 Ukraine War Memorial. Photo by Eric Lee.
Eric Lee As I walked around Kyiv on a beautiful, sunny morning in early September, I noticed the scaffolding in the city’s squares. Statues had been covered up to protect them from bomb damage. Later, I saw a statue with no protection around it– a graffiti-covered memorial to a Red Army general whose name nobody remembered. I was told that this statue had been covered by protective scaffolding before the war. The protection was removed when the war broke out. There was some hope that Russian bombs might solve the problem of what to do with this relic of Soviet rule. You cannot understand the war in Ukraine without knowing its history. This was made very clear to me in a conversation I had with Olesia Briazgunova, who works for one of Ukraine’s two national trade union centers, the KVPU (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine). I suggested that I saw some similarities between the situation in Ukraine today and the Spanish Civil War. Olesia stopped me right there and asked if there had been genocide in Spain. I said there hadn’t been. She said, “Well there’s genocide here — and the Russians have been trying to wipe out the Ukrainian nation for a very long time.” I thought of Stalin’s terror-famine of the early 1930s, which Ukrainians call the Holodomor, and which they rightly consider an act of deliberate genocide. She had a point. History surrounds you in Kyiv. You hear it in conversations, you see it in the street names, and you breathe it in the air. The Solidarity Center, which is the AFL-CIO’s global workers’ rights project, is located on a street once named after Stalin’s Communist International. The street was renamed in honor of Symon Petliura, a leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and a deeply controversial figure in the country’s history. In addition to renaming streets with Soviet connections, the city seems to be removing much of its Russian history, too. At one point I was directed by Google Maps to Pushkin street. But Pushkin street no longer exists. When I interviewed Georgiy Trukhanov, the leader of the 1.2 million member teachers union in Ukraine, about their relationship with the teachers union in Russia, he told me that those Russian teachers were partially guilty here. “Guilty of what?” I asked. All the Russian soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine, all of them, studied in Russian schools, he said. They were taught to be what they have become — killers and rapists. The war has united Ukrainian society as never before. The unions are fully signed up. The FPUpresident, Grygorii Osovyi, told me that 20% of Ukrainian trade union members are now serving in the armed forces. Georgiy Trukhanov told me that teachers could not be drafted as they are considered essential workers — so thousands of them have volunteered. I spoke with many union leaders about the situation in what Ukrainians call the “temporarily occupied territories.” Russian occupiers have essentially banned the Ukrainian language from classrooms. Many workers have fled those territories, and unions are doing an amazing job of helping them, collecting aid, providing accommodation, and much more. Union offices I visited were full of boxes of aid, including plastic sheeting to replace windows destroyed by Russian artillery. Mykhailo Volynets, a former miner and head of the KVPU, told me that there was an urgent need for bandages. Amid the horrors of the war, there are occasional bits of very positive news. An LGBTQI activist explained to me how Putin had weaponized homophobia in Russia, including spreading rumors that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and other leaders were gay. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, there has been a huge shift in public opinion regarding LGBTQI people, many of whom are serving at the front. This is a part of the world where homophobia has run rampant, and even turned violent, as we have seen in countries like Georgia. But in Ukraine, the war has helped change attitudes in a positive way. I spoke with Ukrainian socialists, with young workers who organize couriers, with aviation workers and railway workers. I was interviewed by women members of the nuclear power workers union — who are staying at their posts at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, now under Russian occupation. The message I got from everyone could not have been clearer: The Ukrainian labor movement and Left stand fully against the Russian invasion. They want and expect solidarity from the labor movement and Left in other countries. They enormously appreciate everything from solidarity gestures such as the visits of leading trade unionists, including the American Federation of Teachers’ president Randi Weingarten, and donations from unions ranging from generators to much-needed bandages. Despite the differences, I still see this conflict as the Spanish Civil War of our time. The many young men and women who have come to Ukraine to join the fight are inspiring in the way that the International Brigades were some 90 years ago. The Spanish Republic was defeated in large part because many democracies failed to come to its aid, while the fascists were fully backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Will the same thing happen in Ukraine? Putin’s regime is a fascist one, and the war on Ukraine is an illegal, imperialist war. Ukraine is not a perfect society, and its government is not a perfect government. Nor was the Spanish Republic. But in the fight against fascism, we need to ask ourselves, to paraphrase the old song, which side are we on? About Eric Lee Eric Lee is the founding editor of LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement. Its Ukraine labor coverage can be found at LabourStart.org... There has been considerable on line controversy about the wording in the above post. Here is an additional substantive piece on the issue of the war in Ukraine and the left. The writer represented Die Linke on the German parliament's Defense Committee. Quote from the article : "However, when some leftists talk about geopolitics and proxy wars or call for an end to solidarity with Ukraine, they are not only invoking old friend-enemy paradigms (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”), but also blurring the line between perpetrator and victim in this war. This is morally unacceptable and politically foolish." https://rosalux.nyc/myths-and-facts-about-the-war-in-ukraine/
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Title: Imperialism: The U.S. and Mexico Description: The relationship between the United States and Mexico, both today and historically, constitutes a significant feature of U.S. imperialism. Speakers at this panel event will discuss Lenin's and more recent socialists' concepts of imperialism; the long drive by U.S. capital and the U.S. government to dominate Mexico and seize economic benefits at the expense of Mexico and the working class of both countries; and Mexican/Chicano labor in the U.S. and in the Maquiladoras in Mexico, including the ways in which the U.S. imperialist relation to Mexico has divided the working class and the progressive responses to those divisions. This unequal relationship continues today, impacting workers on both sides of the border. We hope to develop a better understanding of the relationship between the two countries and deepen our bonds of solidarity. The panelists are Bill Gallegos, Luisa Martinez, and Vamsi Vakulabharanam. This panel event was organized by the Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Education Committee. Registration. Date etc: Saturday, September 30, 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM ET Link: https://actionnetwork.org/events/npec-presents-imperialism-the-us-and-mexico?source=direct_link& Immediately After the 1973 Chilean Coup, US Socialists Supported Those Fighting for Freedom9/11/2023  Chilean president Salvador Allende speaks before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on December 4, 1972. (Bettmann / Getty Images) by, DAVID DUHALDE The moment that Salvador Allende was violently deposed on September 11, 1973, democratic socialists in the US knew it was a crime. They joined others around the world organizing solidarity efforts and supporting political refugees. In August, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several congressional leaders visited Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to meet with leftist activists and elected officials — a goodwill trip that the Wall Street Journal dubbed “AOC’s Socialist Sympathy Tour.” In Chile, Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues insisted that the US government declassify more documents related to Washington’s support for the coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973. Bowing to pressure, the State Department released several of President Richard Nixon’s daily briefings concerning the Chilean military’s movement against the democratically elected government. As the memos show, Nixon knew at the time of the coup that Allende was open to a “political solution” (likely holding a plebiscite) and hoped to “fend off a showdown,” which he never got the chance to do. The revelations confirmed that the United States went into the putsch with its eyes wide open and still backed a coup that wiped out Chilean democracy. AOC and the delegation’s successful push for declassification is the latest action in nearly five decades of US democratic socialist solidarity with Chileans, stretching back to the Democratic Socialists of America’s two predecessor organizations: the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). While not the primary US movers of what became known as Chile Solidarity — the global social movement supporting democratic rights in the Southern Cone country — DSOC and NAM, in their publications and organizing, played a real role in opposing Chile’s military dictatorship. In Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2023/09/chile-coup-allende-dsco-nam-democratic-socialists-america-aoc  Salvador Allende campaigning before Chile’s parliamentary elections, Santiago, February 1973,STF/AFP/Getty Images September 3, 2023 Ariel Dorfman THE NEW YORK REVIEW On September 4, 1973, an enormous multitude of Chileans—I was one of them—poured into the streets of Santiago to back the besieged government of Salvador Allende. Ever since he had won the presidency three years earlier with 36.6 percent of the vote in a three-way race, forces from inside and outside the country had been conspiring to destroy his attempt—the first in world history—to build a socialist state through nonviolent, democratic means. One shout from a chorus of voices echoed through the air: “Allende, Allende, el pueblo te defiende,” emphasizing the need to defend the president. After one thousand days of unrelenting opposition, his enemies seemed close to orchestrating a coup d’état that would wipe “the Marxist cancer” from Chilean society forever. Allende felt cornered. I knew this because, though only thirty-one at the time, I had been working for the previous two months at the presidential palace of La Moneda as a cultural and press adviser to Fernando Flores, Allende’s chief of staff, and our reports indicated that many admirals and generals were openly plotting against him. Allende nevertheless remained hopeful. Unlike that of so many Latin American nations, Chile’s military had a lengthy tradition of respect for constitutional rule, with smooth transitions between presidencies guaranteed by its strict nonintervention in political affairs. Thus far the army, at least, had continued to profess loyalty to the government. I remember Flores telling me with glee that General Augusto Pinochet, the head of the army, was in his pocket, nicely tied up: “Este Pinoccho! Lo tengo en este bolsillo, bien amarrado.” Allende also believed this was the case, but he placed his real faith in the mobilization of el pueblo (a term that encompasses several meanings in Spanish: the people, the masses, the poor, the great unwashed). And the Chilean pueblo had many reasons to support the Allende experiment. His cabinet—the first to include a peasant and an industrial worker as ministers—had undertaken a series of reforms, the most impressive of which was the nationalization of the enormous copper mines, until then owned by predatory US corporations. It had also nationalized the mining of minerals like nitrate and iron, as well as many banks and large factories, a number of which were being administered by those who worked in them.1 An ambitious agrarian reform had been handing over latifundios—large rural estates—to the peasants who had toiled on them from time immemorial; by 1973 almost 60 percent of Chile’s arable land had been expropriated. https://portside.org/2023-09-03/defending-allende Salvador Allende campaigning before Chile’s parliamentary elections, Santiago, February 1973,STF/AFP/Getty Images  Sanders for Labor Day “At a time of unprecedented corporate greed, we need an unprecedented worker response,” said Senator Bernie Sanders before an audience of 2,000 union activists at the UNI Global Union World Congress in Philadelphia on August 27. UNI Global is an international union federation with affiliates in 150 countries representing 20 million workers, including janitors, postal workers, call center workers, and retail employees. portside.org Sanders for Labor Day: Unprecedented Corporate Greed Demands Unprecedented Worker Response Support 150,000 workers this Labor Day! In just two weeks, the union contract for the three biggest automakers will expire. If the bosses don’t budge, it’s very likely that the United Auto Workers (UAW) will strike one, if not all three, automakers this month. Take the UAW Big 3 Strike Ready Pledge to stand with workers!
The stakes are high. Profits are up, and executive compensation is skyrocketing — but the workers aren’t getting their fair share. So autoworkers are coming together to demand:
This fight is important not only to the 150,000 UAW workers at the Big 3, but to the whole working class. That’s why DSA members organize on the job and stand in solidarity with other organizing workers. The UAW Strike Ready campaign will make sure we’re always ready to support labor when needed. Pledge to support UAW workers in their fight and join them on the picket line if the bosses force them to strike! In solidarity, Maria Svart DSA National Director Not posted at the direction of DSA. N.S. makes independent decisions. Border policy, and Latin America Congressman Greg Casar ( D. Texas) once a DSA member. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/30/progressive_codel_latin_america_greg_casar  Peter Dreier "50 Years After the March on Washington, What Would MLK March For Today?" Washington Post, August 22, 2013. The March on Washington, where King delivered his great "I Have a Dream" speech, took place on August 28, 1963. I wrote this article in 2013 to celebrate the march's 50th anniversary. If he were alive today, King would be fighting for the same causes - peace, women's reproductive health, affordable housing, desegregation, immigrant rights, gun control, and others. Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins, "We Still Have a Dream," Sun-Sentinel, August 27, 2023 Black Americans have endured the unendurable for too long. Sixty years after the famed March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, African Americans are on a path where it will take 500 more years to reach economic equality. Our country has taken significant steps towards racial equity since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. But growing income and wealth inequality over the last four decades has supercharged historic racial wealth disparities, slowing and even reversing some of those gains. Sixty years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth divide is a policy failure. But just as federal policy helped create the racial wealth gap, it can also help close it. The op-ed column by Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins is a summary of their report, "Still A Dream: Black Economic Inequality 60 Years After the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," which looks in detail at the state of that racial and wealth divide and recommends policy reforms that would substantially narrow it within one to two generations.  by Harold Meyerson,
Even without Donald Trump anchoring last evening’s Republican debate on Fox News, his spirit fouled the air. The scapegoating, paranoid theorizing, misstatements of fact, and moral indifference that have been the hallmarks of Trump’s career went on merrily without him. The fear of offending the Trump cult that is now the Republican base dominated his rivals’ performances. When asked if they’d support him as the party’s nominee even if he’s convicted of the crimes for which he’s been indicted, all but former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (who appears to be running because he has nothing better to do) raised their hand. Even tough guy Chris Christie raised his, if halfway and belatedly, only then to explain it away as a gesture to redirect the conversation. So went the evening. Candidates who spoke of restoring faith in American justice, in reaffirming the fundamentals of Christian morality, felt compelled to give Trump a pass. It was hardly the night’s only "Do I contradict myself? Yes!" moment. Candidates who spoke for bolstering the nation’s police and its intelligence operations against drug cartels also demanded the dissolution of the FBI. Candidates who extolled both the rights and wisdom of the 50 states demanded a federal ban on abortions, lest they continue to happen in California, New York, and Illinois. Evasions were even more prominent than contradictions. Asked if they believed climate change was caused by human conduct, none raised their hands to signal that they did. Several then went on to blame China and India’s reliance on coal burning for the planet’s decay, but somehow, that didn’t mean that human conduct as such was to blame. (The coal in Asia apparently burns itself.) The spark plug of the evening was Vivek Ramaswamy, who combined the epistemic indifference of a shock jock with the patina of a Harvard education and the verbal speed of an auctioneer. No one treads quite so closely in Trump’s footsteps as Ramaswamy, who, like his mentor, overstates the MAGA base’s rage-filled misapprehensions to drive home that he’s one of them, only more articulate. No one else on the stage went so far as to call climate change "a hoax" or to dismiss the obvious moral claims of Ukraine (for which Nikki Haley took him so effectively to task that even the America Firsters in the room were silenced). If this had been the pre-Trump Republican Party, Haley would have won not only the evening but also a clear jump in the polls. But it’s not, and she probably didn’t. Almost every actual candidate (a description that cannot be applied to Hutchinson or North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum) had a back-and-forth with Ramaswamy, with the notable exception of the candidate whose prepared Ramaswamy attacks were actually leaked to the press: Ron DeSantis. Indeed, DeSantis opted not to mix it up with anyone other than, very briefly, the Fox moderators. As Haley, Christie, and Mike Pence all blew their respective gaskets at Ramaswamy’s smarminess, DeSantis appeared oddly detached. He may have been told that since he is universally viewed as a pit bull in a foul mood, he should eschew indignant exchanges, or, alternatively, he may simply lack the spontaneity to go off-script. Seldom have we seen a presidential debate where a contentious front-runner—well, the barely-hanging-on second-place leader of this Trumpless pack—receded so completely into the background. The evening certainly did DeSantis no favors, but it’s hard to see any of the other candidates surging to the point that they diminish Trump’s overwhelming lead. Until Ramaswamy veered into denials of reality so blatant that they offended even the MAGAnaut audience, he was the candidate the audience (and not just the Vivek-section) cheered the most. In Trump’s absence, he came closest to voicing their unmediated rage. DeSantis may voice their fury at wokeness, whatever that may be, but Vivek, like Trump, fairly spews it. (After all, he did write a book called Woke, Inc.) At various points, the crowd unleashed that fury at both Pence and Christie, so much so that moderator Bret Baier had to turn to them and ask them to pipe down. It’s the hate artists, the guys who steam with promises of vengeance on those they loathe, that today’s Republicans want to put in power. They’d have fit in just fine at the Nuremberg rallies. The American Prospect: https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-08-24-even-without-trump-still-trumps-party/  Thank you for joining the United Auto Workers (UAW) Solidarity Call!
Together we heard from powerful speakers and hundreds of us showed the Big 3 Auto CEOS: The climate movement is organizing and stands in solidarity with UAW! Now, we need to keep up the pressure. Our friends at UAW have set up a number so our movement can make quick 2 min voicemails that UAW will deliver to Big 3 Auto CEOs so they hear loud and clear - RECORD PROFITS DESERVE RECORD CONTRACTS! We demand a fair UAW contract now! Call 318-300-1249 and leave a message → UAW will deliver it to the Big 3 Auto CEOs. When you call 318-300-1249, you’ll hear a brief intro about the contract negotiations from UAW. At the beep, just leave your message. Then text 5 friends and ask them to do the same. That’s it! Your 2 minute call will help amplify the pressure to meet auto workers’ demands for a fair contract! You can find talking points and additional ways to take action in the quick action guide we made for the call. Tweet about it! “This clean energy transition needs to be community driven. Working people are being left out while corporations are getting billions of dollars in government grants and huge tax breaks. We also know that we can't do this alone. We need the support of our elected officials, our fellow Union members, and the broader community.” - Marcelina Pedraza, UAW Local 551 Member This fight is just beginning, and we need all hands on deck! Stay tuned, let’s stick together until we win a fair contract. Solidarity!  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in front of the US Capitol, 2022. (Nathan Posner / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) BY BRANKO MARCETIC As with any elected official, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad should be criticized when needed. But left-wing vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns. JACOBIN. It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days. Once the darlings of the American left, the group of progressive and socialist House members that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and others are as likely to be savaged these days from the Left as they are from the Right. Popular YouTube commentators regularly denounce them as “sellouts,” protesters interrupt their meetings calling them warmongers, and even committed socialists question what the point of the Squad has been. The lion’s share of this ire has been trained on Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who’s faced relentless criticism since winning office from all sides, sometimes over substantive issues (once failing to show up for an Amazon union rally, casting a vote that denied railworkers the ability to strike), sometimes over remarkably petty ones (conciliatory rhetoric, the positioning of her hands while being arrested). Much of this was crystallized in a recent critical analysis of Ocasio-Cortez’s record in New York magazine by Freddie deBoer, who charged she has drifted “from radical outsider to Establishment liberal,” making mere “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion that she is a gadfly,” and argued that her and the rest of the Squad’s entry into Congress has been entirely fruitless. Read more. https://jacobin.com/2023/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-aoc-the-squad-left-criticism-policy-accomplishments Photo Jacobin As the Georgia indictments make all too clear.
by Harold Meyerson. With 19 indicted conspirators and 30 unindicted conspirators, there are now almost as many Republicans caught up in Fulton County’s wheels of justice as there are Republican candidates for president. At some point, we may want to indict those candidates (among whom only Chris Christie and, lately and reluctantly, Mike Pence have noted that Trump appears to have broken the law), too. On the charge of contributing to the erosion of American democracy, any number are guilty as sin. The sheer length of Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s bill of criminal particulars makes clear that it takes a village to seize the presidency, even when that seizure is thwarted. Nor is it only in Georgia that those villagers are being hauled into court. Those Georgians who posed as the state’s electors have company in Michigan, where that state’s attorney general has indicted those Michiganders who swore, falsely, that they were that state’s authorized electors. According to a report in today’s Arizona Republic, both groups may yet be joined by Arizona’s electoral poseurs. Such is the genius of federalism. Some law school professors (not a lot) have argued that taking Trump to trial, much less convicting him, would do so much damage to our system of government and/or be so divisive that we shouldn’t go through with it. The question they don’t address, however, is what we should do about his co-conspirators who also broke fundamental laws—by, for instance, swearing falsely that they were their state’s electors and thereby depriving the voters of their state of their right to choose a president. Should people who violated the very laws on which the nation is based also be let go? And if not, how can we hold them responsible for such violations but exempt the person entirely responsible for their lawbreaking? This is the kind of thing that could give double standards a bad name. If we’re to scrap the very idea of equal justice under the law, in the most glaring and democracy-eroding way imaginable, tens of millions of Americans are certain to conclude that our legal system is a (bad) joke and a fraud. (Those Americans who keep abreast of the Supreme Court may well have already done that, of course.) I can only presume that those legal eagles who counsel us to cease the prosecutions of our former president don’t wish that to be the consequence. If they don’t, however, they’d have to support dropping the charges not just against Trump but against every knave and fool who broke the law on his behalf, including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Of course, if we’re actually serious about equal justice under the law, we’d scrap the Electoral College and the Senate, but I digress. From: the American Prospect http://americanprospect.bluelena.io/social/01894d6f048493d2cacde3c579c315a3.2302 The Steering Committee of DSA North Star unanimously calls for convention delegates to DEFEAT Amendment B to NPC Recommendation #8.
Update, the convention agenda has been amended. This topic is back on the agenda for discussion. Amendment B would bring back the resolution rejected by the survey of Delegates, to "Make DSA an anti-Zionist Organization" and expel all members found to be "Zionists", which was proposed by adherents of the DSA Boycott Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Working Group. There are three reasons why the DSA convention must defeat this proposal: 1. SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION A cardinal principle of solidarity is respecting the right of an oppressed people to democratically choose their own representatives. Yet in a resolution which purports to support the Palestinian struggle, there is no mention of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broad organization of Palestinian civil society which is the coordinating body for the BDS campaign. Instead, the resolution proposes that DSA should work with the Palestinian Youth Movement, which is not affiliated with the BDS National Council, and which proclaims, “It Is Time for the Palestinian Leadership to Go.” The Palestinian BDS National Committee issued a statement separating itself from the unprincipled campaign the DSA BDS WG conducted against Comrade Bowman and the DSA NPC. DSA has no business taking sides in the internal affairs of Palestinians. 2. BUILDING THE BROADEST, STRONGEST OPPOSITION TO THE OCCUPATION AND ISRAELI STATE VIOLENCE AGAINST PALESTINIANS Building the broadest and strongest opposition to the Israeli occupation and state violence is a vital solidarity task. Yet in this resolution, the authors attack prominent DSA members, including Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who are among the most vocal public opponents in the United States of the Israeli occupation and state violence. Moreover, they single out by name as a prohibited “Zionist lobby” group a Jewish organization, J Street, which has been the strongest lobby on Capitol Hill against the occupation. Proposed amendment B would undermine vital coalition work against the occupation and Israeli state violence and must be defeated. 3. TURNING AWAY FROM A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PATH OF PURGES The bulk of the resolution lays out an apparatus for conducting purges of DSA members who do not submit to the DSA BDS Working Group’s view of the Palestinian struggle. It leaves no doubt that its primary targets are prominent elected officials who are DSA members. There is another proposal to amend NPC Recommendation 8, Amendment A, without a mandate to purge DSA members and elected officials. However, amendment A also has the central, overriding flaw of prioritizing the issue of Palestine over all other issues in the world, by officially making DSA an "Anti-Zionist Organization". DSA is already an anti-racist and anti-imperialist organization. DSA's existing policy of opposing Israel's occupation by supporting BDS should not be replaced by either of these divisive factional statements, especially Amendment B. If adopted, Amendment B would contribute to the destruction of DSA as a relevant political organization by fomenting attacks on and expulsion of elected DSA members who are respected as progressive leaders.  Finally, I want to share my candidate statement and other writings on my Medium site here: https://medium.com/@xanderhernander
The Steering Committee of DSA North Star Caucus calls on our members and all convention delegates to support member-submitted resolution #18 enthusiastically. It expresses our highest political priority: placing DSA squarely in the ranks of the pro-democracy, anti-fascist coalition which is emerging to fight the ultra-Right. Here are the reasons this resolution is so important: 1. Right-wing victories are destroying democracy and fundamental human rights in the United States. The ultra-Right has mobilized a racist, xenophobic, anti-worker coalition which is smashing voting rights, reproductive justice, climate and environmental progress, gun control, public health, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, and labor rights. This coalition is well organized, funded, and media savvy. A large and militant sector of voters support it. However an effective opposition to this virulent movement is emerging as a network of people of color, unions, community organizers, educators, and like-minded patriots. DSA must step up and take its place in this anti-fascist resistance. 2. DSA can play a historic role as an openly socialist force in this emerging ,left- center movement. As socialists, we know the ultra-right attacks on our hard-won rights are rooted in capitalists’ opposition to social benefits and reforms. Their efforts to destroy even the partial and deeply flawed political system we have in the United States exposes their hatred for democracy. Representative democracy is a precious tool for protecting these hard-won reforms. DSA must commit to defending and extending working people’s rights until a more equitable and universal socialist democracy can be achieved. Enemies of the working class describe even modest measures of social and economic justice as socialist. By standing up to their attacks with other progressives in electoral and community-based struggles, we can claim socialists’ part in these victories. DSA’s electoral and community action in unity with all political tendencies who are battling to protect and increase equity and justice is essential in this crisis. 3. If DSA refuses to stand in solidarity with all anti-authoritariananti- MAGA forces, we will isolate ourselves from the very base we aspire to lead. While many DSA chapters and members are collaborating with the anti-authoritarian movement in their areas, disciplined forces in DSA have discouraged this vital solidarity. Hostility toward the Democratic Party, non-profit social justice organizations, and the liberal wing of the progressive movement have thrown up serious obstacles to DSA building relationships with our natural allies. Some DSA chapters have even refused to support the election of progressives endorsed by local or statewide progressive coalitions. This damages DSA’s reputation and feeds the narrative that the Left is the enemy of real-world victories. Resolution #18 “Uniting Against the Ultra Right” calls for DSA to embrace a leadership role in the emerging anti-authoritarian movement. building relationships and collaborating with our allies in emerging progressive and center-left coalitions. In this endeavor, DSA should be guided by the following principles: a. Class struggle is happening within the Democratic Party. DSA members and other candidates elected by left organizations are demonstrating that progressives elected to public office can make a concrete difference in working people’s lives. Working people look to Democrats to support candidates and measures that offer social justice in local, state, and national arenas. Of course there are corporate and reactionary forces in the Democratic Party too. Our job is to resist those elements and support the voices of Labor, BIPOC forces and all progressives who are turning the party’s agenda toward the left. b.Disparaging DSA members or other progressives elected to public office damages DSA’s reputation. Charges that members of the “Squad” or other openly leftist representatives are not radical enough or make too many compromises feeds anti-leftist forces within the Democratic Party and the media. Once a DSA member or a progressive is elected, we owe them critical support in addition to demanding accountability. Elected representatives must act based on their constituencies and best political judgement without being threatened or attacked. c. Workers, people of color, independent voters, women, community activists, and members of the LGBTQ family will not respect DSA if it stands apart from their struggles, demanding a higher standard of political purity than can be expected in the context of today’s political reality. DSA must embody what socialists offer the working class: effective strategies to win. We must meet our allies with humility and provide the practical solidarity we all need to defeat the ultra-Right. Participation in community or electoral struggles from a purist, ideological position is a recipe for irrelevance. For these reasons, North Star Caucus urges convention delegates to campaign and vote for Member-Submitted Resolution #18 “Uniting Against the Ultra-Right.” Uniting Against the Ultra-Right Let’s Get Real vs. Let’s Get Small An argument in support of the "Uniting Against the Ultra-Right" resolution at the upcoming national convention. BY MAX B. SAWICKY - 2023 DSA NATIONAL CONVENTION DISCUSSION In Socialist Forum. https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/2023-dsa-national-convention-discussion/lets-get-real-vs-lets-get-small/ Democracy in the US is under direct threat from the Republican Party, which Noam Chomsky has called “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.” The ascendance of this organization to national power will mean the destruction of all progressive politics. We see such embryonic scenarios playing out in Florida, Texas, and other states. Indeed, our would-be Führer Donald Trump pledges to liquidate any socialist presence in the U.S. It’s not as if it has never happened before. The Palmer Raids and McCarthyism are cautionary tales. The threat of fascism leads me to stress broad unity in support for Democratic candidates in the national elections in November 2024 as an essential way to block the Right’s road to power. Formal DSA endorsements are beside the point. What matters for the election is material support, and what matters for DSA growth is a visible contribution to that support. Prior to November, primary campaigns that showcase DSA ideas are fine, but third-party efforts or electoral abstention in November can only help rightists gain elective office. …. gains will depend on keeping Donald Trump and his neo-fascist party out of the White House, expanding the Democratic majority in the Senate, and flipping party control of the House of Representatives. DSA’s reputation and political prospects depend on being part of that effort. Hence, I urge the convention to adopt our resolution “Uniting Against the Ultra-Right.” read more here. https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/2023-dsa-national-convention-discussion/lets-get-real-vs-lets-get-small/ Here is an excerpt from the North Star sponsored resolution Uniting Against the Ultra-Right. Democratic socialists must take seriously the threat to our democracy posed by the extremist right-wing elements in the US that have coalesced around the MAGA movement and its allies and gained control of the Republican Party to the point where it is barely distinguishable from them. The ultra-right’s rule would undermine our already inadequate constitutional order in favor of authoritarian rule by the propertied classes, combined with weakening of the federal government and the suppression of basic civil rights, environmental protection and public services. To say that the ultra-right is the principal enemy does not mean that it is the only enemy. It means, however, that we must focus on uniting democratic socialists, progressives and all those willing to build towards a majority which can defeat this threat. This broad front must be multi-racial and cross-class. It cannot be an alignment of the Left alone nor can it be limited to those who are in total agreement with a left/progressive agenda. We are aware that the necessary organized nucleus of such a broad front does not exist and that DSA is not a part of such an alliance. Therefore, we are taking the first steps toward its formation and also addressing the issue that the democratic left is splintered among many organizations that often act with little coordination. Improvement should start by DSA approaching its nearest sister organizations. North Star is supporting this resolution. We invite all to contact their convention delegates and ask them to support the resolution. Defeat Member-Submitted Resolution # 12:
“Make DSA an Anti-Zionist Organization in Principle and Praxis” The Steering Committee of DSA North Star calls for convention delegates to defeat Member-Submitted Resolution # 12, which has been submitted by adherents of the DSA Boycott Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Working Group. There are three reasons why the DSA convention must defeat this resolution. 1. SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION The first and cardinal principle of solidarity is respecting the right of an oppressed people to democratically choose their own representatives. Yet in a resolution which purports to support the Palestinian struggle, there is no mention of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broad organization of Palestinian civil society which is the coordinating body for the BDS campaign. Instead, the resolution proposes that DSA should work with the Palestinian Youth Movement, which is not affiliated with the BDS National Council and which proclaims “It Is Time for the Palestinian Leadership to Go.” https://twitter.com/BDSmovement/status/1466490844475797506 DSA has no business taking sides in the internal affairs of Palestinians. 2. BUILDING THE BROADEST, STRONGEST OPPOSITION TO THE OCCUPATION AND ISRAELI STATE VIOLENCE AGAINST PALESTINIANS There is no solidarity task more important than building the broadest and strongest opposition to the occupation and Israeli state violence. Yet in this resolution, the authors attack prominent DSA members, including Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who are among the most vocal public opponents of the Israeli occupation and state violence in the United States. Moreover, they single out by name as a prohibited “Zionist lobby” group a Jewish organization, J Street, which has been the strongest lobby against the occupation on Capitol Hill. It was precisely this counter-productive use of purist litmus tests that led the Palestinian BDS National Committee to issue a statement separating itself from the unprincipled campaign the DSA BDS WG conducted against Comrade Bowman and the DSA NPC. The resolution undermines vital coalition work against the occupation and Israeli state violence and must be defeated. 3. TURNING AWAY FROM A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PATH OF PURGES The bulk of the resolution lays out what can only be described as an apparatus for conducting purges of DSA members who do not submit to the DSA BDS Working Group’s view of the Palestinian struggle. It leaves no doubt that its primary targets are prominent elected officials who are DSA members. There is a proposed amendment to the primary resolution. However this proposed amendment cannot completely fix a resolution that has these central, overriding flaws. The basic resolution needs to be entirely reconceived and rewritten. If adopted, this resolution would contribute to the destruction of DSA as a relevant political organization by fomenting attacks and expulsion of elected DSA members who are respected as progressive leaders.  DSA North Star Caucus NPC Candidate Endorsement of Alexander Hernández We are pleased to endorse our comrade Alexander Hernández who is running for a seat on DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC). We encourage delegates to rank him #1 on their ballots. While North Star has made recommendations for NPC candidates in the past, this is the first time we are endorsing one of our own. We believe that Alexander will bring a much-needed perspective to national DSA and contribute hard work to strengthen our organization.. Alexander agrees with North Star’s central political position: defeating the ultra-right and the MAGA Republican agenda is the most pressing political priority facing the U.S. Left today. We believe that electing Alexander to the NPC is crucial because DSA today lacks an agreed-upon political strategy to expand the power of the Left, to defend democracy, and build a viable governing majority. Alexander’s background in the labor and immigrants’ rights movements and his work in DSA is valuable experience. He will increase representation of DSA’s core political constituencies in the socialist movement, the membership, and chapters both big and small. Alexander grew up In the immigrants’ rights movement. He is the child of Mexican parents. Living in Chicago, Alexander and his family heard from Dolores Huerta at church, and participated in the immigrants rights demonstrations in 2006 along with 100,000 others in Chicago and millions more nationally. Alexander also grew up in the labor movement. His father is a retired ILA Local 1969 member. Having been active around labor issues growing up, he organized his own workplace and joined IATSE Local 44, where he was elected to leadership in his union. Alexander is now on staff as a union representative in the entertainment industry. Upon joining DSA, Alexander continued this work by organizing for immigrants’ rights in Atlanta and as a co-chair of the national DSA Immigrants’ Rights Working Group (IRWG). Including serving as national IRWG coordinator for a time, working with staff and other national leadership. Our comrade Alexander has also helped build a new DSA chapter in a rural Florida community where one did not exist. Alexander’s pledges are to:
We believe Alexander will work towards a stronger and more united DSA to win the world we all want to see. Our caucus goal for this convention is to add democratic socialist political maturity, common sense, and respect for a diversity of viewpoints to all NPC discussions and decisions. Alexander will help ground our organizing in struggles where democratic socialists are winning today, struggles that can honor the different tendencies in DSA. He made the argument for this position clearly in his Socialist Forum article, “The Case for Realignment.” https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/fall-2022/the-case-for-realignment/. This North Star Caucus goal is also expressed through our proposed convention resolutions “Unite Against the Ultra-Right,” and the resolution to “Defend Immigrants and Refugee Rights.” We encourage delegates to advance these goals by electing Alexander Hernández to the National Political Committee of DSA. _____________ The North Star Caucus is a group of DSA members and democratic socialists who share a broad outlook around the political questions that face DSA and the wider US left. We are not a faction or a group wanting to take over DSA and remake it in our own image. (See our statement of principles. An argument against a number of resolutions concerning electoral politics for the upcoming national convention.
BY SAM LEWIS - 2023 DSA NATIONAL CONVENTION DISCUSSION Since DSA’s contemporary era started in 2016, the organization’s “big tent” approach has evolved to encompass a broad range of organizing tactics and strategies. Most energy in the organization has been at the local level, and chapters have pursued elections, protests, mutual aid, new publications and media strategies, labor organizing, tenant organizing, coalition building and legislative campaigns, all in pursuit of growing the socialist movement and building power. Much of DSA’s internal political development, including the evolution of its caucuses and factions, has been less about clear ideological differences than about which of these projects members see as most important. If these different projects all exist within DSA’s big tent, conflict at the national level has largely not been about trying to halt or constrain any particular type of work, but about competition over prioritization and resources. While the organization has had worthwhile debates over our approaches to labor strategy or mutual aid, there has not to date been any effort to seriously clamp down on the diversity of tactics being deployed by DSA locals. The lone exception to this admirably humble and open-minded approach has been electoral politics. This year, delegates will be once again asked to consider at convention massive, disruptive changes to DSA’s electoral work that could undo much of what has been accomplished by DSA members since 2015, and halt the development of the electoral project within DSA. In some ways, for those of us involved in electoral work the recurring focus on dictating DSA’s electoral approach from above is flattering. It amounts to an acknowledgement that electing socialists to office has a central role in keeping socialism relevant to the lives of everyday people in our present moment. DSA members and delegates are right to take our electoral strategy seriously, and should indeed be focused on how it unfolds. The stunning success of the two Sanders campaigns, and the election of hundreds of locally and nationally endorsed DSA candidates to office, as well as hundreds more non-endorsed DSA members, are all part of an important development: for the first time in a century, democratic socialism is once again a meaningful current in US politics. DSA’s growth over the same period is intimately tied to this development, as are our prospects for advancing the socialist cause. We cannot take those developments for granted, or think that our leading role in shaping the program and politics of democratic socialist electoral politics is something to which we are entitled. This means delegates must read the proposals at convention carefully to understand their potential impacts, and reject those that could use noble sentiments to justify self-defeating ends. Many of the proposals on offer at the 2023 convention would have precluded endorsing Bernie Sanders and most of the socialists who are currently advancing our cause in city councils, state houses, and Congress. Too many of the resolutions focus on elevating abstract principles, devoid of political context, as litmus tests that can be used to punish elected officials–for the most part with no argument for how such an approach will advance the cause of socialism. Many of the resolutions focus not on DSA’s endorsed candidates who we actually worked to put in office, but on any DSA member who holds elected office, setting up pointless conflicts and potential purges that are divorced from the source of our political power. Worst of all, some of these resolutions would pull DSA out of the fight against the growing right-wing authoritarian threat in the US, and have us cede leadership of the working-class opposition to liberals by allowing them to be the most effective opponents of right-wing attacks on abortion, trans lives, labor, and democratic rights. Building an elected bloc that can advance our politics and policies means DSA must keep building our electoral threat and keep building public support for our positions–discipline applied robotically by resolution, devoid of context, is a shortcut that is doomed to fail. Abstract litmus tests don’t build our power Read more. https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/2023-dsa-national-convention-discussion/dont-dsocialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/2023-dsa-national-convention-discussion/dont-derail-dsas-electoral-project/ State Rep. Mike Connolly has decided to leave the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, he announced Monday.
Connolly’s decision comes after Boston DSA introduced a motion last week to expel him. In the motion, a group charged Connolly with a variety of offenses, including endorsing Gov. Maura Healey and not participating in the organization’s endorsement process. Boston DSA would have voted on the expulsion July 23 at its monthly general meeting. Rather than fighting these charges for much of July, a particularly busy time for the Massachusetts General Court, Connolly said, he will devote his energy toward serving his constituents in Cambridge and Somerville. He has been a reliably progressive candidate and legislator, pushing for electoral reform, criminal justice reform and affordable housing, including rent control and the new notion of “social housing.” “I need to focus on continuing to represent our community on Beacon Hill and delivering for my constituents,” he said. The charges against him were largely incoherent, Connolly said, making an example of the first charge accusing him of not engaging with DSA’s already opaque endorsement process: The chapter does not have a bylaw requiring members in elected office to seek the endorsement of the organization. The DSA motion to expel him cited a 2021 chapter bylaw for endorsed officials, using it to condemn actions Connolly took in 2020. “As you recall from your fifth-grade social studies class, that’s what they call an ex post facto,” Connolly said. The motion also accused Connolly of endorsing public officials who “are fundamentally opposed to socialist reforms.” These officials include Healey, State House speaker Ron Mariano and Somerville city councilor Matthew McLaughlin. Connolly said the was disappointed to see that some in Boston DSA do not understand the necessity of cooperation. “For all of us who want to transform society, we need to understand that it’s going to take building broader coalitions, and it’s going to take working with and persuading those in positions of state leadership,” he said. In-fight draws national attention The clash drew national media attention, with Ryan Grim at The Intercept noting “a sizable portion” of local progressives supporting Connolly publicly. Left-leaning local journalist Jason Pramas was critical of the move in an essay published in Cambridge Day, saying the attempt at ideological purity just divided and diminished an already dwindling movement. “The tiny faction of the shrinking chapter of the smallish group in question is trying to purge Connolly as if it is somehow in leadership of not just a political party, but a ruling political party – in some kind of Soviet-style communist regime that is the antithesis of the beloved community DSA is supposed to be trying to build in what their members believe will be the better socialist and democratic future to come,” Pramas said. Politico called Connolly’s departure “a setback for the Boston-area democratic socialists who, after years of making gains on local city councils, are now watching their state legislative ranks dwindle from two representatives to one.” Its remaining representative is Somerville’s Erika Uyterhoeven. https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/07/10/state-rep-connolly-walks-away-from-the-dsa-organization-criticizing-political-compromises/ https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/07/10/state-rep-connolly-walks-away-from-the-dsa-organization-criticizing-political-compromises/ A recent conference brought together democratic socialist elected officials from across the United States—including Bernie Sanders—to collaborate and strategize on advancing progressive public policy. DAVID DUHALDE JUNE 29, 2023  Democratic socialist conference attendees outside Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. on the weekend of June 16, 2023. (POLINA GODZ / JACOBIN) Over the weekend of June 16, 80 democratic socialist elected officials and their aides from across the country came together for the first U.S. socialist policy conference since the 1980s. The event, titled “How We Win: The Democratic Socialist Policy Agenda in Office,” was held at the Gallaudet University in Washington, DC and was hosted by Jacobin, The Nation and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, an educational sister 501©3 nonprofit of national DSA that is focused on pushing progressive policy, preserving socialist history and supporting left-wing activism.
Read more: https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-socialist-dsa-conference-bernie-sanders-cori-bush https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/dsa-fund-brings-together-socialists-in-office-for-d-c-conference/ https://prospect.org/politics/2023-06-21-socialist-emergence-democratic-tradition/ More info: https://prospect.org/politics/2023-06-21-socialist-emergence-democratic-tradition/ BY TOM GALLAGHER
“The unfortunate fact is that a third party campaign in America just won’t add up” In announcing that “We’re talking about empowering those who have been pushed to the margins because neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech,” West expresses a quite understandable “plague on both your houses” perspective of the sort that generally underlies third party efforts – and not just in the U.S. But what may be a viable political option in one country might not be one in another; it all depends upon the rules and laws that govern politics in the respective nations. Nothing illustrates the importance of the differences better than the contrasting experiences of the aforementioned Greens, who find themselves continuously embroiled in defending against charges of facilitating Republican presidencies, and that of their German namesake, arguably the foreign “third party” most familiar to Americans, a party that has successfully entered governments – on both the state and national level – on numerous occasions. Put in the most basic terms, we could say that the difference lies in the fact that where Germans operate within an “additive” political system, we Americans live in a “subtractive” one. ….. In our case, on the other hand, should West persist in running a third party presidential campaign, his potential voters will have no such option. Whether West actually considers a second Biden term as bad an outcome as a second for Trump – or a first for DeSantis – I can’t say, but I feel fairly certain that most voters open to his ideas do not. However, under our plurality-winner-take-all system of apportioning a state’s share of the Electoral College, after the voters have cast their votes for different parties there is no way that they can be recombined to block a Trump return. And while a third-party West vote might contribute to an anti-Republican majority in a particular state, it could also contribute to creating a Trump (or DeSantis) plurality in that same time. The system is in that sense “subtractive,” in that a voter who considers Trump (or DeSantis) the worst possible outcome but opts for a third-party subtracts a vote from the only anti-Trump vote count that matters in the end – that of the largest non-Republican party, which will be the Democrats, however welcome or unwelcome that may be to said voter. Read more. https://stansburyforum.com/2023/06/22/cornel-west-the-primaries-call |
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