​
Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect 
At its biennial convention last weekend in Atlanta, DSA (which, with 56,000 members, is now the largest American socialist organization in the memory of anyone under 80) passed a headline-grabbing resolution declaring that it would not endorse any Democrat save Bernie Sanders in next year’s November presidential runoff.
The vote on the resolution was actually fairly close, though support for Sanders in the primaries is overwhelming within the organization. And its proponents provided a number of qualifications and caveats, making clear that DSA members are free to campaign for the eventual Democratic nominee if they so choose, and that in 2016, DSA locals did campaign against Trump (and members for Hillary) in swing states.
Still, inasmuch as DSA locals work closely with immigrant-protection groups, and the national organization has called for the abolition of ICE, it could be difficult to explain to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, facing deportation and family separation, why the group won’t join its allies in a forthright fight to dump Trump.
However, I find myself of two minds in assessing DSA’s position. As a member of the organization and one of its predecessors (the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee) for the past 44 years, I’m embarrassed and regretful that my organization hasn’t grasped the primacy and urgency of joining, in a public and full-blown way, the battle to rid the world of Trump. In 1944, the U.S. Communist Party effectively, if temporarily, self-abolished so its members could support Franklin Roosevelt’s re-election bid, as part of the fight against fascism. To be sure, that move came at the behest of Joseph Stalin, whose nation was allied with ours in the existential battle against Hitler. But for all its myriad and ultimately fatal flaws, and granting that its self-abolition was a typical CP overreaction, the U.S. Communist Party understood the gravity of the fascist threat. Why not DSA?
That’s the reaction of my DSA mind. But partly through my long-ago work with DSOC, which led to my political work for some left-wing unions, which led to my own work for left-wing candidates and causes, I also seem to have a political-consultant mind. And that mind tells me that the eventual Democratic presidential nominee needs the formal endorsement of DSA like a hole in the head. Where DSA is strong and where socialist and progressive candidates can win—generally, in cities with substantial populations of millennials, immigrants, and minorities—a DSA endorsement can make all the difference, producing scads of the most tireless precinct walkers and dedicated phone-bankers. It has made that difference in New York, Chicago, and any number of smaller cities. In nearly every state, and certainly in the nation at large, however, a DSA endorsement would be one more item on the bill of particulars the Republicans would hurl at the Democratic nominee in hopes of revving up more of their right-wing base. In every encounter with reporters, the nominee would be pressed about DSA’s endorsement. Just as well, says my consultant mind, that DSA takes a pass—particularly since I have no doubt most of my fellow members will end up helping that Democratic nominee in states where that help matters.
 
Read the essay
https://prospect.org/article/what-socialists-just-did-and-why
 

 
Media coverage of the DSA convention.
 
The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/06/democratic-socialists-us-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders
 
 
WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2019/08/06/the-trailer-they-re-open-to-candidates-other-than-bernie-sanders/5d484b6288e0fa1454f8014e/
 
 
 DSA convention and North Star made the New York Times. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialists-america.html#click=https://t.co/gEt9EpBBJn 

-- 

​Harold Meyerson, 
I was present for a speech Harrington  gave to the 1983 convention of the UAW where he told delegates their enemies weren’t Mexican workers but the companies that pitted workers against each other. The delegates were largely silent at first, but as Harrington’s logic unfolded and his passion exploded, they raised the roof with their cheers.
Harrington died in 1989, just sixty-one years old. He did not succeed in building a mass socialist organization — that would require two decades more of capitalism’s erosion of democracy and economic security, the crash of 2008, and the elite recovery that followed. But no one who’d read Mike’s writing or heard him speak could be completely surprised at the instability and cruelty of capitalism, nor by the current democratic-socialist surge against the devastation that capitalism has wrought.
In a time when America and the world were moving rightwards, Harrington kept the socialist flame burning, and fitted the socialist idea to the global challenges of the twenty-first century.
Maurice Isserman, Maxine Phillips and I each have Mike stories up on Jacobin's website today:
 
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-dsoc-democratic-socialism
 
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-democratic-socialism
 
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-legacy-maxine-phillips
 
 
 

The North Star Caucus is a group of DSA members, democratic socialists, who share a broad outlook around the political questions that face DSA and the broader US left. We are not a faction, a group wanting to take over DSA and remake it in our own image. See our statement of principles.
We believe that defeating Trump and the Republican agenda is the most pressing
political priority facing the U.S. left today. 
 
North Star Endorsed DSA Convention Resolutions 
There is a large number of resolutions proposed for discussion at the 2019 DSA Convention, many of which have merit.  In particular, North Start urges votes for the following four resolutions: 
Resolution #5:             Defense of Immigrants and Refugees
Resolution #13:          Defeating Trump, Trumpism, and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives.
Resolution #27:           Proposed 2019-2020 National Priorities for DSA.
Resolution #34:           Ecosocialist Green New Deal Priority.

North Star Endorsed NPC Candidates
 
Based on discussions both within North Star and with other DSA members, North Star endorses the following candidates for the 2019 - 2021 NPC.  They are listed in order of our recommended ranking:  Rank order is important.
1.    Russell Weiss-Irwin
2.    Maikiko James 
3.    Timothy Zhu 
4.    Abdullah Younus
5.    Hannah Allison 
6.    Kristian Hernandez
7.    Theresa Alt 
8.    Jose A. Perez 
9.    Blanca Estevez 
10.   Dave Pinkham
11.   Natalie Midiri 
12.   Marsha Niemeijer 
13.   Marianela D’Aprile 
14.   Megan Svoboda
15.   Rachel Zibrat 
16.   Daniel Merrill

An appeal by the DSA National Immigrant Rights Working Group
The National Immigrant Rights Working Group (NIRWG)of the Democratic Socialists of America calls on DSA members and all working people to mobilize in support of actions such as the Lights for Liberty Vigils to End Human Detention Camps on July 12, the demonstrations organized in San Diego and elsewhere by the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps and the July 13 Action to End Criminalization, Detention, & Deportations in Chicago. 
Trump's attacks on the human rights of the most vulnerable has once again galvanized the nation's conscience. 
We should make this the beginning of a concerted drive against immigration detention and child abuse, as well as the unjust immigration system that has empowered Trump's racist attacks as well as the campaigns to jail and deport the undocumented of past administrations.
We urge our members to call for an end to family separation, to concentration camps, to immigration detention, to criminalization, to deportation. The real solution to the immigration crisis is legalization of the undocumented as permanent residents ("green card" status) with the same rights as all other immigrants, including the right to apply for citizenship.
NIRWG Steering Committee
July 3, 2019
.
The Immigrants Rights Working Group Steering Committee asks DSA members and friends to distribute this statement widely through social media, web sites and mailing lists. We urge DSA bodies, such as chapters, steering committees, working groups and convention delegations to discuss and sign on to this statement at http://bit.ly/SupportDSAImmigrationAppeal.
 
 

A new issue of the DSA publication Socialist Forum has been posted with an emphasis on electoral strategy. Here. https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/spring-summer-2019/electoral-politics-class-formation-and-socialist-strategy/
 
The editors selected articles that seem not to notice that Latinos participate in politics and there is a pivotable election in 2020. The Latino vote is growing rapidly in key states. 44% of Latino voters are millennials.   A second item missing from this article and the selection of articles is a recognition of how important the election of 2020 is to communities of color.
 
I had proposed a piece for Socialist Forum based upon the work of the North Star caucus with such an anti-racism focus.  Here is our argument in brief.
 
"Our first priority  in this election is the electoral and political defeat of Donald Trump, the Trumpist Republican Party and all of the authoritarian forces aligned with them. The white nationalist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses a ‘clear and present danger’ to working people and their unions, to people of color, to women, to LGBTQIA people, to immigrants, to members of minority religious faiths and to democracy itself. Trumpist victories in the 2020 elections would mean the consolidation of an authoritarian state with the most reactionary politics, the expansion of imperial aggression abroad and the collapse of the political space for democratic and left forces at home. The defeat of Trumpism is thus a strategic imperative, the most important political task of our time.
 
Given the central role of racism, white nationalism and bigotry against immigrants and Muslims in the political agenda of Trumpism, and the echoes of the most shameful racist moments of past U.S. history in Trumpian discourse, a failure to prioritize its defeat would be nothing less than the abandonment of the struggle against racism. "
 
See here. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/proposed-resolution-defeating-trump-trumpism-and-election-democratic-socialists-and-progressives
 
The editors selected articles that seem not to notice that Latinos participate in politics and there is a pivotable election in 2020. 
 
A similar argument has been made by members Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson in Portside, ITT, and a number of publications. 
https://portside.org/2019-04-23/left-strategy-2020-elections-and-beyond
 
They, too proposed a piece for Socialist Forum and it was also not accepted for publication. 
 
A strategy for DSA and the left needs to look closely at the potential Latino vote. In 2018 the Latino participation was a relatively low 44%.  This vote exists in states critical to the Democratic primary and any Democratic candidates victory. Latinos make up  28 % of Nevada,  in Texas, Latinos are 39.6 % of the population, in California 39.3 %, and 21.7 % in Colorado.  See Pew for more.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/historic-highs-in-2018-voter-turnout-extended-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/
 
A strategic direction by DSA should recognize that the electoral victories in 2018 by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib  and others, and the 2019 election victories in Chicago occur in districts with large Latino and other People of Color voters. 
 
Most in the democratic left have  recognized this approach since at least the 1988 Rainbow Coalition campaign and it should have been included in the Socialist Forum issue.
We have supported the creation, the recreation, of the Socialist Forum.  At the same time, we  in the North Star Caucus want to be certain that Socialist Forum is fulfilling its mandate to post a wide diversity of views on the topic of electoral participation representing the diversity of views within  DSA.
 
   DSA needs to incorporate a significant anti-racism agenda in its electoral work . North Star resolutions to start from an anti-racism agenda will be considered at the DSA convention, particularly resolutions 13 and 17. We encourage members and allies to cooperate to pass these resolutions. 
 
Latino Vote.  Pew
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/historic-highs-in-2018-voter-turnout-extended-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/
 
Duane Campbell,
Sacramento. 
DSA North Star Caucus  
 
 
 

​The National Political Committee (NPC) has announced that it will not submit an organizational priorities resolution to the 2019 DSA National Convention. It has entered resolution # 88 to propose that the Convention endorse this decision. If the National Convention were to acquiesce in the NPC’s failure to present proposed organizational priorities to it for its consideration, the result would not be that DSA does not have organizational priorities, but that they will be determined in less democratic and less transparent ways, by subordinate bodies such as the next NPC or by the national staff. This is NOT how a healthy democratic socialist organization should function.
In the absence of an organizational priorities resolution from the NPC, the DSA North Star Caucus has submitted a Priorities Resolution. # 27.   Now, the National Convention can debate and democratically decide the direction of the organization over the next year. Our resolution reflects what we believe should be DSA’s priorities, but we would urge other caucuses and individuals who have different priorities to prepare amendments reflecting their views of DSA's priorities, so the National Convention can consider the full range of perspectives in our ranks, and make a democratic decision.
​
Proposed National Priorities for DSA for 2019-2020
WHEREAS for a membership organization to be truly democratic, it is essential that the important decisions about its political positions and its political work be made as close as possible to the membership, with the widest possible discussion and participation;
WHEREAS  as a democratic socialist organization, DSA has among its first principles the importance of collective action, informed by a strategic assessment of the historical moment in which we find ourselves and what it demands of us, and the necessity of deciding how we act collectively through the most democratic processes;
WHEREAS in DSA, the National Convention is established “highest decision making body” in our Constitutions and By-Laws, and has the widest participation of rank-and-file members from across the country;
WHEREAS  the democratic venue for establishing DSA’s organizational priorities must therefore be the National Convention; if the National Convention does not act, the important  decisions over organizational priorities will necessarily devolve to subordinate decision making bodies with less participation, such as the National Political Committee (NPC), or to the national staff, and be less democratic; 
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED:
THAT  this 2019 National Convention of Democratic Socialists of America do hereby establish the top three priorities for our organizational work for the period until to our next annual Convention:
Ø  Defeating Trump and Trumpism, and Electing Democratic Socialists, as set forth in resolution entitled “Defeat Trump and Trumpism, Elect Democratic Socialists”;
Ø  Defending Immigrants and Refugees, as set forth in resolution entitled  “Addressing Immigration Policy and Defending Immigrants and Refugees”;
Ø  Promoting the Green New Deal, as set forth in resolution on that subject sponsored by the Eco-Socialist Caucus.
 
 

Why we need new economic policies before we can fix trade deals
By STAN SORSCHER
(June 10, 2019) — In 2016, Donald Trump’s trade message was very simple: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the worst trade deal ever negotiated. He has renegotiated NAFTA, rebranding the deal as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). We never quite understood his objection to the original NAFTA, and we don’t understand how USMCA fixes it. You need to squint to see the difference between NAFTA and its replacement.
“I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump has said. His gut instinct said NAFTA was bad. Unfortunately, gut instinct is typically simplistic, often impulsive, and by definition not strategic or coherent.
We need to think of our domestic policy and trade policy together. Tariffs, like trade deals, make sense only as tools within a larger coherent strategy. Trade policy should reinforce the principles in our domestic policy. If trade policy is not working, it’s a fair bet that our underlying domestic policies aren’t either.

Since 1980, the prevailing political messagehas been, “Markets will solve all our problems. Government is the problem.”
The term for this is neoliberalism. “Neo” means new. In the language of economics, “liberal” means “liberated” or free from regulation. Neoliberalism “frees” markets by shrinking government, dismantling social programs, and cutting investment in education and research-and-development.
Many of our biggest problems — climate change, growing income inequality, health care, food safety, and workplace safety — are textbook market failures. Neoliberalism responds with its universal prescription — make business succeed and well-being will follow.
Read more. 
Making Sense of NAFTA and Its Replacement.

 

 
by Harold Meyerson
In 1916, amid the carnage of World War I, the great German-Polish socialist Rosa Luxemburg wrote that humanity was facing a choice between socialism and barbarism.
Earlier today, speaking at the George Washington University, Bernie Sanders noted that we live in a time of rising authoritarianism, citing the regimes of Putin, Xi, Orban, Duterte and Trump as indices of the growing threat. His speech was billed as offering his definition of socialism, which, a la Rosa, was said to be the alternative to oligarchy and authoritarianism.
 
Socialism as Sanders proceeded to define it is indeed an alternative to oligarchy and authoritarianism. What his speech left hanging was whether his socialism was in fact socialism.
In 2015, as his campaign was just taking off, Sanders came to a different D.C. university—Georgetown—to deliver what was also then billed as his definition of socialism. Before a crowd of wildly cheering college students, he reeled off a series of social democratic proposals—the universal right to health care, to college education and the like – with constant reference to the great American leader who did indeed lead the successful war against barbarism in the 1940s: Franklin Roosevelt. His speech was so FDR-centric that I wroteat the time:
Throughout the 1930s, Republicans claimed that Franklin Roosevelt was really a socialist. Today, Bernie Sanders said they were right.
 
Then, as today, Sanders referenced Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union speech – FDR’s last great speech—in which Roosevelt proposed an Economic Bill of Rights. Today, Sanders formally proposed “a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights,” which included a right to a living-wage job, to “quality health care,” to “a complete education,” to “affordable housing,” to “a clean environment” and to “a secure retirement.”
 
As if citing Roosevelt were not enough, Sanders also cited Harry Truman, whose efforts to create a Medicare for All program in the 1940s were thwarted by conservatives and the medical profession. He quoted Truman, talking about his critics, at length:
Socialism [Truman said] is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called Social Security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
 
Nor did Sanders’s talk simply identify socialism with the social democratic reforms of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal. It also contained two crucial omissions.
First, even as Sanders cited Roosevelt and Truman, but he also did not cite any avowed American democratic socialists, save, in passing, Martin Luther King Jr. He made no mention of his great hero, Eugene V. Debs. Nothing on Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party’s candidate for president in each of FDR’s four elections. Nothing on A. Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or Michael Harrington. No reference to Thomas’ line when asked if Roosevelt had actually carried out the Socialist Party’s program. “He carried it out,” Thomas said, “on a stretcher.”
 
Second, Sanders also omitted his own more socialistic proposals. His speech skipped over some groundbreaking social democratic reforms that Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both advocated in the course of the campaign, including dividing corporate boards between shareholder and worker representatives. He made no mention of an American version of the Meidner Plan – a 1970s proposal never quite implemented in Sweden that would gradually transfer the ownership of corporations, through the yearly payment of profits in the form of stock to their employees’ organizations, to their workers. 
 
In short, Sanders’s socialism, as he defined it, is an expansion of America’s semi-demi-welfare state to include more economic rights. It’s an effort to make us a more functional social democracy—which, of course, is no small proposal and by American standards, a great leap forward. But he could have made the same proposals and labeled them neo-Rooseveltian liberalism without straining historical accuracy.
​

​By Max B. Sawicky
 
One way the liberal/radical divide manifests itself is in what might be called the distinction of outcomes from process. Radicals, for instance, tended to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq because we simply rejected the rationale for the policy. Liberals tended to criticize the process under which the invasion was launched – the failure of Congress to declare war, the inability to secure support from the United Nations, the aborted search for “weapons of mass destruction.”
So too in the current political situation, liberals tend to focus on the high crimes and misdemeanors of the president, while radicals prefer to center their appeals on behalf of concrete ‘meat-and-potatoes’ demands for Medicare For All, the Fight for 15, or they emphasize foundational social-justice demands in the fights against racism, sexism, and gender-identity bigotry.
There is really no reason for this divide. Liberals can be won to democratic socialist goals in health care and the like. The question is whether democratic socialists can wrap our heads around impeachment.  
The likelihood of continued disenfranchisement of Democratic-leaning voting constituencies, and the increasing extent to which a minority of mostly white, older voters in rural states can outvote a majority of the nation in the Electoral College, not to mention the U.S. Senate, is a grave threat to any elected Democratic president, not to mention to his or her prospects for a fair election.
Imagine that a genuinely progressive Democrat wins the White House in 2020. The chances of a Democratic Senate right now look slim. Of the Democrats’ xxx seats in the House, over a hundred have identified with the so-called “New Democrat” label that was mainstreamed by William J. Clinton. Not a few Democratic senators are of a similar ilk. Relatedly, the prospects for a liberal majority on the Supreme Court are also dim. 

The Socialist Majority Caucus of DSA is proposing the following national convention resolution:
http://bit.ly/electoralpriority

This is the North Star Caucus's proposed resolution on the same subject:
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/proposed-resolution-defeating-trump-trumpism-and-election-democratic-socialists-and-progressives ?
 
Here is one view:
 
There is nothing objectionable in the Socialist Majority Caucus resolution, but there is something crucially important missing – the necessity of defeating Trump and Trumpism in the 2020 elections. This makes the resolution radically incomplete, an ahistorical discussion of electoral politics that avoids the most central issue of electoral politics of this moment. There is a deference to the political fundamentalism of Momentum/Spring/Bread and Roses and its rhetoric of class struggle electoral politics, even as that caucus absents itself from the decisive class struggle election battles of our day, that leads Socialist Majority to duck the question. And yet there is no more important question for the future of American democracy, the left, and all of the popular forces. The debate over this issue will only take place if we take the lead in making it happen.  Leo Casey.
 
 
A second view.
 
 I favor Leo’s view  above on Trump and Trumpism,  It is difficult to imagin  how much damage the Trump cartel has already caused,  See, for example, Paul Krugman’s opinion piece in the NYT today on how starting many trade wars:  Iran, India, China, Russia, Mexico, the EU  has set back our global system. (That avoids the question of how our global system was used to further neoliberalism).  And see Michael Lewis, the Fifth Risk, on how the Trump brigades have set back science and the feeding of children, among other items, 
 
I do, however, see a reasonable middle ground.
 
We can put all of our efforts in Defeating Trump and Trumpism and electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives.  However if Sanders  or Warren do not get the nomination,  DSA as a national organization does not need to endorse a neoliberal. - like Biden.  That does not mean we will not be active in the elections.  
 
Today Warren  posted a platform on trade that  criticizes Trump’s trade wars, argues for fair trade, and critiques neoliberal trade. This is a step ahead on trade. 
 
DSA can encourage political participation along a broad spectrum of electoral campaigns.  For example, here in California there will be an initiative _ Schools and Communities First- to tax the rich to fund schools and community development, .  There will be various Medicare for All campaigns.   DSA can engage electorally and lead politically to defeat Trumpism  without endorsing a neoliberal Democrat.
Duane Campbell 
What do others think?
 

DSA’s top three priorities for political work over the next two years, until our next national convention in 2021, will be:
​

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing  Democratic Socialists and Progressives. 
2. Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal
3. Addressing the Immigration Crisis and Defending Immigrants and Refugees

 
Proposed amendment to the DSA Constitution re Number of NPC Members

These resolutions have each received the required number of supporters and have been submitted to the appropriate convention committees.  Delegates. Please support these resolutions. 
 
Rather than submitting a resolution on number 2 climate change, we chose to support the forthcoming resolution from the Eco Socialist Committee. 

The National Political Committee (NPC) has announcedthat it will not submit an organizational priorities resolution to the 2019 DSA National Convention. If the National Convention were to acquiesce in the NPC’s failure to present proposed organizational priorities to it for its consideration, the result would not be that DSA does not have organizational priorities, but that they will be determined in less democratic and less transparent ways, by subordinate bodies such as the next NPC or by the national staff. This is NOT how a healthy democratic socialist organization should function.In the absence of an organizational priorities resolution from the NPC, the DSA North Star Caucus is submitting such a resolution, so the National Convention can debate and democratically decide the direction of the organization over the next year. Our resolution reflects what we believe should be DSA’s priorities, but we would urge other caucuses and individuals who have different priorities to prepare amendments reflecting their views of DSA's priorities, so the National Convention can consider the full range of perspectives in our ranks, and make a democratic decision. 

Proposed National Priorities for DSA for 2019-2020 
WHEREAS  for a membership organization to be truly democratic, it is essential that the important decisions about its political positions and its political work be made as close as possible to the membership, with the widest possible discussion and participation;
WHEREAS  as a democratic socialist organization, DSA has among its first principles the importance of collective action, informed by a strategic assessment of the historical moment in which we find ourselves and what it demands of us, and the necessity of deciding how we act collectively through the most democratic processes;
WHEREAS  in DSA, the National Convention is established “highest decision making body” in our Constitutions and By-Laws, and has the widest participation of rank-and-file members from across the country;
WHEREAS  the democratic venue for establishing DSA’s organizational priorities must therefore be the National Convention; if the National Convention does not act, the important decisions over organizational priorities will necessarily devolve to subordinate decision making bodies with less participation, such as the National Political Committee (NPC), or to the national staff, and be less democratic; 
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED:
THAT  this 2019 National Convention of Democratic Socialists of America do hereby establish the top three priorities for our organizational work for the period until to our next annual Convention:

• Defeating Trump and Trumpism, and Electing Democratic Socialists, as set forth in resolution entitled “Defeat Trump and Trumpism, Elect Democratic Socialists”;
• Defending Immigrants and Refugees, as set forth in resolution entitled  “Addressing Immigration Policy and Defending Immigrants and Refugees”;
• Promoting the Green New Deal, as set forth in resolution on that subject sponsored by the Eco-Socialist Caucus.
• DSA Members. Please endorse here.  https://forms.gle/pB1N1StTkY5ocFJa6

​


"Only direct action—or the threat of it—will move the boss." Sara Nelson, the flight attendants union president whose strike threat ended Trump's government shutdown, on building a fighting labor movement.

On May 10, 2019, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson gave a speech to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America’s annual Eugene Debs–Lucy Gonzalez Parsons–A. Philip Randolph Dinner. Jacobin reproduced the speech here in full, lightly edited for online publication.
 
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara-nelson-flight-attendants-strikes
 
That spirit is what led flight attendants to declare we wouldn’t work flights that facilitated the Trump Administration’s evil policy of immigrant family separations. And it’s that spirit that led us to take a firm stand during the government shutdown, when millions of people were out of work, others were forced to work without pay, all of us were increasingly unsafe, and our entire economy was on the line. With access to 360 million voters in our workplace, we intend to continue to use the spirit of our union for good.
And let me tell you I’m proud to be with you, the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. You have won some great victories here in this city this year. You have helped elect some incredible leaders. 
Still, some ignorant political hack or media purveyor of hate is likely talking trash right now about democratic socialists. And here’s what I have to say. Helen Keller was a democratic socialist. And so was Albert Einstein. And so was George Orwell. And Bayard Rustin. And the Reuther family.
When Nazi troops came to the Warsaw Ghetto to kill the last Jews left, the men and women on the rooftops who met them with gasoline bombs were democratic socialists, and democratic socialists stood up against dictatorship throughout the twentieth century, they filled Stalin’s camps and Siberian graves.
The minimum wage, national health care, worker safety rules, Social Security — before the Great Society and before the New Deal, this was the democratic-socialist agenda.
And of course our democratic-socialist working heroes, Eugene Victor Debs, A. Philip Randolph, and Lucy Gonzalez Parsons. The police called Lucy Parsons “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” because of her skills as an orator, organizer, and rabble-rouser. 
Her cry that only direct action — or the threat of it — will move the boss is a lesson we can all do well to remember.  Read more. 
 
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara-nelson-flight-attendants-strikes
 
 
 
 

​Defeating  Trump, Trumpism, and Electing  Democratic Socialists and Progressives
​
 


 
Submission to the national convention.  We need your endorsements. Use this form.  Include your e mail and telephone number. 
 
https://forms.gle/LTURUQ8jCuw3QpsNA
 
Whereas, our first priority is the electoral and political defeat of Donald Trump, the Trump-dominated  Republican Party and the authoritarian forces aligned with them. The white nationalist, patriarchal,authoritarianism of Trumpism poses a ‘clear and present danger’ to working people and their unions, to people of color, to women, to LGBTQIA people, to immigrants, to members of minority religious faiths and to democracy itself.
And whereas, a Trump victory in the 2020 elections would consolidate an authoritarian state with the most reactionary politics, expand imperial aggression abroad and shrinkthe political space for democratic and left forces at home. 
And whereas, failure to prioritize the defeat of Trumpism would be nothing less than the abandonment of the struggles against the racism, sexism, white nationalism and bigotry against immigrants, Muslims and Jews that are central to Trumpism: 
Be it therefore resolved that the defeat of Trumpism is a strategic imperative, the most important political task of our time. 
Be it further resolved that to defeat the Trump regime, the Democratic Party and candidates for office running as Democrats must adopt a progressive platform that breaks decisively with neoliberal politics and economics, rejecting the policies of austerity, privatization, economic deregulation and ‘race to the bottom’ free trade under corporate hegemony.
Be it further resolved that DSA should promote the development of such a progressive platform, which places the interests of working people and their unions over corporations and the 1%, that takes on the economic impact of institutional racism and sexism in employment and social services, that addresses increasingly catastrophic climate change, protects abortion rights and reproductive justice and promotes the well-being of the great mass of U.S. working people, especially in the provision of fully-funded, universally accessible public goods in health care, education, housing and mass transportation.
Be it further resolved that DSA will vigorously support publicly avowed democratic socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders and  Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib (both DSA members), as well as other progressive elected officials. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President deserves our support precisely because it can advance this progressive platform, even if he does not win the Democratic Party nomination.
And, be it further resolved that DSA’s electoral work is most effective and has the greatest impact when we work cooperatively with other progressive organizations on the left – both mass organizations such as unions, civil rights organizations and community groups, and political  organizations, such as Our Revolution, the Working Families Party, and Justice Democrats. 
And, be it finally resolved that the DSA Electoral Committee shall report to the membership their proposed strategy for achieving the above objectives.
DSA members may endorse the resolution here.
https://forms.gle/LTURUQ8jCuw3QpsNA

Submitted by Duane Campbell for the  North Star Caucus

 
 

​
​Proposal to national DSA Convention;  2019.
​WHEREAS   one of the first principles of democratic socialism is the importance of collective action;
WHEREAS   our political work should be informed by a strategic analysis of the political economy of U.S. capitalism and the cutting edge issues of the day, with an eye to identifying the critical points of system leverage where we can collectively intervene to maximum political effect; and

Whereas      DSA individuals, chapters, and the Immigrants’ Rights Working Group have been actively engaged for over six  years, and continue to engage in the defense of immigrants and refugees from racists attacks, and promoting 
and the promotion of comprehensive immigration reform that would secure their place in the U.S., putting an end to corporate induced competition between native born and immigrant workers, and between U.S. workers and workers abroad. ( See resolution #41 from the 2017 convention). 
 
  And, whereas,  In the last half century, there has been a major restructuring of the global economy, conducted largely on the terms of transnational corporations seeking ever greater profits. Neo-liberal ‘free trade’ agreements, such as NAFTA I and II and CAFTA, have produced a global ‘race to the bottom,’ with capital flight sending good paying union jobs away from workers in the U.S. to countries with low wage employment, many of which are ruled by authoritarian states that ban independent unions. In the Americas, this global ‘free trade’ economy has devastated entire sectors of the economies of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, leading millions of people attempting to migrate to the U.S. in search of food, jobs, and security. Many also flee the ruthless violence of criminal groups in nations with ‘failed’ states, as well as the effects of climate catastrophes, from drought to increasingly vicious and destructive storms. 
 
And, whereas, the racist nationalism of Trump and his cohort  seeks to exploit the anger of U.S. workers by scapegoating immigrants and refugees, projecting racist fears and resentments on them. 
 
And, whereas, only a politics which breaks with the neo-liberal paradigm can successfully counter the racism of Trump and the nationalist right wing, bringing a measure of justice both to immigrants and refugees and to workers in the U.S.
 
Be it therefore resolved that:
 

​

 We are proposing a constitutional amendment to DSA to  increase the NPC from 16 to 24 members while retaining the allocation to various categories of members.  The proposal is virtually identical to the 2017 resolution that received about 63% of the vote - not the 2/3 necessary to pass.  


To get this on the 2019 convention agenda, we need co-sponsorship from 50 (or more) DSA members -  and we need it by May 2.  

 If you agree, RESPOND DIRECTLY TO ME,

If you wan to sign on, your response should include: 
(1) Name;
(2) email (try to use the one you gave to the NO);
(3) Chapter;
(4) zip code


return to this address
chocolatehouse@sbcglobal.net
Resolution below the fold

​WHEREAS   one of the first principles of democratic socialism is the importance of collective action;
WHEREAS   our political work should be informed by a strategic analysis of the political economy of American capitalism and the cutting edge issues of the day, with an eye to identifying the critical points of system leverage where we can collectively intervene to maximum political effect; and
WHEREAS   to accomplish this objective of effective collective action, it is critical for DSA to develop organizational priorities, determined through democratic processes, to drive our work;
Be It  Resolved:
THAT   DSA’s top three priorities for political work over the next two years, until our next national convention in 2021, will be:

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives 
2. Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal
3. Addressing  Immigration Policy and Defending Immigrants and Refugees

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives 

           See prior post.

   2.  Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal
            See prior post. 

  3. Addressing  Immigration Policy and Defending Immigrants and          
​       Refugees 
Our third priority is the defense of immigrants and refugees against racist attacks, and the promotion of comprehensive immigration reform that would secure their place in the U.S., putting an end to corporate induced competition between native born and immigrant workers, and between U.S. workers and workers abroad.
 
In the last half century, there has been a major restructuring of the global economy, conducted largely on the terms of transnational corporations seeking ever greater profits. Neo-liberal ‘free trade’ agreements, such as NAFTA I and II and CAFTA, have produced a global ‘race to the bottom,’ with capital flight sending good paying union jobs away from workers in the U.S. to countries with low wage employment, many of which are ruled by authoritarian states that ban independent unions. In the Americas, this global ‘free trade’ economy has devastated entire sectors of the economies of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, leading millions of people attempting to migrate to the U.S. in search of food, jobs, and security. Many also flee the ruthless violence of criminal groups in nations with ‘failed’ states, as well as the effects of climate catastrophes, from drought to increasingly vicious and destructive storms.

   DSA’s top three priorities for political work over the next two years, until our next national convention in 2021,  should  be:

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing  Democratic Socialists and Progressives
2. Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal
3. Addressing the Immigration Crisis and Defending Immigrants and Refugees

 

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing Progressives and Democratic Socialists.

See previous  post. 

 2. Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal  
Our second priority is the promotion of the Green New Deal (GND) to address climate change, through political, educational, direct action, electoral and legislative campaigns.
 
The environmental ravages of unbridled global capitalism have led to increasingly dramatic climate change, with humanity headed toward the brink of planetary ruin. In this crisis, the U.S. has been among the world’s leading polluters, in large measure because corporate interests have put their profits before the health of the environment. Under Trump, the US has even withdrawn from the limited Paris agreement to address climate change with modest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Without quick, dramatic and far reaching action, climate change could soon become irreversible, with disastrous effects on humanity and life on earth.
 
The negative effects of this environmental crisis are not limited to the environment. Climate change impacts the economically vulnerable global South in ways that are more severe, with greater cost in human suffering, than the global North. The growing refugee crises out of the global South are inextricably linked to climate catastrophes that are triggering and exacerbating desperate scrambles for safety from many of the poorest areas of the world. While climate change is not the only cause of these refuge crises, it is a central factor: these crises cannot be solved without taking on the cause which is increasingly fueling them.

Defeating Trumpism and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives.
 A proposed priority policy developed by the North Star Caucus. 
Be It  Resolved:
THAT   DSA’s top three priorities for political work over the next two years, until our next national convention in 2021, will be:

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives
2. Addressing Climate Change and Promoting the Green New Deal
3. Addressing the Immigration Crisis and Defending Immigrants and Refugees

 

1. Defeating Trumpism and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives .

 
Our first priority is the electoral and political defeat of Donald Trump, the Trumpist Republican Party and all of the authoritarian forces aligned with them. The white nationalist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses a‘clear and present danger’ to working people and their unions, to people of color, to women, to LGBTQIA people, to immigrants, to members of minority religious faiths and to democracy itself. Trumpist victories in the 2020 elections would mean the consolidation of an authoritarian state with the most reactionary politics, the expansion of imperial aggression abroad and the collapse of the political space for democratic and left forces at home. The defeat of Trumpism is thus a strategic imperative, the most important political task of our time.
 
Given the central role of racism, white nationalism and bigotry against immigrants and Muslims in the political agenda of Trumpism, and the echoes of the most shameful racist moments of past U.S. history in Trumpian discourse, a failure to prioritize its defeat would be nothing less than the abandonment of the struggle against racism.
 
To be best positioned to defeat Trumpism, the Democratic Party and candidates for office running as Democrats must adopt a progressive platform the breaks decisively with neo-liberal politics and economics, rejecting the policies of austerity, privatization, economic deregulation and ‘race to the bottom’ free trade under corporate hegemony. DSA should promote the development of such a progressive platform, one that places the interests of working people and their unions over corporations and the 1%, that takes on the economic impact of institutional racism and sexism in employment and social services, that addresses increasingly catastrophic climate change, and that promotes the well-being of the great mass of Americans, especially in the provision of fully-funded, universally accessible public goods in health care, education, housing and mass transportation.

            - Bill Barclay, CPEG and Ventura DSA
 
The first two posts in this series described two proposals for attacking the overarching problem inequality by directly taxing wealth, one during and after the lifetime of the wealth holder.  The first, Warren's proposal for a wealth tax, is new in U.S. political discourse and the other, Sanders' reform of the Estate Tax, draws on a longer history of assaults against obscene inequality. This post discusses a proposal, the "Jobs for All Act," (Act) that also has a long history as part of countering inequality through restructuring the market for labor but the proposed Act is new in its scope.[i] I'll begin by outlining the history of efforts to create a full employment economy in the U.S., then sketch the major features of the Act and finally discuss the class dynamics of the Act.[ii]
 
I. The Right to Work: Seeking Full Employment the "Jobs for All Act" (HR 1000)
 
 At the 2017 convention, DSA passed - by an overwhelming margin - a resolution in support of legislation that would guarantee a well paid job for anyone "willing and able to work."  This was the language of the "Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act" that that we in CPEG, as part of the National Jobs for All Coalition,[iii]had worked on during the Great Recession with Rep. John Conyers' (at that time the only DSA member in Congress) staff.  It is also close to FDR's call, in his 1944 State of the Union, that Congress establish "the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation."  
Since FDR spoke, there have been several efforts to assure jobs for anyone willing and able to work.  The most important were the Employment Act of 1946 and the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978.  A major component of both Acts was direct job creation by the federal government.[iv] 
Neither Act, nor the policies of the Federal Reserve, have created anything close to full employment, at least in the usual English language meaning of the term.  What has happened is the political redefinition, led by too many economists, of full employment as 4% unemployment - and only counting those people actively seeking a job.  How much difference does the definition make?  In January 2019 the official unemployment rate was 4%, or 6.5 million people.  However, there were another 5.1 million people working part time who wanted a full time job but couldn't find one and 5.3 million people who wanted to work but were not actively seeking a job in the four weeks prior to the unemployment census so not included in the "unemployed."  These numbers total to 16.9 million people or 10% of the U.S. labor force.[v]
II: The "Jobs for All Act" (HR 1000)
 

                        - Bill Barclay, CPEG and Ventura DSA
 
As I argued in my first “Taming Capital” post, the political landscape defined by the 2018 midterms has reinvigorated the discussion of economic inequality and what we can or should do about it.  The problem of inequality was a focus of the Occupy movement.  It was also the core 2016 campaign message of Bernie Sanders – who just announced he is running for president in 2020.  Like Warren’s wealth tax, Sanders understands that the obscene levels of economic inequality in the U.S. today cannot be countered simply by raising the minimum wage or a more progressive income tax structure.  The concentration of wealth must also be addressed.  And Sanders has put forth an important proposal for doing so – but also one that has a long history in the U.S.
 
Making the Estate Tax Real: Bernie Sanders
 
            The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of      relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes.
                        - Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
 
Over a century ago under urging from Theodore Roosevelt, Congress created the modern estate tax.[i]  TR understood the need for an estate tax in terms that apply equally or even more so today: the problem of an inherited aristocracy based on private capital accumulation, arising from some combination of good fortune, innovation and, very importantly, coupled with institutional supports that allowed an individual to amass large amounts of wealth in a single generation.  As TR argued, such inheritances were, for the next generation, free and unearned money.  Not only were the inheritors of the next generation no more deserving of this wealth than any other citizen, TR believed that they would all too often fritter in away in lavish living – think of Paris Hilton, the $37 million dollar ranch that Bill Gates bought his daughter Jennifer because she likes to ride,[ii]etc.