by Trevor | Jan 2, 2020 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, CPUSA, Democratic Party, Electoral Politics, Enemies Within, Featured, Freedom Road, International, Liberation Road, North America, Red Reps, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | December 31, 2019, Updated: December 31, 2019
Commentary
A shadowy new alliance led by pro-China communists plans to mobilize 40 million new Democratic voters for the 2020 election.
This group, firstly known as the State-based Power Caucus and now simply the State Power Caucus, has the ability to mobilize thousands of volunteers and paid staff in New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and Texas.
The State Power Caucus has already had a major political impact in Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, Texas, California, and several other states. This alliance could decide the 2020 election—yet it’s operating almost completely “under the radar.”
In July 2017, 20 state-based organizations from 13 states united to form the State-Based Power Caucus. The organization has no website and has generated very little publicity. We don’t even know its full roster of member organizations or the identities of most of its leaders.
What we do know is that most of its identified leaders come from “orbit” of Liberation Road—the United States’ main pro-China communist party. We also know that at least 22 major organizations in at least 15 states have now joined the caucus.
Leaders
Most known leaders of the State Power Caucus have some connection to Liberation Road. Known until recently as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Liberation Road is descended from radical Maoist groups from the 1960s and ‘70s. While no longer exclusively Maoist in outlook, Liberation Road maintains ties to China, Cuba, and other communist nations and movements.
Identified leaders of the State Power Caucus include:
Jon Liss—co-chair of the New Virginia Majority, national chair of State Power Caucus. Long-time member of Liberation Road.
Andrea Mercado—co-chair of The New Florida Majority, leadership team State Power Caucus.
Bob Wing—organizing committee State Power Caucus. Former member of Maoist grouping Line of March. A long time Liberation Road affiliate.
Anthony Thigpenn—founder and president of California Calls and leadership team member of the State Power Caucus.
Claire Tran—State Power Caucus staff. Long time Liberation Road member.
Member Organizations
Most of the State Power Caucus affiliates are led by Liberation Road cadre or supporters. Some of the organizations are former affiliates of ACORN, the discredited “community organizing” organization exposed by Project Veritas, Glenn Beck, and others.
Confirmed organizations affiliated to the State Power Caucus include:
California Calls is a California-wide alliance with includes the renamed ACORN affiliate Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, several Liberation Road influenced organizations including Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Community Coalition, Strategic Concepts in Organizing Policy Education, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Oakland Rising, San Francisco Rising Alliance plus California Federation of Teachers, Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement, Dolores Huerta Foundation, and several others. These groups have signed up hundreds of thousands of mainly “minority” voters to turn California into one the most heavily Democratic states in the country.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth claims 7,500 members across the state and played a role in the recent defeat of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. One of Democratic Governor-elect Andy Beshear’s first actions was to restore voting rights to 100,000 Kentucky felons—a move lobbied for by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. One of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth’s key leaders, Meta Mendel-Reyes, was involved with the pro-China League of Revolutionary Struggle in the 1980s and has served on the board of the Liberation Road-led Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee.
New Virginia Majority can claim credit more than any other organization for turning reliably Republican Virginia into a Democratic state. In 10 years of solid organizing New Virginia Majority claims to have signed up more than 200,000 Democratic-leaning “minority” voters. The group also worked closely with former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to re-instate voting rights to more than 200,000 disenfranchised felons.
The New Florida Majority, like its Virginia cousin, is a front for Liberation Road. The New Florida Majority has signed up tens of thousands of “minority” voters for the Democratic Party and has helped elect several state-level politicians in Southern Florida. In 2018, the organization also worked with Organize Florida (formerly Florida ACORN) to pass a referendum re-enfranchising 1.4 million felons for the 2020 election. The New Florida Majority almost succeeded in electing the leftist Mayor of Tallahassee to the Florida Governor’s Mansion in 2018.
Washington Community Action Network is the state chapter of USAction. The group claims that in May 2019, Gov. Jay Inslee signed “their” Eviction Reform Bill into law. Washington Community Action Network executive director Mary Le Nguyen was a 2017 alumna of the Liberation Road-affiliated Rockwood Leadership Institute, an Oakland, California-based school for “community organizers.”
The Plan
It’s no secret that the communist rulers of China would love to see President Donald Trump defeated in 2020.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that Beijing’s American franchise has a plan to do just that.
According to State Power Caucus leader Jon Liss writing in Organizing Upgrade:
“Inspired by the disaster of Trump and Trumpism two years out most organizers are engaged in barroom or coffee shop speculation about the 2020 election. …
“All of it is idle speculation unless ‘we’ collectively organize tens of millions of the 108 million eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2016. That’s right, one hundred and eight million eligible voters chose not to register or to vote in 2016. The non-voting block is disproportionately young, poor and people of color.”
So how does Liberation Road plan to harvest these millions of potential Democrat votes? They claim credit for nearly 4 million new voters in 2016—but the target is way higher for 2020.
“Over the last twenty-five years, state power organizations have grown to fill the political space created by the decline of Democratic Party local organization, the breakup and collapse of ACORN, and low levels of voter turnout. …
“These organizations have deep strategic knowledge and practice in their particular states. Starting in the summer of 2017 many leading state-power organizations have come together as a caucus to support peer-to-peer learning and incubate innovate organizing practices. …
“The State Power Caucus has worked to first analyze the collective reach of the national networks who engage in electoral and civic engagement work. …
“We’ve also begun to assess the collective impact of state-based organizations. Looking at 2016, our rough estimate is that at most 4 million people were contacted and encouraged to vote. This is our high-water estimate. The actual number who actually voted is probably much lower still.
“Now, recall the 108 million people who were eligible but not voting? They are largely our ‘core’ constituency, or in other terms, they are our unorganized social base. This 108 million when compared to the voting electorate is more Black, more immigrant, more working class and poor.
“If we initially target just half of the 108 million, and we acknowledge that some in that half are going to disagree with our values and politics, some aren’t going to vote no matter what, and some are in geographies that we just can’t reach, we believe our real voter mobilization target number is 40 million, and we’ve agreed as a caucus to that number as our target. That’s our natural consistency.
“These are the voters or potential voters who put AOC and Ilhan Omar into Congress. They are our friends and family, and they are the everyday members and supporters of our organizations that fight for racial justice at the state and local level.”
The State Power Caucus believes that 40 million new anti-Trump voters is both realistic and achievable.
“The State Power Caucus is committed to working more effectively, efficiently and collaboratively with national social justice networks. Together, we look to take a big leap forward and move from mobilizing 4 million and organizing many less to mobilizing and organizing many times more.
“The long game to defeat white nationalism and move past neo-liberal corporatism is by building a bottom up movement of 40 million people.
“At a minimum that is a movement where people vote consistently and consciously. Where people share our values for racial, gender and social justice and where people believe they have the capacity to rule.”
Does the Republican Party even understand what’s coming? While President Trump is confronting China on trade and challenging China’s military in the Pacific, his voter base is being undermined by pro-China communists in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. If Liberation Road can flip only two or three states in the South, a China-appeasing Democrat takes the White House in 2020.
Permanent Socialism
The United States stands one election away from permanent socialism—otherwise known as “communism.” If the Democrats win in 2020 they will use the organs of the state to destroy their enemies. They will flood the country with immigrants, legal and illegal, and they will swamp the conservative voting base. They will consolidate their power just like they did in Cuba and Venezuela, and a free America will be over forever.
And all this could happen because a few hundred pro-China communists, with mountains of money from the Democracy Alliance, unions, and tax-free foundations are allowed to out-organize Trump and the Republicans in the South.
It’s perfectly legal to sign up “minority” voters for the Democratic Party. It’s not legal to do that to the advantage of a hostile foreign power.
The State Power Caucus and their constituent groups should become the number one priority for federal and state investigative bodies.
Photo credit: Voting booths are set up at the Yuengling Center on the campus of the University of South Florida as workers prepare to open the doors to early voters in Tampa, Fla, on Oct. 22, 2018. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Dec 30, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, CPUSA, Democratic Party, International, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | December 20, 2019, Updated: December 29, 2019
Commentary
Ohio Communist Party leader Maicol Lynch criticized President Donald Trump and pledged allegiance to the international communist movement at the recent 20th Conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Lynch affirmed American communists’ place in the world revolutionary movement and outlined some of the recent activities of the Communist Party USA and the Young Communist League.
According to Lynch’s contribution to the Communist Party USA website:
“The Young Communists of the United States of America salute you in this time of revolutionary change and resistance! This particular gathering of the 20th general assembly of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Cyprus is taking place precisely at a time that the youth of the United States of America, like in many other parts of the capitalist world, are facing a crisis. American capitalism has been intensified over the past three years as a result of the neo-fascist, anti-immigrant, anti-labor, and anti-people policies of the Trump administration.
“For the past three years, our organization has stood firm against the policies of Trump and worked alongside young workers and students in the resistance who are growing more and more frustrated with the political situation and are looking for revolutionary alternatives.
“In the midst of this year’s strike wave led by teacher and autoworker unions, our organization joined the picket lines and offered solidarity and support. …
“Our organization rallied with the masses of young workers and students for the international Youth Climate Strike in which we condemned global capitalism’s neglect to put people and planet before corporate profits.”
According to Lynch, the Young Communist League is using Democrats’ impeachment hearings against Trump to further ramp up propaganda against the president:
“The U.S. has entered a new political moment. The fight against the Trump administration is now centered on the impeachment hearings. Young Communists are working for what we call a ‘workers’/people’s and youth impeachment.’ On campuses and in workplaces all over the country, young people are taking a stand against Trump by holding up banners at football games, stopping traffic, kneeling during the National Anthem, and so forth.”
Lynch, like most American communists, is a Democratic Party supporter. Speaking to his international comrades, he emphasized the importance of the Party’s seemingly permanent shift to the far left and its role in radicalizing more American youth—all with an admirable flexibility with the truth:
“Inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, our country’s youth flocked to the polls a year ago to back candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib: women of color who pose a threat to Trump’s racist, anti-labor domestic policies and his imperialistic foreign policy to the point where they themselves, progressive Democrats, were red-baited this past July by being called ‘communists’ and were later met with threats of deportation by Trump himself.
“Progressive candidacies like these have motivated U.S. youth to search for more revolutionary and socialist alternatives to capitalism on the Left, which often brings them to the ranks of our organization. It is estimated by recent polls that as much as 40% or more of the U.S. millennial population believe that some form of socialism is better than the system we have right now. This number grows each day as youth realize that we need more than a temporary bandage on our problems both domestically and internationally. The march to the ballot box began last year, which resulted in the biggest defeat of the GOP in recent U.S. history, and is continuing.”
Founded in 1945, WFDY was for many years run as the Soviet Union’s main international youth front organization. After several lean years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, WFDY is on the rebound.
Today, WFDY gathers young communists from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Vietnam, Japan, Nepal, India, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Greece, France, Great Britain, Angola, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, the Philippines, and many other countries to coordinate revolutionary activities worldwide.
Every three or four years, WFDY convenes a World Festival of Youth and Students. The last gathering was held in October 2017 in Sochi, Russia, and attracted more than 30,000 young communists from all over the world to mark the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Attendees included more than 50 Americans from the Young Socialists, Communist Party USA/Young Communist League, and Students and Youth for a New America. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally intervened to secure the Sochi venue and keynoted the event.
WFDY was one of the first organizations granted general consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council, and also enjoys operational relations with UNESCO.
Lynch rounded off his speech to the WFDY comrades with a rousing call to arms:
“Our organization will continue to seek the broadest unity possible to take down Trump, the extreme right, and all the other reactionary neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan—like forces that fuel their fires of hatred and division. We will continue to combat Trump’s imperialist policies against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and others.
“We will fight within the belly of the beast and never abandon our international comrades in their struggles, which are our struggles as well. We have a long road ahead of us, but we shall overcome! Long live socialism, long live international solidarity, and long live WFDY!”
Is Lynch advocating giving “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States? Surely not—that’s illegal. Shame on me.
Photo credit: A view of Nicosia, Cyprus, in February 2008. The city hosted the 20th Conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth during the first week of December 2019. By TomasNY, via Wikimedia Commons
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Dec 17, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Asia-Pacific, Blog, China, Commentary, CPUSA, Democratic Party, Enemies Within, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | December 16, 2019, Updated: December 17, 2019
Commentary
Fresh off winning Virginia for the Democratic Party, helping to elect a Democratic governor in Kentucky, and winning a city council seat in Philadelphia, pro-China communists from the Liberation Road group are turning their attention to Arizona and Nevada.
Liberation Road is marshaling all its resources to defeat President Donald Trump. Turning Republican-leaning Arizona blue and holding swing state Nevada for the Democrats would go a long way to achieving that goal and permanently altering the “balance of power” in the United States.
Liberation Road is the main representative of the American Maoist movement. Formed as Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) in 1985, Liberation Road joined the remnants of several Maoist groups—the Proletarian Unity League, Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, Bay Area Revolutionary Union, Robeson-Cabral Collective, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Line of March, and others—into one unified organization.
Confusingly, in 1999, more traditional Maoist FRSO comrades in Illinois and Minnesota broke away to form a new organization also called Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The majority FRSO faction oriented more to electoral work and racial politics—through movements like Black Lives Matter and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).
In April, the majority FRSO re-named itself Liberation Road—partly to differentiate themselves from their former comrades and partly to make it easier to work with the Democratic Party.
Arizona is a must-win state for Trump in 2020. Once reliably Republican, socialists have exploited Arizona’s growing Latino minorities to move the state toward the left. Communist Party-backed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema narrowly won her U.S. Senate race in 2018, and incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally faces a strong challenge from Democrat Mark Kelly—a former astronaut.
Nevada would be a solidly Republican state if wasn’t for Clark County—Las Vegas. With a huge population of Latino and Asian service workers, leftist groups such as the Maoist-rooted Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) have signed up thousands of new Democratic voters to dominate statewide politics.
Liberation Road has had a lock on San Francisco Bay politics for many years. Almost every leading San Francisco and Oakland politician owes something to Liberation Road or its affiliated groups such as Bay Resistance, Bay Rising, San Francisco Rising Alliance, Oakland Rising, or the Chinese Progressive Association.
Consequently, Liberation Road is able to devote resources and personnel to nearby states such as Arizona and Nevada.
Seed the Vote
Bay Area Liberation Road and its satellite organization LeftRoots have established a political action committee, or PAC, to carry out electoral work both in state and out of state.
Everyday People PAC is a “social justice organization committed to mobilizing our communities to elect candidates that share our values,” its website states.
A subsidiary group “Seed the Vote” is a “project of Everyday People PAC, and it is supported by Bay Resistance, Bay Rising Action, San Francisco Rising Action Fund, and other organizations and individuals throughout the Bay Area committed to building political power in our communities.”
According to the Seed the Vote website, Seed the Vote is supported by Liberation Road cadre Sarah Jarmon and Michelle Foy and LeftRoots members Emily Lee of San Francisco Rising Alliance and Adam Gold of the Center for Popular Democracy Action.
Other supporters include Kimi Lee of Bay Rising Action, Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Jill Shenker of San Francisco Rising Action Fund, Rose Mendelsohn of Bay Resistance, and ex-Line of March leader Max Elbaum.
Seed the Vote education team member Calvin Cheung-Miaw is also a leader of the Left Inside Outside Project, a national alliance of Liberation Road, LeftRoots, Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism established to further infiltrate the Democratic Party and defeat Trump in 2020.
Another Seed the Vote leader Jason Negrón-Gonzales was once a supporter of Bay Area Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), as was Adam Gold, also named above.
According to Negrón-Gonzales, writing on Liberation Road-affiliated website “Organizing Upgrade”:
“The Trump era has been all about the naked aggression of the far right, but cracks are appearing. Trump is battling impeachment, a result not only of his criminality but of the changes that the blue wave brought to Congress. Last month we saw further losses for the right in Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania — the result of sustained organizing by hundreds if not thousands. That work didn’t start this year; it’s the culmination of many years of work. None of this was spontaneous. When we organize, we can win. When we step up to fight, we can win.
“Those are the lessons of last year, and this week — lessons that we have to apply to 2020. Seed the Vote is a project in the Bay Area attempting to create a vehicle to do just that. We want to leverage the experience, capacity, and expertise of organizers and activists in California in support of long-term organizing in our neighboring states.
“Our goal is not just to push Trump out of office, but to help shift the balance of power in the states where we are working in favor of communities of color, social justice organizations, and labor. We want to be tactically and politically smart, and move our politics and organizations forward.”
To this end, according to Negrón-Gonzales, the decision was made to shift resources from local races in 2020 to focus on Arizona and Nevada—and to build a small army to do it.
“The possibility of Trump’s re-election in 2020 is a real one. And it’s one we are determined to stop. When we — a group of left activists rooted in community and labor organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area — gathered this spring, it was with the urgency that came from seeing our communities under relentless assault from a white nationalist, authoritarian administration.
“But we also knew that 2020 — with the size, energy, and leftward shift among the opposition to Trumpism — would give us an opportunity: if we plan carefully and think big, we can make a difference at the ballot box in 2020, the kind of difference the Left failed to make in 2016. And we thought we could do this while building a stronger and more cohesive Left.
“So we launched Seed the Vote. Our practical focus is centered on bolstering 2020 electoral efforts to defeat Trump and the GOP in two key states, Nevada and Arizona.
“We are already building infrastructure and recruiting to (1) deploy several hundred Bay area activists to work with partnering unions and community-based organizations in Nevada and Arizona for two-week periods in October 2020; and (2) connect volunteers with remote call-in and text efforts from the Bay Area to register voters, protect voting rights and increase turnout in key constituencies in November 2020.”
The plan is to not just win in 2020, but to permanently change U.S. politics in favor of the left:
“This effort is not only designed to impact the 2020 election outcome. We are including a training component to provide our volunteers with the skills and experience to lead electoral engagement work, ranging from advanced canvassers to team leaders who can train and supervise others, to campaign managers.
“And our program is crafted to increase the capacity and reach of partner organizations in Nevada and Arizona, as well as participating organizations in the Bay.
“Seed the Vote is an active investment in the long-haul work of building the independent electoral strength of social justice organizations rooted in communities of color and the working class.”
Several hundred dedicated Bay Area communists working with already established leftist voter registration and Get Out the Vote groups in two key swing states could very well decide the 2020 election.
Couple that with Liberation Road’s disciplined and focused work across the South in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and we have a perfect Maoist storm brewing up.
China’s communist leaders could risk hundreds of billions of dollars trying to defeat Trump in a trade war. Or risk hundreds of millions of lives (including their own) in a shooting war of indeterminate outcome. Or they could defeat Trump by encouraging their U.S. communist “franchise” to spend a few million dollars flipping three or four Southern and Southwestern states to the Democrat column—all under the radar.
Which option would you choose if you led the Communist Party of China?
Featured photo: Arizona voters wait in line to cast their ballot at a polling place during the midterm elections in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 6, 2018. Ralph Freso/Getty Images
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Dec 17, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, China, Commentary, CPUSA, Democratic Party, DSA, Electoral Politics, Enemies Within, Featured, Freedom Road, International, Liberation Road, North America, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | December 16, 2019, Updated: December 16, 2019
Commentary
America’s main pro-China communist party Liberation Road is working overtime to win Florida for the Democratic Party in the 2020 presidential election.
With 29 Electoral College votes—behind only California and Texas and tied with New York—Florida may well decide the 2020 election. California and New York are deeply blue states and Texas is moderately red, so purplish Florida will be heavily targeted as the most significant “swing state” in the nation.
Liberation Road Maoists finally turned Virginia blue in 2020. They’re now using similar tactics to flip Florida.
Liberation Road (until April this year known as Freedom Road Socialist Organization or FRSO) flipped Virginia by signing up at least 300,000 new minority voters over the last several years and working with then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe to restore voting rights for an estimated 200,000 former felons.
Working through the New Florida Majority and allied organizations FRSO/Liberation Road has signed up hundreds of thousands of new minority voters in Florida and helped pass a referendum giving 1.4 million “Sunshine State” former felons the right to vote.
They also helped to raise the Democratic vote for their friend Andrew Gillum in the 2018 governor’s race. Gillum only lost because Donald Trump endorsed Republican Ron DeSantis who called Gillum out for the socialist he undoubtedly is. Given that Gillum is now working with the Florida left to sign up another million minority Democratic voters, it’s entirely possible that China’s American franchise Liberation Road may well decide who wins the 2020 election.
FRSO Infiltrates Florida
FRSO has been active in Southern Florida since at least 1999 when the Miami Workers Center was founded by FRSO affiliates Gihan Perera and Tony Romano.
Though never FRSO’s strongest section, the Miami branch has been reinforced in recent years with comrades from North Carolina, California, and the Northeast.
Perera founded Miami-based The New Florida Majority circa 2009 (as Florida New Majority). He would staff his new organization with Maoist comrades, including political director Badili Jones—one of the very few open FRSO members.
Perera trained in 2005 at the FRSO-connected and Oakland California-based “community organizer” school Rockwood Leadership Institute. The New Florida Majority’s current executive director Andrea Mercado trained at Rockwood in 2013. Andrew Gillum served his time there in 2012.
In 2007, Perera (who now runs programs for the Ford Foundation) and John Liss of New Virginia Majority, established a nationwide umbrella group for FRSO-affiliated community groups called the Right to the City Alliance.
Moving Florida Left
The New Florida Majority immediately set out to harness the power of minority voters to move Florida left.
From the allied Florida Immigrant Coalition website:
“Through street-level organizing, The New Florida Majority is overcoming the dark days of racism and divisiveness in the Sunshine State to bring the new light of fairness and equity to all residents.
“In 2012, The New Florida Majority’s mobilization efforts resulted in the election of ten new progressive Federal and State legislators in Florida. Through our Breakthrough campaign, we reached more than 250,000 voters across the state, 76% of which turned out on election day.
“This year, The New Florida Majority organizers are mobilizing leaders to significantly expand democratic rights for communities that have been historically marginalized, excluded, and silenced. The key components of the campaign are voting rights, immigration reform, fighting mass incarceration, and standing up for women and our young people.”
Victories included Orlando area congressman Darren Soto and Miami area State Sen. Dwight Bullard—who now serves as the New Florida Majority’s political director.
In recent years, the New Florida Majority has chalked up victory after victory—local and state-wide. All apparently under the nose of the Florida Republican Party.
According to the group’s website the ”Majority” can claim credit for:
“• 31,000 new voter registrations in low-income black & brown neighborhoods, with 32,277 voters contacted, in 2017 alone.
• Helped to win $15/hr living wage legislation in the City of Miami.
• Citizen-lobbying effort led to creation of low-income community representative on the City of Miami Sea Level Rise Committee.
• Led effort to collect 127,000 petitions to get campaign finance reform on 2018 ballot.
• Won lawsuit to extend voter registration period after Hurricane Matthew, which enabled 108,000 additional people to register during this election cycle.
• Field programs helped to win important down-ballot races including Opa Locka City Commissioner Matthew Pigatt, State Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, State Representative Robert Ascencio.”
Socialist SWAG
But by far the New Florida Majority’s most important campaigns to date were the almost successful Gillum campaign and the concurrent push to pass Amendment 4—which gave most convicted felons the right to vote.
“In 2018, New Florida Majority made history with the passage of Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with felony convictions. Our work, along with the work of so many other groups who fought so hard for that win, continues today as the state legislature attempts to roll back our hard-won victory.”
Both campaigns saw the New Florida Majority deepen its ties with several allied organizations across the state through a new umbrella organization the Statewide Alliance Group (SWAG).
The new alliance included:
• The New Florida Majority
• Dream Defenders—a black-led pro-Palestine group closely affiliated to Liberation Road.
• Organize Florida—led by Stephanie Porta, former leader of Florida ACORN.
• Florida Immigrant Coalition—led by Maria Rodriguez, a 2009 Rockwood Leadership Institute alumni and close affiliate of Liberation Road.
• SEIU—heavily penetrated by Liberation Road and other communist groups.
• Faith in Florida—part of Faith in Action, formerly known as the PICO National Network, which is closely affiliated to some Liberation Road supporters.
• Central Florida Jobs with Justice—led by Denise Diaz, who is closely affiliated to Liberation Road and the Communist Party USA.
Defending Gillum
SWAG’s first job was to defend Gillum from his Republican opponent DeSantis’s well-justified and very effective “red-baiting.”
Liberation Road calls the conservative, Christian, Republican-leaning South the “New Confederacy”—and Gillum was supposed to help the Maoists defeat the New “Confederates” in Florida.
JoHanna Thompson, a Miami-based FRSO comrade, wrote a facetiously entitled article on the group’s website “Don’t Let the Socialists Take Over Florida!”
“Gillum seemed like someone who comrades could work with in office.
“Falling in line with the New Confederacy, DeSantis was less concerned with changing liberal minds than attacking liberal ideologies, making inaccurate associations of his opponent, and getting conservative voters to the polls.
“One door hanger asked the question, ‘Does this sound familiar?’ It depicted a picture of a street mural, by a local artist, of Andrew Gillum. Underneath the picture were the words, ‘Andrew Gillum: Another Big Government, Socialist Dictator’ followed by three more street murals of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez. It boldly proclaimed, ‘Don’t let the socialists take over Florida! Republicans must vote, there’s too much at stake.’
“On one hand, the door hanger was laughable, while on the other, it spoke to the intentional decision of grassroots organizations and a union to work collectively as Statewide Alliance Group …”
The attacks on Gillum worked. Although SWAG lifted the Democratic Party vote by a staggering 40 percent over the 2014 elections, DeSantis so boldly called out Gillum’s socialism that the Republican vote rose even more. Florida was saved from a socialist governor by razor thin 33,000 votes.
Anti-communism works.
FRSO did better with Amendment 4, however, which passed 64 percent to 34 percent.
Thompson explained how the Florida left came together to pass Amendment 4:
“The Dream Defenders (DD) took a deep dive in community to create an ideology reminiscent of the Black Panther Party Ten Point Program with seven freedoms. DD launched the #freedompapers, claiming #thisistheyear, focusing on building with community to target private prison corporations, like GEO Group, and transform the Florida political landscape.
“Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) along with Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and United We Dream focused on immigrant rights and abolishing ICE. The New Florida Majority (NFM), SEIU, Faith in Florida, Jobs with Justice, and the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) Electoral Justice Project appealed to their vast membership bases.
“In addition, the Miami Workers Center (MWC) centered the Movement for Black Women and Girls with Soul Sista’s. Power U Center for Social Change continues to inform youth. Community Justice Project (CJP) supported Poetry for the People’s, Maroon Poetry Festival, which amplified the Black Arts Movement and use of art in activism.
“The age old social justice organizations such as NAACP, ACLU, Faith in Florida, PACT, and the likes, also joined the effort to get Amendment 4 passed. All used the same messaging in their conversations which advocated for a Yes Vote on Amendment 4. The strategy was to restore the rights of over 1.4 million voters as freedom voters.
“It was a brilliant, coordinated strategy in alignment and consistent communication that is beginning to consolidate a united front against the New Confederacy in Florida.”
Can Florida Be Saved From Socialism?
Most Florida voters who supported Amendment 4 thought they were simply being kind to people who had paid their debt to society. Many of the Amendment 4 “Yes” voters also voted against socialism and for Ron DeSantis. They had no real idea of who was behind the ballot initiative or why.
FRSO Maoists and their allies basically fooled several million compassionate Floridians into voting for their own destruction. It was never about restoring rights to the formerly incarcerated. It was all about several hundred thousand new potential Democratic voters.
Old-line Maoists believed that all power sprang “from the barrel of a gun.” Modern Liberation Road Maoists know that such crude tactics won’t work in the United States. They believe that total power can be better achieved by mobilizing minority voters to give a hard-left Democratic Party an unbeatable majority. Different tactics—same eventual result.
Liberation Road/The New Virginia Majority used Democratic-leaning ex-felons to turn “The Old Dominion” blue. You can bet that Liberation Road/The New Florida Majority is out there right now registering Florida’s ex-felons for the same purpose.
President Donald Trump would be well advised to hold several large rallies in Florida next year. His Sunshine State base loves him like a chocolate. If he’s there for them, they will turn out for him.
Donald Trump, Jr. recently told Fox and Friends that the 2020 election would be “communism versus freedom.” Florida will prove him correct.
Feature photo: Trays of election ballots are seen at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election Warehouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 15, 2018. Michele Eve Sandberg/AFP via Getty Images
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by M M | Dec 10, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, CPUSA, Democratic Party, DSA, Enemies Within, Featured, Green New Deal, Headline, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times
Commentary
This country’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), played a major role in pushing the Green New Deal into the highest reaches of the Democratic Party.
The Green New Deal is supported by more than 90 members of the House of Representatives and 15 senators, including presidential candidates Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Now, the DSA has endorsed a related project, the “Red Deal,” which comes from even further left. How long will it take the DSA to bring the Red Deal into the Democratic Party?
The Red Deal
The Red Deal is the project of the New Mexico-based Native American activist organization The Red Nation—a group of fewer than 50 core members. However, with close ties to Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestinian militants, The Red Nation has some revolutionary credibility on the left.
The Red Nation is openly communist.
The organization’s Third General Assembly formally adopted “revolutionary socialism and liberation as the primary political ideology of The Red Nation.” The document went on to “articulate the basic principles of revolutionary socialism and Marxism and its connection to Indigenous socialism and communism.”
The Red Nation website explains the origins of the Red Deal:
“The proposed Green New Deal legislation is a step in the right direction to combat climate change and to hold corporate polluters responsible. A mass mobilization, one like we’ve never seen before in history, is required to save this planet. Indigenous movements have always been at the forefront of environmental justice struggles.
“Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the main proponent of the GND, is herself a Water Protector who began her successful congressional run while she was at Standing Rock protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thus, the GND and the climate justice movement in North America trace their origins to Indigenous frontline struggles.
“With this background in mind, [The Red Nation] is proposing a Red Deal. It’s not the ‘Red New Deal’ because it’s the same ‘Old Deal’—the fulfillment of treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation. Ours is the oldest class struggle in the Americas; centuries-long resistance for a world in which many worlds fit.”
So what is the Red Deal? Like the Green New Deal, it’s constantly evolving, but essentially it’s an attempt to impose full-blown communism on the United States under the cover of restoration of made-up Native American “rights” and bogus environmentalism.
“The Red Deal is not a counter program of the Green New Deal. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives.
“The Red Deal is a platform that calls for demilitarization; police and prison abolition; abolishing ICE; tearing down all border walls; Indigenous liberation, decolonization, and land restoration; treaty rights; free healthcare; free education; free housing; full citizenship and equal protection to undocumented relatives; a complete moratorium on oil, gas, coal, and carbon extraction and emissions; a transition to an economy that benefits everyone and that ends the exploitation of the Global South and Indigenous nations for resources; safe and free public transportation; restoration of Indigenous agriculture; food sovereignty; restoration of watersheds and waterways; denuclearization; Black self-determination and autonomy; gender and sexual equality; Two-Spirit, trans*, and queer liberation; and the restoration of sacred sites.
“Thus the Red Deal is ‘Red’ because it prioritizes Indigenous liberation, on one hand, and a revolutionary left position, on the other.”
And where is the money coming from for this leap into full-blown socialism?
“Where will we get the resources to achieve these monumental tasks? We call for a divestment away from the police, prisons, and military (two of the largest drains on ‘public spending’) and fossil fuels and a reinvestment in common humanity for everyone (health, wellbeing, and dignity) and the restoration of Indigenous lands, waters, airs, and nations.”
In a Nov. 15 statement on its website, the DSA fully endorsed the Red Deal and committed to a partnership with The Red Nation:
“The Democratic Socialists of America is proud to endorse the Red Deal, an indigenous centered set of policy recommendations that was written by The Red Nation. We are also proud to endorse the work of The Red Nation and commit to a long-term partnership with them in the furtherance of decolonizing our society. The Red Nation is a group of radical indigenous people that are fighting back against the US imperialist settler colonialist state. They are not just fighting for land and sovereignty, but for survival.”
The DSA, which claims to be a “democratic socialist” and noncommunist organization, appears to have no qualms about endorsing communist principles and partnering with a revolutionary communist organization.
Red Nation
The Red Nation was founded in 2014 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a fusion between Native American militants and comrades from the pro-North Korea and -Iran Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The Red Nation and PSL held numerous events together and worked out of the same office. Several Red Nation activists were also PSL comrades, including Paige Murphy, Sam Gardipe, Michael Butler, and Melissa Tso.
In recent years, The Red Nation also formed a close bond to the Trotsky-oriented International Socialist Organization (ISO).
For several years, ISO website Socialist Worker has carried coverage of The Red Nation’s conferences and protests. Most were written by Wisconsin-based Native American activist and ISO member Brian Ward and his California-based comrade Ragina Johnson.
At The Red Nation’s Native Liberation Conference held Aug. 11–12, 2018, in Albuquerque, ISO hosted the panel “Solidarity Will Win: Socialism and Indigenous Peoples” featuring ISO comrades Khury Petersen-Smith, Johnson, and Ward and moderated by The Red Nation leader Nick Estes.
In early 2019, ISO collapsed as the result of a long-simmering sexual harassment scandal. Many ISO comrades moved into the DSA, bringing their The Red Nation contacts with them.
At the DSA’s national convention in Atlanta, in July 2019, seven comrades moved the resolution “Amendment on the Red Deal and Rejecting a Green Military.”
Two of the seven, Sofia Arias and Brian Ward, were former ISO comrades. Two more, Rory Fanning and Spenser Rapone, had addressed a major ISO-sponsored conference in Chicago in 2018.
The resolution amendment called on the DSA to:
“endorse the Red Deal, launched by comrades in The Red Nation, a radical anti-capitalist Indigenous liberation group, and its principles on the fight for non-reformist reforms. As described by The Red Nation, ‘The Red Deal is not a counter program of the GND. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives.’
“At the end of this Convention, the Green New Deal Coordinating Committee will be tasked with initiating a more direct working relationship between DSA and The Red Nation. The GNDCC will make direct connection with The Red Nation, dedicate one person to serve as the main point of contact, and collaborate with the comrades on joint actions, statements and local, national and international campaigns around indigenous liberation and climate justice.”
So far, the only Congress member to show an interest in the Red Deal is far-left New Mexico Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland.
In June, Haaland sent a representative to a Red Deal workshop in Albuquerque. According to New Mexico Report, Haaland said The Red Nation activists “are absolutely right, for far too long the U.S. government has not lived up to its obligations to Indian tribes, and this is a new era.”
Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal and said she plans to make sure “tribes are included as it is developed.”
The Green New Deal became ubiquitous in a few short weeks thanks to a social media blitz by the DSA and other forces on the left.
How long will it be before the Red Deal is on the lips of Democratic House members, senators, and presidential candidates?
Feature image: Members of the Democratic Socialists of America gather outside of a Trump owned building on May Day in New York City on May 01, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics
Trevor offers his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Nov 16, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Bernie Sanders, Blog, CPUSA, Democratic Party, DSA, Enemies Within, Featured, Headline, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times* | November 12, 2019, Updated: November 13, 2019
Commentary
Radical Maoists from Liberation Road and their small “c” communist allies from Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected one of their own to Philadelphia City Council on Nov. 5.
Kendra Brooks, who won a city council at-large seat, will join fellow radical Helen Gym on the 17-member body.
Heavily Democratic Philadelphia follows an unusual system for electing city councilors. Ten councilors are elected by district, while seven are elected “at-large” from the whole city voting base. Two of those seats are traditionally reserved for “minor parties,” which has for decades guaranteed two Republican seats on the council. Brooks took one of these minority seats, cutting Republican representation down to one.
Brooks ran on the Working Families Party ticket. The party, which has recently expanded from its New York base to several new states, spent more than $400,000 on Brooks and her running mate Nicolas O’Rourke, and knocked on 150,000 doors and sent 300,000 text messages.
In reality, the Philadelphia Working Families Party is just a ballot-line, a shell with little real structure. The backbone of Brooks’s campaign were activists from the DSA, the 215 People’s Alliance (a Liberation Road front—the 215 signifies Philadelphia’s area code) and Reclaim Philadelphia (a DSA-led organization).
Liberation Road (known from 1985 to April as Freedom Road Socialist Organization or FRSO) is a pro-China communist organization that has in the last few years turned heavily toward electoral politics. Liberation Road works both inside and outside the Democratic Party depending on the local circumstances.
The DSA is the nation’s largest Marxist group with a claimed 56,000 members. The DSA is aligned to several European and Latin American communist parties.
Together with the Communist Party USA, Liberation Road and the DSA combine their forces to infiltrate mainstream politics, including the Democratic Party, in an alliance dubbed the Left Inside/Outside Project.
Brooks’s victory should be viewed in this context.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
“Without the infrastructure of a major party, Brooks and her campaign manager, Arielle Klagsbrun, largely built their operation from scratch. But they could not have won without the efforts of a preexisting network of groups whose members knocked on thousands of doors, held fund-raisers, and posted constantly on social media for Brooks and her fellow Working Families Party candidate Nicolas O’Rourke, who came up short in his Council bid. …
“The activist groups that carried the Working Families Party banner this year didn’t just aid Brooks’ campaign. In many ways, they were the campaign.”
Philadelphia DSA has at least 600 members in its main branch and can draw on many more from Delaware, Bucks, and Montgomery counties. Reclaim Philadelphia can mobilize hundreds of people across South Philadelphia and the river wards. Reclaim Philadelphia’s lead organizer Amanda McIllmurray is a well-known DSA member.
Liberation Road also has deep roots in Philadelphia, stretching right back to the Maoist student movement of the 1970s. It’s much more secretive than the DSA, however, and publicly acknowledges very few of its members. However, it does maintain several front groups in the city, and it’s fairly easy to track the same people appearing in various Liberation Road-aligned organizations.
The 215 People’s Alliance, which is centered in Southwest Philadelphia, is riddled with Liberation Road-aligned people. Confusingly, many of them are also DSA members as Liberation Road has some cross-membership with the DSA all over the country.
Some examples include:
Ron Whitehorne, a 215 supporter, was active in the 1980s Maoist group Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee and has since been active with several Liberation Road-aligned groups, including Philadelphia Public School Notebook, Media Mobilizing Project, and Youth United for Change—as well as the DSA.
Bryan Mercer, a 215 activist, has been involved with Liberation Road-affiliated groups Media Mobilizing Project, Asian Americans United, and LeftRoots.
Nancy Dung Nguyen, a 215 canvasser, has been involved in Liberation Road-friendly groups, including Asian Americans United, Memphis Solidarity Brigade, Campaign for Nonviolent Schools, and Progressive Philly Rising.
Teresa Engst, a 215 endorser and canvasser, comes from a well-known Philly communist family. Many of her relatives grew up in China after immigrating to support Mao’s revolution. She is active with Asian Americans United.
Kendra Brooks herself serves on the steering committee of 215 People’s Alliance and has a history of left activism. Her campaign manger Arielle Klagsbrun comes by way of the Midwest where she was an organizer with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (formerly known as ACORN), which was also closely aligned with the local Liberation Road.
Sitting Philadelphia City Council member Helen Gym, a Democrat, ruffled a lot of Democrat feathers when she endorsed Brooks rather than a fellow Democrat.
According to local radio station WHYY Philadelphia, Democratic Party chairman Bob Brady was “dismayed”:
“I don’t know why that’s happening. We have a slate of five, she’s a part of it, and now she’s asking someone to vote against herself or one of the other four candidates who won the nomination — that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
It makes perfect sense if you examine Gym’s background.
The high-polling Gym was first elected to the Philadelphia Council in 2015 by many of the same Maoists who elected Brooks. She has a history with Philadelphia’s FRSO/Liberation Road element going back more than 20 years.
Gym got her activist start with local FRSO leader Ellen Somekawa and her influential Asian Americans United activist group. She also helped Somekawa and Somekawa’s FRSO comrade and husband Eric Joselyn found the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School.
Gym played a key role in the creation and early publishing days of another FRSO-linked group, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a nonprofit news outlet covering the city’s public schools. She worked alongside Whitehorne, Joselyn, and several other FRSO supporters on this project.
Gym would later work with the Media Mobilizing Project, Progressive Philly Rising, and the Minneapolis-based FRSO-linked education journal Rethinking Schools.
In recent years, Gym, who is of Korean extraction, has served on the board of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), which aims to “organize Korean and Asian Americans to achieve social, economic, and racial justice.”
NAKASEC grew out of Young Koreans United, a 1990s activist group well-known for its pro-North Korean views.
Gym may officially be a Democrat, but to all intents and purposes she follows the Liberation Road “line.” No doubt she will look forward to having an ally in Brooks to help advance her far-left agenda.
Photo: The City Hall building with the statue of William Penn on top is seen in the city center of Philadelphia on Dec. 3, 2017. Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
*Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
