By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | January 3, 2020,Updated: January 5, 2020
Commentary
American Marxists are seriously targeting judicial positions in key states—Texas among them.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has already elected some comrades to key positions in the Lone Star State and is targeting several more positions in upcoming races.
The Marxists understand that it’s not always who makes the laws but who interprets the laws that count. Influencing the legal process in favor of the left is a revolutionary act.
So far Houston DSA has elected two comrades to local judgeships.
DSA member Franklin Bynum won his bid for judge in Houston in November 2018 with an endorsement and electoral support from Houston DSA.
His platform “includes plans to stop jailing those who can’t pay bail, an end to ‘plea mill’ practices that coerce guilty pleas from defendants in exchange for freedom, support for diversion programs to reduce arrest, an end excessive to court appearances, and providing more police oversight in the courtroom,” according to Jacobin magazine.
He believes “capitalism drives the horrors of this [justice] system.”
At the same election DaSean Jones, a self-described “criminal justice reformer,” was elected as judge for the 180th criminal court in Houston. He’s also a member of the Houston DSA.
On Jan. 31, 2019, Bynum, Jones, and Tarsha Jackson of the Communist Party-influenced Texas Organizing Project participated in a Houston forum “The end of policing: putting abolition into practice”—”a conversation” with anti-police activist Alex Vitale.
A former Houston DSA member, Vitale is a professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. “He has spent the last 25 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally,” according to People’s World. “He also serves on the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.”
Vitale is a personal friend of Bynum and is active in the “close Rykers Island” and the “End Gang Database” campaigns in New York.
Comrade Vitale has also advised Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign concerning the candidate’s “Justice and Safety for All” proposal—so you can guess how “just” and “safe” these proposals may be.
In November 2019, Vitale gave a similar presentation at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Berkeley, California—sponsored by the Northern California Communist Party,
“In his recent work, ‘The End of Policing,’ Vitale gives a scathing critique of police reformism and presents realistic alternatives to policing, such as restorative justice and harm reduction programs implemented in various departments around the world. The book attempts to spark a public discourse by telling the racist and anti-labor origins of modern policing as a tool of social control, in which police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice, and public safety.
“Vitale says, ‘The origins and function of the police are intimately tied to the management of inequalities of race and class. The suppression of workers and the tight surveillance and micromanagement of black and brown lives have always been at the center of policing. Any police reform strategy that does not address this reality is doomed to fail.’
“An example is the reformist idea of ‘community policing,’ which focuses on police accountability, diversity, training, and community relations which so far do not produce positive results, either alone or in combination. ‘The problem,’ Vitale says, ‘is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last 40 years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself.’”
Imagine a prosecutor trying to bring a case before a judge imbued with this type of judicial philosophy?
Recently, Houston DSA endorsed Audia Jones (wife of DaSean Jones) in her bid for Harris County District Attorney—that’s Houston’s top prosecutor.
According to her campaign website, while working in the Harris County DA’s office, Audia Jones noticed:
“… courts disproportionately filled with the poor, people of color, intellectually disabled, and people suffering with addiction standing accused of non-violent offenses. It became clear that the criminal justice system was sorely broken and was not working for the benefit of our largest and most vulnerable communities.”
Unsurprisingly, Audia Jones has also secured the endorsement of socialist and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
A couple of hours away in the state capital Austin, the 1,000-comrade-strong Austin DSA chapter is also endorsing and backing two socialists for high judicial office in Travis County.
“Austin DSA is proud to endorse Dominic Selvera for Travis County Attorney and Jose Garza for DA. Our criminal justice system needs to change. People in Travis County deserve real reform, champions who will end mass incarceration and the war on drugs, eliminate wealth-based detention, protect immigrants, fight racism, and restore integrity to the way victims are treated. If Jose and Dominic win, things are going to change. And we will be the ones changing them.”
How would you like to be a property owner or businessperson in Austin with people like this running the legal system?
The DSA’s infiltration of the Texas judicial system has nothing to do with justice in the traditional American sense. This is a quest for revolutionary justice. It’s an attempt to seize the power of the courts to weaken the “capitalist” system and private property rights to pave the way for worker’s revolution.
This is not justice. It’s subversion. The Justice Department should be investigating and countering the DSA’s penetration of the judiciary before it becomes even more entrenched
Photo credit: The Harris County Courthouse in Houston, Texas, on April 1, 2017. (Patrick Feller 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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
As the Democratic Party moves ever further to the left, it has become normal to see communists and socialists running for office on the party’s ballot line.
Usually, Marxists run for county commissions, school boards, state legislatures, and Congress.
Now they are starting to run even for the U.S. Senate in 2020.
Sema Hernandez is standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.
Hernandez, a health care worker, is an activist with the Poor People’s Campaign. She is also a member of both Houston Democratic Socialists of America and the Houston branch of the Communist Party USA.
Hernandez stood in the Democratic primary in 2018 against Beto O’Rourke and earned a respectable 250,000 votes—probably the best in recent times for a Communist Party comrade in Texas.
It’s still technically illegal to stand for public office as a communist in Texas—but it’s apparently OK for a communist to stand for office as long as they call themselves a Democrat.
Yana Ludwig is the only Democrat so far declared in the primary to stand for an open U.S. Senate seat in overwhelmingly Republican Wyoming.
Both she and her husband, Matt Stannard, the former debate coach at the University of Wyoming, are active in SE Wyoming Democratic Socialists of America.
A Laramie resident, Ludwig has been active in the “gay” and “feminist” movements since the early 1990s.
She has participated in numerous women’s marches, “peace” protests, and many “ecological activist actions,” including the People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014, according to her campaign website.
Ludwig has also been the director of numerous nonprofits, including Project Grow Community Gardens, Recycling Jackson, and the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture.
It’s hard work being a socialist in Wyoming and almost impossible to win statewide office as a Democrat—let alone as an open Marxist.
Betsy Sweet is standing in the Maine Democratic Senate primary in the hope of challenging left-wing Republican incumbent Susan Collins in 2020.
Sweet said that “a women’s right to choose, health care for all, and climate change” are the main reasons why she decided to challenge Collins.
Sweet lost the Democratic primary for governor in 2018, even though she had the endorsement and active support of the Southern Maine Democratic Socialists of America.
Sweet is a former director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine Commission for Women.
In the early 1980s, she represented the far-left Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom on the Communist Party USA-controlled U.S. Peace Council—an affiliate of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council.
Paula Jean Swearengin is standing in the West Virginia Democratic Senate primary to hopefully challenge incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito in 2020.
In the 2018 primary, she unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
Swearengin was formerly active with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Keepers of the Mountain Foundation. She has addressed the United Nations and spoken at rallies and colleges across the country on environmental issues.
An early Bernie Sanders supporter, Swearengin attended the DSA-run Chicago People’s Summit in 2017. She was also the subject of a documentary alongside DSA and Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DSA Nevada congressional candidate Amy Vilela, and DSA and Communist Party USA-affiliated Missouri congressional candidate Cori Bush.
Swearengin was also supported in 2018 by far-left Justice Democrats and DSA-influenced Brand New Congress.
Cristina Tzintzun is, like Hernandez, standing in the U.S. Senate Texas Democratic primary to hopefully take on Cornyn in 2020. Of all the candidates profiled in this article, she is by far the one most likely to succeed.
Tzintzun founded and ran the Austin-based Workers Defense Project, a leftist immigrants’ rights group in the orbit of the Maoist-leaning pro-China group Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).
In 2013–14, Tzintzun spent a year studying with the FRSO-affiliated Rockwood Leadership Institute, an Oakland, California-based school for “community organizers.”
Tzintzun has worked closely with DSA activists in Austin, Texas, including Alice Embree, the Fetonte family, and the late Glenn Scott.
As the founder of Jolt Texas, Tzintzun organized the enrollment of thousands of new Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters across the state.
She was recruited out of Jolt Texas to stand for the U.S. Senate by well-connected former Bernie Sanders senior staffers Becky Bond and Zach Malitz and former ACORN Texas leader Ginny Goldman.
Bond and Malitz were both senior staffers in the 2018 Beto O’Rourke Senate campaign. They are also both colleagues of wealthy San Francisco socialist Michael Kieschnick—who is also a big fan of Tzintzun.
Bond is the co-author of “Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything.”
Malitz, a DSA affiliate, will serve as a senior adviser on the Tzintzun senate campaign. Goldman, lately a leader of the Communist Party USA-infiltrated Texas Organizing Project, will serve as Tzintzun’s campaign chair.
The other Democrats in primary, and probably Cornyn, are in for a tough race.
Feature photo: Community organizers Cristina Tzintzún Ramírez (L) and Brittany Packnett share how they’ve built a social movement, at The Summit on Race in America at the LBJ Presidential Library on April 9, 2019. Tzintzún is founder and director of Jolt, a Texas-based organization that builds the political power and influence of Latinos. Ralph Barrera/LBJ Library 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.
In September, the United States’ largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), posted a list of “progressives” running for the House of Representatives in 2020.
The list, posted on a DSA Reddit page, names more than 100 candidates in over 30 states, from Alaska to Florida, California to Maine. The list includes many hopeless candidates, but also includes several who have a good chance of winning seats, or at least running their primary or general election opponents close.
In 2018, the DSA elected two members to congress—Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—plus two sympathizers, Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—collectively known as “The Squad.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) questions U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin as he testifies during a House Committee on Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
With an increased membership (now around 55,000) and considerably more electoral experience, the DSA could elect more members and several more supporters in 2020.
Some of the candidates are also closely aligned with two pro-China DSA allies, Liberation Road and the Communist Party USA.
Several on the list ran as first-timers in 2018 against well-established incumbents and lost in many cases by under 10 points. With “on the ground” and financial support from the DSA, Liberation Road, Communist Party USA, Working Families Party, Progressive Democrats of America, Our Revolution, and left-controlled unions such as the SEIU and National Nurses United, many of them will be competitive against Democratic and Republican opponents.
Comrade Candidates
In Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, far-left DSA-friendly Eva Putzova is mounting a serious primary challenge against incumbent moderate Democrat Tom O’Halleran.
In California’s 29th District, DSA comrade Angelica Duenas is aiming to replace incumbent Democrat Tony Cardenas, while DSA comrade Shahid Buttar is going up against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in California’s 12th District. Strangely, another DSA member and former Massachusetts state legislator, Tom Gallagher, is contesting the same seat.
In California’s 50th District, the DSA-friendly grandson of a Palestinian terrorist,Ammar Campa-Najjar lost narrowly to a scandal-plagued Republican incumbent Duncan Hunter in 2018. Campa-Najjar is back for a second shot, but his Republican opponent may be different this time.
Ammar Campa-Najjar (D-CA) speaks to reporters outside the Federal Courthouse in San Diego, CA, on Aug. 23, 2018. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images
In California’s 53rd District, Jose Cabellero is challenging incumbent Democrat Susan Davis with both DSA and Liberation Road support.
Florida’s 27th District likely won’t change much this cycle as low-polling DSA-friendly Michael Hepburn runs again against Democrat incumbent Donna Shalala.
In Georgia’s 1st District, DSA-friendly Lisa Ring is making a second attempt at sending Republican incumbent Buddy Carter to an early retirement. In Georgia’s 7th District, Nabilah Islam is running for the open seat, while Michael Owens is contesting Georgia’s 13th District against moderate Democrat David Scott. Both Islam and Owen have requested the endorsement of Metro Atlanta DSA.
In Illinois’s 3rd District, DSA congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and DSA Chicago Alderman Carlos Rosa have endorsed Marie Newman, who came within a whisker of defeating moderate Democrat Dan Lipinski in 2018. Overly optimistic DSA member Anthony Clark is running for the second time against far-left Danny Davis (himself a former DSA member) in Illinois’s 7th District. In Illinois’s 10th District, another DSA comrade, Adam Broad, is running hard against moderate Democrat incumbent Brad Schneider.
In Iowa’s 4th District, JD Scholten ran embattled incumbent Republican Steve King close—with DSA support. He’ll be lucky to come within 15 points this time around.
Top-ranking Democrat Steny Hoyer is probably not too concerned about losing in Maryland’s 5th District—even though his “democratic socialist” opponent Mckayla Wilkes has the endorsement of the more than 2,000-strong Metro DC DSA.
In Massachusetts’s 4th District, DSA-backed “democratic socialist” Ihssane Leckey has a narrow opening as her Democratic incumbent opponent Joe Kennedy III has decided to run for U.S. Senate. In Massachusetts’s 6th District, DSA-friendly Nathaniel Mulcahy has even less chance against Democratic incumbent Seth Moulton.
In Minnesota’s 2nd District, DSA supporter Johnny Akzam is making his second run for the Democrat held seat.
In Missouri’s 1st District, Pastor Cori Bush ran about 10 points behind leftist Democrat incumbent Lacy Clay in 2018. With probable DSA, Communist Party USA, and Liberation Road support, Bush could well pull off an upset in this district.
Nebraska’s 2nd District could possibly go left with Kara Eastman’s second run for the seat. In 2018 she won the Democratic primary with DSA help, then lost the general to a Republican. Moderate Democrats will fight her hard in the primary.
In New York’s 12th District, DSA member Lauren Ashcraft is fighting a longshot battle against incumbent Democrat Carolyn Maloney. New York’s 24th District is a bit more hopeful for the far left. DSA-supported Dana Balter came within 5 points of Republican John Katko in 2018. If Balter can get through the Democratic primary, she may have a shot.
North Carolina’s 1st District sees DSA member DeAndre Carter go up against far-left incumbent Democrat GK Butterfield. In North Carolina’s 4th District, Boy Scout and DSA comrade Daniel Ulysses Lockwood has even less chance against incumbent leftist Democrat David Price.
Ohio’s 3rd District could possibly see a shock result as DSA, and possibly Liberation Road-backed, Morgan Harper goes up against incumbent Democrat Joyce Beatty.
In Oregon’s 3rd District, DSA member Albert Lee has a good shot against incumbent far-left Democrat Earl Blumenauer. DSA-supported Mark Gamba has less chance against moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader in Oregon’s 5th District. Long-time Liberation Road affiliate Doyle Canning is even braver to take on far-left incumbent Democrat Pete DeFazio in Oregon’s 4th District.
In South Carolina’s 2nd District, DSA member Lawrence Nathaniel is valiantly challenging incumbent Republican Joe Wilson in one of the most heavily Republican districts in the country.
Texas’s 25th District sees DSA member Heidi Sloan competing against one other leftist Democrat in the primary for an open Republican seat. Support from around 1,000 Austin DSA comrades may well see Sloan through at least the primary.
DSA endorsee Stevens Orozco is standing in Texas’s 18th District to unseat the deeply entrenched Sheila Jackson-Lee. Houston DSA and probably the powerful local Communist Party USA branch will likely help out.
Jessica Cisneros is running a brace challenge in Texas’s 28th District against moderate Democrat Henry Cuellar. Cisneros’s campaign has borrowed DSA congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s DSA-friendly adviser Andres Bernal to help out.
Texas’s 10th District could see a possible far-left victory. Democratic candidate Mike Siegel, son of former Communist Workers Party leader Dan Siegel, came within 5 points of beating Republican Mike McCaul in 2018. With Siegel’s strong DSA and union backing, the Republican Party needs to take Mike Siegel very seriously indeed.
Over in Washington’s 10th District, DSA member Joshua Collins is challenging moderate Democrat Denny Heck. In nearby Washington’s 6th District, another DSA comrade, Rebecca Parson, is taking on left to moderate Democrat Derek Kilmer. The strong DSA and small Communist Party USA presence in these districts might help Collins and Parson a little.
Should We Worry?
While only a handful (if any) of the candidates on DSA’s list will get elected, their mere presence on the ballot will damage this country in several ways.
Firstly, they will serve to further legitimize socialism—something that should rank very near the top of the Evil Graph.
Secondly, election campaigns to communists are more about recruitment than winning elections. The DSA and its allies will win very few of the seats they contest, but they may end up seducing several thousand new souls to socialism. That will impact us all over time.
Thirdly, these candidates will serve to drive the Democratic Party even further to the left. That will benefit the Republicans in the short term, but in the long term, it makes the whole nation morally and politically poorer.
Democratic Socialists of America holds a rally in New York on Oct. 30, 2017. (Working Families Party/CC BY-NC 2.0)
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.
Pro-China communists from the Liberation Road group have insinuated their supporters and allies into several key positions in the city government of Durham, North Carolina.
Liberation Road has been highly influential in flipping neighboring Virginia from a Republican to a Democratic state; North Carolina is the next target.
Liberation Road has a strategy of destroying the Republican Party base in the South—what it terms the “New Confederacy”—by using the minority voting base to flip county by county, state by state to the Democrats.
If the communists can turn North Carolina blue, President Donald Trump will likely lose the 2020 election—handing Democrats and their socialist allies a near-permanent monopoly on power. By establishing a political base in Durham, the comrades aim to project their power and city resources across the entire state.
The 2020 presidential election may well be won or lost in North Carolina.
North Carolina Maoists
Since 1985, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) has been the pre-eminent pro-China communist party in the country, absorbing cadre from several other Maoist groups along the way, including the Communist Workers Party, Line of March, and League of Revolutionary Struggle.
In April this year, the FRSO changed its name to Liberation Road—partially at least to sound fewer alarm bells as it proceeds to infiltrate the Democratic Party.
In 1988, FRSO had fewer than six members in North Carolina: a white lawyer from Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and a handful of black comrades from the Amilcar Cabral/Paul Robeson Collective. Through the 1990s, FRSO recruited more old Maoists and a new layer of university students from Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. They even recruited a couple of former Communist Party USA members, and in recent years seem to have absorbed some cadre from the pro-Iran and North Korea Workers World Party.
In the 2000s, FRSO began sending comrades from California, Massachusetts, and New York to beef up the numbers, soon making the Maoists the most significant force on the left in the region. This was part of a deliberate colonization of Southern states, particularly Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida. FRSO targeted the South because of its high concentration of black and Hispanic potential voters, which, coupled with a history of racial polarization, made for great revolutionary potential.
North Carolina, one of the most politically marginal Republican-held states in the South was a prime target. Durham, with the largest concentration of black voters in the state, became ground zero for the Maoists. FRSO supporters began to infiltrate Durham student unions, community groups, labor unions, churches, and local government.
Maoist strategy is all about building a counter-state—taking over whole areas to form a state-within-state to serve as a base to spread revolution across a much wider area. Parts of Virginia are moving in that direction. Jackson, Mississippi, is already there. Durham is well on the way.
In recent years, FRSO has moved away from traditional street activism into more of an electoral focus. The organization now has the numbers and influence to impact elections at both state and local level.
FRSO is extremely secretive about membership, but I estimate there are around a hundred cadre in the Triangle area and another 200 supporters or allies. Many FRSO/Liberation Road people lead key organizations that are able to mobilize several thousand people at a time.
To achieve its ends, FRSO has infiltrated several existing organizations and has created others.
Durham People’s Alliance
In the early 1970s, Durham activists affiliated with the communist New American Movement formed two collectives—a health collective and a socialist feminist collective. In 1973, the health collective became the Durham Organizing Committee (DOC). The DOC later split, some members entering a Marxist-Leninist collective that eventually became the Communist Workers Party and others forming the Durham People’s Alliance (DPA).
Since that time, the DPA has become a major force in local politics. With the ability to raise money and a small army of door knockers and phone-bankers, DPA’s endorsement is widely sought by candidates on the left.
North Carolina Democratic congressmembers David Price and GK Butterfield and former Sen. Kay Hagan have all been endorsed and helped by DPA’s 2,000 members—as have dozens of lower-level politicians.
Around 2014, FRSO cadre Aiden Graham joined the DPA board; in the same year DPA helped elect FRSO leader Sendolo Diaminah, a self-described “black queer communist,” to the Durham School Board, though he later resigned before finishing his term.
Durham Association of Educators
The Triangle area has experienced widespread education labor unrest in recent years, mainly because of the Durham Association of Educators (DAE), a local affiliate of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) and the National Education Association.
Longtime FRSO/Liberation Road cadre Bryan Proffit is on the board of the NCAE and was president of the DAE.
With an army of fired up leftist teachers on their roster, ready to rally or door-knock on command, the DAE has also become a major force in Durham left politics.
Durham For All
Launched in early 2016, Durham For All grew out of a group of FRSO supporters who had been working together for some years on local politics.
In 2014 and 2015, members of the founding team began experimenting with building political power through local elections, and led “victories to elect young, progressive people of color into local offices.”
Durham For All is a completely Liberation Road creation and is the counterpart of similar front groups Richmond For All in Virginia and Memphis For All in Tennessee.
Durham For All plans to build a force in Durham of 10,000 people to first take control of the city, then the entire state. The first goals were to take control of the City Council in 2017 to 2019 then to flip the state to the Democrats in 2020.
“Corporations and right-wing politicians have rigged the political system, and we’ve had enough. Together, we are building a cross-class, multiracial movement in Durham that is 10,000 people strong. …
“Power comes from thousands of people speaking up and deciding to take action. That’s why our plan is based on building people power from the ground up. The plan has three stages:
“Stage 1: Build a Mandate. 2017. With the launch of our 10K Strong Campaign, we trained leaders like you to ask family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to sign our 10K Strong Pledge and join the movement for a Durham for All. In less than a year, over 4,500 people said “yes” and signed on! These commitments were the foundation for a new political vision of a Durham rooted in the principles of a Durham for all of us. Grounded in these principles, we organized in working class and people of color communities to find new leaders and get out the vote. Together, we elected a progressive, people of color majority to Durham’s City Council!
“Stage 2: Build a Model. 2018. Through our Decriminalize Durham Campaign, we successfully piloted a base-building model that (1) activated and developed leaders in working class and people of color communities, (2) invited and supported hundreds of people to take new risks in organizing, and (3) translated election victories into policy wins via participatory democracy. We endorsed and elected officials who committed to fighting mass incarceration and stopping deportations ….
“Stage 3: Build a Movement. 2019-2020. In the third stage, we are harnessing the power of our movement to create platforms for co-governance and to pass policy. We are continuing to refine and expand our base-building model to bring new leaders and thousands of voters into the critical state and federal elections in 2020. Working with groups in rural areas, towns, and other cities, we will be part of unleashing millions of engaged residents and leaders in a movement to win back North Carolina from the far right.”
So far, the goal to take over the Durham City Council has gone as planned.
In 2015, the DPA elected Charlie Reece and Jillian Johnson and helped re-elect Steve Schewel to the six-member Durham City Council.
Reece was treasurer of the North Carolina Democratic Party and a past board member and secretary of the DPA.
Johnson was a long-time FRSO affiliate and later served in the leadership of Durham For All alongside comrades Sendolo Diaminah, Aidan Graham, Anna Grant, Tony Macias, and Bennett Carpenter. Steve Schewel was a former radical magazine editor.
In 2017, the DPA successfully backed Schewel for Durham mayor. The DPA also elected their longtime board member and Durham For All supporter DeDreana Freeman and another former DPA board member Vernetta Alston to the City Council.
In 2019, Johnson, Reece, and newcomer Javiera Caballero ran as a leftist “Bull City Together” ticket backed by the DPA.
Schewel, Johnson, Reece, and Caballero were all endorsed as a team by Durham For All.
Liberation Road’s Bryan Proffitt also endorsed the team, as did the DAE PAC, which also supported a “$95 million housing bond to combat gentrification and end the rapid displacement of our communities.”
The left won everything. They passed the housing bond and now hold five of the six City Council seats, plus the mayoralty.
In 2018, DPA members also helped elect Satana Deberry for district attorney and Clarence Birkhead for sheriff.
FRSO leader Sendolo Diaminah noted in a Facebook post:
“Tonight we made history in Durham by electing Satana Deberry for DA and Clarence Birkhead for sheriff – both committed to ending mass incarceration and fighting deportations. There are so many things to say about this but tonight I just feel humbled and nourished by the calling to build political power with our people.”
So, stage one of the FRSO Durham For All plan is pretty well accomplished, according to their original aims. Liberation Road and its allied organizations pretty much have a lock on North Carolina’s fourth largest city and its 275,000 citizens.
Can the Maoists Take the State?
Liberation Road has a strong presence in the state. So do their allies the Democratic Socialists of America, which has branches in Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Asheville, Winston-Salem, and the Yadkin Valley.
Liberation Road leader Aiden Graham also serves as the campaign manager for the North Carolina State AFL-CIO.
Between Durham For All, the DPA, DAE, North Carolina AFL-CIO, and the voter registration groups listed above, Liberation Road and its allies have the power to mobilize several thousand election workers against Republican candidates.
If the left is working hard to re-elect Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, they’re even more determined to defeat Republican Sen. Thom Tillis—considered one the most vulnerable in the country. The Democrats need to flip five State Senate seats for a majority and six seats in the State House.
If the left can defeat Sen. Tillis and flip one or both houses of the state legislature, North Carolina will be well down the road to becoming a Democratic state, just like Virginia was about three years ago.
Pro-China communists from FRSO/Liberation Road stole Virginia from under the nose of the Republican Party. If North Carolina is allowed to go down the same path then Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas will soon follow suit. The Republican Party will then be finished as a national force.
There is no excuse for the Republican Party to allow that to happen—if they care at all about their own survival that is.
Featured photo: A woman votes on November 8, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. African American turn out to the polls was reporting low across the battleground state. (Photo by Sara D. Davis/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 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.
