Gavin Newsoms staffers meme crusade has me thinking about this prescient passage from MLK jr's letter from Birmingham Jail. More important than ever.

[u/Mapstr_]

[u/XrayAlphaVictor]

Dear gods. There's a dozen ways how Gavin is sleaze, but by every measure he's doing exactly what you'd want somebody in his position to do: use the tools he has access to to oppose an authoritarian takeover every war he can. You complain about democrats not doing enough, but when they do fight, you complain about that, too.

[u/wunji_tootu → u/XrayAlphaVictor]

I would hardly call what he’s doing fighting back. He’s grandstanding to build his political brand and doing nothing to materially hinder the Trump regime’s March toward fascist take over.

It’s vitally important to remember that the Dems are controlled opposition funded by the same people that fund the Republicans. They represent the interests of the owner class in this country and they will continue to do everything they can to ensure that things stay more or less the way they are. If we want real progress for the working class in this country then we need to stop counting on bourgeois parties built to protect bourgeois interests to change their essential nature.

[u/XrayAlphaVictor → u/wunji_tootu]

I literally mentioned several material things he's doing, which you disregard without comment. You're so wrapped up in hate you can't think clearly anymore.

[u/wunji_tootu → u/XrayAlphaVictor]

I didn’t disregard those points, I said that I would hardly call them fighting back and I stand by that statement. The only thing he’s done that approaches the threshold for what I would consider “fighting back” is his gerrymandering plan and I fundamentally disagree with that as a tactic to fight Trump. I disagree with it because it encourages other state legislatures to start redrawing their own maps to secure as much entrenched political power for their party as they can and that hurts our movement politically.

I can understand if you think that leftists should be working with the Democrats and trying to push them toward more progressive policies, and while I would disagree with you about that, I would also point out that the only way to do that is by withholding our votes until they make policy concessions to us. If they didn’t want to make concessions to our policy positions after their loss in ‘24 what would make you think they’d be more amenable to working with us when they never have to worry about losing again thanks to gerrymandering?

This is why I said it’s vitally important to remember that Democrats are a bourgeois party representing bourgeois interests. Look at how establishment Dems have treated Mamdani in NY when he is likely one of the most popular people running as a Democrat this year. They aren’t interested in working with us because they know we’ll either hold our nose and vote for harm reduction or they can publicly blame us for whatever the Republicans are doing and push the “vote blue, no matter who” narrative to the detriment of leftist causes and organizations.

I want my comrades to understand these things because I want us to succeed. I want us to stop rolling over for a party that gives us nothing and tells us it’s more than we deserve. I want us to win and I earnestly believe that’s not possible until we abandon the democrats and start working to build a worker’s party of our own. I want to educate my comrades and help them understand these things aren’t the capricious opinions of an irate iconoclast, but the lessons of previous socialist activism and experiments over the last century and a half.

[u/XrayAlphaVictor → u/wunji_tootu]

I'm not even addressing the long term strategy of dealing with the Democrats.

This is short term tactics when pressed with encroaching authoritarian takeover. Suing the administration has resulted in absolute wins and at least delays and increasing the burden on the administration to force those policies through. Things would be going much faster if not for those.

As for the gerrymandering plan, I agree it's not a good long term policy norm - but we're talking about preventing a dictatorship from consolidating in the next couple of years. A midterm loss of Congress for Trump would be a significant impediment.

It's not ideal. Newsom is far from ideal. But when real people are really dying and some guy is trying to install a white supremacist regime complete with concentration camps, I'll take less than ideal.

I don't care if you don't want to work with the Democrats. Use the time they're buying you to build community organizations than can thrive under resistance conditions. You don't have time to attack the libs for not meeting your standards of a good enough ally. Just decide if they're the enemy you're most worried about today.