"One of our three demands on May Day is no ICE, no war, and no private armies for authoritarian power. We know that none of us are free until all of us are free. And we also know that allowing the genocide in Gaza to take place under a Democratic administration greased the wheels for fascism domestically." - Saqib Bhatti. Upgrade now to listen to this powerful interview!
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FEATURING SAQIB BHATTI - The New York Times on Tuesday published an editorial titled “Here’s How to Defeat Trumpism.” The piece reflected on Peter Magyar’s earthshattering win over Viktor Orban in Hungary, a dictator Donald Trump has long admired. The paper maintained “the Democratic Party’s need to develop an ambitious agenda that goes far beyond criticizing Mr. Trump and charts an alternative vision for the country.” And then, it went on to denounce the “social progressivism that dominates elite left-leaning circles and alienates many voters.”
With such sentiments dominating corporate news media, a mass mobilization led by grassroots organizations aims to bring millions of people onto American streets on May 1st. The May Day Strong coalition has a clear agenda: “tax the rich… No ICE. No war. No private army serving authoritarian power. Expand democracy. Hands off our vote.”
Saqib Bhatti, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy is part of the May Day Strong coalition and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the motivation behind the mobilization.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: I'm wondering what you make of this argument that we hear over and over again, essentially, what the left has been saying for a very long time, if the Democrats want to win, they need to go far beyond, "We're not Trump. Please vote for us." Right? Hillary Clinton said, "Vote for me because I'm not Trump." Essentially that's what Kamala Harris said. And neither of them articulated a clear agenda that showed how they would be different from Trump.
And it seems as though The New York Times kind of got close and then backed away and talked about elite left-leaning circles. I've never come across such elite left-leaning circles. I don't know if you have.
Saqib Bhatti: I have. I think The New York Times is it. Right? I think the key thing is that the Democratic elites, the party insiders, have fundamentally failed to understand that everything that they have been doing is what has brought us where we are now. The fact that the Democratic Party turned away from working families, the fact that they chose to become the party for Wall Street and corporate America, just fundamentally seeded the working class to the right. Just played a huge role in the rise of Trump.
The failure of Democrats to advance a bold agenda that spoke to people's needs is what led them to turn to Trump out of desperation in many cases, because they couldn't make ends meet. And that's what we're trying to do with May Day Strong, is figure out how we're actually developing an agenda and fighting for an agenda that speaks to the needs of Black folks, Latinx folks, immigrants, working-class folks, poor white folks. We know that we need to actually speak directly to the economic interests of everyone in the country in a way that the Democrats have refused to do. And The New York Times has been a cheerleader in everything they've been doing up to this point.
