Commentary
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is being covertly supported by the United States’ largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The organization won’t publicly endorse Abrams, who is a Democrat, but it’s urging their membership to get involved in her campaign against Republican Brian Kemp.
Abrams has been linked to the Metro Atlanta chapter of the DSA for many years, having attended the organization’s first membership meeting in 2011. But the relationship has gone into overdrive since Abrams announced her run for the governor’s mansion.
“Brian Kemp must not be governor,” an article in the September 2018 issue of Metro Atlanta DSA’s publication Equality states. “The Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America stand in solidarity with our fellow Georgians against the government that we have been promised under four more years of Republican leadership. We stand with the workers who work harder than any of the wealthy elite in our state. We stand with those who continue to suffer under white supremacy in the state.
“We stand with all of these working families who want Stacey Abrams to be the next governor of this state. For many reasons, we cannot endorse Abrams ourselves, but neither can we stand aside while our friends and allies fight for something they know will make their lives better. We voted to encourage our members, if they feel so moved, to stand up and fight in this election cycle.”
There is also evidence that DSA has been supporting Abrams’s gubernatorial bid from the very beginning. South Fulton, Georgia, city Councilman Khalid Kamau, a Black Lives Matter activist and a DSA member, has close ties to Abrams dating back to 2015. At that time, then-Georgia House Democrat leader Abrams campaigned with Floyd Griffin, the Democratic candidate for Georgia House District 145; Kamau was Griffin’s field organizer at the time.
On April 8, the DSA-aligned Working Families Party and DSA-affiliated Georgia feminist Aimee Castenell held an event in support of Abrams, with speakers that included Kamau, Georgia state Rep. Renitta Shannon, and Georgia state Sen. Nan Orrock.
At the event, Kamau declared himself a “socialist” and urged all attendees to get involved in Abrams’s campaign. Shannon and Orrock are both close DSA affiliates. Orrock, in particular, is a decades-long veteran of the Georgia left, dating back from her time supporting the pro-China October League in the early 1970s (Orrock was then known as Nan Grogan Guerrero).
Georgia State University professor Alex Sayf Cummings posted a short video of the event on Twitter.
In August 2017, state Rep. Stacey Evans, a white woman who was Abrams’s main competition to be the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, spent her entire 10-minute speech at the annual Netroots Nation Conference talking over protesters who chanted, “Trust black women!”
The disruptive protesters accused “white progressives and Democrats of holding Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-Ga.), the first black female leader of her party in the legislature, to higher standards than the white and moderate Evans,” according to The Washington Post.
“’An interruption is not necessarily promoting one person over another,‘ said Anoa Changa, a protester who spoke outside the convention hall after Evans left the stage. ’How do you have someone onstage with groups like the [National Education Association] that are fighting the issues that she supports? Come on!'”
“Abrams, first elected in 2006, had been a star at previous Netroots Nations conventions, and spent two days working the convention with a message about how massive voter registration could activate black voters.
“‘We can change the face of Georgia, forever,’ she told supporters at a Thursday night fundraiser near the convention.”
Changa is now a leading member of the Abrams campaign; she also serves on Metro Atlanta DSA’s electoral group. Changa recently attended one of Metro Atlanta DSA’s monthly “Eat, Drink, & Be Marxist” events.
Metro Atlanta DSA’s Afro-socialist group leader and current Chair Erin Parks also works on the Abrams campaign.
In November 2017, the Working Families Party announced its endorsement for Abrams for governor of Georgia.
“I am honored to have the support of the Working Families Party. Together, we are committed to fostering an economy that works for every Georgian, regardless of zip code, and creating a government that lifts up the voice of everyone,” Abrams said in the announcement.
Eric Robertson, who is helping to organize the Working Families Party in Georgia, in the announcement: “Stacey Abrams is someone we can count on to always stand with working families. Whether it’s pushing to make childcare more affordable, expanding healthcare coverage or stopping job misclassification that cheats workers out of pay and benefits, she is fighting to make a difference in the lives of working people.”
Robertson is now political director at the New Georgia Project Action Fund, the fundraising arm of Abrams’s voter registration organization New Georgia Project. He also served on the executive committee of Metro Atlanta DSA.
Currently, the DSA has about 500 members in Atlanta, and an additional 80 or so around Augusta, and yet more groups in Athens and smaller communities around the state.
These DSA members are committed revolutionary activists who are willing to write checks and put in long hours going door-to-door and phone-banking on behalf of their ally Abrams. Currently, Abrams and her Republican opponent Kemp are neck-and-neck in the polls. If Abrams wins, she'll owe a huge debt to America’s largest Marxist organization.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
