{"id":20458,"date":"2016-07-29T21:24:13","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T01:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=20458"},"modified":"2016-07-29T21:24:13","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T01:24:13","slug":"editorial-my-time-at-the-dnc-a-demoralizing-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2016\/07\/editorial-my-time-at-the-dnc-a-demoralizing-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: My Time At The DNC: A Demoralizing Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"3500\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Leonard Zorfass<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I attended the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I did not\u00a0attend the convention itself but joined the hundreds of protestors outside the\u00a0convention.\u00a0Among the protestors were various strata of left including\u00a0Sandernistas, Anarchists, Democratic Socialists, and a handful of\u00a0communists outside of the APL members in attendance. We carried an APL\u00a0and Soviet flag. At first things seemed to be going okay. People were\u00a0converging outside of the convention gates. Several different media\u00a0representatives interviewed members of the APL including myself. We\u00a0also\u00a0met a handful of other communists who showed up and expressed their\u00a0admiration that we had\u00a0\u201cthe guts\u201d\u00a0to carry the flags we were carrying. We\u00a0also managed to point out some party lit to interested people. That was the\u00a0good, which accounted for about 5% of our time there.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other 95% was an absolute mess. I had thought, that given the\u00a0common opposition to Hillary, the left would be relatively united. This was\u00a0not the case. Groups were not in contact with each other. There was constant\u00a0over talk over megaphones. One group would march one way, the\u00a0other\u00a0group would march another, and another group gathered in a corner to sing\u00a0songs. Not to mention the groups of people who just sat on the lawn\u00a0not\u00a0participating in anything. There was no unity, no plan, no solidarity.The last and most annoying part was the right wing trolls. We didn\u2019t\u00a0have the time to try to get people organizing because we were being\u00a0harassed by right wingers who showed up to do nothing more than\u00a0to\u00a0create\u00a0a disruption. We were cornered by a number of these people who attempted\u00a0to start arguments. They were not good arguments. While they tried to throw\u00a0the same rhetorical anti-communist nonsense at us, we would respond\u00a0leaving them speechless aside from the insults they flung at us. One tried to\u00a0tell us how the Soviet Union was so evil and only supported evil things.\u00a0When we asked if he knew how the US supported people like Pol Pot,\u00a0Pinochet, and Franco, the person didn\u2019t even know who they were. Another\u00a0group cornered us throwing similar rhetoric at us. One claimed\u00a0that the\u00a0Soviet Union was bad because he had family who were killed by the Soviet\u00a0state. When my comrade said,\u00a0\u201cI know people who have been killed by the\u00a0U.S.,\u201d\u00a0he blew it off and repeated himself. I then replied that the Soviet Union\u00a0saved my family in Russia. Which is true, if not for the Bolsheviks and Red\u00a0Army the White Army would have executed my Jewish family, not\u00a0to\u00a0mention the Nazi\u2019s during their invasion. He gave the response:\u00a0\u201cShut the\u00a0fuck up, you\u2019re a loser.\u201d\u00a0They also made claims that capitalism created\u00a0wealth, when we tried to explain that wealth came from labor they told us\u00a0we were asshole idiots who didn\u2019t know what we were talking about. This is\u00a0what we had to spend most of our time doing. Dealing with right-wing\u00a0lunatics whose ignorance is so great they can\u2019t even defend their own points\u00a0and result to insults.<\/span><\/p>\n

After tonight, I feel ashamed to say it but I feel very demoralized. The\u00a0left couldn\u2019t even coordinate with itself when we were all there for a\u00a0common goal. Hell, the Sanders supporters couldn\u2019t even coordinate with\u00a0the Sanders supporters. The fact that we couldn\u2019t try to get something\u00a0together because we kept getting cornered by right-wing, and often drunk,\u00a0wreckers was a disaster. They were extremely insulting, ignorant, and\u00a0aggressive. There was a point were we thought we might have to fight these\u00a0people. People seemed to care more that they just showed up to sing songs\u00a0or to try to troll left-wingers than to actually accomplish anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I always try to maintain revolutionary optimism, but at the moment,\u00a0I\u00a0am finding it hard. The left hates itself, and the right spouts their ignorant,\u00a0and false, rhetoric to cheers. Usually, after an action I feel invigorated,\u00a0energized, and optimistic. Even when strong opposition shows up I feel\u00a0proud to have stood up to them. After the DNC, however, I feel pessimism,\u00a0demoralization, and utter annoyance. The movement outside the DNC was\u00a0an utter disappointment. I will not stop organizing and fighting in spite of\u00a0this. The victory of communism is too important to give up on, despite my\u00a0current mood due to this experience. But I think it\u2019s time we start to\u00a0reevaluate how we interact with different groups of people both on\u00a0the left\u00a0and right. We can talk about unity, solidarity, and togetherness all we\u00a0want\u00a0but they don\u2019t want it. The right wants us dead just for holding a flag and the\u00a0\u201cleft\u201d\u00a0only cares about making a show of things so they can tell their fri\u00a0ends\u00a0they were there. I don\u2019t have the answer as to what to do from here but we\u00a0must come up with a new one soon or the only change we\u2019ll see is ourselves\u00a0in the grave, or having a mental break down. We are, as Che\u00a0put it, in the\u00a0mouth of the wolf, and it\u2019s jaws are closing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Leonard Zorfass I attended the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I did not\u00a0attend the convention itself but joined the hundreds of protestors outside the\u00a0convention.\u00a0Among..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[347],"class_list":["post-20458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3500.jpg?fit=620%2C372&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}