The North Star Caucus for Socialism and Democracy has proposals for the DSA Convention this summer. The first one put forward here -- “Unite Against the Ultra-Right” -- is aimed at building a broad front against the incipient neo-fascism of the Republican Party. We urge all members of Democratic Socialists of America to sign on. A minimum of 300 signatures is required for a resolution to be considered at the convention. After you have signed, please circulate it among your comrades for support.

Here is the text:

Uniting Against the Ultra-Right 

Authors: Duane Campbell (Sacramento), Itzhak Epstein (New York City), Barbara Joye (Greater Atlanta), Max Sawicky (Metro DC)

Preamble:

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.

Budget and Staff Implications:

One staff person  will collaborate with other organizations in establishing the broad front and serve as a resource person to DSA on fighting the ultra-right. The broad front may establish its own staff and financial resources.

There will be a need for a staff person, if there isn't one yet, to look after cooperation and coordination with other democratic left organizations. This person will assist DSA bodies in working with their opposite numbers.

Resolved:

DSA should  urgently work in cooperation with  like-minded organizations to establish a broad front that is committed to the defeat of the ultra-right. The foundation of this block should rest on improved  cooperation and coordination among democratic left organizations  on issues such as the defense of democracy, the Green New Deal, labor organizing, reproductive choice, universal health care, racial justice, and progressive taxation.
 
PLEASE SIGN HERE

We urge you to circulate this blogpost URL.

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election but the forces he represented and the ideas he furthered – the contemporary US right – have not gone away. These forces are continuing their efforts to push the US – both at in the electoral and the extra-parliamentary terrains – further towards their anti-democratic vision for the U.S.

 NPEC is sponsoring an upcoming zoom session, Confronting the Threat of the Far Right.   

Session date: April 3, 2023
Session time: 5 PM PT/8 PM ET
Three sets of questions will be addressed in this session:
 

1. Who is the right, both electorally and in the larger cultural front?  What groups are the  most active?  What are the historical roots of the U.S. right?  How are these groups organized?  
2. The “right” has several ideological strand and beliefs.  What are these differences?  Is it possible to exploit potential divisions between libertarians, white evangelical Christian nationalists, para-militarists, white supremacists, etc. and other segments the right?
3. What should the broad left do to counter today’s right?  How should we organize and with what goals?  Where does DSA fit into in the effort to create a progressive counter-offensive to the right?

 
We will hear from and ask questions of Bill Fletcher, John Huntington, and Nancy McLean.  These three presenters have engaged with the US far right as analysts, organizers or both.  .  The presentations and discussion will help DSA members in our day-to-day organizing and will provide important context for our political thinking and work through the 2023 convention and beyond.
Join us on April 3.
Register for this exiting and important session here:

https://www.dsausa.org/calendar/confronting-www.dsausa.org/calendar/confronting-the-threat-of-the-far-rightthe-threat-of-the-far-right
 
 

We need to invest and expand our publications and media, not liquidate. 
 
By Alexander Hernández 
 (Includes Proposed Amendments) 

Since 2019 there have been four instances the convention has taken up questions referencing Editorial Boards. In one instance a reference to the Democratic Left Editorial Board and another to the NPCs role in overseeing all Editorial Boards. 
 
Two other instances were with reference to an Editorial Board orienting towards Latinx communities. In the first case, 2019 resolution Orienting towards Latinx communities was the most voted for resolution to pass on the consent agenda. The 2019-2021 NPC failed to implement this convention mandate. 
 
While an attempt to bring the issue to convention 2021, via resolution #36 Prioritizing Working-class Latino Organizing in DSA,  was ultimately tabled due to lack of time; the 2021-2023 NPC allowed for the originally passed mandate and follow up resolution to remain tabled. 
 
If the goal is to revitalize our publications, you do not do so by cutting the budget or consolidating the work. You do so by investing into our publications and media. And one crucial way already mandated is to create the editorial board for Latinos Socialistas. 
 
The reason our Democratic Left went from 18 pages to 4 is not from lack of volunteers and membership input, rather from a failure in leadership to act or rather even realize that a 20% budgetary cut across the board included the organization's publication
 
The current proposal circulating is misguided and should be rejected as currently presented.  In the event the proposal reaches convention, I would offer the  amendment  below to truly revitalize our publications and media as a top national priority. Starting by fulfilling our commitment of orienting and organizing Latinx communities. 
 
Proposed amendment to revitalize and expand DSA publications as national priority
 ( Editor's note. It has become clear through posts on social media that the original post below did not show all the details.  This was an error in our posting. 

Note; the substitute proposal is here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6IqVB0oCvJPhuRjTNpZpJxFCxHJe4DK/view?usp=drivesdk

This resolution  may not get to the convention.  It was developed to illustrate what was wrong with the original proposal. 

Proposed amendment to revitalize and expand DSA publications as national priority
 
Be it therefore resolved that the revitalization and expansion of DSA publications and media will be a top national priority.
Resolved the National Political Committee will initiate the selection of an Editorial Board as mandated by 2019 resolution #6 Orienting to Latinx Communities, that the Latinos Socialistas Editorial Board be composed of 9 4 Editors elected no later than 3 months after this each national convention by the NPC following a public call for nominations open to all DSA members in good standing,
 
Resolved that DSA’s publications will continue to be open to the participation of members in good standing; to that end, the NPC  will create a public sign-up form for DSA members to volunteer in producing  any publication (Latinos Socialistas, Democratic Left Print, Democratic Left Blog or Socialist Forum), and will follow up with each member who submits the form,
 
Resolved that the Editorial Board will choose among itself an Editor-in-Chief, functionally the chair, responsible for organizing meetings and ensuring tasks are bottom lined, and that all Board members have equal votes on matters,
 
 
 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6IqVB0oCvJPhuRjTNpZpJxFCxHJe4DK/view?usp=drivesdk

North Star member Bill Barclay breaks down the Silicon Valley Bank collapse here.

Excerpt:

Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe.
– David Sacks, PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley libertarian commentator, 3/10/2023

OK. We can all enjoy some schadenfreude as the Silicon Valley techno-libertarians discover that maybe there is a role for government, after all. Especially when their money in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) might vanish. Of course, it didn’t. It didn’t because those burdensome government agencies decided to make them whole, 100 cents on the dollar, including the more than 90% of deposits that were above the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance limit. . . .

Cindy Hahamovitch, William P. Jones, Joseph A. McCartin 
February 24, 2023
In These Times
​
​Something is stirring this spring. People in the U.S. are becoming increasingly interested in what commentators once called ​“the labor question,” following recent organizing victories at Starbucks, Amazon and Apple stores; well-publicized strikes of teachers, nurses and railway workers; and the unionization of staff, graduate assistants and even faculty at scores of campuses, including the recent successful strike of nearly 50,000 academic workers on the campuses of the University of California. 
Evidence of this mood shift is unmistakable this spring as students, campus staff and faculty, together with unions and community allies, are coming together on or adjacent to more than 50 campuses nationwide — including ours — to engage in a remarkable national teach-in on worker rights and organizing called Labor Spring.
Read more. In These Times.
Labor Spring Teach-Ins this Spring. 

by Bob Master in Convergence

February 14, 2023

Midterm wins bought organizing time for pro-democracy forces, but MAGA authoritarianism still menaces US politics. In “Pro-democracy Organizing Against Autocracy in the United States,” scholar/activists Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks map the threat and steps that could help defeat it. Convergence interviewed the two and will be publishing reflections and responses to the report. Bill Fletcher Jr. got the responses rolling. Here, Bob Master takes a close look at labor’s role in defending democracy. 

In “Pro-democracy Organizing Against Autocracy in the United States,” Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks issue a clarion call to progressive and social movement leaders to begin strategizing about how to defeat the authoritarian regime the ascendant faction of the Republican Party seems intent on imposing in this country. The two professors warn that the US is not immune from what they call a global “third wave of autocratization,” and identify key pillars of an effective pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian strategy. The centerpiece of this strategy is the construction of a broad, multiracial, cross-class united front, comprised of a wide range of state, local and national progressive, constituency and movement organizations, which could begin planning a multi-faceted resistance to authoritarianism. 

The authors argue that the labor movement has a crucial role to play in this alliance, including organizing strikes and slow-downs to build “coercive” pressure on an anti-democratic government, should one come to power. But interviews with half a dozen high-ranking current and former union staffers suggest that the US labor movement is largely unprepared for—if not downright skittish about—taking up the question of how to contest a fundamental assault on democracy. Only in states like Texas—where far-right assaults on voting rights, local government autonomy, and educational free speech pose an existential threat to workers’ rights—has the labor movement fully engaged in the struggle to safeguard democracy.  
Bob was the  longtime political and legislative director of District One of Communication Workers of America, and a co-founder and organizer of Working Families Party.

Read the rest at ​Convergence

by ​Jessica Benjamin 

I write this with great appreciation for Leo Casey’s clear and cogent theses on the need for us to support and further the development of a broad-based struggle against the authoritarian Right. I fully endorse Comrade Leo’s analysis of the danger of ultra-leftist rejection of working within and around the Democratic Party, as a surrender of that arena to the often ineffectual center—although mercifully other left progressive organizations have continued their important work. 

But there is an interesting lacuna in the elucidation of political state struggle (Thesis 4) and civil society (Thesis 5). The latter section is particularly helpful, in my view,  because it  addresses not only civil society institutions as part of struggles for hegemony but also the all-important way that ideology is implemented by the Right. 

by​ Leo Casey.
​
.1.
The immediate and present danger of an authoritarianism of the far right, in the U.S. and internationally, is now widely recognized on the broad left. The fundamentally racist character of this danger is also widely acknowledged. 
 
To focus on making this case is to preach to the converted, pointing out the glaringly obvious. Even on the ultra-left, the general point is not so much disputed as completely ignored, especially in prescriptions for action, as if this paramount danger had no important ramifications for what the left should do politically. Our emphasis should shift to what is to be done in this moment, given the authoritarian danger.
 
.2.
The critical question before us is how to respond to the danger of authoritarianism from the far right: what are the strategic imperatives of this moment, given this danger?  
 
A grounded left strategic approach begins with the reality we face: the nature of the authoritarian threat from the far right, with its drive to institutionalize white supremacy and autocratic minority rule in the state, and the real danger it poses to essential democratic institutions and cultural norms. Even in their increasingly attenuated forms, political democracy and civil liberties in the U.S. are the indispensable foundation for the organization and struggles of working people, people of color, women, LGBTQ folk, immigrants, and religious minorities. Consequently, a serious left strategy prioritizes the defeat of the neo-fascist threat, which in the U.S. takes the form of a MAGA-dominated Republican Party. In this historical conjuncture, the MAGA forces are our immediate and primary enemy, and their defeat is our first and most important objective. Since the U.S. left is manifestly too small, too weak, and too organizationally immature to accomplish the goal of defeating the authoritarian danger posed by the MAGA forces on its own, it is necessary to join in organizing and to participate in a broad center-left coalition to accomplish this goal.[i]
 
By contrast, those in the thrall of ultra-left dogma operate from fixed and unyielding first principles that always override concrete conditions: nothing in the emergence of a grave neo-fascist danger has caused them to reconsider their absolute prioritization of opposition to the Democratic Party. From their perspective, the liberal and centrist forces in the Democratic Party are ever and always the primary political enemy, as they spread ‘illusions’ about what is required for real social change, and so keep working people from flocking to the banner of working class revolution. Take the recent panel “DSA Adrift?,” featuring various ultra-left currents in and around DSA: the entire focus of the event – every question and every answer, all prepared in advance – was on the ‘corruption’ of the Democratic Party, the ‘opportunism’ of DSA’s elected members in the U.S. Congress, and the need for an ideologically driven vanguard party dedicated to the precepts of ‘revolutionary Marxism.’ In the eyes of the panel’s organizers and participants, the looming danger of neo-fascism did not even merit discussion. This is a politics that brings to mind the refrain of the old Talking Heads song, “same as it ever was”: if a time machine could assemble this panel at various points in the last one hundred years (say 1923, 1935, 1945, 1968, 1984, and 2001), its participants would offer the same political analyses and political prescriptions in all but the most minor details.
 
The left can and should put forward its own analysis of the danger of authoritarianism from the far right and its program for how to defeat it within this center-left coalition. Contrary to ultra-left doctrine, there is nothing about participation in a broad front that precludes making an intelligent democratic socialist case for how that front can best achieve its objectives. During the 1930s and 1940s, the left did precisely that in many different nations where it participated in a united front against the classical form of fascism; in that context, it grew significantly in size and influence. But other forces in the broad center-left coalition must be treated as allies and partners, not enemies, for the left to get a proper hearing for its analysis and program.

The Russo-Ukrainian War and the rest of us.

By Bill Fletcher Jr.

The Nation January 20, 2023

The announcement of the Ukraine Solidarity Network is a small step in breaking a strange combination of silence, ambivalence, and complicity within some left-leaning circles regarding the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Code Pink, for instance, which is outspoken on international affairs, falls into the “ambivalent” category, criticizing the Russian invasion—but not supporting Ukrainian resistance. Black Alliance for Peace is an example of a group that is complicit through its support of the invasion.

Particularly since the end of the Cold War and the turn towards capitalism within China, much of the US left and progressive circles have found themselves adrift in navigating the stormy seas of neoliberal globalization and growing right-wing authoritarianism. Given the crimes of the United States—domestically and internationally—it came as no surprise that a great deal of the attention of left and progressive forces has been on the posture and practice of the US government (and its allies). This approach, however, began running into complications when governments in the Global South that had appeared to have embraced a left, anti-imperialist approach, began embarking on approaches that were either complicit with neoliberal capital and/or undertook repressive measures against their populations—in the latter case in response to popular protests. Zimbabwe under former President Robert Mugabe is a case in point; the Ortega regime in Nicaragua is a more current example. In both cases, the left-wing “bona fides” of these regimes covered over an increasingly authoritarian approach, often mixed with corruption. 

Read the rest at The Nation

By Max Sawicky

In keeping with my obsessions on my substack, I need to point out that the antics of Trump’s MAGA caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives can distract from what I see as the other key dimension of political struggle in the U.S. — state and local government.

I don’t need to recapitulate at any length the insanity in the Federal government. Bolstered by a packed Supreme Court, the GOP is angling to hold the world economy hostage via threats to block a routine increase in the debt limit. The ransom would be cuts in Social Security and Medicare. A default by the U.S. government on debts for the safest securities in international finance — U.S. government bonds — would have unknowable consequences for the world economy. (Note that in finance, since time is money, even just paying a debt late is a default.) And knowing — finding out — is not something that should be contemplated. Needless to say, debt limit increases during the Bush or Trump Administrations never came in for parallel scrutiny.

The lesser threat is to hold up future budgets and provoke a new Federal government shut-down. It is lesser because government by continuing resolution, also described as “flat funding,” is damaging but short of catastrophic. The Rs dirty secret is they like their own pet appropriations bills too. Deals can and will be struck.

As I said, all that distracts from the equally dangerous Trumpist organizing at the grassroots. As Trump crony and convicted felon Steve Bannon said on his podcast: “The path to save the nation is very simple — it’s going to go through the school boards.” The article linked above provides some encouragement that the effort is not invincible, but still there is no sign of any let-up here in Virginia. Governor Glenn Youngkin, failed account manager chased out of the Carlyle Group, is zeroing in on the Fairfax public schools, race-baiting the school board and administration over their efforts in the field of diversity-equity-inclusion (DEI).

It should be said plainly: opposition to admissions criteria to elite schools that allow for some flexibility when it comes to people of color, or criticism of DEI policies as an affront to “merit,” are appeals to racism. The implication that allowance for factors in addition to test scores and grades is a rejection of “merit” rests on a definition of merit consistent with white supremacy that precludes equal opportunity for African-American and Hispanic students.

The political game here is to hive off some Asian-American voters from the Democratic Party, completely similar to gambits in years ago with respect to Jews. In the latter case it failed, since we Jews still disproportionately vote Democrat, understanding that at bottom, these bigots are not and have never been our friends. I doubt that Asian-Americans will be any less insightful in this respect.

As I’ve written, the Republican ascendancy in Virginia, in the form of a turnover in the offices of governor, attorney-general, and lieutenant governor, plus the lower house of the state legislature, rests on a year of demagogy regarding Critical Race Theory, DEI, alleged transgender student predators, and dirty books in school libraries. The Fairfax Foofaraw is just the latest salvo in this bombardment of bigotry.

Youngkin is relatively slippery in this respect, angling between the old GOP establishment and the new extremists. So far he has failed to register in presidential polls, but it’s easy to see him on a national ticket with Florida’s execrable, unambiguously MAGA governor Ron DeSantis. Youngkin is term-limited in Virginia and doesn’t have anywhere else to go. There isn’t all that much daylight between him and our very moderate senators — Tim Kaine and Mark Warner.

The new Republican Party is dedicated to electoral tactics that cement them into power indefinitely. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio are cases in point: the GOP majorities in state legislatures are grossly inferior to their shares of registered voters in those states. When it comes to drawing district lines, where Democrats play fair and Republicans play dirty, the dismal outcomes are not difficult to foresee. When the Rs lose a statewide office like governor, where gerrymandering is not feasible, their super-majority state legislatures try to enact new bills denuding Democratic governors of executive powers.

“NeoFascism” may be a little strong to describe all this, but the fact remains that the Republican Party of yesteryear has been transformed by a line of deplorables from Newt Gingrich to Pat Buchanan to the TEA Party to Donald Trump to whatever comes next. To me, any movement that is sufficiently authoritarian as to be intent on eliminating democratic institutions qualifies.

Rerunning all the old civil rights struggles is not a pleasant prospect. Ideally we would be fighting new battles to win new ground, rather than struggling to retain past victories. Unfortunately, the trend in Virginia is pointing to the latter burden.

This is the sum and substance of my own campaign for the state legislature, coming out of Loudoun County.