In the most consequential election in our lives, I’m happy to report that we spent last week on the campaign trail working hard for Kamala and progressive candidates. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we were in Texas, on Thursday and Friday we were in Nevada, and on Saturday and Sunday we were in Michigan. We spent a lot of time traveling on planes and cars - but it was worth it. We drew large and enthusiastic turnouts, are reaching undecided voters and are expanding our grassroots movement.
Texas
In my view, Texas has huge political potential, and there are some great people in the state who are working hard to turn it progressive. And let’s be clear. If that happens it will transform politics in America.
In San Antonio we had a great event with Congressman Greg Casar - one of the outstanding young progressives in Congress. We were joined by an old friend of mine, Congressman Lloyd Doggett.
At the University of Texas, Austin we were joined by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as usual, did a great job in firing up the standing room only crowd. Beto O’Rourke who, 6 years ago, came within 2 points of defeating Senator Ted Cruz, also spoke. And by the way, Beto is now heading up a very strong and effective voter registration campaign which could make all the difference in Texas.
While we were in Austin I joined Congressman Casar and members of the Austin City Council in addressing a rally in support of workers at a local Hyatt hotel who are facing strong and illegal opposition from the corporation as they attempt to form a union. I had the opportunity to chat with two very brave workers there who were fired for their union activities.
At the University of Texas at Austin with Beto, Lloyd, Greg and Alexandria
In East Austin, Texas with Hyatt hotel trade unionists
 
Nevada
In Las Vegas we had a great town meeting with Congressman Steven Horsford. Hundreds of people came out to discuss housing policy — an issue that’s on the minds of Nevadans as they face the greatest shortage of affordable housing for low-income earners in the country. We also discussed health care, prescription drugs and the war in Gaza.
On Friday morning Congressman Ro Khana and I joined a room full of Harris- Walz volunteers. They understand, as I hope all of us do, that in the next month we’ve got to knock on doors, make phone calls, and talk to our friends and neighbors about how we can increase the voter turnout and defeat Trump.
In Las Vegas, Nevada at a community town meeting
Michigan
The last state on this trip was Michigan, where we held events in Warren, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, and East Lansing. The polls suggest that Michigan is up for grabs and could well decide who becomes the next president.
We started off in Warren, where I was joined by UAW president Shawn Fain for a rally against corporate greed. Shawn is one of the leading progressive trade union leaders in America and has not only helped win an excellent contract for his members, but is inspiring workers all across the country to stand up and fight for their rights.
I then traveled to Saginaw, where a large crowd joined me in demanding that we have a government and an economy that works for all, not just the people on top and wealthy campaign contributors.
Finally, on Sunday, we held two more town halls with the Harris-Walz campaign in Grand Rapids and East Lansing. The turn outs were great and people are fired up. Our trip ended with me joining a picket line in Detroit with Teamster workers who are on strike against Marathon Oil.
At a town hall in Saginaw, Michigan
With UAW president Shawn Fain in Warren, Michigan
In the last month of this campaign all of us have got to do everything possible to see that Donald Trump is defeated and Kamala is elected. We cannot have in the White House someone like Trump who is a pathological liar, someone who is undermining American democracy, someone who thinks that climate change is a “hoax” and someone who believes that women do not have the right to control their own bodies. We also have to fight hard to see that Democrats control the House and the Senate.
Later this week, I will be hitting the campaign trail again. If we’re in your community, please join us. If not, join us online when we livestream.
In solidarity,
Bernie
 
For how you can be involved, see the two posts below.
 

​The Border, Immigration, Dog Whistle Politics and Political Reality.
Videos, updates from the border, and strategy.
Plus, Break out rooms to promote open discussion/dialogue. 
 
Sunday, October 20, 2024.    2 PM Pacific.  5 PM Eastern. 
Presented by North Star Caucus.
Via video recording.
Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Ian Haney-Lopez.
Speaking; 
Host; Duane Campbell.  DSA. Over 50 years in the immigration struggles. 
Also speaking. NS Participants/Dialogue  
Members of the North Star community. 
 
Community members; Request participation link  here. [email protected]
 
 [email protected]

The Battle Ahead: Latino Civil Rights vs. Project 2025
Prepared by Adriana Varea, Ari Kittrie, and Joaquin Macias, LULAC Policy and Legislation Fellows

Introduction

The 2025 Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise, more publicly recognized as “Project 2025” is a roadmap for the first 180 days in office for a conservative presidency. It was drafted by The Heritage Foundation, which is a right-leaning, conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. charged with crafting policies that align with the Republican party. The Heritage Foundation gave the first Mandate for Leadership to Reagan to “repair the executive branch” after Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Former President Trump has recently distanced himself from Project 2025 by tweeting:
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” (@realDonaldTrump)
However, this was refuted by a 2022 statement from former President Trump:
“[The Heritage Foundation] is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” (Bennen, 2024)
Additionally, several authors, editors, and contributors of Project 2025 have previously worked for the Trump administration. Roughly 64% of policy recommendations from the 2016 Mandate for Leadership were either implemented or taken into consideration by the Trump Administration in 2017 (The Heritage Foundation).
In this article, we will outline ten specific ways in which Project 2025 disproportionately negatively impacts Latino civil rights.
1. Establish a Unitary Executive Branch

2. Mass Deportations

“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border.” (Project 2025, pg. 135)
Project 2025 plans to repeal parts of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to allow for the large-scale use of detention facilities to mass incarcerate migrants. It also will change Title 8 of U.S. Code § 1226 to require mandatory detention for unauthorized migrants caught within the U.S. interior (pg. 150). To compound this, Project 2025 will also increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) capabilities by removing all sensitive zones where ICE personnel are prohibited from operating, allowing for raids in schools, churches, and businesses (pg. 142).
Project 2025 calls to authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security actions (pg. 150). Through deputizing local law enforcement, there will be a lack of oversight and accountability, allowing for abuses of the system that would disproportionately hurt the Latino community. Additionally, Latinos would have a more difficult time receiving impartial hearings and legal representation, especially because detainees are not entitled to public defenders as criminal defendants are. To compound upon this, the Supreme Court Case Loper Bright Entreprises vs. Raimondo, which repealed the Chevron Deference, has the potential to take immigration hearings away from the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services and shift them to the local courts. These local courts notoriously have long backlogs and a limited understanding of immigration policies and laws, which would force Latinos to have long and unjust trials.
3. Cutting Off Legal Immigration

“Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit.” (pg. 144) “If CISOMB continues as a DHS component, a policy should be issued that prohibits CISOMB from assisting illegal aliens to obtain benefits. Currently, approximately 15 percent–20 percent of CISOMB’s workload consists of helping DACA applicants obtain and renew benefits, including work authorization. This is not the role of an ombudsman.” (Project 2025, pg. 166)
Project 2025 proposes to cut down on legal immigration by limiting interim immigration into the United States. For example, it calls for an increase in visa application fees. It plans to limit the issuance of H-2A and H2-B visas for seasonal agricultural workers, as well as the complete elimination of T and U visas meant to protect trafficking or crime victims who are actively cooperating with law enforcement as a witness (pg. 612, 141). Project 2025 calls to remove and deport all Temporary Status designations for migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live in (pg. 145). Finally, Project 2025 will phase out DACA for the over 500,000 recipients by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications which will make it very hard for DACA recipients to renew their status given the proposed lack of staff present to do so (pg.145).
 
And More 
Project 2025 
https://lulac.org/project_2025/
 
We will have a North Star webinar on this topic on Oct.20, 2024. Watch this site for details.
and on our Electoral Fight Back site below. 
 
 Our building a united front is here;
 North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities
List of opportunities:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing

Our strategy is here.  https://www.dsanorthstar.org/our-strategy.html
 
DSA and the broader Left must join forces to confront the international rise of authoritarianism. Together we should work to build a center-left coalition in defense of democracy. DSA must jettison a growing tendency towards a  “go it alone” approach that devalues coalition work and glosses over the importance – indeed, the necessity – of a center-left coalition to defend democracy from neo-fascism.
  Our building a united front is here;
 North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities
List of opportunities:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing
 
 We have a new addition. 
 
Volunteer opportunities around the nation. 
***
KAMALA  HARRIS/TIM WALZ CAMPAIGN
on-going volunteer opportunities
kamalaharris.org 
https://txt.democrats.org/c7b4 
 
 

​Bill Fletcher Jr. 
Excerpts from a longer piece,,

Which brings us to the Cornel West campaign and other third-party bids during the 2024 election cycle. What is the essence of such ventures?
If one is interested in building a struggle for power, one does not begin by running a presidential campaign, and certainly not a campaign with no organized base and no possibility of victory. If, however, one is concerned more with asserting one’s beliefs and expressing one’s frustration and antipathy toward the existing system, one can view a campaign for the presidency as an ongoing platform to both hear oneself talk, and to try to captivate and entertain an audience. Such politics become, not the politics inherent in a struggle for power, but the politics of self-expression. The objective becomes expressing one’s views, anger, etc., rather than seeking to achieve anything. In effect, it becomes the politics of defeat, in that one has no plan, knows one cannot win, and therefore cries out in hopelessness.
The West campaign and other third parties will virulently object. They will assert they are taking a stand against the two-party system of the capitalist class, against imperialism, against the criminality of the US support for Israeli genocide. And they will be correct! They are. Yet, they have neither plan nor sufficient organization to transform their assertions into political power. Thus, they can only rely on magical thinking in the hopes—and this is a best-case scenario—that their plea to the masses will resonate and result in a great wave of revulsion against the system, thrusting them into office…alone. 

…. 
The political moment
Leaving aside, for a moment, that minor parties in the USA have rarely been successful due to the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, the actions of the Cornel West campaign and other third parties would be comical if less were at stake. And there have been times when comedians have run for president to make a satirical statement, such as Pat Paulsen.
Current third-party candidacies, including West and Jill Stein, either ignore or deny the dangers inherent in the current moment. West, for instance, acknowledges the dangers of a Trump victory but asserts, in part due to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, that there was no difference between Trump and Biden and, apparently, no difference between Trump and Harris. Stein’s views carry on from the historic and, unfortunately, dogmatic stand of the Green Party on the need for formal political independence from the two-party system.
None of them are coming to grips with the dangers on the horizon. There is nothing, for instance, on the Harris side that is comparable to the plans of the MAGA movement such as Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s hatched idea for a rightwing authoritarian overhaul of the US government. There is nothing comparable on the Harris side to proposals such as the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ongoing work to advance a Constitutional Convention to alter the US Constitution in favor of business and the Christian Right. Nothing.
One cannot conclude ignorance on the part of any of these campaigns. One cannot imagine that any of these campaigns believe that progressive politics and policies will survive a second Trump presidency. Or perhaps they do? As many of us have heard over the months, there are those who believe that Trump will not be so bad and, yes, there will be suffering, but we will come through it.
 
Read the entire piece.
 
https://liberationroad.substack.com/p/the-cornel-west-campaign-third-parties?
 

Statement by National DSA
Solidarity with Springfield’s Haitian Community: DSA’s Statement on Anti-Immigrant Violence
September 17, 2024
DSA condemns in the strongest possible terms the hateful lies promoted by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and other Republican officials targeting Haitian immigrant communities in Springfield, Ohio. These lies have led to ongoing school and hospital closures over bomb threats, smashed windows, acid thrown on cars, death threats, and the canceling of beloved local cultural events due to safety concerns. The goal is clear: Trump’s lies intend to incite violence and harassment against working-class immigrant communities, not just in Springfield, but toward Black people living all over the country. In the lead up to their second term, he’s touting plans to launch mass deportations targeting millions. The far-right wants to divide and conquer the working class by using xenophobia and racism to pit workers against one another in a race to the bottom. 
 
Democrats, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have enabled this rhetoric by remaining silent about the attacks on Springfield, while also affirming her plans to expand border policing. This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric.
 
The Presidential debate last Tuesday made clear that Trump’s hateful Project 2025 agenda would be catastrophic for the working class, both at home and abroad. Opposing the far right, as represented by the Republican Party under Trump’s neo-fascist leadership, is a necessity for the working class and for our movement.
 
The truth is that working people everywhere have a common humanity and shared struggle against the exploitative capitalist economic system, which is the real root cause of the increasing precarity and insecurity in our society. DSA is fighting for a world where all people live together in peace, regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Immigrants are welcome here. People everywhere are hurting, struggling to pay bills, buy groceries, and live beyond paycheck to paycheck. But this is not because of the immigrants who are living in this country: our suffering is due to the insatiable greed of the billionaire class.
We will stand against anti-immigrant hate anywhere and everywhere it appears, and we continue to fight against the greed of billionaires like Donald Trump and the lies they tell to keep us from achieving working class solidarity.
----------          --------------            -----------
National DSA has made the statement above.  Most of the statement is a good statement of the situation and policy. https://www.dsausa.org/statements/solidarity-with-springfields-haitian-community/
 
The following part of the statement is in error.
 
Democrats, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have enabled this rhetoric by remaining silent about the attacks on Springfield, while also affirming her plans to expand border policing. This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric.
See here for the errors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/us/politics/harris-trump-haitian-migrants-pets.html
 
This  unfortunate view is also in error.
This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric.
 
We propose that DSA members unite with others on the left in a popular front  to participate in the effort to defeat the growing anti fascist movement as advanced by the Republican – MAGA movement and the  2024 effort to elect Donald Trump as President .
 
Here are ways you can join with other North Star members in building our electoral effort.

** North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities
opportunities:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing
 
 

Trump’s claims about immigrants "pouring into our country" from prisons and mental institutions, as well as his baseless accusations of widespread "migrant crime"1, are not only false but dangerous. ​

​LULAC Response to Presidential Debate on September 10
Washington, D.C. — Last night’s debate highlighted the need for both candidates to focus on the issues that matter most to Americans, not on falsehoods, distractions, and hysteria.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) strongly condemns the xenophobic and inflammatory comments made by former President Donald Trump during last night's debate. His rhetoric on immigration not only misrepresents the facts but also promotes fear and division, unfairly targeting immigrant communities, particularly Latinos.
We are encouraged by Vice President Harris’s commitment to delivering bipartisan immigration reform in Congress, which would uphold our nation’s dedication to addressing the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, tackle the root causes of displacement abroad, and strengthen our homeland security. We urge Vice President Harris to maintain her commitment to the critical goal of creating a more fair and humanitarian immigration system.
LULAC remains committed to advocating for the rights of all Latinos and immigrants, and we will continue to stand against divisive rhetoric that seeks to undermine the progress we have made. We urge the American public to reject hate and instead focus on the positive role that Latinos and immigrants play in building a stronger and more united nation.
Donald Trump’s Xenophobic Comments on Immigration
Trump’s claims about immigrants "pouring into our country" from prisons and mental institutions, as well as his baseless accusations of widespread "migrant crime"1, are not only false but dangerous. These comments are rooted in fearmongering and are designed to vilify immigrants as threats to American society. Such rhetoric only serves to harm the Latino community, a vital part of the fabric of the United States.
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric is not just inflammatory—it’s dangerous. It incites division and violence, and it ignores the tremendous contributions that immigrants, particularly Latinos, make to this country every day.
One of the most egregious examples is Trump’s false and outrageous claim that immigrants are “eating pets” in American towns. This statement has no foundation in truth. Not only is it completely baseless, but it also serves as a reprehensible attempt to dehumanize immigrants by spreading ridiculous and harmful lies. Fact-checkers have already debunked this claim, and it is nothing more than an insult to the hard-working immigrant communities who contribute so much to this country2.

As the election gets closer you are again invited to join us in engaging and organizing North Star members and allies into campaigns to defeat Maga /Authoritarian efforts and to Fight for Democracy  by participating in the campaigns  to defeat the Trump/Vance ticket, to elect Kamala Harris as President and to win a majority in the House and the Senate. 
To organize our work, we have created a platform, a google docs site to learn from each other and share activist opportunities including Block and Build, battleground states and districts, left coalition efforts and more. The google site is for the recording of opportunities for political participation; phone banks, canvasing, donations, union contacts, links to important documents (such as Project 2025).  The categories on the site were determined by a poll of North Star members.
 Please continue also  to announce your relevant activities and urge electoral participation on the list serve.
 
Here is the link to the Google site.
 
Organizing North Star members
 
If you have items, events, projects that you recommend for posting go here.
 
Recommend add items
 
We hope you will participate. Please go to the site and see the opportunities to engage and participate.  If you know of campaigns to defeat fascism and elect a progressive majority, use the link above to share your information.  For example, there may be a critical swing district race you are working in. Please share the contact information and how to get involved. 
 
Our immediate tasks.
 At this time, key primary steps are to unite with others and build the campaigns to defeat the Trump/MAGA/ anti democratic forces.
  Defeating MAGA candidates up and down the ballot in November.
 
Supporting the re-election of members of the Squad.

Powering Cori Bush to victory, winning a Ceasefire, and ending US complicity with Israels long war against the Palestinian people.

 Beating back the current wave of misogynist and anti-immigrant demagogy and laying the basis for serious positive reform under a new administration.
 
All are invited to participate. Thank you for your participation.  
The NS  Steering Committee

​ Peter Dreier,
When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, he was there supporting African American sanitation workers whose picket signs relayed a simple, but profound, message: "I Am A Man."
Today we view King as something of a saint, his birthday a national holiday, and his name adorning schools and street signs. But in his day, the establishment considered King a dangerous troublemaker. He was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. He began his activism in Montgomery, Alabama, as a crusader against the nation's racial caste system, but the struggle for civil rights radicalized him into a fighter for broader economic and social justice.
This Labor Day, labor unions are on the upsurge. In the past year, workers at Starbucks, Amazon, REI, Apple, and Trader Joe’s and many other companies have been organizing to gain a voice and a collective bargaining contract at their workplaces. Earlier this year, workers at Volkswagen’s 4,300-employee factory in Chattanooga voted 73% to 27% for the United Auto Workers, an historic victory in an historically anti-union Southern state. The United Auto Workers won a pathbreaking contract earlier this year, and President Joe Biden joined their picket line – the first president ever to do so.  More than 40,000 hotel workers in the Los Angeles area won an historic contract this year after a months-long strike, and more hotel workers are currently on strike in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and other cities.  In addition, actors, school teachers, nurses, screenwriters, and graduate students have recently won contracts to improve working conditions.
More than at any time in memory, the Democratic Party convention offered union leaders prime-time speaking moments, while elected officials spoke enthusiastically about creating  “good union jobs” and passing legislation to penalize corporations that engage in union-busting.  According to a new Gallup poll, 70% of Americans have favorable views toward unions  -- higher than at any time since the mid-1960s, when they began asking the question.
But every day should be Labor Day – a celebration of the people who do the work that makes our economy and society operate.
Dr. King understood that. “All labor has dignity,” he said. He was committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor movements.
Invited to address the AFL-CIO's annual convention in 1961, King observed:
"Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."
He added:
"The labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."
Several major unions reciprocated King's support. When he was jailed in Birmingham for participating in civil disobedience, it was Walter Reuther, the charismatic leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, who paid his bail.
Several major unions, especially the UAW and the International Ladies Garment Workers, had donated money to civil rights groups, supported the sit-ins and freedom rides, and helped organize the massive 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
We often forget that its official name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and that its manifesto called on Congress not only to pass a civil rights bill but also "a national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living." The manifesto pointed out that "anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this."
In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.25 -- the equivalent of $12.81  in today's dollars. A $2 minimum wage in 1963 would be $20.49 an hour today.
In the 1960s, the sit-ins (a tactic adopted from workers' sit-down strikes in the 1930s), Freedom Rides, mass marches, and voter registration drives eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King was proud of the civil rights movement's success in winning the passage of those important laws. But he realized that neither law did much to provide better jobs or housing for the large numbers of low-income African Americans in the cities and rural areas. He recognized the limits of breaking down legal segregation.
"What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?" King asked.
King observed: "Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice." To achieve economic justice, King said, "there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children."
"There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he [or she] is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer," said King.
In a speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO in 1965, King said:
"The two most dynamic movements that reshaped the nation during the past three decades are the labor and civil rights movements. Our combined strength is potentially enormous. We have not used a fraction of it for our own good or for the needs of society as a whole. If we make the war on poverty a total war; if we seek higher standards for all workers for an enriched life, we have the ability to accomplish it, and our nation has the ability to provide it. If our two movements unite their social pioneering initiative, thirty years from now people will look back on this day and honor those who had the vision to see the full possibilities of modern society and the courage to fight for their realization. On that day, the brotherhood of man, undergirded by economic security, will be a thrilling and creative reality."
King warned about the "gulf between the haves and the have-nots" and insisted that America needed a "better distribution of wealth."
Thus, it was not surprising that Memphis' civil rights and union leaders invited King to their city to help draw national attention to the garbage strike.
The strike began over the mistreatment of 22 sewer workers who reported for work on January 31, 1968, and were sent home when it began raining. White employees were not sent home. When the rain stopped after an hour or so, they continued to work and were paid for the full day, while the black workers lost a day's pay. The next day, two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning city garbage truck.
These two incidents epitomized the workers' long-standing grievances. Forty percent of the workers qualified for welfare to supplement their poverty-level salaries. They had almost no health care benefits, pensions, or vacations. They worked in filthy conditions, and lacked basic amenities like a place to eat and shower. They were required to haul leaky garbage tubs that spilled maggots and debris on them. White supervisors called them "boy" and arbitrarily sent them home without pay for minor infractions that they overlooked when white workers did the same thing. The workers asked Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb and the City Council to improve their working conditions, but they refused to do so.
On February 12, 1,300 black sanitation workers walked off their jobs, demanding that the city recognize their union (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME) and negotiate to resolve their grievances. They also demanded a pay increase to $2.35 an hour, overtime pay, and merit promotions without regard to race.
For the next several months, city officials refused to negotiate with the union. In private, Mayor Loeb reportedly told associates, "I'll never be known as the mayor who signed a contract with a Negro union."
The city used non-union workers and supervisors to pick up garbage downtown, from hospitals, and in residential areas. Even so, thousands of tons of garbage piled up. Community support for the strikers grew steadily. The NAACP endorsed the strike and sponsored all-night vigils and pickets at City Hall. On February 23, 1,500 people -- strikers and their supporters -- packed City Hall chambers, but the all-white City Council voted to back the mayor's refusal to recognize the union.
Local ministers (led by Rev. James Lawson, who died in June at 95)) formed a citywide group to support the strikers. They called on their congregants to participate in rallies and marches, donate to the strike fund, and boycott downtown stores in order to get business leaders to pressure city officials to negotiate with the union. On Sunday, March 3, an eight-hour gospel singing marathon at Mason Temple raised money for strikers. The next day, the beginning of the fourth week of the strike, 500 white labor unionists from Memphis and other Tennessee cities joined black ministers and sanitation workers in their daily downtown march.
reposted from Portside. ​https://portside.org/2024-09-02/labor-day-remember-mlks-last-campaign-was-workers-rights
portside.org/2024-09-02/labor-day-remember-mlks-last-campaign-was-workers-rights​

Bernie Sander
Public approval of labor unions, at 70%, is higher today than it has been in decades. Over the last year major unions like the UAW have won some highly publicized strikes, while many other unions have negotiated trail-blazing contracts for their members. Young people at Starbucks and on college campuses are now more involved in labor organizing than ever before. And, for the first time in American history, a president of the United States, Joe Biden, walked a picket line with striking workers.
It is not an accident as to why we are now seeing more militancy and growth in the labor movement. The working people of our country are increasingly aware of the unprecedented level of corporate greed and power we are now experiencing, and the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that exists. They understand that never before in American history have so few had so much, while so many continue to struggle. And they are fighting back. They know that workers in unions can negotiate contracts that give them better wages, working conditions and benefits than non-union workers. They appreciate that when you’re in a union you have some power against the arbitrary decisions corporate bosses. 
Working people today are more than aware that, over the last 50 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. They are disgusted that, despite huge increases in worker productivity, real inflation-accounted for wages for the average American worker are lower now than they were over 50 years ago as 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They are insulted that CEOs of major corporations make almost 350 times as much as their average employee. They are concerned that the American dream is ending and that their kids may have an even lower standard of living than they do. And they worry that with the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence and robotics, they have no power as to what will happen to their jobs as the economy undergoes major transformations.
The average American worker also understands that his/her political power has been significantly diminished as billionaires pour huge amounts of money into both political parties as they undermine our democracy. It is no great secret as to who now has the clout in Congress. It is the billionaires, the corporate CEOs, the campaign donors and their well-connected lobbyists.

​
Purchase affordable magnetic Harris/Walz bumper stickers (2 for $5) and give them to other volunteers.
Purchase Harris/Walz window decals for car/home and give them to other volunteers. 

Purchase affordable magnetic Harris/Walz bumper stickers (2 for $5) and give them to other volunteers.
Purchase Harris/Walz window decals for car/home and give them to other volunteers. 

TREATING MIGRANTS AS THE ENEMY PROVIDES NO VISION ..
 
David Bacon.
 
...In that bill, President Joe Biden agreed that he would close the border to asylum applicants if their number rose beyond 5,000 per day, while making it much harder to gain legal status for those even allowed to apply. Biden said he would cut short the time for screening asylum applicants by asylum officers, which would make winning permission to stay much more difficult.
 
To keep people imprisoned while their cases are in process, instead of releasing them, Biden proposed an additional $3 billion for more detention centers, a euphemism for immigrant prisons. There are already over 200, according to the group Freedom for Immigrants. Under a law signed by President Obama, Congress required that 34,000 detention beds be filled every night. At the end of 2023, those beds held 36,263 people, and another 194,427 were in “Alternatives to Detention,” which required wearing the hated ankle bracelets that bar travel for more than a few blocks. Over 90 percent of these jails are run for profit by private companies like the Geo Group, (formerly the Pinkerton Detective Agency).
 
These proposals respond to a media-driven frenzy that constantly refers to an immigration “crisis” and calls the border “broken.” That media coverage, and the response by centrist Democrats and Republicans, treats migrants as criminals, as an enemy. Political operatives in Washington then take polls, announce that the public wants draconian enforcement, and advise candidates that going against this tide will lead to election losses.
 
Yet this accepted political “wisdom” in Washington is not actually based on facts.
 
Let’s Look at the Numbers
 
Department of Homeland Security statistics show that over the decades the number of people crossing the border, and subject to deportation, rises and falls, while displacement and forced migration remain constant. In 2022, about 1.1 million people were expelled after trying to cross, and another 350,000 deported. In 1992, about 1.2 million were stopped at the border and 1.1 million deported. Over a million people were deported in 1954 during the infamous “Operation Wetback.” Arrests at the border have totaled over a million in 29 of the last 46 years....
 
Criminalizing the Undocumented
 
Should Trump win election in November, he promises to reinstitute the notorious family separation policy. Children who survive the crossing might easily be lost, as so many were, in the huge detention system. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) wants to reintroduce the “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which people wanting asylum were not allowed to enter the United States at all, to file their applications. The Mexican government was forced to set up detention centers just south of the border to house them while they waited.
 
Trump and other Republicans would imprison all migrants who face a court proceeding that allows them to apply to stay or stop a deportation. Pending cases now number in the millions, because the immigration court system is starved for the resources for processing them.
 
Texas Governor Abbott has pushed through a law that makes being undocumented a state crime. Republicans in Congress last year proposed to build more border walls, create barriers to asylum, force the firing of millions of undocumented workers, and permit children to be held in detention prisons with their parents. Centrist Democrats are very willing to agree to modified proposals like these.
 
No money, running from something or someone, trying to keep a family together and give it a future, or just needing a job at whatever wage—these are the commonalities of the thousands who arrive at the U.S. border every year. Winning public understanding of immigration is the only way to decisively defeat this anti-immigrant hysteria, rather than caving into its illogic, and to the media frenzy and the onslaught of Republicans and MAGA acolytes.
 
Roots of Migration
 
President Obama made some acknowledgement of the poverty and violence that impels people to come but drew the line at recognizing this migration’s historical roots, much less any culpability on the part of the U.S. government. President Biden sent Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for president, to Central America in his first year in office with a similar message—don’t come.
 
So far, the new presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has not taken a different direction. In Arizona she gave a speech recommitting to the Biden-brokered compromise and criticizing Trump for killing it. In a new TV ad, she promised to hire thousands of additional border patrol agents. The three enforcement arms of the Department of Homeland Security—the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement today account for 52,300 officers, making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country.  The numbers mushroomed by 22,000 in the past 20 years; the Border Patrol alone tripled from 2,700 to 8,200.
  
Survival in Venezuela became impossible for many as its economy suffered body blows from U.S. political intervention and economic sanctions. If the United States moves further to increase sanctions in response to the recent elections, it will produce even more migration.
 
These interventions produce migrants and then criminalize them. In 2023, the Border Patrol took 334,914 Venezuelans into custody, along with 163,701 Haitians. And while promoting military intervention in Haiti and regime change in Venezuela, the Biden administration put people on deportation flights back home, in the hope that this would discourage others from starting the journey north.
 
The disconnect is obvious to anyone born south of the Mexican border. Sergio Sosa, a Guatemalan exile who heads the Heartland Workers Center in Omaha, observes: “People from Europe and the U.S. crossed borders to come to us, and took over our land and economy. Migration is a form of fighting back. We’re in our situation, not because we decided to be, but because we’re in the U.S.’s backyard.”  While President Clinton was the author of many anti-immigrant measures, he did recognize this historic truth, and apologized to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. support of the military dictatorships that massacred thousands.
 
The Democrats have to tell people the truth, and political campaigns are the times when this is most important. Agreeing with Trump that immigrants are the enemy to be detained at the border, and then only disagreeing on the numbers and methods, contradicts any commitment to a fact-based policy, while making immigrant communities scapegoats.
  
An Alternative Approach
 
The goal of these marchers is to win support for a bill that could make a profound difference in the lives of millions of people. Today, anyone who entered the United States without a visa before January 1, 1972, can apply for legal permanent residence. From 2015 to 2019, however, only 305 people received legal status this way because over 90 percent of undocumented immigrants came after that date. As the years go by, ever fewer numbers qualify.
 
Known as the Registry Bill, HR 1511 would allow anyone in the country for seven years to apply for legal status. Emma Delgado, a leader of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (United and Active Women) in San Francisco says, “I haven’t seen my children in many years because there is currently no way for me to apply for legal residency.” She called the family separation produced by current immigration law “immoral.”
 
Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Reform in Los Angeles, challenges the idea that Democrats can’t campaign for it during an election year, and that a Republican majority in the House dooms it. “Think of all the millions of U.S. citizens who have immigrant parents,” she urges, “and how many have had their fathers or mothers deported. All over the country. Immigrant workers are a big part of the workforce. They’re all part of a base that can force change. We can’t depend on political winds or what people tell us is possible.”
 
No matter how many walls and migrant prisons the government builds, people will come. Over the years they will become part of communities here, and with progressive immigration policies, eventually voting citizens. Democrats need a long-term vision that sees the future in organizing and defending them, in turning those old anti-immigrant arguments around, rather than reinforcing them.
 
By David Bacon,
 
Full piece: 
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2024/08/treating-migrants-as-enemy-provides-no.htm ldavidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2024/08/treating-migrants-as-enemy-provides-no.html

Today, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is proud to officially launch our 2024 Program: Workers Deserve More, our vision for a different kind of world, one that works for working people everywhere, not billionaires, weapons manufacturers, and the capitalist class. We know that building the world workers’ deserve goes way beyond the ballot box. 
In the 2024 elections, Americans will often have to choose between far-right fascist Republicans and corporate Democrats. In both cases, workers lose, and our politicians will remain controlled by their corporate donors, not the ordinary people who voted for them. Under this status quo, inequality will continue to worsen, corporations will continue to sell war and wreak havoc on the environment, and the worst impacts of these crises will be felt by the poor, by people of color, and by working people generally. We, the working class, deserve more. 
That’s why DSA is presenting a bold alternative. In our 2024 program, “Workers Deserve More,” we hope to bring together millions of people throughout the U.S. to fight for a true democracy where working people have control over their own lives, their government, and the economy. We deserve more, and we have to fight like hell to make that vision a reality. Read DSA’s 2024 Program: Workers Deserve More

​

By Mike Dover 
The Nation recently published an article by Kareem Elrefai titled AOC’s DNC Speech Was a Betrayal of the Gaza Movement. Written by a DSA member, it calls for another opinion from a DSA member. 
According to the article and the transcript,  Congresswoman Alexandre Ocasio-Cortez said about Vice President Kamala Harris: "And she is working tirelessly. To secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home."
This response will focus on the issue of what was the most progressive and realistic thing that could be said in a plenary speech at the Democratic National Convention, and still produce unity and inspiration to defeat Trump/Vance and the MAGA movement. 
Part of the specific criticism given by criticism by Elrefai regarding the Gaza was: "But Ocasio-Cortez’s statement was simply not true. There have been no indications that Harris is playing a central role in any ceasefire negotiations. And there is mounting evidence that those negotiations are more fantasy than reality." 
Harris not being involved directly in the negotiations may be true. But given her role as Vice President, it is unfair to target her for staying loyal to the President. On July 25, she did make what Politico called a forceful case for a ceasefire, although the article pointed out she did not diverge from Biden’s position except in tone. But since when is the US role in proposing and passing United Nations Security Council 2735 a fantasy? 
Either side could now take the first step and actually implement Phase one's temporary cease fire. Either side could immediately cease bombing and/or rocket attacks, at least, while negotiating the details of a hostage/prisoner exchange. Phase one calls for Israel’s withdrawal from all major population center. Phase Two calls for negotiations over a permanent ceasefire. Why not ceasefire now and cross that Phase Two bridge when we get there? 
There was other criticism made: “She could have called for an arms embargo against Israel. And even if she felt she couldn’t take such a bold step, she didn’t have to help Harris push a narrative that is not true. She could have done what Bernie Sanders did in his speech on Tuesday night, when he said, “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages, and demand an immediate ceasefire.” 
This practically admits that it was not feasible to call for an arms embargo. At a time when Israel is any day expecting massive guided-missile attacks from Iran and/or Hezbollah? That is a non-starter if Harris/Walz wish to beat Trump. A temporary arms embargo for offensive weapons might be called for, but a permanent one would just embolden Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas and its allies, to think that there is a military solution to the conflict. 
As to the criticism that AOC did not go as far as Senator Bernie Sanders, that is just not true. First, Sanders was given just over 12 minutes. AOC’s speech was prime time and only 7 minutes. According to the transcript, on Gaza, Bernie said this: “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.” He said nearly the same thing as AOC!
 
One might imagine there could be other criticisms. Should have said "permanent" ceasefire? Should she have said not only "hostages" but hostages and prisoners? 
This would be irresponsible given there were still reports of a possible ceasefire implementation.  If she had more time— and she did not—she could have said "to secure the immediate implementation by Israel and Hamas of the UN Security Council ceasefire resolution, which the Harris Biden administration helped formulate and is tirelessly working to implement."
It seems to me that instead of attacking AOC from the left, those on the democratic left should recognize the political realities within which she operated, instead of criticizing one of our most outspoken allies. When Rep. Ilhan Omar was criticized for her comments at the Convention, AOC responded in defense of her. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has a long and principled record of progressive statements and action on US policy in the Middle East. Let’s find a way to build unity this fall and block the attack on democracy by Trump/Vance and the MAGA forces.  
​
(Mike Dover has been a DSA member since 1992 and is a longstanding peace and solidarity and radical social work activist)
 

​In April 2024, the North Star Caucus adopted the Block and Build strategy as an essential part of our electoral work for this year. 
Below our ally Bill Fletcher Jr. offers ideas on What Do We Do? - descriptions of what you and I can do now to contribute to the Block and Build effort to defeat MAGA Fascism.
This is an excerpt.  A link to the full presentation follows. 

 
The following is an edited transcript of a speech delivered by Bill Fletcher, Jr. to the Southern Workers Assembly on August 8, 2024.
 
When we're looking at the far right today, and the MAGA forces, it's important for us to recognize that the Republican party has consolidated as a right-wing party for dictatorship. They have driven out most of the so-called moderates and liberals. There is no moderate wing of the Republican party. There are so-called moderates floating around there like the remnants from a storm, but they do not constitute a significant force. So they're very, very consolidated. And their objective—as they've been making very clear—is to carry out this overthrow of the 20th century. …
 
 
So what do we do? Well there's a few things. I have been involved in the formation of an organization called Standing for Democracy, recently formed, which is a worker-focused organization aimed at fighting the rising tide of fascism. We're interested in engaging organizations and individuals in that fight. This is not just an electoral fight; it's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground. I'll get to that. 
 
“This is not just an electoral fight. It's a fight that's going to have to be ideological; it's going to have to be in the courts; it's going to have to be on the ground.”
 
Part of what needs to happen and what we're going to be trying to do—but I encourage all of you to do this too—is to carry out real grassroots education with your members. Most people don't really understand the nature of the far right, and sometimes think that these lunatics on the far right are so out there that they must be marginal, not recognizing that they actually have a base and that part of what happens is that the far right exists within a bubble—a bubble where their views are constantly reinforced through institutions like so-called Fox “News” and others that enforce and reinforce their particular view of the world. And you know many of our members rely on Fox News, unfortunately. So we need to conduct real education. 
 
We need to build organizations through unions and through other worker organizations at the grassroots level. That means not just relying on the internet. You know, what the far right understands is that the internet is important as long as it's done in conjunction with direct mass organizing. It does not replace individual interaction, but reinforces it. Many progressives unfortunately have come to the conclusion that struggle is done behind a keyboard and that it's okay to text and tweet and that that's the way we build mass movements.  And that's completely wrong—there is no historical foundation for that. 
 
In our local areas and in our organizations we need to be very consciously thinking about opposing the far right. And that means beginning with an assessment of the right in your area. Who is the far right in your geographic area? What do they look like? What are their organizations? Who are their leaders and spokespersons? What are their strategies? What are they attempting to do? 
 
And that leads to being prepared to disrupt the right. So think about these many examples when these far right forces—these fascists—have shown up at school committee meetings, at abortion clinics. The optics are terrible for our side because they get there, they intimidate people, and there is almost never any of us there responding. Why aren't we there standing right behind these fascists with our arms crossed, just waiting? What are we doing? I know what we're doing—we're tweeting, we're texting, we're shaking our hands, we're saying “oh, God.” But that doesn't make change. We need to be there. We need to be there when election officials are being intimidated by these fascists—threatened on a regular basis. Where are we? Where are we to say “no, we are here with election officials. We want to make sure that there's a fair election. We're going to be there with you and we're going to be there protecting the vote.” So we need to be doing that. 


“Refuse Fascism” (Aug 25, 2017) / CC BY-NC 2.0
 
We need to be defending  women and women's institutions, including but not limited to abortion clinics, when these fascists show up and are surrounding these clinics and are intimidating women. Where are we when they are trying to intimidate people? When they are trying to control their bodies. Again, where are we? We need to be there in force. And we need to be defending the LGBTQ+ population. When I said before that the far right seeks to exterminate the LGBTQ population, that was no euphemism. All of the indicators are there, everything that they are doing, or want to do, but in stages—making it more difficult if not impossible to adopt; make it more difficult if not impossible to marry; making it more difficult if not impossible to come out of your house. It goes down a certain path, and history has demonstrated this many times. 
 
We have to also be prepared to engage in self-defense and prepare ourselves at multiple levels, including guarding against provocations. One of the things that I recently was looking at was how, in a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, there have been right-wing provocateurs who have gone in, in order to incite the protesters to engage in various kinds of activities, including anti-semitic rhetoric and various kinds of actions. We need to train our members and our leaders on how to identify potential provocateurs and what to do when these people show up. 
 
And finally we need to learn from the New Popular Front in France, which I thought was a marvelous example, in which they not only came together to stand against the rise of these new fascists but they also articulated a vision—a progressive vision for what they want to see France become. And I would say to us we have nothing to gain from the status quo. That doesn't mean we don't protect our institutions! But the status quo is not enough. We need to be the ones that are advocating for the expansion of democracy, rather than contraction. We need to be the ones that are expanding on workers rights, on environmental rights, on changing the way that the economy functions. We need to be speaking that now. 
 
That may or may not end up being the voice of the Democratic Party. But this goes to a point about that, which is, as my friend Carl Davidson has pointed out, the Democratic Party is not really a political party. It's an alliance. There are several parties within that alliance. Progressives need to become conscious that we are part of that, and that as part of that—as part of a “party” within that—we need to be articulating our own vision for what needs to happen. We need to be pushing tactical allies that we are engaged with in the fight against the fascist threat. The tactical allies don't have to be our friends, and in many cases are going to be people that we're going to be in struggle with—and are in struggle with, and have been in struggle with—but what we can agree on is that we must defeat MAGA and we must defeat them now. And crush them politically. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.


Join Bill Fletcher, Jr. and others on Sunday, August 25, 5:00-6:00 p.m. EST for our upcoming webinar “3 Socialist Tasks for 2024: Block, Broaden Build.” 
 
 

Rick Perlstein, 
 
Many have been concerned that Texas Governor Greg Abbott might inundate the DNC with migrant buses. But, the people of Chicago may have already called Abbott’s bluff. 

 
https://americanprospect.bluelena.io/index.php?action=social&chash=f75526659f31040afeb61cb7133e4e6d.2860&s=f3196cb603d6d11dedcd326ed6daf0e3

Some of the Old Debates in the Left
Paul Buhle 
 
Social Democacy: Flickering Candle or Blazing Son. Raymond Barglow. Privately Published. Berkeley, 2024. No price given. 39pp
 
Luther Vs. Müntzer:  Nicht der Kopf Verlieren. By Johannes Saurer and Ulrike Albers. Evangelisch Miedenhaus: Stuttgart, 2017. No price given. 28pp 
 
Two definitely odd and fascinating books, fun to look at and fun to read (in the second case, definitely better if you can read German).
 
Ray Bargelow,  a fellow comrade (with yours truly, among 70,000 others) in Democratic Socialists of America, offers a text plus old photos and political art of various types, to offer a popular view of the question that Rosa Luxemburg titled in her famous pamphlet, Reform or Revolution?
 
Luxemburg (honored recently in her own full length comic, Red Rosa, edited by myself, written and drawn by Kate Evans) argued that a true radical movement had to free itself of existing institutions so the proletariat could make its own way. Eduard Bernstein insisted, on the contrary, that working through the existing order, step by step, offered the only real way forward.
 
By the time we get to p.5, the reprint of “The Strike,” a beautiful full-page, later nineteenth century painting by a German immigrant working the US, takes us far from Germany but probably someplace in Germanic Wisconsin. Never mind the details, we get the idea of class struggle.
 
The following pages describe the rise of the German Social Democratic Party near the end of the nineteenth century and explains how the institutions around the SDP offered working people a world of politics and culture. (Germans in the US, but also a dozen the European immigrant groups, did the same, with results that lasted into the second generation). The “Erfurt Program of 1891” spelled out  the socialist plan or vision. We learn that British socialists were on a similar path, with the Independent Labour Party determinedly eclectic and influential on Bernstein himself, then living in the UK.
 
Bargelow then usefully (if very quickly: it’s a small book) passes on to ponder the Jewishness of Luxemburg, a  Polish Jew living in Germany, and her counterparts. He reminds us that his own grandfather came from Dresden and “served proudly in the Kaiser’s Army.” (p.16).
 
Serving, that is to say, in the Great War (as it was called, when not called “The War to End All Wars”), initially popular, with the press whipping up popular opinion, and then steadily less popular. German Socialists divided sharply on what to do. Luxemburg argued that the War grew out of a struggle for empire, that is to say, empire over the vast global South, its people and its resources. Bernstein favored colonization, Luxemburg bitterly opposed colonlization on economic and racial lines. The German Social Democrats including Bernstein voted “credits,” that is to say a war budget, to the government. Luxemburg opposed the war and was jailed.
 
The German government that emerged with defeat soon encompassed the SDP, while an uprising of Luxemburg’s party led to an urban commune (young Herbert Marcuse was one of the participants) that was soon crushed, herself murdered. Communists would later accuse German socialists of being, in an extended way, a party to her assassination (along with Karl Liebknecht, her famous political comrade). It was a charge difficult to refute.
 
We push onward past Naziism to something close to the present, and in Bargelow’s vision, Bernstein, still in the SDP, is locking arms with the ecological if militantly hawkish Green Party. Luxemburg’s ghost curses the compromises, the militarism and the continuing role of the ruling class.
 
The following several pages tell a similar, roughly parallel story of neighboring Austria, where Friedrich Adler led a similar social democratic party, most notably creating an urban cooperative network of neighorhoods and progressive schools. All this ended with the 1938 Anschluss. So did Austria itself, re-emerging at the war’s end.
 
Bargelow goes on to offer us a page on Walter Benjamin, a page on the hopes for the future, and a page on his own family’s story,  an Austrian tale with charming photos ending in Berkeley, California.
 
I like it and I hope others will find their way to this booklet. If something is missing, it must be Rosa Luxemburg’s dire warning. Capitalism’s conquest of the Global South would extend its deadly life, and threaten everything, all civilization, all life on earth Thus “Socialism or Barbarism,”  as she put it, which is to say more or less where we are now.
 
Luther Vs Müntzer was created for the five hundred year anniversary of the Refomation. I stumbled across it in a bookshop in Wartburg, across two streets from the “Luther Church” with a pig on the roof signalling the unwanted, hated Jews, whose organized dehumanization reminds us more than a little of the treatment of Palestinians just now.
 
Read more.

​

 
Paul Garver
The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) helped organize the pro-Palestinian encampments on several university campuses.  DSA elected officials in several cities across the country continue to advocate pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) resolutions on Palestine.
The final push to pressure Biden to drop out of the Presidential race did not come from the Party’s Left, but from major Democratic donors, and from Centrist Democrats terrified that their own reelection campaigns in ‘purple’ districts were endangered with Biden at the head of the ticket.  Sanders and AOC, along with most of the Squad, have been focused on trying to persuade any Democratic candidate (now officially to be Kamala Harris) to campaign on a more forthrightly pro working-class and progressive platform, including cutting off unconditional military aid to Israel.
Not surprisingly, DSA elected officials at the national level have been targeted for defeat by pro-Israel lobbyists. Crippled by drastic redistricting to remove most of his African-American constituency, Jamaal Bowman lost his seat in a congressional district outside New York City to an opponent heavily funded by the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).  Bowman has also been the target of negative campaigning from ultra-left sectarians within national DSA, who regarded him as insufficiently pro-Palestinian, though New York City DSA did endorse and canvass for him. 
On August 6, another incumbent Squad DSA member, Cori Bush, a working class African-American nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, narrowly lost in a Democratic primary in St. Louis to an opponent heavily funded by more than $8 million by the United Democracy Project, associated with AIPAC.  Despite strong fundraising from the Justice Democrats, phone banking by the national Working Families Party, and the united canvassing and phone banking organized by local and national DSA, she could not overcome massive negative campaigning against her that never mentioned her strong support for Palestinian rights, the real reason for AIPAC recruiting and supporting her opponent.
​
However, DSA played an important role in helping to organize the campaign to persuade Kamala Harris to select Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate.  Young activists from DSA launched a negative social media campaign of their own against the selection of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, primarily because of his denunciation of the pro-Palestinian campus encampments and positions favoring private charter schools.   Shapiro had been supported by much of the Democratic Party establishment and mass media, and had been considered the front-runner because it was thought that his candidacy would help the Democrats win the battleground state of Pennsylvania.  But Tim Walz already seems to be an excellent unifying choice for the Democratic Party.  He has been an effective governor, winning major gains for working class people in Minnesota despite a very slender legislative majority.  Walz also “speaks American,” in a way that should be accessible to alienated white male dudes, particularly in rural areas of the Midwest, who are not necessarily prone to vote for women of color.
The first reactions from the young DSA media activists to Harris’s choice of Walz as a running mate were quite positive. [(https://x.com/NoGenocideJosh/status/1820928441539088520?t=B3tpDPYWj8imL7O_88_5cA&s=03]. For those whose major issue is Israel/Palestine, they will of continue to demand a clear and effective break by the Biden/Harris administration from the genocidal and aggressive policies of Netanyahu.  This will be the major focus of the inside and outside protests at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The 30 Uncommitted delegates have already decided to vote “Present,” all that is allowed by the DNC rules, but each of them separately chose to nominate a child, woman or man who were killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza.  https://t.co/b7ckx3BcTS
DSA will support the large Palestinian diaspora communities in the USA in what are hoped to be large non-violent demonstrations in Chicago outside the Convention.
 
 

Contact the Harris campaign.   kamalaharris.com

​The Right to Vote
 
Yesterday marked the 59th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the law that finally guaranteed the right to vote for millions of people who had wrongfully been denied their ability to participate in democracy.
And yet the law has been under attack since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted its key provisions. Since 2020, there have been more than 1,000 voter suppression bills filed and promulgated throughout this country – mainly in the American South.
While Black people are the targets of much of this voter suppression, it’s important to remember that voter suppression impacts a broad array of people – from women and students to immigrants and poor white people. We all have something to lose when we lose the right to vote.
It is the right to vote, after all, that gives us the power to change this country. It is not a coincidence that our political leaders have for too long ignored the needs of the over 135 million Americans who are poor and low-income. They say that poor people don’t vote. But when we ask poor and low-wage voters why they don’t go to the polls at the same rate as other groups, they tell us that it’s because nobody talks to them. 
On the 59th anniversary of the VRA, we started our nationwide voter outreach effort that aims to educate and mobilize 15 million poor and low-wage infrequent voters. 
The goal is to encourage these voters to support candidates who are committed to a Third Reconstruction Agenda that aims to eliminate poverty as the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. 
Poor and low-wage voters are the sleeping giant of this election – this powerful voting block can shift election outcomes in every so-called swing state. By waking this sleeping giant, we can ensure that those in power center the needs of poor and low-wage people in this country.
 
Also see. ​https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/aft-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-for-president

​ And the U.S. Left ?
Marc Cooper , from his substack. 
I HAVE to say something about Venezuela. Too much of the American Left along with a few groupuscles in Latin America are the only people in the world still believing that the Maduro Dictatorship in Venezuela is actually an anti-imperialist beacon of socialist solidarity and prosperity.
In fact, it is a hell hole from which a full quarter of the population — some 8 million— have fled. And having run into some of the 700,000 who are now in Chile, these are poor people who were plain hungry and tired of the Chavista-Maduro bullshit.
Maduro has created a new class of wealthy government lackeys, parasites, and favored loyalists who are swimming in money — and not exactly short on cocaine (google Maduro’s wife and family for that one). As Chavez dubbed his regime Bolivarian, the new rich are called the Boliburgueses.
Since the election a week ago Sunday, hundreds of thousands of protesters have come into the streets denouncing the obvious fraud perpetrated. Around 20 have been shot dead. Among the various election observers, many from progressive Latin American organizations, the Carter center, the international press, and the opposition itself, it appears that Maduro actually lost by a margin as big as 2 to 1 but simply declared victory.  The AP has concluded he really lost. Duh. So has everybody else. Well, almost everybody. There are still American progressives like acrobats in pain, contorting themselves to justify one of the most fixed elections in recent history.
Much of the American Left cannot articulate a strong critique of regimes like Venezuela or Cuba for that matter, and currently not even Russia, because there is a large percentage of American lefties who are wittingly or otherwise, are what we Old Leftists call “campists.”
They believe in their hearts that only the US has imperialist or military agency and that any country in the world, regardless of its regime, is to be supported if it is “anti-imperialist” which in the end translates as anti-American. So… for these campists, yeah, Iran and China and even Russia and certainly Venezuela, are seen ONLY as victims of US imperialism with absolutely NO regard for the living conditions of the respective populations. Nor is any independent agency ever assigned to these “anti-imperialist” states because whatever they do, whatever evil they perpetrate on their own people or others, is rotuinely justified by these campists as legitimate resistance to.. multiple choice: a)the cia b) the state department c) NATO, D) and generally, US Imperialism. 
And while leftists are properly quick to point out all the anti-democratic aspects of American elections they are usually dead silent on these sort of chronic human rights violations imposed by various dictatorships — so long as they call themselves socialist (they are not) or, simply engage in phony anti-Imperialist rhetoric. The case study for the latter is Nicaragua where the dictatorial Ortega family has buried both the Sandinista Revolution and basic democracy and in the name of Sandino has imposed a ruthless pro-capitalist dictatorship with socialist rhetoric. I guess that is the China model. Savage capitalist dictatorship with enormous inequality all in the name of Chinese socialism. I mean, how do these reptiles get through a party convention without cracking up in laughter (but dont ask Code Pink about Chinese democracy because China is a victim of US Imperialism — and also a pretty direct funder of Code Pink!
This chronic inability to liberate themselves from these Stalinist impulses, their ability to apologize for brutally anti-democratic dictatorships so long as they are a thorn in the American side. render this sort of American leftist politically inert at best — radioactive at worst.
---------         ----------------            -----------------
 
Many of us will remember Marc Cooper from his informed writings on Chile at the time of the coup, and during the dictatorship.

(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really(https://thecoopscoop.substack.com/p/coop-scoop-do-progressives-really))
 
The AP Results.
https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-machado-biden-gonzalez-a625eb01979bc9cf5570d03242f198b1
 
The response of governments of Brazil, Argentina, Peru and more.

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CARACAS, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Brazil announced a diplomatic agreement on Monday that will allow it to represent the interests of Argentina and Peru in Caracas, after Venezuela severed ties with the two nations following its contested presidential vote.
Brazil's government, like Colombia and Mexico, has called for the release of full voting results following Venezuela's July 28 election. But Venezuela's electoral authorities have so far failed to do so while the country's electoral authority has proclaimed that President Nicolas Maduro won reelection to a third term.
Presidential Elections of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela — Joint Statement by Brazil, Colombia and MexicoThe governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico congratulate and express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people, who turned out in large numbers to vote on July 28 to determine their own future.
We are closely following the vote counting process and we call on the Venezuelan electoral authorities to move forward quickly and publicly to disclose the data broken down by polling station.
Disputes over the electoral process must be resolved through institutional means. The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through the impartial verification of the results.
In this context, we call on political and social actors to exercise maximum caution and restraint in their demonstrations and public events, in order to avoid an escalation of violent episodes.
Maintaining social peace and protecting human lives must be the chief concerns at this time.
Let this be an opportunity to express, once again, our absolute respect for the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people. We reiterate our willingness to support efforts to engage in dialogue and seek agreements that benefit the Venezuelan people.
Republished and translated from the government of Brazil

 
Washington Post. Maduro Lost the Election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/04/maduro-gonzalez-election-actas-analysis/
 
 

 
​
We have a new category on our Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy platform.
The category is Project 2025. 
 
There is an AFL-CIO analysis and an analysis by a group Democracy Forwardamong others. 
 
Democracy Forward guide to Project 2025. https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-2025/
 
Our project: Defeat MAGA / Fight for Democracy: 
Action Opportunities. 
 
To organize and advance our work, we have created a platform, a google docs site to learn from each other and share activist opportunities including Block and Build, battleground states and districts, left coalition efforts and more. The google site is for the recording of opportunities for political participation; phone banks, canvasing, donations, union contacts, links to important documents (such as Project 2025).  
 
Here is the link to the Google site.
 
Organizing North Star members
 
If you have items, events, projects that you recommend for posting go here. 
 
Recommend add items
 
Also, buttons have been added  to the site where you can recommend adding additional opportunities to engage and participate.
 
We hope you will participate. Please go to the site and see the opportunities to engage and participate.  If you know of campaigns to defeat fascism and elect a progressive majority, use the link above to share your information. 
 For example, there may be a critical swing district race you are working in. Please share the contact information and how to get involved. 
 
Our immediate tasks.
 At this time, key primary steps are to unite with others and build the campaigns to defeat the Trump/MAGA/ anti democratic forces.
 Defeating MAGA candidates up and down the ballot in November.
 
Supporting the re-election of members of the Squad. 

Powering Cori Bush to victory, 

 Beating back the current wave of misogynist and anti-immigrant demagogy and laying the basis for serious positive reform under a new administration.
 
The exit of  President Biden from the race has not changed our fundamental goals.
​https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/north-star-statement-on-the-biden-transition-july-23-2024
​What hasn’t changed is our primary task: the defeat of Donald Trump and the fascist threat he represents in 2024, embodied in the Project 2025 document.  Success in defeating this threat demands solidarity among all forces opposed to Trump’s election.  DSA should place itself squarely in the ranks of the gathering pro-democracy front and discard the ultra-left positions voiced in the NPC’s initial pronouncement on President Biden’s withdrawal from candidacy.
The North Star Caucus Steering Committee stands ready to unite with all DSA members who recognize this historic opportunity to unite with the pro-democracy forces.  We are committed to electing progressives and defeating reactionary measures at all levels of government on November 5th.

All are invited to participate. Thank you for your participation.  
The Steering Committee of the North Star Caucus. 
 
 
 
 
 

By Peter Dreier and Maurice Isserman
Los Angeles Times

A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a “March on the DNC” for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.
Here’s why.
In a democracy, protest movements can play a vital role in reshaping the national debate on important issues. But they have to hone their message and choose when and how to make their case. There were major protests at all three Democratic conventions in the 1960s. Two of them eventually got the results they hoped for. One backfired.
In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles, civil rights protesters, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., carefully orchestrated a 5,000-person march and daily pickets at the convention demanding a strong pro-civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. It was a first at a convention, and Kennedy was cautiously supportive, though it took several more years of protests before he embraced the Civil Rights Act, which became law in 1964, the year after his assassination.
When Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated that same year in Atlantic City, civil rights activists, now driving for voting rights, supported the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates in place of the all-white regular Mississippi delegation. They didn’t unseat the regulars, but their impact on delegates and public opinion was undeniable. A year later, with Johnson’s support, Congress passed the watershed Voting Rights Act.
The convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus. The leaders crafted demands that appealed to the best in the American democratic tradition — equal rights for all. They delivered historic gains for African Americans.
In 1968, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president in Chicago, it was a different story. Protesters again showed up in the streets outside the convention, this time to demonstrate their opposition to the Vietnam War. That opposition was justified. Targeting that convention that year, and their wild rumpus approach, was not.
Due mostly to the brutal tactics employed by the Chicago police, the result was bloody chaos in the streets. Some protest organizers believed dramatic televised images of confrontations would strengthen their cause, winning the sympathy of the viewing public.
They were wrong. Polling revealed that most television viewers — 56%, according to a Gallup poll -- blamed the protesters, not the “police riot,” for the disturbances. Republican Richard Nixon, campaigning to restore “law and order,” defeated Humphrey that November. He prolonged the Vietnam War well into the next decade.
Antiwar protests ultimately helped shift public opinion away from the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. They produced a new wave of liberal and progressive politicians. But the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention set back the cause.
Today, those who want to protest the war in Gaza need to think about how to further that goal. Will the cause of peace and Palestinian rights be helped or hindered by demonstrations at this year’s Democratic convention in Chicago?
More than 70 mostly small-membership organizations are endorsing the upcoming protests. The key organizers, the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and its front organization, the ANSWER coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and defaced monuments in a “day of rage” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.
Conspicuously absent from the list of endorsing organizations are the politically savvy major labor unions, civil rights and environmental organizations, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ groups, and community organizing networks, such as PICO California, MoveOn or Indivisible.
Could it be that they recognize that in this election season, the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate? Perhaps they don’t want to lose voters to a perception that Democrats are the party of chaos in the streets or rabid anti-Americanism.
Many of the groups behind the Chicago protests are not simply pro-Palestine or anti-Israel. As the “March on the DNC” website puts it, they dismiss the Democratic Party as “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”
Even one of the larger groups endorsing the demonstration, Democratic Socialists of America, has adopted a politically self-defeating rationale for doing so. DSA’s Chicago chapter recently posted that making the “DNC a complete political disaster” — through disruption, confrontation and extremist rhetoric — is as important as ending all U.S. support for Israel.
In fact, many of these groups don’t believe in electoral politics as a vehicle for change. They are enamored of revolutionary fantasies. They seem to believe that Trump’s reelection can hasten the prospects for a fairy-tale end to capitalism.
In the meantime, they are indifferent to the threat that a second Trump administration poses to democracy, workers, the environment, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, the poor, respect for science, voting rights, common decency and, yes, even to Palestinian rights. (Trump is a strong ally of Israel’s most conservative forces.)
If this year’s Chicago protests produce scenes of chaos in the streets and Democratic-leaning voters decide to abstain or choose a doomed third-party candidate — who will benefit? In a remarkable bit of political jujitsu, the Republicans, instigators of the Jan. 6 insurrection, are campaigning as the party of law and order.
Protests may achieve changes we want to see. But this time, it’s too risky. Instead of demonstrating against Democrats, we’re going to campaign and vote for them. You should too.
Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is the author of several books including “We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style.” Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College; his books include “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.”
 

AFT: Endorsement of Kamala Harris for President
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By The American Federation of Teachers in Convention.  July 24, 2024.
WHEREAS, the AFT and our 1.8 million members are committed to making a difference in the lives of the students, patients and communities we serve by the work we do, the advocacy we pursue, and the real solutions we bring; and
WHEREAS, the AFT and our members make meaningful change through that work, and through organizing and activism; and
WHEREAS, the AFT and our members engage in politics not as a partisan tactic or destination, but as a means to turn our values and aspirations for a better life into a reality for all people; and
WHEREAS, the 2024 elections are a battle for what kind of country we seek to be: one of community, or one of chaos; one of hope, or one of fear; one of democracy, or one of autocracy; and the stakes are existential, with our freedoms, rights and democracy hinged on the outcome of the election; and

The resolves.
RESOLVED, that for all these reasons and for our students, our patients, our families, our communities, our democracy and ourselves, the AFT endorses Kamala Harris for president in the November 2024 general election, subject to the ratification by the delegates to the 2024 AFT convention; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT and our state and local affiliates will recruit and engage members in a coordinated get-out-the-vote effort to ensure they and their families are registered to vote; are informed of the positions of Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump and other presidential candidates; and turn out on Election Day; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT and our affiliates will provide the necessary resources and undertake the necessary comprehensive get-out-the-vote programs to educate and organize allies and the general public about the issues and the candidates in the 2024 election; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT, in solidarity, will continue to work with and build a broad coalition effort with the AFL-CIO, other labor unions, and community partners in our collective effort to elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.
​
WHEREAS, President Joe Biden will go down as one of the most consequential and meaningful presidents in our history. He has made people’s lives better and has been a champion of workers, families, unions and democracy; and

​
 Here is what DSA national leadership says.
 
https://www.dsausa.org/news/july2024_npc_newsletter/?

NORTH STAR STEERING COMMITTEE STATEMENT ON BIDEN AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election resets the dynamics of the 2024 Presidential election but does not change the basic task of socialists and progressives.  
The Biden administration made many positive contributions to the U.S., rebuilding from the economic decline of the Trump Administration, and providing more support for workers and their ability to organize than any administration in the past half century. We commend President Biden for rescuing the nation from Trump’s failure to provide an adequate and timely response to the Covid crisis.  We support Biden’s positive responses to the climate crisis and thank him for his service in difficult times. 
President Biden has also failed in significant ways.  His weak resistance to the brutal Israeli attack on the people of Gaza and continuing supply of military support to Israel is contrary to international law and must be denounced.  His immigration policies have been repressive and he has been unable to enact reforms on immigration and student debt collection due to Republican stonewalling.
What hasn’t changed is our primary task: the defeat of Donald Trump and the fascist threat he represents in 2024, embodied in the Project 2025 document.  Success in defeating this threat demands solidarity among all forces opposed to Trump’s election.  DSA should place itself squarely in the ranks of the gathering pro-democracy front and discard the ultra-left positions voiced in the NPC’s initial pronouncement on President Biden’s withdrawal from candidacy.
The North Star Caucus Steering Committee stands ready to unite with all DSA members who recognize this historic opportunity to unite with the pro-democracy forces.  We are committed to electing progressives and defeating reactionary measures at all levels of government on November 5th.

• Bill Barclay and Barbara Joye, co-chairs, Steering Committee, North Star Caucus for Socialism and Democracy