the sheer RELIEF I’m feeling my god. I came so close to offing myself so many times lmao. This goddamnit labor market is TRASH.

I’ve accepted it obviously and waiting for the next steps. Gonna drink some nice wine I bought a while ago.

It’s been a good 24 hrs (the market crashed and my relatives lost money but that’s what they get for betting on a fascist. I’ve been happily dancing and drinking from thousands of miles away.)

Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.

Now, we come to the protest.

Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.

The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.

Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.

I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.

Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.

The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.

I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.

Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.

HE COMMENTED ON CIVIL RIGHTS:

When asked: Would you have said the same thing during the civil rights movement?

He replied: "What a ridiculous and self-serving oversimplification to imply the civil rights movement was successful because people stood in the street. It's very simple, just get out of the road"

Here's the link to the video clips.

He also said this:

"What gives you the unique moral authority to break the law because of what you believe in?... It's narcissistic and entitled. That's insane. It's like these people think the world revolved around their issue..."

The pic is just a pic I found of him.

Edit: Also, if people think he doesn't matter, he's literally more popular than Hasan, especially when it comes to gaming shit.

Edit - I don't remember where I read/heard it, but I remember very early on someone said that liberals will one day turn on Israel but it'll be after a certain number of people begin dying - 5k, 10k, 30k, 50k. I wish I could find it.

That perfectly encapsulated the liberal mindset. They won't stand with us before the atrocity begins, when we are saying this will happen - only when it's already happening and their conscience gets in the way. (I'm talking about the people, not the ones in charge - the latter know perfectly well what they're doing, of course).

It's just endlessly frustrating, because the same thing happens over and over again.

The entire article is very good and gives a solid reasoning (for baby leftists, not anyone here) of why we need to support Cuba. It also highlights the weakness of both the DSA and the DSA IC from within that allowed this to happen + the steps they need to take. Give it a read. (The more I read stuff like this plus the history of real movements I realize why things like DemCent and other hardline ML things are needed but that's not a discussion for here).

I'm highlighting just the parts relevant to the title.

Multiple delegates chose to skip out on parts of the programming, including declining to meet with the president of Cuba, who held a frank conversation with the delegates who did attend for more than two hours.

Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip. This means that the Cuban hosts were listening thoughtfully to the critiques and relayed them back to the President. That our Cuban comrades would care this deeply and thoroughly about our critiques is a sign that they honor us as equals and truly want to make ties with U.S. socialists, as relatively powerless as we are.

Maria in particular met with anti-government opposition groups while on delegation, which when taken together with the fact of her skipping the meeting with the comrade President suggests a goal of undermining the Cuban socialist state, not defending it against U.S. imperialism. Furthermore, R&R declined to follow what few guidelines the International Committee offered around discussion of the trip after returning. Delegates were instructed to keep news of the conversation with President Díaz-Canel private until an official reportback; R&R decided instead to discuss this at their caucus panel, pre-empting the official reportback.