Oakland Socialist John Reimann Live Interview On His 2022 Oakland Socialist Run For Mayor Of Oakland Friday January 14 2022
ZENNIE62MEDIA, INC., is pleased to announce that John Reimann, a candidate for Mayor of Oakland in the 2022 Mayoral Race, will be on Zennie62 YouTube Friday January 14th, 2022 at 3:30 PM PST / 6:30 PM EST.
John calls himself The Oakland Socialist, and if you remember Occupy Oakland from 2011, and were around when it was a thing (type “Occupy Oakland” in Zennie62 YouTube), then you’ve at least seen John’s name more than once. Now, John is throwing his hat into the ring of 13 candidates for Mayor of Oakland. Get to know John by watching my talk with him on Friday live or in the video afterward at Zennie62 YouTube, OaklandNewsNow,com and OaklandNewsOnline.com.
Here’s John’s reason for running, from his blog Oakland Socialist:
In February of this year I posted this article What an Oaklandsocialist for Mayor in 2022 Campaign Could Accomplish. As I pointed out there, Oakland is not an isolated island; there is not a single issue that workers in Oakland face that can be resolved outside of a national, and in fact an international, working class political movement. That is true for issues related to low pay, lack of jobs and poverty, including homelessness and crime. It is true for issues involving racism and police brutality and the criminal (in)justice system. It is true for issues involving public health, especially in the era of covid. And it is true for environmental issues. Therefore, mine will be a campaign to add a voice towards taking one small step in the direction of building a working class movement and a mass working class party in the United States.
Crisis in Working Class
Among other things, I recognized the crisis that exists in the working class, with something close to 40% working class support for Trump. This crisis is largely due to the role of the leadership of our class – the union leadership. It’s true that the unions have shrunk significantly, but with 14.3 million members they absolutely dwarf all other working class organizations combined. They still remain the only mass organizations of US workers. This leadership has collaborated with the capitalist class to wage a 75 year war on the very idea that workers have their own interests, as workers, vs. the interests of the capitalist class. That war has included a struggle to wipe from collective memory the real, fighting history of how the unions were built in the first place.
Dozens of wildcatting carpenters shut down numerous jobs in Seattle.
In the last six months we have seen a tendency to rebel against the results of this war – the cut rate contracts that this leadership pushes. We have seen this rebellion in Western Washington carpenters, among striking UAW members at Volvo and John Deere, among Kellogg workers, and among IATSE members. In all those cases, a majority of voting members rejected a proposed contract at least once. My hope had been that this tendency would develop into an organized force. Although it could yet happen, that now seems unlikely.
Read the rest here, and see you Friday: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2021/12/13/why-i-will-be-running-for-mayor-in-oakland-in-2022/