GND is not our endpoint- prevents cooption

(Keith Brower Brown is co-chair of the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and a PhD student in geography at UC Berkeley. Jeremy Gong is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America in California’s East Bay. Matt Huber is assistant professor of geography at Syracuse University. He is the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital. , 3-21)

Second, the absorption of working-class militancy into elite Democratic Party brokerage politics was fatal. FDR and key segments of the trade union bureaucracy suppressed rank-and-file radicalism with political sabotage, legal persecution, and force. The dangers of being cajoled and absorbed into an even more business-friendly Democratic Party are even greater today. Bernie Sanders is fortunately not the kind of liberal “save capitalism” politician that FDR was. But, as he himself keeps saying, we need not one president, but a persistent mass movement of millions to overcome corporate control of our government. We hope today’s renewed workers’ militancy paves the way for a truly independent, mass working-class party that can secure and advance our gains in the state. We have to make sure militancy keeps building after we win a GND — otherwise we won’t get to keep it.