Socialist Back-Seat Driver: I Know a Couple Things — post-Mamdani-election
I too was once a founding member of a tiny cadre that toppled a massive institution— here’s what it’s really like
Allow me to share my quivering-puppy-joy and rare insights at Tuesday’s election results.
Today’s story is a chock-full podcast — press the audio button at the top. Singing is included.
What follows below, is a spare outline of what I have to say— more detail in my recording.
November 4, 2025, was my favorite day this year.
Yes, there was righteous news everywhere— Mississippi Goddamn.
I felt a special vicarious thrill in Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral victory. I too was once a young whipper-snapper socialist just like him.
No, not as notorious to be sure— but in terms of massive social change, yeah, I witnessed such a thing.
When I was a teenager, I was in the center of what seemed like a Quixotic socialist quest, that went from a handful of people in a bare room, to a successful political campaign that changed everything.
My group toppled the leadership of the Teamster Union leadership and precipitated the first national strike in the history of the “International Brotherhood.“
Yeah, there was a considerable cost. Nonetheless . . . I know what’s like to have a tiger by the tail.
I was in a minuscule New Left socialist group in the 70s,1 who started a rank and file progressive group, called TDU, in the notoriously corrupt and powerful Teamsters. The IBT was run at the time, but a combination of Mafia dons and Nixon hacks. We organized, from the bottom up, we stood down the bosses on the Master Freight Agreement, and kicked out the corrupt leadership.
It went from “a handful” of hardcores to hundreds of thousands of supporters on the day to day issue level. We influenced the labor movement right up to this moment in time. We were cool as hell, and we had all the best parties and laughs. We knew what we were fighting for.
Top from left: 1976 TDU conference. That’s the late Sharon Cottrell, Long Beach on the mic; Anne Mackie, Cleveland; the late Pete Camarata, Detroit; Ken Paff, Cleveland; Help me with others?.
The little newsletter that says, “Smile, Frank!” — that was the Detroit UPSurge newsletter, called the Write-Up. Jenny Vail and I produced it, that’s my handwriting. Ha!
Jenny snuck into Las Vegas IBT convention, the heart of the monster, and pretended to be an innocent blonde who wanted her photo taken with President Fuck-All Fitzsimmons.
And the last photo in the row, is Celia Petty, , the late Christina Bergmark in glasses, I don’t recall the others, I’m so forgetful! Please help me fill in.
Middle from left: More pages from The Write Up. I should transcribe these pages because I know they’re hard to read. We were very sassy.
Bottom from left: Another page from The Write Up. The letter is the day the local Teamster honchos tried to call off our wildcat strike at Detroit UPS hubs. Finally, my court notice. We were all eventually pled out to “loitering” but it was far more serious to begin with, and we sat in our cells. The judge was the Julius Hoffman type: he scolded me, “Young lady, you are a menace to society.”
There were, too, horrible setbacks. I was one of the founders of TDU,2 so I suffered them, under a microscope. Or, as one of my colleagues Ken Paff said, “Death by a thousand cuts.”
The internal bullshit, after our victory, was OUTRAGEOUS. I’m still mad about it. The conservative turn TDU took over the years, is so crazy and against everything we started with, it leaves me slack-jawed.
And so too, I look at AOC’s and Mamdani’s campaigns, and contemplate what internal landmines they endeavor to avoid. Will they be successful?
After our 1970s success, when a socialist grassroots organization should have capitalized on the best of our union win, we instead had internal purge after purge. It was gross. The newest, youngest members were treated like cannon fodder. Women were treated like shit behind a veneer of feminism. Most fearsome, a couple of sociopaths were tolerated and even celebrated in our leadership circle. There was insidious internal racism and elitism which protected an old guard who were completely obnoxious. I am tortured by memories and at the same time, so fiercely proud of our best work.
Don’t forget, Reaganism was rising. —Which had more of an effect on us that we could realize at the time. The Cold War was still intact.
Did the ugly tide turn me against socialism? No. Yet it was demoralizing, because our better angels did not prevail. Our legacy was tremendous, but our original little group took a bloody hit.
Now, those of you who are clever, are asking, “How much of the self-sabotage had to do with the State’s persecution?”
Okay: a lot. We were infiltrated by criminal con men. We were the target of the federal government’s COINTELPRO program, orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover. It was insane.
And needless to say, grrrrrrrr, the mainstream Democratic Party fucked us; they did not defend us. Liberals were the death of us so many times. We were targeted by Cold War commie-phobia, which today, seems a lot more quaint. I am so done with that bullshit. Red Apple, my ass.
Young organizers ask me, “What did you do about agent provocateurs?”
You can only do so much. The rule is, make everyone work as hard as everyone else, so at least we get our pound of flesh from the inevitable informers. That is why activist lefties are workaholics. No one gets to sit around on the sofa and be a dilettante.
When you do find out who the Judas’s are, you’re ruthless. You better have stone cold evidence. It’s a terrible thing, betrayal. When it backfires, you feel utterly broken.
The inspiration I take from Mamdani’s campaign is not only the canons of loving positivity and strategy — community building blocks— but also this:
D-i-s-c-i-p-l-i-n-e.
I am impressed. They call Mamdani’s campaign discipline “ironclad.” As the wife of a welder, I like that word.
For an incisive and rare look at Zohran’s character, watch the video of the look on his face, at the election booth, when a reporter popped up, “Did you know Dick Cheney just died? What’s your reaction?”
The millisecond look of shock and curiosity on his face, immediately followed by his determination to stay focused on the task at hand . . . It tells you a lot about the man.
Everyone is speculating: what will the new mayor’s priorities be?
I have news for anyone who’s grabbing their smelling salts— it’s not going to be “Israel stunts.”
Priority A is going to be the five boroughs, and fighting ICE (Trump’s revenge) every step of the way.
The bad players on the social-media right wing are “leaking a memo” this week about how the DSA, and hence Mamdani, are going to be driving Jews out of NYC.
Bitch please.
First of all, the DSA working group memo in its entirety3— I’ve read it— is a boycott-divestment strategy straight out of the anti-apartheid campaign that the whole world joined in, in the 80s, to defeat the regime in South Africa. —Word for word. It is an economic boycott and military divestment strategy as old as the hills. Vietnam, South Africa, you name it.
The only difference is this time, the Christian nationalists/AIPAC coalition have sought to conflate Jewish heritage with Netanyahu’s agenda. Ha!
Back in the 80s, no one would be crazy enough to say, “All white people support South African apartheid.” Absurd.
Yet, MAGA and AIPAC managed to do that, as if they speak for all Jews.
Activists know among the most passionate, burn-it-down anti-Zionists are the Jewish Left. Always have been, since the dawn of Zionism. They are enraged that colonial racism and genocide are invoked in their name. It is unbearable.
I will never forget meeting my first South African WHITE expats, (many of them Jewish) who were traveling the world in the 20th century to campaign for apartheid divestment. If they could have ripped out De Klerk’s throat and ended apartheid with a stroke of the sword, they would have. They were driven by the same outrage: NOT IN MY NAME.
Mamdani knows all this, as you can see by his Jewish colleagues, staff, supporters. Brad Landers, come on down . . .
Furthermore, Mamdani is the kind of dem-socialist candidate who knows that if you run on free buses, childcare, and affordable housing, that is exactly what you bang the drum on, every single day. Look at what AOC did with her post-campaign operation. She created a national stage, yes, but only with the predicate that her constituents in Queens and the Bronx be protected.
So, how will Mamdani withstand Trump’s rage and revenge? Will it be heavy?
Yes, it will.
Stephen Miller, Trump, they will push forward with ICE.
Look at Chicago and LA, at the ground resistance there.
It will be even tougher in NYC. It’s gonna be ugly, but self-defense is everything right now.
As for all the billionaires and socialites leaving NYC? ‘Tis the season!
Have you seen the meme of the funeral lady directing the billionaire traffic out of the City? I can’t stop laughing.
NYC’s 1% already spend plenty of time in their global mega-mansions and yachts. They are New York Part-Timers.
However, they crave the cultural capital and social life of New York. They aren’t happy in fucking Miami during a hurricane. They don’t want to live in Po-Dunk. They don’t like the Kennedy Center being taken from them and turned into a HeeHaw show, or that their servants and favorite restaurants have been destroyed by Little Stevie’s Gestapo. It’s not “socialists” who are hurting New York.
Can we pray that Trump falls over dead and such an event will cut NYC a break?
Sure, the prayer circle is in force. But Mamdani knows this struggle will be heavy. My god, his family lived through what happened in Uganda, in India. Recent immigrants know what it means to be WIPED OUT by the state.
And, the new mayor knows the biggest voting block he commanded were voters under 30. They will be voting with him and for him, for the next two generations.
“Will Mamdani sell out?” —Another Manhattan cocktail talking point.
You know, I’m not worried about him being derailed by nice dinners and suits. This young man already grew up in an upper middle class milieu, in an intelligentsia. That’s a long way from being a billionaire, but he is someone, his parents are someone’s, who are true believers in social justice, in an end to racism and colonialism, in democracy.
In a sense, you could call it their privileged innocence, but it’s also their super power. He was raised with a sense that he COULD change the world (entitlement) but also that he MUST, that it is a moral crusade and inheritance that cannot afford to flinch.
I identify with this, too. I’m an atheist, as is Mamdani and AOC and MOST PEOPLE UNDER 30.
We are nonetheless influenced by our heritage. Zohran quoted Nehru and Eugene Debs for a reason.
I also quote Debs, and socialists like Dorothy Day, Bernadette Devlin, and a lot of radical nuns.
I too remember why my kin came here. This country is for us. The streets belong to us.
In Case You Missed It
Bitsy Gomez - In Memory
I didn’t want to go the Elks Club downtown anymore and deal with the boys and the police riots. I drove up from Long Beach to Crenshaw/Slauson to see Bitsy Gomez, who usually had a butch-girl-trucker solution to everything. She listened to my whole sad tale, took me up on her roof and said, “Let’s light up and shoot my guns.”
Special Begging Jewelry
Boo, it’s that time of year when I beg for you to subscribe or make a one-time donation to my newsletter.
Could you?
I hate holding my hand out, but as they say: “What Is To Be Done?4
I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to. I have lots of plans, and we have a lot of history. Thank you! — Susie
If you read the Wikipedia entry, just know that I have my OWN version, darling.
It cracks me up that in the Wikipedia entry, the prominent TDU activists are a list of 5 dudes. No women. What a joke. Anne Mackie at UPS is one of the greatest union leaders who ever lived, and she’s not there? Fuck you. Myself, Jennifer Vail, Stephanie Batey, Sharon Cottrell, Bitsy Gomez, Mary Deaton . . . I could go on and on. We were jailed, beaten, pronounced a “menace to society,” and you don’t want to mention us? Sure, Buddy. It was so hard to be a woman in that milieu. We were legends.
I’ll let you find it on Google, I’m not going to link to right wing nuts.
I was like the last to find this out, but did you know that Vlad took his title from a famous street popular Russian novel, with a female heroine who makes great sacrifices? Little Vera?
As usual Susie’s piece is right on and spot on. i campaigned for Mamdani. it was exhilarating and full of hope. He can succeed if he keeps his coalition together (something Obama refused to do).I think he knows it as do his tens of thousand of activist supporters. It will be our responsibility to get involved in making sure his mayoralty works.
And as to Susie’s comment about the all male wikipedia TDU comments - again, she is so right and more important she names the women, or some of them, who were the backbone of TDU. as for Anne Mackie, she was the second driver hired by UPS in the early 1970’s a born John Lewis trouble maker she organized a rank a file movement among UPS drivers an warehouse sorters. think about this, Ann was under 30 (as were most of the other women mentioned) and led, repeat LED a mass movement of overwhelmingly male UPS drivers. They loved her and respected and treated her with great respect. She put out an exceptional newspaper UPSurge, with brilliant journalism and wickedly funny cartoons. Ann was fearless. UPSurge actually made money which no other rank and file union newspaper did at the time. She worked out of the Cleveland Ohio UPS job. One of her supervisors (or on UPSurge lingo stupidvisor) was in the very same National Guard unit which murdered and wounded the Kent State students. Every May 4, Ann would wear a Remember Kent State tee shirt to work. She also was treated like shit, her work demeaned by some of the bris in the wikipedia article. A terrific tank and file organizer, leader, role model and terrific dancer.
My mom’s side of the family was on the “red” side of politics. Her father, a Union man to the core, had a picture of Uncle Joe on the wall during WWII. My uncle finally persuaded him to take it down during the ‘50s McCarthy purges.