The Pied Piper is arguably more dangerous than the hunter, and neither should be discounted.

Background

Mamdani’s campaign started with a surge of popularity riding on radical anti-zionist talking points. A long-time “pro-Palestine” activist, supporter of BDS, and critic of zionist settler violence in Palestine, Mamdani has been a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America since 2017, and the New York State Assembly since 2020. Using his elected position to amplify his particular brand of “radical” politics, Mamdani’s public visibility quickly ramped up following his condemnations of the genocidal zionist reprisals following the October 7, 2023 Al-Aqsa Flood uprising. By repeatedly stirring controversy within settler power structures and zionist media, Mamdani has spent the last two years building a popular image of a radical “socialist” Muslim within a key hotbed of settler political struggle, carefully ramping up the controversy to keep himself in the media spotlight by spouting radical rhetoric such as “globalize the intifada” and “abolish the police.” In October 2024, he announced his candidacy for the 2025 Mayoral race, winning the Democratic Party primary in June 2025. 

Surprising no-one paying attention, Mamdani began walking back his phony radicalism as soon as his candidacy was assured, currying alliances with key members of the NYC police force, choosing open zionists for his staff,¹ announcing his support for the zionist occupation’s “right to exist,” and declaring his intent to greatly expand the police budget for prosecuting anti-zionist activities. 

Principles of Settler Opportunism

The “socialists” who run for office are little more than political adventurists and opportunists. A political adventurist here means an individual who sees themselves as a heroic figure setting out to save the masses from their oppression. They believe they can “make a difference” by struggling within the system, so long as they retain their “principles.” They set aside the necessity of first constructing a class that is conscious of itself and able to coordinate political action according to a definite plan, and try to instead champion what they individually perceive to be the interests of this class (which does not yet exist!). This necessarily produces an eclectic undisciplined political line, because one individual, or group of individuals (like the many so-called “communist” parties) is not capable of producing a correct political line. Only a vanguard party with the backing of the masses, acting in their interests according to their will, can do this. Adventurists either do not know this, or do not care. They believe that by “showing the way,” the masses can be inspired to spontaneous action in support of their own liberation. They believe that by spurring the masses to all go to the polls, they are at the same time building working class unity, solidarity, consciousness, or whatever. Inevitably, they are ultimately defeated: either they fail to gain any purchase within the system and wash out, or they realize the futility of pushing a “revolutionary” line all by their lonesome and turn to opportunism. To this end, political adventurism is materially indistinguishable from opportunism.

Opportunists are in it for whatever they can get. They may agree in principle with a revolutionary line, but in practice they are more than willing to discard inconvenient segments of the masses in the interest of political expediency. Often they can be found eagerly doing this in anticipation of what they believe will win the most “support” at the polls. Inevitably, their most radical edges are rounded out and dulled by constant contact with the inertia of bourgeois/settler governance. In the game of musical chairs that is settler colonial privileges, the most vulnerable people are the first pushed out of the way, and the opportunists are the ones who take up the task of doing the pushing. Because it may be “politically inconvenient” to militantly struggle against the settler colonial occupation and genocide against Palestine, they tell us that these issues must be set aside “for now,” to be pursued “later” when the movement has built more momentum and mass power. Of course what they fail to mention here is that in doing this they are dividing the masses, weakening the movement by directing mounting class struggle into dead-end reformist avenues down which only a small section of the masses can advance. Their actions lead to the sacrifice of all principles on the altar of “pragmatism.”

Besides Mamdani’s tepid criticism of some of the most depraved zionist acts of violence, the key reforms he promised (and those which have won him such widespread support among the imperial left) are as follows: 

• To freeze rents and build “affordable” housing
• To crack down on “bad” landlords 
• To establish city-owned grocery stores
• To establish free public transit
• To raise the city’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030. (This in particular appears to be why the “progressive” settlers are so thrilled.) 

A full explanation of the flaws in the rent freeze is well beyond this article, but suffice to say that whatever attempt he may or may not make at expanding and stabilizing the private property regime, it won’t put a dent in the empire-wide land speculation that is the real cause of the housing crisis. Cracking down on “bad” landlords is laughable, considering the socialist position is not to hound out malfeasors, but to liquidate entire classes. And rather than feeding people directly, Mamdani would prefer to compete on the market by creating his own NYC brand grocery store!

This minimum wage increase will mostly benefit the service workers in the empire’s finance capital, the people who keep the gears turning in the nerve center of global imperialism. The claim being made by the settler “socialists,” is that this push for higher wages for some of the city’s workers is building the mass base necessary to push through some “real” reforms—just later on, at an unspecified date and time. There’s no word on how that’s to be accomplished or what the demands will be, but never mind that, they say, we’re getting paid. How exactly is socialism advanced by the appointment of a bourgeois politician as the mayor of the bourgeois finance capital of the empire in the middle of a holocaust being waged against Palestinians? That this disgusting mockery of human decency is being held up as a beacon of hope for the socialist cause hinges on the idea that wage increases are a victory in themselves, that advancing the conditions of some workers is always an advance for the socialist cause. We contend that this is simply not true. Let’s ask the real question: wage increases for who?

Simply being employed, however wretched that employment may be, is itself a position of privilege and power in the imperial system. Yes, the bourgeoisie remain the top dogs, but people who “work for a living” in the colonial economy are still a privileged group: their class position depends on the continued exploitation of people who can’t work for a living. 

There has never been a challenge to the employment problem, and a major reason why is that following along to the plans of the Imperialists keeps wages high and development uneven, securing employment while simultaneously securing unemployment. 

Example scenario: Capitalist introduces labor saving machines that double productivity. Rather than overproducing, they cut the workforce in half and raise the wages of the leftovers by 50%. Overall, the capitalist just reduced aggregate wages by 25%. The business operates at the same level. They don’t overproduce and break their market position, the workers who didn’t get cut have a huge wage increase that puts a contradiction between them and their laid off siblings.²

– @probablykaffe

Many people are excluded from the “productive” sphere on the basis of nationality, gender, ability, etc. We know that a Black person is much less likely to have access to employment than a white person—in fact, the Black unemployment rate in New York City is more than double that of whites (8% vs 3.5%). Disabled people are often completely excluded from a livable income, with less than 25% of people with any disability being employed, and fewer than 1 in 5 autistic people. According to the 2022 US transgender survey report, trans people in the US face a whopping 18% unemployment rate, more than four times the empire-wide average, which frankly should be considered a demographic crisis. These are entire populations of people who are excluded from the privilege of accessing employment, and those who do gain access are often limited to part time or sporadic/seasonal work. And all of this is before we even get into the issue of the role of US imperialism in inflating worker wages inside the empire at the expense of billions of global south workers. 

It can’t be dismissed how difficult it is to be a low wage worker in New York City. There’s a very good reason people are clamoring for this reform. But as the grip of capital tightens around your throat, disabled people who have been suffering under brutal austerity conditions for years are dying at atrocious rates under state eugenicist campaigns. The fact that these plans don’t address the needs of the most oppressed, and in fact perpetuate their oppression in a mystified and more acute form, should be a warning that Mamdani doesn’t deal in social revolution but rather in reinforcing the capitalist state with a “kinder” face. How does the “socialism” of Mamdami do anything to build solidarity between oppressed groups? What is the plan for carrying this movement to a higher stage of struggle? What is being accomplished here, except grabbing more for a select few while the most vulnerable people continue to languish and die in ever-increasing poverty and homelessness? Is the wealth supposed to trickle down from people with jobs to those without? Everyone needs to eat before you reach out your hand for seconds! If any group is forgotten or sacrificed on the altar of “progress” then inequality is reproduced and oppression persists. What does “universal emancipation” mean to you, seriously? If your “socialist” candidate isn’t running on the democratic mandate of the masses of the exploited, and held to account by that democratic mandate, following a definite plan to continually heighten the struggle and broaden the involvement of the masses, then they aren’t a socialist. Unfortunately, the democratic institutions necessary for this, a vanguard party or socialist state, do not yet exist in this land. Our efforts, therefore, should not be to run candidates accountable to no one, but to build the party capable of holding leaders accountable, so that we can finally seize the state. 

Whose Side Are You On?

We must be very clear on this point: Palestinian sovereignty is non-negotiable, just as much as all anti-colonialism is. There is no middle ground or compromise with the settler colonial system. Either we destroy it or it destroys us. Any position which leaves room for the continued existence of “israel” in any form is a denial of the sovereignty and humanity of Palestinians. In tossing out this issue, by “compromising” with genocide, they draw a line between themselves and the Palestinian people. They separate international humanity into two groups pitted against one-another: “us,” and “them.” In the arena of class warfare this division is fatal. When one section of our forces advances while leaving another behind, reactionary forces are afforded room to encircle and defeat both groups, usually by absorbing the opportunists and killing off the rest. Either all the oppressed advance in unison, or we get picked off one-by-one. Genuine revolutionaries demand that every oppressed group be respected, uplifted, and empowered; this will be done in opposition to the dominant groups, who recognize every gain for the oppressed as a loss for their profit. On the other hand, opportunists are content to allow reactionaries to pick off “inconvenient” groups, so long as they personally benefit in the end.

This strategy of divide and conquer, directed from the rear by the bourgeoisie and spearheaded by opportunism, goes back to the earliest days of the anti-capitalist movement. In particular it has come to dominate and define imperial politics over the last century. When the interests of those privileged enough to have jobs are prioritized ahead of those who aren’t, the material division between the two widens. The privileges of the advantaged group are reinforced at the expense of the disadvantaged group, which produces an incentive to keep it that way in the privileged group. This is how reaction breeds. The issue with homelessness is not “the lack of supply” but the capacity for landlords to evict tenants. Ensuring everybody is housed and safe needs to come ahead of reducing market prices on apartments.³ The speculative value produced by rent extraction is what drives the constant inflation of property prices, not “undersupply.” When the health and safety of disabled people is considered a secondary concern to the “comfort” of abled people, and (for example) masking is not enforced, disabled people are excluded from the movement, further weakening it. When trans rights are considered a “token” issue and worth ceding ground on in exchange for concessions for “the majority,” the movement further fragments as trans people are left behind to struggle to survive and to die alone. When Indigenous sovereignty is treated as a secondary concern, or a threat to the property “rights” of “the majority,” the settler-Indigenous divide deepens, and one of the most revolutionary elements of all human society is ejected from the movement. It is this way that, in the name of “the majority,” the opportunists carefully and meticulously carve up the movement into bite-sized chunks that the reactionaries are only too eager to devour. The bourgeoisie and settler masses will always demand that we sit down and shut up and in exchange they will grant some privileges to those of us who acquiesce while they slaughter those who won’t or can’t. Every “temporary” retreat from solidarity turns into a strategic defeat for the movement.

In the coming months, Mamdani supporters may pretend to be shocked at his complicity in settler violence and his leadership in maintaining the colonial occupation of Lenapehoking, just as they are now pretending to be critical of his zionism. The signs pointing towards his opportunism were always there for those willing to see. While he did condemn the zionist reprisals on October 8, 2023, he was quick to also condemn the Palestinian resistance within the weeks following, and since then has eagerly participated in spreading zionist propaganda lies about supposed “war crimes” committed by the resistance.⁴ Mamdani has carefully and consistently played both sides, spouting anti-zionist rhetoric out one side of his mouth while materially aligning himself with colonial hegemony with the other. This barefaced opportunism, and its inevitable tragic outcomes, should be wearily familiar by now to those of us with the slightest of principles. It’s plain as day now, just as it has been for years, that Mamdani is just another lying settler pig—perfectly content to take advantage of public outrage against the Palestinian Holocaust for his colonial ladder-climbing career. 

For as much ink that has been spilled and attention monopolized for this man, little mind has been paid to the social processes underlying his ascent to international fame and infamy. Mamdani’s popularity and controversy could well serve as a case-study in how the left wing of capital uses radical window-dressing to conceal maintenance of the status quo, but we’ve had enough such case studies to fill a library. What is happening to us on the ground? Whether you’re cheering and applauding or booing and hissing, you’re watching the show — so how has the so-called “revolutionary left” become so enraptured by what amounts to performance art on a stage inside a colonial garrison? The complete hegemony of the settler empire’s cultural influence continues to mislead and dull the senses of our aspiring revolutionaries, but not by lying to us to convince us that one settler politician or another is a radical. Even the most ineffectual liberal “socialist” will openly admit that they don’t believe Mamdani will deliver anything resembling a radical break. After all, they’ve “learned their lesson” from former DSA campaign outcomes, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s vile opportunism. But if they’ve learned their lesson and “don’t expect much” from Zohran Mamdani, what exactly are they doing? The answer is a parallel to Mamdani’s career.

The Social Technology of Settler Socialism

The mass base of Democratic Socialism is the lower and middle strata of settler colonists.⁵ These people are genuinely discontented with the system, but pay attention to their grievances! “Housing is unaffordable, wages are too low, social safety nets are not robust enough, and  education is too expensive.” Wealth and capital have become too concentrated in the hands of a minority, “the 1%,” and they aren’t getting what they see as their due share. Are these the grievances of a revolutionary, or of petulant settler youth and failed settler aspirants? Are these demands aiming towards the complete destruction of the colonial system and the restitution of Indigenous land sovereignty, or are these demands aiming at a “fairer” redivision of the spoils of colonial conquest and imperialist exploitation? Are the grievances rooted in a desire to end class society or to simply make it more comfortable for those fortunate enough to live within the colonial jurisdiction at which their reforms are aimed?

The DSA professes to be a “socialist” organization, so on the surface it appears to be approaching an alignment with national liberatory, decolonial, and communist struggles. But is this really the case? Remember to always analyze the class position of a given organization by the actions it takes, not by the ideology it professes. Ideology is always a more or less accurate reflection of class alignment, but recall the scientific tenet that the appearance of a thing does not perfectly match its content—therefore we have to look deeper. The reflection can be, and often is, inverted. Zionism purports itself to be a liberatory movement, which is an inverted reflection of reality. Amerikan liberalism purports to be interested in universal democracy, which again is an inverted reflection of reality. So, is DSA really socialist? What are the outcomes of DSA’s political activity? As of this writing, no militant organizations or movements have emerged from the DSA, and decades of organizing has yielded little but a few “more radical” Democratic politicians in colonial office positions. The standard explanation given by “communists” within the DSA for its lack of revolutionary action is that the masses have yet to be radicalized, and therefore struggle within the DSA is necessary to bring them the consciousness they need to begin to take revolutionary action. In 43 years, however, the DSA has largely remained ideologically stationary.

This “failure” to radicalize the masses is a constant point of debate and analysis. Many individuals and organizations within the communist milieu but outside the DSA contend that the source of this failure is because the organization is ideologically democratic socialist (i.e. not revolutionary in ideological outlook), and therefore a different, “more communist” organization is required to impart the necessary revolutionary outlook in its adherents. But this is putting the cart before the horse! Ideology does not dictate material alignment, material alignment dictates ideology. The DSA is not a stagnant ineffectual organization because of its backwards ideology—instead it has a backwards ideology because this is necessary to fulfill its actual goals. What are its goals? The purpose of a system is what it does, especially a system which has remained more or less stable and self-reproducing for over four decades. So what does the DSA do? It reels in members of oppressed groups (trans, queer, disabled, Black, Indigenous, etc) and disciplines their activities into serving the interests of its colonial middle-class leadership by mixing them into a single “organization” under middle-class leadership. The profession of “socialist” aims is a smokescreen to obscure the actual aims of the organization, which is ultimately little more than colonial, careerist ladder-climbing.

What of the internal criticisms levied at the organization? Many of the members are often very dissatisfied with the outcomes of their political activity, and among the common refrains is the need for more centralized leadership, for the ability to enforce a political line on the politicians they get into office, and for the organization to divest itself from cooperation with zionism. Yet despite a resolution passing in August⁶ enabling the expulsion of zionist membership (which was barely successful, succeeding with 56% percent of the vote), the openly zionist Mamdani continues to be backed by the DSA, and the overall strategy of the DSA continues to be to maintain its involvement in the zionist Democratic Party. The reality of the matter is, despite professing anti-zionism for the first time in its long history, the DSA remains a zionist organization, and its new “anti-zionist” mask is the same “anti-zionism” of the broader imperial left—an anti-zionism that affirms the necessity of the occupation to continue. Little more than a barefaced lie.

This is not exactly a new phenomenon. The settler empire has long since perfected the social technology of penetrating organizational and community structures built by, or being built by, the oppressed, with the aim of taking them over from within and submitting them to colonial interests. Where the oppressed see a dire need for unity and solidarity in the face of colonial genocide against our siblings in Palestine, the lower and middle strata of settlers see an upsurge in laboring subjects available to fill the ranks of their latest campaign for redivision of the imperialist spoils. That, in essence, is what the Democratic Socialists of America is: far from a dysfunctional organization which routinely fails to meet its goals, the DSA is a well-oiled machine of settler-colonial annexation. In which revolutionary currents among the oppressed are carefully cultivated within a narrowly bounded arena of struggle, both in order to prevent a dangerous rupture of the colonial system, and in order to ultimately benefit the settlers served by the DSA. That this process occasionally settlerizes individuals from oppressed demographics is part of the point—in order for the DSA to function as intended it’s necessary that the occasional individual from an oppressed demographic attains an internal leadership position or a colonial office position, but this is always predicated on the condition that they closely adhere to the interests of colonial maintenance; they must not engage in illegal activities, such as organizing and arming militant struggle. “Class peace” remains the priority ahead of anything else, even when the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children hinge on the taking up of armed struggle. To the settler socialists, their deaths are water under the bridge so long as wages are increased enough to broaden the number of people who can access the colonial land exchange.

For revolutionaries, what the success of the DSA and Mamdani’s campaign represents is a complete capitulation of the “Free Palestine” movement to settler annexationism and zionism. We’ve failed to differentiate between friends and enemies, failed to take the actions necessary to expel enemies from our organizations and communities, failed to build up the militant organizational capacity necessary to wage armed struggle against zionism, and in doing so failed to defend the lives of our Palestinian siblings in their hour of greatest need for two years ongoing. And yet, Mamdani’s electoral success is lauded as a victory for the left! Indeed, this is a triumph for the left wing of zionism. With hardly a word to the contrary, we’ve rolled over and allowed this travesty to unfold for two years, all the while repeating the inane mantra that “any day now” the masses of settler oppressors will “radicalize” and join forces with the oppressed to aid in the overthrow of their colonial system. In doing so, we’ve demonstrated our own willingness to be complicit in a holocaust so long as this complicity keeps us out of the prison cell and out of the line of fire.

Our Place in History

When freshly stolen land became scarce and prices rose in the late 1700s, the lower and middle masses of settlers eagerly aligned with the planter bourgeoisie to oppose British rule and expand the colonial system. Indigenous peoples bore the cost of their genocidal brutality.⁷ Since then this pattern has repeated itself over and over. At each moment of crisis in the colonial system, the dispossessed and poorer settlers will seek out temporary alliances wherever they can find them to bulk up their ranks for coming confrontation with the ruling strata, but always with the sole aim of securing their own slice of colonial land and their own share of imperial wages.⁸ As times change and ideologies shift and develop, the colonial redistributionists will find alliances in different places. During the period of protracted economic crisis in the 1930s, the redistributionists found alliance with rising Black nationalism, only to cast off their allies the moment a fresh flood of booty came pouring in following the empire’s successful conquests at the close of the Second World War, and by the 1950s the Communist Party USA had successfully liquidated all revolutionaries from its ranks and disavowed national liberation. In the 1960s, a new wave of national liberatory struggles rose, and by the 1970s, settler “radicals” had successfully played out their role in crushing all resistance. The defeated liberation movement became a victorious “Civil Rights Movement” in the settler history books.

Today the same pattern plays out yet again in real time before our eyes: with the colonial system’s internal stratification at historic highs, and faced with the objective necessity of violent armed struggle in support of the Palestinian resistance and against the US empire, the settler “left” floods into our organizations and our discussion spaces, reads our literature and learns our language of resistance, claims to be our allies in struggle, and spends two years marching in circles to maintain the facade, while shoring up support for their preferred reformist. Time and energy and resources that could be spent serving the needs of the most oppressed, building dual power institutions, organizing guerilla strikes against weapons manufacturers and zionist finance institutions, etcetera, gets repeatedly diverted into the same century-old discussions about whether socialists should vote. Those of us aiming to build the revolutionary forces necessary for winning this war find ourselves surrounded by the most dishonest dregs of humanity, grabbing and pulling us back from struggle to keep our labor squarely aimed at shoring up the structures of oppression holding us down. Make no mistake, when $30/hr is firmly in hand, these so-called radicals will ride into the sunset towards their very own mortgages on stolen land and pensions funded by imperialism. 

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for personal gain at the expense of the Palestinian resistance is not a betrayal of the “socialist” movement, but the blueprint to be followed by each of its adherents. We’ve already failed to lend Palestine the support it needs for two years ongoing. If the aspiring revolutionaries of our new rising wave of national liberation fail to recognize the myriad methods that settler opportunism uses to exploit our labors for individual gain, we too will take our place in the history books as the defeated “extreme fringe” of a successful movement to redistribute the spoils of genocide and oppression.

1.  Julian Gerson, political director for Mamdani’s electoral campaign, previously served as a campaign manager for US congressman Jerry Nadler. Nadler describes himself as a “committed Zionist” and “a strong supporter of Israel as a homeland for Jewish people.” Gerson is on record saying, “Jerry embodies the idea that one can absolutely be pro-Israel and progressive simultaneously.” ︎
2. From Kaffe in the same thread: “The ratio of the sub-employed population has been roughly the same for the last half century, even as the role of ‘housewife’ has eroded (good riddance), with the shift in joblessness going mostly to the Nationally Oppressed. The abolition of unemployment (a Soviet right), is so little entertained for two reasons:
   1. The Labor Aristocracy refuses to let go of wages and security, even if that value could be re-allocated for increased employment, and erase the security problem. 
   2. The work that desperately needs to be done (i.e. land healing), would reduce dependency on Imperial relations, making it more difficult to compel the working class to reproduce them.
   Instead: insecure-security, stratified wages, uneven development (the cause of high economic migration — the medium of insecurity and stratification), and the ‘public works’ cages a million people yearly, militarizes the population, and (re)builds Bourgeois terrorism.” ︎
3. Hence why housing was a right in the USSR, “Thus a worker cannot be put out of his room, even for non-payment of rent. His wages can be attached, but if he is unemployed his rent is free. He cannot be charged more than a certain low sum, fixed in proportion to his wages.” Anna Louise Strong, The First Time In History, (New York: Boni and Liverlight, 1924),149. ︎
4.  “…of course I condemn Hamas. Of course I have called October 7th what it was, which was a horrific war crime,…” ︎
5. According to the 2021 DSA Member Survey Report, 85% of membership is white, compared with only 4% Black representation. 28% of members are full upper-PB with household incomes of $100k or more. 80% of respondents had bachelor’s degrees, and approximately 60% of respondents occupy petty bourgeois or labor aristocratic positions, split between scholars, academics, white-collar, tech workers, non-profit organizations, public sector employees, healthcare or social work, self employed, writer, performer, arts, and political org/union. ︎
6. See resolution R22. ︎
7. “This pretense toward ‘freedom’ continued in 1776 when settlers revolted when London seemed to be loath to continue funding their wars of dispossession against indigenes and the constant conflict with enslaved Africans that was an adjunct of that process” Gerald Horne, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), 154 in the PDF. ︎
8. See J. Sakai Settlers Ch. 4.4, describing the process of the settler economy importing Chinese labor to displace the Mexican population of the southwest, only to then violently expropriate Chinese industry and landholdings. Afterwards, the same participants in these genocidal purges urged “unity” with Afrikan labor, as the next phase of the developing industrial unionism movement: “Terrance Powderly, the Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor (who had personally called for wiping out all Chinese in North America within one year), suddenly became the apostle of brotherhood when it came to persuading Afrikans to support his organization: ‘The color of a candidate shall not debar him from admission; rather let the coloring of his mind and heart be the test.’” ︎

In Harlem, New York, on January 2nd, 2025, a man attacked a woman, with words and fists, and paid the price. 

Jaia Cruz, a 24 yr old woman, who is transgender and Latina, was standing in line at a deli. An argument started with Ray Hodges, a 36 yr old Black cis man, over who was next in line. This escalated rapidly. Hodges called Cruz slurs, and attacked  her. She told him to stop, and he continued to attack. She said she would kill him if he continued, and he pushed her against a refrigerator. She drew her knife, and he died en route to the hospital. 

The outrage machine has spun up shockingly fast, even for this time of escalating terror against trans women. She was described as “towering” and “giant” by Yahoo! in a classic monsterization of trans women (her height is the fourth search result on google). The New York Post published an article whose title called her “Pure evil” and “A disgusting excuse for a human being.” While he attacked her, Hodges called her a “faggot” and a “tranny”.  During her sentencing, Hodges’ family chanted and jeered “It’s a boy!” and “Fucking boy!” at her. She has been deadnamed, misgendered, verbally and socially abused in the reaction-economy, accused of being on drugs, a slut, aggressive; and people gleefully fantasize over what hideous violences await her in, as anonymous people are giddy to point out, “men’s prison.” Ms. Cruz is sadly no stranger to either violence nor public spectacle. Her image and dignity having been thrown to the rabid dogs of social media earlier last summer when videos circulated of her being viciously beaten in public by two men. 

Make no mistake, people know what they are calling for when celebrating her incarceration, when lying about her gender, and gleefully hoping she is sent to men’s prison. Trans women are subjected to a regime of sexual violence and torture in men’s prison. We are placed into disgusting circumstances by people who fucking hate us, who desire nothing more than our violent debasement. One aspect of this debasement is known as “V-Coding”, a system in which we are “given” to inmates to be violated, raped, and abused. 

Would this have gone differently if Jaia did back down? Certainly! Another woman’s life may well have been extinguished, gone unremarked upon, another abject, another victim, and Hodges may well have gone free in the city whose police brutally murdered Marsha P. Johnson and threw her body in the Hudson River. Trans women are a precious resource in patriarchy and racism and our lives are extinguished frequently in the pursuit of its violent maintenance. Cruz did only what was necessary, backed up against a literal wall, unable to trust anyone except herself. She does not deserve to be the new face of this hyperviolence, nor the recipient of targeting by the unleashed dogs of a reactionary, blood-thirsted public. She deserves a long life, surrounded by loved ones, outside of public mockery, out of prison, and free from the clutches of the fascist rape-reich. 

Transmisogynoir, the hyperviolent intersection of anti-Blackness, misogyny, transphobia, misogynoir, and transmisogyny, sits as a fulcrum, a break-glass-in-emergencies tactic, to be wielded even by other oppressed groups. It allows the violence being suffered at the hands of the state to be redirected against abjected minorities. Trans women’s lives are fertile soil for the flowering of love, care, community, beauty and liberation, yet we are made dirt to the vast majority of the wider populace, ground for growing and training violence, prejudice, and resentment. 

The resistance against this tightening is already sprouting as well! Rodney Hinton Jr.’s heroic retaliation against police that brutally murdered his son was treated with the same spectacle and the same theater.

“Your favorite song… Nicola, Bart – immigrants, wrongly executed… But their deaths served as a message to others: that ours is a society that murders the innocent. Do you, too, believe that your sacrifice will change the world?”

Skull Face

Make no mistake. This occurred during the allegedly “most pro-worker”, “pro-trans” Biden Regime. The Democrats have been no friends to trans people. When prompted, Kamala Harris refused to even say that trans women deserved rights and healthcare. Gavin Newsom has pushed transphobic rhetoric, actively exhorting the fascist ranks of their evil party to abandon trans people altogether.  There has been nothing but escalating violence, genocidal rhetoric, and an unceasing hitlerian regime of legislation being introduced, un-fucking-challenged in both red and blue states, designed to cut trans people out of all walks of life, especially trans women.

Two trans women were attacked in broad daylight in a train station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a self-declared trans sanctuary state! Sam Nordquist, a Black trans man, was tortured to death over the course of a whole month earlier this year in New York! In May of 2025, the suicide of a trans girl was turned into a spectacle to jeering hordes on twitter who mocked her relentlessly and turned her despair into celebration. 

The amount of violence has hardly escalated. We have always been hideously subjected to violence, including rape, murder, beatings, homelessness, and exploitation. What has changed has been the rhetoric and spectacle surrounding our deaths. From Norm Macdonald on Saturday Night Live saying of Brandon Teena’s rape and murder, “Now, this might strike some viewers as harsh, but I believe everyone involved in this story should die,” in 1993, to now where we can look forward to outright celebration, heroizing of our killers, beaters, rapists and attackers.

Transmisogyny flourishes in the client states of the U.S. Empire as well. On April 4th, 2025, Sara Millerey González, a trans woman from Colombia, was raped, beaten, and mutilated by having all her limbs broken, before being thrown into a stream in a ravine to drown to death. She later died in the hospital. Again, people prioritized filming the spectacle instead of stepping in to stop it. 

What will we do then? So much structured, dedicated, motivated violence is arrayed at the innocents, who the Empire has decided to grind into a pulp as it thrashes.This will not resolve with simple reforms. Just like Pavlov and his dogs, the reactionary elements have been primed, conditioned, and rewarded for their worst impulses, encouraged and trained to salivate when they smell fresh meat. 

Jaia Cruz’s actions in her own defense will serve as a warning to those who would terrorize us. We will not be passive or pacific. We will no longer ask timidly for respect of our pronouns. We will instead demand our safety, knowing that it will only blossom from the barrel of a gun. Let her serve as a rallying call to all transfeminine people to organize for our self defense. Let us be unafraid, disciplined, and swift. 

We cannot trust so-called “allies” any longer. You are with us, or you are against us. You will fight and bleed and die alongside us, or you sentence us to abject horror in prisons, allowing and committing our murders alongside the cops and fascists and bigots. It has been too long that queerness and transness have primarily been a vehicle for otherwise neutral parties to feel good about their own pathetic, capitulationist lives. That ends now. End your own complicity. Buy us weapons, food, housing, hormones, and stay the fuck out of our way.

Some queer people may react to this essay with timidity, and to that I say, I am not sorry. We are not at a point where you can opt out of the violence because it will find you. There is not an off ramp, there is not a reformist track anymore. Brianna Wu and Buck Angel are not going to fucking save you, and begging the Democrats will give you nothing. Get with the program.

Unrelenting, unmitigated, unapologetic terror against the enemies of trans women’s dignity and safety is the only answer. Trans women will never be respected until every aspiring woman-beater, self-indulgent rapist, and whinging, sniveling, coward who hides behind a screen to mock our deaths, is afraid for their miserable, worthless lives, afraid to look us in the eye for fear of being the last thing they ever see, afraid to be cut down in righteous self- and community- defense. 

“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Cruz said to investigators:

“I told him, ‘You come to me and I’ll kill you.’”

“No motherfuckers are going to put their hands on me no more.”

“He tried to mess with me because I’m trans, and I poked him up.”

“I hope he’s maggot food.”

Good for her! Well that she is still here. This is only what is deserved by people who would hurt vulnerable women. 

“I killed him laughing. Oh, well. I’ll piss on his grave.”

This year’s theme was “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion.” It featured dresses too delicate to be worn and a walk through the history of fashion, while ignoring the historical moment occurring in the real world. One block from the Gala protestors chanted, “Gaza! Gaza!” and waved Palestinian flags. These students, protesting their universities’ role in funding the genocidal zionist project, spilled into the streets, demanding from these celebrities their voice alongside the rallying cry of those demanding an end to the genocide. Police arrested twenty-seven of them, but you can still hear those voices on the media footage of the event, chants breaking through the metal barricades set up on the street to reach the ears of the wealthiest and most influential fashion party in the U.S..

The dress code was supposedly the “Garden of Time,” a J.G. Ballard story about a wealthy couple who are on the verge of being attacked by an angry mob, forestalled by their magic garden, whose flowers stop time when picked. They rely on plucking roses to turn back time,  but roses and time are both running out. The garden withers; time comes for the couple, turning them to stone and their palace to dust. With the police barricading the surrounding streets and their silence on a genocide, these celebrities are acting out the Ballard story on the grand scale; the spectacle is meant to buy time for a system doomed to die at the hands of a mob.

As boozy celebs pranced about in Manhattan, the zionist occupation rained hell on Rafah, answering the protests with an ear-splitting run of explosions. Joe Biden, never one to restrain his imperialist dog in the Middle East, immediately folded on his so-called “red line.” The insulting opulence of the Met Gala was set against a backdrop of unceasing violence. At an event two days later, billionaire Kim Kardashian overheard, “Free Palestine” and replied, “Free everybody!” This sanctimonious neutrality, this “All lives matter” equivalent to an ongoing genocide, demands our criticism; the genocide in Gaza is as plain as day, and we do not accept that the best anyone with a platform can do is half-baked platitudes. We need to put the pressure on.

In another sense, though, all residents under the umbrella of the U.S.-Canadian Empire are in the Garden of Time, picking the flowers. This system will not last forever. The exploited nations are throwing off their shackles. The Met Gala itself relies on the fickleness of fast fashion, providing a respectable veneer for the destructive waste of the fashion industry. Fashion brands use the Gala for promotion, while profiting heavily from the destruction of the environment and exploited labor of the Global South. One would think, given the Gala’s theme, that these designers would pay mind to the environment they share with us, but we instead saw designs meant to be thrown away. This is an empire that uses things up and spits them out. The clothing goes into a landfill, the factory that made the clothing dumps its pollution into the water, and the human beings who made work under obscene conditions are then cast aside.

The crimes of fast fashion are the crimes of the U.S. Empire. It’s not just poor taste that inspires celebrities to carry ice purses, nor is it simply bad moral judgment that they ignore the cries of the protestors. They need the imperial system to continue to keep hold on their obscene wealth. The glitterati will always stand against the people; their wealth comes from the imperial ruling class.

But our struggles are the Palestinian struggles; the world’s struggles. U.S. police “innovation” is tested on Palestinians in occupied territory before it comes home. Capitalists — and zionists —  run slave mines in Africa, and their political interference in Latin America creates hundreds of thousands of refugees. The climate deteriorates further under the capitalist system, and they offer no solutions. The walls of the garden of time are cracking. The empire is crumbling. The ruling class is losing control.

On the question of Palestine, the tide has turned. The working people of the world, particularly the young, see the zionist entity for what it is: a genocidal state with the full backing of the US. The U.S. celebrity network celebrates in lavish outfits while our government funds and backs a genocide, but you wouldn’t know it with the coverage of the event. The media is merely the hand that washes away the blood of empire. Our government buys missiles and sends them to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian children trapped in Gaza where they cannot run; every new “safe” space becomes a bombing target. Zionist forces maim and kill civilians without hesitation. U.S. military technology is key to Israel’s entire war effort. Yet our political caste refuses to reign the zionist state in, because our outpost in the Middle East is too valuable and our empire too rigid for even genocide to make Joe Biden constrain the zionist monster.

We are living on borrowed time; the capitalist system cannot fix our climate, and the world cannot bear the weight of American consumption much longer. Our flowers are running out. Americans need to stand with the protestors and make our voices heard. We cannot afford to turn away, to retreat further into senescence and decrepitude. We must reject the genocide in Gaza along with the system that requires it. Reject the silence of celebrity and hold the American ruling class to account; put their feet to the fire and secure our own liberation. It is this that will make a truly international revolution. The Black struggle, the Indigenous struggle, and the Palestinian struggle are all struggles for national liberation. The broader class struggle — our struggle — depends on their unconditional victories. The same imperial system conducting this genocide brings its murderous lessons home to use against us. We need to struggle together, or we will die together. We who live in the heart of the empire have the choice; we did not choose this empire, but we can choose its destruction. We have the tools to remake the world. Reject our genocidal ruling class. Stand with Palestine. Stand with liberation. Stand with life. Free Palestine!

And what is Rikers Island? It is a prison; but not only a prison, it is the incarnation of everything evil and cruel about the prisons of the United States Empire. As its name says, it is an island, but this island is also the largest jail in New York City, and one of the largest jails in the world. It employs a small town of correctional officers that were once presumably human but who, through their work as wardens, as brutalizers and murderers of all that is good in humanity, have surrendered their connection to the human race. What is Rikers Island? It is 10,500 turnkey jailers, $860 million per year, and 10,000 inmates. Rikers Island is a factory. There, they produce human suffering. Being sent to Rikers is a promise of psychic mutilation, of physical danger, and of economic destruction.

What is it like inside this warehouse of misery? It is a nightmare. More than half of the inmates on Rikers have some documented mental health problem. No one receives treatment there, despite the fact that it “boasts” the largest psychiatric hospital in New York State. The inmates are routinely permitted to die in full view of the guards. Last year for instance, Michael Nieves, who had been held without trial since 2019, diagnosed with serious mental health problems, and had attempted suicide in the past, bled to death in front of two impassive, inhuman guards and a guard captain. His death was recorded as the third suicide on the island in 2022, but guards also brutalize prisoners to death.  In 2022 alone, 19 inmates died at Rikers. 8 more have died so far this year. COVID routinely makes the rounds among guards and inmates, but Rikers Island is still open and still hosting legally innocent prisoners — and killing them.

At any given time, fully 1,000 prisoners may be in what they call Punitive Segregation on the island. Some of those cells are dedicated for teenagers, others for those with recognized mental illness. In the words of prisoner Donovan Drayton, detained from 2007 until 2017:

The box is like the jail inside the jail. It’s like being locked away, locked up and the key thrown away. It’s like you in a little-ass cell for twenty-three hours a day, if you make rec for that one hour and it’s for x amount of days. See, back then when I was going to the box, they used to be able to give you a year, a hundred days, four hundred… I cried. 

A grievance officer, Kathy Morse, said “We had to go to them. And it was a dungeon. I thought the noise in the housing unit was surreal, but the noise in solitary was unbelievable. You had people banging on their walls, just screaming. It was so bad. It wasn’t even like it was a human being who was screaming. It was more like an animal who was hurt, screaming for help.”

In 2021, the state of New York took steps to end the most abusive of the prison’s practices: continuous solitary confinement. The Humane Alternatives to Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act — and we must admire the brazen-faced bullshit with which the legislature pretended to solve the problem — prohibits solitary confinement in excess of 17 hours per day or for periods of longer than three consecutive days.

Rikers ignored it. A study conducted by the Correctional Association of New York found that people are still placed in solitary confinement for up to six times the legal period in many cases.

This living hell – for those who are not yet legally guilty — this live burial of the poor and the nationally oppressed is merely the most visible manifestation of the evils of the system under which we live. 55% of the inmates in Rikers are Black, while just 25% of the population of New York City is black. Rikers is not only a prison for the poor; it is a prison for Black residents of New York. Why would this surprise us? Black people are jailed at a rate of 11 times that of whites in New York City. If anything, we should be surprised that the number of Black inmates at Rikers isn’t higher.

The median Black household income in New York City is $53,000. The median white household income is nearly $94,000. That means Black workers earn, on average, 57 cents to every dollar white workers in New York City earn. Rikers Island is part of the system responsible for this glaring inequity. Without the horrors of Rikers, the poverty of the Black residents of New York couldn’t continue.

This system didn’t spring out of the ground fully formed; it evolved over the last two-hundred years. The emancipation of Black chattel slaves after the Civil War threatened the wages of Euro-American workers. A huge influx of “free” labor entered the markets of the industrialized north. The prison-industrial complex helps to turn back the clock.

How?

If you’re afraid that you might go to jail because people who look like you are imprisoned at a rate of 11 times that of others, you’re less likely to fight for better wages.

If you’re held in Rikers Island or one of the five other jails in New York City, you won’t be able to work. When you get out, you’ll be desperate enough to accept low wages. While you’re held, you’ll lose your apartment, any government assistance you might have, whatever job you were working.

When you’re on probation, you have to hold down a job, even if it doesn’t pay enough.

People in New York City with convictions make, on average, $5,000 a year less than those without. If it’s a felony conviction, that jumps to $7,000 less. The mass incarceration of Black people economically safeguards better jobs for white Americans.

In 2019, the city council of New York enacted legislation requiring the closure of Rikers Island by 2026. To have the annihilation of Black Americans and the working poor made so public and laid so bare had become inconvenient. Better to do things like this quietly, in local county jails and lockups. The plan was to spread this torture out among four new jails that would be built for the purpose of shutting down the Rikers prison camp. 

Eric Adams, the police-chief mayor of New York City, a nominal Democrat, has repeatedly said he has no intention of reducing the population of Rikers Island, a necessary prerequisite to closing it. Will it be closed? The city government remains ambivalent. The only update has been to push out the closure date, a sure sign that there is a lack of commitment to the plan. 

In fact, real reform of the prison system is impossible without basic reform of the U.S. economy. Democrats typically profess to represent marginalized communities, but they are beholden to the same economic and social interests as the Republicans. Perhaps that’s why their solution to Rikers Island is to do nothing. Democrats have passed some of the worst, anti-prisoner, pro-carceral legislation this country has seen in the past century, like Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. A steady drumbeat of Democrats denouncing the radical demand for prison and police abolition, of actively increasing the funding of the police and the prisons — such as Biden’s plan to put 100,000 new police on the streets, or the allocation of COVID relief money to prisons and police stations, the Biden administration’s plan to steal money earned by federal prisoners under the so-called “Inmate Financial Responsibility Program,” or the new border prisons operated by the Biden regime to incarcerate the desperate, poor, and dispossessed — makes them just as complicit as any frothing white-hooded Republican.

Republicans proudly claim that they represent business interests and oligarchs, but Democrats claim allegiance to the working people while sliding in the knife — a knife, in New York, that is shaped like the prison on Rikers Island.

The fear that underlies the white mind is not a fear of ghost stories or Pet Semetaries, but a real fear, a justified fear, that those who have been economically and socially oppressed — redlined into crumbling apartment blocks, thrown into prisons and jails without remorse or pretense of justice, deprived of legitimate economic opportunities, shunted into under-funded schools, and driven into the lowest, most menial ranks of the U.S. workforce — might dare to rise up against those people who put them there. This fear infects the white mind of the U.S. Empire. It manifests in different ways between the left- and right-fascists. Democrats respond with spineless programs promoting social equality through neoliberal hiring incentives and meaningless moments of “social recognition,” such as donning Kente cloth in the U.S. Senate rather than taking steps to abolish the police state. Republicans and their right-fascist allies have a different strategy: unleashing universal white armament, in which every white man is a deputy and every nationally oppressed person is an outlaw.

In service of that universal armament, the National Police Association and other right-fascists have been working overtime to transform Daniel Penny, the man who murdered Jordan Neely, into a white national hero. The New York City police failed to arrest Penny at the scene of the crime and some media outlets and right-fascist politicians are now calling the killer a “good samaritan.” One of those politicians is the governor of the state of Florida where, in 2020, a local sheriff threatened to “deputize every lawful gun owner” in response to the legitimate outpouring of anger and grief at the murder of George Floyd that became the June Uprisings.

The mentality of the frontier has been played upon for a century by the arms industry. It is precisely this social urge that unites the otherwise incomprehensible positions of the National Rifle Association, namely: against guns in the hands of Black communities, but for guns in the hands of everyone else. In the 19th century this was the open position of the government itself. For instance, the 1856 Supreme Court opinion in Dredd Scott v. Sandford stated, without any ambiguity that if Black people:

were entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race [sic], who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union… the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State. (Emphasis added.)

Dredd Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 417 (1857) (Superseded by Constitutional Amendment (1868)).

Thus, at every turn, the white patriarchs, and those aspiring to the role, have been encouraged to view themselves not as subject citizens of the U.S. Empire, but rather as the embattled homesteaders standing their ground. We cannot know if Penny himself felt this charge to defend white civilization or if he was merely an ex-Marine looking for someone to murder. We can, however, surmise that among his two accomplices (who have gone unnamed by the police or the media) and the other people on the subway car who gave their silent approval to the killing, many felt this satisfaction of defending the frontier. Indeed, social media has been pummeled by the joyous cries of self-proclaimed “feminists” (they are nothing of the kind!) congratulating, or at least excusing, the brutal slaying because they themselves feel threatened by unhoused people like Jordan. These women play, to a T, the part of the homesteader’s wife, congratulating the big strong man with his rifle — or wielding the rifle themselves to protect their “property” from the natives. This is the predictable — and predicted — result of a system that treats Black persons as something other than human, as disposable sources of labor, as farm animals.

In reality, we know that the emancipation of women and the emancipation of the oppressed nations — Black, Indigenous, Latiné — must come together as part of the overall social revolution.The New York courts are, of course, on Penny’s side. Although he was charged with the crime — indeed, the District Attorney could hardly afford not to charge Penny after the NYPD’s riotous and brutal suppression of protests calling for Penny to face justice — he was released on a mere $100,000 bail. The average bail amount for second degree murder in New York is $250,000. First degree murder, which this killing undoubtedly was, has an average bail set at $1 million. We can be certain that the judicial system has no intention of holding Penny accountable. It is likely that, unless the people of New York act to pressure the courts and the D.A. to punish Penny, he’ll be given a plea deal on a low-level assault felony. Indeed, the only way to be certain that Penny sees justice is for the people to mete it out to him themselves.

Only a militant, well-organized people’s movement can get justice for Jordan.

The NYPD purchased two of the drones, these “Digidogs”, for $739,000 using funds outside the official city budget through a program that incentivizes the NYPD to seize cash and other property from the community to be used for their own purposes. They call this “asset forfeiture,” and it is standard practice for the armed militias serving and protecting private property in every corner of the United States.

The police are empowered to seize property through forfeiture simply by claiming that the property was involved in criminal activity whether or not you’ve been convicted, or even charged with a crime. In fact, unless they are challenged, the police don’t even have to present evidence that the theft is justified; when the cops seize property in order to auction it off and keep the cash for themselves, the burden is on the victim of this stickup to show up to court and argue that the property was not used in a crime or acquired through crime. This is a very difficult process that often requires a lawyer and frequently results in the property staying in the hands of the police. With the cost of legal fees, you might even be better off trying to buy your own property back at the police auction.

Adams hosted this charade barely a week after announcing his plans to cut funding 4% city-wide in the new budget. While New Yorkers wait to find out what essential services are slated to be ripped out of our hands, we are presented with this unabashed mockery. Of course, we never expect the Landlord-Cop comfortably reigning over us to care about our needs, our rights. But it seems he is also incapable of basic human shame! Well, the budget is now released. So while he and his goons in the NYPD get shiny new drones to harass us with, what do we get?

We get a $1 billion cut to education! With all the glaring flaws of our school system, they must have done a rigorous study of NYC schools and determined that our children were $1 billion too educated last year. Never mind the underpaid and overworked educators who are forced to personally buy supplies for their overflowing classrooms; Adams is attacking the heart of the issue!

We also get a 4% cut in the Department of Buildings! These are the people responsible for staffing and inspecting construction projects throughout the city. Surely, the parking garage that just collapsed in lower Manhattan, and the 4-year high in construction site deaths are due to the DOB having too much money for hiring construction workers and safety inspectors.

And more good news! The Pig-In-Chief heard all of our complaints about NYC libraries being open too much, and has proposed cutting $53 million out of their budget so that they can reduce Saturday hours and be rid of Sunday hours entirely.

So where is all of this money going? Along with boasting about the record amount of funds this budget will keep in the reserves, the Mayor also reached a deal with the NYPD police “union” that will raise salaries across the board, some as much as 40%. This deal includes back pay all the way to 2017, as well as more flexible overtime hours just to tie a neat bow on it all.

Every time they ignore our demands that our money go towards vital social services instead of the NYPD it’s a crime. Year after year, they shift more money to the NYPD’s obscene budget at the expense of New Yorkers’ education, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure. And when that extortion is not enough for them, they also rob us in the streets at gunpoint and head to midtown to show off the cutting-edge surveillance tech they buy with the new funds. Tech that will, as always, be weaponized against the people who paid for it.

The NYPD exists to protect the landlords and all others who live on the income of their private property, or more accurately, live on our backs. Until the working class takes the reins of power from the exploiters, our taxes will always be used to protect these private property interests at the expense of our wellbeing. An organized working class fighting for all of our collective interests is the first step towards ridding ourselves of the parasites and their armed thugs forever.

EDITORS NOTE: This statement was released by the New School Students Occupation on 12/8/22 and is reproduced here exactly as it was released, with their permission.

In light of recent attacks by the New School administration on all school employees including faculty and students, as well as the blatant refusal to meet ACT-UAW 7902’s demands or even negotiate in good faith, the students have decided it is the time to escalate direct action. The University Center will be occupied until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection, and retirement benefits to all striking employees and a fair contract is reached with part-time faculty.

New York, NY: ACT-UAW 7902, composed of Part-Time Faculty at the New School, has been on strike for 23 days—this makes the strike the longest strike of adjunct faculty in the nation’s history. Part-time faculty are fighting for a fair contract that truly compensates them for their labor, their care, and their commitment to their students—which the New School administration has refused to offer. Not only has the administration prolonged this strike, showing a complete disregard for its students, staff, and faculty it claims to care for, it offered nothing of substance.

They have retaliated violently. As of yesterday, ALL striking workers at the New School have their wages withheld, no access to healthcare benefits, as well as no added funds to their retirement plans. This decision risks the lives of our faculty—many of whom are caretakers, primary insurance holders, some even pregnant or have upcoming surgeries—and this is all happening while New York City experiences a Covid-19 surge with over 40k cases as of the last two weeks. Students who work at The New School have also been notified that if they don’t cross the picket line they will be without pay as well. This applies to Federal Work Study employees—a disgusting move by the administration upon students who qualify based on financial need for the FWS grant.

The administration has also attacked Full-Time faculty who are in solidarity with PTF, notifying them that they must sign “work certification” forms that they will hold class, and if they do not or are found to have not fulfilled what they sign on the form—they risk termination. At all points, the administration of the New School is trying to break the solidarity that ALL faculty and students have fostered—but we will not let them.

This abuse of power by the administration is exemplary of a long history of the New School betraying its founding mission, radical history, and declared values. We no longer recognize the administration as representative of The New School.

The violent, manipulative, and cruel attacks from the administration upon every part of the New School community have left us with no choice but to escalate student action—We are now occupying the University Center.

We will peacefully occupy the building day and night until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection, and retirement benefits to all school employees and until the university reaches a fair contract with part-time faculty. We do not take occupation lightly, this is a necessary response to the administration’s violent escalations.

We students will stand in solidarity with faculty who we love and trust, and demand that they are treated and paid not only a living wage and benefits—but that they are respected. The administration would like to believe they can divide us, that we will allow them to exploit our faculty and our friends, but if anything this strike has shown us and the struggle for fair working conditions around the world, the UCs, in HarperCollins, in UCU in UK, that ‘Solidarity is Forever.’ These Administrators have nothing on us and cannot be allowed to continue operating as such. We will win.