We talked with long time socialist , New York City subway worker and union fighter, John Ferretti, about why he’s supporting Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor. Here is an edited version of that interview with the transcript of the full interview below it. You can also listen to the full interview on the Oaklandsocialist podcast here.

John Reimann
Okay, and we’re talking today with John Ferretti, who’s a New York City subway worker and a member of the transit workers union there in New York. And John has been very involved in both labor matters as well as now in New York City politics. So welcome John.

John Ferretti
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me Comrade. So

John Reimann
I want to start by just talking, if you could just talk a little bit about how things went last Saturday with the no kings March in in New York.

John Ferretti
There were estimates of about 200,000 plus in New York. There were many more in LA San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, all over the country. I mean, even places like Boise, Idaho had protests. I think it’s just an expression of how viscerally the Trump regime and ICE are hated right now, because the people who mobilize the protest aremostly clueless bourgeoisliberals, and for example, they were, they were telling people to kneel when the cops and the thugs come in, which is like the worst thing you could tell people to do. So despite all of the cluelessness at the head of the people organizing the rally, it was the largest rally in recent American history, anywhere between 5 million to 13 to 14 million nationwide, which is a massive explanation of the political divide in this country and how much people hate this regime, and how much people are motivated to go out outside of their comfort zone in massive protests that rock this country, From coast to coast and in New York,

John Reimann

to what extent was Labor a visible presence in the protest and to your knowledge, to what extent did the unions try to mobilize their membership?

John Ferretti
Not at all. My union, one of the largest unions in the city, one of the most important strategic unions in the entire world. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 did absolutely nothing to mobilize its members at all. What they did was take a a selfie with about six members of some committee within the union about human rights. You know, apparently, they have some kind of human rights and labor rights committee, and they went out there and they took a selfie. They did not try to mobilize the members. Now, there are other unions that Did you know, for example, like

John Reimann
Like which you would you mentioned UAW, which other unions? Um,

John Ferretti
you well, UAW, like a lot of Teamsters that w ork for product TV production in New York, sections of academic unions, mostly, you know they’re that those UAW has a huge influence in Organizing college professors, college adjuncts, staffers, etcetera. But I think that their members certainly showed up, whether or not they were told to by the union and see that’s part of the problem is that the dynamic is that, you know, a politicians often try to get support from unions, but they get support from the bureaucracy, but that doesn’t translate into actual mobilization of the members. What was encouraging is that many members showed up in their union shirts. I know people from DC, 37 came out. People from local 100 came out on their own to support these rallies. But in terms of a terms of unions seeing it as part of their job to mobilize the ranks to come out in the 1000s, it just what just didn’t happen, not in my union, and not in any union that I seen that that is a big union that could do so,

John Reimann
you know, I’m reminded when I was in Ferguson a few days after Michael Brown was killed, yeah, I got to talking to a member of of the Teamsters. No, the UAW. You. And he told me that his local president told him, in regards to the protests against the killing of Michael Brown, his local president told him, this is not our battle, yeah, and that’s kind of symbolic,

John Ferretti
Let me give you an example of how they think: my local put out a flyer encouraging members to go… they put out a flyer with the no kings rally, and they don’t mention Trump, not once. And from what I understand, the International President John Samuelson, has put the local under strict orders not to be confrontational with Trump, and this is part of that strategy. So they’ll they’ll pat people on the back for protesting, but they won’t talk about what the protest is about, and they won’t specifically call out ICE. So it’s all about democratic rights. It’s all about labor rights, and we support it because it’s the rally is nomally about these things, but what the rally is really about is fighting fascism, and they have no interest in fighting fascism.

John Reimann
I’m guessing that this is not a one off. There’s a history behind this. How does that sort of approach affect New York City politics in general?

John Ferretti
Well, what it means is that somebody like Andrew Cuomo can masquerade as if he’s a pro worker candidate after he gave us tier six after he sexually assaulted and harassed 13 women and asked for their gynecological records, we still to this day, have the biggest unions in this country, in the city, endorsing him. So it’s, you know, it’s really, it warps and distorts working class consciousness in a way that paints working class unions as being outright corrupt, which, in fact, they are, in many respects, but the membership of those unions has much more class consciousness than they do, and that’s reflected in the in the fact that many of the people who I canvas with for Zohran Mamdani, an openly socialist Muslim candidate for New York City Mayor, are activists within the union. Are rank and file members within the union are raising motions within the union to get their union to try to endorse a candidate that actually speaks for class consciousness in a way that just hasn’t been seen in New York City for a long time. So there’s a big schism between the consciousness of the rank and file and the consciousness of the bureaucracy, and there always has been, and this has been going on for decades,

John Reimann
so I want to get to that. But you mentioned Mamdani, and let’s talk a little bit about his campaign and why you are campaigning for him.

John Ferretti
I’m campaigning for him because his victory would be a stake through the heart of the business, the corrupt business associated Democratic Party leadership in New York City, in New York state, it would be a reordering of political priorities in favor of centering the working class and its needs and fighting for free childcare, Fighting for free busses that are fast and safe, fighting for a city where you have city run grocery stores that actually lower the price of groceries. And I think that Mamdani does the most effective job that I have ever seen of any mainstream political candidate running for office of of explaining socialism concretely in terms of people’s lived experiences. Mamdani went out after Trump was elected, and he spoke to people in like sections of Bronx and queens, mostly immigrant communities, the places where you see the largest drift towards Trump, either votes for Trump or people staying home. And he asked them why they why they felt the way they did.

And a lot of it had to do with them feeling completely abandoned by the Democratic Party and and feeling a sense that their life was marginally better economically under Trump than that, it was under Biden. And he then explained, what would you think if a Democrat actually had solidarity with the working class? And he proposed some of the things that he went on to fight for a $30 an hour, minimum wage, free childcare, free busses, etc, Department of Public Safety that doesn’t criminalize the homeless, doesn’t criminalize those with mental health problems, but actually seeks to solve those problems with with methods that are proven to work in cities across the world. And they said they would vote for him, they would vote for a candidate [like that]. And he didn’t introduce it as “I’m running for mayor”, he introduced it. “What would you think if somebody did this?” and they responded overwhelmingly positively to that kind of class conscious approach that actually had solidarity with working people and didn’t abandon them? So I think that Mamdani is the most effective political candidate that I have ever seen in my lifetime. He’s more effective than Obama. He’s more able to connect with people’s lived experience in a way that’s that’s real than anybody I’ve ever seen. Now I don’t have any illusions in any political candidate. Everybody can talk a tough game. Actions speak a lot louder than words. But in terms of cutting through the bullshit, cutting through the anxiety, the fear, the hatred that the right wing, that right wing populism seeks to stoke, Mamdani is the most effective at cutting through all of that and exposing, exposing how hypocritical the right wing is that they have no solutions for the problems that the poor, the oppressed, the working class face. And he actually is, is launching a campaign that’s very heavy on policy, very heavy on advanced ideas that working class people often don’t get to discuss and think about but he does so in a concrete, relatable way that workers can understand. So like when he goes to rallies, he can start his slogans and people finish the slogans. You know, we’re going to freeze the rent, we’re going to provide free childcare, like people understand through the slogans in a concrete way, how this connects to their life and their interests. So,

John Reimann
you know, when de Blasio was elected mayor around the country, there was a lot of talk about, “oh, this is going to change things, and he’s different,” and all that kind of stuff. And then it disappeared. Nothing happened. So, how does Mamdani differ from Di Blasio?

John Ferretti
How he differs from De Blasio is that, first of all, he’s an open socialist, and he says so, and he explains what he means by socialism in a way Blasio never did. Blasio. De Blasio was always a bourgeois liberal. And de Blasio was also phrase mongering the the slogans of a movement that he wasn’t a part of. Zohran is a part of those movements Zohran took on Tom Holman directly in the state capitol and and dramatically called him out for kidnapping American citizens, people with green cards, immigrants, and disappearing them. So in 1001 ways Zohran, is part of the leadership of of the movement which he’s adopting the slogans of because they’re his slogans. Zohran led a hunger strike on behalf of taxi workers in New York City and and won $450 million in debt relief for them. He took on the Blasio administration at the time to win debt relief. Now is Is it a solution? Are Taxi Workers no longer poor? Are they no longer exploited? Of course not, but I’ve never seen a mainstream political candidate walk to walk the walk as well as talk to talk in the way that Zohran does. So I think that’s a big difference between what de Blasio did with phrase mongering and looking to mimic a movement that was started by other people, whereas Zohran is actually amplifying the slogans of a live movement that he is part of.

John Reimann
You know, I ran for mayor as a socialist in Oakland And what I said at the time, and I still believe, is any candidate that says they are going to solve this problem for you is either naive or they’re hoping you’re naive, because change doesn’t come…. In order to solve the problem, you have to have a mass movement from below, a working class movement. So how would you relate that issue, that point of view, to Mamdani and what he stands for?

John Ferretti
Yeah. I don’t have any illusions that Zohran Mamdani is going to lead a general strike in New York City or anything like that. I think he would support it. I think that if the UAW actually follow through on their claims to want to strike on May Day of 2028 that Zohran would be in in solidarity with it, and he would certainly not be on the opposite side of the barricades. He would be in solidarity with that struggle. Now there’s huge difference between that and actually seeing it as your role as a socialist to provide leadership to and not just rhetorical sport, not just solidarity, but actually concretely be on the side of the workers. And there’s also a certain disconnect between being the mayor of New York City and playing that role like that, you like, you’re you’re right that there needs to be a mass movement to pressure Zohran Momdani as well. Li ke, like we, we have need to have no illusions that he’s going to do lifting for us, nor does he say he will. He actually wants people to challenge him in a way that I’ve never seen a mainstream political candidate be in favor of. But you know, there’s no free passes given to anyone. You know, you have to back up your rhetoric with where you are on when, when the real class battles happen and and obviously we need much wider class battles to win the things that he’s proposing like he’ll never get these things passed without a mass movement. He’ll never get the he would have, and also he would never be here without a mass movement. He has 40,000 volunteers in the streets every day, knocking over a million doors. He is also funded by that movement. He’s not taking a single dollar in corporate PAC money. He is entirely funded by people who, on average, get $80 and we’re talking about 27,000 individual contributors. And it means something. I’m not saying, nobody’s saying it’s a silver bullet for the working classes disorganization, but we want to choose our political our adversary. We want to choose who’s the person on the other side of the negotiating table in New York City, and having somebody who is on record as being on our side and is beholden to mass movements is a massive step forward, and it and it changes the balance of forces in terms of what we will be able to demand and what we will be able to win. And also, it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle when you see how he talks about the most oppressed New Yorkers, like in his in his speech on Saturday, which I went to the rally with AOC, like he talks about people working the night shift. He talks about the most depressed immigrant workers and and he talks about him trying to be, trying, trying to be listening to those, to those voices, and championing their, their their experiences. He talks about their lived experience in a way that’s very hard to put that genie back in the bottle when you’re in a position of power, because he has raised expectations in a way that catches fire. It’s the reason why he goes from 1% to 30% like that.

John Reimann
Let’s phrase it slightly differently: What effect would it have within the working class, both the organized working class, like in your union, and also the most oppressed and poorest layers forMamdani to win? What effect would it have?

John Ferretti
It would it would mean that they don’t have to choose between two corruptions.

John Reimann
No, I mean, as as far as their their their activity, they’re getting more active in the unions or or elsewhere, as a something beginning to be an organized working class political force.

John Ferretti
Um, it would, it would clear a major obstacle out of their way. Like the major thing, the linchpin that has kept New York’s labor peace in in place for decades now, since Really 2005 with the transit strike, there’s been overwhelming labor peace. And basically concessionary bargaining, tier six, divide and conquer, cynicism and nihilism be be pushed by the Labor bureaucracy. That will have that will change as a as a result of Zohran being elected, the fact that an immigrant is elected New York City Mayor, the fact that somebody who’s powered by the dollars of working class communities, it will change what they view as possible. And part of the reason why concrete explanations of socialism is so important is because often socialists get put in a box, as if we’re moralists who our feet never touch the ground, and we have our head in the clouds and we envision a world of utopia that is not really possible. And part of part of what Zoran has done is grounded the possibility of a world where class is. Front and center and where the working class, working class demands are not seen as crazy, and they don’t add and he also fights back against the idea that, “Oh, how you going to pay for it?” He explains exactly how he’s going to pay for it. He’s going to tax the rich, and that can only be a shot in the arm to what workers feel are reasonable demands, given the change Battlefield, if the representative of the ruling class, which the mayor is, I mean, there’s just no way around that. The mayor of New York City is the chief representative of the New York City ruling class in the same way the governor is, if they are able to force our message to be heard from that position of power, and if they are able to choose a less hostile person in that position, it raises the the perception of what is possible, and it can only encourage workers to become more active and to see that campaign is part of their activity. We made this happen. So

John Reimann
for instance, on tax policy, on a whole series of other policies. Yeah, clearly he can’t do it himself. He’s going to have to get the city council to go along.

John Ferretti
Yeah, well, the city council is far to the left of the Andrew Cuomos of the world, and far to the left of even the Adrian Adams of the world, and they have been pushing they’ve been defeating Eric Adams repeatedly, and dealt him huge losses. It’s part of the reason why he’s been undermined even before the corruption issue in New York City, the New York City Council, the majority opinion is much closer to Zohran than it is to Andrew Cuomo or to Eric Adams. Yeah, it’s going to uphill lift in the State Assembly to get anything from New York City, because they’ve continually starved New York City and they’ve continually engaged in class warfare against the working class. Don’t want to pay for anything, for porn. Working Class New Yorkers let new horn. Working Class New Yorkers die by the hundreds and the 1000s during COVID, abandon them. So it is going to be an uphill battle, but I think that with a movement behind him, like like we’re seeing right now in the streets, and also with every provocation of the Trump regime, it adds fuel and fire to the mass movement that we see just beginning to to erupt, and I think that it has much more of a class conscious basis than, for example, previous previous generations of struggle, like, even the George Floyd movement, like, like, a lot of the reforms that were proposed were performative, and they were able to basically roll back all of those promises pretty quickly. I don’t think they’re going to be able to do that with a with a very class centered, existential kind of movement like you begin to see growing up all over the country, just public opinion. You can look at Trump’s approval ratings. Trump is now with approval ratings that are pre, that are post January six levels, which was his lowest point ever. And I think that everything that ice does, and everything that Trump does, especially with a potential war in Iran, are only going to lead to much more the growth of of working class consciousness. I mean, there’s no there’s no blueprint for how you do this, for how you develop class consciousness. It has to be real and concrete for workers. But one thing I do know is that them seeing that they can, they can, through the force of their will, change the direction of who runs a a major city in the world, and they can put their thumb on the scale, and they can, they can put the stake in the heart of those who’ve abandoned us and those who left us to die during COVID, that victory is going to mean more to them than just mandani winning. It’s going to mean a change in what’s possible, and that’s important.

John Reimann
So if you look at if you put the mayor’s race in context of national politics, yeah, as we know, there’s a lot of complaints to say the least about the Democratic Party not really doing very much to oppose Trump. And so win or lose in what way do you see the injection of Mamdani into this mayor’s race and the attention that he’s gathering in New York? How do you see that playing out within the Democratic Party as a whole?

John Ferretti
I think if Mamdani wins that it’s going to change the entire calculus of the midterm elections. It’s going to change how Democrats engage in political a political answer to Trump and Trumpism and fascism. I think that it will. It will. It will send a signal worldwide of a change and a break from the politics of non confrontation with Trump. I mean, Andrew Cuomo has literally said that if ice comes to New York City, they will violate the law, they will violate the Constitution, and what we need to do is not to overreact. That is his literal quote. We should not overreact. And ma’am and Mamdani being the mayor means that he will be there physically fighting for those immigrants. He will, He will be part of defending a sanctuary, the sanctuary city laws in the in New York City, you know, so it will. I mean, I think that it’s really, it’s really determinative. I don’t think. I don’t, I don’t guarantee that mandani can win. I mean, he’s facing $20 million in negative campaigning, declaring him the other, the barbarian, the monster. He’s dangerous, all of this kind of rhetoric. And yeah, anti Yeah, he’s anti semitic. And a lot of this money is coming from Trump billionaires, and even even beyond the Trump billionaires, people like Michael Bloomberg, who are donating this money. And you know, there’s an constant drum beat of lies about him, but, but if you look at the if you look even at the negative ads, they actually work as propaganda from Mamdani, because they say he’s for free childcare. They say he’s for crazy things like free busses. So it only undermines their own argument, because people don’t think the way they think they think. And so that’s that’s why he has a chance. So,

John Reimann
you know, we both see the necessity for the working class to have its own political party, yes, which the Democrats are not and can never be. Absolutely. How would you see that issue in terms of the Mamdani campaign?

John Ferretti
Well, I mean, I think that Mamdani would probably be in favor of a Labor Party. I mean, Mamdani is openly hostile and rejects the Democratic Party and the role that it’s played in abandoning workers over many, many decades. Um, he is not a Democrat. He is a Democratic socialist. He is. He does not he never introduces himself as a Democrat. He always introduces himself as a Democratic socialist, and he has basically said that Cuomo was funded by the same billionaires that put Donald Trump back in power. So I don’t I it’s not the same dynamic as it would have been with De Blasio, who de Blasio conceives himself as a liberal, openly says he’s, he’s part of the Democratic Party. Actually believes in the Democratic Party. This is really, if you if you think about it’s an opposite. It’s an anti Democratic campaign, party campaign within the Democratic Party. But,

John Reimann

I mean, he’s, he’s been in office for some time. There’s been an office for four years, but it must have some, I’m not necessarily arguing against supporting him, but he must have some element of the Democratic Party machinery that he’s been working with for this time.

John Ferretti
He’s worked with Eric Adams to get things passed. He’s worked with Chuck Schumer to get things passed, but he never did so giving them, you know, encouraging political illusions in them. I mean, if you’re, if you’re in the State Senate or state assembly, and you want to get things passed, obviously you need to sponsor bills or fight for bills that are supported by other, you know, capitalist politicians for their own reasons. in terms of, in terms of how he portrays himself and how he ran, he didn’t run as a Democrat. He ran and he also rejected the strategy of the Democratic Party, which is all about taking billionaire money, which is all about McKinsey consultants, which is all about not wanting, like Hakeem Jeffries, wanting to mend fences with the billionaires. And I’ve never seen any of that from him.

John Reimann
If you looked at the campaign staff and also the chief of staff for Bernie Sanders, they all came from the Democratic Party machinery. Are you saying that’s different for him?

John Ferretti
I don’t see any machine representatives as far as his chief of staff. Like and you could tell. You could also tell. You could tell by the ads, and the way in which they are not afraid at all of nailing the Democratic Party establishment to Donald Trump, you know, basically bundling them up and throwing them to the bottom of the ocean. That is how forcefully they tie the Democratic Party establishment to Donald Trump, to ice to every to the rise of American fascism. They portray them as collaborators with fascism. I mean, so it’s, it’s a there’s a difference between that and somebody who phrase mongers about hope and change, and you know you’re truly about police accountability and all this kind of stuff, but, but actually, all of your spokespeople are all tied by 1000 strings to the establishment. I just don’t see that with mandami. I’m not trying to, I’m not, I’m not trying to make him seem more militant than he is, but I just don’t, I don’t have any evidence for that, that he has ties to the establishment. And I also think, I mean, you can see from AOC speech at his rally on Saturday that they told her that if she endorsed mandani, her political career would be over. And she says, I don’t and she says, I don’t care. I don’t care because I’ve tried. I I’ve tried to bend over backwards to to make common cause with those in power, to to win them to the side of what working class people need. And they will always choose someone like Andrew Cuomo. They will always seek to recycle the same corrupt leaders again and again and again. They will always choose corruption. And so to me, it seems to me that there’s going to be a civil war in the Democratic Party over this fissure, this fracture, and I think that it’s the role of the working class to push that fracture and to expose the contradictions, and to push working class consciousness and to hold mandani feats to the fire, and to hold AOCs feet to the fire. And we can’t do that from the sidelines. We can’t do that by abstaining and not wanting to get our hands dirty with the actual work of going into joint actions with working class people and engaging in political activity in their own class interest. And there’s a huge difference between that. It’s a huge difference between that and going through a joint struggle with workers where they’re not engaging in their own class interest, where they’re actually just providing passive support to a Bucha political machine as the lesser evil. There’s a huge difference between those two

John Reimann
So my perspective, and I’d like to get your your thoughts on this. As you know, I supported votingfor Harris, also Biden, four years earlier, but for Harris in this election, the main reason being that I believe in the need for independent movement of the working class and a working class party. And my view was, and I think it’s been proven correct, that it would be far more difficult for a movement like that to develop if Trump was elected. So this is my first question is, to put it in the reverse, that it’ll be easier and more likely for such a movement to develop if Mamdani is elected mayor. That’s number one. Number two, my view is that people like Mamdani and AOC and so on, that if and when a real mass movement towards a working class party develops. It will only be then that they would be liable to split from the Democrats and join such a movement they have to have, in other words, if they’re on a rock in the middle of the river, they have to not have another rock to jump to to get off of the first one,

John Reimann

I think that, I think that there’s a difference between AOC and Mamdani. I think AOC has when she was first elected, she was much more militant and she was much more independent, and she represented a defiance in the face of the machine. And that that that came from the fact that she was standing on the body of Joe Crowley like she had, just like defeated Goliath, right? And the way she got there was uncompromising. Uh, militancy and defiance in the face of that machine, and targeting the Democratic Party machine as the cause of our misery, as the cause of why working class people can’t have anything in society, and why Trump got elected like, if you remember, she was elected in 20 was it was in 27 2016 was that part of the same? No, it’s 2018 it was 2018 this was in the wake of Trump being elected the first time. So AOC was a weather vein of the the blowback for Trump being elected, the blowback that the Democratic Party establishment faced for Trump being elected. But then after that, in the years later, especially after 2020, you see AOC begin to mend fences with Nancy Pelosi. She called her mama bear. She looked to to at every point, try to mend fences with the establishment of the Democratic Party and try to, like a lot of it had to do with her own her own careerism, her own wanting to move up in the in the power structure and gain their confidence and use her independent fundraising as a way to argue for a different approach. And in certain respect, it was kind of pathetic that she thought she could ever win that argument with them, that they were ever going to accept her approach, and so they co opted her to a certain extent. But now I think she’s kind of run up against the fact that they will never accept her and that she has an independent role to play here that’s much bigger than maybe she thought when she was elected in the first place. Now, mandani has never seek to ingratiate himself with the establishment. He is a member of the Democratic Socialist of America. She was kicked out. She is no longer a member of the DSA. She was endorsed by them, but she has turned her back on their positions repeatedly. For example, She voted for the Iron Dome funding for Israel. Again and again, she has broken ranks with with a socialist perspective, and she’s she’s tried to become popular and palatable to normies, to mainstream liberals. And you see that by her support part of the reason why she can be considered a potential candidate for president in 2028 is because her popularity amongst mainstream Democrats has gone through the roof, and a lot of that had to do with Bernie and her doing this anti oligarchy tour, and the effectiveness they had in terms of being seen as the only ones fighting. And so it’s not so people coming towards her politically are coming towards her politically because she’s willing to actually fight, not necessarily about any of her policies, whereas Mamdani people are are coming towards him because he has real solutions that reflect their lived experience, and he can explain them in a way that connects to their common sense, their own, their own view of how, of how they’ve been abandoned and and connects to their class interest in a way that AOC has never really been able to do. So I think there’s a difference between those two, and in terms of their trajectory, where they came from, whether they have roots in the movement, as opposed to being somebody who was put in a position of power because of the explosions against Trump, but doesn’t really have any roots in the movement. Doesn’t really have any loyalty to that movement, in the same way that mandani Does as an active member of the DSA and as an active member of the movements that are actually happening, whereas ASC has a has a separation, there’s a buffer between her. And

John Reimann
maybe you could say that it was her misfortune to get elected four years or so too soon. Yeah, could have been. She looked around and she saw well, and there was nobody behind her. “Where’s the troops behind me?” (Ferretti: “Yeah, exactly, yeah.”) So where else did she have to go?

John Ferretti
Well, also, I, but I, but also think that Bernie did a very terrible job of…

I think also, she had a she had a terrible mentorship in terms of political education from Bernie. I mean, look what Bernie Sanders position has been with Joe Biden. He actively calls him his friend. I mean, this is a guy stabbing him in the back and destroying him politically and rolling and fighting against everything that he stands for, and yet the schmuck still calls him, still thinks he’s his friend. And so AOC gets the political tutelage of somebody who pissed away the potential for actually defeating the Democratic Party establishment, and instead, at every turn, look to collaborate with them. looks to operate with them. Look to be their left flank. Look to provide left cover for them. So I think that AOC has learned all the wrong lessons in that respect, but I think that she’s beginning to come to a reckoning that that doesn’t work.

John Reimann
Maybe she’s seeing that there’s a new wind that’s blowing.

John Ferretti
Yeah, that’s possible too, but I think, for example, like Zohran Mamdani, could never run for US president, because he’s a naturalized citizen, but had Bernie run the campaign that Zohran is running now, he would have defeated Donald Trump. He would have defeated Joe Biden in 2020 because Zoran campaign answers the question that Bernie never answered, which is, “how do you fight right wing populism? How do you truly counter message what fascism has to offer, which is preying on the anxiety, on the frustration, on the abandonment, on the hatred that working class people have for the elites.” And Bernie could never answer that question, because he wasn’t willing to break with the elites in any real, concrete way, and that’s why it failed, and that’s why it was bound to fail, because he was never willing to take the steps that Zohran has taken. So I think AOC is kind of learning much later why it didn’t work, and whycollaborating with Nancy Pelosi and company will never get them a place at the table. And so now and then, she’s also seeing that the Democratic Party is headed for a civil war, and she’s positioning herself to respond to that. So know, if Zohran gets elected. I don’t think it’s going to be followed the same trajectory.

Trump himself made that clear, you know, but because you know, as they talked about the guard rails or the adults in the room in his first term, yes, his generals even Bill Barr at the end. But, you know, he put the clampers on Trump as far as overturning the election, yeah, and he said, he made it clear he’s not going to appoint people like that. And he did not appoint people like that. He appointed pure sycophant do and say anything. If he wants him to.

John Ferretti

Yeah, I remember, you remember when people were, were outraged that Sebastian [Unclear] was in the first administration, and he was in some, some little, you know, adviser position. Now Stephen Miller is making all the decisions like, like he is the personification of American fascism, white supremacy like so they’re not hiding it anymore, and that changes the class dynamic too. It changes how explosive the situation will become, because there’s no pretense anymore that this is normal, and every attempt to normalize it inflames the populous and that

John Reimann
we’re getting a little bit far afield here. But it’s it’s an important issue, and it seems to me that in the first 100 days or so of the Trump administration, there was a kind of you, what you could call a corporate, corporatist wing of Maga, represented by Elon Musk, that was really driving the bus. And it was proven how unpopular that was, and Musk was forced to recede. And incidentally, during that whole time, people like [Steve Bannon and the populist wing, they were denouncing him. And now it’s the populist, the like white nationalist, populist wing led by Stephen Miller, and there’s already starting to run into trouble as far as conducting even, even his his deportation policies are starting, in general, to become unpopular, and also, like all big sections of big business, like agriculture and the hospitality wing of big business and so on, are wanting Trump to back off. At first he start, he agreed to back off. Now he’s reversed himself, I’m sure, under pressure of Stephen Miller, yeah, so it’s not going to be just like a cake walk for Maga and Trump.

John Ferretti
I mean, they he’s actually vacillated Trump repeatedly saying that he might have to roll back some of the agricultural, the ICE enforcement on agricultural.

John Reimann
But just the other day he reversed that and said he’s going to go ahead with

John Ferretti
Yeah. But the thing is that like it, they don’t have a majority opinion in the populous. They don’t have a majority opinion amongst the ruling class, and it’s a very unstable regime. But the more unstable it is, the more unpopular it becomes, because it’s a fashion, because it’s tied to a fascist movement, the more violent it becomes, exactly more rational it becomes. And the crackdowns that are happening with ice are just a small foretaste of what, how far thing things can go a field. And when you have that kind of unstable movement that will engage in a rational violence that destabilizes the entire economy, like they did with the tariffs, like anything is possible.

John Reimann
And then you saw those two murders in Minnesota. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Because, as you say, the more they start to feel that they’re in a minority, the more wing of them is going to… I was reading that somebody, and I think was in Philadelphia, was arrested at the No Kings movement. He was armed to the teeth. And when they then went and and looked in his home, raided his home, they found like bomb making bombs and all sorts of stuff there. So we’re going to see more of that. The other question is, to what extent will Trump be able to use the state power to crush an opposition. And, you know, there’s some evidence that the soldiers who were marching in the military parade were not at all happy about being there.

John Ferretti
Yeah, well, I think he’s in a very vulnerable position when it comes to the military, except for like, special forces and Marines, in terms of having the ability to just tell them to go and follow his orders without any blowback, and the National Guard is a very unstable weapon in the hands of the ruling class, especially for domestic domestic law enforcement, domestic repression. It’s very unstable, not. You have a de facto economic draft in a lot of places in this country, where people who flood into the military have no other economic choices, and they are not going to open fire on their own communities. It’s just not going to happen. And so the fact that they don’t have a draft makes them very vulnerable. And however, you have white supremacists riven through the police forces all over this country, riven through the specialized forces of the military all over this country. And so that makes it that’s the countervailing force, and that’s and part of the people who you’re talking about doing these acts of violence, white supremacist violence, almost without exception, they have some connection to white supremacist movements within the police force, within security apparatuses, within Palantir and private, you know, prisons and private police forces and All of that kind of stuff. So it’s a very dangerous situation, because the balance of weapons of arms in this country is overwhelmingly towards those kind of forces. So it’s not necessarily about majority numbers. It’s about how much damage they can inflict just based on their access to this this kind of military weaponry. So it’s very dangerous period.

John Reimann
So, and all of this, in my opinion, is related to the issue of a working class party, which won’t necessarily start as a political party that runs candidates, but working class people starting to organize themselves as their own, as an independent force, possibly to defend themselves as as being the focal point.

John Ferretti
Yeah, I think, I think that working class people need to be serious about the scale of the crisis that we face, and we need to start to both politically arm ourselves, but also organizationally arm ourselves to to engage in collective self defense. So like when they I mean, I don’t know if you know, but 1000 people a day are being rounded up at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City. And I know that’s happening city after city around the country, and that will be a flash point. You know, we need to have organized self defense in the 1000s. In the 10s of 1000s and hundreds of 1000s descend on places where this is happening. But also, I mean, I think workers need to be conscious of the fact that we need Anti Fascist working class organizations that actually do the work of organizing a real counter offensive against what we’re facing, and teach working class people what their rights are, how to organize themselves. And you know, I think independent organization is going to be the key. Can the working class develop independent organizations that can be the nucleus of the kind of organizations that we need to actually implement

John Reimann
Which would have to have a program, including an economic program.

John Ferretti
Absolutely. Yeah. So they would have to be independent from people like Mamdani. They would have to be politically independent from even the best political representations of class consciousness, because their class consciousness and what they can do has very real limits, given the fact that they are working within the system. We need an inside and an outside strategy. So AOC is right about that, but how she conceives of an inside outside strategy is much different than the way real socialists do

John Reimann
Yes, most people, when they talk about inside outside, they mean acting within the Democratic Party and blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, exactly Other than that, but you’re talking about actually organizing the working class as its own independent force. To the extent that that happens, if it starts to happen to a wider extent, is to that extent that people like Mamdani or AOC will be inclined to break away from the Democrats. They have to see an alternative. And yeah, so anyway, to get back to New York and to wrap it up, I don’t know if you have any final points, I think the election is coming up on what is it?

John Ferretti
The election is on June 24 we’re currently in the early voting process, which started last Saturday and runs through this Sunday, and then you’ll have in person voting on Election Day. Likely we won’t know on June 24 who the winner is because every poll, even the most pro Cuomo poll at this point, has this going eight, 910, rounds of of ranked choice voting. So after every round, the lowest vote getter gets eliminated. So this is very likely to go into the eighth, ninth, 10th round. Dollars, and even the best polls for Cuomo show him with like a 2% above a majority 52% so and you can never tell how these things are going to work out in these simulations, but you but one thing that I have seen is that the the people on the progressive side of the wing of the Democratic Party have united in a way that you never seen before. So for example, lander has cross endorsed Mamdani. Mamdani has cross endorsed lander and so on. And the Working Families Party has told people not to rank Cuomo at all. And all of those candidates have told people not to rank Cuomo at all. So that means that if Mamdani is the leading progressive candidate, as rounds go on, more and more voters are going to go to him, break for him and not for Cuomo. Whether that’s enough, we’ll see. You know, but it’s going to be some very interesting times coming.

John Reimann
Well, thanks very much, John for your time, and we’ll definitely, hopefully we’ll hear from you again, of course, after the election is determined.

John Ferretti
Of course, yeah, and look to be on the same side of the barricades as you, and many, many of our struggles and nationwide.

John Reimann
Well, we have been, so far, I don’t see that changing, of course. Okay, thanks again, John. Thank you.