On this episode, Kumars and Roqayah speak with Eugene Puryear. Eugene is an organizer and founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation or PSL, and is on the editorial board of Liberation News, a biweekly publication of the PSL. He ran for Vice President alongside Presidential candidate Gloria La Riva under the PSL banner in both 2008 and 2016. He is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America, and host of By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.

We ask Eugene how he got involved with organizing and how he found himself working with the PSL. We find out more about the PSL, their history, mission, and organizational philosophy, as well as the split between PSL and the Workers’ World Party. Eugene gives us his critiques of Bernie Sanders, democratic socialism, and working within the Democratic party, while acknowledging the benefits of the Sanders campaign for the American socialist project. We discuss PSL’s electoral politics strategy, both its strengths and limitations. We also talk about the concept of “lesser evilism” and Eugene’s vision for what socialism means today.

You can follow Eugene on twitter at @EugenePuryear and check out his writings over at Liberation News.