Subscriber Request: Mamdani

Too many Americans still believe in Democrats and Republicans. Another election approaches, billions spent on bad advertising – ok that’s redundant, attempting to convince Americans their vote to switch seats in DC means something.

Yesterday, the NYT amusingly noted the one political entity in the country more unpopular than Trump is the Democratic party. Whatever the upcoming election’s outcome, that will be a weight on the results.

It might suggest some Democrats, not enough, finally figured out the Democrats are responsible for creating Trump. What would be a more amusing present campaign idiocy than former Clinton bagman Rahm running around the country claiming he is the future is Chucky Schumer espousing, “Vote like I’m on the ballot,” many already certainly will.

The latest in a now infinite number of examples how the two parties are one in the same was the Journal article, “U.S. Needs Energy Push to Win Economic Race, Ex-Trump, Biden Officials Say - Mike Pompeo, Janet Yellen and others urged Congress to pass an energy-permitting bill.” Mike Pompeo and Janet Yellen, Lord.

With the Iran war, the US begins to pay for the culmination of 40 years of a failed and criminal oil policy. Now, the same culpable bipartisan establishment pushes to strip political enfranchisement from local citizens fighting the stupidity of the latest generation of compute marketed as AI. As the ragamuffin once screamed, “We’re the future, your future, there’s no future for you.”

I received a request the other day in comments. Dear readers and noble subscribers I do my best to fulfill all requests. Shane Gray wrote,

“Joe, any chance you could give your thoughts on Mamdani almost a year in? He’s been receiving push back lately. You should never trust campaign promises, but I am surprised and disappointed about his resistance to calls around policing.”

“Is this just because of the budget deficit/ deal with the devil, Hochul? Is it impossible for him to fire Tisch? Does he want to but can’t, or does he not want to? Any thoughts about his governance more generally, or in relation to DSA in short-medium term?

“Thanks for your great newsletter.”

I replied I haven’t much followed Mamdani, but would give some impressions. Here they is.

First and foremost, I think it's a very difficult if not impossible job to be Mayor of a big city these days. I like cities. New York’s a massive, crazy city. For the first time last year, I spent a fair amount of time in New York and developed an appreciation I didn't previously have. Born and raised in Chicago, with much of the national media headquartered in NY, quite early you develop a fuck New York attitude. Not to mention in 1980 and again in 1992, I had two not great political experiences there.

Last year, right after the Mayor election, I was talking with Zephyr Teachout, who had previously run against the Democratic establishment's Andrew Cuomo in a primary for governor. She told me she advised the Mamdanis to focus on the local. Good advise, nonetheless, anyone focusing on the local will soon find both the term and the politics need to be redefined.

With New York, it’s incredible how much of its financing and organization are directly tied into the state. For example, the subway system is run not by the city, but the state. So, already, the Mayor is subservient to Albany for things the city should be deciding and implementing.

Mamdani’s idea of city grocery stores is a good one. There needs to be a resurgence of small businesses not just in New York but across the country. As soon as you get to thinking and implementing this, you immediately run into America's great monopolies. There are no greater monopolies than American agriculture corporations, national and global in scope. In Democratic Promise, Lawrence Goodwyn wrote of the process that birthed Big Ag,

“In essence, “agribusiness” came into existence before it even had the opportunity to prove or disprove its “efficiency.” In many ways, land centralization in American agriculture was a decades-long product of farm credit policies acceptable to the American banking community. The victory won by goldbugs in the 1890’s thus was consolidated by the New Deal reforms. These policies had the twin effects of sanctioning peonage and penalizing family farmers. The end result was a loss of autonomy by millions of Americans on the land.”

So, there’s no little irony in the banking community of New York now having a Mayor promoting a policy to truly be effective requires a breaking up of the monopolies the city’s banks were instrumental in creating. In order to really develop and increase the power of smaller markets you need to go down the chain and work with smaller independent farmers and there’s not many left. Coordinated money from New York City can now help revive them just as coordinated money out of New York destroyed them.

For things to change in the US, all politics need to first and foremost be about reorganization – political, government, economic, and cultural – a literal reforming.

As far as the police, this certainly does provide an opportunity for local initiative, but the politics are complicated. In the past, having participated in a lot of urban politics, including Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles, I came to understand how many of America's urban poor consider the police as occupying forces. This is not the view of the majority of Americans and almost unanimously foreign to great wealth.

In 1992, I was in Los Angeles for the riots following the Rodney “Can we all get along” King verdict. King was an African American beat to the ground and then continually beat while laying on the ground by white LAPD. It was videotaped. The trial was moved from downtown LA to the all white, semi-affluent Simi Valley. The cops all walked. This didn’t sit well with South Central LA. Riots are always worthless expenditures of political energy.

A curfew was called for the second evening. I had to drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood where I was staying at a friend’s. I left right at dusk and took Sunset. It was surreally empty. I mean empty. Unless you’ve driven around LA, you can’t really understand how extraordinary that experience was. Just past Beverly Hills, right where the clubs are, there used to be some open lots. You could see across the southeast horizon. It was fully ablaze with dozens of variously shaped pillars of black smoke rising to artificially darken the not yet night sky. Having previously been aware of the importance of police relations, it was now forever emblazoned onto my political conscious.

In the 35 years since, it’s impossible to argue, like so many things, that police relations have improved across the land. In fact, another bipartisan effort was enacted to militarize American police forces using the castoff equipment of our sinfully wasteful DC military expenditures. Many local police forces are now equipped as occupying forces. Just as importantly, the concentration of wealth in America has skyrocketed since 1992. If you’re going to create an ever expanding permanent underclass, you’re going to need a police force to help keep them down.

Over the years, I’ve explained to people neither ancient Rome or Athens had cops. Most find this concept unimaginable. Such a system requires much different social, political, and economic organization, where people are active participants in shaping their lives, not simply the addled consumers and employee-stooges of mega-corporations. Police organization we know today came out of monarchical structures, the republican exception being they are locally controlled. That’s why we vote for sheriff, though most cities' police chiefs are appointed by the elected Mayor.

Just as importantly, the republic's founding generation vividly understood the danger of standing armies. “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies” was one of the Declaration’s indictments against King George. This understanding went out the window after WWII with the establishment of the National Security State. With the establishment of ICE two decades ago, Americans of all political stripes recently witnessed and some even relearned the grave dangers to any system of self-government posed by an executive controlled national police force.

So, not just New York City, but we all have problems concerning policing. Long ago, I helped elect the Sheriff of San Diego county, he was about, what was called then, “community policing,” there were some demonstrated benefits, start there I suppose. That’s not going to do anything about America’s rapidly expanding underclass. Mamdani and NYPD, all I can say is good luck.

As far as DSA, as I’ve said before, it’s a waste, blame Barnie. We need a lot better thinking than that offered by a blathering old hack or those ignoring and promoting the failures of the past thinking they are novel.

The cities need to network together, not through state capitals or DC, but directly, creating new structures.

Network the Local and Assemblies not Parties – slogans for a politics of democratic revival.