Adam Katz

DSA candidate Tim Denson tries to sell the crowd on “democratizing the workplace” and says Walmart should belong to the workers. Big mistake. The guy 6 ft away from him grew up in Venezuela. And he’s heard this communist fairy tale before. DANIEL DI MARTINO: “So you want to take it [Walmart] from its owners and have the workers do what?” TIM DENSON: “I want the workers to own it and get paid better and have better benefits and be able to provide better lives for their families.” DI MARTINO: “We can buy shares in Walmart right now. In fact, all of the SpaceX workers became millionaires overnight.” “You can start a workers’ cooperative right now. It’s legal, but under a socialist country, you’re not allowed to own your own property and start your own private corporation.” Denson tried to refute Di Martino’s point. Then Di Martino dropped this line on him: DI MARTINO: “It’s very easy to be a socialist in a capitalist country. It’s illegal to be a capitalist in a socialist country. That is the difference.” [audience applause] Then it got personal: DI MARTINO: “When I had to go to the grocery store, Tim, I had to put my fingerprint in a scanning machine so that they would tell me what I was allowed to purchase.” “And I could only go Mondays and Saturdays because we have to ration food, because that’s what happens when there’s no profit motive and the farmers, their food is confiscated because they had to sell it to the government and everybody else at the price the government tells the farmers.” “My mom made chocolate bonbons for parties.” “Well, people have a right to chocolate, so we had a price control on chocolate.” “So my mom had to buy counterfeit chocolate, put it in black bags as if we were cocaine drug dealers. That’s what socialism was in Venezuela. That’s what worker ownership of the means of production is.” “Where has it ever worked?” Denson had no answer. Because there isn’t one.