Transcription
What do you think of the phrase Epstein class? I still prefer billionaire class.
[laughter]
Me, too. Yeah, yeah. Um, because they're all they're all guilty. Yeah, yeah.
[laughter]
Right. It just seems like we're paving the way for some billionaire who's not in the Epstein files to be like, "Yeah, I'm one of the good ones." And it's like I think there are good billionaires. That's No, they're all they're all criminals, you know? So.
Welcome to Doom Scroll. I'm your host, Joshua Citarella. My guest is Claire Valdez, a union organizer, artist, and Democratic Socialist running for Congress in New York 7th. What convinced you to run for New York 7th? You do not strike me as the kind of person who got into this to get famous or launch a media brand or whatever. You were asked to run in the past, you did not. So, what convinced you this time?
It took a long time to convince me on this one. Um
That's That's a good sign. A lot of people get into this for the wrong reasons. We need union members in Congress. Um, if union density in the United States is low, union density in in Congress is abysmal. It's like a handful of people who have any direct relationship to the labor movement. My primary purpose in being in office really is to increase union density, to get as many people into unions as possible. So, I feel such anger thinking about what it was like to, um, like clock in and clock out at some dead-end job that paid too little like so little money, that had very bad benefits, that demanded so much of my time and energy, um, and gave me no dignity or respect back.
Mhm.
Um, it's a feeling that I think a lot of people share, a sense of like powerlessness. And being in a union was the antidote to that. It was about feeling powerful and capable of changing my working conditions and my co-workers' working conditions. Um, and I think that experience is so essential, um, to bring to the halls of power where, you know, so many Congress members are landlords or managers or you know, like come from like generational wealth and are just like not representative of working people. They're like such freaks.
[laughter]
What do you what do you think about the NLRB just got decimated with the Trump administration? How do we how do we approach this? We've got to basically replace everyone who works there, it seems like.
Yeah, no, it's a really bad situation and it's especially chilling to a lot of higher ed labor organizing right now. So I kind of view the UAW as like very attuned to. It's it's a bad it's bad. It's a really bad situation. I mean, we have to yeah.
The worst it's ever been actually? Is that fair to say?
It might be. Yeah, it's gotten pretty dire.
It's like Reagan levels of bad.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We haven't gotten to well, I mean, we're basically at PATCO at this point with the way they're treating federal workers. Um Yeah, it's really it's really abysmal. So we need to win back power so we can we can transform the NLRB and make it make it even better. I mean, honestly under Biden it was like they were really fighting for workers. I think we can always do better than Biden. It's
[laughter]
Yeah, I I get a lot of heat for this, but I think that that shift was really significant. Not to say that Biden's record was perfect, but it was just such a sea change compared to what the consensus had been since basically Bill Clinton onward. I felt that it was really significant.
Too. On the on the topic of affordability, you've done an extraordinary amount of canvassing and talking to people in New York 7th. What is it like to speak with people who are kind of outside of maybe your and my ideological bubble? Maybe they voted for Cuomo, maybe they even voted for Trump, but like how do you you know, speak to their worldview and and win them over?
I mean, we have to talk about the affordability crisis that we're all in, you know? It doesn't matter who you voted for. Odds are your rent went up this year. It's increasingly hard to get to get ahead in New York City. Um The day-to-day cost of just like living and paying rent and paying for child care and gas bills going up and um transit is more expensive now. Like all of that is already such a burden, but trying to plan for a future, like trying to imagine retiring, trying to imagine like putting savings, you know, away, like forget about it. Um and so I think we can always start from kind of like an economic position of wow, we are incredibly precarious. Um maybe we have different ideas about how to fix that problem, um but we can start with at least the problem is real and we're both experiencing it and we want to solve it. Um and so, like that's always the kind of like first thing is like are you a renter? Did your rent go up? Um
Yeah. Yeah. And and we go from and we go from there. Um but I think people are people have been receptive. Um It is, granted, a very, very progressive district, but there are certainly enclaves of more, you know, conservative people who um regardless of their politics, yeah, are experiencing the pinch. I mean, it's it's hard not to notice that most people are working more and they're getting paid less.
Yep. But their ideas of how to fix it are kind of all over the place and what they think the problem is is kind of a moving target for for different people. And I think at the end of the day, if you just give them the social democratic argument, I think it does win.
Mhm. But uh we've been talking about a meme called Brandolini's Law, which is a little bit of a side quest here, but uh the amount of energy needed to refute conspiracy theories is an order of magnitude greater than that needed to produce it. And so there's some activities where you can just throw away all of your energy and resources and just you'll you'll never win those those people over. Um and so in the idea of like canvassing and getting people out to vote, there may be some people that it's not worth persuading because their idea of what the problem even is could be some, you know, metaphysical nonsense that you we can't even have a rational conversation about.
Mhm. Uh but I guess I'm I'm curious about, in your experience, what percentage of society do you think is winnable? Like how many people can we really convince? Um is it an 80% majority of people that could get behind a social democratic agenda? Is it a niche 25% that we have to, you know, hyper mobilize to uh to achieve victories? Or like what is your sense of uh the majority of people that we can potentially convince about some of these ideas?
I think it I think it's majority of people. Um I think these ideas are resonant and I think if we're going to truly win our democracy, and if we're going to really advance a true democratic socialist vision, social democratic, you know, whatever, it has to be a majority of people. We have to get a majority of people on on board. Um and I think it's possible. Um I think, like I said, people have the same frustrations with their private health insurance or with their like terrible management company or um you know, national grid. Yeah. You know, all of And these are all private private companies that are making our lives much much worse. Um and I think it's um I think it's possible to get people on board with the vision that the state can provide for them. Uh the state can can help out and make their lives a little bit easier and give them some breathing room so they can have a little bit more time with their family, a little bit more time with their hobby, a little bit more time um doing whatever they want to do. Um so I think it's it's really essential that we win the majority. Um and I think it's possible. The the message is resonant. And I remember canvassing in Sunnyside in my assembly campaign and talking to a woman who we had a very long uh and funny conversation.
Conspiracy-minded, I I
Yeah, yeah.
Um and perhaps an anti-vaxxer. But we landed
It's It's surprisingly widespread. The the level now. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But what did she What was she telling you?
Um, I can't even remember what she was telling me about vaccines. But what we landed on was uh healthcare should be free for everyone. Yes. So we like come Yeah, yeah. We got to the end of the conversation and there was consensus that like Yeah. these private company you know, the private healthcare industry um is wrecking our lives and healthcare should be free and available for everyone. Yeah. Um, so you know, I think it's possible to arrive there.
Yeah, that's um that's a fantastic example. Yeah, I mean I'm I'm a little bit obsessed with this question over the last few episodes, but I've just I've noticed generally that if you would talk to people on the left about what percentage of society is winnable, like the number of people that are unwinnable has kind of crept up in the last few years. And this seems to have arrived like right on the heels of these historic shifts towards like national populist candidates that they they won from basically what I think should be our coalition, you know, the working class vote moving towards the conservative conservative Republican parties. And then yeah, this perfect example of like people might not have to have coherent ideas on everything, but they can agree on just the bare basics and that will get us to this kind of majority that we need to win in a democratic society. So that's Yeah, that's a wow, fantastic. One at a time.
[laughter]
We're blowing their minds. Yeah, yeah. And hopefully you have some good canvassers that are patient and generous with their time as well. You mentioned Patco though, so this is a little bit of a tangent. Maybe we'll put this behind the paywall cuz I don't think people care about the granular history for this, but um in the 1980s, you get Reagan and Thatcher and it kind of cements this coup of the common sense. We call it the neoliberal turn and then globalization happens and and all these things. But, basically when uh Reagan fires the air traffic controllers, this just like is the nail in the coffin for the American labor movement. Uh in the I think mid to late '80s, the Mitterrand government in France was kind of the the social democratic government that had held on the most resisting that tide, and even they have to crumble. And this is, you know, an elected socialist. So, the decisions that that came from that on the left were kind of like, "This uphill battle is so uphill." And for a lot of like strategic, very granular, in the weeds details about, you know, people leaving their coalition and the different kind of class constituency that made up that block, people basically came to the assumption that although we we are of the socialist left, the most we can hope to do is just weather the storm of neoliberalism. And so, the type of politics that you're advancing, the stuff that really inspires me, what has me, you know, so enthusiastic about your campaign, is that you sound like the type of labor organizer that just didn't take no for an answer in the 1980s. So, how do you How do you think about these things now? Like, is it more difficult terrain to charge up? Do you have optimistic expectations for our ability to rebuild the labor movement? Like, you seem basically undeterred by, you know, the the the past 40 years of neoliberalism.
For people from millennials right now in New York City and in New York 7, so many of us feel like we can't afford a home. Can't imagine having children. Yeah, I don't just feel that way, but
[laughter]
Like, it just feels like so much of the future that we had anticipated is foreclosed. So, like, let's let's fight. Let's throw down, you know? Yeah, my my friends in they live in Berlin. One of them was born in Tennessee, and they had a child maybe 2 years ago. And they did this enormous amount of basically, it might have literally been a spreadsheet about what are the services that they can utilize in Berlin, what is available in the US. And they did the math and they were like, if we want to have our child that they love so much and is a beautiful baby boy, um they literally could not move back to the US. They could not afford to do it. And yeah, that seems just like such a shameful tragedy that people even have to make those decisions. We can't provide for them being like, you know, unprecedentedly wealthy.
Mhm. To watch part two of this episode, you can support the show on Patreon. Uh a lot of your campaign, you've used this phrase, the golden age of organized labor. So, I'm going to dump some statistics at you here, but uh 1912 is the height of the uh Socialist Party of America, SPA, co-founded by Eugene Debs. Mhm. In the late '30s, so like a kind of half generation after the peak of that organization, America goes to a all-time high of 33% union density. Previously, it was around 10 or 11.
Mhm. We just so coincidentally happen to be around 10 or 11 right now.
Mhm. At that time, uh the SPA has 113,000 uh members of the organization. And adjusted as a percentage of the population now, we would need around like 300,000, 330,000 DSA members, but um what are these kind of preconditions for a new golden age of organized labor? I think there is a a correlation there between, you know, the the popularity and um and uh size of a socialist party. And, you know, DSA nationally, I think is like around 100,000 people now. I don't think we've quite crossed that threshold, so
I saw 95K recently, but it's a little higher now, I guess. Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah.
[laughter]
Yeah, that is the goal. It's it's trend it's trending upwards.
It was trending up. Yeah, yeah. So, we've got more ground to gain there, obviously.
You look at these graphs for union density, it's like low, low, low, and then it's just parabolic. It just spikes, and it goes from like 10 to like a third of the country within 5 years. Yeah, and upstream of that is a kind of dedicated organized socialist group.
Mhm, mhm, exactly. So, hopefully, you know, the the same kind of correlation can happen here. Um having, I think, a a thriving like democratic socialist movement in the country is is a is a good precondition, I think. Yeah. And certainly, the primary reason that I'm running for Congress is because I think we need a thriving labor movement that um that can actually help advance things like Medicare for all, um housing for all, all of that. Um and so, there's, you know, there's there's federal policy that I think would be helpful, obviously, like the PRO Act. Um we've been talking about a federal fund for new organizing, things like that can kind of like directly and materially help unions and workers that are are trying to organize in their shops. And I think those things will help kind of build that density back up. Um but we're also in this like funny chicken-and-egg situation where it's like to win those demands, we need a thriving labor movement. To get the thriving labor movement, we kind of have to win some of these like policy proposals. We have to kind of be doing both and organizing for all of it at the same time.
Yeah, so this is where we're kind of merging into this next question here, but um a lot of the conversation on the, you know, left media ecosystem in the last few years has been that there's this like a fork or wedge in the Democratic Party of this neoliberal consultant class, and then the remnants of a labor movement, which has been, you know, decimated over the past 40 years. And one of the ways in which you make the Democratic Party accountable is by having a very strong labor movement to discipline their bad decisions that, you know, the corporate wing corporate wing wants them to do. Uh and how do we get further upstream of that? Well, you got to have an organized socialist group
[laughter]
To canvas, get these people uh in office do all of this stuff. So just running through a few different things here Pro Act Medicare for all housing for all what else is part of this like plank or policy platform what is like core to the agenda?
Yeah, a four-day work week federal jobs yes, it'd be nice if federal jobs guarantee and enhanced unemployment benefits. I talked about the kind of a federal fund for new organizing. I think we need to be really ambitious for ever the federal government has supposedly been like a new neutral party and kind of like labor negotiations. It really hasn't been though and I think we need to be really proactively fighting for workers to to organize their workplaces. Um, it's essential for defending our democracy. It's essential for making people's lives affordable and like I said if we if we win more unions of more people can recognize their power in the same way that I did when I was organizing in my union recognize themselves as real political agents in their lives in their own lives and the lives of their co-workers and their friends and family. That's unbelievable power for the working class. And if the Democratic Party can stop treating you know unions as some you know appendage of the Democratic Party and instead as a real pillar in American society and in our democracy. I think we can we can get there but we need the Democratic Party to come around.
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Well on that on that topic what is your long-term vision for the Democratic Party? I think we share many similar criticisms of their recent behavior but yeah, what do you see in the future? What is your most kind of optimistic goal for this thing?
If we can be a party that puts working people at the heart of our agenda. If we can really fight to advance things like Medicare for all, um, you know, and lift as we said earlier, that lift the floor for more workers and more people, raise wages, raise the minimum wage, um and fight for a world where people don't have to just like s- beg to scrape by, yeah, and re- win real dignity for people. Um I think we can we can write the ship a little bit um and bring people back who either sat out in previous elections or voted for the Republican Party and Trump in the previous elections, you know. We've ignored the real material pain of working people for a long, long time. Um and, you know, this is this is exactly how we got Trump.
Yeah. Yeah, um I want to talk about Medicare for all for a second, but um of the many unpopular opinions I've expressed on this podcast, not unpopular [laughter] opinions, unpopular observations, but if you look at the swing of um voters who moved towards Trump in 2020 4 and then voted for Mondaire like it is mathematically impossible that a significant portion of people who voted for Trump were also won over by the affordability agenda of Mondaire, so they are reachable. Like the evidence exists. Uh how do you feel, however, about Medicare for all um as a political slogan now? Like is that as effective as it was 8 years ago? Are people like, uh I heard that and so I they didn't get it last time. Like does that still effectively mobilize people?
I think it does. I think we've let the movement around Medicare for all um it's given out a little bit. I think like because, you know, the Bernie Bernie's campaign fizzled, you know, ended up ending sadly in 2020. Um it the it's not maybe as popular as it had been or it's not the um a demand that I think has been it's not close to being realized, unfortunately, but I I health care is it's a profound expense in people's lives. And I think every single person has a story of a friend, a loved one, a family member who faced some sort of catastrophe because of something really minor, you know, I have a friend who was eating potato chips one day and his tooth filling fell out. And he was an art handler at the time, no health insurance, independent contractor.
Terribly expensive and terribly painful.
Yes. And just kind of like, you know, went shopping for a dentist to help and the first quote he got was like $6,000. You know, that's Oh. ruinous, you know?
Yeah, yeah, pencil that in.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, everyone Yeah, everyone has that a little bit of give in their budget for totally, totally. But it's just such a common occurrence that someone could face life could be completely derailed because they stepped off a curb funny or they got a bad diagnosis or they ate a potato chip the wrong way. And that's that indignity is so I think deeply felt by people. And I think even if Medicare for all is not a slogan that penetrates that anger and frustration, people feel profound anger at private health insurance, frustration with their private health insurance. And they want to be able to go to the doctor and get care and not have to interface with a really like Byzantine and punitive and um like useless health care system. I think we all have had that experience.
Yeah, yeah, the health care system seems to exist just to like do a bunch of jobs creation for middle men to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. So, I'm I'm totally on the same page. I think I picked this up from Amber and Bosker and Cara, but like upstream of the process of building the labor movement, the biggest advantage we can give people, priority one, is national health service because that just does so much to empower workers versus employers. I guess the only thing I'm curious about and I haven't really worked this out but like the political slogan we saw in a tremendous amount of competition where everybody came up with their own like Medicare for all who want it and also have like a crypto fund and we're a small business owner and got fast or whatever. Um I'm just curious about like what is the most kind of what mobilizes the political imagination the most. Um on that topic, what about housing for all? Can we talk a little bit about that policy platform?
So, housing is probably the most one of the most expensive things that we all experience in our daily lives. Um New York 7 is 77% tenants too. It's a huge tenant population. And that represents, you know, natural residents, market rate um apartment renters like myself. I think especially in New York City where the real estate industry has a profound grip on the market and has profound political influence and political power, we have to be thinking about and advancing a vision of housing that's decommodified and that's actually permanently affordable for everyday people. So, we talk a lot about like social housing which is exciting and great and those who might have spent more time in Europe or probably more familiar with it. Um but social housing is kind of state managed and owned but democratically managed by the people who live in it. Um it's permanently affordable and it's insulated from market forces. Someone could pay 25% of their income for rent forever which is such a so so much more helpful than being at the whim of a landlord or a management company that could arbitrarily raise your rent with very little notice. And we have some tenant protections here in New York City and state but at the end of the day like my landlord could double my rent and I would have 90 days before that happens um to find another home. Um and
A little bit of background just have like comparison for these numbers. These statistics are not exact, but roughly if you begin around the 1970s up until the 2020s
Mhm. The percentage of your income that goes to rent goes up by like 10% every year.
Mhm. So now people are paying about 50% of their income towards rent in New York. And it's like that you can't build a functioning economy at like draining half of the value from your population. Like it really is crazy.
No, it's wild.
You know, I'm I've been assured the market will take care of it, so I'm not too worried.
[laughter]
Thank you, market.
[laughter]
How about um I want to talk a little bit about your uh your media strategy. Um Zócalo has I think just completely changed the game with how people think about these things. There's another extraordinary example from um Claudia Sheinbaum, uh a program called the Mañanera where um most popular watched live stream in Mexico just speaks directly to the population. Yeah, what is your kind of strategy for using social media, reaching out to people? Um being on this show perhaps is part of it,
[laughter]
But uh how are you how are you thinking about these things?
We have to reach people where they're at and where they're at is watching podcasts similar to this. They're watching Hasan They might be scrolling on Reels. Um they might be on Twitter. Um I think we need to be as available as possible when making um the policies that we want to advance as as as digestible as possible, as engaging as possible, and make them connect directly to people's lives, too. You know, a lot of federal policy feels like it's pretty far away from our lived experience, but you know, the billions of dollars we were spending every day bombing Iran, that money could go to us. That could be
$28 billion so far. That's going to be out of date by the time this This published, too. Yeah, I know. It's a unbelievable. Um but that money could be spent on on on healthcare for everyone. It could be spent on putting elevators into our train stations so we can actually get up and down. You know, like there's the list goes on and on and on of things that we could be using that money for. Um and so making sure that um the decisions at the federal level um are tied directly to people's lives. And I think this is like the success of Mondaire Jones' campaign, too. Um fast and free buses, um universal childcare, all of those things people feel those things so immediately and directly. Um I took a bus today um and it crawled through traffic. Yeah. Yeah.
Um if we can speed those buses up, that saves people, you know, hours of their lives at the end of, you know, a month or so. So, um I think yeah, the media strategy is very much about like reaching people where they actually are, making sure that policy is approachable and understandable, and that's directly connected to their lives, and that people feel like they can participate in the campaign and be part of this movement um for uh a better world.
Yeah, just just to underline the the commute time thing, it sounds a little bit annoying, but I think um or the most impactful way it's been related to me is that for most working people, that additional commute commute time comes out of their childcare time, where they would be doing, you know, formula and diapers and all that kind of necessary work. But they have to spend another 30 minutes, and you add that up over the week, and it's like it's a lot of time, actually.
Oh, totally. When I worked at Columbia, I lived in Ridgewood, and it was, you know, an hour and change both ways to get to work, and it's like, "Okay, so now my day is 10 hours instead of 8 hours, you know?"
Right. Right. A few months ago, we started putting our episodes onto Spotify. If you're subscribed on Spotify Premium, you can watch our episodes ad-free. The best way to support the show is on Patreon or Substack. We do a bonus episode with every guest. Follow us on Spotify Premium, Patreon, Substack, maybe somewhere else in the future. Let's get back to the episode. Um okay, so what are we looking at now? Um what do you need? What do we need to do to get you into the government?
So, we need volunteers primarily. So, this is going to be a race that's won at the doors. Um we can expect lots of outside money spent on this race. Look at your cast of characters. You've got AI, cryptocurrency, potentially APAC, real estate. We'll pour endless amounts of money into this race. What we can and will use to cut through that noise is people. So, if you have never knocked on a door before or phone banked before, now's the time to get in there. Um this is really how I started um kind of organizing within DSA and within my union, too, doing kind of um visits around different shops, talking people directly, going all over um New York City to canvas for Bernie Sanders back in the day. Went to New Hampshire for him.
Oh, wow. Wow. Put on my snow boots, did all that. Um Amazing. But it's like I I love canvassing and I'm like a real uh evangelist for it. It's like the most grounding political activity you can possibly do. Profoundly humbling, too. Yeah, you got to you got to talk to people that you otherwise might not run into. Yeah, and share your politics um and hear and hear theirs and find that common ground in the moment. It's really um it can be really hard, but I find it incredibly joyful. Um but that's how we win, you know? Um it's not just getting the message out there and making sure people know that there's a race happening and um and and what our vision for the the seat is. It's also getting people to realize that they can be part of the political process and are are powerful themselves and can knock doors, can organize canvases, can even run for State Assembly and Congress.
Yeah. Yeah, when you talked about building our own political machine before, I think primarily this implies canvassing, which has been kind of the the engine of the DSA and getting these candidates in. Um they've just had an extraordinary effort uh mobilizing people to knock doors. What are the other uh little bit of background? I gave a talk at the European Parliament um earlier this week actually. Woke up at 4:30 in the morning to give it. But we were talking about left internet cultures, the role of media, and how we can make an impact with all of these things. Fundraising is a kind of clear opportunity, but priority number one right now is to get volunteers for door-knocking. Is that that's your understanding as well?
You know, the canvassing operation is obviously really important. We want people to go and talk to their neighbors. We also want people to understand that they can help drive strategy and make decisions and and think really, you know, people know their neighborhoods very well. They know how to approach their neighbors. Um and to take an active part in in helping drive that that process. Mhm. Um fundraising also important. Um these races are not cheap and unfortunately there are no matching funds at the congressional level unlike the city and state. So, yeah, always always need more funds. Yeah, we don't have we don't have a lot of billionaires in our Rolodex right now.
Um
[laughter]
Endorsements uh Ideally we never will either. Probably not. Yeah, if we do then we know something's going wrong. Yeah, uh you were on Hasan Piker's stream. Uh this is maybe like two months ago. What was the impact of like that level of media exposure? Did you see a bump in like followers, fundraising? Like what did you see after that?
That's a really good question. I have no idea.
[laughter]
That's So this is this is kind of the thing is that I'm just realizing particularly through that experience in the um European Parliament is that there's not a lot of people either in the academy and definitely not in billionaire-funded think tanks that have even thought seriously about these things. So, how do we like measure what is worthwhile media exposure? I have a few theories about it, but I'm kind of just curious to poll people in this space cuz it's it's basically void of any kind of serious research. The closest that you get is like kind of liberal progressive candidates that are, you know, in some kind of democratic consultant network, um, which is not exactly the politics that I want to see enacted. Give us a little bit of background with, uh, your involvement with the DSA.
DSA runs a incredibly democratic process for making endorsements. I think it's kind of like the the real muscle behind the organization, and I think the thing that really, like I said, drew me in, um, because it it's profoundly democratic. Um, it can be very arduous. Um, but we, you know, start thinking about districts we might want to run in, um, and analyzing the like political histories there, what coalition partners might be there, if they're DSA members, if we have candidates, um, and really being incredibly deliberative about where we're putting our resources because they are finite.
Um,
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that kind of strategizing is something that I think very few organizations do in a really in-depth way. Um, if you're just like a regular person walking in off the street, you can still, well, you need to be a member.
[laughter]
You should join DSA. Um, but if you're a regular, you know, if you're a dues-paying member of DSA, you can come in and participate in that, and we're not going to like ask you if you like have the right degree or have the job background or whatever. You can like weigh in, um, and you have a vote just like, you know, the mayor has a vote, like I have a vote. Um, and we can make decisions about, you know, where we're putting our resources and where we are trying to advance the the socialist left in New York City. Um, and that's very cool, um, and very unlike, I think, a lot of organizations that make endorsements. For people who maybe have not had to deal with the math on this, like, if you have a certain pie of resources, you could fund every candidate to like 10%, but it won't be that effective. So, you kind of have to see like where is it most useful to concentrate these resources? Where do you stand the best chance to win? Um so, that's really impactful. We're not always making the decision based on the same kind of set of criteria. Like power can be multiplied in ways that are really unexpected. Um like the mayor's race. I think a lot of people were worried about the resources we're going to pour into that race, if we'd have the reach, and what we found is that
The reach. Yeah, and like
[laughter]
And like you know we were able to multiply our power in like a really substantial way because we could go anywhere in the city and talk to anyone about the mayor's race. Um and so, I think it it's like every year there are new kind of considerations and we learn something new and um I think what we're finding is that taking risks can pay off in really unbelievable ways.
They really did. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm getting sick of winning. We're winning
[laughter]
So much. They clean that snow unbelievable I've never I've never seen the city function this well. I've lived here for 19 years now.
Yeah. It's incredible. Incredible. Um you're currently at 70 76% probability of winning on Kalshi.
Um
[laughter]
If you do win this race, which I hope that you do you will be an SIO, socialist in office. What does it mean to be a DSA endorsed candidate in the Congress?
We're going to find out, I think. Um so, I can really speak to this at the state level. Um in New York State, we have nine socialists in office between the um State Assembly and the State Senate. Um and we meet every single week. We talk through strategy. We talk through different legislation that might be coming up, how we're approaching the budget negotiations, all kinds of different things. What's really powerful about being in that committee is that we um again, we're relying on each other and on um infrastructure that is kind of devised by DSA. Whereas, I think a lot of legislators have to rely on lobbyists or rely on the Democratic Party or for fundraising or for policy input.
Research, too.
Yeah.
Research, all of that. Um and we've been able to develop this this project that we can be more independent and kind of and move collectively, too. Um in the same way that you know, we can take the risks on, you know, things like running for the mayor's office. We can take bigger risks together because we're not doing something by ourselves. Um we're kind of sharing the risk across nine different people.
Right. Right. You can vote as a block, too. You can also, you know, withhold your vote as a block.
Yeah. What about at the national level? So, we're going to try and bring that exact same energy to the national level. Um I think there's a lot of organizing that needs to happen in Congress. And we have um some socialists in office already. Um but it's a huge body and we're definitely going to be in the minority.
Yeah. Yeah. And so, um building coalition will be important. Um and finding common ground with some of our non-socialist colleagues. Um but it's going to take a lot of organizing, I think. It's a it's a new it's a new challenge, for sure. Um but one that I'm I'm very excited to to think about.
But necessary. Yeah. So, your background in art school, there's this thing that has been very popular to discuss in the last few years called the professional managerial class, which is maybe representative of the other wing of the Democratic Party now. Um how did you fall out of the PMC pipeline going to a art school university, this kind of thing?
[laughter]
Um wow, what a great question. I mean, I kind of graduated into the recession, um like many of my my peers. Uh and ended up just staying on at Trader Joe's um for many years after I graduated college. Um so, it'd been kind of the thing that sustained me during school, but became my main source of income um outside of school, too. Um and so, I I know. I think there was um there was a time in my life where I was working at Trader Joe's and part-time at a gallery and I had an unpaid internship and I was running this like project space and working truly 7 days a week like half of which was
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Half of which was for, you know, a paycheck which was not a very substantial paycheck.
Right. I think because it felt so so impossible to access the kind of stability that I imagined professional managerial class experiences I just like fell myself I like fell out of that that possibility. Yeah. So yeah, I just never never fully joined I think um in part because I was going to Trader Joe's every single day and lifting boxes off of pallets and yeah, running a cash cash register.
The labor market for PMC opportunities just closes down for for a long while. Mhm. Uh there's there's a fantastic essay called The Rise and Fall of the Professional Managerial Class. This comes from Barbara and John Ehrenreich. I know you'll be familiar with this but I'm saying this for the the students sorry the audience that is watching this. They write it around the period of Occupy Wall Street which is a few years after 2008 so these were probably formative experiences for you and me people of our age. And what they hypothesize in that essay is that when the PMC was coined in like 1971 that that strata of society has become precariatized such that their economic interests now align with the working class. And so around 2011 at that point was kind of the first break at which what previously might have been the middle class they now have shared interests with the workers. And I'm curious about your thoughts on maybe that essay in particular or just generally that block of society which was previously middle class. Do you think that they are being successfully won over to the social democratic agenda.
Um I I do think so. I think yeah, absolutely. Um I think because again, we're seeing people who went to maybe an elite university, got the education that they were supposed to, um did all the right things, had the internships, and still can't really make their rent um at the end of the month, um can't progress in their careers, um are the kind of like downwardly mobile millennials that we all know and love. Um And potentially are.
[laughter]
I'm glad you said it. And uh you know who you are.
[laughter]
Um But I think we're winning, you know, those folks, many of them are, you know, people in my life, uh are being won over to this um to this program because it offers I think a different vision than the one we had set out to achieve. I think when I said I want to work on the arts, I imagined myself being a curator in a museum or doing something down the line that would have um uh a lot of cultural capital or something like that.
And what I found in working, you know, for 40k a year, um and getting not getting paid for overtime and all of that is like what I really what I really wanted was just like time off the job. Like I wanted to be able to go on vacation sometimes and spend time with friends and maybe spend time in the studio. I think that's like a a different vision of the good life than a lot of us were maybe expecting. Um I think in the place of uh like professional success, um the thing that I decided that I really wanted, and I think maybe this is resonant for others, is just like a stable life and security and to clock out at 5:00 and if you want me to stay until 5:30, that's that's overtime. That's time and a half, baby. Like Mhm. pay up. Yeah. And that's that's so much more control of your life than I ever expected to have. Um I think maybe that's why people are coming over to this other vision of a social democratic society where our needs are provided for and our quality of life is more stable and humane.
You went to DC as a teenager?
Mhm. Okay. How was that experience? What was the purpose of that trip?
Yes. So I went to DC because I I won a congressional art competition when I was in high school.
Oh, congratulations.
Thank you so much. My greatest achievement.
[laughter]
But I I made this piece of it was during the Iraq War. It was obviously a time of real radicalization for many millennials like myself and I made a piece of anti-war art called Mission Accomplished.
Yeah. Okay. Do you have Do you have a photo of this?
I do. Okay. Could we like put it in the episode like
[laughter]
Right between us here? That's Okay. Yeah, we'll we'll put it. And then you can also put the picture of me meeting So I got to meet my congressman who's Randy Neugebauer who represented West Texas. So it was yeah, my first time going to DC and spending time in the capital.
What did he say about this artwork?
I don't even remember. I think the the work had a technical capability to it that I think was the thing that people liked.
What was the technical capability?
It's a it's a nice drawing and I think they were like unwilling to kind of see the political message behind it as much as it was incredibly
[laughter]
Obvious. Wait, so did did they just read it as like, oh nice mission accomplished, yeah?
Yeah, they must have, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[laughter]
I don't know who made the decision to accept it but they have a a really goofy picture of myself as a very awkward high school student standing next to my congressman.
That's adorable. Doing our best out here.
[laughter]
On this uh uh topic of being anti-war, Mhm. there's a lot of uh reflection and reckoning post-2024 about the impact of the genocide in Gaza on people not showing up to vote for the Democrats. Um what should they have done differently in that election?
I mean, they should have actually worked for a ceasefire. Um they shouldn't have been propping up the Israeli government as they were committing genocide. And the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris and everyone, they should have been honest about that. Um I think what was being asked of them in so many instances, I mean, like even the you know, the DNC um wanting to have a Palestinian speaker on stage, um really unbelievably small asks from a movement that was watching members of their families be murdered en masse, people being displaced, you know, and again, billions of our tax dollars going towards bombing refugee camps. The list of atrocities is it you know, it's endless. Um and we were all watching it happen in real time on our phones, um broadcast for the entire world to see, and there was no reckoning from the Democratic Party that A, they had a hand in making it happen, they had a responsibility to make it stop, and they had a responsibility to just be honest with the American public about the facts that we could all see in front of us. There's such um willful dissonance between the leadership and I think the vast majority of Americans were horrified every single day seeing this happen, um and an unwillingness from the Democratic Party to change course, um and it was one of the reasons, I believe, that they lost the election.
What would your advice be to Democratic candidates in '26 and in '28 about how they position themselves uh around Gaza?
I mean, we're seeing the sea change happen right now. I think there's now the at least the progressive consensus is no more aid to Israel. No aid to an apart- Yeah, I know. To, you know, an apartheid state that's committing a genocide um that's expanding settlements in the West Bank. Um Again, the list of atrocities goes on and on. So, I think there's finally consensus there. But it's pretty clear from polling where the base of the Democratic Party stands on this issue. And people, you know, politicians should be listening to their bases. And it's no one wants to see our taxpayer dollars propping this this up. And I think that's going to be the winning message not just in lefty districts either, not just in in New York 7. I think across the country people are fed up with it.
I want to do one last plug if people want to get in touch. We will keep donation links for fundraising in the newsletter, in the video description. If people are ready to sign up, canvas, knock doors, we have only so many days before the election on June 23rd as a reminder for people. Where can they find you on socials? How can they best get involved?
Yeah, Claire for New York on socials. Claire Valdez for congress.com for the website. Sign up for a canvassing shift on the website. Um We'll be doing all kinds of calls to action. We're actually doing a like a a merch event tomorrow in Bushwick. So, you can come screen print a shirt or a tote bag and then go hit the doors.
Claire Valdez thank you so much.
Thanks for having me. And good luck.
Thank you. Good luck to us all.
[laughter] [gasps]
To watch part two of this episode, you can support the show on Patreon.
You know that.
[music]
Yeah.