Hello comrades!

Welcome to our first ever episode of Transmissions, the official podcast of the Class Unity caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In this episode, we bring you first of all an interview segment on DSA’s Childcare for All campaign, with CU member Sarah R. Sarah was heavily involved in the Childcare for All resolution, which passed at the DSA Summer 2021 National Convention.

In the second half of the show, we have a panel session on Hal Draper’s 1973 essay, Anatomy of the Micro-Sect. Our guests for this part of the show are Class Unity members Julie S. from Cleveland, Sarah R. from Virginia (making her reprise appearance on the episode!), and Jamal A., from Chicago.

We felt the Draper essay would make for an interesting reading for this first episode of a Class Unity podcast. It was written around the same time as the Ehrenreichs’ well-known essays on the professional-managerial class. And, just as with those essays, this piece by Draper seems to anticipate a lot of contemporary debates. The problem Draper was facing in the late 1960s bears some family resemblance to the problems faced by the post-Occupy Wall Street American Left. That is, the problem of a Left which, while it seemed capable of mobilizing large numbers of people for short-term protests in the streets, nevertheless struggled when it came to converting this energy into an effective strategy for the pursuit of long-term political power. For some contemporary Left critics, the problem today is that we conflate performativity with real strategy. For Draper, this tendency finds its origins in the “sect” mindset.

Hope you enjoy the episode. Please see below for some links which you can use to stay in touch with Class Unity.

Website: https://classunity.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/

Your host for this episode is Nicholas Kiersey. You can follow him on Twitter, at @nicholaskiersey.

Our guest for the interview segment, Sarah R., can be reached by email at communicatingcollectivelife@gmail.com.

Here are some links to resources mentioned by Sarah, during the interview:

Well There’s Your Problem, Episode 72: Schools & Childcare in the New River Valley, https://youtu.be/mkRhKNipOS0.
Sarah R., “Working Class Families Need Universal Childcare – Tempest.” Tempest, July 31, 2021. https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/07/working-class-families-need-universal-childcare/.

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