the capitalist system already set the public
education school system to fail. And so now you have
the doche and you have them talking about efficiency, and
you have them, you know, sharing talking all this crap
about how they're going to eliminate the Department of Education
(25:42):
because it has been failing. But they're missing the other
part of that analysis, and it's that capitalism has made
public education fail absolutely, and charter schools were a part
of that. The private education system is a part of that.
And so you want to privatize it more, take the
federal funding from it, which is something that we collectively
put into it. To then make all these private institutions
(26:04):
and whoever owns these private institutions wealthier at the expense
of the majority of kids in our country, who are
poor in working class, and so socialism is the complete
opposite to that, because what we're talking about is not
further privatizing, it's actually making the system and government work
in a way where everyone has access to the most
(26:26):
basic human rights, education, housing, food, employment. I mean, these
folks came in, they came in hard, just taking away
regulations giving corporations the free range to exploit people. When
we're talking about federal workers taking away their right to
be able to build unions, that is bananas. And it
(26:48):
also affects a different sector of society that had not
been affected. So now you're creating a whole set of
pool of people that are actually seeing what the crimes
of capitalism look like. Physicists to that is creating socialism,
not reforming it. It's creating a whole new economic and
political system.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, am I get in trouble for saying this, but
I'm gonna say it. I just wish it's.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Not that you care about getting in trouble because you've
been getting in trouble.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, but sometimes it's just like again, I just wish
young Like I don't pay a rent right now, right
and I don't pay a mortgage, but I feel like
this is the era where had I had either of
those things on my head, I would squat up with folks, yeah,
and be like, we're not paying.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Our mortgage, like we're not paying our rent.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Because what happens is people get stuck in the capitalism
of things because they keep you stuck, and they keep
us stuck by preventing us from being able to move
out of this constant cycle of having to quote unquote
do adulting, which is really in our society adulting is
paying bills.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, that's adulting.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And then we forget though that we're paying bills to
somebody who has to pay bills. So when you start
bringing that carpet out from the bottom, it does ripple.
I mean, I remember when I bought my house and
I said to my mom, like, I feel like I've
made a grave error, and she was like, well, Ye're
not paying that mind rent anymore, so.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Figure it out.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It was like fair enough because I was renting before
and during COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I was like, can I have a month off?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
And my landlord was like, well, I mean if you
don't pay for a month and that's my mortgage, and
I was like, I mean, yeah, I know.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Ain't that crazy, You know, it's really crazy. But the
thing is that, you know, like getting mortgage and rent
don't go at the same pace as salaries and wages.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
In terms of the way that they are growing exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, they don't ever raise wages, but mortgage in rent
keep on going.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Out, keep on going up. And it's not that productivity
has decreased in this country. People are working more than
they ever have. But that's capitalism, right because the most
expensive part of a business is salaries, and so what
you don't want to do is pay more salaries because
that doesn't necessarily mean a surplus to your business. It's
(29:21):
a loss. That's how they see it. You don't have
to care whether that is a mother who's single, mom
who has three kids, just business exactly. So the economics
of capitalism prioritizes profit. It's always about profit. Socialism puts
human needs at the center. So it's really a battle
(29:44):
between death and life. That's the battle that we're seeing
right now, a system that doesn't care about whether people
live or die because you know what, let's face it,
we have AI, we have robots, we have automation, and
so we have surplus populations, We have more people than
we need, and so if there's a good pull of
them that disappeared, Hey, whether it is disappearing because they
(30:08):
don't have access to health, whether it is because they
freeze to death in their cars, whether it is because
we're imprisoning them and making them cheap labor, because that's
what the mass incarceration system is. And so there's a
surplus population that we could get rid of, and we're
just going to create ways in which we are going
to get rid of that because it's not about humanity,
(30:29):
it's not about the planet. Even we're in the worst
stage when we talk about climate catastrophe. So that is capitalism,
that is socialism. We asked about communism. Communism would be
the last stage, and it's not about one nation. It's
also global. It's a sense of if we are able
to globally a socialist vision world economic structure, political structure,
(30:52):
we can get into a space of communism, which is where,
because we've developed society and understand standing our role and
responsibility with each other and the planet and the ways
in which we prioritize humanity, we could then live in
a communist society that doesn't necessarily need a state. It
doesn't have classes. That's communism. It doesn't have classes, meaning
(31:16):
that there's not billionaires, there's not trillionaires, there's not millionaires.
A class of society means that we are more focused
again in the survival of people and the survival and
the planet that we inherit, the planet we live in.
And people may think that's utopian.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I definitely was in my head like this out.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
But let's think about one of the first classes that
I was engaged in with the party, with the PSL
at a very young age. I wasn't a party member.
I was just someone in the periphery of the party.
I would come to different meetings. Someone pulled up a
year map and they said, if we were to think
about human history and a year calendar and we were
to think about capitalism, capitalism would be a day.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Because okay, there was way more, because more and before
capitalism and people really myself included. You just feel like
that's the main character syndrome of being in the United States,
Like you just think that whatever you're existing in is
what always was here, what.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It is in human history. Capitalism actually hasn't been around
as long as humanity has been around, so.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
What do you say to people who say, well, okay,
but there were merchants, and you know, we learned about
nomads and about what's his name, not Marco Paulo. Get
there is Marco Paulo was like, it's right there, it's
right there. You know what was that? Is that not capitalism?
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Capitalism is what we know now, right.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Exchange of goods is not capitalism, y'all.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
No, No, exchange of goods is not capitalism. And communities
and society is often organized based on the means of production,
the motive production basically the technology that we have in
our hands, and who has that technology? Right? Who owns
that technology, and who has the ability to use it
(33:01):
in benefit of whom and what so? For example, the engine,
when the engine came into the world, there was a
class of people who owned it. These were the people
who build transportations, trains. These were the people who had
access to and owned factories. I mean not that the
(33:24):
invention of the engine was of that set of people, right,
workers invented the engine fact factory, but who owned it.
Just like our phones, the iPhones, these things are built
on the blood of a lot of working class people
in the global South, including babies and congo these things, right,
(33:45):
But who owns this technology is the one that determines
how we utilize it, who has access to it, and
that is how societies are developed. And a lot of
the times we don't think that as working class people
who make these things, we can have control over these things.
(34:06):
And that's what socialism is. I mean, we're talking about
TikTok earlier and the tariffs, and you know how these
manufacturers are coming out and saying, actually, you could get
this shit for cheap, because what they charge you one
thousand dollars for guess what to me, it cost us
ten dollars to make. We will sell it to you
and retail price. And people are like, what, that's what
(34:27):
capitalism has done to the global South. It has created
cheap labor that they exploit. They own the air in
many ways, because you know, they get these flights, these
FedEx packages flown to Spain to get their brands on
him and then bring him here and then all of
a sudden, whatever costs ten dollars for them is costing
us fifteen hundred dollars. And so who's making that surplus
(34:51):
of money. It's not us, is not the workers in
China for sure. So that is what capitalism has become
because of again who owns what and in whose benefit,
and societies have developed and evolved throughout human history in
that way, before capitalism and a class society, there was
primitive communalism. There were people who were living in villages
(35:15):
and tribes and everyone had a role and people, you know,
figured out how to survive and there was that And
so it's not a utopia because in history we have
examples of it. Will it look different, It will look
massively different.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
Listen the technology that we have, the culture that has evolved,
and the things that need to be deconstructed and reconstructed
and created and new. But it is possible because it
has been part of our history. People have done that before.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Where do you feel like the trajectory is going at
present in terms of the world, So not the United States,
but the world because we see organizations like bricks like
Caracom there just seems to me like theirs. And maybe
I'm being like a utopian idealist here, but it just
(36:12):
feels like in the isolating of the United States, it's
actually making these other nations a lot more forward about
saying how do we work together.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
It actually came from Brazil. It wasn't a meeting that
it's a meeting and a process that started twenty years ago,
the Landless Pests and Movement of Brazil. The MST started
this in two thousand and four, and it was a
convening of different forces around the world, so social movements,
political organizations, community leaders, you name it. Everyone comes together,
mostly from the Global South, to speak about the current
(36:45):
moment and speak about the ways in which we need
to analyze together, but also exchange and build political programs
in collaboration. And in this last one it was specifically
around the economy and Trump and tariffs keep coming out.
And one of the things that was really hopeful about
this particular meeting where Africa was their India was there,
(37:08):
Different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean were represented.
It was really inspiring to hear them talk about the
need for strategic unity in the Global South and the
need to build alternatives to the economic system and the
dollarization of the world. What has happened is that the
(37:28):
United States is stuck in nineteen forty five. Yes, the
United States and all the administrations that have come afterwards
have been invested in the idea of a unipolar world,
a world that is dominated by the US, and everyone,
including those of US in the United States neak to
bow down to. And the South has in many ways
(37:50):
accumulated experiences of resistance and has created mechanisms like SELAC
in this region. SELAC is basically a council of the
different governments in the American region, so in the American continent.
And so while I was in Brazil, SILAC was meeting
as well, and you had Mexico, you had Cuba, you
(38:10):
had Venezuela represented in this space. That actually is one
of the regional proposals that come out of the Vallavarian
Revolution of Venezuela to be able to create again mechanisms
and instruments that are an alternative to the hegemoniums of
the United States around the world. And so SELAC, the
President of Mexico, was like, we cannot become the backyard
(38:31):
of the United States. We cannot allow ourselves to be recolonized.
That is dignity the United States government.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Now Trump gets because Colda Shinbaum does not speak louder
than this, Just Leanna.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
She is the most tender, sharp voice. I have ever heard.
I love that woman.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
I was like, Sosa knows we are sovereign people's She
was amazing her speech.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
People should actually go and like listen to what she
has to say. She was amazing because it expresses the
sentiment of people in the global South, not only here
in this continent, but in Africa and India. Like, it
is crazy that the president of the United States stands
there and talks about how we're declaring Liberation Day and
we're becoming independent when the United States dollar controls the
(39:30):
global economy and it actually strangles the life out of
other countries. When this man was like, I don't know
where Losado is, I'm.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Like, first of all, his stuff is made, and then
you're gonna put a tariff that is going to.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
In many ways kill the economy and displace a lot
of these women. Who are the women in these factories
from their jobs, deepening their poverty. Like, ma, man, what
are we talking about. We need to be independent, independent
from who. And as a matter of fact, you know
this is listen, this is.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
The same white supremacy you know masking itself. Well, this
might media could be masking itself with supremacy, but it's
the same victim behavior.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
They're mimicking the big is Karen is Trump.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yes, they're mimicking this like we're victims exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Performance, Yeah, which is a performance, is a complete performance.
And it's also a way in many ways of justifying
their actions and making US citizens manufacturings justify their actions
that are violent actions, that are cruel actions to the rest.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
The Global South is coming into an understanding of themselves
as the producers, as the manufacturers in this large factory
of the Global South to the United States, and they're
all strike. They're like, actually, we're gonna take over this
factory and we're gonna build our own ourisms and our
own instruments and so bricks is part of that. But
(40:59):
there's also a lot of different discussions happening by regions,
right because like how do you integrate economies regionally? How
do we trade in each other?
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yes, yes, yes, like seeing African countries say we want
to start removing visas to be able to travel between
the African countries.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Exactly because the only thing that doesn't necessariate like a
visa or document is capital. Like capital moves freely in
this country globally, Like if anyone who has the resources,
the millions of dollars to go buy land in one
of our countries which we love and are beautiful. They
go by land and they don't need to worry about taxes,
(41:35):
and they don't need to worry about labor laws, and
so they build this big ass resource in these beaches
that don't belong to them but now belong to them
because they pay for it and they get to exploit
the labor.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Not in Grenada, just for the record, not in Grenada.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You can't pay for a beach in Grenado.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Okay, you if you could get to the beach, he
is your beach. I'm talking about the ones that you
know didn't have a Marie Spishal, didn't. You know.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Listen, though many Grenadians, many Grenadians have a different view
of Maurice than people outside of Grenada.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
Yeah, I think that that's another show.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
But you know, when I talked to Grenadians that were
there at the time, They're like.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, I don't think it was what folks think it
was for us.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
So yeah, I know, for me, I feel like I'm
only just now like delving into my Maurice context outside
of the context from Grenadians who were there, like my
mom's schoolmates who were like put in prison, you know,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I mean it's different because he also is not Grenadians.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
That's true. Let's say in the United States with the
Black Panther Party, a lot of us understand the Black
Panther Party as a revolutionary like organization. But then there
are other people that you talk to or don't have Yeah,
don't have that perception.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
But then I'm talking like Cludia Shanbau.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
But then.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
You talk to other people who are like, there's the
Panthers from the Bay.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I mean, so you know history by the way, J
James has a really great talk about that on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
But I know what you about to say. To say it,
please say it for all of us.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
So it's that, you know, I think in a lot
of ways, there are gonna be many different perceptions, but ultimately,
when there are radical movements, there will always be a
marker before this movement, yeah and after this movement. And
these folks have actually marked history in that way, Like
people could say whatever they want about Cuba and filed Castro,
but there's a marker there, Like there was a sense
(43:35):
of dignity that was established. You are no longer the
United States going to utilize Cuba as your backyard and
as your little Las Vegas. I mean, you got to
watch a Godfather and see what happened, you know what
I'm saying, Like it was real, and it was the peasantry,
and it was those who were part of the labor movement,
and it was the students all in the United Front
that actually won that revolution. So people could think whatever
(43:58):
they want. The end of the day, there was a
marker in the United States. We have had historical achievements.
We've won the Civil Rights Act, We've won the right
of women to vote, we fought movements, fought people came
together to abolish slavery as was known then because we
know that the methods of slavery have changed. Yes, but
(44:18):
we have had historical achievements. We have yet to make history.
History comes with the total liberation of our people. And
there's still a lot of people in this country that
aren't free. So when this man stands there and he's
talking about we're declaring nationals, they and freedom because we're
going to gain our independence, who is he talking about?
(44:39):
Who's we independent from?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Medicine, and for whom it's the same people that say, like,
why isn't there a White History Month. It's the same
people that say all lives matter. It's like, we don't
need a white History month. All of it is white history.
We don't need to say all that matter. All of
your lives have been proven to matter, would it?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Okay? Yeah, but you asked me the question, where do
I see us going? There's an OXFAM report that is
so good. They do it every year, and they basically
say that we can't expect to see the first trillionaire
to emerge in the next ten years. Trillionaire, trillionaire, The
first trillionaire can emerge in the next ten years, but
(45:18):
to eradicate poverty, it will take two hundred and sixty years.
So you can have one person in the next ten
years that becomes the first trillionaire, okay, but it will
take two hundred and sixty years to eradicate poverty in
the world, which means that the level of inequality I
was gonna say why, I mean, the level of inequality
(45:38):
that we are experiencing globally has created a larger gap
between the small group of people that have everything and
the majority of us that have nothing, and if we
continue at this rate, our possibility of eliminating poverty is
almost impossible. So one example, Jeff Bezos again.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Actually, you know what, We're going to go to our
special Patreon segment for this.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
We're gonna head over to Patreon so we can hear
about this. One example Jeff Bezos and his dick shaped spaceship.
So come and join us at the Seal Squad with
Coria la Cruz on side effects of socialism. The last
(46:28):
I mean, I think for a lot of people, the
first step is really just being willing to understand the
harm of capitalism, because I think that, like anything, it's
seen as so the same way that socialism and communism
are seen as fails. So I saw this interview recently
where this on lady was saying how people are always
(46:49):
challenging her to say saying like, well, tell me where
communism is works, tell me where socialism has worked, And
she was saying, well, that question is not a genuine
question because you don't ask that about capitalism. You're constantly
only contextualizing socialism and communism by where it hasn't worked.
Versus acknowledging that there are examples that are still infringed
(47:14):
upon by capitalism. And she was like, you know, when
it comes to capitalism, we consider capitalism quote unquote working.
But she was like, based on what based on the
fact that there's a billionaire, is that what makes capitalism working.
There's so many ways to look at these things, and
ultimately it just boils down to our values the same.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
And that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
It's like, I know that when I talk to black conservatives,
their mindset quite often they might try and say that
it's about their Christian beliefs, but their mindset as being
a black conservative, nine times out of ten ends up
aligning with a certain economic conservatism that ignores and we're.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
Won't bring it all all the way back.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
But that ignores theology liberation like theological liberation, what is it?
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Liberation? Theology?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:02):
No, you were closed, you were closed. I got you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
And so you know, as we close out this episode,
I can tell you the number one question people are
going to ask is what book can I read? Now
they're not going to actually read the book, but they
gonna ask. So for the one out of ten that's
actually going to read. The book what would you say
is a good introductory book for people to read about socialism.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
So because there are a lot of people who ask
that question and asked a question, then how would it
look like in the United States? The Party for Socialism
and the Liberation actually created a book that's called The
Socialist Reconstruction, Okay, And the Socialist Reconstruction has a definition
of socialism and it also speaks to the history of
socialism in the United States, because another thing they want
to make us think is that socialism is a foreign thing. Yes,
(48:52):
so socialism is very much embedded in a lot of
the struggles that got us the eight hour day, that
got us the regulations for landlords, for us to have
tenant rights, like a lot of these things come from
socialist struggles. And the civil rights movement as well was
very much injected by a socialist ideology. And so the
Socialist Reconstruction you could look into that. And then another
(49:14):
book that I think people should be reading now, which
has to do with the moment, like the question of
where do we go from here, which is Martin Luther
King's last book, Where do We Go From Here? Where
he reflects and like we got civil rights. Right, that's cool,
but that's not enough. I've never heard of this book
Where do we Go from Here? I think I don't
know where is it? I thought i'd had it Where
do we Go? Where do we go from here? But
(49:35):
it's an amazing book for many different reasons, because it's
like it's a parallel to what's happening now, Like we.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Were in chaos our community. Where do we go from chaos?
Speaker 4 (49:44):
Our community as a community? From Martin Luther King And
it was a reflection, like we got these laws, but
like what does it take for these laws to be implemented?
What does it take for us to be able to
have economic and political decision making power? What does it take?
And ultimately he lands at the question of revolution as
(50:04):
the space where we need to be able to contest
struggle to get like move forward reform or revolution right,
And it doesn't have to be one or the other,
but it has to be both. Like at this point,
we've earned all these reforms that are being rolled back
and as long as they continue to be reforms that
are fought and won by us, but we don't have
(50:25):
the economic and political power as a mass, not an individual,
as a group, of people in society as a class.
Then we will continue to be at the women's of
those who have the economic and political power to dangle
that in front of us for an election, to say
what we want. And actually, this doesn't serve us anymore.
So we're going to roll it back. And we need
(50:45):
to be able to fight for power, fight for economic
political power, and to create a system and a structure
that is the complete opposite of what we've been experiencing
and living in this country.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
There you have it, y'all. Thank you so much Claudia for.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Coming through and school in US and for you know,
consistently making that just the platform education and informing a
really effectively uninformed proletariat.
Speaker 4 (51:15):
So thank you, Thank you for having me. It's always
fun to be in conversation with you, to be in
community with you, you know, and I'm very excited about
continuing to build, So thank you for having me same.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I'm looking forward to it. Y'all. Know what to do?
You wanted to know the names of the books? Get
the books.
Small help from small, small human areas. Small It's so funky.
We're back.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's another episode of Small Doses podcast. I'm Amanda Seals,
and the political climate in the United States is just
every day so overwhelming. That being said, a lot of
words are being placed into people zeitgeist on a more
regular basis than I think they are accustomed to.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And one of those words is socialism.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So as we find ourselves in the throes of a
fascist dictatorship taking over, people are throwing out words like
socialism on a regular basis. And a lot of times
that people throwing out those words are the fascist dictators
because they know that the words socialism and communism have
been really very successfully indoctrinated as having negative connotations for Americans.
(01:08):
And this has been going on for years and years
and years and years. People don't even know why they
feel some type of way when they hear the word socialism.
They don't even know why they feel some type of
way when they hear the word communism. They just hear
those words and think enemy. They hear those words and
think opposite or danger or something counter to what they
(01:29):
would want for themselves. We see this in the way
that Republicans love to say that Democrats.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Are socialist leftists.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
First of all, Democrats are absolutely far from being socialist leftists.
But the consideration of what a socialist leftist is is
something that you should be doing, because if they're saying
that they're so terrible that they're the opposite of them,
then have we ever considered that maybe the opposite of
them is the better option. Well, if you've been wondering,
(01:57):
or maybe you didn't wonder, but now you're here today,
we're going to talk about side effective socialism with somebody
who really knows what they talk about when they talk
about socialism. Claudia de la Cruz was the presidential nominee
for the Socialist Party here in the United States, and
she is very involved with the continuing religious and education
(02:19):
of politics in both spaces. And I really am so
glad that I finally got to meet her because I
was very persistent. I got her email, I emailed her
about linking, and this was last year and it would
just kind of fell off, but I was still living
in California.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
When I moved back to New York.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I reached out again and said, I have a feeling
I think that you're based in New York and if so,
I apologize for falling off, but I would love to
get up.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
No response, I said, no, I'm supposed to hit her,
And so I hit her two more times. Yeah, I
was harassing her.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And the third time I hit her said, I know
that this is like harassment at this point, and I'm
just being persistent because my gut is telling me you're
worth it. And she was like, you know, I really
appreciate you being persistent, and she had been traveling a lot. Nonetheless,
we ended up getting up for lunch, and immediately there
was a shared understanding of where we are and where
(03:16):
we're going. And I was really happy that she was
interested in coming on Small Doses podcast to do what
she does really well, which is provide political education to
folks who are curious and want to know.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And that's the thing.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Providing political education to people who are committed to misunderstanding
you and who are committed to making a villain. There's
nothing worth that, you know. I know some people really
enjoy doing that. I don't think that's a use of
my time, but it's a great use of our time
to be here with Corriera La Cruz because she is
going to talk to those of us who are listening
(03:51):
to learn, and I know that that is so many
of you right here at Small Dose's podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's so good to be there, you guys today the
smile Today, we have a guest that I persisted. I
persisted because I just feel like there's a lot of
whack people walking around and something said to me like
this lady ain't wag. So I'm I'm glad, ain't you know?
(04:26):
And I don't believe that you're gonna be whack. Some
people be surprising me, but I don't think. I don't.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I don't get it from you. I don't. And I'm
met a man and he ain't whacked neither.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
That says a lot because.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Sometimes you meet somebody man and you like, if this
young man, what's that say about you? Which is also
when I reflect back at my choices, I'm like, oh wow,
what did that say about me?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And so I was a good And that's another episode.
That's another episode.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
That was a moment because you know what, things change, Yes,
the only constant thing in life has changed, and so
that in life we're over with that.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yes, you bet a parable of the sour Us.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yes, okay, Lauren Olamina and God is changed.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
We are here with Claudia de la Cruz.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But Claudia, I was like, what is the title that
I get? Plenty because you are so many things and
you're organizing in different spaces and with different groups, Like
right now, I know that you have been given the
mantle to reinvigorate the organization that come on every time
you say it.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I'm like, memorize it. Memorize it. Memorize it. While she's
saying it, memorize it.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
It's if go for peace, that's just for peace.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Have you ever read Chris Hedges book about It's like
Christian fascists or something?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
No, I think I sent it to you. I sent
it to you on signal.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yuah, huh, I haven't read it.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I send it to you because I wanted to find
out from you if like his point of view of
how he was raised in christian is similar to what
I understand, like your point of view of how you
were raising Christianity to be. But hearing it from like
an old white man was like, okay, I just try
and keep a log of the high quality whites.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
That's necessary.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We need a log we need a database.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
We need a database. Yeah, we need a database of
the high quality whites.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But a lot of people came to know you through
your presidential run with the People's Socialists and.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
The Party for Socialism and Liberation. Okay, can I be honest,
you could be honest.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think that perimenopause has really settled in with me
in my memory because I used to be able to
remember everything, and like I can't remember names.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It's two of us. At some point we're going to
have to make a show about perimenopause.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, it's very many. Yeah, because honey, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I'm like, I don't remember the name of that and
why not? Like, why not it's the name of a party,
Like you should be able to really pull that from
the sky, and unless it's like something I'm reading for
like very particular reason to memorize, like these facts about
this story, to relay it.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
In one lock and write out the other.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It happens. It happens to the best of us.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And we are the best of us.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
We are the best of us.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So we are very fortunate today to be getting this
lesson from you because you were that.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Girl I don't know, and you know these things.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know these things, so first and foremost, can you
just contextualize for people how you became a part of
the party, how you became informed and impassioned about socialism
and able to educate your community and the comrades.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Well, I came into the organizing world, the organizing sphere
in the United States, at the age of thirteen, and
it started with a lot of questions. I mean, I
was born and raised in the poorest congressional district in
the United States, the South Bronx where hip hop was
born South South Bronx. Yeah, and there were many questions.
You know, people speak often about poor communities that are
(08:03):
flooded with violence, that are lacking so many things and
in so many ways. I didn't necessarily know that I
was poor until it was made clear to me by
others that I was poor because my parents were working
class and they did everything they could to feed me,
to clothe me. You know, they are immigrants from the
Dominican Republic. There's a certain set of values that come
(08:23):
with that, in terms of what the expectations are for
you in school, for you at work. And so I
understood the world differently in many ways because of my
Caribbean background, and I understood my relationship to this country
differently as well, because I came from a Caribbean background.
I came from a place that was invaded politically, militarily,
(08:44):
economically by the United States several times. And my parents were,
you know, hit by that economic and political instability and
forced to move to the United States. And so I
have many questions, you know, questions around police brutality, I
mean talking about in the eighties and nineties, a whole
lot of things were happening in the South, Bronx, questions
around patriarchy, and my parents didn't necessarily know how to answer.
(09:07):
But one of the things my parents, to their credit,
had very clear was that they didn't have any money
to leave me, but they would definitely leave me educated.
They would definitely leave me in a space where I
could do better, not necessarily economically, but just in terms
of knowledge and in terms of access. Then they did,
and so they started looking for a spot to take
(09:28):
me to answer all these political and economic questions, and
they came. They came to church because they thought, you know,
maybe if she finds Jesus, I'll do it. Maybe she'll
stop causing havoc and find her path. And I found
a socialist priest Puerto Rican.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
And I can promise you that somebody in their car
listened to this just went how that worked. I promised
you somebody just went what Because the goal of this
episode I already told you on the intro. The goal
of this episode is to give you a foundational unders
standing of what this is, because whatever you've been told
by the mainstream media or by most institutions probably ain't
(10:07):
even the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Well I know, if it's mainstream media, it's not the truth.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
But this man who understood that Puerto Rico had been
colonized or continues to be colonized, is the last colony
in this hemisphere by the United States and was engaged
in liberation movements in the sixties, seventies, eighties, took me
in and said, you know, you're looking for Jesus. You
need to find the revolutionary Jesus. He was also a socialist,
(10:30):
and I was like, okay.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Dang is he from the Caribbean.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
He's Puerto Rican. And so the question of Chris Hedges.
That's where I found liberation theology, and I started studying
liberation theology and started studying how people's faith starting with
Haiti eighteen oh four, the Haitian Revolution, people's faith were
(10:55):
part of the independent struggles. And so I was very looking,
you're going to pull out a book.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I'm gonna wait because I'm really because I love when
things started to come together, because I literally had just
talked about a quote from Chris Hedges's book where he
said religion is good for good people and it's bad
for bad people, and like that was.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Like such a just like yeah, simple, simple, yeah, but
that's why I sent it to you.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And then you're like, yeah, that's how I found liberation
and theology because everything he described about his upbringing was
that was like, no, the Bible is not meant to
be taken literally, but it is supposed to teach you,
and that there are so many aspects of the Bible
that are grounded in community building and all the things
that people are talking about when they talk about socialism.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
That's right, I mean, And if you want to think
about like the primitive communalism, the ways in which we
understand communal living, right, they're pretty much principles and values
that come from faith tre additions, not only Christianity of course,
you know, but the sense of humanitarian humanism come from
those principles, those tendants of liberation theologies, the faith that liberates,
(12:10):
you know. And so when I came in contact to that,
I understood that faith didn't have to be passive either,
because this church was involved in so many different campaigns,
campaigns to free political prisoners were talking about at that time.
You had Puerto Rican political prisoners. You had Leonard Peltier
who was just released from prison a long ago, but
I'm talking about fifty years in prison for the simple
(12:33):
fact of uplifting the need to liberate indigenous communities in
this country. Native indigenous communities. You have Mumiabu Jamal, you know,
there were so many at that time, and so I
engaged in the process of developing and working in the
campaigns to free political prisoners. Then it was the anti
police brutality movement. Then it was an immigrant rights movement,
(12:55):
and so but this all came out of faith in action.
How do you put your faith into practice and understanding
that church is a moment. You go into the space
to reflect, but the service starts during the week and
you come back and you replenish, and then you go
back back to work, and so that politicized me heavily.
And then by the age of seventeen, folks were handing
(13:17):
capital with me. You know, read some marks, read some lenen,
and then I had questions. And then they were like, Okay,
I think you're ready to go to Cuba. And I
was like, bet, let's go. Yeah, Let's go to Cuba.
And I got sick. In Cuba, I got a stomach
like a parasite because you know, I'm Caribbean. So I
(13:37):
was like I lived in them in the current public.
I traveled to this why can I drink water? And
people were like, you cannot drink this? And I drank
water and I got sick, and so I was really
concerned because in my mind it didn't click like I'm
going to go to this hospital, but I don't have
health insurance and how am I gonna you know, So
my mindset in the United States, in a capitalist societ
(14:00):
that asks you the first you know, as soon as
you get into that hospital or clinic, the first question
is what's your coverage. I was panicking, and the comrades
and friends there were like, you're good, and you look
like you're Cuban and so when I when I walked in,
the lady that was at the dust said, you know,
what are your symptoms? How are you feeling? And I
(14:22):
went into shock because I was like, is she not
going to ask me? And he said, you're in socialist Cuba.
Medicine is free. Here, healthcare is free. And then I
started having conversations with other folks. I was considering the
college applications at that moment, and I was like, I
don't know. I mean, I'm going to have to ask
for financial aid because my parents can't afford to pay
(14:43):
my tuition and I'm going to go into debt. And
they were like debt for school. We get free education here.
They're like where do you do that? Like what? And
how much money would you calculate you being debted to it?
Right now, I have over one hundred thousand dollars worth
of debt with Columbia. You know, breathe, I know you
was there too. I was there, he was there too.
(15:05):
And so all these things made me realize in so
many ways how different society could be organized economically, politically
to serve the people. And when I came back, I
was set. I was like, this is what I'm fighting
for and ultimately I live in the wealthiest country in
the world, with the most access to so many things
and the production of so much wealth. What socialism could
(15:28):
look like in the United States is not what it
looks like in Gula. It's not what it looks like
in Venezuela. You know, we're talking about abundance in the
hands of the people. And so at seventeen I was sold.
I started reading everything and anything I could find on
the socialist tradition, as back as w Web and as
back as Paul Ropes and Claudia Jones.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
I see Ropes right over your shoulder, Yes.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Because for me it was also a way of understanding
that it's a science. When we're talking about socialism, or
we're talking about marx Is a science, is not something
that is based on an identity specifically or a culture.
Many different cultures have adopted Marxism to their context and
in a lot of ways. When we learn about socialism
(16:13):
and communism, we learn it from a space of referencing
countries that have lived the attacks of eus imperialism, that
have been unfortunately victims of strangled economies, of invasions of coups.
We haven't experienced that in the United States. Therefore, our
possibility of creating real socialism, a socialism that actually speaks
(16:37):
in the needs of the people, that restores the level
of damage and violence it has imposed on other people.
We could do that because we are in a space
to be able to do that in terms of like
just how advanced we have become. Also in terms of
production technology, Like we could do a lot, but we've
taught to fear.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
What are some of the biggest misconceptions around socialism.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Girl, there's so many, Like I'll share one. You know,
socialists are going to eliminate private property. Therefore, if I
own a house, they're going to take the house. Or
if I own this, they're gonna take this. Yes, socialism
and communism are against private ownership. But let's consider this.
When you buy a home, you got to get indebted
(17:31):
to buy a home, so the bank actually owns your home,
which means that the desire of socialism is to take
the profit motive out in that transaction. Every human being
deserves to have housing. Therefore, housing is a human right,
and you wouldn't have to pay sixty seventy percent of
your income to a bank to keep your house that's
(17:53):
what we mean when we're talking about eliminating certain things
with regards to private property. We're talking about the profit motive.
Why do we need health insurance to get health care?
I mean someone's getting a lot of loop, someone's getting
a lot of money because people are sick. That shouldn't
be a profit making industry. It should be accessible in
(18:16):
freedom people to get health care. And it is possible
if you eliminate the health insurance companies like who often
just deny your claims anyway and make it really difficult
for you to access the health care you need. We
live in a society where we have food deserts, yes,
and it's not that we're not producing what people should
(18:38):
be and can eat. Like the Bronx, the South Bronx
where I'm from, has the marketa the Margeta is the
market that actually distributes fresh produce to the rest of
the city. And yet my community in the South Bronx
is a food desert. We're the last ones to receive
fresh produce. The children living in the South Browns are
(19:01):
living in poverty and are food and secure. Come on,
but then you have Jeff Bezos taking I don't know
how many women they have none of do that have
none animal? You know what I'm say, anything on nine
to do with nothing, But he gets to do that
and gets to also steal from workers seven point nine
million dollars an hour.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So when we see this level of inequality, that is
very intentional, and it's only for the service of a
very small group of people that get to live their
lives lavishly while the majority of people in the world,
not only in this country, in the world, are suffering
all sorts of mysteries. It's inconceivable. It's something that should
(19:42):
not be normalized. It's something that should be criminalized. Actually,
like we don't need billionaires. Who the hell needs billionaires?
O don't know, they shouldn't exist.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean that's the part for me, you know, the
the cash twenty two for me is that I think
government serves a valid purpose. But we've never gotten to
see in large economies the government serve the people, that's right, right, So,
like I do believe that you should be able to
own your house, Like I don't think that the government
(20:12):
should have to own my house. However, I do also
believe there should be guardrails, right that keep me from
owning ten houses.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
When people can't have a home, when people don't have
a room to sleep in.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Yeah, that's what we're talking about. I mean, we're talking
about the same thing. Ultimately, there should be a way
in which those people who cannot afford to buy a
house should also be sheltered. Like in New York City
right now, there are people who have salary jobs who
are living out of shelters. The New York Times just
came out with an article about that. We're talking about
thousands of people that are living out of shelters who
(20:47):
have full time jobs. And so we're talking about a
society that literally does not put as a priority human needs.
It doesn't prioritize human needs at all. We're talking about
out the increasing of electricity bills, the increasing of meals
and food primary stuff too, like eggs, like milk.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, it's not like we're talking about filet mignon.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, like the very bigs, cheese, bread, you know what
I'm saying, Like very essential things.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
And the government could actually put a cap on price gouging.
They've done it before, they did it during nexent the
Nixon era, they did it, but Democrats and Republicans could
care less at this point about how people are living.
And so I think, you know, there's a high level
of discontent that comes with the crimes of capitalism. Capitalism
(21:39):
has done that to us. But yet we're told that
what we should fear are the communists. We have not
experienced communism in this country.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
How does socialism relate to communism? Because I don't think
people for a lot of us, I feel like these
are just words that have been kind of thrown around
in the orbit, and until you make it your business
to actually parse out the nuances and the truths about them,
they end up being used and weaponized.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I mean, we still to this day hear people saying
like such and such as a communist, and I think
a lot of people, without even realizing it, have been
indoctrinated to see that as a negative or as a
character trait that makes them worthy of whatever harm they
ended up perceiving on the other end of it. Yeah,
So how do communism and socialism relate?
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Well, you know, there are different economic systems that historically
have kind of been built one on top of the other.
Like if you think about feudalism, then you're thinking about
how feudalism as a society. Yeah, the serves, they were
obviously opposing relationships. You have the landowner, you have the
serves capitalism, you have the workers, and you have the
(22:45):
owners of the means of production. Just as everything changes
in society and the world, history has proven that this
economic and political patterns in history do also shift as
a result of a revolution, and revolutions have looked different
ways in different moments in history. And so when we're
talking about socialism, we're talking about the inherent next step
(23:08):
from a failed capitalist system. Socialism means you would still
have a government, you would still have a state, and
the state now deals with the people differently. It's not
in the benefit of capital and capitalists, but it's in
the benefit of the people. So you socialize things like healthcare,
you socialize things like education, you socialize things like housing.
(23:32):
And by socializing, I mean that the wealth that is
created is for the majority of people's benefit. Therefore, these
things could be free and accessible in a socialist society.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And further record, let me just say real quick, so
when you keep hearing about privatize, y'all, and this concept
of privatizing, which is what's happening in the United States,
it's the antithesis of socialize, which is we're going to
make it so that only one person or some conglomerate
can amass all the wealth from this necessity. And so
(24:04):
that's where you see the privatizing of schools, hospitals.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Girl, they're trying to privatize tampons.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I mean, if they could figure out a way to
make you have to pay for somebody to put it in,
they would do.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
It, that's right. And when we talk about privatization of education,
so there are certain things under the capitalist system, they
actually make certain things fail so that they can then
push after privatization. So, for example, public education is not
failing simply because public education is a failure. It's simply
(24:34):
because it's underfunded. My mom was an educator. She was
a public school teacher for thirty five years. My mom
had to purchase thank you for Nervous, and she loved
it so much, and she was so committed to her
students that she would actually buy materials to bring into
the classroom. Because it was a very underfunded school in
a very poor working class community in the Bronx, So
(24:56):
she didn't receive new books, she didn't receive new tech knowledgies.
You didn't receive all the things that young people should
have accessible for them to be able to learn and
to be able to be in dialogue with the rest
of the world. We don't do that. We don't fund
public education. What we do is that we fund war,
we give tax breaks to corporations. That's what the capitalist
(25:19):
structure and the economic system is. And so when we
talk about privatization, the capitalist system already set the public
education school system to fail. And so now you have
the doche and you have them talking about efficiency, and
you have them, you know, sharing talking all this crap
about how they're going to eliminate the Department of Education
(25:42):
because it has been failing. But they're missing the other
part of that analysis, and it's that capitalism has made
public education fail absolutely, and charter schools were a part
of that. The private education system is a part of that.
And so you want to privatize it more, take the
federal funding from it, which is something that we collectively
put into it. To then make all these private institutions
(26:04):
and whoever owns these private institutions wealthier at the expense
of the majority of kids in our country, who are
poor in working class, and so socialism is the complete
opposite to that, because what we're talking about is not
further privatizing, it's actually making the system and government work
in a way where everyone has access to the most
(26:26):
basic human rights, education, housing, food, employment. I mean, these
folks came in, they came in hard, just taking away
regulations giving corporations the free range to exploit people. When
we're talking about federal workers taking away their right to
be able to build unions, that is bananas. And it
(26:48):
also affects a different sector of society that had not
been affected. So now you're creating a whole set of
pool of people that are actually seeing what the crimes
of capitalism look like. Physicists to that is creating socialism,
not reforming it. It's creating a whole new economic and
political system.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, am I get in trouble for saying this, but
I'm gonna say it. I just wish it's.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Not that you care about getting in trouble because you've
been getting in trouble.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, but sometimes it's just like again, I just wish
young Like I don't pay a rent right now, right
and I don't pay a mortgage, but I feel like
this is the era where had I had either of
those things on my head, I would squat up with folks, yeah,
and be like, we're not paying.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Our mortgage, like we're not paying our rent.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Because what happens is people get stuck in the capitalism
of things because they keep you stuck, and they keep
us stuck by preventing us from being able to move
out of this constant cycle of having to quote unquote
do adulting, which is really in our society adulting is
paying bills.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, that's adulting.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And then we forget though that we're paying bills to
somebody who has to pay bills. So when you start
bringing that carpet out from the bottom, it does ripple.
I mean, I remember when I bought my house and
I said to my mom, like, I feel like I've
made a grave error, and she was like, well, Ye're
not paying that mind rent anymore, so.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Figure it out.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It was like fair enough because I was renting before
and during COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
I was like, can I have a month off?
Speaker 2 (28:33):
And my landlord was like, well, I mean if you
don't pay for a month and that's my mortgage, and
I was like, I mean, yeah, I know.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Ain't that crazy, You know, it's really crazy. But the
thing is that, you know, like getting mortgage and rent
don't go at the same pace as salaries and wages.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
In terms of the way that they are growing exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, they don't ever raise wages, but mortgage in rent
keep on going.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Out, keep on going up. And it's not that productivity
has decreased in this country. People are working more than
they ever have. But that's capitalism, right because the most
expensive part of a business is salaries, and so what
you don't want to do is pay more salaries because
that doesn't necessarily mean a surplus to your business. It's
(29:21):
a loss. That's how they see it. You don't have
to care whether that is a mother who's single, mom
who has three kids, just business exactly. So the economics
of capitalism prioritizes profit. It's always about profit. Socialism puts
human needs at the center. So it's really a battle
(29:44):
between death and life. That's the battle that we're seeing
right now, a system that doesn't care about whether people
live or die because you know what, let's face it,
we have AI, we have robots, we have automation, and
so we have surplus populations, We have more people than
we need, and so if there's a good pull of
them that disappeared, Hey, whether it is disappearing because they
(30:08):
don't have access to health, whether it is because they
freeze to death in their cars, whether it is because
we're imprisoning them and making them cheap labor, because that's
what the mass incarceration system is. And so there's a
surplus population that we could get rid of, and we're
just going to create ways in which we are going
to get rid of that because it's not about humanity,
(30:29):
it's not about the planet. Even we're in the worst
stage when we talk about climate catastrophe. So that is capitalism,
that is socialism. We asked about communism. Communism would be
the last stage, and it's not about one nation. It's
also global. It's a sense of if we are able
to globally a socialist vision world economic structure, political structure,
(30:52):
we can get into a space of communism, which is where,
because we've developed society and understand standing our role and
responsibility with each other and the planet and the ways
in which we prioritize humanity, we could then live in
a communist society that doesn't necessarily need a state. It
doesn't have classes. That's communism. It doesn't have classes, meaning
(31:16):
that there's not billionaires, there's not trillionaires, there's not millionaires.
A class of society means that we are more focused
again in the survival of people and the survival and
the planet that we inherit, the planet we live in.
And people may think that's utopian.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I definitely was in my head like this out.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
But let's think about one of the first classes that
I was engaged in with the party, with the PSL
at a very young age. I wasn't a party member.
I was just someone in the periphery of the party.
I would come to different meetings. Someone pulled up a
year map and they said, if we were to think
about human history and a year calendar and we were
to think about capitalism, capitalism would be a day.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Because okay, there was way more, because more and before
capitalism and people really myself included. You just feel like
that's the main character syndrome of being in the United States,
Like you just think that whatever you're existing in is
what always was here, what.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It is in human history. Capitalism actually hasn't been around
as long as humanity has been around, so.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
What do you say to people who say, well, okay,
but there were merchants, and you know, we learned about
nomads and about what's his name, not Marco Paulo. Get
there is Marco Paulo was like, it's right there, it's
right there. You know what was that? Is that not capitalism?
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Capitalism is what we know now, right.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Exchange of goods is not capitalism, y'all.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
No, No, exchange of goods is not capitalism. And communities
and society is often organized based on the means of production,
the motive production basically the technology that we have in
our hands, and who has that technology? Right? Who owns
that technology, and who has the ability to use it
(33:01):
in benefit of whom and what so? For example, the engine,
when the engine came into the world, there was a
class of people who owned it. These were the people
who build transportations, trains. These were the people who had
access to and owned factories. I mean not that the
(33:24):
invention of the engine was of that set of people, right,
workers invented the engine fact factory, but who owned it.
Just like our phones, the iPhones, these things are built
on the blood of a lot of working class people
in the global South, including babies and congo these things, right,
(33:45):
But who owns this technology is the one that determines
how we utilize it, who has access to it, and
that is how societies are developed. And a lot of
the times we don't think that as working class people
who make these things, we can have control over these things.
(34:06):
And that's what socialism is. I mean, we're talking about
TikTok earlier and the tariffs, and you know how these
manufacturers are coming out and saying, actually, you could get
this shit for cheap, because what they charge you one
thousand dollars for guess what to me, it cost us
ten dollars to make. We will sell it to you
and retail price. And people are like, what, that's what
(34:27):
capitalism has done to the global South. It has created
cheap labor that they exploit. They own the air in
many ways, because you know, they get these flights, these
FedEx packages flown to Spain to get their brands on
him and then bring him here and then all of
a sudden, whatever costs ten dollars for them is costing
us fifteen hundred dollars. And so who's making that surplus
(34:51):
of money. It's not us, is not the workers in
China for sure. So that is what capitalism has become
because of again who owns what and in whose benefit,
and societies have developed and evolved throughout human history in
that way, before capitalism and a class society, there was
primitive communalism. There were people who were living in villages
(35:15):
and tribes and everyone had a role and people, you know,
figured out how to survive and there was that And
so it's not a utopia because in history we have
examples of it. Will it look different, It will look
massively different.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
Listen the technology that we have, the culture that has evolved,
and the things that need to be deconstructed and reconstructed
and created and new. But it is possible because it
has been part of our history. People have done that before.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Where do you feel like the trajectory is going at
present in terms of the world, So not the United States,
but the world because we see organizations like bricks like
Caracom there just seems to me like theirs. And maybe
I'm being like a utopian idealist here, but it just
(36:12):
feels like in the isolating of the United States, it's
actually making these other nations a lot more forward about
saying how do we work together.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
It actually came from Brazil. It wasn't a meeting that
it's a meeting and a process that started twenty years ago,
the Landless Pests and Movement of Brazil. The MST started
this in two thousand and four, and it was a
convening of different forces around the world, so social movements,
political organizations, community leaders, you name it. Everyone comes together,
mostly from the Global South, to speak about the current
(36:45):
moment and speak about the ways in which we need
to analyze together, but also exchange and build political programs
in collaboration. And in this last one it was specifically
around the economy and Trump and tariffs keep coming out.
And one of the things that was really hopeful about
this particular meeting where Africa was their India was there,
(37:08):
Different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean were represented.
It was really inspiring to hear them talk about the
need for strategic unity in the Global South and the
need to build alternatives to the economic system and the
dollarization of the world. What has happened is that the
(37:28):
United States is stuck in nineteen forty five. Yes, the
United States and all the administrations that have come afterwards
have been invested in the idea of a unipolar world,
a world that is dominated by the US, and everyone,
including those of US in the United States neak to
bow down to. And the South has in many ways
(37:50):
accumulated experiences of resistance and has created mechanisms like SELAC
in this region. SELAC is basically a council of the
different governments in the American region, so in the American continent.
And so while I was in Brazil, SILAC was meeting
as well, and you had Mexico, you had Cuba, you
(38:10):
had Venezuela represented in this space. That actually is one
of the regional proposals that come out of the Vallavarian
Revolution of Venezuela to be able to create again mechanisms
and instruments that are an alternative to the hegemoniums of
the United States around the world. And so SELAC, the
President of Mexico, was like, we cannot become the backyard
(38:31):
of the United States. We cannot allow ourselves to be recolonized.
That is dignity the United States government.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Now Trump gets because Colda Shinbaum does not speak louder
than this, Just Leanna.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
She is the most tender, sharp voice. I have ever heard.
I love that woman.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
I was like, Sosa knows we are sovereign people's She
was amazing her speech.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
People should actually go and like listen to what she
has to say. She was amazing because it expresses the
sentiment of people in the global South, not only here
in this continent, but in Africa and India. Like, it
is crazy that the president of the United States stands
there and talks about how we're declaring Liberation Day and
we're becoming independent when the United States dollar controls the
(39:30):
global economy and it actually strangles the life out of
other countries. When this man was like, I don't know
where Losado is, I'm.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Like, first of all, his stuff is made, and then
you're gonna put a tariff that is going to.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
In many ways kill the economy and displace a lot
of these women. Who are the women in these factories
from their jobs, deepening their poverty. Like, ma, man, what
are we talking about. We need to be independent, independent
from who. And as a matter of fact, you know
this is listen, this is.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
The same white supremacy you know masking itself. Well, this
might media could be masking itself with supremacy, but it's
the same victim behavior.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
They're mimicking the big is Karen is Trump.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yes, they're mimicking this like we're victims exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Performance, Yeah, which is a performance, is a complete performance.
And it's also a way in many ways of justifying
their actions and making US citizens manufacturings justify their actions
that are violent actions, that are cruel actions to the rest.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
The Global South is coming into an understanding of themselves
as the producers, as the manufacturers in this large factory
of the Global South to the United States, and they're
all strike. They're like, actually, we're gonna take over this
factory and we're gonna build our own ourisms and our
own instruments and so bricks is part of that. But
(40:59):
there's also a lot of different discussions happening by regions,
right because like how do you integrate economies regionally? How
do we trade in each other?
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yes, yes, yes, like seeing African countries say we want
to start removing visas to be able to travel between
the African countries.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Exactly because the only thing that doesn't necessariate like a
visa or document is capital. Like capital moves freely in
this country globally, Like if anyone who has the resources,
the millions of dollars to go buy land in one
of our countries which we love and are beautiful. They
go by land and they don't need to worry about taxes,
(41:35):
and they don't need to worry about labor laws, and
so they build this big ass resource in these beaches
that don't belong to them but now belong to them
because they pay for it and they get to exploit
the labor.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Not in Grenada, just for the record, not in Grenada.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You can't pay for a beach in Grenado.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Okay, you if you could get to the beach, he
is your beach. I'm talking about the ones that you
know didn't have a Marie Spishal, didn't. You know.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Listen, though many Grenadians, many Grenadians have a different view
of Maurice than people outside of Grenada.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
Yeah, I think that that's another show.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
But you know, when I talked to Grenadians that were
there at the time, They're like.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Yeah, I don't think it was what folks think it
was for us.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
So yeah, I know, for me, I feel like I'm
only just now like delving into my Maurice context outside
of the context from Grenadians who were there, like my
mom's schoolmates who were like put in prison, you know,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I mean it's different because he also is not Grenadians.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
That's true. Let's say in the United States with the
Black Panther Party, a lot of us understand the Black
Panther Party as a revolutionary like organization. But then there
are other people that you talk to or don't have Yeah,
don't have that perception.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
But then I'm talking like Cludia Shanbau.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
But then.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
You talk to other people who are like, there's the
Panthers from the Bay.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I mean, so you know history by the way, J
James has a really great talk about that on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
But I know what you about to say. To say it,
please say it for all of us.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
So it's that, you know, I think in a lot
of ways, there are gonna be many different perceptions, but ultimately,
when there are radical movements, there will always be a
marker before this movement, yeah and after this movement. And
these folks have actually marked history in that way, Like
people could say whatever they want about Cuba and filed Castro,
but there's a marker there, Like there was a sense
(43:35):
of dignity that was established. You are no longer the
United States going to utilize Cuba as your backyard and
as your little Las Vegas. I mean, you got to
watch a Godfather and see what happened, you know what
I'm saying, Like it was real, and it was the peasantry,
and it was those who were part of the labor movement,
and it was the students all in the United Front
that actually won that revolution. So people could think whatever
(43:58):
they want. The end of the day, there was a
marker in the United States. We have had historical achievements.
We've won the Civil Rights Act, We've won the right
of women to vote, we fought movements, fought people came
together to abolish slavery as was known then because we
know that the methods of slavery have changed. Yes, but
(44:18):
we have had historical achievements. We have yet to make history.
History comes with the total liberation of our people. And
there's still a lot of people in this country that
aren't free. So when this man stands there and he's
talking about we're declaring nationals, they and freedom because we're
going to gain our independence, who is he talking about?
(44:39):
Who's we independent from?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Medicine, and for whom it's the same people that say, like,
why isn't there a White History Month. It's the same
people that say all lives matter. It's like, we don't
need a white History month. All of it is white history.
We don't need to say all that matter. All of
your lives have been proven to matter, would it?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Okay? Yeah, but you asked me the question, where do
I see us going? There's an OXFAM report that is
so good. They do it every year, and they basically
say that we can't expect to see the first trillionaire
to emerge in the next ten years. Trillionaire, trillionaire, The
first trillionaire can emerge in the next ten years, but
(45:18):
to eradicate poverty, it will take two hundred and sixty years.
So you can have one person in the next ten
years that becomes the first trillionaire, okay, but it will
take two hundred and sixty years to eradicate poverty in
the world, which means that the level of inequality I
was gonna say why, I mean, the level of inequality
(45:38):
that we are experiencing globally has created a larger gap
between the small group of people that have everything and
the majority of us that have nothing, and if we
continue at this rate, our possibility of eliminating poverty is
almost impossible. So one example, Jeff Bezos again.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Actually, you know what, We're going to go to our
special Patreon segment for this.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
We're gonna head over to Patreon so we can hear
about this. One example Jeff Bezos and his dick shaped spaceship.
So come and join us at the Seal Squad with
Coria la Cruz on side effects of socialism. The last
(46:28):
I mean, I think for a lot of people, the
first step is really just being willing to understand the
harm of capitalism, because I think that, like anything, it's
seen as so the same way that socialism and communism
are seen as fails. So I saw this interview recently
where this on lady was saying how people are always
(46:49):
challenging her to say saying like, well, tell me where
communism is works, tell me where socialism has worked, And
she was saying, well, that question is not a genuine
question because you don't ask that about capitalism. You're constantly
only contextualizing socialism and communism by where it hasn't worked.
Versus acknowledging that there are examples that are still infringed
(47:14):
upon by capitalism. And she was like, you know, when
it comes to capitalism, we consider capitalism quote unquote working.
But she was like, based on what based on the
fact that there's a billionaire, is that what makes capitalism working.
There's so many ways to look at these things, and
ultimately it just boils down to our values the same.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
And that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
It's like, I know that when I talk to black conservatives,
their mindset quite often they might try and say that
it's about their Christian beliefs, but their mindset as being
a black conservative, nine times out of ten ends up
aligning with a certain economic conservatism that ignores and we're.
Speaker 4 (47:48):
Won't bring it all all the way back.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
But that ignores theology liberation like theological liberation, what is it?
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Liberation? Theology?
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:02):
No, you were closed, you were closed. I got you,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
And so you know, as we close out this episode,
I can tell you the number one question people are
going to ask is what book can I read? Now
they're not going to actually read the book, but they
gonna ask. So for the one out of ten that's
actually going to read. The book what would you say
is a good introductory book for people to read about socialism.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
So because there are a lot of people who ask
that question and asked a question, then how would it
look like in the United States? The Party for Socialism
and the Liberation actually created a book that's called The
Socialist Reconstruction, Okay, And the Socialist Reconstruction has a definition
of socialism and it also speaks to the history of
socialism in the United States, because another thing they want
to make us think is that socialism is a foreign thing. Yes,
(48:52):
so socialism is very much embedded in a lot of
the struggles that got us the eight hour day, that
got us the regulations for landlords, for us to have
tenant rights, like a lot of these things come from
socialist struggles. And the civil rights movement as well was
very much injected by a socialist ideology. And so the
Socialist Reconstruction you could look into that. And then another
(49:14):
book that I think people should be reading now, which
has to do with the moment, like the question of
where do we go from here, which is Martin Luther
King's last book, Where do We Go From Here? Where
he reflects and like we got civil rights. Right, that's cool,
but that's not enough. I've never heard of this book
Where do we Go from Here? I think I don't
know where is it? I thought i'd had it Where
do we Go? Where do we go from here? But
(49:35):
it's an amazing book for many different reasons, because it's
like it's a parallel to what's happening now, Like we.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Were in chaos our community. Where do we go from chaos?
Speaker 4 (49:44):
Our community as a community? From Martin Luther King And
it was a reflection, like we got these laws, but
like what does it take for these laws to be implemented?
What does it take for us to be able to
have economic and political decision making power? What does it take?
And ultimately he lands at the question of revolution as
(50:04):
the space where we need to be able to contest
struggle to get like move forward reform or revolution right,
And it doesn't have to be one or the other,
but it has to be both. Like at this point,
we've earned all these reforms that are being rolled back
and as long as they continue to be reforms that
are fought and won by us, but we don't have
(50:25):
the economic and political power as a mass, not an individual,
as a group, of people in society as a class.
Then we will continue to be at the women's of
those who have the economic and political power to dangle
that in front of us for an election, to say
what we want. And actually, this doesn't serve us anymore.
So we're going to roll it back. And we need
(50:45):
to be able to fight for power, fight for economic
political power, and to create a system and a structure
that is the complete opposite of what we've been experiencing
and living in this country.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
There you have it, y'all. Thank you so much Claudia for.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Coming through and school in US and for you know,
consistently making that just the platform education and informing a
really effectively uninformed proletariat.
Speaker 4 (51:15):
So thank you, Thank you for having me. It's always
fun to be in conversation with you, to be in
community with you, you know, and I'm very excited about
continuing to build, So thank you for having me same.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I'm looking forward to it. Y'all. Know what to do?
You wanted to know the names of the books? Get
the books.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com