The sports category has moved to a new website.

A Political Party Aligns Itself With Ocasio-Cortez

The Working Families Party, an influential, labor-backed organization that has helped push Democrats to the left, is moving toward a new identity: It wants to align itself with the movement that spawned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A Political Party Aligns Itself With Ocasio-Cortez

The shift comes amid recent internal debate between the labor unions that helped found the WFP in the late 1990s and the party’s more progressive faction — fissures that have caused key unions to withdraw their support for the party in New York.

Rather than try to repair those relationships, party leaders are moving further to the left, seeking to strengthen its alliance with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, an early backer of Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign in 2018.

“There are social movement actors from Occupy Wall Street all the way to the resistance movement to Trump, who are looking for an electoral political home,” said Maurice Mitchell, the WFP’s national director. “The next iteration of the Working Families Party is intent on being that political home.”

Leading that shift in New York will be Sochie Nnaemeka, whose appointment as the head of the New York State Working Families Party will be announced Saturday.

ADVERTISEMENT

Nnaemeka, 31, an activist who most recently served as the director of emerging organizing and leadership at the Center for Popular Democracy, will assume her role at a time of great success but also looming trouble.

In 2018, the WFP helped knock out members of the Independent Democratic Conference — a group of Democratic state senators who had collaborated with Republicans — and elect more progressives to the New York Senate. That returned control of the body to Democrats and led to the passage of long-stalled progressive priorities like changes to rent and bail laws.

But the WFP’s push to the left seems to have caused other problems for itself. In 2014, the party flirted with not granting its line to Gov. Andrew Cuomo because party members did not feel he was progressive enough. In 2018, the WFP endorsed Cuomo’s primary rival, the actress and activist Cynthia Nixon; after her primary defeat, the party gave Cuomo its ballot line.

Now, a commission created by Cuomo and state leaders has voted to raise the threshold for minor parties to make the ballot. The WFP and another third party have filed a lawsuit and accused the governor of trying to destroy them, a charge Cuomo has waved off.

“Damaging the WFP is small potatoes when you consider the much broader movement being built,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a grassroots organizing group. “There is a growing anger on the left about where we need to be going and that the Democratic Party has not gone there.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Nnaemeka seemed confident of the party’s future.

“There are new formations that are aligning. The DSA is growing, and there are all sorts of other insurgent left groups that we are in a deep relationship with,” she said in an interview, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America.

“We were still on an upward trajectory,” she added. “We still delivered on progressive visions even as our party changed shape.”

Bill Lipton, whom Nnaemeka is replacing, said he would be involved with the state party through the 2020 election, then work on climate issues for the national party.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

ADVERTISEMENT

The WFP and the DSA may not agree on everything. The WFP, for example, has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in the Democratic presidential primary; the Democratic Socialists have endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

“The endorsement of Elizabeth Warren is not a choice we would have made, but everyone knows that beating Trump requires a coalition,” said Cea Weaver, a member of a DSA steering committee in New York City. “We help each other be more left versions of ourselves.”

The partnership nearly scored a monumental upset in this year’s Democratic primary for Queens district attorney, which was ultimately won by Melinda Katz, the candidate backed by the Democratic county machine.

Tiffany Cabán was a little-known public defender when she picked up the endorsement of the DSA for her bid for the Democratic nod. The WFP soon came on board.

“WFP had the strategy and the know-how and we combined that with what DSA does best, which is boots-on-the-ground organizing,” Cabán said.

ADVERTISEMENT

After a lengthy recount, Cabán lost the Democratic primary by about 60 votes to Katz, who went on to win the general election last month.

The DSA is currently backing a slate of candidates in Brooklyn to challenge several incumbents, including Assembly members Erik Martin Dilan, Félix Ortiz and Walter Mosley, and state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery.

“We’d love to be able to replicate that Tiffany Cabán model,” Weaver said. The WFP has not made a decision about endorsements in those races.

But the burgeoning partnership may help fuel a perception that progressive groups are made up of mainly white, middle-class people who are pitting their views against more established groups of people of color.

“Historically, the WFP has this reputation of being the white progressives, and the white progressives who get on my nerves,” said L. Joy Williams, a political strategist and president of the Brooklyn NAACP who worked with Nixon during her primary run. “This tension is prevalent in places like Brooklyn, where we have these pockets of white progressives.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Membership in the DSA has jumped to 50,000 from 5,000 after the election of President Donald Trump, and the group has acknowledged that it needs to diversify its ranks.

“We’ve always had to deal with the paternalism that exists and that’s not absent in the white, progressive circles,” said Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate who was supported by the WFP and DSA during his run for lieutenant governor, and is a member of the DSA. “The WFP didn’t always represent the communities they organized, and they changed that. DSA can do the same.”

Emma Wolfe, chief of staff to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said Nnaemeka’s background as a black woman who is the daughter of immigrants was a signal that groups like the WFP and DSA were listening to the criticism.

“The progressive left is a multiracial coalition,” Nnaemeka said. “Blacks are progressive. I’m a black person who considers herself part of a strong progressive left who wants to expand possibilities for working-class people.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

ADVERTISEMENT

Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:

Email: news@pulselive.co.ke

Recommended articles

African countries with the highest divorce rate

African countries with the highest divorce rate

10 African cities with the highest crime index at the start of 2024

10 African cities with the highest crime index at the start of 2024

Machoka at 70: Emotions run high during Citizen TV presenter's birthday [Video]

Machoka at 70: Emotions run high during Citizen TV presenter's birthday [Video]

Diwali 2022: Is Monday a public holiday in Kenya?

Diwali 2022: Is Monday a public holiday in Kenya?

Akothee finally reveals reasons for separating from Omosh 1 month after wedding

Akothee finally reveals reasons for separating from Omosh 1 month after wedding

Man, once a ‘billionaire’, recounts how he lost wealth, now sells his book on streets [Video]

Man, once a ‘billionaire’, recounts how he lost wealth, now sells his book on streets [Video]

Details of Ngina Kenyatta's luxurious restaurant

Details of Ngina Kenyatta's luxurious restaurant

Zero Chills! Jackie Matubia's advice for Milly Chebby amid the unfollow drama

Zero Chills! Jackie Matubia's advice for Milly Chebby amid the unfollow drama

Nigerian royal dignitaries, including four kings and a queen, expected to attend Museveni’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations

Nigerian royal dignitaries, including four kings and a queen, expected to attend Museveni’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations

ADVERTISEMENT