tonight is everyone coming out just wanted to share what we're doing tonight tonight is not a debate rather we have i think three wonderful guests to reflect on where the left where progressive liberal politics go from here and there is talking with my wife kathy dinner and the frame i invite you to look at this as at least the frame that i look at it has i'm stereotyping here so just go along with me it's the candidate that is outside the system it's outside of capitalism it's a radical call to to change the way our society is structured and she ran a campaign against frank here and has made a bit of a name for herself and so she's here representing in my mind a critique of the capitalist system in the middle ten might not like this but literally ten isn't and i didn't set these guys up notice how they sell selected even i mean i think it's great so ten is in the middle because tim in my mind has to has to be both in and out of the system i admire real change i think it is one of the finest activist groups in this city i think they are consistent in their  i think ten as a prophetic voice and if any of you have ever heard him talk about home he is just absolutely utterly brilliant he is a brilliant man but he also has to play in the system and out of the system and so so it's good that he's in the middle frank top has a history with our city he has a history with us here in seattle and has done wonderful things outside of the office in terms of homeless and poverty but he's now in the system he's inside that capitalist system and he's a he's a liberal from seattle probably wouldn't be elected in spokane where i lived for a while probably wouldn't be elected  maybe who knows but frank has to do a dance between core values that he has and incremental change and how do you work with people across how you work with people across the continuum to get anything accomplished whatsoever any of you who hold positions of responsibility or if you want to be a pastor you'll you'll feel this a little bit because at some point you've got to hold people together sometimes when they don't share your values or your vision and so each of our three guests tonight represent different parts of the continuum of the left and the way the set up is i'm going to ask them when they begin by asking them a cultural values question and each of them will have about five minutes to reflect on that and then i'm going to ask each of them a question about where does the progressive left go from here and they're going to reflect on that and then the real magic of the evening takes place the real magic is you this is where democracy  happens you will just self select you'll be about fifteen twenty minutes where you break into groups of three to five people no more than that and each of you will reflect on those questions as well because that's democracy in action it's the start of a conversation at the end of that we'll come back they'll be a time for q and a i just want to acknowledge the thames got to leave at eight thirty we will end at eight forty five and you know basically the lights kind of go off about nine fifteen how everybody got it thank you for being here one more thing just a commercial and if any of you are interested i'll show you this afterwards ran across this book earlier this year and read it and i just thought it was pretty brilliant and really liked it and bought it immediately for both of my sons it's called the progressive revolution how the best in america came to be it's a history of the progressive movement and it's really good it's also in the seattle library if you want to just take a library so let me begin by asking level if you would reflect with us for just briefly your impressions about what we're up against today we in this country there is a fifty fifty split in the popular vote and the real question is what values bring us together are there any there are very many very a whole bunch of values it can bring us together starting with the fundamental concept of loving your fellow human being a well as making sure that people have a chance to stand up for themselves and to be treated with fairness and justice and that gets translated into a variety of organizations in our society ranging from churches to labor unions and many other organizations nonprofit agencies good to see yours and i by the way because i want to care about those values that we care for each other in that we're all in this together now what's happening so much of the national of in particular is a rural raud divide in this country even in this state it you can see it as well that a lot of folks will say they support certain kind of public services to help everybody in this society whether it's education or home care for the only and yet in this election there were several votes that where they actually repeal the things that we did on the revenue side so we have to make sure that when we have a values that we can figure out a way to translate that into real action and also bring people together in the key to that is if find a common agenda where we can say look these are the four or five things that we can do together let's figure out the best way to get there and with that i feel very honored to be with you tonight and look for the discussion you know i think that there is there there are several  i think that one of the things that i say over and over again that makes me hope fall is that people often have ideas that are pretty off base and fear based about people that they don't have a lot of contact with whether that be the poor people or folks in communities of color  familiarity once people actually get know folks you know once people get to know for example the real change vendor once homeless ten city comes into a community and folks start to understand that you know that these aren't just sort of like walking stereotypes of homeless people that they're actually living breathing people and they're not so different from them and they get to know them and they make friends with them and they have a whole different window into something that they thought that they knew all about and they don't or they did and i think that that gets replicated over and over again and and that makes me hopeful i think that in know people often have ideas that  you know they've they've come to hold but they don't hold them all that tightly you know they're open to being changed and i think that we also live in a time where you know  some level of people are very hungry for community and that can be you know exploited in ways that are not so you know like nationalism and ugly things like like that ways that build understanding across across barriers and so you know i think it's just important to look beyond ideology to the things that us here it's really an honor to be here and i think it's very apt that we are talking about these things right after the elections because it's very important not for us to not lose the momentum of far off our  activism in our political thinking after being engaged so actively we don't want to just go and go home and you know just go back to life as usual because there's a lot that needs to be done and i think in terms of the question  in american society that exists between the super rich and everyone else and there's any number of statistics that we can look at but one really striking i'll probably give you more statistics because i'm an economist and i can help it but but one really striking number is that if you look at the growth of productivities every year you know for the last several decades it is just skyrocketing but if you look at the wages of we're chilly everybody except for the you know dop sliver of the one or even just the one percent of the top one tenth of one percent except for them if you look at everybody else wages are mostly stagnant and for a lot of people wages in real terms are falling so there is that whole you know huge chunk of wealth that was created by everybody you know ordinary working people going that's obviously flowing to the top it's not going down some black hole and disappearing right so what does that mean that actually means in terms of numbers that every year for the last several years a trillion dollars are flowing to the dark one percent whereas the rest of us are us king are being told to make do with crumbs and i think that while we're talking about the polarization of society we need to recognize that that is the  women's rights let's look at the you know the need for universal single payer health care the need for gulf air for the poor in you know for services for the homeless the need for childcare you know publicly provided childcare the need for public life under high quality education if you look at the you know ending the wars that seeing the rich you look at any social or economic issue and pick up opinion polls i would encourage you to go to fair dot org you know fairness reporting they have several you know a whole range of polls and what it shows is not a deeply polarized society it actually shows a deeply united society what it shows is that ordinary working people are actually looking for the same thing which is social and economic justice a decent standard of living look at the polls on climate change you know it is very clear that a majority of people are becoming more and more aware of the dangerous bat to words which the system is taking us and the need for a radical change in the use of renewable energy look at the polls and wars so i think what's happening here is that you of obama and romney the democratic party and the republican party neither of which are offering any real alternative and in the absence of their real alternative people are being you know led down the garden path by one party or another both parties are actually doing equally to distort the real issues and abuse them you know use them for their own benefit and the problem here on an island with this is that if the democratic party is what is considered the left in million real trouble because then we are really left with a very false choice the choice is between you know very quickly going down a very bad are less quickly going down a very bad and that's about the left comes in we have to create our own alternative i'm actually feeling very hopeful after the election and you know i mean i work with homeless folks and i believe in in harm reduction and he you know if you're going to shoot do do the least harm there and that's valid you know you get to live to two to fight another day but you know to extend the analogy a know if you're shootin consumer culture and where addicted to distractions and we're addicted to a bunch of trivia that really isn't doing us a lot of good and we sort of you know we miss the big  picture i think you know i had this kind of joke that i was telling my friends before the election you know that you know when when when when and when i'm going to have my president lie to me you know i want sort of and you know i mean i think no matter which one of them is get in to watch one of them you know as is president you know we still have wars of the empire we still have a sort of an overall neo liberal mark where operating with then where are still going to have this culture that's been and coke aided for decades or even in a state you know in a state that  overwhelmingly goes democratic we simultaneously vote to to give tax breaks that the legislature tried to take away from corporations back to them you know we're not really we want you to have this money you know so that's that's that's a long term project changing the culture i mean the right has been been building this sort of anti tax anti government culture for three decades and we're not going to shift it in one election but i was i was you know very encouraged by you know the kind of rhetoric that was in this election even though obama never mentioned oh i don't know homelessness for example you know he was still talking about our response ability to each other and the role of government and shifting the dialogue around that as opposed to other asshole who is just you know everybody for themselves and you know it's bladerunner time so but you know the reason i'm hopeful is just simply you know part of it's just demographics you know i mean voters are getting younger and you know there have been people that have been fighting the good fight year after year and losing who are now starting to win i mean for gave gay marriage passed in four states that's obama won florida i mean after everything that they have done to you know is steal in racist ways in that state in all of the ways that they have like set him up to lose he won florida and that was demographics that was the shift that was you know there just ain't and nuff white guys around anymore for the republican party to continue to to lean on them is really their sole base you know so i think that is is very very hopeful and you know i wrote this i wrote this this time and running out of reasons for hope but i had more women play you know there was a big backlash big some very very stupid things that some very stupid people and it kind of comes down to that not enough white guys to go around thing anymore like what's going on in you know he's like cleveland and detroit  economically devastated communities where business enterprises are bubbling up from you know people who are organizing of necessity because they have to create their own opportunities and all of these sort of like green businesses are getting created in these these worker run co ops are getting created and i think that there's a lot going on there that is really kind of creating in our in grandiose terms it's kind of creating a new economic model as as capitalism in some ways becomes less viable long term so i think that there are new models for organizing in new models for business and new models for  you know really free enterprise that are being created that are not they're really you know pure capitalism or socialism it's something different that's being created and i think that that that is is really hopeful i see make this really putting class and inequality in the deep economic divisions in america front and center and having that be a very popular debate you know opened political space for a different sort of a national dialogue around around this election i think you know the movement had a lot to do with that you know i think when you look at the history of they're better people than the rest you see you see people who are organizing because they need to because they're threatened because there are survival issues that bring people into action and you know there is choice involved in some ways there there isn't and i think that where we're seeing a lot of that now mean things are getting awfully real out there fall and we've been organizing over the last year to support folks who are in the tent cities saying that we need to do more to meet the unmet need to out there and that there that you cannot have a purely human services aleutian to what is an economic justice issue that human services are homelessness governing board meeting a couple of weeks ago and they were going through their little sort of board dash board their board dashboard and they were looking at all the you know signs of progress and how they're they're looking at homelessness even though  you know the number of homeless people in king county has gone up by thirty three percent since they started their plan and they had all these you know kind of kind of you know metrics and some of them looked rather hopeful and then they came to and they created some five thousand units of housing over the last six years which is you know a lot of bull but but then they you know guess how many people became homeless for the first time last quarter over the last three months one hundred seventy five families and one thousand and of it jules they counted in their system through their own their own you know  database system a thousand people in the last three months homeless for the first time in the economic reasons that people are becoming homeless is is just utterly trumping the human services response and and people are fighting back because they have to and they're fighting back saying we need an economic justice response not a human services response that is entirely inadequate and we need to support those movement speak because those are the sorts of survival movements that i think in the end are going to build to change the movements for social change that are going to turn things around thank you for speaking i really agree with a lot of things and just said it it's true that it's absolutely true that you know a romney presidency would i think in many real ways have been a far worse option but let's be clear an obama presidency is not is not really is not actually in any way going to offer any solutions and i think this is the problem with this two party system and i want to say that as a socialist i am also hopeful but i am extremely hopeful but my hope is not based on this idea now suddenly for example in the case of obama that you know now he has no he doesn't have to worry about reelection suddenly he's going to come out of the closet and declare himself a socialist and actually start doing what we want him to do i know that is not going to happen and i think we should all understand as long as we have this misplaced faith in this two party system we're actually not going to get anywhere and we have to understand that these problems that jim was talking about he could as he was correctly hinting at these are systemic problems poverty and unemployment and homelessness a to capitalism and if we don't actually organize really concerted fight back against the system itself then we're never going to solve those problems i think i think them very eloquently talked about how  social services are not go are never going to be able to keep up with the problems that are facing i mean the simple reality that we're facing right now is that since day konami collapse all the burden off that economic collapse which ordinary people did not create is on the backs of ordinary people the census is reporting that one in two americans is either in poverty or inching closer so we have to look for solutions outside this two party system and recognize that the two parties you know the two corporate parties are merely tools for the capitalist system in the united states to keep the status quo and in order to solve those problems we have to come out of that agenda and i'm pretty sure the democrats you heard them say before and i'm sure you'll hear them again today and other times that you know we have to be gone be paying this guy we have to get things done you know these are all dream this is great but we have to really live in the real world and i think if we believe that poverty and homelessness and unemployment are going to be salt by voting for the democrats then ducks by in the sky we have to recognize that and every time there was a social movement that wanted to address the you know desperate ills and misery of society they were called dreamers the abolitionists the first day do you think that build a movement in the first day no they had to really struggle and the first day a lot of people who were arguing with them you know this is pie in the sky why don't you just fight for kinder gentler slavery this is what this is the message of the democratic party you know we are we have we have no option but to fight the corporate you know fight for the corporations you know be loyal to them and in doing that if we give you a few crumbs and that's the best we can get we have to reject that fall choice and the way you reject it is through concrete action and that action comes on the streets as you know t was talking about you know that came with the civil rights movement that came right now a very live example is the enormously successful struggle to the chicago teachers union had recently against a democratic party establishment was that was you know led by rahm emanuel that was determined to really crush the teachers union but what they did was organize a strike they actually had parents and teachers children you know students having school occupations and they showed the way the showed that really the only way to address these problems in the system is to challenge that itself and action comes in other ways as well and i will look to our campaign that has recently you know you know re ended that as an example of what people can do i mean if you think about it and openly socialist grassroots people power campaign on a shoestring budget we had less than a tenth of the budget th and these votes did not come because we watered down our socialist ideas or said that well let's fight for little things no if you look at our election program we're actually calling for free education free public transit where we talking about so many things police accountability a massive jobs program so the question is do we think that we were or did we did we think that we were all going to achieve all that just by running this campaign know but the point is that we have to go out there with a message that really sets people sights higher and says you know this is what we can achieve but the way you achieve is by having a systematic you know series of movements a series of struggles and bringing people together drawing a broader layer of people together and i completely agree with him the occupy movement was a huge inspiration in fact our campaign is an occupy inspired campaign that's you know that's where we came from because you know it occupied really change the dialogue but what we need in the coming years is occupy time stand occupy times hundred times thousand we need movements of millions of people on the street because history has shown that that is what brings about a change but you know it that's all in the abstract because we don't know which movements exactly will break out we have to you know keep our europe to the ground and follow that but we also have to be active actively involved in struggle and one of the things that we are pointing out towards is based on the enormous success of our socialist campaign you know election campaign that just ended we don't want the chapter to be closed there we actually want that to be the opening salvo of better and greater things to come and a concrete thing that we're proposing is that in seattle in two thousand and thirteen we run a slate of left candidates against a democratic party you know here that's the kind of you know collective effort we need and that's what we're proposing let's run a slate of candidates for the seattle city council races for the mayoral race let's open up the agenda let's really open the floodgates to really completely change the dialogue and we've been proposing this for several weeks but i think we are now it's in a totally different i mean let's let's be clear the boat that we have just got is historic this is a game changer let's not you know there's not just be casual about this you know like this is a great idea you know let's let's mull over it no this is the time for action two thousand dean will be a dramatic here and tim made a really excellent point which is that people are forced into a struggle by their circumstances that they face and those circumstances are going to intensify next year you know for you know let's not kid ourselves the economy economic crisis isn't going anywhere it is going to worsen we're going to have the fiscal cliff question coming up in january there are going to be bigger and deeper attacks on education on health care on social services we have to fight on all those fronts already we are seeing explosive issues in student debt and the foreclosure crisis where already five million homes have been foreclosed on and they're predicting that another eight or ten million schools are going to be foreclosed on homes are going to be foreclosed on to be clear the charter schools amendment you know initiative also passed which is not not good and i think what what has happened in chicago to chicago schools should give us a taste of the future of what will happen if we allow the new liberal you know privatization agenda that was mentioned earlier do take over our public schools so what we need is to call on the left call on the labor movement call on the rank and file union activists union leaders you know challenge them you know stop being tied at the hip to the democratic party because what has it got you you know you're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the democratic party you're releasing thousands of foot soldiers to stump for them and what are we getting in return as a state employee myself you know i can tell you through personal experience we're getting battered we're not even getting cost of living increases and there are worse attacks to come so what is the solution to all this the concrete solution immediately is to break from party system and begin to create a mass political alternative nationally not just in the city and we're hoping that this call for a slate of left candidates in seattle will prove to be an inspiration and a stepping stone for what should be happening nationally nationally we should be building a mass body of the ninety nine percent a mass working class party that is that has to be on the agenda and i think it is on the agenda right now and we have to you know we have to find that way forward and i think we need to wrap up but i just want to say they're for for people who think that americans are conservative and you know americans are obsessed with consumerism i want to give you a really interesting perspective i don't know if you've you've you've thought about this before in this way but if you actually look at the statistics if you look at the deep poverty and misery that exists in the united states if you look at  child homelessness if you look at the number of jobs a large majority of single moms work you know if you see how much they work their work two or three jobs we actually have a crisis where people are actually not getting access to the things that they really need we have the opposite crisis we have the crisis where people don't have proper housing they don't have a safe environment they don't have good quality schools they don't have good quality health care that they can you know access for free we don't have good lords we don't have mass transit i mean this is a shame this is a disgrace in the wealthiest country in the world so i think into to looking at it as a you know consumerist culture we should have the opposite view that you know we really need to create you concept is a brilliant concept and it is truly inspiring and you took a real situation right at a key idea and then made it work i mean it's just a beautiful concept and you've done so well here for real change  to i think one of the things we've got to do is focus in on real solutions that address real human needs and let me give you the probably the primo example why it was so important for obama to win they passed despite its flaws and i if i was the present i would certainly have pass different law myself but the health care law makes a real difference in people's lives and we're talking about literally six hundred thousand more people have health care because that act in washington state and that's on top of the about almost eight hundred thousand that we have with the help of health programs so that all the kids in the state have health care now ten years ago that wasn't the case now it is every kid in the state can have health care in this state that the ones that are provided by the say are actually run through a single payer system for that matter so this expansion of medicaid is extremely important head to head romney one they would have it repealed and that's what his platform was on day one he said that he was going to actually be a lot of things a day once i don't know how many hours are in that his day but that's a clear tangible example between the republicans the democrats and what was so important have a b whim and i appreciate rich you your article there where you indorsed obama just in terms of this election means that much the next thing we need to do is build a broader coalition and i as an example that is referenced only for those of us in the legislature myself and others fought back against that and eventually we got enough of a majority to start reversing that right wing train trend and we passed a subset of rights legislation anti discrimination legislation anti bulling anti hate crimes step by step and then with domestic burner ships and then before marriage equality and i'm so proud of this state that we passed it with a very strong vote there it's the first state in the nation to repeal the defense of marriage act and enact for marriage equality the other thing we did is need to build a broader coalition with the labor movement it was very very important to state that we start unionizing new people in the workforce that's why i started in which i used to be the director of we organized the care workers union and started out with one hundred people through opiah you local eight and then step by step by step through se i use service employees international union it got unionized to now it's up to about forty two thousand people real wages real people and a real difference in their lives consequently they helped enormously to try to pass reform so many for in many other things we're going to need that kind of mass movement among the labor folks to work together with this to do the right thing get example it was very important for the tent city movement to start in the city we helped organize that back in the early eighty's with scott moral david bloom and john fox is through actually a federal grant we got for the displacement coalition those are the four three three guys i hired scott morrow then went on to organize tent city to keep a law i have that what you want to call that discussed that we should have about anybody being homeless in this society and so oftentimes they will make the public statement with the tent city occupation and such and also in some churches i appreciate the church has been very helpful in that and so some other is aisha's obviously because we need to really focus in on what the real situation is that people don't have homes so again like to work with you and i don't know you as well as i should because i agree with you in terms of rapid housing for people get them home sprite away and so we need to come up with strategy about that we do a lot in response to the tent city challenge to the society we've funded a lot through the housing trust fund we fund programs like this roots here in this church year and a lot of other ization but i agree the social services some is not the answer to this and  get a combine both making a very strong statement like tent cities and then also solutions that will then drive actual accomplishments you know i just give you example at a sandpoint helped organize the folks out there to build housing there's but going to be two hundred units of housing for the homeless primarily homeless families that would not have happened had we not drawn attention to the the injustice of homelessness in the society but then we follow up with specific proposals this many buildings here they are here's how we finance and get the job done so that's the combination you've got to combine both you can't just say one or the other if you're one dimensional well you only see one thing you have to be multidimensional from all of cross the board in order to effect real social change i think from a i very much feel this this daily tension between extreme urgency and and utter patience because i see it is very very much a long term now and i've gotten very used to the idea that the world as it is isn't necessarily the world as would united states at this moment and that is just the way it is you know the right hasn't created the atmosphere that you know sort of shrines freedom from taxation and  you know sort of badness of government that needs to get off our backs that didn't happen overnight that was you know a thirty forty year project of creating that consensus and you know i think that it's cracking i think that it no longer holds i think that neo liberalism its self is starting to crack and the contradictions within that are widening and breaking and there's there is hope in that but nonetheless there is a process of of bringing people along that doesn't happen overnight and that we need to be patient with that and at the same time be urgent about the reality that exists and needs to be addressed and you know one of the things that drives me insane is how for example used to homelessness people have become resigned to homelessness is this sort of permanent structural fact of our economy  we'll be walking around running around like our hair is on fire over the fact that there are three thousand people who are going to be sleeping outside in king county tonight because there isn't even room for them in the shelter system that is that is outrageous none of us should allow ourselves to get used to that idea but at the same time we know that that's not going to change overnight and we need to build that case we need to build that movement and that's that's that's work that that doesn't go as quickly as we would like it to also you know we don't know and none of us has a crystal ball and we see time and time again where in social change movements there are sudden shifts or things become possible that didn't appear possible before you know for myself you know i mean i living with integrity am i living a life that's worth living and you now i think that if that is the foundation from which wearing gauging  questions about you know are we winning are we losing eventual a those start to take care of themselves so i think tim said something that really struck a chord with me because it's my own personal experience and he was saying that if you you know think about the fact that the two thousand homeless people in a wealthy city like seattle that you should be so troubled about it it's like your hair's on fire i can totally relate to that many times over because i grew up in india and my earliest memories were of just this ocean of poverty and misery and that is what exists you know for most of the people outside the united states and there's any number of facts you could think about i mean the millions of people going hungry and dying simply because they don't have any food to eat while there is so much food that it is rotting in the ground this is the insanity of the system it's true and i can also identify with what he was saying this combination of this feeling of extreme urgency and then also you know really most patients that is actually i think if you wanted to  m up the life off a socialist activist that's pretty much sums it up because we recognize correctly that you know what we want is not going to change today so we have to have patience to you know win over  know over the millions who we know are we are going to win them over but it is going to take time it is going to take a lot of patience and it's going to take a lifetime of dedication but we have to recognize that it has to go in the right direction i mean in my personal view we don't we don't define being patient as endlessly working with the democratic party or within the two party system which we know is not going to help us i mean in any other science you are actually going to use evidence you know from the past and then decide what does most of the evidence indicate you know if ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the evidence indicates a certain way then you will say ok you know let's go the other way but that's the approach we have to use and politics as well why are we so why do we have such blinders in our around our eyes that we think that endlessly supporting the democratic party endlessly voting for a democrat is actually going to change things and yes we are socialists we don't hide that fact we have a certain view of what should replace the system of capitalism and i invite each and every one of you to have discussions and debates with us to know more about what we mean by socialism by democratic socialism and we also believe very strongly that it's not enough merely to have a critique of capitalism but you also have to have an alternative you know if not capitalism then what and that's the capitalism but if you if you you know if you were ask me are you willing to work with somebody in politics only if they're socialist at this moment no and that is what you know that is where the heart of the matter light in this question that rich has asked you know the question really is in other ways i mean i look at this question as what is your definition of compromise you know how do you define compromise in political work yes compromise is absolutely essential and essential in political work because we have to find a way to work with people on the things that we agree would while we're still discussing and debating out the things that we don't agree with don't agree on but we have to understand which what that compromise really means so if by compromise somebody means that we are always going to carry out a corporate agenda and give you crumbs that's not my definition of compromise look at what has happened in the state of washington in the last several decades microsoft which made twenty three billion dollars of profit last year alone play pays nearly zero in taxes on its profits and in the same time the tuition for higher education has gone up by roughly one hundred percent that's doubling that is not compromise that is selling the working class down the river so let's be clear what we mean by compromise so just a very concrete example we you know i mean just you know but you know just like i mean rich sure he would be very happy but the point is that if he or any other socialist was elected or is to be elected in the future then that is that is the message that they're going to take forward you know what is our definition of compromise if there was a bill you know just to concretely put it in the legislature that was to increase the funding for higher education by thirty percent yes by all means let's fight together to make that happen while knowing that the fight is much greater than that and it has to continue in the future but that is not what's happening unfortunately that is not what's happening what is happening is that conditions for ordinary people the elderly the disabled young people students public schools teachers janitors conditions for all these people conditions for us in the ninety nine percent are far worse than ing and they're going to keep worsening this is a slippery slope the only way to break this bad is to find an alternative to t system but you know i wouldn't necessarily define it in a rigid way that you know we are outside the system and they are in the system i mean we are working within the system unions the formation of unions and fighting for collective bargaining and having strike action within capitalism that's you know that's a compromise within capitalism you know what we need is socialism of course but we are you know we want to fight for the rights of workers within capitalism so if you look at every step of the way in the way the socialists fight for the working class yes we are making a compromise within the system but it's a question of how you do it one of the strategies you're using who are you building coalitions what if you're building coalitions with the executives of the building industries association of washington and microsoft and boeing executives and amazon and starbucks that's not go illusion i mean that's goal isn't building a one kind but that's not what we want we want  n building among the left so we want to have coalitions of socialists and other people on the left who are sick and tired of the betrayal of the betrayal of the democratic party and want to look for real solutions and want to work on a agenda and that is precisely what we're talking here i mean i hope everybody realizes that this is a really exciting moment we're no longer talking about these things in the abstract this has really happened a socialist is on the map a socia socialist agenda is on the map and i capitalist agenda is on the map so we need to really make use of that momentum and go forward