Comrade Chronicles, Issue 1

COMRADE CHRONICLES

WE see. we speak up. we publish. issue 1

In this issue: On Dublin by Tej Budhram & United in Anger: Act Up and Exploiting the Power of Art for Action by Ciela Diffenbaugh

Note from the editors: Thank you to everyone who submitted pieces! Keep an eye out for the next issue.

Cover art by Saesha Jindal Comrade Chronicles is a publication of NYU YDSA Follow us on instagram @nyuydsa for meeting times!

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On Dublin By Tej Budhram For a week, I went to Dublin to canvass for Paul Murphy, a TD (Teachta Dála, member of the lower house called the Dall Éireann) for People Before Profit, a socialist party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Island.

Here are some reflections.

“My bathroom looked like the Do Lung Bridge this morning.

If I see the chambermaid in the hall, I'm going to avoid her gaze.”- Anthony Bourdain after eating Irish “food”

It should come as no surprise that a country where roughly one in ten adults report using cocaine or where ten companies owe a majority of corporate taxes would be a breeding ground for populist politics. Ireland is known as a world-renowned tax haven where multiple big businesses (including Apple, Google, Microsoft etc.)

1 headquarter to take advantage of lower tax rates and help boost the local economy.

In essence, this corporatist control over tax revenue is why the Irish government is the way it is: moderate, neoliberal, and failing. Owned and pushed by two main parties–Fianna Fáil on the moderate center and Fine Gael on the right–this brand of politics has followed

Ireland since the declaration of the Republic in 1922.

When I landed in Ireland, I really had no idea what to expect. I had planned the trip about a week before going with some other NYU YDSA members who ended up being unable to attend. As far as I knew, I was flying into a country I had never been to to work with people I had never met. With the exception of Desmond O’Halloran (the chair of the Bread and Roses caucus of Y/DSA which I and others in NYU YDSA are in; pictured in the middle of the alleyway we were walking through in the photo below), I knew no one’s name.

Before I continue, I feel it necessary to say that I don’t think all Irish people are racist.

I don’t think all of any group can share one characteristic.

But, in line with the rest of Europe, far-right and racist politics seem to be dominating the scene in Ireland right now.

There was a time for left-wing politics to flourish (like much of the world) in the post-GFC

populist kick which brought such tribunes as Sanders in the US and Corbyn in the UK to power. In Ireland, frustration with the post-GFC liberal government’s imposition of charges in 2014 on how much water people used propelled Paul Murphy into relevance and into office. He ran under the banner of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, a left-wing populist grouping led by the Socialist Party. Eventually, in 2021, he would leave the Socialist Party over political divisions and join another member party of the Alliance- People Before Profit, forming a new caucus within the party called RISE. But, when I landed in Ireland, I found a party trying to stave off far-right gains.

In the local elections the summer before, the far-right made massive gains including MMA-fighter-turned-racist Paddy Houlihan winning not one but two seats on the same city council by running in both of them (somehow, this is legal) and local councillors such as Gavin Pepper cruising to election.

In Ireland, the far-right tends not to coalesce into a party for two main reasons. One, the country as a whole is still not as uncouth as to elect outright authoritarians to government. Two, Ireland has a strong history of

“Independent” representatives (i.e. people elected who represent no party) that tend to be right-leaning ninetimes-out-of-ten, and a lot of the far-right ride the discontent these independents espouse into election.

How is Ireland fighting this far-right rise? What lessons can we learn from them that we can take into DSA? Well, you’re in luck, because I am about to tell you.

First, People Before Profit have a strong party apparatus that is constantly pushing out propaganda for their cause. Their social media is absolutely awesome and they get money from the government to create these pieces of art that they post. But, I hear you say, DSA doesn’t have the same money as a political party would in Ireland. But we do have elected officials. This is a personal idea, but maybe our elected officials should be fighting (in NYC and perhaps on a federal level as well) for some of the same things our comrades in Ireland have: multi-member districts, matching funds, rankedchoice voting (If this point interests you, you should read the 1234 proposal from the 2022 NYC-DSA convention or the failed proposal Democratize NYC from this year’s convention).

Additionally, elected officials almost always move en bloc and are very much beholden to the party. They listen to their branch and national advice and follow it. This makes their brand unified. We don’t have such electoral discipline in DSA and there is active disagreement between our electeds on their approach to Palestinian liberation and other pressing issues. Case in point: PBP is actively anti-war and against the war in Ukraine; they en bloc did not clap when Zelenskyy addressed the Dall.

In the USA, DSA nationally is antiZionist and a key part of our endorsement process is committing to protecting protest and agitating against the normalization of Zionism. Rashida Tlaib follows this criteria while AOC does not.

Another fun point: People Before Profit TDs even have a dress code. They refuse to wear suits and call the establishment politicians “suits” to make fun of them. A very small thing, but it helps build that party brand.

Second, on an internal level, how do we build that party

apparatus? In my experience with the party in Dublin, they have a few internal rules that set them apart from DSA that I think would be very beneficial for us to adopt.

It is the opinion of others and myself that DSA should become a political party, but in the intermittent period we need to start thinking of how we differentiate ourselves from Democrats: All staff in any local or national People Before Profit politician’s office are members of the party and act in both a political role and as office staff.

Every elected official in the party takes the National Industrial Minimum Wage as a salary and donates the rest of their government-given wage to the party.

There are general body meetings every year that last for two days and nation-wide conferences every three months that last about an afternoon. While nation-wide is ambitious for a hypothetical DSA conference, maybe branches co-ordinating their conferences to be at the same time three or four times a year would be a good goal for DSA in the future.

Third, every elected official is much more involved in their community than I would reckon any DSA elected

has ever been. I canvassed with Paul in his constituency and every elected official works themselves to the bone actually taking complaints at the door. Every incumbent hosts community town halls, is an active member of community groups, and talks to them, proposing and propagandizing around legislation using constituents as inspiration (for example, Paul proposed a bill around special education and listed every constituent that called him to complain about it). These incumbents build their own personal fiefdom in their constituencies, and the party has always grown election-over-election because of it.

The party’s populist rhetoric and rules that show them being of the people combined with their active rebuttal of far-right messaging while it is spread create a political landscape where no matter the conditions nationally– such as a surge in the far-right–their incumbents weather it and move on. The party’s active rebuttal of far-right messaging while it’s being spread combined with populist rhetoric and rules that show the party as being of the people make it so that no matter the conditions nationally (such as a surge in the far-right), their incumbents weather it and move on.

Maybe we can do the same.

A Publication of NYU YDSA