Kayla Popuchet, political analyst explains how both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump don't represent the U.S. average citizen from their elite status.
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00:00So, as you were saying, we are now being joined by Kyla Popuchet.
00:04She is a political analyst.
00:06Hello, Kyla.
00:08Welcome to United States Decides.
00:10Hi, thank you for having me.
00:13Of course, it's our pleasure.
00:16And we've been analyzing this election night.
00:19We've been going over results, but we're also using this opportunity to really understand
00:24and try to get an idea of what is the U.S. political life, where is it at, what are the
00:31problems and main concerns that the population are going through, and how is this two-party
00:36system in some cases, or in most cases, not being able to really give way to a lot of
00:43the political demands that the people have.
00:46So I wanted to ask you, a lot has been said in all these campaigns about women, the women
00:52vote, and who was going to win it.
00:55It was like something that was up for grabs.
00:58I wanted to ask your opinion on this matter.
01:03Yeah, I think that the Democratic Party has been trying to manipulate, and they've long
01:09been using the right to have an abortion as kind of like a carrot stick for women across
01:15the United States, saying that, oh, we're the only party that actually cares about women
01:19because we want to give you the right to have an abortion.
01:22The Republican Party, they want to take away your right to abortion.
01:26In fact, they also cite that Donald Trump had put in the Barretts, she's one of the
01:32Supreme Court justices who ended up being one of the crucial votes that turned down
01:37Roe versus Wade, which gave the federal protection for women to access abortion.
01:42So they'll use this as a carrot stick to try to paint themselves as the party of women,
01:46but the truth is that neither of them are party of women.
01:49And while the Republicans, sure, they want to limit the women's rights to access abortion
01:54by whatever may be their conservative beliefs or their religious beliefs, by no means are
01:58the Democratic Party in favor of women.
02:02Women are not like some separate entity from men.
02:05We also are affected by the economy.
02:07We also are affected by the lack of transportation, that our streets are not as safe, that we're
02:12also being susceptible to housing infragility and possibly living on the street.
02:19We're also the ones who are seeing the decline of our transportation system.
02:22We're also the ones that are seeing our kids and our siblings and our young ones around
02:27our families that are being sent to school and being brainwashed with social conservative
02:33or sociocultural issues, as well as just blatantly not having secure homes to come to.
02:39So the women's question is not something that's completely separate from the men.
02:44We're also affected by the economy, and the Democrats have been using abortion as if that's
02:49the beginning and the end of women's rights, when women don't have the right to motherhood,
02:53women don't have the right to a secure life, women don't have the right to access healthcare.
02:58So it's not just one thing.
03:00And I think that the Democrats, they've been trying to manipulate it, and it's a very guilt
03:05way of manipulation, as well as people who do support the Democrats to say that, well,
03:09if you support the Republicans, then you're anti-woman, but both of these parties are
03:13anti-woman.
03:14Neither of them, none of the capitalistic parties are supportive of women.
03:19Good evening, Kayla.
03:21Thank you for staying up late to join us.
03:24We really appreciate it here in Caracas.
03:26Kayla, you've been involved in some new political organizing.
03:31I think the conventional left has turned its back on blue-collar America, on what many
03:37call Trump country.
03:39We have a slogan, you know, F Trump, but not F Trump country.
03:44There's so many good, solid Americans who, through struggle, we can win them over to
03:51a new worldview.
03:53Kayla, tell us about this innovative organizing that you've done with the American Communist
03:59Party.
04:00What is the vision for the transformation of what you all call occupied America?
04:06Yeah.
04:07I'm glad you're talking about that, because I actually was just on Tele Sur Español talking
04:13a little bit about what we believe.
04:16As the other announcer was saying, that there's like two-thirds of the country right now actually
04:20aren't going to be voting.
04:21While some of that population may include felons who aren't allowed to vote, or maybe
04:26minors, a lot of those people are just regular people, like me, who is not voting in this
04:30election because I'm not going to participate in either of this sham of a system.
04:35There are a lot of people who have been forgotten.
04:38Even also the Trump country and people who do support Donald Trump have been, like I
04:41said, mentioned earlier, kind of guilted out as to seem like they're anti their other fellow
04:47American.
04:48That's what both of these parties, but especially the Democratic Party or the traditional left,
04:52have tried to do is to really further divide American people as more of a moralistic thing.
04:58If you're voting for Trump, then you hate X, Y minority of group.
05:03If you're voting for the Democrats, then you love X, Y minority group, really trying
05:07to tear us apart and demonize these Republican base.
05:11I was actually looking earlier today to see some of the exit polls of the issues of where
05:15certain voters were coming from.
05:17It did look like a majority of the main issues that those who voted for Harris were were
05:22social issues, while 51, from the last time I checked, for those who voted for Trump,
05:27were about the economy.
05:29That's the basic thing.
05:30We're regular people.
05:32We're worried about whether we're going to be putting a roof over our heads or meals
05:36at our table.
05:37We want to know if we can go to work and be able to reproduce ourselves just fine.
05:40The past four years, that's been increasingly difficult.
05:44The ACP, like we've been started, or the American Communist Party, for those that don't know,
05:48we were announced in July.
05:50We just had our first convention on October 12th in Chicago, the heartland, the middle
05:54of the country, USA.
05:57We are here to really stand up and really remember who we are as American people, Trump
06:02country, and even the Democrats, people who support these social issues.
06:08We are one American people at the end of the day.
06:10We are working class people.
06:12We should not be letting both of these capitalist parties, they're really just one party with
06:16two different names, as W.E.B.
06:18Du Bois just says, they're two of the same thing.
06:23They're trying to pit us against one another by trying to manipulate our emotions or manipulate
06:29our sensibilities.
06:30We're at the ACP, we don't believe in that.
06:33We won't allow that.
06:36Some of the recent things that we've been doing here, at least in New York, but across
06:40the country as well, we've been going into parks and cleaning up our communities.
06:43I live in a big Democrat city and actually work in Richie Torres' district, one of the
06:47poorest districts in the entire country, even though it's New York City.
06:51We've been going into these communities and cleaning up and talking to the people and
06:54seeing what their needs are.
06:57We've been doing food drives and winter clothing drives as we're approaching winter.
07:03As we're seeing the country now at its highest level of people living on the streets, because
07:07it's actually safer to be on the street than it is to be in a shelter because they're so
07:10poorly funded.
07:13One of the big things that happened also in Trump country, in Appalachia, which has been
07:19a historically neglected part of the US, was that there was Hurricane Helene that happened
07:24there.
07:25As we know, FEMA, just as they did during Katrina, just as they did in Hurricane Maria
07:30in Puerto Rico, they massively failed at actually meeting what the people need.
07:34Same thing in Maui.
07:36They massively failed in helping the people.
07:38Entire towns were blown away.
07:40People lost everything.
07:42Instead of actually going there immediately to help those people, they gave them a meager
07:47$750 per household, which most people haven't actually even seen.
07:52They were turning away volunteers.
07:54We went there.
07:55Here in New York, even though we're very far away, we collected funds and we went into
08:00the streets.
08:01I remember me personally, flyering around town and going into the bodegas, many bodegas
08:05who I have good connections with over Advocacy for Palestine, putting up flies in there.
08:10They allowed us to do it.
08:11People have donated en masse because American people, whether we're in New York or wherever,
08:15we still care about each other because at the end of the day, we are good people.
08:19We were able to send some money to our comrades in North Carolina who were then able to disburse
08:24a lot of funds to people there.
08:26If we want to talk about the women question or the women's issues, we're the only party
08:29that actually cares because while the Democrats are just telling us about the right to abortion,
08:33our people in Newburgh were able to get some funds with what little we have in the past
08:37few months and give some donations to a women's shelter in Newburgh.
08:42It's only the beginning and it's very exciting to see where we're going, but I think that
08:46our work speaks for ourselves.
08:49We're here to unite the American people, the American working class as one.
08:53These elites that are trying to put us apart, they don't represent us.
08:56They're just here to tear us apart so that we can confuse us and continue to take our
08:59money to fund wars and genocide across the world.
09:02As long as we're fighting each other, then we don't get to unite and realize that they're
09:05the problem and we're not going to allow that.
09:08So yeah, the American Communist Party, ACP.US, if anyone's interested in learning about our
09:12program and our party information, it's very promising to see what we've got going on.
09:17And like I said, we're the patriotic Americans that are actually here, not the bourgeoisie,
09:21not those elites who like to wave American flags everywhere and use those emotions.
09:26They don't care about us.
09:27They don't represent us.
09:28Precisely.
09:29Kayla, I'm glad you're over here.
09:31I'm greeting you also from the studio.
09:33And I want to, first of all, tell you how much we appreciate what you do and the activism
09:39and the community work that you do right there.
09:43And you have all the reason and the truth on your side.
09:47Only the people saves the people.
09:49But I want you to be over one of the key elements in this election.
09:52And as you were saying, Kamala Harris had been creating this persona and this identity
09:59that she's the woman or the female candidate, that she's the force for women, okay, advocating
10:05for women's rights.
10:07But there you have Jill Stein, who has been running for two terms now, okay, for two elections
10:13right now.
10:14And she's also advocating for women's rights.
10:17And you have also Claudia de la Cruz, who is also a woman, a woman of color, not a white
10:24woman.
10:25And she's coming from also a background of immigrant parents.
10:29And she has the same, you know, liabilities maybe in that bringing.
10:33And she's bringing that to the table.
10:35She's proposing that as her core.
10:38And she has been explaining that her campaign has no billionaire funding, that she's just
10:45relying in the people and in whatever she can find as support.
10:50So I think that the very existence of Claudia de la Cruz and Jill Stein demystifies Kamala
10:57Harris as the only women and the only women of color and the only women of color and of
11:04immigrant descent or, you know, bringing in this election.
11:09So how does demystify Kamala and how this unveils the machine behind this political
11:16race?
11:17Well, ultimately, it does go down to the fact that the United States does have a two party
11:22system that the elites, they don't want to get rid of, because why would they allow a
11:27path for somebody like Jill Stein or Claudia de la Cruz to be able to succeed in power?
11:32They don't want to allow that.
11:33The same reason why they don't want to allow to get rid of electoral college.
11:36It doesn't benefit them.
11:37And they're not going to give us the keys to have access to power that they do.
11:41They want they want to keep the system as it is because it allows them to share power.
11:45It allows them to consolidate all the power into their one hand.
11:49So, you know, they're not going to allow anything else.
11:51And also with that, because these other candidates have very little shot of actually ever winning
11:55power.
11:56They also have very little shot of getting money and access and resources to put their
12:00names in their platforms out there.
12:02So while I said, you know, it's more impactful, I think, in this election, considering that
12:07it's genocide that's, you know, been happening for the past year, that's been funded by our
12:11government.
12:12It does, in our belief, it is more impactful to not vote at all.
12:16But I do commend these both these ladies, Jill Stein and Claudia de la Cruz for what
12:19they've been doing and for the platform that they put forward.
12:22I actually did vote for Jill Stein in 2016.
12:24I was never going to vote for Hillary.
12:27But it's true what you say, the Democrats and the liberal NGO and the corporate media
12:33want to parade Kamala Harris as this, well, she's a woman of color and a child of immigrants.
12:38And she's a woman as if that's supposed to move me at all as a woman of color, as a mother
12:42who is from Peru, a family who is from Peru.
12:45That doesn't move me at all because she doesn't actually represent the interests of women.
12:48I want to be able to keep a roof over my head and not live paycheck to paycheck.
12:53I want to be able to know that my kids and my family members and I might not be sent
12:57to war.
12:58I would like my taxes to not go to kill and destroy women and children and men in Palestine.
13:03So you know, it doesn't matter to me whether she be black, white, Asian.
13:06It doesn't matter.
13:07At the end of the day, Kamala Harris is anti-woman by virtue of her policies, by virtue of, you
13:13know, standing for an oppressive system which seeks to conquer the rest of the world and
13:18start chaos in the rest of the world.
13:20Nuclear war, I'm sorry, it's not for a woman, right?
13:23We need a planet to live on.
13:24We need homes to have.
13:25We need security.
13:27And she just does not represent that.
13:28And quite frankly, I don't think Kamala Harris has any kind of platform or any kind of interest.
13:33She's more of a talking head for, you know, her advisors, for the military-industrial
13:37complex.
13:38And it's very easy to try to woo people with the romanticism, look, this is a woman of
13:43color and her beautiful background story.
13:45You can do it, too.
13:47But really, she's just a head for the same old evil system, this imperialistic system
13:52that wants to seek destruction of the world to enrich themselves.
13:55So no, it doesn't move me at all.
14:00OK, Kayla, so I wanted, I cannot, I cannot avoid to ask you about the Palestinian cause,
14:08of course, and not only the, all the grand demonstrations that have been taking place
14:15and the way that that's affected the political scene in the United States, but also how
14:22those demonstrations and that topic has been a means of politicization for these grassroots
14:31organizations and efforts and a way to also interiorize the anti-imperialist sentiment
14:39within the United States.
14:41How do you view the effect that the demonstrations and, of course, the ongoing genocide that
14:46is going on in the Middle East right now has affected the political organizations and
14:53the efforts of the left in the United States to organize, to continue building and to build
14:59wider bridges with the U.S.
15:01population?
15:04I think it's done several things.
15:06It's shown just truly how despicable and criminal our government is.
15:12And for me and for a lot of others, it's it that's even more of the reason why they're
15:17pushing this culture, these social identitarian things about Kamala Harris and about voting
15:23for the Democrats, because they have to reckon with the fact that they have funded a
15:28genocide. They have destroyed entire families, entire bloodlines, an entire nation.
15:33They're trying to cripple it.
15:34And so they really have to reckon with that.
15:36And then they have to use these other pathways of, oh, well, she's a woman.
15:40So if you're going to vote for her, you got to care about women because they really have
15:45something that they're like staring them in the face, the elephant in the room.
15:49And that's not to say that the Republicans aren't going to continue on or maybe even be
15:53worse. But I think it really does expose how criminal I mean, more than ever, we have our
16:00TikToks, we have our phones where people can see babies losing their heads.
16:05I mean, I don't want to go into it.
16:06We are all very well aware.
16:08And if you're not, there's plenty of videos online.
16:12But it really has shocked a lot of people more than it ever has, especially in my generation and
16:16younger and my mother's generation, who, you know, an immigrant class who doesn't know much
16:20about the situation. They came from Peru.
16:22That wasn't something they spoke about or knew about.
16:25But now they're coming here in the age of the media to see that this is something that the
16:30United States is hand in hand with.
16:32And the Democrats, the party that parades itself as a champion of oppressed people, has
16:36completely abandoned Arab Americans and the Middle East entirely.
16:40So it's really interesting to see how there are new alliances also forming, even within the
16:45Republicans. There's splits happening within them.
16:48People who don't support the genocide in Israel, who don't support war crimes and those who
16:52are, you know, diehard loyal to Israel.
16:54But it also has raised the question within people of different political spectrums.
16:58Why is it that our government is so loyal to Israel, that it would leave American journalists
17:03in Israeli prisons, that it would leave and abandon Lebanese Americans and not even help
17:07them evacuate, even though we're giving money to the country that's bombing them?
17:11And the same thing goes for Palestinians, that we've allowed and given money to this entity
17:16that is bombing our fellow citizens.
17:18And, you know, not to say that it's OK that there weren't American citizens, Palestinian
17:23Americans, but they are our citizens and we're not even speaking up for them.
17:26It's really just really shown the face of who the United States is.
17:30And it's been very interesting to see not even just how it's done, like change political
17:34organizing on the left, but also on the right.
17:36There's different political alignments and more questions being faced.
17:40And I think it's not going to go away.
17:42It's only going to get worse.
17:44Wow, thank you, Kayla.
17:46I think you dropped anti-imperialist seminar on us here.
17:51We couldn't be more grateful.
17:52And how refreshing as we talk about this elections, which really amounts to nothing more than
17:59the status quo in the usual spectacle where we can't participate.
18:03And to see you with Kefiyah on television talking about the true points that neither
18:09the liberals nor the conservatives would ever allow us to talk about in this period of
18:15McCarthyism 2.0, and to hear you talk about the American Communist Party in their new
18:21journal, Red America.
18:24It's quite a sweeping, inspiring vision.
18:26So here at TELESUR, we thank you for your time and we'll definitely be calling upon you
18:31in the near future, both in Spanish and English, for your refreshing insights.
18:36Thank you. And yes, check out the ACP.US to learn more about the work that we're doing.
18:41And we're going to keep going.
18:42The people of Palestine and for all freedom peoples of the world, including American
18:46people. Thank you, Kayla.
18:48Thank you, Kayla.