Democratic Socialists

"We could be partnering and working on LEAD initiatives, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, things that we’re seeing in Seattle, up in Albany, that are working, that give police officers the opportunity to make the decision not to make an arrest and just to provide support. And in places where they’re doing these things, they’re seeing violence between officers and civilians go down exponentially."

"We have taken public health issues and punted them to a criminal justice system. What we should be doing instead is going to the root causes of the instability. You can tie it back to the bad actors who are destabilizing entire communities that then drive crime, whether it is low-level quality of life crime or violent crime. It’s all connected. As a public defender I represent clients who the system criminalizes for their substance use disorder, rather than prosecuting a doctor who’s overprescribing opioids. Or it prosecutes a client who is seeking shelter, rather than a bad landlord who’s unlawfully evicting or a predatory lender who’s stealing somebody’s home. I represent people who are accused of stealing from their employers when in fact their employers are misclassifying workers, stealing their wages, taking advantage of our undocumented communities, preventing people from unionizing. When you think about it that way it’s a no-brainer, right? These are things that seem intuitive, but again there are people profiting off of this. That really the reason why those types of prosecutions aren’t prioritized, and they should be."

"Being endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, folks like her, like Senator Jessica Ramos, Senator Julia Salazar, for me, it moved me in a way that said, “Well, I can do this. I can enter this space and have an impact.” Because, you know, as a 31-year-old queer Latina from a working-class family, never in a million years did I think that I would be entering a space like this. But I feel not only that I have the right experience, but that we are so well equipped to get the job done."

"I’ve been practicing criminal law in Manhattan and seeing District Attorney Cy Vance sort of come out with these so-called progressive policies, and recognizing that, you know, there’s a big fat asterisk next to those policies. And my clients, who were the exception to the rule before, continue to be the exception to the rule afterwards. One of the things that stands out to me, or I’ve told a lot during this campaign, is, when he said he wasn’t going to prosecute turnstile jumps. You know, a week later, I picked up a turnstile jump that we litigated for a year and went to trial on. And it was a perfect example of what’s wrong with our justice system, that we’re making decisions that overcriminalizes our black and brown and poor communities, that doesn’t serve public safety."

"When you’re on the ground in court every day, you recognize that some of these programs and the way that they are put into place do more to destabilize rather than stabilize and heal. And so, being able to kind of pinpoint those things and say sometimes it’s even better just to have people out of the system, period, so that we’re not criminalizing poverty, mental health, substance use, or criminalizing already marginalized communities, like our queer communities of color."

"If the goal is public safety, then we should be doing whatever it takes to say, “How do we make sure this harm doesn’t happen again and how do we keep people safe?” The answer is not, overwhelmingly, to just throw somebody in a cage and then throw them back out on the street after whatever the sentence is. Where they’re not in a position to thrive."

"I think that we’re in this really special moment in time where we’re seeing decarceral prosecutors, committed to keeping people rooted in their communities with access to resources and supports, be elected all around the country. We’re seeing defense attorneys being elected into these positions all around the country, and also being able to navigate relationships with police departments that, you know, coming in, were sort of adversarial, just based on the things that they were talking about."

"My campaign and democratic socialism are very much in line because we are talking about popular control of resources, right? We have a criminal justice system that is profiting off of breaking black and brown bodies, low-income communities, our immigrant communities, our LGBTQIA communities. When we talk about what this office could be, there is a real opportunity to put some change in place that moves us forward in terms of reaching racial, social, and economic justice. To reinvest resources in things that are basic rights, and promote public safety and public health."

"It’s personal to me. I think about my grandfather. My grandfather was a guy who was incredibly physically abusive to his family. To the point where my grandmother left him and my mom dropped out of high school to take care of the family. When I got older, and he was dying — essentially, he was drinking himself to death, he struggled with alcoholism — my mom let him back into our lives. And for me, he was the most patient, kind, funny person … I loved him to death. He’d play the guitar for me, he’d tell me these wild, fantastical stories. When I got older I thought about this abusive husband and father, and this really incredible grandfather, and recognized that they were just so equally true. He was somebody that could have been cycling in and out of our criminal justice system, but it wouldn’t account for the fact that he was a Korean War combat veteran, he came home with PTSD, self-medicated with alcohol. And where were our systems in place to support him so that he could support his family? So that he could do things differently? I see that with my clients all the time. There will be somebody that is getting into fights and the DA says “Hey, we gotta throw this person in jail.” My answer is “Well you’ve thrown him in jail two or three times, he comes back, he’s still engaging in this behavior, we’re not changing behavior. Let’s learn about him instead. He has a trauma history, he is somebody who was abused badly as a child. All that was modeled for him were really unhealthy relationships. Why can’t we invest in support services, why can’t we give him access to therapy?” Because that could change behavior rather than throwing him in jail, which obviously isn’t working. Tying it back in to my personal story: what was modeled for my parents, certainly, were unhealthy relationships. Then what were modeled for me were really unhealthy relationships. It is only through access to things like therapy that have allowed me to be able to navigate relationships in a healthier way than those who came before me in my family tree. Now I recognize that we should be taking a holistic trauma-informed approach to address violence."

"When people ask me for a book recommendation - just one book - this is the one I recommend. Until We Reckon (by Danielle Sered) has been such an incredible resource."

"If you want to target true trafficking, then you have to fully decriminalize so that you’re creating a space where survivors and victims can access health care services, can feel comfortable cooperating with the district attorney’s office or law enforcement. Doing anything to drive the behavior underground just increases the risk of harm and violence. You can’t take the middle ground and say “Well, I’m not going to prosecute sex workers but I’m going to prosecute their customers.” Again you are creating an environment where there’s still a fear of decriminalization and there’s serious destabilization."

"You cannot separate our criminal justice from housing, health care, and education. You just can’t."

"Rikers Island, our jail here, is the largest mental health provider in our state. It’s horrific. You get released from Rikers Island, you get a couple days’ worth of medication, and then you’re on your own. The amount of money we’ve spent to incarcerate folks could all be reinvested in comprehensive mental health care access."

"We should be talking about why we don’t have safe staffing in our hospitals, why we don’t have more resources, why we aren’t creating environments that allow people to access care. Rather than saying “Hey, we’re going to criminalize you and throw you into the criminal justice system.”"

"DAs get to decide what our metrics of success are. But “success” has been defined as convictions and sentences, right? That’s got to change. The metrics should be reducing recidivism, decarcerating, applying the law fairly across racial and class lines. The police department is typically going to make arrests that the DA’s office supports, that it is going to then take and prosecute. So, I think that it is a mechanism for informing the police department what kind of offenses they should be focusing on. Also, with the resources that the DA’s office has, there’s an opportunity to reinvest in our community. The DA’s office does have those resources, so that police officers aren’t the first responders in situations where they really shouldn’t be."

"The second that you introduce somebody to the criminal justice system you are injecting a ton of destabilizing and stigmatizing factors that continue to perpetuate the barriers that those folks are experiencing."

"Every day in court was just a constant reminder that our justice system is the single most powerful driver of the continued oppression of our black and brown, our low-income, our immigrant, our LGBTQIA+ communities. But one thing that’s also glaringly obvious is that if you have money, if you have the right political ties, if you pad the right pockets, you can get away with doing a lot of harm in our communities."

"The celebrated phrase, 'so much the worse for the facts', would satisfy only the high priests of Marxism, for Marxism also has its high priests, and these priests, like all others, daily deny the principles they claim to defend. Bolshevism is a living proof of this."

"Marxist theoreticians have heard too much, in season and out of season, about 'the crisis of Marxism' to be unduly moved by the latest anti-Marxist challenge, particularly as it coincided, oddly enough, with the practical confirmation of the essential theses of Karl Marx in the economic crash of 1929-36. In writing this book it was certainly not our intention to rebut the old stale arguments once again with old and equally stale answers. The same well-worn gramophone record has given satisfaction since the end of the last century."

"In this sense we can speak of a 'decomposition' of Marxism. In ignoring the important fundamental contribution of the followers of Marx, and by insisting exclusively on the phenomenon of superficial adaptation and variation, Sorel passed in silence over all that was healthy, live and fruitful in the Marxist doctrine."

"Marxism is not a dogma at all; it is a method of investigation. Seeing that the conditions of our day differ considerably from those studied by Marx, what are the new problems which contemporary Marxism has to solve? They certainly cannot be solved by reeling off a few quotations learned by heart."

"In the general collapse of values all around us it is not surprising that Marxism should also be subjected to critical attacks. A failure in the eyes of its enemies, even many of its friends admit that it is going through a severe crisis. Certain self-styled 'orthodox' Marxists, more in love with the letter than the spirit of the writings of Marx and Engels, have provided the less scrupulous critics of Marxism with weighty arguments. However, this category of 'academic Marxists' is becoming less and less numerous, and today we can observe their place being increasingly taken by people with far less knowledge and even greater pretensions: half-a-dozen quotations lifted from this or that popular pamphlet serve them instead of doctrine, and represent in their eyes the sum total of Marxist science. Most of the anti-Marxists of our day reveal the same intellectual poverty."

"Many people declare that democracy, too, is bankrupt. It is certainly true that democracy has lost much ground in recent years, and is now face to face with a serious crisis, but we do not believe that it is bankrupt."

"The real crisis through which Marxism is passing is not due to this relaxation of intellectual discipline on the part of some of those who call themselves followers of Marx. Unfortunately, the habit of praising or blaming without knowledge of the subject is becoming increasingly common to men of all parties today. This is not due to the failure of this or that doctrine, but to the crisis through which our whole civilisation is passing. At the same time this regrettable tendency adds greatly to the confusion in which all the sociological disputes of our day are taking place."

"Let us define what we mean by Marxism. Is it the doctrine of Marx and Engels? Or is it the movements to which that doctrine has given birth, and which, rightly or wrongly, claim to be Marxist? To what extent are these movements actually inspired by Marxism, and to what extent have they caused it to develop, sometimes reforming, sometimes deforming it? Are these movements still really Marxist in the classic sense? Or do perhaps both friends and enemies of Marxism often harbour a distorted conception of Marx’s original theories? We must therefore ask ourselves whether the so-called crisis of Marxism is not in large measure a crisis of differing posthumous interpretations of Marxism. Karl Marx died in 1883 and Friedrich Engels in 1895. Although a number of their followers have developed their doctrines and provided important supplementary analyses of the modifications experienced by capitalism in the course of the twentieth century, the results of these labours have hardly affected the movement as a whole. In fact, as the movement grew in size, the assimilation even of the ideas of Marx and Engels themselves, which were naturally better known, became slower, more fragmentary and more superficial. In accordance with historical conditions which obviously differed considerably as between country and country, each movement took what best suited it from the original doctrine, and applied its choice (very rarely the Marxist method itself) to its own particular situation."

"The dictatorships, whether Fascist or Bolshevist, have been able to conceal their innumerable defeats only by ruthlessly using both the gag and the lie."

"Each leader has the privilege of choosing the way he will leave [the political scene], [...] Andreas Papandreou chose to deny reality."

"He's one of the most fascinating characters [modern] Greek history has produced, but after all the sound and fury, he signifies nothing."

"For almost a quarter of a century the affairs of the world and its ideas have been in indescribable confusion. In most cases the confusion of ideas is manifest without the aid of polemic or controversy. It is simple evidence of the chaotic state of the world."

"Andreas was not a philanderer. He was a serial monogamist."

"He's an unpredictable, very irresponsible man, ruthlessly ambitious, Andreas has to be Prime Minister of the world to be happy. But he has always had very generous feelings toward the Greek people."

"There are many scandals in Greece [...] The only difference in my case is that here someone is saying, himself, what he did with Papandreou."

"The succession of events since 1914 has swept away so many illusions that even a summary inspection of the heap of ideological ruins would demand the compilation of a veritable encyclopaedia. The summer of 1914 witnessed the collapse of all those hopes which had been built on a peaceful evolution of the capitalist world, and it also witnessed the breakdown of ."

"Andreas Papandreou corrupted the Greek psyche and gave to Greeks an entitlement culture based on their existence and not on their ability to work and take risks."

"He [Andreas Papandreou] wanted to build a state with better salaries and services. But in the end, the money just went into the bureaucracy and not to the people. In fact, we built up such a large state that we had to keep borrowing just to pay its expenses. This was a terrible mistake."

"One of the most courageous and committed politicians I have ever met."

"I may not believe in a Turkish threat, you may not believe in a Turkish threat, but the Greek public believes in it, and that makes it Greek reality and you have to deal with it in those terms."

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

"Greece's only successful fascist regime probably was Andreas Papandreou's [...] Both the military regime of John Metaxas, from 1936 to 1941, and the junta from 1967 to 1974, never achieved a broad level of popular response to their message, which was seen as artificial, even ridiculous. By contrast, Papandreou's posturings and habits reassured a people who harbored a mistrust and envy of the West that their way of life was legitimate. Much like Mussolini, Papandreou succeeded as the embodiment of a nationalist-populist resentment. He was the ideal Greek every-man. He threatened America and backed up these threats by embracing America's enemies—Qaddafi and the terrorists. Papandreou danced the traditional Greek dances in public. He distributed the wealth to his partisans as a reward for their loyalty. Even with the Liani affair, in a male-oriented society like Greece's there was a certain resonance. Papandreou projected the Mussoliniesque image of the nation's first lover. His divorce and humiliation of Margaret Chant not only reinforced his (and Greece's) break with America, but also with another threatening demon of the Greek male, feminism."

"Andreas is an actor who does not believe in anything. He loves himself, power and women, and that's all."

"The world crisis which began in 1929, the longest ever known, caused people entirely unconnected with and even hostile to the working-class movement to speak of 'crisis' and even of the 'collapse of capitalism'. [...] The economic and financial smash of 1929 ruthlessly disposed of the illusion that capitalism was about to experience an era of lasting prosperity and harmony. Liberalism observed with horror that the actual course of ignored all its good advice. Today the doctrine of liberalism is practically dead, but, at least, its few remaining defenders can console themselves by noting the disastrous effects of ."

"I'm grateful to no one about anything."

"Power to the people."

"I no longer trust anyone, not even myself."

"The Greeks have betrayed me."

"I accuse my accusers."

"Tsovola give it [to them] all. (Τσοβόλα δώσ'τα όλα.)"

"Don't worry, I’ll stop the audit. As long as I'm prime minister, nothing's going to happen."

"Greece belongs to the Greeks.("Η Ελλάδα ανήκει στους 'Ελληνες.")"

"There are no institutions – only the people rule this country."