Democrats Abandon Working and Poor People as Need for Organizing Intensifies

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Lillian House, writer for Breaking the Chains magazine and organizer with the ANSWER Coalition in Colorado to discuss the King Soopers strike in the Denver metro area and a recent ruling that severely limits striking workers’ freedom of speech, the intimidation tactics and starvation wages that sparked the strike, the unfair practices that the business is employing to break the strike, including paying scabs more than union workers, and how this strike fits into the larger labor movement.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Libre X Sankara, poet, cultural worker, educator and organizer with the Troika Kollective to discuss a judicial ruling restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt and the recent history of the exploitation of Puerto Rico, how this restructuring is a smokescreen that clouds the reality that Puerto Rico remains in debt and does nothing to alleviate the neoliberal exploitation of the island, and how the exploitation of Puerto Rico plays out in the lives of Puerto Ricans.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Leo Flores, Latin America Campaign Coordinator at CODEPINK to discuss Luis Almagro’s abuse of his position at the OAS to challenge progressive movements in Latin America, how he also has supported coups in Honduras and Haiti in line with US interests, his anti-democratic effort to maintain his position in the OAS to serve as a lackey for the US empire, and efforts in Latin America to present a challenge to the OAS with a more representative body.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Breakthrough News journalist Kei Pritsker to discuss the apartment fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people and the outright neglect for the lives of working and poor people that is commonplace in places where they live, the US sending military aid as part of its cold war drive against major powers and how it fits into US attempts to maintain its imperial influence, the bad approval numbers for the Biden administration and how Biden’s unwillingness to push for reforms for working and poor people has directly contributed to the precarious situation Democrats are in for the midterm elections, and the need for organizing to achieve a new, people-centered system.