Jacobin magazine, the principal mouthpiece of the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America, today released a hit piece on Amazon labor leader Chris Smalls, @Shut_downAmazon.
It could be legit if Jacobin had had an honest critique of Smalls to clarify what class struggle unionist leaders should be doing. But the article is not that at all.
It’s a hatchet job against a leading labor activist who has refused to toe the line of the DSA and the business unionist labor leaders who give cover to the so-called progressive Democrats and to the Democratic Party as a whole, despite shocking betrayals by them against working people.
The crux of the real reason why Jacobin went after Smalls is contained in this sentence: “[Smalls] blames the two-party system for the state of the American labor movement…”
Smalls is spot on about this and the need to break from the Democratic and Republican parties. We need a new party of the working class.
The DSA leadership, on the other hand, sees giving cover to the Democratic Party as job number one. The Democratic Party is the party under whom the genocide in Gaza began and which engineered the breaking of the railroad workers’ strike — both under President Joe Biden. ALL Democrats in the House, including DSA star AOC voted to break the strike. The Democratic Party is one of the two most powerful capitalist parties in the world, and in no way represents working people or the oppressed.
Business unionist labor leaders are those who have made peace with the capitalist system and are driven by protecting their careers, which means placating the bosses, not organizing the rank and file against the bosses to win substantive working-class victories. Refusing to fight the bosses also means aligning with the parties of the bosses, like the Democratic Party.
The overwhelming majority of the labor leadership today is business unionist, with some crucial exceptions like Smalls. We need a reckoning in the labor movement.
Brother Smalls has put his life on the line for the antiwar movement in solidarity with the Palestinia people against the Israeli state’s genocide bankrolled by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Smalls went on a Gaza aid flotilla carrying food, baby formula, diapers and medicine in the context of catastrophic levels of mass starvation in Gaza. The flotilla was attacked by the Israeli military, who physically assaulted Smalls, and kicked and choked him.
In contrast, AOC has voted for the Iron Dome which is part of the Israeli state’s genocidal apparatus.
For having the temerity to expose AOC and other self-described “progressive” politicians, Smalls is called “narcissistic” by Jacobin, a term the magazine’s editors were apparently forced to retract after they got huge amounts of flak on all social media.
Personal attacks and character assassination like in this case are often used by the political establishment’s spokespeople as proxy for their real objections — in this case, the threat they feel from Smalls openly calling out the Democratic Party’s actual role.
The only way of rebuilding a militant labor movement is to pose a concrete threat to both the Democratic and Republican parties, which in turn requires a challenge to the business unionist labor leadership. That is the basis on which I won the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax during the decade I was the sole socialist on the Seattle City Council.
I am now running as an independent revolutionary socialist against genocidal Democrat Adam Smith. I am calling for an end to all military aid to Israel and an end to all weapons and tech for genocide and imperialist war. https://t.co/sh3zyhgTI7
On this day 35 years ago (May 14, 1991), we released our sophomore album “De La Soul Is Dead” featuring “Oodles of O’s”, “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey), “A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays””, “Keepin’ The Faith” and more.
🪴🌼🪦 Listen: https://t.co/qxCFyp665y
📹: @massappeal
The practice of mutual aid enables movements to resist and transform oppressive systems and conditions. With enough momentum, it can also carry us through climate change "as we approach the end of this world as we know it and the start of another."
https://t.co/TiV7NUiqYj
Please join me and other @Blacks4Peace and @CommunistsKe comrades and as we report back on the @pasai2026 summit.
"Resisting the Imperialist Plunder in Africa" on Saturday, May 30, 11am eastern time.
Register here: https://t.co/DrNkt6tk7W
2000 commencement speech: “if you believe it you can achieve it! The world is yours!l”
2026 commencement speech: (reads introduction to “the accumulation of waste” by Ali Kadri and a Bukowski poem, fires flamethrower at every tenth graduate)
“A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here… deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool… hear me now or pay me later.”
Scott Borchetta, a Nashville record label executive, gets booed by MTSU grads when he brings up A.I.
HBCUs cannot mistake sports revenue for a solution to structural underfunding. We currently cannot properly house or provide resources to the students we accept. An influx of students, especially athletes who require special resources, requires structures and money we don’t have.
@HBCUHW@eugenejohnson_ There also should be a tailoring of sports offerings to available resources. Spelman and Paul Quinn are excellent examples of cutting sports to match resources and institutional strategy. Several HBCUs in NCAA DI (minimum 14 sports sponsored) is completely untenable.
@jacksonvoss Sadly, far too many people in my home parish would line up one by one to have their children photographed with him. Only Grant and Vernon voted for him with a higher percentage.
In his upcoming book, William Broussard, Ph.D. will explore athletic fundraising and how new NCAA legislation creates fundraising opportunities for HBCUs even while funding gaps between HBCUs and their PWI competitors continue to widen. https://t.co/KG67i0UvUm
Please register and join us for our Virtual African Liberation Day event on Sunday 24 May 2026
THEME: "Revolutionary Pan-African ism fights in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere. Our struggle is one!"