Claudia De la Cruz & Abby Martin

Photos by Day Day (Claudia) and Yvanna Rammos (Abby)

ABBY: Presidential elections in the US Empire are a complete farce. The system is rigged. So why even give legitimacy to the process?

CLAUDIA: We run in the lineage and legacy of other Socialist parties that have run before us. Eugene Debs was a socialist who ran in the 1920s and got a million votes from prison. And we do not run to legitimize the sham and the lack of democracy of the electoral process in this country, we actually run to uplift the demands of working class people, which are not ever lifted or solved by the two party system. We run to be able to give the majority of working class people an option, people who may not see themselves in the political platforms or policies of the two party system can find vehicles to get activated into political work beyond the election season. And so that is why we run. We run to intervene. We run to do mass education. We run to agitate people, to build the confidence of other working class people, to demand all of the things we deserve, to not settle for mediocrity and the limited democracy that we experience; a very tortured democracy.

ABBY: There was a lot of attention on Jill Stein during the campaign, calling her a spoiler, calling her a Russian asset, alleging that Putin was backing her. Kamala’s campaign spent a lot of money to try to delegitimize her. All Democrats want to do is argue that third parties steal votes, instead of talking about the nonvoters: half of all eligible voters in this country choose not to vote.

CLAUDIA: I think it’s important to mention and validate our people’s feelings that more than half of the population that doesn’t vote and why they don’t vote. And how can we blame or judge people that are often betrayed and abandoned, neglected by the two party system for not engaging with politicians that do not engage with them? I think it’s reasonable. Like, why are there swing states? People lack commitment to these two parties because they are not committed to working class people. And so when they talk about our campaign, which is a vote for a socialist campaign, and they talk about Jill Stein and the Green Party, and they put us in the category of spoilers…well, we all should want to spoil genocide. We should all want to spoil the war against Black America. We should all want to spoil capitalism. And what has done to our communities and the crumbs that it has committed abroad. I mean, we should all want to spoil that.

ABBY: You campaigned all across the country in the lead up to the election. You talked to thousands of people outside of movement politics. What is the general sentiment of working class people in regard to our current moment?

CLAUDIA: People are suffering. I think we need to acknowledge that people, working class people, in urban areas and rural areas are suffering and they’re starting to make the connection between their suffering and the way in which the US empire exports misery and suffering as well. They’re trying to ask the real questions, often not getting the real answers as to why are we such a wealthy nation, why are we so rich and so many of us, as working class people, need to get into debt to be able to survive day to day?

They’re asking the questions of why is it that we are sending billions of dollars, over 100 billions of dollars to Ukraine, for example, to fight a war that doesn’t benefit the ordinary working class person? Why is it that we are giving over $26 billion in one year to the colonial state of Israel to commit genocide against working class people, poor people in Palestine?

You know, there are folks all over this country who are earning $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. What has happened to the promises of the Democratic Party with regards to that? And people feel betrayed. People feel abandoned. A lot of these states in the South had been basically passed on to Republicans and have been deemed unworkable, unmanageable. They lack, you know, any sense of progress. And the thing is that there’s so many people in these southern states who are struggling, struggling to unionize, struggling against police brutality, struggling to be able to build.

And we need to take this seriously. There are fast food workers who are working 50 hours a week and are just earning minimum wage and unable to provide housing for their families. There are people who are living with, you know, amputations in their legs and arms because of diabetes.

And so I think there has been a sense of frustration of not being heard. There’s a sense of desperation because of the material economic conditions and social conditions that people are experiencing. But there’s also a willingness to build an alternative because we’ve received so much support.

We were able to get more than 7000 volunteers for the campaign, mostly young people who went out, who petitioned, who have done canvassing. And so there’s a desire for a new system, for a new society, for instruments that are working class instruments. And that is also important to highlight that people are not completely hopeless. They want to be activated into doing something that transforms society.

ABBY: You mentioned this collective amnesia. And I think it’s important to remember the collective consciousness that was dominant back in the 60s and 70s. We’ve had to re-educate ourselves on the basic principles that made up the foundation of our ideological resistance to these oppressive systems, that was commonplace knowledge back then. But they gutted unions, revised history, defanged and co-opted our movements. And they’ve sanitized the language of decolonization and resistance into just the notion of “human rights” and making people who are oppressed and subjugated into perpetual victims, that we can do nothing about their liberation.

So I’m just happy that right now, even though there’s the dystopian nightmare of this ongoing genocide, there is this resurgence and burgeoning mass movement of an internationalist left that I’m extremely inspired by and optimistic about. Talk about how you’ve seen that firsthand, how as an organizer you’ve seen the tide has turned with both socialism and internationalism.

CLAUDIA: The tide has definitely shifted. And it has turned for the benefit of working class people all across the globe. And it has to do with the material conditions also that people are experiencing. Obviously people are experiencing harsher conditions than they had before. People are also coming into contact with more state repression. People are making more meaning of the domestic face of U.S. imperialism and how it affects them.

And so there’s a huge shift in consciousness. I started doing organizing work 30 years ago when we were marching and when we were demanding a free Palestine and an end to an occupation. When I was 17 years old, there were only a few of us doing that. In the early 2000s with the anti-war movement that arose demanding that the U.S. get its hands off Iraq and off Afghanistan, there were a few folks that were putting up the banner of Palestine, because putting up the banner of Palestine also meant validating the resistance, the fact that people who are occupied have the right to resist.

And now the multitude of people of all ages and families across the country and across the globe have come to understand the colonial state of Israel, and its relationship to the U.S. empire. It’s been very hopeful. And it has also been in some ways re- energizing and humanizing for many of us who have been in the struggle for so long. There’s an optimism, a revolutionary optimism that had been missing for a while. It is possible to move forward, to resist, to be resilient. And our communities are feeling that way, too.

Obviously, there is a level of distress because of the material conditions. But there’s also a hope and a willingness that we could transform society. And as you mentioned, a lot of our dismemberment as organizations, as people that are engaged in organized struggle comes from the intentional actions from the state to dismember political organizations. And I think to a certain extent, we’re gathering the strength to rebuild the left, to rebuild revolutionary organizations, to understand deeply what socialism means, what communism is as a proposal, as a counterproposal to a capitalism, as we are in a new space and we are in a new era. And one way of measuring that as well is the ways in which the Democratic Party fears having any socialist presence anywhere.

ABBY: Claudia, what got you into organizing? Your parents are from the Dominican Republic. Talk about the radicalizing moment for you that integrated all of this, why you incorporate anti-imperialism into your politics, how did that all coalesce and what it’s exposed about that kind of colonial relationship between the D.R. and the U.S.?

CLAUDIA: Well, my parents are first generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and I saw them work tirelessly. My mom was, for 35 years, a teacher to children with special needs. And I saw her getting paid very little and still having to buy supplies for the children. And she loved it. She never complained. She is someone who really enjoyed her work. My dad worked multiple gigs and was a construction worker for over 35 years. His hands were cracked, his knees were messed up. And he did that because he understood that there is dignity in labor. And my father was probably the first person that I heard the word labor from because he also believed in unions, in spaces that he was not unionized.

And so I gained a consciousness in terms of my class and who my allegiance is to, based on my parents. My grandmother worked the sugarcane plantation, and I’m going back to the dictatorship of Trujillo, which was a US backed dictatorship of over 30 years in the Dominican Republic. And so I heard the atrocities that this dictator carried out against Haitian people, against poor black working class people of the Dominican Republic. And it was all backed by the U.S. Trujillo was trained in the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. And so I think it’s important to raise that because many times when we talk about migrants, when we talk about people who come into this country, we forget that these people are coming from countries that have been invaded, occupied, whose economies have been squeezed.

And the folks that are coming into this country are coming following the traces of the things that have been stolen from them by the U.S. empire. My parents were part of that community. And so, to me it’s very important, not only to come into any space of politics and organizing, but even when I went to school where they were trying to teach me what delinquents were, because I did my undergrad at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, they were talking about criminals and criminality and delinquency in relationship to the most historically marginalized communities. It’s important for me to bring my community into that space and say, actually, what you’re teaching us is a whole bunch of bullshit. The majority of people in my community work very hard to be able to get what they need. We need to talk about class. And so many questions brought me into a space of searching for what seemed to be true, not the half truths that the system often offers us.

But what is the other story? Because I have lived experience as a working class person, as a black Caribbean woman, and it’s not being reflected in the half truths that they’re giving me. And so that brought me into spaces with folks that were organizing around many different issues for the liberation of political prisoners, Black Panther Party members, Puerto Rican political prisoners. They brought me into a space of people doing antiwar work, folks that were doing work around immigrant rights, reproductive justice. I saw myself in those movements.

And I think in terms like the anti-imperialist question again, is a question of understanding the connection that we hold with the rest of the working class. I think it’s a precondition to understand ourselves as part of the working class first, and then understand our connection to the larger working class across the globe. We are part of the majority of people in this entire world. And we’re meant to feel small. And my confidence in how I speak and what I say, and the truth that I hold is not one that is personal or individual, it is a collective one. It is in the collective experience of many people all across the globe that are fighting for total liberation. And I think that is the most beautiful offering that the movement has ever given me. And I’m very proud to say that.

ABBY: I think this election has really revealed the system for what it is, especially for a lot of young people who are facing down the cataclysmic effects of climate change. The future is being shaped forever by the inaction of our politicians today because of the inevitability of capitalism.

But now that the election is behind us, how should people, moved by the US-Israel’s war rampage, climate change and all these other pressing issues be focusing their energy? Where should they be organizing if the left lacks institutional power? How can people use this election to radicalize and mobilize them instead of becoming completely disempowered and disenfranchised from it?

CLAUDIA: The tenant of the White House must expect to struggle. They must expect resistance from the people. They must expect a fight back. We need to understand that they’re aiming their fight against migrant workers and immigrants. They’re aiming their fight against the working class in general. They’re aiming their fight against Palestinians in Palestine, against Russians and Ukrainians alike, against China. Like they’re telling us exactly where they’re headed and we need to get ready. My hope is that folks that are progressive, folks that are socialist, folks that want to be able to build a new society for the generations to come, take the opportunity to get organized, to be part of some sort of organization.

If you are a student, become part of a student organization and try to make the link between that university and the community that surrounds it and the struggles there. If you are in a community, start organizing communities around the many issues that our communities are facing: the housing crisis, food insecurity, environmental devastation. If you are a worker, organize a union because all these levels, all these spaces of organizing, teach us how to fight the level of monstrosity that is coming our way.

We’re going to have to fight. And ultimately, what we understand in the Party for Socialism and Liberation is that, you know, as a party that has been drenched with struggle, that is 20 years old and has participated in many, many sites of struggle, we understand that elections are only a small part of our political work, that we have to be engaged in it, but as you mentioned earlier, they are a sham. And the only way that we transform that is if we build an independent movement of working class people that become the force behind any electoral party, because these folks, the Republicans and the Democrats may have the millions of dollars, but we can gain the millions of people if we do the work that we need to do within our communities.

And it’s not something that can wait every four years; it’s something that we need to do every day. And so the question is not whether we take the streets or the ballot. We need to take the streets and the ballot and every other space that we need to occupy in order to build the force required to make the changes that we need in this society.

ABBY: So now we see that the election was a blowout for Trump. Unlike 2016, he won the popular vote by a significant margin as well as the Electoral College. Even if you combined every vote for every third-party candidate on the ballots in key swing states and gave those votes to Kamala, they would have made absolutely no difference. That’s how much of a landslide this was. They can’t deflect blame onto Jill Stein or Russia for their abysmal performance here—or for the fact that they lost to Donald Trump again.

CLAUDIA: It’s crucial to recognize that the Democrats’ losses are entirely of their own making. The millions of voters they’ve lost are telling—many didn’t switch to Trump, but rather chose to stay home. This reflects widespread frustration with the party’s mediocrity and failure to act on behalf of the people. Time and again, the Democrats have prioritized moving right over defending the rights and interests of working-class Americans. In doing so, they’ve alienated voters, who now see the party as little more than the liberal wing of the Republicans. That’s what they are right?

ABBY: What was so vapid and callous was running on something as cynical as “joy” while we are witnessing children being torn apart daily, while she’s overseeing and managing a genocide. And before we get into that, I want to address what you’re talking about: the economic factor.

In 2024, 40% of Americans said they had trouble paying their bills every month. That’s almost half the country. That’s huge. The so-called “myth” of the working-class Trump voter isn’t really a myth anymore; he made significant gains among working-class people in this election. Voters who prioritized inflation as their top issue were twice as likely to support Trump. This highlights a growing disconnect and the lack of a clear message or platform from the Democrats. People are more focused on their financial stability than abstract concerns like “saving democracy.” Having lived through four years of Trump, they saw that he didn’t become the dictator the Democrats warned about.

CLAUDIA: The thing is, people know these politicians aren’t actually fighting for them. Even if they claim they will, they don’t—Trump didn’t before, and people remember that. Of course, people remember the COVID relief checks that went to families, which wasn’t out of his benevolence; it was necessary to prevent what could have been a revolt in this country. In many ways, that check calmed people down, and they remember it as something that materially affected them. They want an expansion of that—though Trump certainly isn’t going to provide it. We should be clear on that. But he ran on, “I gave you money; I will fix this; I will fight for you.”

That’s not the sentiment the Democrats put forth. They focused instead on, “We’ll do things to the right of Trump, be tougher on undocumented immigrants, and build the most lethal military force.” These were the messages from Kamala’s campaign. On the economic front, they offered a so-called “opportunity economy program,” but people understand that “equal opportunity” in this country has rarely meant anything for the most marginalized communities. It hasn’t addressed the issues of economic inequality—gendered, racialized inequality— and that doesn’t motivate anyone to show up at the ballot box. Kamala Harris serves as Vice President in an administration that has failed to build on COVID relief gains, such as the Child Tax Credit, which lifted millions of children out of poverty. When Biden rolled it back, child poverty doubled. This highlights the disconnect between domestic priorities and foreign policy. While economic programs that could help the American people are ignored, the U.S. funnels billions into the war in Ukraine and supports policies seen by many as harmful to Palestinian children. People are rightly questioning why so much money goes to war instead of investing in our own children and communities.

ABBY: I saw all these liberal pundits saying that the solution is, of course, to go further to the right. “We shouldn’t have been as anti-Israel as we were.” It’s like the most ridiculous, so-called “solutions” are just about catering even more to conservative values.

But look at the down-ballot measures—progressive ideas are popular! In Missouri, for example, voters passed pro-abortion initiatives, minimum wage increases, and paid leave. That’s not the issue here, Claudia. I mean, Biden ran on a progressive platform—we forget that. It was all rhetoric, but he couldn’t keep it up. The tidal wave from Bernie’s campaign had galvanized people around economic populism, Medicare for All, debt relief, and rightly blaming billionaires and corporations. Biden and Kamala took the opposite approach. They abandoned any pretense of progressivism—commitments to a Green New Deal, a fracking ban, a federal jobs guarantee, Medicare for All. Their solution was to appeal to that non-existent “moderate Trump voter.” Why do they do that every time?

CLAUDIA: I think it’s important for us to understand that they’d rather move to the right than embrace progressive ideas and policies, because progressivism is not profitable for the ruling class. Ultimately, these two parties represent two factions of the ruling class; they don’t represent working-class people. As the majority of people in this country shift towards progressivism— driven mainly by their material conditions—they’re doing so because they need livable wages, reproductive rights, and other basic needs. The capitalist system has pushed people to the point where we see that there are essential things we could have if those in political and economic power were aligned with our needs. But they aren’t.

ABBY: Exactly, that was perfectly put. Just look at the issue of abortion—what a huge miscalculation. The Democrats, along with their identity politics, assumed it was a guarantee for her to win. But when you don’t offer people any real solutions and spend 20 years saying, “Vote Democrat, or Roe v. Wade will be overturned,” only for it to be overturned because of their own willingness to lay down like a carpet for the Republicans and not fight—then offer no federal or executive action to support women—it’s clear they’ve missed the point.

They could have issued executive orders to secure women’s rights. They could have declared VA clinics as safe locations for abortion services, for example. Biden overrode Congress over 100 times to send weapons to Israel, yet we’re supposed to believe that the best they can offer is, “Just keep voting Democrat, and maybe in 20 years we’ll have a supermajority. Maybe if one of the conservative Supreme Court justices passes, we’ll put in someone moderately liberal who might not take away your basic, fundamental human rights.”

CLAUDIA: What you’re saying is completely right, and we have to recognize that there have been times, like the first two years of Obama’s presidency, when he could have codified abortion rights for women. He could have done that. The same thing happened with the Biden-Harris administration. For the first two years, they had the political and economic power to defend our rights, and yet they haven’t done that. Instead, they’ve consistently laid down and conceded to the most conservative elements of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Again, it’s not in their interest to give us what we need because, ultimately, they use our needs as bargaining chips to secure our votes.

We need to understand that this is the game they’re playing. So, we’re at a moment where we either learn from their track record and create our own agenda, unify our struggles, and build a strong independent movement, or we risk continuing down this path. We need political organizations strong enough to fight back because, ultimately, we are the only ones who can protect

our rights. They won’t do it for us.

ABBY: I want to touch upon foreign policy because, as we discussed, you can’t uncouple U.S. foreign policy from people’s economic woes. The country is suffering, and people are truly struggling, all while we send tens of billions of dollars to fund this genocide. I think it’s really important to highlight this connection, because I’ve talked to countless people. I mean, you traveled across the country, talking to hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans, and I’m sure that issue was in their periphery. While they’re suffering economically, they’re also seeing their government endlessly funneling money to kill people. Yet, some still downplay this as a factor, saying foreign policy didn’t play a role because it showed very low in exit polling. But, again, these issues are connected, especially when you look at the decisive role foreign policy did play in states like Michigan.

An arms embargo against Israel would have swayed more voters to support her—especially in several key swing states. For me, it was clear that they were so arrogant and belligerent that internal polling must have convinced them they didn’t need to court even one vote. I mean, the fact that they sent out Richie Torres to talk down to pro-Palestine people, or Arabs and Muslims in Michigan, and then Bill Clinton came out saying Hamas was the one killing kids, throwing babies in front of bullets—it was insulting. Meanwhile, Trump seized on that opening, distributing literature showing Kamala on top of the rubble in Gaza, saying, “We did it, Joe.” The fact that they even gave him that opportunity and allowed that opening was a huge mistake.

Why do you think she was willing to literally lose the election over her refusal to even rhetorically end support for Israel, or pledge to cut arms to expedite their ethnic cleansing? Why was that so impossible for her?

CLAUDIA: I think we need to understand the role of the president in this country. They are part of the problem, but they are not the entire problem. The problem is the capitalist and U.S. imperialist project. That is the project, and it goes beyond presidential candidates—it goes beyond Trump or Harris. Ultimately, both Trump and Harris have pledged their allegiance to the genocidal, colonial state of Israel repeatedly, right? And the reason they’ve done it is because the genocidal, colonial state of Israel is very much a product of the United States. It is a proxy state in the Middle East, safeguarding the interests of U.S. imperialism. That’s what it is. It could be another military base for all we care. That is what Israel is in that part of the world. So regardless of whether it’s Trump or Harris, ultimately, they are there to protect colonialism. They are there to protect that genocidal project.

She’s not going to move an inch to give into the voices of the uncommitted group—voices of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have been protesting in this country daily, Abby. Day in and day out, they are protesting against the genocide, against the expansion of war, demanding a ceasefire, demanding an arms embargo. She’s not going to give those voices an inch because, ultimately, they are there to protect U.S. imperialism and all that it means.

Even when she attempted at the debate to mention, “I believe in the self-determination of the Palestinian people,” she was obviously co-opting the language of the movement. This person should never use the term “self-determination” because they’ve crushed any opportunity for it. And I mean, not just her personally, but her and the project of U.S. imperialism. We see the pandering to a certain section of society that already understands this. People have gone beyond the question of being anti-war—they are now anti- imperialist. That’s how fast we’ve learned in the last 15 months. We’re talking about a population that can make the connection between the genocide in Palestine, the expansion to Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and now into Iran, to the slaughter and genocide in Congo and Sudan, to the reoccupation of Haiti. People are making these connections, and this has been happening in the last 15 months. It’s been a rapid shift in consciousness in this country.

So, she couldn’t not mention it. She mentioned it. In fact, we pushed for them to mention what’s happening in Palestine. That doesn’t mean that either of these two factions of the ruling class is interested in making it stop because, ultimately, it serves U.S. imperialism. And I think people have also understood that. As much as they might want to downplay just how much of an impact their complicity and collaboration with genocide has had on the mindset and behavior of people in the United States, they can downplay it all they want—but they’ve lost the youth. They’ve lost a whole generation of people, and I’m talking about millions of people across this country, because of that.

This is something that those of us who have been engaged in the movement—not just in the last 15 months, but for decades—should be really proud of. We should consolidate and activate those millions of people to continue doing revolutionary politics because they have already proven they are unwilling to co-sign genocide. They are unwilling to co- sign the expansion of war. They are unwilling to be complicit in the destruction of humanity and the planet. Now, we have to organize those forces.

ABBY: Absolutely, the fear is valid, especially for those who feel directly targeted by such rhetoric and policies. But it’s essential to remember that fear can be a powerful motivator if we channel it into action. The key is unity and solidarity. For those feeling paralyzed or afraid, it’s important to acknowledge the history of resistance—movements have always risen in times of crisis, and we are capable of organizing and fighting back.

CLAUDIA: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s normal for a lot of us to feel a certain level of sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety— all these emotions are, I think, highly normal, understanding that Trump is a threat. Trump is a threat, not to the ruling class, but to the majority of working-class people. It’s not all working- class people who have a consciousness, who get up every day to sell their labor, whether they are undocumented or not. For women and trans communities, for the most historically marginalized groups, he is definitely a threat. He’s dangerous, and we know this.

So we need to validate and be really conscious about not pointing fingers at communities for whatever electoral decisions they make, but instead, bringing folks into the fold. Understanding that these are valid emotions, but they should not be paralyzing emotions, because when you’re pinned against a wall and someone is trying very hard to attack you, the only thing that will get you out of being pinned is fighting back. If you don’t fight back, your life will end at the hands of whoever is pinning you down. But if you fight back, you have a better chance. And that’s what we’re trying to do—we’re trying to advance whatever chance we have to prolong our lives, the lives of the people we love, and everything we’re here to protect.

Exactly. The sentiment we must reclaim is the unwavering commitment to fight back. Historical movements, like the abolitionists, show us that it was not popular or easy to challenge the status quo, but it was necessary. They risked everything to fight for freedom, and through solidarity and determination, they succeeded.

In our time, we must recognize that we, too, will face challenges and sacrifices. Those with privilege must step up, put their bodies on the line, and defend the communities most at risk. This is a moment where we can no longer remain passive—we need to confront the reality of the work ahead. We must use every tool, every method, and every lesson we’ve learned in organizing. And as the situation evolves, we must be ready to adapt, create new tactics, and push forward with relentless resolve. The time for action is now.

We will have to organize in ways we haven’t seen in decades in this country. We will need to bring organizing into communities. What would it mean to build communities of defense to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants? What would it mean for us to build communities of care and networks of care to ensure our trans community is supported, especially as programs that helped them may no longer be available? How do we organize alternatives for people in states where abortion access has been highly reduced or eliminated? This will entail a certain level of risk, but we must be willing to take it. Because if we don’t, then Trump wins, the capitalists win, the empire wins, and our communities become further isolated and drowned in depression. Those are the things we need to break. The moment calls for us to use all our courage, intelligence, bravery, knowledge, and organizational experience to build unity that starts at the grassroots level and moves toward national organizing.