PHILADELPHIA — “It’s a class issue now, it’s class war,” is what Sean, a member of the socialist 100 Red Flags group, told The Daily Caller outside City Hall Monday.
At the start of the Democratic convention, over a 1000 protesters gathered outside Philadelphia’s city hall to fight for various causes. The connecting theme between them all is a disdain for Hillary Clinton. Some groups there — like the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) — think Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is not leftist enough, calling him a “capitalism light.”
“We vow to tight for a world without capitalism, the system that thrives on racism, wars for profit, and police terror,” a pamphlet the group was handing out says. “We will not win an end to capitalism at the ballot box. We will win when a revolutionary workers army defeats capitalist forces and establishes communism.”
A member of this group, who would not give his name to TheDC, said they need “millions of workers under the red flag” for this revolution to succeed. When asked when this could happen, he said they were fighting an uphill battle but “sometimes history moves very quickly.”
This sentiment was also repeated by Ben Becker, of the Party for Socialism and Revolution. This group is actually fielding a candidate, Gloria La Riva, but is only on one state ballot. Becker told TheDC, “The important thing is to keep building the movement, things can change very unexpectedly.”
Becker was handing out a newspaper that had the headline, “The Pentagon Wants Clinton, The Racists Want Trump.”
Another group, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, handed out a flier with a six step plan for revolution. The flier said, “because we are serious, at this stage we do not initiate violence.”
Bernie supporters are all* around City Hall – #DemsInPhilly #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/gyfORk0aeS
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) July 25, 2016
@BernieSanders supporters stream through Philadelphia’s City Hall. Sanders will speak at DNC tonight. #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/ZiVg6okOI4
— Colin Deppen (@colin_deppen) July 25, 2016
One protester, Janny, carried a sign that read “what we fear from Trump we have already seen from Hillary.” She told TheDC that if Hillary gets the nomination as expected, she will support Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
Stein is currently at 3.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Hundreds gathered on the north end of city hall at a rally in support of her where at one point they chanted out “Jill not Hill!” A Bernie Sanders supporter there, Sarah, told TheDC that she would not support Stein and would instead write in Sanders’ name in November.
Zack from the 100 Red Flags group told TheDC, “Any self respecting Bernie supporter never stood for the cause if they move onto Hillary.”