on this sort of thing.

Tony Blair and the Clintons used the same consulting firm.

I've linked before to stories about living cooperatives founded in the Bronx in the 1920's.

A Home In Utopia.

But they were incredibly aware of injustices to people around them and jumped into protest and strike. When tenants in the building next door were being evicted, Coops residents joined in the efforts to block the police from pulling the tenants from their apartment with the women acting as human barricades. This scene in the film uses actual footage of this event on Allerton Avenue.

Religion was not important to them.
May Day, International Workers’ Day was very important to them.
Jewish holidays were not.
And for some, neither was marriage.
Coops resident Amy Galstuck Swerdlow said that her parents never married, believing that a marriage certificate was meaningless. [She says this during an interview on the DVD.]

The strongest moments of the film, however, are about race.

The people in the Coops, including the children, were well aware of the injustices toward Black Americans. They knew of the lynchings of black men in the South and were in solidarity with the Scottsboro Boys, nine black boys accused of raping two white women while travelling on a freight train in 1931. In fact, William Patterson, an attorney who represented the boys was a member of the American Communist party and a frequent visitor to the Coops. His daughter, MaryLouise Patterson, is interviewed in the film.

In the 1930s they encouraged a small number of Black families to move into the Coops. This was quite revolutionary at the time, as Blacks and Whites did not live in the same building in New York, nor anywhere else in America in the 30s, 40s nor 50s. (Parkchester, for example, would not become integrated until the 1970s.) And few became very prominent in the Communist party including Angie Dickerson, a new name for me. And Queen Mother Moore, whose name was already familiar to me.

The film tells the story of an incident that occurs when Coops residents take buses up to Peekskill, New York to hear Paul Robeson sing. They are surprised to learn that the outdoor concert is met by the locals shouting anti-semitic and anti-black rants and stone throwing. The footage of the riot that ensues and the retelling by the residents who were there is entirely compelling.

The Oppressed standing with the Oppressed - that's what it's all about.

I can't find it now (looking on Lib.com) but there was a very vivid story about Jewish tenants in Brooklyn around the same time coming together in the protest of a rent strike against a shady landlord highly reputed in the religious community. Fed up they marched into the local synagogue and dragged him out to confront him. Different times. Revolution in the air, all over the country.

Yeah, Cuomo is sleaze and venality personified. His style of fear-based politics is so outmoded. Hope he gets his ass handed to him.

In the bigger picture I think the Communist ancestors of today's wild-eyed Zionist fascists would have despised these fraudulent folks. Far different story then. When folks didn't have social media to hide behind they tended to be both more informed and more reliant on face-to-face meetings to resolve their own problems.

Andrew Cuomo.

Disregard the corruption of NY politics. Disregard the Gubners numerous friends indicted and sent to jail. Disregard one of the top 3 highest taxed states. Ignore. Disregard.

A man of the "people".

When did Andrew go to a dance party with socialists?

Who me says he?

I've known NYrs all my life. Aside from fanactial adherence to the most vile teams in multiple sports, I can't believe they are so dumb.

It's just an NY state of mind, I guess.

is andrew cumo jewish, or is his 'base' thus the incentive for the Nixon as anti-semite smears?

or is simply expressing soldarity with palestinians, or criticizing Likud Israel enough to get painted?

...not-so-behind-the-scenes, putting "the hammer down" on many within the real left-side of the Democratic Party around here, this Summer, with regard to virtually all of the races noted by Gjohnsit (and then some), above. I've been witnessing it, firsthand. What I'm sensing (here on the ground) is that at least a few of the challengers to the status quo are going to win.

And, no, I don't think Cuomo's going to come anywhere near actually winning the nomination; and I think he knows it, too.

Folks here should be paying closer attention to the Attorney General's race in NY. Latest polling shows my current congressman (with one of the most pitiful voting records of any Dem in the House of Rep's), Sean Patrick Maloney, running neck-and-neck with Tish James (Cuomo's pick). As for me, I'll be voting for Zephyr Teachout.