by Trevor | Jan 9, 2020 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Democratic Party, Enemies Within, Featured, North America, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
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,
According to the People’s World account of the event:
“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.
According to Austin DSA’s Facebook page:
“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.
Trevor presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Jan 3, 2020 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Democratic Party, DSA, Electoral Politics, Enemies Within, Featured, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | December 31, 2019, Updated: December 31, 2019
Commentary
Billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer hired a bona fide socialist, Mike Morrill, to run his vital New Hampshire operation.
Low-polling Steyer must do well in New Hampshire to remain a viable candidate. Hiring a radical like Morrill as his state director could be something of a risk in the fairly evenly divided Granite State.
And Morrill is definitely a radical socialist.
Based for decades in rural Berks County, Pennsylvania, Morrill has been involved in left organizing since childhood, working for numerous unions, leftist civic organizations, and political campaigns.
According to a bio on Netroots Nation, “[Morrill] has served as executive director of Keystone Progress, Pennsylvanians United for Quality Care, Pennsylvania’s Campaign for Choice, Pennsylvania Citizen Action and Christian Churches of the Tri-County Area. He has written extensively with numerous articles in publications around the world and has appeared frequently in state and national media as a spokesperson for working families.”
In 2000, Morrill was a leader of the Reading, Pennsylvania, branch of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In that capacity, Morrill organized a major militant protest against that year’s Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
According to DSA’s Democratic Left Fall 2000 issue:
“One of the major events of the summer was R2K, a series of demonstrations and other actions during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. … DSA, particularly the Greater Philadelphia Local, was deeply involved in the organizing of most facets of R2K.
“When the convention was announced last fall, a coalition of groups convened by Mike Morrill, Reading DSA member and executive director of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network (PCAN), decided to work together to create one large event, a march and rally, under the banner of UNITY2000.”
The UNITY2000 march brought together 25,000 to 30,000 activists to march against the Republican gathering.
Endorsing organizations included ACT-UP, the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network, NOW, the Philadelphia NAACP, AFSCME District Council 47, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the International Socialist Organisation, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Green Party, the Communist Party USA, the Industrial Workers of the World, national DSA and Greater Philadelphia DSA.
“Marchers carried placards and banners dealing with globalization, capitalism, the death penalty, the military industrial complex, [defending] Mumia Abu Jamal, the environment, unionizing, the growing divide between rich and poor, and more.
“Street theater portrayed Bush and Gore mud wrestling for corporate dollars under a capitalist pig; ‘Billionaires for Bush (or Gore),’ a street theater group associated with United for a Fair Economy, swaggered down the street in tuxedos and gowns, satirically proclaiming ‘Cut taxes for the rich;’ and ‘Plutocracy, not Democracy!’; and someone wearing a box on his head with life-size photos of George W. on each side begged passersby to ‘Stop me before I kill again.’”
And Morrill put it all together.
In 2002 Morrill was the Green Party USA nominee for Pennsylvania governor, receiving 38,000 votes—1 percent of the total.
Morrill was also suggested by some Socialist Party USA activists as a possible Socialist Party presidential nominee for 2004. However, the nomination did not go ahead as more high-profile socialists threw their hats in the ring.
In 2008, Morrill founded Keystone Progress, one of the largest left-wing activist groups in Pennsylvania. Morrill served as executive director until he left the organization in 2017. Keystone board members included Eileen Connelly, formerly of the far-left U.S. Labor Against the War, and John Meyerson, a former member of the District Committee of the Pennsylvania Communist Party.
Morrill went on to run a small operation with a big-sounding name—Greyroots Action—from his Reading, Pennsylvania, base:
“Greyroots Action is the national network of American Elders fighting for progressive values. Together we are building a network that will fight to stop ageism, racism, sexism, classism and homophobia.”
In 2018, Greyroots Action endorsed Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in their respective U.S. Senate races, as well as far-left gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum (Florida), Stacey Abrams (Georgia), and Ben Jealous (Maryland).
Morrill then moved South to serve as interim executive director of leftist pressure group Progress South Carolina.
In July 2018, Morrill represented Progress South Carolina at the Progressive Leadership Institute’s State Strategy Forum in Washington. Morrill scored himself a photo op with Sara Innamorato and Summer Lee, two DSA comrades who later won seats as Democrats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
In May 2019, Morrill ran for Berks County Commissioner in Pennsylvania on a pro-illegal immigrant platform.
According to his campaign bio:
“Mike Morrill is a lifelong union organizer and progressive leader who is running for Berks County Commissioner. He is running on a bold progressive platform and promises to focus on shutting down the Berks County Refugee Family Detention Center – the only county run ICE detention center in the country.”
Morrill lost the primary against an incumbent by only 32 votes.
Why would a life-long “true believer“ socialist like Morrill work for a billionaire like Tom Steyer rather than for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren?
What does Morrill know about Steyer that the rest of us don’t?
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 Trevor | Dec 14, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Featured, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times
Commentary
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.
Trevor presents his acclaimed movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
