Last week, New Jersey activist Carlos Rojas (of Movimiento Cosecha) confronted Joe Biden over the record-setting deportation rate of the Obama administration at a town hall meeting in South Carolina. I was impressed with Rojas’ courage, and I was shocked when Biden brushed him off with a curt, “vote for Trump.” It was a hollow, dismissive response, basically a dare.

But was it that different from what our own Democrats tell us in New Jersey? They claim to resist Trump, but they lucratively contract with ICE to facilitate its work of needlessly caging immigrants. They obstruct their own drivers license bill for our undocumented neighbors, which would help spare many from ICE’s clutches. They even presided over the crass, aggressive expulsion of activist Sue Altman from a public hearing, a shameful travesty on par with Trumpian thuggishness. In short, they don’t need to say out loud what Biden so gracelessly said; they embody it in their actions by holding progressives captive to the Democratic Party and its machines, knowing we won’t vote Republican.

We don’t need better individual Democrats; we need to destroy their corrupt machines root and branch. No more Joe DiVincenzos, no more Steve Sweeneys. Let us occupy their streets and buildings until they get the message.