Democratic Socialists

"I do not stand alone. I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope. … I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago — and I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken. I stand alongside neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall, those in a rush who still lift strangers' strollers up subway stairs, and every person who makes the choice day after day, even when it feels impossible, to call our city home. And while only action can change minds, I promise you this: If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you."

"A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change. And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. What was promised was never pursued, what could have changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier, the wait has only grown longer. In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try."

"And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from—the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers."

"In a city where the mere names of our streets are associated with the innovation of the industries that call them home, we will make the words "City Hall" synonymous with both resolve and results. As we embark upon this work, let us advance a new answer to the question asked of every generation: Who does New York belong to? For much of our history, the response from City Hall has been simple: It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strain to capture the attention of those in power. Working people have reckoned with the consequences. Crowded classrooms and public housing developments where the elevators sit out of order. Roads littered with potholes and buses that arrive half an hour late, if at all. Wages that do not rise and corporations that rip off consumers and employees alike."

"Simitis is good, but he is not PASOK."

"When I took over as Prime Minister, I had already known Andreas for more than thirty years. There were very few PASOK cadres who had been with him for such a long time. Political commentators highlighted our conflicts, the distance that separated us in life and politics, our different behaviors. However, they overlooked our many commonalities: our resistance to the junta, our struggles for the establishment and development of PASOK, our confrontation with the Right, our cooperation for an effective government. We maintained a stable relationship between us, despite any friction."

"Populism transfers the social problem from the plain of ideology to a level that does not disturb the status quo of social relations. The assistance of the state and the benefits derived from it is the sole objective of political struggles in Greece."

"Our political practice followed the same track as that of the right-wing governments; many times we implemented ad hoc policies; we maintained clientelistic relations between government and voters; we made selective allocations of funds and we introduced measures benefiting specific groups. The principle governing our political practice was that the party and the government were always right and that their actions had to be justified;... we do not need attractive slogans that create rising expectations but systematic programming and well-planned action."

"State authority cannot, and must not, dominate economic and social activity."

"Δεν υπάρχει τέλος της ιστορίας. Το σήμερα έχει συνέχεια το αύριο. Από εμάς τους ίδιους εξαρτάται η συνέχεια αυτή."

"Like many other Social Democratic women, she did not examine specifically how Marxist theory related to women, and her approach still remained quite reductionist or economistic when it came to the "woman question." Nevertheless, she showed increasing interest in the crucial role women could play in creating a socialist society and clearly seemed aware of specific problems women faced in the postwar world."

"Throughout her life, in letters and other personal expressions, Balabanoff consistently emphasized her sense of duty to alleviate the sufferings of others. While she recognized that society and nature contained no perfect justice, she believed that self-denial and moral humility provided the only real guidelines for the realization of her ideal "to share the sufferings and deprivations of the poorest among the poor." In the sense that the party had remained her family and the workers her children, the obituary in the Corriere della sera correctly pointed out "the only monogamy to which she felt morally pledged was to that of her own ideology." Peace, equality, social welfare, and justice were her values."

"One writer noted that "her single most remarkable trait [is] her total integrity, which is why she fail[ed] in the game of power politics"; while another wrote that "to listen to her soft, compassionate voice, telling of the suffering of the people of Italy and all over Europe. . is to understand that revolutionary faith can be synonymous with humanitarianism.""

"She had not wavered in what she believed to be the true work of socialists; that is, the education of the masses toward a consciousness of their human and social rights resulting in a spontaneous mass movement that would inevitably lead to an egalitarian society."

"Living in New York, she discovered support for Mussolini in some Italian-American and conservative circles before the United States entered World War II, and so she edited and wrote a small periodical, Il Traditore, which between January, 1942, and May, 1943, contained a series of articles describing Mussolini's early years, his persecution of socialists, and the fascist record of assassinations and brutality in Italy.""

"Balabanoff's position was characteristic of the general movement and in keeping with her previous view that women's rights issues were secondary to the question of the workers' struggle. She sought to make proletarian women and men aware of capitalistic society as their common enemy, but she was most sympathetic to women, since they often bore the burdens of class oppression as well as the brunt of fascism and war. Balabanoff became highly emotional when describing their suffering and hoped to rouse women from their passivity."

"Balabanoff supported the organizing of working-class women and wrote several pamphlets on women's liberation-among them a denunciation of the Baryshnyas, "young ladies from petty-bourgeois families accustomed to idleness and being kept by men of wealth and position." She also maintained that when asked to assume leadership responsibilities in the Women's Union, she refused because she claimed to have neither the interest nor the talent for such work."

"most readers will note that Miss Balabanoff resembles not only some of the early romantic socialists but also some of those active in women's liberation movements today, especially those whose parents represent the affluent society. Above all, Balabanoff provides insights concerning the international socialist movement during the first two decades of the twentieth century. She is especially informative concerning socialism among the poor Italian textile workers in northern Italy and in Switzerland, but she also attended the crucial 1907 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party. Before the war, her extraordinary talents as a speaker and as an interpreter-she spoke six languages fluently-brought her into close contact and often friendship with all of the socialist leaders, Auguste Bebel, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Jules Guesde, Jean Joures, and all of the Italian leaders. Mussolini received her greatest attention and her deepest contempt, not only for his betrayal of socialism in 1914 for French money, but also because of his servility and his gross interest in the things of this world, rather than in helping the poor."

"The two leading Communist women of Russia proved the greatest contrast. Angelica Balabanoff lacked what Kollontay possessed in abundance: the latter's fine figure, good looks, and youthful litheness, as well as her worldly polish and sophistication. But Angelica had something that far outweighed the external attributes of her handsome comrade. In her large sad eyes there shone profundity, compassion, and tenderness. The tribulations of her people, the birth-pangs of her native land, the suffering of the downtrodden she had served her whole life were deeply graven on her pallid face…I left the dear little woman with mixed feelings. Soothed and comforted by her rich fount of love, I at the same time disapproved of her acquiescence in the evils and abuses about her. I had known of her as a fighter, always firm and unflinching in her stand. What had made her so passive now, I wondered. Communists enjoyed the right of criticism, as I had learned from the Bolshevik press. Why, then, did Angelica not use her pen and voice in and out of the party? It kept worrying me and I sought an opportunity to speak to her woman comrade who had served us tea. From her I learned that Angelica had been secretary of the Third International. In that capacity she had fought determinedly against the growing bureaucracy of the clique led by Zinoviev, Radek, and Bukharin. As a result she was most unceremoniously kicked out and denied all responsible work. [...] Her mental state was due to the methods employed by her party, including the wide-spread suffering, the terror, and the cheapness of human life. Angelica could not face them…she suffered more than most of her comrades from the latest somersault of her idol Ilich. To see constantly the hungry crowds around the bakeries and pastry-shops was torture to one who, like Angelica, felt guilty to accept the gift of even a few biscuits from her Swedish friends. It was a purgatory which only we, who knew her well, could appreciate."

"When Angelica Balabanoff died in Rome on November 25, 1965, at the age of eighty-seven, an obituary referred to her as "one of the most striking personalities of the International Socialist Movement." Her life since 1878 was marked by activism in a wide range of radical causes. As a leader of the Italian Socialist party (PSI) and later of the Italian Social Democrats as well as an intransigent antifascist and a dedicated humanist, Balabanoff was a key figure in the history of European radical politics."

"After reading this chronicle of my collaboration with the international labour movement in its periods of victory and defeat, the reader is entitled to ask where I stand now. At sixty I am drawing conclusions from those experiences. My belief in the necessity for the social changes advocated by that movement and for the realization of its ideals has never been more complete than it is now when victory seems so remote. I am more than ever persuaded that a militant international labour movement must be the instrument of those changes. The experience of over forty years has only intensified my Socialist convictions, and if I had my life to live over again, I would dedicate it to the same objective. This does not mean that I do not recognize my own mistakes or those of the groups in which I have worked. (page 314)"

"It is this that kills the spirit of the labour movement-not only in Russia, but throughout the world: that an Idea which has inspired whole generations to matchless heroism and enthusiasm has become identified with the methods of a régime based upon corruption, extortion and betrayal; and last, but not least, that the sycophants and assassins of this régime have infected the world labour movement. In this, Bolshevism identifies itself more and more with the methods of Fascism. I am among the few people who have not been surprised at the various abrupt changes in the tactics of the Communist International. I knew that its tactics were always imposed, rather than accepted, and as they never corresponded to conviction, there has been no need of any psychological adaptation. These changes have been the result of bargains, or the failure of bargains, between Stalin and the military and diplomatic authorities of other countries. (page 319)"

"My first realization of inequality and injustice grew out of these experiences in my early childhood. I saw that there were those who commanded and those who obeyed, and probably because of my own rebellion against my mother, who ruled my life and who for me personified all despotism, I instinctively sided with the latter. Why, I asked myself, should mother be able to rise when she pleased, while the servants had to rise at an early hour to carry out her orders? After she had raged at them for some mistake, I would implore them not to endure such treatment, not realizing that necessity held them as tightly to our home as it had held the peasants to the feudal landlords. (page 4)"

"The guideline for her own life was clear; "there has never been any conflict between my heart and my brain.""

"Victor Serge describes her as secretary: "Perpetually active, she hoped for an International that was unconfined, open-hearted and rather romantic.""

"At the time that Balabanoff joined the PSI, concern for the emancipation of women was already a stated party goal largely through the work of Anna Kuliscioff's"

"As her old friend Bertram Wolfe observed, "she is too honest with herself not to realize that her dream has failed to come true.""

"The issue of dissent from established doctrine was clearly in her mind when she wrote: "You have to choose between what you conceive to be your duty, between your personal dignity and honesty, and your collaboration with this institution.... You can't expect a revolutionist to remain indifferent when methods he considers damaging are applied to the movement he is supposed to serve.""

"Balabanoff, the revolutionary humanist."

"Angelica Balabanoff was the last great representative of the nineteenth century revolutionary tradition in Russia. Her emphasis upon ethical values, her thrust for liberty and equality, and her deep concern for the poor of all countries put her squarely in the sentimental socialist movement which appeared first in the 1830's and 1840's in Western Europe. She was a romantic idealist, in many ways an anarchist, and a true European and internationalist. Thus, she was one of the first of the old socialists to recognize that Lenin and his Bolshevik colleagues, who were riding the storm of the Russian Revolution and creating the new Soviet State, were cynical, ruthless, and self-interested. She therefore left Moscow and the Third International in 1921 and was expelled from the Communist Party a few years later for placing her ideals and integrity above the demands of the Party, even of Lenin."

"Our conference [Women's Congress in Bern] had two tasks to perform: to publicize the fact that in spite of the vetoes of their governments and the opposition of the labour leaders, women had met and worked together for peace and for Socialism; our second task was to formulate slogans for this struggle and to publish a leaflet for women to whom the reaction to the war marked a first approach to social problems, to explain the causes and consequences of the war and the manner in which they could be abolished. Our appeal to them began: "Where are your husbands, your brothers, your sons? Why must they destroy one another and all that they have created? Who benefits by this bloody nightmare? Only a minority of war profiteers...Since the men cannot speak, you must. Workingwomen of the warring countries, unite!" (page 131)"

"The path of least resistance can very easily become a trap and the price one pays for taking it may ultimately come too high. This has certainly been the case with Russia. The trials and executions of the past two years which have dishonoured not only Russia but the entire revolutionary movement, may cancel in the memory of mankind the gigantic social and technical achievements of the Revolution. These crimes did not begin with Stalin. They are links in a chain that had been forged by 1920. They were implicit in the development of the Bolshevik method-a method which Stalin has merely amplified to incredible proportions and used for his own non-revolutionary ends. (page 185)"

"If a new world war-which can no more make the world safe for democracy than did the last-does not plunge us into a new nightmare within the next few years, I believe that the international labour movement can be built again, and that in this movement and its courage and solidarity lies the only hope for humanity. Such a movement will have learnt from its past defeats at the hands of Fascism and from the mistakes and the betrayals of the Russian experiment. A new world war, with the inevitable rise of totalitarianism of various sorts within the democratic countries, can very well kill the possibility of such international action for decades to come. I am proud to have lived and worked with the artisans of a new social order. Many of them are now dead or defeated-in exile or in their own countries. But a new generation will take their place-to build more wisely and more successfully on the foundations we have laid. (page 319)"

"Alix Kates Shulman's narrator quotes the real memoir of revolutionary socialist Angelica Balabanoff: "the experience of the individual in relation to historic events does not belong to oneself alone.""

"Angelica Balabanoff paid us a visit last week, and brought us personal greetings from [[Emma|Emma Goldman. The poor soul changed a lot since I have seen her in Berlin last: she looks so old! But not only physical (sic) she has changed, she seems to be so pessimistic and depressed. Her lectures are not very successful we are told, and if not for the Italians it would be worse still. She is envying Emma that she can be active in England, just the country where she would love to be. And Emma enrages her that she is in the states: that how it is, nobody can have ones choice, even not in the most elementary and simplest things these days, it is a miserable state of things."

"If Donald Trump gets dementia, how will we know?"

"This is going to be an important time for him, but I thought about him as a very important player at MSNBC for a long time. He knows more about the Senate than almost anyone else on television."

"The desks are now an important part of the public health strategy in the schools"

"Ok @elonmusk & @joerogan. Since this is getting interesting I’ll throw my hat in the ring as well. I’ll mimic Lawrence O’Donnell ... minus the castration of course," Trump responded. "That’s a bridge too far.""

"In difficult times, we turn to our poets (Nov. 29, 2016) and MSNBC video"

"It is no accident that the distressed areas we are discussing are the very areas which, in the past, have contributed most to the prosperity of this country and to its achievements all over the world. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen was right when he said that we must pay people to eat. I would invite him to go further and say that we must learn how to pay people not to work. Only in that way can we use that dividend of civilisation in the interests of the community which has achieved those things."

"I think it is true to say that the people of this country have no enthusiasm for this or for any war, but they would not be willing, in the main, now that the war has started, to let it end on such terms as would restore the world to the position in which it was —or to anything like that position— before we started. It was a position in which we were continually stumbling along from one crisis to the next, never knowing what was to happen, and without any kind of order, stability or security. I think the people of this country would not go back to that now, and that they are prepared to fight until some kind of order, based on stability and justice can be secured."

"It may be that you hold the view that no kind of peace is possible unless the Nazi regime in Germany is removed. If that is one of the things you regard as essential, say so by all means; but do not stop there. You have to say what you would do then. Suppose that the Nazi regime went, suppose that the abnoxious individual went, what then would you propose?"

"It seems to me that this problem of the distressed areas cannot be dealt with as though it were a problem existing by itself and divorced from the whole of the economic and social complex of affairs out of which it arises. I have heard during this Debate and during the Debates that have preceded it in the past week many gibes at this party because, as was alleged, it has refrained from endeavouring to apply its Socialistic faith to the problems that we were discussing. Therefore, I hope the House will not think me too doctrinaire or dogmatic if I endeavour to say how, in my view, those Socialistic ideas and principles, for which I and my friends stand and work, are the only principles which have any relevance to the problems which the House is discussing on this Motion. I am bound to say that, listening to the jibes during the past week and coming here for the first time straight from the open air and light which seem to come so rarely in this Chamber, either physically or otherwise, I felt a sense of deepening gloom as speaker after speaker from the Government Benches, beginning with the Prime Minister, made speech after speech the burden of which was, so far as I could see, purely a confession of impotence—they could not do anything, this course will not do, that measure will not do, no grand schemes will be of any effect and no particular schemes are worth pressing very hard."

"It is possible that the war might go on for many years before we got peace. You could create a European desert and call it peace, and give it the permanence of the grave. The objects that we regard as essential for the maintenance of civilisation may require a long war. If so, we should not be afraid of it. But neither should we assume that that is going to be necessary. Now, while people are in the mood to talk, talk to them. It is not necessary to talk on their terms; but if you tell them what are your terms and invite them to talk on your basis, you take the initiative out of their hands, you take the leadership, and perhaps you do something to acquire a long-wanted diplomatic success for ourselves."

"I would just summarise, very shortly, the qualities and aspects of this penalty which make it to all of us a revolting and barbaric thing. It is hot only the melodrama and sensationalism with which these proceedings are surrounded; it is not only the sordid squalor, every detail of which spreads into the newspapers in every one of these crimes, and whose effect on juvenile delinquency has never been measured but must be very considerable; it is not only the relentless finality of this penalty, the relentless finality which makes this result that once it has been inflicted there is no room for rectification if there were error or miscarriage of justice. No one who knows the records can doubt that there have been cases of error, that there have been miscarriages of justice, and that innocent men have in fact been executed. Above all these things, there is the sense which we all have that this penalty, of itself, denies the very principle on which we claim the right to inflict it—namely, the sanctity of human life."

"Sydney Silverman will be remembered as one of the great backbenchers of the House of Commons. The respect he commanded, even among those who bitterly opposed his views, was total. As a parliamentarian, he was totally dedicated, and therefore dominating. As a politician, he was uncompromising and vehement in saying what he had to say—often a superbly lucid crystallisation of what others had been trying to present Nobody could put a lawyer's training in argument and grasp of essentials to better parliamentary use, but where Silverman differed from many Commons lawyers was that, when he reached the heart of the matter, it invariably had a heart. It also had sense, and a solid backing of relevant fact. He was a somewhat pompous figure but, in his case, this was accepted as a virtue. Pomposity is one of the first things to be laughed at in the Commons, but one would have to search far back in one's memory to recall anybody laughing at Sydney Silverman. Physically he was tiny; his shoes, as he sat on his familiar front bench below the gangway, scarcely touched the carpet. If he had been a Minister, there would have been no point in his trying to put his feet on the table in the orthodox manner of nonchalance. But his dignity was unassailable. and nonchalance, was not part of sis nature. He was one of the few remaining backbenchers, who could put many Ministers and Shadow Ministers utterly in the shade."

"When DA Krasner accomplished what he did in Philadelphia, it really pushed the Overton window."

"We’re at a time where people are open to redefining what the role of the DA is, because historically it has served a function to punish the poor. It’s been one that has disproportionately criminalized our black and brown and working-class immigrant communities. There is an incredible opportunity for harm reduction by bringing in somebody with more leftist analysis, saying “Hey this isn’t about convictions and sentences, this is about public safety, this is about fairness.” There’s some potential to shape the office, so that it really is a driver for protecting the very folks that have been disproportionately, negatively impacted by our system. It can be, when you have an independent, progressive person at the forefront, a vehicle for holding bad actors accountable who are profiting off of others’ disenfranchisement."

"I am a queer Latina from a low-income community. I grew up in South Richmond Hill, Queens and my parents grew up in Woodside housing projects. We’re talking about communities that have been historically over-policed, over-criminalized, but also resource-starved. When we talk about the injustices done by our system, it’s not just people who are accused of crimes, it’s survivors and victims as well. It is a situation of certain folks not having access to the same resources and protections as other folks. My story wasn’t one that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and got to be a lawyer and got to do all these great things. Really there’s not much that separates me from my clients. What separates me — the only thing that I can point to besides chance and luck — is the fact that my dad got a union gig out of high school. That was game-changing in terms of my access to an education, to health care, to therapy so that I could have reparative experiences around my own trauma that then could lead to a lot of different things like criminal justice system involvement. It’s important to have somebody with that background. Who recognizes that a lot of times, what drives crime or unsafe conditions is instability in people’s lives. Stability, in things like housing, health care, education, equals public safety. These are things that we all should have a right to access. We should bring that perspective into our district attorney’s office and say “Hey, if what we’re supposed to do here is promote public safety, then we should be investing resources in the communities that have suffered because of other people benefiting at their expense.”"