General Jewish Labour Bund

Mamdani is a different kind of heerness candidate in his love for New York, etc., uh those those folks down in tucson looking at the suaros in the desert uh i'm i'm pretty sure that at least some of them were probably uh had taken some peyote and i'm all for that so but how much of like what is that that politics you're you're this is not policy set of policy prescriptions it's an attitudinal uh and and existential uh recommendation you're making i'd love to i'd love to have to explain it to the audience a little bit

Yeah, well, the term actually comes from, it's a translation of a Yiddish word, and it comes from the Jewish organization, the Jewish Labor Bund, that was very powerful in Europe between the wars.

It was a union, and it was a social club, and it was self-defense against pogroms.

But it was people living in what was called the pale of settlement, facing extreme discrimination and violence, and also the idea that they should leave, that they should go to Palestine and find safety there.

Yep.

You know, it, it doesn't totally line up here because Luxemburg socialism was much more disciplined than the decentralized democratic socialism that AOC comes out of, which has some of its roots in the, in the Jewish Labour Bund.

But the dynamics are similar, beginning with the poignancy that Luxemburg is writing about a fellow socialist aligning with a general because AOC's relationship to the DSA is fracturing mostly along the fault line of Israel and Palestine.

The issues are Iron Dome funding, BDS, and the IHRA antisemitism definition, which, uh, people, uh, report conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Yeah.

So we organized sort of the final act of the book around this concept of here-ness, which is an idea that we take from the Jewish Labor Bund, citing a brilliant book by our friend Molly Crabapple, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, is an idea that...

That spoke to the need to build multiracial, multi-faith solidarity where we live.

But here-ness, we think, has a new resonance today because ultimately we are describing a far-right alliance that is all about there, all about there-ness, right? Whether it is...

Um, and I mean, I think that's wonderful.

Like, you keep, we see that over and over again, whether it be with Naomi Klein, um, speaking up, whether it is, uh, Molly Crabapple's new book, right, um, that is encouraging us to, to, to look back at the history of the Jewish Bund, um, and Deutche and heroism, uh, and an embrace of diasporic Judaism as opposed to this idea that, like, we all have to, you know, like the only place we could possibly be safe on Earth is Israel, which I just don't think is true.

I, I really like living in Bed-Stuy.

[laughs]

I'm just talking about Jewish nationalists.

Well, the Jewish Bund were leftists.

June of 1906, I think, the Jewish Bund did have heavier weapons, higher caliber weapons.

weaponry, attacked a nationalist procession, they killed 25.

They were called, quote unquote, self-defense units.

However, the municipal Duma had met to discuss emergency measures, including how to replace the state police with an urban militia.

On the same day, the Bund's local committee decided to organize a solemn funeral for the victims who had fallen the day before on the barricades.

But Neudhardt, understanding that such a demonstration would cause, as always, a new revolutionary explosion, gave the order to remove in secret of the Jewish hospital where they were, the five corpses, and to bury them before the scheduled date, which was done on the night of the 18th.

The next day, the organizers demanded that the corpses be unearthed and brought back to the hospital.

Quoting, During the pogrom, there was a certain coordination center that worked quite well.

Universities played an enormous role in the preparation of the events of October.

The Soviet coalition of the Odessa University included a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, an SR, a representative of the Bund, Zionist socialists, the Armenian communities, Georgian and Polish ones as well.

Student attachments were formed even before the pogrom.