Rev Left Radio - The Twin Cities Fight Back: ICE, the New Red Scare, and Socialist Organizing

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Aminah Sheikh joins Breht to discuss the mass resistance that erupted in Minneapolis against the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, the subsequent repression of organizers, and the contours of an emerging new Red Scare. They discuss the current political moment, DSA's growing electoral insurgency, and the struggle to build independent working-class power before turning to Islam, Marxism, anti-imperialism, and the role faith can play in revolutionary politics.   Follow Aminah on IG and on X @AminahSheikh  Here are some articles written by Aminah as well:   On Rosa Luxemburg HERE   On The Canadian Right HERE   On Militant Trade Unions and Anti-Communist Reaction HERE   On Palestine HERE ---------------------------------------------------- Check out our new merch designs and support the show HERE Learn more here: https://revleftradio.com/ Check out Unlearning Capitalism for more political educational resources

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the show, my friend and comrade, somebody who I met recently in person as she traveled from the Twin Cities down to Omaha to participate in the labor section of our Socialist Night School program. So it was really cool to have dinner with her, to hang out with her, to teach a class alongside her. And it was awesome. And so I always wanted to have her back since then. And so we have her back on the show today to talk about, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, organizing within Minneapolis, not only in the face of and in the wake of the Operation Metro surge, the ICE assault on the Twin Cities, which ended in the death of Renee Good and Alex

Prady and, you know, the assault of many people, the traumatization, the imprisonment, the splitting up of families, this disgusting fascist assault, specifically on the Twin Cities in the wake of that Nick Shirley Somali fraud bullshit that was used as a sort of ideological pretense to do that invasion. We also talk about a more recent prosecution case, kind of like the Prairie Land case in Texas called the Minnesota 15 case. It was a direct action Minnesota as being sort of targeted, lots of DSA, Twin City members of which Amina is obviously a part of have been sort of implicated in that Minnesota 15. And so we want to bring attention to that. We talk about that. We also talk about some of the argument.

about the DSA, both that's clashed with the Democratic Party establishment as well as criticisms the DSA has from the broader left, perhaps the left to its left, that see it as too electoral or whatever, the sort of contradictions and debates within

DSA, both its right wing and its more principled left wing. And then we get into a discussion about, you know, Amina's sort of personal relationship with Islam and its connection to her socialism and her union organizing. Talk about Malcolm X. We talk about, you know, Islamophobia and the way that Zionists and the Trump,

the fascist Trump administration are connecting radical left-wing, so-called terrorism with radical Islam so-called and how they're trying to marry those two things together as a nefarious international alignment, when really it's like a principled ideological solidarity between these two groups in the face of not only the Palestinian genocide, but the ongoing its assault on Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, etc. So this is a wide-ranging, I think a really good conversation with a great organizer, a longtime organizer, comrade, and a friend. So we're really excited to share that with you today. And as always, if you'd like what we do here at RevLeft, you can go to RevLeftradio.com, learn how to support us on Patreon, make a one-time donation, check out our

really cool new merch designs made by an artist who listens to RevLeft from Korn. Coffee Stain Comics gave us a cool design and we put it on some shirts and kept the cost as low as we can while still allowing a few dollars to come in and support the show itself. So if you're not inclined, support us on a subscription model or just give a one-time donation. If you buy a shirt or a hat, men's and women's sizes, tank tops, t-shirts, some of that money does go to support the show. So it's a cool way to get a really cool design from a, you know, a left-wing Marxist artist while also supporting the show. So we're really happy to release those to the public. Check that out if you're so inclined. All right, without further ado, here is my conversation with Amina Shaikh on Minneapolis, the DSA, Islam, and so much more.

Enjoy. Hi, everybody. My name is Amina Shaikh. I'm residing here in Minneapolis. I'm the co-chair of the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America chapter. I'm part of Afro-socialist, socialists of color, and the international. committee. In the past, I was on the executive of the Canadian Freelance Union, and I'm a labor organizer. Absolutely. Welcome back. You've been on the show before to discuss your work as a union organizer, a labor organizer. We've talked about your relationship with Islam over the years. I'll

link to that previous episode in the show notes for people who, you know, like this conversation and want to go deeper. But we'll be covering different things, and we'll kind of also bring back in later on in the conversation, the Islam aspect, because I think it's fascinating. I'm, you know, I think obviously Islam is a, is a gorgeous religious tradition and there's this new, you know, red scare. We just released an episode about precisely this, wherein the Trump administration is explicitly, and the Zionists have done this for a while, explicitly connecting radical left, anti-imperialists, you know, pro-Palestine, and generally socialist, Marxist, communist politics with, you know, the war on terror, paradox.

and the quote unquote Islamic extremism, et cetera, and they're now explicitly making this connection. And we talk about the reasons for that and the implications for that in our recent episode on the new Red Scare. People can go check that out if they're interested. So even though we covered it in our previous conversation, I think it's worth kind of re-engaging

with some of those ideas on the latter part of this one. But having said that, I think the important thing I want to do here, you're so involved in organizing, particularly in and around the Twin Cities. which is just five or so hours north of Omaha where I am. So I love that area of the country, have a lot of friends and comrades up there. And so I think it's worth keeping people updated on what's going on

because Minneapolis, in general, the Twin Cities more broadly, really has been this political inflection point for so many things over the last 10, 15, 20 years. And of course, the Midwest in general has a deep history of various forms of, left-wing, you know, revolutionary politics and stuff like that. So I always am interested in that. But I think the place to start when we're talking about that is just kind of bringing people up to date on what's been happening. Last time you were on, it was in the more or less immediate wake of the

killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti amid that massive ice operation. And then you had that mass demonstration, the general strike, workplace actions, et cetera. Can you kind of just remind people what happened in Minneapolis, the resistance to the ice stuff and kind of basically what's happened in Minneapolis since then. I feel like the last time I was on was even before that. So it's been a pretty busy and intense couple months for people living here and living across America because this, these ice operations weren't just happening here, but happening in cities like Chicago and LA and different places. But I first want to begin that a lot of the work that I do, it includes talking to working people and everyday people. And so how I frame my analysis,

it's really informed by that work and really engaging people to understand our current economic situation and bringing them into unions and bringing them into socialist organizations like the DSA, which I'm part of. And I just wanted to say that because what happened here in Twin Cities in Minneapolis is we're still digesting everything that happened. And we're also trying to understand why it happened, how we fought back, how we resisted. And we've been answering a lot of these questions for organizations and groups. And so we're trying to constantly build our analysis from that.

So my view is that this violence that happened on this scale under Operation Metro Surge that began formally in December 2025, right? So like last year, it's not new to Minneapolis, right? And it's not new to the communities that are living here. But it was intense. And this violence was seen before, you know, most recently the uprisings against the murder of George Floyd by the MPD. And the native inner city native community has seen violence used against them over the course of history.

This is considered sacred land and the homeland of the Dakota people. And it is the home of many tribes living in the inner city. So really what I'm trying to say is this is not new, but Operation Metro Search that formally began was intense in the sense that 3,000 ICBDHS agents occupied the seven county metro area. And it's also important for your viewers to know that ice raids were already happening previous to this operation and this escalation and this intensity. And it indiscriminately targeted and detained Somalis, African Americans, Latinos, and Native people. Trump claimed it was to keep Americans safe with the mainstream media, including white supremacist

influencers also came into the city during this period. And during this period, if we remember Secretary Homeland, whatever her title was, Christy Noam also was coming into this city, right? And they were amplifying this anti-immigration sentiment, this crackdown on fraud or criminal. and what have you. And I would really encourage the audience if they want more data to read the report that was published

by Human Rights Watch called a manufactured crisis because indeed it was manufactured and it only intensified already the decaying system. What I mean by that is the capitalist system that has already eroded all forms of public services,

social services, institutions, and it only gave grounds to push forward more austerity, right? That everybody's a criminal, the poor, the black, the native communities, and the white working class and the unhoused, they are undeserving and they steal and they're frauds. And basically this is based on the information that they have through food programs and through the programming that people really rely on in across the country right and so this is part of the greater attack on education, child care, public spaces, libraries and really I indiscriminately

went into all these public spaces so they were in libraries, they were in schools, they attacked children, they basically attacked a pregnant woman who miscarried and And really human rights watch wrote a really important report on that. And ICE would take arrested detainees to the Whipple Detention Center at Fort Snelling. And this is the sacred land of Dakota people. So that is why it's really important as us. And I know the audience, many are socialists, how we understand everything that's happening here is connected to the history of violence that have been enacted here.

on the Dakota people and the diverse Native communities that live inside these cities and the American Indian movement. But also, I've learned a lot from our black community and the black liberation movements that also were historically targeted here. And we know that Trump had made clear before these raids that he was going to target cities like Chicago, L.A. and Minneapolis. was, of course, on this list. And I'm part of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, our Twin Cities chapter. When all this was happening, I don't know all the dates, but we enacted a contingency plan. That basically was we voted to enact emergency plan and put all hands on death. And our members engaged in all forms of anti-ice activism, including deploying rapid response.

teams, demonstrations where we knew ICE was present. We expanded our mutual aid networks. We developed neighborhood block committees. We participated in mass coalitions that really observed federal agents, facilities that were imprisoning neighbors. And we set up actions in partnership with local businesses where we knew ICE was, you know, present. So defense tactics, including mutual aid tactics, including networks, were built fast. But I would really say that everyone participated in it. And that's why it was very much mass, mass mobilization, mass direct action. And throughout all this organizing, ICE only increased its violence and escalated and escalated. And like I said, they assaulted a pregnant woman. You would watch videos every day. I mean, the

mainstream news wasn't really covering it, but you could, you could gather everything from like Somali alternative news or alternative Instagram channels, including right-wing channels. And you would see them attacking people, but you would also see people defending themselves. And I think that was pretty extraordinary. Somali women would respond to right-wing influencers, like, and would, people would argue back and, you know, really critique even when Bovino was like parading around here looking like he was like SS or whatever that was. But like people would really argue with him. And I thought that was really inspiring because it showed you that, you know, people don't need to be saved, that people were really involved in resisting themselves every single day. And during this time,

our chapter tried to put pressure on elected officials, demanding emergency provisions, like an eviction moratorium. Of course, you know what I'm going to say maybe. Nothing of that happened. As usual, like COVID-19 and like other crises, our Democratic, DFL, whatever you want to, whatever, both sides, all sides, like, did nothing, I would argue.

And many people in our chapter would argue. So the war in ordinary people, you know, was fought back by people. And as socialists, we organized, we participated and we leaned into coalitions. And this work isn't done. We're continuing to work in coalition. And one of the main results of some of this coalition work, work was the January 23rd, no work, no school, no shopping. I'm sure you all heard about it probably, right?

A little bit. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was extraordinary for the United States. If we put it into context that union density is very low, America, although it touts itself as a democracy and allows freedom of association, majority people in this country are not in the union. Workers are not organized. So it's pretty remarkable to see that around

100,000 people participated. They said about one in three people less work. I know my daughter's daycare, which is predominantly women working in non-union workforce doing feminists, doing femininity. work, you know, social reproduction that's devalued. They closed their daycare down. They went to their employer and said, we are not coming to work. And so people participated in what was called no work, no school, no shopping. People ask, is this a general strike? No, it's not a general strike. We haven't reached that moment. But in many ways, it was a work stoppage. It was economic disruption. The billionaire class didn't approve of us doing it. We had to put. We had to push for us to do it. And I think it's important to say that because we had a lot of internal

debate around it. And then we also had like, you know, different critiques about it. But I said that it's a moment that lifted the consciousness of people who are not in formal unions, organizations. And it made them understand that, hey, we can't just protest. We need to do economic disruption. And this was a successful action. People have seen it all over the world. More importantly, it resulted in worker assemblies forming out of these actions. And in these assemblies, one took place in February, one took place in April, 400, and more workers gathered, non-union, union where we assembled to vote on the course of action we are going to take in these cities. And these people assemblies informed our action around International Workers Day, which I think is also precedent setting, considering that America doesn't formally celebrate any really union holidays, right, and doesn't really participate in internationalism with labor internationalism.

And I think that fact that workers and chapters across this country participated, DSA chapters participated in May Day, a lot of, along with other socialist organizations and workers and non-union workers is pretty remarkable as well. No, absolutely. And, you know, a couple points on that. First thing first is like, you know, the Trump administration and the whole metro surge, it's all premised somewhat on this idea that like it's criminal or somehow nefarious for regular people in a community to organize in any form of resistance at all. And that itself is seen by the Trump administration and by ICE as an organization as a sort of crime or a pre-crime. The very idea that you're on signal chats coordinating responses to ice raids, that you are presenting any sort of obstacle or resistance to them going in, terrorizing these communities, ripping families apart, etc. That itself is not only seen as nefarious, but is increasingly criminalized.

And this is an obvious point, but it's just worth stating explicitly that, this sort of activism and more important, this sort of organizing, that's not only our human right. That's not only our civil right. That is a function of our dignity as human beings. And that is a core aspect of even the potential realization of democracy that regular people living, regular working lives can come together, can organize in and around their interests, can defend their community from the federal government, which is actually what these right-wing, dorks often pretend they want to do. The whole idea of don't tread on me, you know, the whole idea of like the federal government is tyranny, all this stuff, why they capitulate every step

of the way towards big government fascism and the deep state, you know, voting for Trump and this Trump administration and supporting this administration, supporting police, supporting ICE as they terrorize communities. The real, uh, animating spirit of those ideas they pretend to adhere to is actually in the left more broadly. and it manifests in these sort of particular examples of regular people, grassroots organizing to push back against federal government tyranny in their communities of which ICE is obviously a part. And then the other thing you said is about unions. And of course, I'm now coming up on my first year anniversary of being in a union. I know firsthand what it's like to operate within a union,

the union culture, having political discussions every single day on the job site with, you. you know, people all across the political spectrum. It's not easy. It's not always comfortable, but it's, it is a locus in which workers are organized. They're self-conscious of themselves as workers. And there's this baseline understanding that our interest and the interest of those who want to profit off our labor are fundamentally at odds. And that in and of itself is what Marx and Lenin and all these figures in the socialist tradition have explicitly said is the sort of kernel of socialism within, within capitalism.

It is workers organizing and coming to their consciousness as workers and pushing back against them. And one of the things I've noticed, among many other things in my particular union, is regardless of what people's actual politics are, and I'm in a deep red state, you know, on blue-collar job sites so you can understand that there's lots of like reactionary, conservative type of people, regardless of what people's politics are. There is a basic class consciousness despite it all, and there's a basic hostility.

towards, you know, being rushed, being talked down to the contractors in general. And there is this bottom-up pushback always. It's ambient against the bosses, against the contractors. That's just a baseline form of class consciousness that is present within unions. And so developing those and continuing to organize workers is certainly, you know, utterly essential. If you have anything to say about that, let me know. or if not, we can move on to the next question. Yeah, I would say it is essential to tie the two together

because I think in moments like these, similarly when the genocide sort of began almost during pandemic, from pandemic times when Israel, you know, consistently kills and maims and destroys Palestinian lives and like we're watching, you know, all these global events, even the war in Europe and everything, all this violence and destruction. And then often we go to work and they want us to compartmentalize that that has nothing to do with the workplace. And really what they ideally would like is the charities and these philanthropic capitalist charities to kind of step in and be like, let's let's be kind to our immigrant neighbors and this sort of rhetoric, liberal rhetoric around saving.

saving and, you know, just, just trying to like do the bare minimum. And I think that was happening a lot during the beginning of ice and all of this here on the ground. And really, uh, the connections from liberals is very divorced from the history of this, this area and this land. And not only because of the 1930s, the teamster strike, uh, which includes, you know, know, militancy from indigenous union members, like Ray Rainbow, but also this is the birthplace of the American, like I said, the American Indian movement, the black power movement. And so really, there's infrastructures that were already here. And then people who are from Somalia or from Latin American countries, we understand when Greg Bovino is marching around here looking like he's like,

you know, SS or whatever, you know, or these right-wing influencers, we understand when they're coming and to child care centers and like dehumanizing black children. We understand those connections and we understand that they are terrorizing our workplaces, right? So it's not just this neat compartmentalization that it's an immigrant and they're not a worker. And I've been asked this off. because we have to understand that millions and millions of people contribute to the economy in the United States. And they are actually many people are undocumented in unions, first of all. And undocumented people contribute to the GDP and pay taxes, right? But also, you know, their labor is extracted and is what keeps this country going. But also the worker is not just a

white worker. And I think that when we leave labor out of it, it, which I noticed there is people trying to do that. We are really not understanding that the workplace is already terrorized. And it's really interesting. When I've read a lot about what was happening here, we should really look at how black leaders are looking at this and how they inform our analysis. Because some people were even likening it to slave catchers, right? because it's like terrorizing us in workplaces and then imprisoning people.

So we should really think about this and really allow black and native and the communities living here to see all those intersections and how it overlaps together. Yeah, I always appreciate how you bring in that not only the historical perspective, but you're constantly emphasizing that there's this radical tradition of indigenous resistance that isn't in the past. It's in the present. There's this radical tradition of black liberation and self-determination movements across the region, but including in the Upper Midwest, that you emphasize and connecting these things and refusing to play into this idea

that we're fundamentally separate based on our race, that solidarity is fundamentally impossible, and it's precisely around labor, around work, around our exploitation as human beings for the profit of this despicable ruling class, that we have a deeply shared interest. And the labor movement is difficult in the U.S. for all reasons that we understand, the racial reasons, the historical reasons, the unions of today come out of these historical processes that are by no means favorable to our politics broadly. But that is a crucial point in which we must intervene.

And the more of us that are engaged in labor work, in labor organizing, operating within unions, even very imperfect ones. Lennon talked about it in his own time. A lot of what he would call, you know, in his book, you know, left communism and infantile disorder,

one of the things he would point out to is that there is a segment of the left who would refuse to engage with these unions, with the labor movement even more broadly, precisely because of its often conservative or reactionary or just difficult nature, and that they wanted pure unions. They wanted to go and create,

from the bottom up, you know, these ideologically pure forms of unions, which of course never really actually manifest. And so functionally what happens is that there's just a, an exodus, if you will, of people with genuinely good, you know, revolutionary politics from these difficult spaces. And that's just as applicable in our own time as it was in Lenin's. And, but I think what Lenin ultimately concluded in that pamphlet was that these are where people actually are. These are where this is where the working class in all its contradictions, in all its messiness, actually is. And we have to be there too. And you've dedicated huge portions of your life to doing just that. And I applaud you for it.

Thank you. Yeah, just really quickly too, just worth mentioning as we talk about the Minnesota situation, Nick Shirley and the Somali fraud bullshit. I know you've gestured towards that and you alluded towards it, but just to make that very clear, that whole Somali fraud. bullshit thing with this little dork, you know, you know, dehumanizing these, you know, black children and the Somali community more broadly was one month before Operation Metro Surge. And I think absolutely helped lay the ideological groundwork for that invasion of the Twin Cities. And, you know, we can't ever refuse or, you know, forget to point out that he himself as an individual and all those who work with him and boost him, they absolutely have.

blood on their hands, and we won't forget that either. Yeah, I completely agree. And I like that you use the ideological groundwork because many people play a role in allowing this sort of racism, white supremacist attitudes to spread here. And it's not, didn't just begin with Donald Trump. Yeah, absolutely. I want to move in to another issue within Minneapolis. This is more recent. We talked about it a little bit on our Red Scare episode, but it's worth, I have some details here that I combine from various news sources just to give people a basic outlay of the situation. On June 11th, a federal grand jury indicted 15 people associated with direct action Minnesota. The DOJ announced the charges on June 16th. All 15, the Minnesota 15, are charged with conspiracy to impede or

injure federal officers. A particular defendants face additional allegations, including like interstate threats, solicitation of violence, assault on federal officers. Fourteen of those defendants appeared July 1st in court and pleaded not guilty. This is an ongoing situation. There are actually no obviously explicit terrorism charges in the Minnesota 15 case in particular, but Antifa and this, you know, this attempt to create this boogeyman out of Antifa and this create this image in the right wing mind of Antifa being a highly organized, highly hierarchical, externally funded organization of radical leftism. That is being used in the Red Scare more broadly and specifically in these cases like the Minnesota 15 and like Prairreeland, where any association they can make it all

with Antifa is a huge part of these cases. In the case of the Minnesota 15, I think, the Department of Injustice highlighted. that one defendant wore a sweatshirt that said, I'm Antifa, right? And that was enough to tie them to this nefarious, you know, shadowy group, you know, that the right wing fever, feverish mind is really fixated on in the moment. But what the Trump administration is really kind of fleshing out into this, this, the leading edge of this broad assault on the American left. I know that you have connections with organizations, obviously, in the Twin Cities and DSA. I think. some of the DSA members are perhaps implicated or related to the Minnesota 15 in particular. Can you just kind of talk about that situation as much as you can? I know it's legally sensitive and organizationally sensitive. So I don't want you to say anything you're not supposed to or or anything like that. But maybe you can just help people understand exactly what's happening and how organizations on the ground are responding. Well, a lot has happened and these reports

keep coming out and including this indictment. We as Democratic Socialists in the Twin Cities have been named in that particular one, but the Cuba report also that I don't know if your audience has read that, but also we are, DSAs listed as well as other socialist organization. And, you know, the government is taking here, taking the fight through this legal arena, but the fight has been in many places. And it's been a lot to keep track of because every day you wake up,

there's more different ways this fight is manifesting. And the allegations include like conspiracy against the government and, you know, this attack from Donald Trump around Antifa or socialist, Marxist, going on the news, talking about communism. he's always accused, you know, political organizations, unions as, as communist. And I mean, this tactic of also calling us domestic terrorists is not new. So I'm not really surprised about it. In regards to an indictment, of course, many people in that indictment are part of our greater

community. And what I want to be clear is that DSA, including thousands of thousands and thousands of people in this entire state, we're part of resisting and we're part of this resistance to the ICE metro surge to what's going to happen in the future. And they will continue to resist. And I think the indictment alleges what was done, including court. chat groups, engaging in rapid response, observing, legally observing immigration officers, protests. All of this is legal. And I think that, like, we as socialists and us part of community, we should just say that everybody was part of this, you know?

So my white lady neighbors are Antifa probably, right? So, like, these moms are probably Antifa. I mean, you know, Miss Rachel is probably anti-fascist, right? And so, I mean, I don't, the Antifa label's unique for me, being a Muslim person, the communist and all of that that's coming later, probably. But we are all part of the resistance. And I think that ultimately there is nothing to be found because it's everything, all the tactics that we participated in were legal and they were part of mass. mobilizations and mass coordinated action. Yeah. No, absolutely. And that's worth stressing. And, you know, for those that are engaged in

organizing and in and around the Twin Cities in particular, this is certainly a case. I think that's worth not only individual attention, but organizational sort of, you know, movement and focus and organizing around that. I'm sure the DSA and other related organizations will continue to follow this prosecution, this persecution, in a similar way that comrades. in and around the North Texas area are hopefully, and I know they already are, organizing around the Prairieland case. You know, this fascist regime is attempting to intimidate us in a silence. They want us to stop organizing. They want us to stop resisting. They hate the very idea that us little people, us working people on the ground, us grassroots people could in any way get in

between them and their, you know, their profit, their exploitation, their power, their privilege. They disdain us. They hate us for being human beings and resisting, you know, their cruelty and their insanity and their fascism. And they're trying any ways they can to punish us legally and illegally. The people that murdered Renee Good, that murdered Alex Pretti, that made that woman a miscarriage, that terrorize these communities, that rip families apart. They're not facing even investigating. They have at this point so far impunity from the federal government that they can't be investigated. They can't be charged. And even if somehow they were, we all know the Trump administration would go out of their way to pardon them. This is a criminal regime telling us that the people who are resisting it are the criminals. And, you know, this if we get silent, if we stop doing our very legitimate political work and organizing, then we're handing them a win. That's exactly what they want. And these are intimidation tactics. There's really shaky to no legal basis for especially the cruel and unusual punishments handed out in the Prairland case, which they're going to try to replicate in one way or another with the Minnesota 15 case.

But the more that we organize, the more we refuse to go away, the more that we bring attention to these issues, you know, the weaker they are because reactionaries are paper tigers. They want to scare us. They want us to shut up. They want us to stop. But when we do fight back, when we organize. we can often gain victories. And they don't want us to know about that. They don't want us to think like that.

But I think it's essential that we do. So I just wanted to kind of highlight that case. And I appreciate, you know, you and the DSA, Twin Cities, work in and around that situation. And we'll continue as a media outlet, an independent media outlet, to bring attention to these matters. But I do want to zoom out a little bit, kind of shift gears and kind of talk about the DSA. This is interesting, right, because the DSA clashing with the Democratic.

Democratic Party has created a lot of heat and noise, right? There's like a civil war within the Democratic Party. There's a concerted effort by the corporate centrist within the Democratic Party to alienate and lop off this DSA kind of infiltration of the Democratic Party. If you want to think about it this way, you have rich millionaires like Bill Maher pulling his hair out about, you know, the communism and the socialism of the DSA faction. Factions, you know, he explicitly named the Marxist Unity Group in a recent Bill Marr real-time episode. You have James Carville, you know, these these longstanding dominant figures within the Democratic Party establishment freaking out about the DSA. But when you zoom out to the broader left, there's also a lot of contention around the DSA

strategy, around electoralism as such, around, you know, various forms of, you know, sectarianism, whether legitimate or not, line struggles around, you know, what, what revolutionary should be doing. Criticisms of the DSA, responses from the DSA to that criticisms, caucuses and factions within the DSA that are more left-wing or more, you know, on the, on the, I guess, right wing of the socialist movement more broadly. So I'm just kind of thinking, or I'm just kind of curious about what you're thinking with regards to how this is playing out in your specific chapter, what you think about these controversies writ large and why you still think organizing within the DSA is an important thing.

for socialist who are so inclined to continue to do. Wow, that's a, that's a big question. I apologize for it. Listen, our chapter has grown exponentially. And across the country, DSA is growing. And DSA grew during AOC. It grew during Bernie Sanders. And it will grow.

but there is a concern that if it does not focus on movement building, which it is doing right now, and they did at the beginnings of AOC until she changed and became AOC Pelosi. Right? So, and Bernie Sanders just started really hating everybody, including Palestinian people. Then it like, then we hemorrhaged members. And I want to bring that up because,

I became interested in the Sanders campaign. Many people became interested in the Sanders campaign and the primary. And it brought us to the idea of socialism. And then for me, Corbin Momentum, this campaign also watching Europe and seeing how socialism was drawing people to it. And these bold, principled policies that were socialist, are, what we needed as young people, millennials, Gen Z, whatever. And we really believe in that. And so now I think with what we should be doing is focusing on growth,

but also retention of our members. And maintaining our members means we have to focus on our vision and our policy. And I just wanted to mention that workers deserve more. You were bringing up the mainstream news. Workers Deserve More is a program that DSA developed. And I just went to a conference in Chicago with what called the Socialist Summit where DSA members from across the country gathered. Right.

And they released this program that was already released by Fox News. And it's making so much media coverage because it asks for basic. things like health care for all and mass incarceration and police immunity and the U.S. war machine, free Palestine, and blockades, embargoes, and sanctions stop U.S. interference in places like Cuba, Venezuela, and even Iran. So, you know, and Finnish reconstruction and the legacies of slavery and colonialism. So I really encourage people to read it. It's on the Democratic Socialists of America's website.

It's been released. I know I'm bringing it back to my chapter. But I have a concern. I have a concern that when we just do electoralism, when we just focus on the victories of a few places, we're going to do what we did already back in 2018 or, you know, with AOC and really we're going to abandon the movement. Yeah.

If that makes sense. Oh, absolutely. And I think there's totally legitimate criticism that you're echoing right there that I agree with with some factions within the DSA. Tying yourself too tightly to individual candidates or the Democratic Party more broadly is obviously has many pitfalls and forms of error and can often be a form of opportunism or revisionism. But there's also, and I, you know, from those that are more critical of the DSA, I've always argued in favor of it because I know a lot of good comrades, including you, operating within it. Many of the chapters are very, you know, to the left of some of those particular critiques. And that left struggle, anti-imperialist struggle within the DSA, I think is an important thing to emphasize and stress not to abandon. And just like Lenin, to bring back this text, because I recently did an episode on it, in a left communism and infantile disorder, he obviously says that right-wing opportunism is the bigger threat.

But that in that text, he wanted to focus on what he would call ultra-leftism, this hyper-purity politics, this hyper-sectarianism that refuses to engage in what is seen as impure. And whether that is conservative unions or even the electoral terrain writ large, there are some people who are just not willing to engage with that and who are harshly critical of people who do or to think that there is a path forward there. I actually do think among many other terrains of struggle that the electoral terrain is an important one. And we can already see not only the ruling class in both parties becoming apoplectic about the DSA. writ large, but we can see that there's a lot of interest generated because a lot of Americans, they're not reading Das Kapital. They're not necessarily even listening to Rev Left Radio. A lot of average, you know, perhaps historically democratic voters are becoming radicalized to some extent by their material conditions and by things like the genocide in Palestine. They're looking for

an electoral expression for those politics and the DSA is struggling to give. voice and allow that to emerge. And in the process, there's contradictions, there's splits, there's careerists taking advantage of it, there's opportunists, there's people who get in and then just become self-serving in various ways. That's, I think, to be expected, to be combated, but is part of this broader struggle that I think is just unavoidable. And we have to recognize that and wrestle with and not totally abandon the entire sphere. But I'm interested, you said, I agree. Yeah, is there anything else you wanted to add to that?

I said, I was going to say, I agree with you. But I don't think we do in America in this side of the world abandon the electoral sphere. I think that we become totally encompassed by it. And I think that when we're reading like about these faction groups and the, and people. And I've noticed since coming in America like being categorized as ultras, infantile, this like Mao, like Mao, that. And I feel like actually a lot of people are in in America are just think that the only tactic we can do is electoralism, right? And so the movement gave the victory to Zoranam Dani. The movement of DSA is giving these victories to them. And it was actually, you're right,

anti-imperialist politics, right? That was denounced by our right-wing comrades and in our multi-tendency, you know, organization who said anti-Zionist resolution is too extreme. And actually, anti-Zionist resolution was so forward-thinking, and it has actually led to the victory of all these candidates in the electoral sphere, including the ones in New York, Boulder, Colorado. I met Chris Rav, who also said, no, I'm for free Palestine, but I'm Palestine all the way, you know, And they are leaning into that. And that is because of all these factions, if you want to call them, or just caucuses filled with members engaging in rigorous debate

and pushing forward really progressive and socialist vision and an anti-imperialist vision. And if you read the workers deserve more, it is a reflection of how socials in America and Canada and in the empire will never divorce the material. the material conditions that we're living in, the material conditions that I was born in that radicalized me to understand that it is not cut off from what's happening in Cuba.

It is not cut off from what's happening in Palestine. And we will not separate the two because we know that billions and billions and billions of dollars are spent every day to kill people in places and we can't get basic things like child care, food, and dignity, you know, in our workplaces. And so I really do praise all our caucuses, but I also think that the challenge ahead of us is the people that have had an influence over DSA over the years, the groups that are either in New York City or L.A. Not to insult the cities while the periphery is ignored because we passed anti-Zionist resolution here in the Midwest, okay?

Yeah, yeah. You know, we're the ones who brought it. Not New York City. Not New York City. So we really need to look at power relations, but we also need to know that there are people within this organization that are benefiting and are interested in maintaining their staff or jobs that are tied to the Democratic Party. And I am going to be critical of it because I've lived through it through Canada and I've lived through it through here

where they're invested on maintaining the status quo. And so they think like, okay, we got some victories. we know how to win and they're still convinced about Bernie Sanders. They're still convinced about you know, AOC even and they're going to really have to listen to the DSA as a movement, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I've been emphasizing, whether you're, I'm not in the DSA, whether you're outside the DSA or you're in one of the left, you know, caucuses or the left wing of the DSA, one of the things I'm trying to push is this idea of the anti-imperialist red line that we're not going to build, you know, even social democracy on the corpses of our brothers and sisters in the global south.

And so I will not be a part of any political project or I will never support any political candidate who is okay with free health care and higher wages in the Imperial Corps, but who in any way aids or allows to perpetuate itself, the decimation, the impoverishment, the emiseration, or the outright slaughter of people in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Iran, in Palestine, in the Congo, or anywhere else on the planet. And I think it's our job, if we take struggling on the electoral terrain seriously, that that is our red line. If you are on the right side of that red line, we can talk. I might not agree with you with everything, but I'm willing to engage with you as somebody interested in a better future for the world, right? We have our different politics, our different ideological tendencies, et cetera. If you are on the wrong side of that line, and I don't care what you call yourself, you can call yourself a Marxist or a socialist,

If you are on the wrong side of the anti-imperialist red line, you're an enemy to my brothers and sisters in the global south, and you're an enemy to me. And I will put you in the same category as I put, you know, a Bill Maher, a Donald Trump, a Nancy Pelosi, a Chuck Schumer, or any of these other assholes. So for me, that's my harsh red line, and I refuse to get treats and benefits as a westerner,

even for my own family, if it comes at the costs of families in the global south and across the world. And so I think that is one, you know, dividing line that we should continue to emphasize, be very clear about, and continue to push. Again, whether you're in the DSA or you're operating on the outside of it. Do you kind of agree with that? I totally agree with that. And I would say that DSA is the path forward because many of us have learned what the red line is through the genocide and through everything that's happened in the pandemic.

and we can't go back and we are the reason why there were victories for people across this country in the electoral sphere and we will claim those victories but we will also continue to organize

and put pressure because we know and this is where I plug Clara Zetkin on fighting fascism, how to struggle and how to win, you know, this book really helped me understand liberalism and I would say the most danger to us is not the ultra-left or the left. It's actually been the liberals

and the rad-libs who posture and will use our spaces for opportunism and will sedate and stymie our movement. Could not agree more. That's what Lenin and Zetkin both said is the main threat, and that remains the main threat. And it's fascinating when those on the right wing of, let's say, the DSA, use the term ultra-leftism and try to invoke Lenin's work as a battering ram against their more principled left when in fact, in that text itself, Lenin explicitly says it's you, right-wing opportunist. It's you, you know, tailist, chauvinist, liberal, Radlib. That is the number one problem. I'm just addressing this other secondary problem of those that are too sectarian and too pure for anything. But let's not forget that, you know, you are the main,

you know, sort of internal threat to the broader socialist movement. And I think you echoed that perfectly. And the, you know, invocation of Zetkin is really helpful here as well. I know we only have a few more minutes here. I did want to touch on the Muslim aspect of this, your, you know, your relationship with Islam and how that feeds in to your socialist politics, your union organizing. We did discuss it perhaps more at length at that previous episode we did together, which again, I'll link to people can listen to.

But, you know, more broadly, the ruling class is, as I said earlier, in these documents, like the Cuba document, like the NSPM 7 document, this new, you know, red scare, especially in the Rubio, Stephen Miller, Scott Bessett, sort of counterterrorism summit. And within Zionism itself, there's this explicit connection now increasingly being made using the war on terror logic, which is already racist and colonial, of connecting radical Islam with. the radical left as the two major increasingly interconnected threats, you know, to God, family, and faith, or whatever the fuck they're saying. So I'm interested in what about, you know, being Muslim fed in to your socialist politics. I think that's important to emphasize. And then what you make of this increasing conflation and concern about solidarity between, you know, Muslims in the global south and anti-imperialists in the imperial core. Yeah, I really appreciate you always asking this question because I did not become a socialist

by reading Marx or Engels. I did not become a socialist by reading Lenin. I became a socialist by becoming radicalized in my workplace. And I think I talked to you about it in the first episode that, you know, being born in Canada or, and for Muslims being born in the West, yeah, we are Muslim just like Jews are Jews and Christians are Christians. And but of course, Islam is sort of the antithesis to, to Western civilization. And so we always have to combat that hysteria against us throughout, be 100 years or, you know, since colonialism, right? But I would say what distinctly impacts Muslim people in being born in North America is also us being workers. And so for me,

being a young person in the workplace, like from the age of 1516, you know, I was, I was oppressed because I was a worker. And often a lot of my issues would arise in the workplace, like millions of people living here. And so they were always intertwined with my identity, but sometimes they weren't. And a lot of my struggles were shared amongst the multiracial working class that I was raised in. So I was raised amongst people of all sorts of faith.

I went to school with all sorts of faiths. And I understood my identity through this sort of plural reality. And so it's kind of hard sometimes for me to say, What radicalized me was being in a specific identity group because I actually can't relate to that. So when I organized two throughout my life, I leaned into the union that pulled me in. As a temp worker, I was a young temp worker, and I spoke about that in the last episode. The president who was this old Italian man, you know, said I could come do their social media. He helped me.

He represented me when I had some workplace issues with my manager. And so those moments of his intervention, just as my union rep, made me feel less alone. I used to be really depressed in the workplace, like lots of people. I used to feel very alone. I felt like I had no future. I couldn't make rent. I mean, so I sometimes think through this because people ask me what brought me to socialism, but particularly what radicalized me.

And it was definitely not reading. And if anything, I was gravitating. towards more, and I spoke about this too in the last episode that at the university, they have all these scholarly people come from from all over the world and they espouse, you know, this is what Islam is. Like you should be a traditional wife. So trad wife. You know, you should be like living in Dubai or something. I don't know. Or a suburb. And it's very interesting that this is proselycised and propagated inside our universities, all well inside Canadian universities, there's the Canadian unions and the Canadian student unions, which America doesn't really have

a lot of student unions. That's another problem. But really, so you see this counter propaganda happening on the campuses. And I was also a worker and I was also a student. So I was at the intersections of all this. And so being a worker is what really radicalized me. And And I got pulled into my union. And then after that, I saw some really vague posting about being a union organizer. And I started to work for a large union and started organized custodial and low-waged workers. And really, when I started working for the union, I started to see more images of revolutionary figures like Malcolm X. And I didn't fully understand, but it was that period where I started to consume and read, like a lot of trade unionists, Malcolm X or other revolutionary leaders from around the world.

But Malcolm X was the one I could relate to more because growing up to being a Muslim born in the West, I used to go with my family to Chicago. I would go with my family to the U.S. And like Malcolm X is a very honored and revered figure for the Muslim community as he should be, but they don't want him to be, right? And really from Malcolm X's teachings, I really learned that, you know, Islam is anti-capitalist. And, you know, Malcolm shaped shaped Islam for millions of people living in the West. And they can't erase his legacy from our consciousness or his teachings. and like his critique of America and furthermore like his emphasis on internationalism. So how I see Islam is that it, from his teachings and his legacy, that internationalism is part of Islam.

And he saw that when he converted to Sunni Islam after his pilgrimage to Mecca, but also his travels through Africa and him visiting. and learning from revolutionary struggles, even in Cuba, China, and Ghana. And Cuba, someone asked me the other day because, again, DSA is listed in this Cuba, Cuba document by the government and asked me, well, said this long-winded question, the journalist asked me and said, well, do you feel that Cuba's this, like, spiritual place for socialists and Marxists? And I said, yeah, it is.

because when you go to Cuba, they love Muslims, first of all. So they totally make you and they debunk this lie from the American Empire that communists hate Islam. That is the furthest from the truth. And going to Cuba and being witness to the Cuban people, they love all people. And they show that through their solid juristic healthcare, where they go to, all countries, including my country where my origins are, Pakistan, where they sent health care to Pakistan in 2006, during an earthquake devastation, that the Americans didn't even provide doctors. And they've, under Castro, you know, like they've given so many scholarships

to people like Pakistani people who are in the third world and empowered them and educated them And this health care revolution and this education revolution is something that is spiritual for people like me. And visiting some place like Cuba and leaving the empire and seeing Cuba and seeing how people are so loving and so wonderful and how it's the complete antithesis to capitalism. And it's anti-borsese and it's full of love and it's anti-imperialistic. I believe it is a spiritual movement. And I think for me as a Muslim, I cannot separate my faith from my actions. And I think that it informs everything that I do. And another thought leader that has like really made me think about Islam and socialism recently post-genocide.

And I know a lot of your audience is probably reading him. two is Ali Shari Shariati. I've been reading his works. I apologize if I really ruined his name. Yes, why? Like a true Canadian person. So I've been reading religion versus religion, and I've been reading all his books,

and his books also have shaped the way I've been thinking about how how Islam is revolutionary, and that all the prophets that came, whether it's Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, peace be upon them, they all were revolutionary and they were all fighting the status quo. They were all fighting the greed, the rich, the people who were saying, no, you can't be equal. You know, they were fighting on the behalf of the poor, the sex workers, the dispossessed, the hungry, and they were amongst them, you know, and the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessed. things be upon him and his entire family were inflicted in so many injustices. And really, it was about

changing the system. And Islam Kaman was pushing against slavery, you know, and was in the prophet's last sermon, you know, he said again and emphasized his famous speech that an Arab is not better than a non-Arab, you know, a black person is not lower than any other race, right? And, again, I don't remember his exact sermon, but basically this is embedded and woven into our faith and the pillars of our faith, a major pillar of our faith that millions of Muslims are taught all over the world, including me and my father told me, was from when I became a wage earner, we must give zakat. Zakat is 2.5% of our overall wealth. And when I became a wage earner, we must give Zakat. Zakat is 2.5% of our overall wealth. And when I became a worker at 14, 15 years old,

I knew that I had to calculate and it was an obligation on me. And this isn't charity. And I think I bought this up maybe on your last episode. It's not charity. It's an obligation because in our faith, the poor or the people who have less, I don't even know if we should use the word poor, but people who have less have actual rights over our wealth and that our wealth has to be dispersed. And not to a state, not to the church necessarily. So I also think Christians try to like look at things through the Christian framework. So they'll think it's teeth or something and it's like not teeth, you know. And it has to be distributed directly to people and to your kin or to your community.

and it's actually also an act of worship. So everything that we do is also an act of worship. And so for me, I was taught these things from a very young age, including that like we shouldn't be, you know, participating in interest and mortgages. And my father was like many Muslim fathers obsessed with like Islamic economies. And I think obviously living in a world systems that this capitalist and us as individuals can't divorce ourselves, you know,

know I can't my dad tried to convince me to like put money in a bank with no interest and it's just like it's like impossible but like there are Muslims who don't buy houses right that is in in north america there are Muslims who will never purchase a house because of the mortgage system and they live a simple life and a lot of the this movement and they're part of religious faith-based groups and they're all over the world, a lot of their movement is about, well, these are worldly objects and these are material items and we should not be obsessed with them, connected to them, and that this is just, we are passing through here. And it is more important for us to focus on our community and our doing, purifying ourselves,

which is disconnecting ourselves from this worldly material world. But also what's a foundation of Islam in Ali Shariti's work really covers this, is that it is part of our faith in our tenants that we have to be in action and fighting on behalf of the oppressed and fighting against those who have collected absorbent amounts of wealth and the oppressive rulers. And a lot of that understanding has come out of Shia, you know, Islam. And I think a lot of people are restudying that because of what we've seen over the past years with the, with the resistance. Yeah. No, absolutely, beautifully, beautifully said, I love Islam. I love learning more about it.

I'm actually listening right now to on my way here to lecture. about it just because I'm curious about it. I will never ever otherize or dehumanize my Muslim brothers and sisters no matter how much this rotten fucking system wants us to and has propagandized us to think through the colonial lens

at Muslims and at Islamic society writ large. Last week, it's funny you mentioned Malcolm X last week on the job site, this spontaneous discussion about Malcolm X sort of erupted in our crew as we're doing this sort of miserable trench work.

and a lot of these 20-somethings, you know, some white, some Mexican, they were interested. They didn't know much about Malcolm X. They had heard about him. And I found myself over the course of an hour or two kind of explaining Malcolm X to them. They were curious. They were asking follow-up questions, pushing back on some, you know, some stereotypes or some false ideas about who Malcolm X was. And we got into this really fascinating discussion. And I walked away feeling very good about that conversation that I had sort of, you know, somehow, some way got Malcolm X into this discussion and we're kind of like, you know, naturally and spontaneously educating some of the younger workers on my crew about Malcolm X and their genuine curiosity about him

was a beautiful thing to see. So I love that you brought him up. I also want to point listeners to my good friend, my previous co-host on guerrilla history, Adnan Hussein, who does a lot of work. He wrote a book on the crusading society going all the way back hundreds of years to, you know, Western Christian Europe and its relationship to Islam and how that feeds in to current understandings and misunderstandings of Islam across Western societies. To this day, I would point people in that direction. And the last thing I'll say is what I, what I always say, from a socialist perspective, I have infinitely more in common with a working class father in Iran. or Palestine or Lebanon or Yemen than I do with a millionaire or a billionaire European descendant American in my own society

That's class solidarity That's international solidarity And I will always take the side Of the global working class Which is Muslim, which is Christian, Which is Buddhist, which is Hindu, Which is indigenous Against the ruling class

That seeks to extract and plunder And destroy the lives of regular working people For their own power, privilege, and profit. So I think we should always keep that core goal of front and center, especially as the Zionist anti-Islam war on terror bullshit gets ramped up by the Trump administration and by the Zionist propaganda machine. It already has been over the last several years and in the coming weeks, months and years as well. We refuse to fall into it.

So Amina, it's always a pleasure and an honor to speak with you, my friend. I want to be courteous of your time. before I let you go, is there anything that you want to plug or promote your organization, any other of your personal work or anything else, any last words you have to say before we let you go? I just really appreciate you covering these topics because I think that we have to see how faith is interwoven into revolutionary movements and that we need people to come to our side and we need people to see that like Malcolm X later in his life became anti, you know, clearly anti-capitalist and also internationalist in that. We need to develop young people to get there because a lot of people, including, you know, white people, Muslim people, all religions, all faiths are moving towards fascist or right-wing ideologies around faiths.

and that can be sort of like covered and mystified under maybe social influencers and all these people, you know, propagating eugenics and trad wives and you should do a whole episode on it. And, you know, and we should really reclaim faith and reclaim its revolutionary potential. And so I'm so happy that you cover it on your show. and I would just say that, you know, people should join socialist organizations in my life. I've tried to participate in different socialist parties. And I think that the DSA, it's not perfect, the Democratic Socialists of America, they're not perfect. But at least they allow you to participate meaningfully.

They've always allowed me to participate. They allow for us to intervene and push for more populous. left socialist, anti-imperialist visions. And instead of being alone and not having friends and feeling alienated, if you join your local chapter, you can find people that you can debate vigorously in factionalism or whatever. But at least you can debate and talk and have a friend. This is what I tell people.

I tell people that even about like the communist party or whatever, I'm like, do you want to have friends or do you not want to have friends? Do you want to meet someone or you don't want to meet someone? Like join a organization because we know that like in the past there were just more organizations where people met in person and had these debates but also socialized. And the DSA is trying to do that and we're trying and we're growing and we really want people to join. Awesome. Well, my friend, again, always an honor.

Always a pleasure. I hope to speak with you soon. Keep me updated on what's going on in the Twin City. shout out. It's all the comrades up there doing good work, and I hope to speak with you soon. Thank you.