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More from @thestustustudio

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 29

If there’s one soundbite that I hope becomes synonymous with the People’s Conference for Palestine — beyond all the Hamas mentions — it’s this:

“We have to destroy the idea of America in our heads, in our neighbors’ heads, in our comrades’ heads..."

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1961542295209349351

I noticed a few questions in the replies. Here’s some additional context that should help clarify things.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1961542295209349351

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1961545448050618457

This worldview comes naturally if you loathe America and imagine communism as the better alternative.

https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1961545448050618457

Read 4 tweets

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 19

🚨 BREAKING: Microsoft employees and "community members" calling themselves the "Worker Intifada" have established a "liberated zone," also known as an encampment, on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington.

"We demand Microsoft cut all ties with the entire economy of genocide immediately."

A plainclothes Microsoft security guard literally hauling away the protesters’ trash. Give this man a bonus for putting up with this nonsense.

Read 6 tweets

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 14

🚨 UN-Backed Feminist Education Program Features Mahmoud Khalil Praising Terrorist Icon and Urging Student “Revolution”

Earlier this week, I attended Transform Education’s From Classrooms to Revolution, featuring Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil.

What’s troubling is that Transform Education is part of UNGEI, the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative. Instead of focusing on education, the event promoted student “revolution” as a moral duty and necessity.

Khalil praised PFLP terrorist Ghassan Kanafani as an inspiration, framed education as “resistance,” and lauded Columbia’s militant campus activism and mutual aid networks that supported students during arrests. He described carving protest chants into his prison bunk, hailed students as the “moral compass” of radical change, and even preached about “positive masculinity.”

Given the militancy of Columbia’s protests, it’s alarming that a women’s education program would choose Khalil as its keynote speaker.

Sapphire, a young feminist activist from Trinidad and Tobago, opened From Classrooms to Revolution by declaring that in many societies, young people are “viewed as powerless, entitled, or in some cases even lazy” and “expected to obey authority without question.” She countered that “students have led many of history’s greatest protests” — from the Soweto uprisings to today’s campus encampments — often “at great personal risk.”

She said the event was “a celebration of student activism, countering the narrative that student activists are deviants,” and closed by declaring, “We are agents of change, shifting the world order away from a movement of extractivism, capitalism, and oppression toward collective liberation, freedom, and justice for all.”

It is certainly surprising to hear such far-left, anti-capitalist rhetoric — the kind you’d expect at a socialist rally, not from a UN-backed education program.

Mahmoud Khalil opened by saying he wanted to define himself in his own words. He introduced himself as “a human being, a human rights defender, a freedom fighter, a refugee, husband, and father,” and “a Palestinian.”

He said these identities shaped who he is, comparing himself to Columbia students who “fought constantly… for justice, for dignity, for the right of people to live free from oppression.”

It takes a certain arrogance to casually crown yourself a “freedom fighter.”

Read 14 tweets

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 9

🧵 DSA Co-Chair Hails Zohran Mamdani as “Generational Talent” and Blueprint for Socialist Power in America

At the Socialism 2025 conference, Democratic Socialists of America Co-Chair Ashik Siddique painted a sweeping vision for the future — one built around Zohran Mamdani’s rise from DSA’s ranks to the brink of becoming New York City’s mayor.

Siddique called Mamdani “a unique generational talent” and said his campaign proves the DSA can “have people like Zohran all over the country.” He openly embraced naming “class enemies” and promised that with Mamdani in office, socialists could “confront capital where it matters” in America’s wealthiest city.

The DSA leader credited Mamdani’s win to years of post-Bernie DSA organizing, strong union support, and the group’s coordinated “socialists in office” blocs nationwide. He called the primary victory “the biggest thing for the socialist left in the past century,” praising Mamdani as an “organizer in office” who joins strikes, hunger fasts, and direct actions.

“We are trying to build the party and in many ways, we’re already doing it.”

Not the wildest thread you will read today but a revealing look at how DSA built its power and where it plans to take it next.

DSA Co-Chair Ashik Siddique laid out the group’s strategy for using the Democratic Party as a launching pad for an independent socialist party.

Siddique said DSA is a “big tent” that includes members who want to reform Democrats, those calling for a clean break, and others pursuing a “dirty break” using the party’s ballot line until they are forced out.

He described the prevailing “party surrogate model” as running DSA candidates under the Democratic label while building the infrastructure for a future socialist party. Representing the DSA’s Groundwork Caucus, Siddique made the goal explicit: “We are trying to build the party, and in many ways we’re already doing it.”

It is important to understand that Siddique is the DSA’s respectable frontman, the buttoned up figure they present so attention drifts away from members calling to abolish the family or boasting that New York City is flying people in for trans healthcare and footing the bill.

It is an open admission that the DSA’s long game is to hollow out the Democratic Party from the inside until it is ready to replace it or compete against it directly, which, as you will hear later, is exactly what they do in deep blue areas.

Siddique dismissed both major U.S. parties as hollow “funding networks” for competing sectors of capital and claimed the DSA is already building a true party infrastructure to replace them.

Quoting Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara, Siddique said the United States has a “no party system” where Democrats and Republicans lack membership structures or internal democracy.

“It’s just which sector of capital pours more money into politics."

By contrast, Siddique boasted that DSA has grown to more than 80,000 dues-paying members, making it the largest socialist organization in decades, with an independent funding base and internal decision-making. Through what he called the “party surrogate model,” the group is building the functions of a political party while still running candidates on the Democratic ballot line.

Read 6 tweets

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 6

🔥DSA Organizer in Texas: We’re Embracing "Direct Confrontation and Contradiction with the State"

This is Saya Clarke. Trans rights activist. DSA organizer. Former addict and sex worker. Co-chair of DSA North Texas.

She took the mic at the now-viral “United Struggles” panel at Socialism 2025 — and delivered a blunt, radical vision of DSA’s work in one of the reddest states in the country.

In Dallas, Clarke helped...

-Pass a trans sanctuary resolution
-Build an underground-aboveground coalition of queer, labor, anti-war, and Palestinian groups
-Spread Marxist feminist political education
-Compile a survival guide for trans and queer services in North Texas

She says her chapter is embracing “direct confrontation and contradiction with the state.”

Then she runs through the latest laws in Texas...

-Retroactive bans on ID changes (Refers to laws prohibiting or reversing changes to legal documents like birth certificates and driver’s licenses)

-Mandated detransition coverage for insurers (If insurance covers gender-affirming care, it must also cover detransition procedures — including retroactively)

-Legalized conversion therapy (Texas never banned it — and “conversion therapy” here includes talk therapy or parental guidance that doesn’t affirm gender identity)

-Stripped protections from LGBTQ youth (This means banning gender-affirming medical interventions for minors — puberty blockers, hormones, surgeries)

“Even my own documents are now illegal.”

Clarke describes life as a trans person under "hostile" law:

“The state is actively hostile to my and my loved ones’ way of life.”

She draws a parallel between abortion bans and trans repression, saying lawmakers now use the same “framework of cruelty and denial of dignity” to block “self-determination.”

On the failure of liberal politics:

“We’re living in the unfortunate aftermath of the flawed piecemeal approach to sustaining trans life by a political class that wants you to work when you're sick, that considers pitching a tent to survive a crime against property, that happily shuffled right on immigration, legal or otherwise — the effects of which we are now seeing, that allow police to destroy encampments and arrest students protesting a generational crime against humanity, and that continues to vote to send money to a genocidal colonial ethno-state that livestreams its ethnic cleansing campaign and lashes out at its neighbors.”

She challenges the notion of sanctuary.

“So the word ‘sanctuary’ really does sound great, right? ‘Sanctus’ means holy, and early use was in reference to a church or other sacred place where a fugitive was immune by the law of the medieval church from arrest. Interesting, right? You are still a fugitive and protected by law. Do we remember who makes laws? Do we know how little a supposed law matters when a fascist is out for blood?”

Clarke calls for international solidarity and a unification of all struggles around bodily autonomy.

“We must reorient our politics around bodily autonomy. It is the one feature that unites struggle that connects the children of Gaza being starved to migrants being kidnapped to trans people searching for a truly safe place. Our struggle is by necessity international.”

🏳️‍⚧️“Only under socialism and maybe even communism can clear trans liberation, working class liberation be fully and permanently realized.” — Saya Clarke at Socialism 2025

At the close of her Socialism 2025 remarks, DSA organizer Saya Clarke warns of a coming collapse and calls for radical self-reliance. This feels like a manifesto so I am including a full text transcript of it.

“I believe a time will come when we will only have each other to rely on — when the state will not only have completely abandoned the marginalized, it already has, but the larger working class.”

“If we want to feel safe, if we want to feel protected. If we want our bodies to belong to us, we must begin to wean ourselves off of the state as it exists. It's a hard habit to break, I know, but we must break our dependency before they break it for us, and then where will we be?”

“This isn't to say no state could ever protect us or have our best interests at heart or hold sacred one's belonging to oneself. Quite the opposite actually.”

“What we are capable of building, what we will build, what many of you are building in your own communities right now — these are the structures, the ideas, the community formations, the ways of relating to each other, caring for each other, that will plant the multi-colored international seeds for a future.”

“The key to all of this is bodily autonomy. Capitalism runs on alienated, desecrated bodies. It compels them, it sorts them, it pacifies them, it exhausts them, it maims them, it burns them, it deprives them of joy and eventually of life.”

“This is why socialism is not only the ownership of production — it is the ownership of one's body. Only under socialism and maybe even communism can clear trans liberation, working class liberation be fully and permanently realized.”

“If the city will have you, let them. If the police will ignore you, let them. If the doctor will see you, let them. But we must begin to invest in another strategy, a strategy of cooperative reliance — a break, yes, a prefigurative modality that requires a thoughtful vision of the future provided by the people at the margins of society, people like us.”

Read 4 tweets

Stu Smith

@thestustustudio

Aug 4

🚨 “Zohran is literally attempting to do what conservatives say we want to do, which is provide gender affirming care to anyone who wants it for free. We're gonna fly people in and pay for their hotel rooms.”

That’s Daniel Goulden, a member of NYC DSA’s Steering Committee, speaking on a panel DSA just uploaded from last month’s Socialism 2025 conference.

Goulden worked on Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, helped write the trans policy platform, and says he regularly meets with Zohran and his staff.

“We collaborated with the Zohran Mamdani campaign on his trans rights platform, and what we explicitly wanted to do was use the power of New York City to provide free gender affirming care—and I say free in case insurance companies decide to boot us off—free gender affirming care not just to people in New York City but across the country.”

“DSA has regular meetings with him, let alone his team. His policy director is my friend. I've been working with his campaign manager for well over a year.”

This isn’t hypothetical. DSA operatives are openly planning to turn New York City into a national hub for trans healthcare—flying people in, paying for hotels, mailing prescriptions across state lines—and doing it on the taxpayer’s dime.

And it’s not just about healthcare. It’s about power.

“With Zohran, we’re in basically the best possible position to seize state power.”

They’re not hiding it. They’re posting it proudly. The Democratic Socialists of America are building a machine—rooted in radicalism, empowered by city government, and led by a man now poised to run the largest city in America.

“We wrote the platform with him… now he’s going to be mayor.”

In this clip, NYC DSA’s Daniel Goulden spells it out. Zohran Mamdani didn’t just accept support—he let DSA write his trans policy platform. Their goal? Turn NYC into the national distribution hub for gender transition procedures.

“What we explicitly wanted to do was use the power of New York City to provide free gender affirming care and I say free in case insurance companies decide to boot us off.. Free gendering affirming care, not just to people in New York City but across the country.”

They're planning to override red states by any means necessary.

“There’s no reason at all that we can’t use telehealth and mailing prescriptions to people across the country to undermine state bans.”

Goulden lays out just how deeply NYC DSA is embedded in Mamdani’s campaign.

“The Zohran campaign was always eager to work with us… the team was so happy to work with us on this.”

“All of a sudden my work shifts from being on the outside to thinking about how to utilize the fairly significant municipal power of New York City.”

“The model we used in New York is 100% replicatable [SIC] both in terms of our trans organizing, but also getting Zohran elected mayor.”

This is the plan. In their own words.

Daniel Goulden starts by griping about a centrist op-ed attacking Zohran—then immediately pivots to bragging about how radical Zohran actually is by framing it as Fox News' worst nightmare.

“Zohran is literally attempting to do what conservatives say we want to do which is provide gender affirming care to anyone who wants it for free. We’re gonna fly people in and pay for their hotel rooms.”

“Zohran is literally attempting to do what conservatives say we want to do… provide gender affirming care to anyone who wants it for free. We’re gonna fly people in and pay for their hotel rooms.”

From there, he explains how Mamdani’s focus on cost of living wasn’t just practical—it was, in his words, the politics of solidarity. By centering shared material struggles, Goulden argues, the campaign automatically reached the most marginalized and built a broader coalition than he thought possible.

“Basically, when you use the politics of solidarity, you are automatically targeting the most marginalized… because the most marginalized communities are experiencing the hellishness of capitalism the most acutely.”