The Chris Hedges Report: How to defeat the billionaire class

now you talk about terror [Music] what about for me i've been terrorized [Music] all my days [Music] in december socialist alternative leader and seattle city council member shama sawant defeated a well-funded campaign by the city's business community to remove her in a recall vote since being elected to office in 2013 sawant and her socialist party have been locked in a bitter battle against the city's moneyed elites which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a corporate pack called a better seattle and saturated television and digital platforms with negative advertising she and her party have been denied ads by google youtube and hulu amazon alone spent over three million dollars to defeat her when she ran for office in 2019. sawant is hated because she is effective she helped lead the fight in 2014 that made seattle the first major american city to mandate a 15 an hour minimum wage following a three-year struggle against one of the richest men in the world jeff bezos and his political establishment she and her allies pushed through attacks on big business that increased city revenues by an estimated 210 to 240 million dollars a year she was part of the movement that led to seattle's successful ban on school year evictions of school children their families and school employees she was one of the sponsors of a bill that protects tenants from being evicted at the end of their term leases requiring landlords to provide tenants with the right to renew their leases and prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants for non-payment of rent if the rent was due during the covid emergency and the renter could not pay due to financial hardship her leadership and her party provide an example of effective resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor joining me to discuss her nearly decade-long battle against the billionaire class and the lessons we can take from her successful struggle is shamasawa so sharma the campaign to remove you from office was dirty it was highly funded but rather than go on the defensive you use the recall campaign to collect over uh 15 000 signatures to establish rent control which i expect shocked your rich adversaries i wondered if you could explain those tactics yes i think the idea of going on the offensive for the working class and our representatives and our movements to go on the offensive against big business and the politicians that represent them is contrary to the conventional guidebook we are handed down by the democratic party officials and by the ngo leaders and in fact unfortunately even many social movement labor movement leaders the idea is that you can actually make change by not antagonizing the powers that be and resorting to moral persuasion and prioritizing peaceful and not just peaceful but extremely cordial relationships with big business politicians with democratic party politicians as in seattle and with big business lobbyists uh well we threw that guidebook out the window because we understand from our study of history as socialists as marxists that that is precisely what doesn't work in the interests of the working class and in fact it is not an incidental idea this pervasive idea that well you know which it should be we should all be talking nicely regardless of our position in society and that that is the way to convince rich people to give a you know hand a little bit of crumbs to those of us who don't have any that actually that idea is a false one but it doesn't incidentally exist in our society under capitalism it is very much a conscious narrative that is put forward because by the ruling class by the capitalist class by their political representatives and their media representatives in the corporate media because it benefits them for working people to be lulled into this idea that we're all on the same side this is a shared situation that covet was a shared sacrifice well i think people's eyes have been opened for the most part and under in understanding that the very essence of capitalism is that the very wealthy at the top they make this enormous profit at the expense of ordinary people and the only way really to address the class war that we face is through class struggle can you talk about the role of the democratic party especially during your efforts to raise the minimum wage to protect people from evictions to increase taxes on large corporations such as amazon where were the democrats yeah i mean just to make sure all your viewers know you know seattle is the electorate the ordinary people are extremely progressive and it's it's you could say it's a left-leaning city for the most part uh and the city council has nine council members i am one socialist and uh or the rest of the eight i have always been democrat from from from as long as i know and certainly as long as i've been on the council you know since i took office in january 2014 and one of the first things that happened when i took office was these two prominent democrats democratic council members who came into my office sat me down and said well it's all well and good i mean i'm paraphrasing obviously i don't remember the exact quotes but paraphrasing that is all well and good you roused the rabble and got elected as a socialist but we're here to tell you that city hall runs on our terms and you're not winning any wage increase let alone 15 an hour and less than six months later we had won the 15 hour minimum wage so that about sums it up for the democrats and as you indicated chris it has never changed it has never been different it's not like they were opposed to 15 an hour but they were forced to concede and then they were morally persuaded to then be on the side of working people no it has never been that way as a matter of fact even the more self-described progressives not the overt corporate democrats even they have played a role which is actually contrary to the interests of working people and every step of the way they have placed obstacles in the path of winning these victories and so every such victory not just between dollars an hour but the amazon tax that you mentioned all the renters rights victories that we have won unprecedented renters rights victories that we have won every single victory has come about despite the either overt or backroom opposition and tactics by the democrats and the reason we have won is because we mobilized ordinary people union members to fight for it and yet the rhetoric of the democratic party is aligned with your campaign i mean for instance biden when he ran for the presidency promised that uh he would work to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour it's a promise to cancel student debt uh and yet once in power of course i think as your situation illustrates they uh work across purposes from from certainly what they have espoused during campaigns oh absolutely and in fact it's quite spectacular now what we are seeing from the consciousness in ordinary people understanding that the biden administration has completely failed them and you don't have to take the word of a specialist you can see the approval ratings for biden are at as low as they've ever been throughout his presidency and the fact that he has it no it's not just him but you know the democratic establishment including his regime have completely failed in passing any kind of progressive program whether it is 15 an hour or medicare for all as you said he promised to cancel student debt and not even a fraction of that measure has been carried out and so it's no wonder you know this is this is this is exactly the reason why now we are staring into potential uh clobbering of the democrats by the republicans and by the right wing in the midterm elections and and as i said you know it's not just me saying it if you look at the uh the the news i mean the analysis from uh even democratic party media strongholds like cnn and new york times they're having to be very frank about this and they're clearly admitting it that actually the democrats are headed into a real slaughter at the midterms and that it primarily lies at the doorstep of the biden administration getting you know just really failing to get anything done and i think this is the this is the thing that we have to talk about is that the democrats failing to deliver on any of the progressive agenda that they say that they support that their spouse uh the you know sort of verbal support for what does that actually lead to that leads to greater and greater openings for right populism to have its own day you know look at the attacks on lgbtq rights in various states including florida look at the the uh the the acts that is going to come down very likely on roe v wade all of this should be a warning sign that the left needs to build itself you have been targeted by the far right uh your campaign volunteers were harassed and threatened uh the former police union president ron smith called you for you to be handcuffed as seattle police actively worked in your recall and i wanted to ask about this clash with right-wing populism is this uh inevitable for the left especially as you said as the body administration fails to provide uh meaningful reforms i think uh fundamentally the clash between the very wealthy you know big business the capitalist wall street interest and the working class and any of us who have any vision of social justice and a different kind of society than what's on offer that clash in other words the class um you know the class divide or class struggle that is inevitable and how it plays out will depend as as we were just discussing earlier on how the forces of the left genuine left and how the forces of the working class develop so the extent to which right populism succeeds is a testament to the failures of the democratic party and still the infancy of the left on on you know the us left and so in other words how much the right succeeds and how much of a clash that will be is really dependent on um what what how how the balance of forces adjust itself so in other words let me just put it this way if the agenda for a living wage adjusted for inflation for medicare for all for canceling student debt for a real green new deal policy agenda all of if all of this was actually put forward by the democrats there is no question that uh you know it is absolutely um a given that they would be able to win over a big section of the voting population that will end up either staying out of the elections or will end up voting for republicans in the right wing because for the most part i mean there is a genuinely dangerous and reactionary current in every um you know on every continent but to the degree to which they get traction that entirely depends on what else is on offer in other words it is precisely because people are so disgusted with the connections between the democratic party and big business that and they are also clear about republicans to some degree but that you know they're searching for answers working people in america right now are searching for answers and in fact it should be noted in this context that uh it is it is because of the disappointments on the electoral arena the disappointments from the many of the blm leaders being unable to deliver on the promise of this enormous black lives matter movement that happened in 2020 is because of all these reasons that now young people are testing the avenue of labor organizing and so it is important to note that it's in the midst of this complete failure and disarray that the democrats are in that the workers at the amazon warehouse on saturn island were able to win the first ever union uh in amazon and the reason they were able to win is precisely again they used class struggle methods to convince their co-workers the democratic party for a long time has uh essentially attempted to replace a political agenda with woke sound bites i know you call them the woke democrats and cancel culture i wonder what effect this is having on the political landscape i think this is a very uh dangerous uh development and i think we have to um it is it is actually incumbent on the left to think through these things and have honest if uncomfortable debates in other words what i mean is that the potential for a multi-racial working-class solidarity in order to actually fight for and win a society that is free of racial and sexual oppression and economic exploitation is very much there i mean look at the fact that over 20 million people marched in black lives matter i mean that is not out of nowhere that is because the vast majority of the american working people young people can be won over and are actually already won over to the ideas of a society that genuinely respects uh everybody around us so you know it's again it's it's no coincidence that at this point the support for roe v wade is two thirds of the american population and yet roe v wade is on the chopping block so this in other words we have to make you know we have to be very clear in our minds that these regressive attacks from the right wing the attacks on women's rights the attacks on lgbtq rights the attacks on the black community they are not coming because ordinary people are just um just irredeemably racist and sexy that is absolutely not the case in fact it is the exact opposite that there has been a huge shift on the progressive shift on the questions of racism and sexism in our society as evidenced by the size of the blm marches by the fact of how much support uh abortion and reproductive rights have how much lgbtq rights have and in spite of that we are seeing this this kind of relentless attack from the right wing that shows you what is that it's not the ordinary people's consciousness that is the barrier the barrier right now the obstacle for progressive change is the leadership that's on offer and it's not only electoral leadership in terms of the democratic party and even the squad but it's also leadership of the labor movement leadership of social movements like blm so we on the left have and rank and file workers and rank and file activists we have the task of opening up genuine debates in which we bring these points out and explain that that kind of identity politics of the world corporatized identity politics is not the answer that is not the way to win over working-class people actually that is handing a weapon to the right wing on a golden platter well in fact the movements that have been successful including your own have challenged the traditional hierarchy you the democratic party staten island there were no major labor organizations that supported them black lives matter in fact when jesse jackson al sharpton these figures visited places like ferguson uh they were uh booed uh there has were watching a kind of uh revolt against the uh established liberal elite i wonder if you could talk about that yeah it's absolutely right chris and i'm glad you mentioned that that you know that again the examples that you gave once again are illustrating the increased political clarity that exists among millions of young people that actually these leaders are there just for photo ops they are there to co-opt our movements and in fact we should be wary of them and one of the reasons the amazon labor union succeeded at the jfk 8 warehouse in winning this historic first ever union election in this trillion-dollar corporation headed by uh the you know one of the richest men in the world jeff bezos is precisely because they did not use what i would call the you know business unionism basically the conventional ideas that have existed in the labor movement in the in the democratic party and uh even even among social movement and ngo leaders that uh you know the way to uh organize uh for change and even to win a union election or to win a good contract is to tinker at the margins by this sort of mythical idea of you know a few labor leaders at the bargaining table and then not mobilizing the rank and file uh you know the allu did not agree with all of that and it was because they decided to build independently and then they did many things that most labor leaders haven't done in the last four decades which is one they led with concrete demands you know they didn't talk about the union as an abstract entity they made it very clear to the workers in the warehouse and workers made it clear to workers in the warehouse that we need a union because don't you agree that we need to win a 30 an hour starting wage don't you agree that we need job security don't you think that we deserve a say in scheduling don't you think that we should get full-time hours if we want them you know it was through concrete issues that they were able to build uh this kind of solidarity or shop floor solidarity where it you know you may not you may not get workers to agree on every single thing on this planet on every ideological issue but if you can get agreement on a core group of concrete demands and that is a solid basis for building a unified struggle and then the other thing that they did right was that they made it very clear that the bosses are not on your side you know so they didn't cultivate illusions that somehow they could convince management and jeff bezos to be nice just by making morally persuasive arguments they said no they're going to fight against the union tooth and nail and so that is the kind of clarity we need to bring forward if we are to win any such victories and and we can see that people are ready for that kind of thing but um i am unfortunately not hopeful that the most of the crop of current labor leaders are going to carry that kind of change out so in other words if we want to do what alu did and you know win replicate those victories not only in other amazon warehouses but if you want to win a historic union struggle and then on top of that you know wins a strong contract for workers then we will need a rank-and-file revival of the american labor movement in the first place although you've been very successful electorally you've always argued that elections are not the point elections uh are secondary to organizing can you explain that strategy yeah i think this is very important to explain because the the politicians who for the most part you know despite their progressive rhetoric who ultimately have made their peace with the capitalist system where they believe that this is pretty much the best we can get but then you know let's let's uh think around the edges and you know win a few reforms here and there for them uh it is um fundamentally a different idea in the sense that they believe that because this is generally the best we can get then give you know flowing from that the best approach we can have for political change is by getting a few progressive people elected but maybe not few anymore maybe getting hundreds of progressive people elected and then that way by sort of um you know getting more and more uh self-proclaimed socialists or progressives elected that is the way to make change because then they will go and then have these negotiations or have conversations with corporate politicians with corporate lobbyists and then deliver a few um you know progressive changes for us now that doesn't mean that they won't be able to do anything but so far they haven't you know we we've seen the evidence for that the biden administration is in shambles because precisely because that approach does not work uh and it also uh calls into question what what exactly you know how how far are we actually going to aim to change society and i think if you look at the crisis that our society is in that kind of tinkering around the edges approach simply does not work anymore i mean if you look at the data on the climate crisis it is very clear we have a very small window in which in which we can we need to make a fundamental shift away from capitalism and for that we will need mass movements of workers we will not need mass revolutionary struggle led by working people ordinary people in order to bring about that kind of change and that kind of change that we need flowing from the needs of the planet itself cannot happen through elections although at the same time we have to be very clear that just being in a you know anti-electoral in a simplistic manner also ends up benefiting the democratic party because that doesn't explain to ordinary people okay so how do we deal with the fact that every four years every two years we are told to vote for democrats so in other words we do need the left does need to put forward strong campaigns like ours you know campaigns organized around demands not around personality politics uh but at the same time explain that the the way to run a really strong electoral campaign is to as i said completely reject personality politics completely reject careerism and build political organizations like socialist alternative except we need far bigger organizations uh where we can hold our elected representatives and other leaders in the organization accountable and that the program of demands that we are fighting around become the central focus not those individuals who who could then use those positions just to build their own careers by uh sort of you know making themselves useful to the ruling class that's that's what we need to reject so shama the democrats focus on likely voters um that's not been your tactic you focus on those who are often part of the 80 million eligible voters who don't cast ballots including immigrants those living in public housing marginalized community i know you distribute campaign material in i think eight languages and this has been a tactic that's worked very well for you in fact in one heavily east african building i think turnout was nearly ten times uh what it was in the general election i wondered if you could describe how this works i think this tactic that you're uh correctly talking about chris and which as you correctly said it stands in stark contrast to the approach of the democratic party i think that difference flows from the fundamental political differences in the first place in other words the whole ethos of the democratic party is that they're not going to be overtly uh and viciously pro big business in the way that the republicans are you know the republican party is and it's very rhetoric very openly probate business they also um they also um you know they also don't have a problem being openly racist you know openly going against the rights of lgbtq people for example as they're doing in florida uh and openly attacking reproductive rights all of that so you know the democrats are not like overtly against all rights of ordinary people in that way but their role for the ruling class they're also you know their primary task is to be useful for the ruling class under capitalism but the way they do it is by speaking from both sides of their mouth and because of that because for example they will talk about 15 an hour every so often you will see pramila jayapal the head of the congressional progressive caucus tweet out saying it's time for medicare for all but then when it actually comes time to fight for it then they will uh you know they will actually use their progressive uh status to give cover for the biden regime which is what they have done every step of the way because that is their agenda and there's this disconnect between the rhetoric their spouse and their act the actual role that they play that is in service of the ruling class because of that they're not eager to actually mobilize the kind of voters as you said that we mobilized where you know we would not actually have won our elections had we not mobilized a whole section of the population that is typically disenfranchised not because they don't have the legal right to vote but because there's nothing for them to vote for and nobody nobody cares whether they vote or not because they are not the people those democrats are there to fight for and so because of that difference they don't actually want to mobilize those same voters that we mobilize because you know when you go out there and say hey you know as east african working class people as workers as union members you need to not only come out and vote for our campaign but we need you to enjoy join us in door knocking you we need you in order to win 15 an hour the amazon tax or renter's rights when you do that what you are doing is raising the expectations the political expectations of all those people who are mobilized you are giving them the hope that actually if you uh vote for this and when you fight alongside this elected representative we can actually win concrete victories no see the democrats don't want to do that because they have no intention of actually winning those concrete victories for you they just want you to think about that enough think that just in just feel positive just enough so that the democrats are able to win elections but ultimately their goal is to maintain this uh sort of uh you know um unsteady equilibrium where they are somewhat to the left of the republican party but their main goal is to be sort of the gatekeeper against gen the genuine left interest and genuine working-class interest so because of that fundamental difference between what what role they want to play and what are uh you know why why we are political as socialists you see these tactical differences emerge as well and then repeatedly you will see that the ruling class will use other you know sort of every new uh every new iteration like every time we run for re-election they will use different tactics in order to then undermine us so in reference to the specific tactic you mentioned chris where we have mobilized you know in historic numbers we have mobilized working-class people and communities of color vulnerable communities like never before in fact not only did we do that we actually have carried out voter registration drives like this city has never seen before but because of all that and because the ruling class in seattle has seen how powerful that is is that we don't just win votes but then we go and fight use our office to win concrete victories now they have failed in uh defeating us in two re-elections they failed in recalling us last year and now they are now resorting to trying to gerrymander our districts you know our democrats complain about republicans gerrymandering which of course they should because republicans do have a gerrymandering agenda but now it's the democrats in seattle who are trying to gerrymander our district here in order to cut working-class people out of this district so they that's how far they will go to prevent ordinary people from getting politically involved well that's how they removed dennis kucinich from his house seat and it was the democratic party that did it exactly uh i want to talk about uh two things just in the last couple of minutes let's assume that this cultish republican party does take power in the midterms and the stagnation of the biden administration results in another trump presidency or a wannabe trump presidency how are we going to resist and then can you also address this idea of having progressives like bernie sanders or nina turner run within the embrace of the democratic party yes first of all in terms of what could happen in the midterms i i mean the most likely scenario is unless unless something unusual develops between now and the voting uh period uh we should expect an absolute shellacking as i said before of the democrats this is what all political analysts are are are expecting and uh so the prospect not only of the right wing as a whole making gains is a very real one the prospect of a trump in resurgency is also a very real one unfortunately at this point that's how that's how dangerous this um the whole debacle of the biden regime has been and so the only way to cut across that and you know create an a genuine alternative to right populism that could unite the majority of working-class people in america is through working-class politics it was it's not for nothing that bernie sanders got a resounding response to his campaign platform every single time that he ran uh it united people even in states that you would otherwise think of as right state or red sorry right states you know it was in it's in red states that you've seen not only a strong a positive response for a working class campaign program like that of bernie sanders but it's in a red state west virginia where you saw one of the most successful and historic labor uprisings happen in our times which was the struggle of the teachers in 2018 the west virginia educators who won an enormous victory by standing up not only to the republican legislature in the state but also to the leaders of their own unions who were not willing to take a fighting approach to winning a strong contract and to maintaining solidarity across the board you know among public school employees so it was rank-and-file leaders and rank-and-file members of the educators union who did that so that plus the example of starbucks workers now in nationwide unionization drives you know in so many uh hundreds of stores and the strike actions that starbucks workers are starting to take at the store level without any political leadership they're themselves recognizing that the only way to push back against the union busting and the anti-worker intimidation and threats is to take a work stoppage actions and strike actions and the example of the amazon labor union winning a union election in all of this is telling us well the way to actually push back against corporate politics push back against the failures of the democrats and to defeat the rise of the right wing is to build struggles of the working class where we're able to unite a majority of working people on a common working class based program and in that process the labor movement you know and rank and file workers have a huge historic role to play so the union drives in major corporations like amazon and starbucks are the most crucial thing right now absolutely without any question they are the most crucial thing right now and if we can bring you know a real success not only in terms of the number of starbucks stores that win their union elections we can't stop there but in terms of winning strong contracts for store after store in starbucks if we can unionize amazon warehouse after amazon warehouse across the nation where tens of thousands of workers start getting unionized and they start winning strong contracts winning concrete demands like thirty dollars an hour that will show how a shift can be made and that is precisely the shift we need to make but none of this is going to be automatic we will need courageous rank-and-file leadership in order to make that happen and also the political clarity that the that the labor leadership that is tight at the head to the democrats is not going to make it's not going to be the force of change the force of change will be a militant a revival of the militant labor movement and that can only be done on the basis of tens of thousands of workers understanding that we need a democratic rank and file based union movement great i want to thank the real news network and its production team cameron grenadino adam coley dwayne gladden and kayla rivera you can find me at chrishedges.substance.com [Music] you

Channel: The Real News Network

Views: 115,241

Keywords: kshama sawant, jeff bezos, amazon, billionaires, democrats, the chris hedges report, the real news network, trnn

Id: mCCD_g1XYac

Length: 34min 39sec (2079 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/game_rights_activist]

Random thoughts that maybe someone will find interesting: I have very mixed feelings about this subreddit's crowd overall, but I do have some sympathies towards it. I think that the opposition to identity essentialism and focus on class politics is correct, but the dominant trend here is overly opposed to taking up fights against identity oppression. I think this is often the result of an overreaction to admittedly horrible liberals. Categorizin this in historical terms I think it is similar to what Lenin criticized as an economistic (ie economics only) approach, especially in What Is To Be Done, although since the US labor movement is so weak, it gets expressed in an ultraleft way rather than, during Lenin's time in Russia, a right opportunism.

Anyway I do feel sympathetic for the members of this subreddit who feel alienated from political participation. It can be done in a principled way, it's just that so far that's very uncommon.

Edit: on second thought I think the people here who ID as real marxists should think about adding more classical marxist stuff and particularly What Is To Be Done to the sidebar. I don't think anyone could accuse Lenin of being an idpol liberal, but here he is:

"For the secretary of any, say English, trade union always helps the workers to carry on the economic struggle, he helps them to expose factory abuses, explains the injustice of the laws and of measures that hamper the freedom to strike and to picket (i. e., to warn all and sundry that a strike is proceeding at a certain factory), explains the partiality of arbitration court judges who belong to the bourgeois classes, etc., etc. In a word, every trade union secretary conducts and helps to conduct “the economic struggle against the employers and the government”. It cannot be too strongly maintained that this is still not Social-Democracy [marxism, which was called Social-Democracy at the time], that the Social-Democrat's [marxist's] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat."

And again, Kshama is a Leninist.

[u/douchey_sunglasses]

some controversial takes (for this sub)— as a member of Sawants district im extremely disappointed in her performance and actively supported the recall against her. IMHO, she’s similar to Donald Trump, in that she’s primarily interested in leveraging populist movements to drive her own name/brand/career. As a politician, she’s largely ineffective and is frequently called out for her conduct in meetings. She organizes protestors to harass coworkers, often from the comfort of her literal mansion paid for by her husbands wealth. Not to mention she turns every single event she attends to “Tax Amazon!” whether it’s Pride or Juneteenth or Eviction Moratorium end date.

This sub likes to talk about grift, but she seems to be on a whole other level.

[u/basedcomradefox2]

Nothing but love love and respect for Dr. Sawant.