Good afternoon, it is a pleasure to stand with yall today, my fellow workers and comrades, standing in defiance of the latest manifestation of the existential crisis of our age, this crisis of capitalism. True, we are here to express our discontent with President-Elect Donald Trump, but we oppose more than the man; we gather to oppose the system that supports him. A system that tells up things could be worse rather than they could be better, a system that tells us to blame our neighbor for our ills rather than the slumlord, the corporation, or the billionaire tax cuts, a system that steals from the working man and woman to line the pockets of those that already have more than enough in ill-gotten gains.

We stand in the shadow of the tallest state capitol in the United States, a beacon of art-deco design and a construction that came with a promise; a progressive future for the families of Louisiana where every man was a king and there was a chicken in every pot; this is a future that has clearly not come to pass. We live in this state between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we have a Republican party lead by Jeff Landry, a Trump sycophant that eagerly enforces xenophobic rhetoric as a balm to cover his platform of privatization that benefits only his donors. On the other hand, we have an anemic Democratic Party who didn’t even run enough candidates to prevent a Republican supermajority; the ineffectiveness of this “Left” party nationally is apparent, they are more concerned with fundraising galas than with showing up on time to prevent the gutting of the NLRB, as was the case with Kamala Harris last week.

The issues are clear, but the solution has eluded us thus far. We are citizen and taxpayers of a xenophobic, draconian, dishonest, and corrupt oligarchy that steals from us; they take our meager wages, turn a blind eye to our needs, funding geocidal regimes around the globe and allying with apartheid governments like Israel. They do this while we live off of the bare minimum. They did it before Trump, they will do it during Trump, and they will do it after Trump unless we say no more. The only way forward and out of this barbarism is us; I look across this crowd and I see rage, I see anger, but I also see hope. We must have hope that things can get better, we must believe in the power of the people; we can not afford to slip into apathetic indifference because our threat is great and our time is short.

On the eve of the French Revolution, a pamphlet was published by Abbe Sieyes called “What is the Third Estate?” In this short work, Sieyes correctly pronounces that the third estate, the workers, are France. What is Louisiana without us? Nothing. This is our home, not theirs; we should be running it, not these ghouls that have lined their pockets with the blood stained money of corporations. Electoralism alone will not save us, organizing will. Our opponents don’t even know we are here today, they are busy taking the holiday, a day celebrating Dr. King, whose memory they slander. We must organize and we must return; we must return to this beacon of progressivism and instruct the people found inside that they work for the people, not corporations like Exxon.

I’m an union man and, in my experience, when we show up, we win. I’ve packed these committee rooms before and I’ll continue to do so, but we must begin to show up for our communities and show up for the least among us. Our numbers must be our strength. Here in Baton Rouge, our DSA local is beginning to organize on a variety of fronts, coordinating actions with some of our friends that I see out in the crowd today as well as doing community outreach, like our tenant union that we have begun. The renters of this city are what allow the city to function, yet, every single day, they are disrespected by the bourgeoise landlords and national property management corporations with little to no legal recourse to secure basic rights, things as simple as regular pest control or air-conditioning and heating. We have started this work and we will continue it; when you leave this place I want you to ask yourself, what will you do? I encourage you to return in the spring and stand with us in the halls of the capitol and in the committee rooms, but what will you do between now and then? Will you talk to you neighbors? Will you listen to their grievances? Will you organize your community? Let’s create the world we want to see because they won’t. We must believe that a better world is possible.

-Jacob Newsom

“A better world is possible”