 In case anybody just came in, my name is Damien Taylor. I'm an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. And the volunteer coordinator for the Claudia Carina Vote Socialist 2024 campaign. And we're really excited about this program, the potential for working class people to unite around a common program of socialism. And to basically take the power that we deserve, we're the ones who make this country run. We should be the ones running it. And we feel like this campaign is the catalyst for growing a people's movement. And to learn the organizational skills and personal development that goes into organizing, and that's kind of what I was speaking to a second ago, is we'd like to think of ourselves as the example of what the future could look like. And to develop leaders out of the struggle who can actually confront the existing power structure and change things. We all know we need change. So yeah, that was off the top of my head. I've never really done that before. But it's humbling. And it's the sort of thing that you just got to rip off the band-aid and just get in there. And I think that that's what we can all do together, is just come together and realize that we all bring all these different sets of experiences and skills to the table and organizing ourselves in a way where we can realize the potential is just so much greater when we can do that together. And it's a learning process, and we're going to make mistakes, and we're going to have success. And we're just always going to be moving forward. So thank you for coming today. And I'm really excited to get this going. So Sam, Sam Bliss from Marxist Jargon. Thank you so much. This song or these songs are only my own, unfortunately. Maybe they're your views, too. What I mean to say is that these lyrics haven't been approved by the Party for Socialism and Liberation or anything like that. But you'll find that it's aligned. Robert Barron's are the ultimate carons. They hoard all the riches, wouldn't think Sharon with us instead they jet-set to summits of the powerful, where poverty's an abstract problem to discuss. But really, it's simple. Some people have little, precisely because others take lots for themselves. And then they dare to complain about the poor and blame them for not having their fair share of the wealth. But all the billionaires are good people, says billionaires a bad word. I agree we should find a better term like exploiter or extractor. Con man or just thief, motherfucker or monster, illegitimate chief or common. With torches and pitchforks to their porches, it's going to be gorgeous when we burn their McMansions to the ground. Or maybe we should just take them for the town. Tell our homeless friends, look at this big house we found. Imagine how many people could be housed. When you got a billion bucks, you can't just give it away. Without exercising the enormous sway you hold over the world when you choose soon to give it to. And who not to give it to? That power's not something you can't donate. As your selfish anarchist, evil and terrible, hooded parents. My name is Alex. My pronouns are she, her. I'm with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Welcome. Today we are officially launching our campaign to get Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia on the ballot in Vermont. Our goal is to build a party that actively represents the working class because it is the working class. We are going to introduce our candidates, Claudia and Karina, running for president and vice president of the United States. We want to share our party platform and how socialism is our best hope for peace and a future worth fighting for. An alarming rate. A global pandemic, our government's abysmal response environmental protection slash police brutality, military invasions, blatant political corruption, Roe v. Wade overturned, a growing unhoused population and housing funds terminated, droughts, floods and wildfires, new anti-trans legislation, mass shootings over 623 alone. And the list goes on and on. Even those with a stable income have found their laborers worth less and less. Wages are stagnant but inflation is out of control. Our people are subsisting on fewer resources all the time and it's no coincidence that the wealth of the billionaire class has more than doubled since 2020. Where did that money come from? Where it always comes from? Us. None of this is a coincidence. Our society was built this way. The extreme imbalance maintained by the brutal criminal injustice system and the mirage of the American dream. Under capitalism, crises will continue to multiply and we continue to pay for them. We did not vote for any of this but our elected officials did, opting to preserve their careers and or outright serve the corporate elite. Monday's city council decision was a great example of an elected body's blatant disregard for our democratic rights. How many of you were at that city council meeting on Monday? So why are we hopeful? But we are hopeful, we're even excited. We're hopeful because since the last election we've learned that we don't have to take it. The people are finding their voices and taking to the streets. We were in the streets when George Floyd was murdered. We marched for peace in an end at the US proxy war in Russia. We came up for the Teamsters in a hot labor summer and we're still out here in our thousands and our millions to demand and enter the genocide of our Palestinian siblings and then end all USA to Israel. We fought alongside many of you in this room, refusing to be silent and go about our business while the money that our labor earned is used to kill other poor and working people. And we're not alone, we're part of an international movement that is still growing. These mass movements are the seeds of a new political party, one that answers only to the people because it is the people. Socialism means an empowered working class and we're excited because right now our class is waking up and flexing its muscles. We are proud to introduce our candidate for president, Claudia De La Cruz. Claudia is a mother, a popular educator and a community organizer. Born in the South Bronx to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic, she was nourished by the Black and Caribbean working class communities. She began organizing at the age of 13 with her church and has made a lifelong commitment to fight together with a working class to improve our lives. She has been inspired by national liberation struggles from Puerto Rico, Palestine, peasant struggles in Brazil, the Cuban Revolution and many others. She has staunchly stood against US and Western imperialism. She is co-executive director and co-founder of the People's Forum in New York City. An educational and organizing hub in the largest city in the country. Here she continues her nearly 30 year legacy of building a people's movement for international liberation and socialism. This is exactly the kind of president we need, someone who understands the international needs of the working class here in the United States. We are equally proud to introduce our candidate for vice president, Karina Garcia. Karina is a Chicana organizer and popular educator who has been fighting for a better world since she was 17 years old as a high school student in California. From El Barrio in New York City to the border areas of Texas, she has helped lead campaigns against landlord abuses, wage theft and police brutality, as well as fight for reproductive justice, immigrant rights and student financial reform. She is the founder of the Justice Center in El Barrio in New York City and is a member of the Central Committee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She has her degree in economics and worked as a New York City math teacher upon graduating. After school, she advised a student group that protested against budget cuts in the Iraq War, police brutality and anti-immigrant laws. In 2012, she moved into a national organizing position for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice where she worked for nearly a decade training immigrant women and working class Latina activists in New York, Texas, Virginia and Florida. Karina also writes for Breaking the Chains Magazine which you can get over there. A unique socialist and feminist magazine and she played a leading role in organizing mobilizations against the Supreme Court decision that eviscerated abortion rights. I don't know about you but I am so proud to say that I am voting for socialism in 2024. I am voting for Claudia and Karina. Our political platform is ambitious because working people need and deserve to live with dignity and enjoy the wealth we produce for this country. Our political program is to seize the biggest 100 corporations and create a new economy for the people. Overthrow the dictatorship of the rich, build a democracy that serves the working class and the rule of money and lock up the corrupt elite, cut the military budget by 90% peace not war with China and Russia and the war on black America and defend women's rights full of quality for LGBTQ people. Which of these changes to our country would mean the most for you? What would it mean for you and your community? And now we will pair up and talk about the platform and how you want to get involved. Thank you for supporting Palestine. The ones that I see who are. And I hope you all. Secondly, I think we're damned if we do, we're damned if we don't, when it comes to the election. Look what we've got. We've got no choice. On one side, you never know what that fool is going to do. On the other side, you know damn well what that fool is going to do. So what do you do? That's a good question. I guess so. I think that's a good place to start. You know, we're not really, under the illusion that a third party has the potential to win the presidency in the United States. But we should leave no stone unturned. We should interact at every level we can. And the electoral process, which is kind of like a soap opera drama here in this country, is a period of time when the population is at their highest level of political consciousness. The most engaged they'll be for the rest of the three years in that cycle. And that's a really important time to bring a program that's unashamed about what we deserve and want to do. And use that time and that experience to build a network of organized, professional, disciplined people that can balance what's going on. That's what the campaign is about. It's about not so much about winning the presidency because we believe that democracy under capitalism is incompatible. It's an illusion. When you have so much money going in, riding these politicians to create policy that suits the ruling class, you know, like that. That's not really a democracy. So we're here to sharpen that contrast of these contradictions and to start proving that there's another way that we can do it. I was talking with Barbara and I think that the main thing that we sort of emphasized was that idea of it summed up very well in between of all things I read recently. What do you even call it? When you can only vote for one person or democracy dies forever. Where the Democrats at this point are holding the gun of Donald Trump to our head and telling us, oh, well, if you don't vote for us, you get this guy. So you just have to suck it up, vote for us and do whatever the hell we say and don't have a choice in this matter. What I think we need to acknowledge is that is true. We don't have a choice. We can vote for whoever we would like. We can vote in any way that we would like and it will not ultimately matter because the design of this country is to make sure that the rich remain in power, that a tiny few remain in control. And to even think for a second that there would be some way through an electoral system, that there would be some way through a democratic system to overturn that, just foolish. Ultimately, the point of this campaign, as you just said, should be to get people involved. It should be to get people militant. It should be above all else to get people organized. It should be to start building the base right here, right now, that can grow into something much larger. Absolutely. And that's actually the idea of this, is that we want to develop ourselves into people who are smarter and stronger and more capable than we are before we started. And when we do that together, there's the most amount of potential. If we set out to try to make change on our own, yeah, we could do some things, but it's not until we come together and learn from each other and work together that we can actually take all of our energy and focus into one point and focus that point right at the power structure. So we really hope that you all would like to join this campaign, join the PSL and just get involved and start developing ourselves together. Jackson. I'm not going to go into that, but we were talking about the idea of democracy. A lot of people are realizing, but Trump had elected because people were so angry at his right-wing populism. And now, people are realizing, you know, Biden is not, people are primary in him, but he's just like, I don't know what you're talking about. Not that the primary candidate are that good anyways, but people are realizing, people are getting angry, and so we have to organize the anger into something instead of just physically kind of... Yeah, and letting it just fragment into all these little silos of struggles, you know, single issues, struggles are great, but in the PSL, we recognize and we don't know but in the PSL, we recognize and we assert the fact that all of these problems are absolutely connected and that by challenging the system of capitalism, which we believe to be the reason for these problems, like the profit was, especially leading us down the path of more and losing our rights left and right, like reproductive rights and... You know, it's... it is capitalism and we're never going to change it unless we can come together. History has proven that, that it takes mass movements of people to make change and we're excited about the possibilities. Does anybody else want to share something for the conversation? Oh, yeah, it's like that. I was just going to expand on something else we talked about, how... like we were talking about the hearing on Monday and how we don't have any way to hold those in charge of Campbell even when they don't do what we elected them to do and how that's super important because that happens again and again if like Joe Biden was like, no more student debt. Oh, just kidding. We're going to pay off some... Oh, we're going to pay off a little less than that, actually. Yeah, yeah. Just keeping to like back paddle and just like great promises and there's nothing we can do about that. So I think that's a great like thing to rally on and it's a great thing to try to accomplish because then we can move on to other issues so much easier, right? Yeah, well they're not going to listen to us if we're all standing there one by one trying to like say, look man, we can't live like this but if we were all together and we were organized and like, you know, competent and trained that's going to be a force that they can't stop. The working class has all the power and you just don't know it yet and it's seeing the turnout for today like really does inspire like a lot of confidence that we can actually do this. So I just need to sort of slow you to like to come off as like that individually we can all be saying we can't live like this but together we can say we won't live like this. Well, it means a lot to get all shared and then we're all here and, you know, we wanted to just like talk real quick about, you know why you're voting socialist and I'd like to invite Wesley to share his voice. I'm Wesley Palmer. I am with PSL. I am a member. I joined fairly recently after October 7th because I see what's happening in Gaza. 30,000 Palestinians are dead because Joe Biden would rather send our money to war and occupation and I just can't stand by that. I know a few people, met a few people on the street a couple of weeks ago and two of them have been homeless for the past eight years. They told me about a week ago how excited they were that they were finally going to start getting an apartment and that they can finally stop living out of their friend's car. They don't touch substances. They don't touch... Their boyfriend has a disability and it's just really hard for them to maintain stability and to keep a job or to just even like try to find an apartment and don't even get me started on the paperwork that they have to deal with. Yesterday afternoon I say what's up to them and I say long time no see. Like how have you guys been? How's everything going? Did you work everything out with the Housing Association? And they told me that because the girlfriend did not have a disability they put her at the bottom of the list. She can't get an apartment. She's going to have to probably wait another year or another two years. It's just ridiculous. And while all our taxpayer dollars are going to war and they are killing children in places that we don't belong in you have Vermont residents who are still sleeping out on the streets. Their entire life this is how they're going to spend their lives unless we stick together unless we all unite together and vote for a socialist party a working class party a party meant for the working class a party meant for each and every single one of us because the two party system is a lie. Donald Trump, Joe Biden the rest of those Republicans, Democrats, whoever they don't represent us. They represent the upper echelons the corporate, the rich filthy rich clique that has been exploiting us for hundreds of thousands of years and will continue to both internationally, nationally and locally all these situations all these problems are connected to one of us unless we all vote together and we all rise up and we you know look out for each other so I say money for housing and education not for deals into death, destruction and war and occupation and that's why I'm voting for Claudia and Karina and I'm voting socialist 2024 thank you very much it's okay yeah well you can take that thing the one I am actually take it no no please you're so well spoken I don't mind being on TV Hi I'm Will I'm 20 years old and with everything that's working out I'll probably make it to 50 if I am lucky and it's on fire, look outside this shit is not January, this shit is March this shit was March for most of my life and I don't even know what it was supposed to be before that because I never grew up at any point in the world that had a normal climate, that had a normal set of weather I never grew up around the natural foliage and wildlife that existed in this country before Europeans came and destroyed it all I have spent my entire life watching the world just get worse day by day by day things have only ever fallen apart around me things have only burned around me and I think I speak for a pretty fucking huge part of my generation when I say if you expect me to stand by and watch that and look at that and be okay with that because that's how things are because that's how the world should work because I just don't understand the complexities of the system you can go fuck yourself I'm not listening to that, I'm not abiding by that I'm not working for that, I'm not okay with that nobody should be beyond that specifically I would vote in 2024 is because, again I think we need to send the message to Biden, we need to send the message to the Democrats, you know, Republicans aside obviously, that we're not okay with this shit anymore we're not putting up with it, we're not going to be your dogs who just sit back, vote for whatever you say, do whatever you say, and act however you like we, as a people are sick and tired of just having our votes be assumed towards the Democrats because they're supposed to be the left or because they're supposed to be the good guys whatever version of history they want to write for us and for that I think we need to pick the third option, we need to pick the better option, we need to pick the socialist option meet Will, the Claudine and Carina Burlington lead organizer I just signed you up man yeah, so the reasons are obvious for me and I've talked a little bit about that so I think we should maybe move on because I really loved the group discussions and we were hoping just to say a few more things and then have us circle up we could take a minute to grab some refreshments afterwards but let's have a talk together after this presentation so the next thing is just we don't really want your vote we want you guys to be involved we really hope that you all sign up to take part in this thing that we're trying to build here however whatever kind of bandwidth or capacity that you have available we want you to be involved some of the things that we can do together would be petitioning to get us on the ballot after talking with some comrades who are in other places in the country, you actually have kind of an easy walk to get on the ballot as independent, that's how we're going to run here I was hearing from some folks in North Carolina that they need something like 50,000 signatures to get on the ballot it's just like another example of the contradiction of democracy under capitalism you know, it's not a democracy if you can't actually you know it's not the bourgeois democracy you saved me Jordan it's not the bourgeois democracy I mean public there's all these university studies that have proven that public policy has very little to do with public opinion I don't think congress has been over like a 30 something percent approval ratings in like decades that's like our highest that's a lot still too high I mean these are the contradictions that seems like every day they make it easier and easier we all saw that viral video of the girl at city hall last week or last one day really the contradictions are sharpening more and more every day so anyways raising visibility being on social media sharing the content from the campaign we've got a bunch of extra posters and flyers pins I'd like to see like all that stuff gone when you leave here today please feel free to just take it upon yourselves to be a leader in this campaign and to think outside the box about different ways that we can intervene in the community to like bring this really important message forward recruiting other volunteers like who do you know the people you work with the community that you live in where can we talk to people where can we have the conversations that need to be had to convince them this is something that they need to be a part of too and building out a team we want to have a solid team I'm imagining meetings on a regular basis training we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a second and even today we're hoping to record some testimonials about what you've learned today about why you're voting socialist about what you want to see from the future anything at all that journalism is super important in this movement and we'd like to be able to make a little compilation of different video clips and put them together to be able to share to the community, to the world about what we're doing here and maybe some of us would be interested in organizing a campaign event at our school workplace, community that's the kind of things that we want to learn together it wasn't that long ago that I had never spoken in front of anybody I'd definitely need more practice but that's what we want to do we want to develop ourselves into people who can deliver speeches and who can write speeches and who want to learn photography and video and video editing and screen printing and button making there's just like a there's so many skills that go into trying to make a future that's going to work for all of us a little off topic for folks who have machines, cable of running view at any software you want to start learning today download the black magic davidji result it's all in one seat with everything you need for video, audio and also car rating okay I'm learning Premiere Pro right now I'm like two videos in it's been like a learning curve it's like quite the radical but there's so many different levels of accessible programs that are out there open source, Linux FreeBSD graphic design is another great example the campaign actually has templates and fonts and color spectrum the whole deal and we can actually make our own agitational material from these templates to have a cohesive branding and style and message if anybody is interested in these sorts of things it's a great place for us all to develop our skills together were you still saying something or are we going to move on did you want to say something yes a lot of many ways you can also keep money out of corporate software developing coffers is to go the open source freeware group with Linux and FreeBSD definitely look those up freeBSD that's not cable running the lace version of windows or macOS that's not a problem at all with these open source alternatives that's an excellent point I admire that but they also say the capitalists are going to sell us the rope that we hang them with too so we can make our own we can make it better alright I just had a couple little notes and it's more about my dream about this team that we're going to build here I actually did voice text as I was driving here from St. Johnsbury I would just like to share some of these ideas so we want to learn the process of organization for social change and so much of that is training in personal development having study groups book clubs learning public speaking like I was saying speech writing event planning fundraising media skills like video photography graphic design outreach like conversational skills canvassing door knocking, phone banking posturing, flyering wheat pasting practical skills like printing media and this is like part of the conversation that we'd like to move into right now is ways that we can get started and I know that you all have really creative ideas about what we could do some of the thoughts that I had would be regular meetings online in person posturing and distributing materials working on our social media profiles such as like I'm voting socialist in our profile bio having the link to the campaign in the bio sharing the content from the campaign and Claudia and Karina do a weekly live stream on Instagram and there's also the official campaign launch tomorrow that you all can check out we have we'll make sure to get you the link for that please check it out there's also at the same time the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation statewide meeting at the same time which is where I'll be but do one of those two things that's like your first homework and then yeah so like I was saying the weekly live stream it's like a great place to learn about the candidates to like see them talk on a weekly basis and also direct people to like people are like I don't know like socialism sounds a little crazy you could just be like just take a couple minutes and like watch this listen to what they have to say it's fantastic I mean I highly recommend it and then also we have monthly volunteer meetings with the campaign and that's you know with the candidates and like the campaign leadership you were at the last one weren't you so yeah that's basically what I had to say and you know I would like to circle up and we can start brainstorming about ways that we can intervene and what you know where are the people at that you want to talk to and how can we figure out a way to talk to them does that sound like a plan so yeah still a few more snacks around if you want to grab some and I think we can just make a little bit more of a circle or we can just keep the formation but you guys are jammed up over there