​by Harold Meyerson
​It’s not only those who forget history who may be condemned to relive it. Less forgivably, some who remember history condemn themselves, and others, to endure horrors they clearly recall.
No one can argue that Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and editor of Jacobin, doesn’t remember history—socialist history particularly. His book The Socialist Manifesto, published last year, contains the best short (150-page) evaluative history of socialism in thought and action that’s appeared in decades. The strengths and limits of European social democracy, Russia’s and China’s blood-drenched variants, the Sisyphean ordeals of American socialists—all get a smart and balanced treatment at Sunkara’s hands.
One grim interlude that Sunkara dispatches with appropriate contempt is that of Third Period Communism, the doctrine that Stalin propounded in the early 1930s, and that the German Communist Party faithfully and tragically acted upon. Third Period Communism asserted that social democrats were actually fascists—“social fascists” was the term—who posed a threat to socialism and humanity’s future every bit as grave and imminent as fascists themselves.
Faithful to Stalin’s diktats, Germany’s communists refused to make common cause with the Social Democrats, their rival left party, to block Hitler’s ascent. Instead, they treated Hitler as just another, if more violent, capitalist tool whose excesses would only hasten the revolution, while directing most of their boundless ire at the Social Democrats. “For every action Stalin took to defeat fascism,” Sunkara writes, “he took another to undermine the anti-fascist struggle—supporting the disastrous Third Period policy that directed Communists to see social democrats as their primary enemy.”
By the early 1930s, it took almost superhuman myopia to miss the growing Nazi threat, but Germany’s Communists were up to the challenge. As historian Michael Goldfield noted in the pages of Jacobin, “Despite huge growth in Nazi membership and votes and the growing murderous violence of their storm troopers, the CP continually underestimated Nazi strength.”
But having duly chronicled and edited accounts of this blindness to the fascist threat, Sunkara appears to have caught a case of it himself. In April, he tweeted that he’d vote come November not for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, but for Green Party presumptive nominee Howie Hawkins.
He pointed out that he had no desire to build the Green Party as such, and he encouraged fellow lefties to continue to work for causes like Medicare for All. He chose not to mention that because he’s a New Yorker, his vote for Hawkins carried no risk of throwing electoral votes to Donald Trump. But his rejection of Biden, if followed by his readers, could be lethal in close swing states.

​Ed.note.  DSA member Sunkara posted an updated view of consequence to this essay. It was posted after the essay was written.  Recommended.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/opinion/socialists-biden-trump.html?smid=fb-share
 
In his refusal to vote for Biden, Sunkara has company on the left. By a vote of 12 to 4, the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America recently declined to encourage members in swing states even to “grapple with the question of voting for Biden.” While polling shows that roughly 80 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters say they’ll vote for the former vice president, and while the sentiments of DSA’s (thus far unpolled) rank-and-file members remain unknown, there’s a wing of the democratic left for whom a Biden vote looks to be unthinkable.
The history of the American left contains plenty of precedent for such reluctance. Some of the most active members of DSA hold to a perspective honed for decades in Trotskyist and other socialist sects that shunned involvement in the Democratic Party, even though DSA was founded as an organization that encouraged socialists to build the movement by competing openly within the Democratic Party. Indeed, DSA’s growth spurt since 2015 (from an organization of 6,000 members to one of 66,000 today) is largely due to the groundbreaking campaigns that socialists Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others have waged within the party—compelling those with more sectarian perspectives to join DSA rather than continue talking to the same marginal few.
But the real precedent for Sunkara and the dozen DSA National Political Committee members isn’t Trotskyist or Debsian or anything like that. It’s Third Period Communism.

​

• Dr. William Barclay, Chicago Political Economy Group

 
What will the recovery from the slump driven by COVID-19 look like?  There are arguments for at least three different paths. We can call them: V, U, and L shaped. (A fourth, W-shaped, recovery can be seen as simply a variant of either V or U.) In each case, the letter describes (i) the path the overall economy is expected to take; and, (ii) importantly, defines the time frame of the recovery.  Recovery can be best understood as getting back to and exceeding the previous levels of GDP.  It does not necessarily mean back to the pre-COVID-19 growth path.    
 
The next three sections of this paper describe the arguments for each of the three recovery scenarios. The fourth section asks what we might learn anything from the economic impact of the 1918/19 influenza pandemic.  In a very brief conclusion, I make a guess at the probability, as of mid-May when I am writing, for each recovery scenario. 
 

1. V-Shaped Recovery

 
This scenario is the most optimistic.  In this projection, the economy will rebound quickly, the recession, while likely deep, will be short-lived, although the United States will probably not return – or at least not quickly – to the pre-COVID-19 growth trend.  We will, however, embark on new growth path with GDP expected to exceed the 2019 level by late 2020 or in the first half of 2021.
 
There are several points that favor this scenario.  First, and probably most important, is consumer spending.  The U.S. economy has been consumption-driven for the past three decades. Personal consumption expenditures account for almost 70% of GDP.  The COVID-19 slump is primarily the result of a sharp decline in consumption.  This dramatic drop in consumption has been driven by the restriction on personal movement, including social distancing, and the closure of many businesses and non-profits.  Once these restrictions are relaxed, there will be pent up demand – for leisure, household goods, sporting events, food and drink, etc.  And, because of the payments to families earning less than $75,000 annually plus the enhanced payments from the four-month boost in unemployment insurance, there will be some disposable income available to satisfy this demand.
 
Even the favoritism to the ultra-wealthy in the form of write offs against some business profits (available only for households with incomes over $500,000) and the shoveling of money into the pockets of large corporations may strengthen the case for the V-shaped recovery. Since the top 10% of households account for 30-35% of total consumption spending, their post-pandemic consumption decisions could drive a rapid recovery.
 
There is also a psychological dimension here: many people, especially those who indulged in “retail therapy” pre-pandemic, will be so overjoyed to have the chance to get out and about that they may even spend at a higher rate than usual. (Of course, doing so has more negative long-term debt implications.)  The result could even be some limited, local, and short-term shortage of some goods – but not oil. In fact, the likely ongoing oil glut will reduce the price to travel – either by car or, as airlines seek to entice customers back, by air.  Thus another avenue of consumption will open.
 
In short, this model predicts that a consumption-led downturn will be followed, quickly, by a consumption-led recovery. 
 
A wide array of commentators and policy leaders have argued that the V-shaped recovery is the most likely outcome of the COVID-19 slump.  Certainly, the stock market’s recent behavior suggests that many investors see much the same path.  From early February to mid-March the S&P 500 fell more than 1000 points, but it has now (mid-May) recovered about half of that decline.  (It is less clear what the bond market is saying.  Yields have continued to decline, suggesting little future demand for capital.) 
 
Both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers have articulated this view.  Economic commentators Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have also made the case for this path to recovery.  The V-shaped recovery scenario also appears to be favored by the International Monetary Fund, although with Vs of different slopes for various countries.  The recent Congressional Budget Office projections look like a V-shaped recovery, with the expectation that 2021 GDP will exceed 2020 and almost equal that of 2019.  And Trump, of course, wants it to become reality.  

MAY 12, 2020
Following the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders from the presidential race, our country has lost the only viable Presidential candidate advocating the comprehensive reform we need to address this pandemic head-on. Sanders’s exit leaves Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. His differences with Sanders and the broader left could not be starker, as was recently made clear when he committed to vetoing Medicare for All, Sanders’s signature legislative priority. Biden’s recent, disgraceful embrace of anti-Chinese xenophobia in his general election campaign, and credible allegations against him, are dangerous examples of how corporate Democrats continue to fail at stopping the ugly advance of far-right politics, racism, and misogyny.
The Democratic Socialists of America will not be endorsing Biden. We fully agree with Senator Sanders that taking on the reactionary, racist, and nationalist right wing represented by Donald Trump is imperative for the survival of millions of working-class people across the country and the world. We believe that the only way to beat the radical right once and for all is through a socialist movement that draws millions of disillusioned working-class people, here and abroad, into the political arena. We will continue to welcome the millions of people who supported Bernie’s platform and are looking for a political home.
We also recognize this moment to strategically strengthen our movements and power.  We will fight like hell against the Trump agenda by running pressure campaigns, engaging in mutual aid, helping to build strong, democratic unions, building coalitions with those organizing against capitalism, acting in solidarity with immigrants and incarcerated people against deportation and detention, working to protect tenants and unhoused people, organizing to expand voting rights, locations, and the right to vote by mail. We will demand COVID relief that addresses inequality through a lens of reparations, push for an end to sanctions that are killing millions and fuel militarism in many parts of the world, and will back democratic socialist candidates at the grassroots level. That’s because we know that politics does not begin every four years with a national election: when we get organized, we become the agents of the change that will win the better world the working class desires and deserves.
 
 https://www.dsausa.org/statements/beyond-bernie-a-statement-from-the-dsa-national-political-committee/ 

A Left Strategy for 2020 and Beyond
 
Bill Fletcher, Carl Davidson.
( Ed. Note. This piece was written in early 2019. The strategy is significant. It is even more important now that Bernie has withdrawn from the campaign.)
As the 2020 presidential campaigns begin in 2019, nearly everyone on the left knows the stakes are high. The defeat of Donald Trump and the ejection of his right-wing and white supremacist populist blocfrom the centers of political power is a tactical goal of some urgency not only for Democrats but also for leftists. The outcome of the upcoming election will have a direct effect on thwarting right-wing populism and the clear and present danger of incipient fascism and war.
The removal of Trump’s bloc would also remove a stubborn obstacle to a range of urgent progressive reforms much needed at the grassroots — Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, no new wars and interventions, a $15 minimum wage, and so on. Given how unlikely Trump’s resignation or impeachment is, the election of the candidate running on the Democratic Party line seems like the likeliest path toward his removal.
What would be the most effective way for the left, and especially the socialist left, to go about unseating the Trump bloc? The most fruitful strategy would not only accomplish that goal, but would also strengthen the left’s leverage in other upcoming rounds of class and democratic struggles, keeping the country on a socialist road.
Electoral Politics Is Not a Sideshow
Work in elections is always conflicted for socialists. There is a uniqueness to any campaign in that it is time-limited. There are specific tensions that are unleashed given the intensity of the effort, but one knows that on a specific day — Election Day — it all ends. There is no seamless spillover, moreover, into organizing on-going political organizations and their many longer-term mass campaigns, such as organizing the unorganized, or unionizing the South. Here the time frame is far more open. The election-of-the-day looks a lot like the Gramscian “war of movement,” mobilizing forces quickly for the taking of a strong point of power. The other protracted base-building campaigns are more like the “war of position,” gathering strength, taking or winning over stronghold by stronghold, concentrating our forces on the weak spot to make a breakthrough.
What we want to argue here is that the “war of position” and the “war of movement” are best seen as tightly interconnected, like casting out nets and drawing them in. The art and science of strategy and tactics, then, is to know which to emphasize and when, which is not so easy with a battleground always in motion.
This requires a wide-awake assessment of our current conjuncture, a fresh survey of the terrain, and a good estimate of the balance of forces. The dramatic growth of left forces since 2016 — especially Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) surging to 60,000-plus members located in every congressional district, plus the election in 2018 of two DSA members to Congress and many more to state and local offices — is the most obvious change. But we are still in a period of overall strategic defensive, within which we view the war of position strategically and the wars of movement tactically. This is our orientation through 2020 and its immediate aftermath.
Election campaigns are not a sideshow. We use them to make our local base communities stronger, more connected and more aware.
This means election campaigns are not a bothersome, if still required sideshow. They are at the center of our work. We use them to make our local base communities stronger, more connected and more aware. Through electoral campaigns, our mass outreach can be magnified tenfold or even more. And we integrate electoral work in creative ways with all of our non-electoral mass campaigns for organizing our respective base communities.
But there is also a range of ways to do electoral work: effective, ineffective and in-between. The most ineffective way is merely to contact the local Democrats and volunteer for whatever task they might assign to you. At the other end is organizing a left-progressive bloc under their tent that becomes stronger than the regular Democrats themselves, where they might even begin to take our lead locally.
The starting point is getting a good grasp on exactly what the Democratic Party is. To say that it is “capitalist” is true, but only tells us something at the general level. Repeatedly, all too many of us on the left misread the Democratic Party and believe that it is actually a political party. It is not, at least in any regular meaning of the term.
The Democrats, instead, are an alliance of class interests and grassroots civic forces that exist in the form of a political party, dominated by a segment of the capitalist class. Since the 1980s, that segment has moved further and further in the direction of neoliberalism. The politics of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council represented a rejection of traditional liberalism and a rejection of the progressive populism represented by forces such as the Rainbow insurgency of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
​
In many countries, the Democratic Party would exist as a coalition in which component “parties” were engaged and disengaged depending on the moment.
In many other countries, the Democratic Party would, in fact, exist as a bloc or coalition in which some of the component “parties” were engaged and disengaged depending on the moment. Thus, a healthy sentiment has emerged on today’s left that the way we should participate in electoral politics is through our existing organizations rather than simply jumping into an official campaign.
In other words, we should not provide volunteers for a campaign of the regulars, but instead, take on campaign work that we do in our own names. This sentiment arises from an understandable concern that electoral politics can suck in and suck up all the energy from the left. The danger, however, is that such a view can alternatively lead to practical sectarianism. It thus must be deployed carefully.
Think of it this way: If the only way that the left participates in electoral politics is on its own terms, that limits the possibilities for building broader fronts. But even if it participates in the campaigns of more mainstream Democrats (but only operating within its own formations), it reduces the possibility of bringing together a broad assortment of left forces to collaborate more and exert more influence on the ultimate direction of a campaign.
We should not abandon working within campaigns of non-left Democrats. We should, however, ascertain what is gained or lost through working within such efforts, while at the same time creating and strengthening independent political organizations that help left/progressive forces to build up independent base areas.
What Are Our Options?
We want to start with a more realistic and nuanced view of the Democratic Party. First, it is often weak at the grassroots in many areas. It consists of a cluster of lawyers and publicists around a few incumbents, lists of voters and donors and not much else. There are exceptions — such as the network of working-class Democratic Clubs in California, and in the ward organizations in a few larger city machines.
We should not provide volunteers for a campaign of the regulars, but take on campaign work that we do in our own names.
But its main strength is at the top, and rests in the Democratic National Committee-aligned think tanks and big-donor PACs. In the Congress itself, it operates first in caucuses with shared platforms or interests, and second, in clusters of these caucuses or even subdivisions of caucuses.
At the moment, there are two major caucuses: the social democratic Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and the neo-Keynesian New Democrat Coalition (NDC)/Third Way Caucus. A minor one, the Blue Dog Caucus, seeks compromise with the GOP neoliberals in the South and West, as well as with health insurance companies. DSA, Working Families Party (WFP) and Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) make up the left wing of the CPC. The Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others like them divide their forces between the NDC and the CPC, as does labor, although some unions are also working with Blue Dogs around tariffs.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus gets even greater reach at the grassroots through Our Revolution and Indivisible. Our Revolution grew out of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign and has hundreds of local chapters. Indivisible was formed in the protests around Trump’s inauguration, first around a manual on how to organize. It now boasts a reported 3,800 local groups.
The implications? Socialists shouldn’t work “within the Democratic party,” but with one of its clusters, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, especially its DSA/WFP/PDA left wing and its mass allies. The Progressive Caucus is by far the largest of the Democratic Caucuses, with numbers above 100 members (compared with the smaller New Democrats and Blue Dogs).
The goal would be to develop and expand the CPC, win over as many of the New Democrats as possible, and isolate the Blue Dogs if they can’t be budged. How could people on the left do so? By simply fighting for what people need, defined as those redistributionist and structural reforms that can unite a progressive majority of voters. Medicare for All is now a case in point, and the Green New Deal is becoming one. When connected with the base communities in the local congressional districts, the left could elect progressives until it becomes a solid majority among Democrats in the House.
This will eventually raise the stakes and the tensions to a new level. The left forces under the Dem tent will be tempered by the need for wider left-center unity to defeat far-right measures and candidates, but we will wage our “war of position” nonetheless.
Back on the Bloc?
Some on the left have asked: Why doesn’t DSA just start a new party? The answer: because DSA and its close allies, objectively, are already helpingto do so by growing the social-democratic bloc and giving it an organized and independent grassroots base in the working class and communities of the oppressed. But the work begins under the Democratic tent as a largely inside job. Once you get over 100,000 or even 200,000 new DSA members from the organizing and base-building of backing Sanders on the Democratic line, you’ve created at least one key component of the large bloc needed for a new First Party.
Much of what Sanders articulated in 2016 — and was treated as radical at the time — has come to be accepted since.
More. 
Read the entire piece here.  It is both long, and significant. 
https://truthout.org/articles/a-left-strategy-for-the-2020-elections-and-beyond/
 
Reposted from Thuthout.org
 
Bill Fletcher will be one of the participants in the We Are The Future conversation on May 7.  Register at DSA or at Dissent.

  ​ Peter Dreier,
Outside the U.S., May 1 is international workers’ day. In Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Canada it’s normally observed with speeches, rallies, and demonstrations calling for higher wages and improved working conditions. Unlike the rest of the world’s democracies, the United States, which alone among first-world nations doesn’t require employers to provide workers with paid vacations, doesn’t celebrate May Day as an official national holiday.
This year, the global Covid-19 pandemic will keep most workers around the world in their homes on May Day. But Americans are more aware of the plight of workers than at any time in decades. 
Despite the Trump administration’s incompetence and indifference in handling the virus crisis and the economic collapse, the courage and resilience of front-line health care workers, grocery store and drug store employees, farm workers, food processing workers, and many others are in the news. 
Trump’s most recent demand – that workers in meat-processing plants return to work as “essential” employees, with no guarantee of adequate safety measures – is is yet another example of why we need a stronger labor movement.
Few sectors have been more disrupted by the current crisis than the tourism and sports industries, where millions of hotel, restaurant, stadium, and sports arena workers have lost their jobs. Last week, the labor movement in Los Angeles – which is heavily dependent on tourism – won a big victory when the City Council passed an ordinance by a 15-0 vote to require those businesses to offer jobs in the hospitality and other sectors to their former employees, based on seniority, at their existing wage levels, when they start rehiring. The measure will guarantee that workers are not replaced by newer, cheaper labor once the economy rebounds. UNITE HERE (the hotel workers union), the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor spearheaded the campaign for the law. That coalition will now seek to get the state legislature to adopt a similar bill.
But in too many other cities around the country, the 28 million people who have already applied for unemployment insurance remain vulnerable to further trauma, even if the economy starts to recover. The current crisis has exposed the fragility of the nation’s economy, as well as its health care and housing systems. As a result, many progressives are demanding a dramatic rethinking of what the country should do to improve living and working conditions for America’s families. 
That’s precisely what the nation’s radicals were thinking in the late 19thCentury when they first developed the idea for May Day. Yes, this international celebration of working-class solidarity was started in the United States by labor organizers. The holiday Americans had invented soon spread around the world, even if it never earned official recognition here.
The original May Day was a byproduct of the movement for an eight-hour workday. After the Civil War, unregulated capitalism ran rampant in America. It was the Gilded Age, a time of merger mania, increasing concentration of wealth, and growing political influence by corporate power brokers known as Robber Barons. 
As the gap between the rich and other Americans widened dramatically, workers began to resist in a variety of ways. The first major wave of labor unions pushed employers to limit the workday to 10, then eight, hours. The 1877 strike by tens of thousands of railroad, factory and mine workers — which shut down the nation’s major industries and was brutally suppressed by the corporations and their friends in government — was the first of many mass actions to demand living wages and humane working conditions. By 1884, the campaign had gained enough momentum that the predecessor to the American Federation of Labor adopted a resolution at its annual meeting, “that eight hours shall constitute legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.”
On that first May Day, unions and radical groups orchestrated work actions and large-scale demonstrations in cities across the country. More than 500,000 workers went on strike or marched in solidarity and even more people protested in the streets. In Chicago, a labor stronghold, at least 30,000 workers struck. Rallies and parades across the city more than doubled that number, and the May 1 demonstrations continued for several days. The protests were mostly nonviolent, but they included skirmishes with strikebreakers, company-hired thugs, and police.
On May 3, at a rally outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company factory, police fired on the crowd, killing at least two workers. The next day, at a rally at Haymarket Square to protest the shootings, police moved in to clear the crowd. Someone threw a bomb at the police, killing at least one officer. Another seven policemen were killed during the ensuing riot, and police gunfire killed at least four protesters and injured many others.
After a controversial investigation, seven anarchists were sentenced to death for murder, while another was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The anarchists won global notoriety, being seen as martyrs by many radicals and reformers, who viewed the trial and executions as politically motivated.
Within a few years, inspired by both the American labor organizers and the Haymarket martyrs, unions and radical groups around the world had established May Day as an international holiday to celebrate the ongoing struggle for the eight-hour day, workers’ rights and social justice. 
In the U.S., however, the burgeoning Knights of Labor, uneasy with May Day’s connection to anarchists and other radicals, adopted another day to celebrate workers’ rights. In 1887, Oregon was the first state to make “Labor Day” an official holiday, celebrated in September. Other states soon followed. 
In 1894, the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company to demand lower rents (Pullman was a company town that owned its employees’ homes) and higher pay following huge layoffs and wage cuts. In solidarity with the Pullman workers, railroad workers across the country boycotted the trains with Pullman cars, paralyzing the nation’s economy as well as its mail service. President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and called out 12,000 soldiers to break the strike. They crushed the walkout and killed at least two protesters. 
Six days later, Cleveland — facing worker protests for his repression of the Pullman strikers — signed a bill creating Labor Day as an official national holiday in September. He hoped that giving the working class a day off to celebrate one Monday a year might pacify them.
For most of the 20th century, Labor Day was reserved for festive parades, picnics, and speeches sponsored by unions in major cities. Meanwhile, May 1 faded away as a day of protest in America, even though the Communist Party and other radical groups tried to keep the tradition alive. 
In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, with a renewed Red Scare still in full swing, even in the wake of the most virulent forms of McCarthyism, President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as Loyalty Day. Each subsequent president has issued a similar proclamation, although few Americans know about or celebrate the day.
However, things have begun to change recently. In 2006, some U.S. unions and immigrant rights groups resurrected May Day as an occasion for protest. That year, millions of people in over 100 cities — including more than a million in Los Angeles, 200,000 in New York, and 300,000 in Chicago — participated in May Day demonstrations. Each year since immigrant workers and their allies have adopted May Day as an occasion for protest.
America is now in the midst of a new Gilded Age with a new group of corporate Robber Barons, many of them operating on a global scale. The top of the income scale has the biggest concentration of income and wealth since 1928. Several decades of corporate-backed assaults on unions have left only seven percent of private-sector employees with union cards. More than half of America’s 15 million union members now work for the government (representing 37 percent of all government employees), so business groups and conservative politicians have targeted public-sector unions for destruction. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel opposed federal relief funds to cities and states facing bankruptcy and massive layoffs, a plan designed to weaken government employee unions, who have led the fight against Trump and the Republicans. Meanwhile, a Brookings Institution report released in November found that more than 53 million people, or 44 percent of all workers ages 18 to 64, earn low hourly wages. Many families need more than two jobs to make ends meet, including one-fifth of all schoolteachers.
But as wages and living standards for the majority of Americans have declined in the past decade, the appeal of unions has started to make a comeback. 
The new slogan for many unions is now “One job should be enough.” Congress hadn’t increased the federal minimum wage ($7.25) since 2009, so activists launched “The Fight for $15,” with wildcat strikes at fast-food and retail outlets prompting successful legislative initiatives and ballot campaigns. According to the National Employment Law Project, 24 states and 48 cities and counties will raise their minimum wages sometime in 2020. In 32 of those jurisdictions, it will reach or surpass $15 per hour. Activists also pressured McDonald’s, Walmart, Disney, Bank of America, and other large employers into raising their pay scales. The idea of a $15 minimum wage, a pipe dream in 2010, is now mainstream.
The fight for higher wages has coincided with an upsurge of successful strikes by GM workers, and of teachers in both red and blue states. According to a recent Gallup poll, public support for unions reached a two-decade peak of 64 percent. There’s a growing demand for paid family leave – a policy that, had it been in place three months ago, would have lessened the suffering caused by the pandemic. During the current election season, many Democratic politicians have called for a federal $15 minimum wage, unlinking health insurance from jobs, reform of labor laws to make it easier for workers to unionize, a requirement that workers elect representatives to serve on the boards of U.S. corporations. 
Workers at Amazon, Walmart, and other companies will be engaged in a one-day job action on Friday. Renters around the country have planned a one-day rent strike. 
So, while there may not be big parades and mass protests on May Day in this pandemic year, there’s no reason why Americans can’t join together to sing “Solidarity Forever” –even if remotely — while sheltering in place. 
Peter Dreier is Professor of Politics at Occidental College. You can tweet with him @PeterDreier.
 

May 1, 2020
On April 13, 2020 Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden for President. It is highly likely that Biden will be nominated at the Democratic National Convention. This is, of course, disappointing to the movement that coalesced around Bernie’s campaign, and to the many DSAers that have played an active role within it. 
 
At the DSA convention in August 2019, DSA adopted a resolution to not endorse a Democrat if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee (Resolution 15). We respect the decision that DSA should not explicitly endorse a candidate for president who is not a democratic socialist. We are confident that DSA members recognize the danger of further consolidation of the nativist movement and that we will work with our allies to defeat Donald Trump.
 
Donald Trump is unfit to be president. The list of his crimes is long and well known. The most glaring failures, corruption and depravity of his presidency have become fully realized with the Covid 19 crisis.  The death toll of Covid 19 has struck the working-class as a whole, and African Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color in particular, in greater proportion than people working from home. Trump’s racism in calling the coronavirus the “China Virus” has incited many racist acts against Chinese Americans and Asian Americans more broadly. 
 
Despite Biden’s shortcomings and checkered past, a full array of issues overrides our reservations about him. At stake are issues such as judicial nominations; the climate crisis; women’s rights and reproductive choice; people of color’s and LGBTQ rights; the assault on immigrants; and the increasing burdens upon the working class. Most troubling is the Trump presidency’s promotion of incipient neofascism and racist white ethno-nationalism, and his ongoing efforts to dismantle governmental and social institutions.
 
We therefore ask DSA members and allies who live in battleground or swing states and congressional districts to organize for the defeat of Trump. Of course, this includes voting for Biden, but it also means much more. DSA members should work with the myriad of organizations that will seek to push Biden to the left, in terms of both his policies and his appointees, including his choice for running mate. It also means helping elect democratic socialist and progressive candidates, especially those supporting Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, and taxing the rich, to Congress and state houses across the country.  Ending control of the US Senate by the current GOP majority in thrall to the radical right is particularly crucial.
 
We understand that the nomination of Biden confirms that for 2020 we have to choose between one candidate who is far from being a democratic socialist and another who is close to being a neofascist, but it is clear that another Trump term would be horrific. The opportunity to work with other socialist, progressive, and liberal groups can further build democratic socialism in the USA. We acknowledge that during the primary season working-class voters and African American voters made a choice that they felt was paramount in saving their lives. We commit to listen to the concerns of voters of color with respect and trust.
 
We ask that DSA members in decisive locations work to defeat Trump in broad coalitions or fronts that allow others to see that DSA members are working for the common good. By working with others and selflessly giving our talents and energies in defeating the danger of neofascism, we will awaken in the people support for democratic socialism and respect for DSA.
 
North Star Caucus of DSA  May 1, 2020.
 
 
 

A recent sneering op-ed in the New York Post was titled, “Suck it, Bernie Bros—the socialist dream is dead.” But is that dream really over? 
Today, as the unfolding COVID-19 crisis finds the economy in a tailspin, has the hope brought to millions by Sanders, the “Squad” of newly elected Congressional progressives, and a large peaceful army of organizers truly ended?
 
Verso Books                
"Bigger Than Bernie" by Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht
A new book offers a reassuring message. Bigger than Bernie, written by Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht, a staff writer and editor, respectively, at Jacobin magazine, both active members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), reminds this reviewer, in form and content, of the old pre-1920 socialist popularizations: confident, good-humored, and easy to read. It shows that, minus the theoretical or dogmatic terminology and the projections of better societies somewhere else in the world, socialism looks suspiciously familiar. Maybe even American.
The authors rehearse a history that’s well-known to many readers: the socialist movement’s recent return from obscurity, Sanders’s long journey toward his political apex, and the hopes now raised by today’s activists. 
Bigger than Bernie highlights how successful local socialist activity has been in recent years, most notably within the electoral realm where socialists have long done poorly.
Since 1980, hundreds of Socialists have run for office (either as Democrats, or in nonpartisan elections) and have actually been elected, most famously in Chicago where they hold six seats on the city council. 
Fellow members of Democratic Socialists of America in the Bay Area have a similar tale, but with a sharper edge. Here a socialist-like Teamster activist Jovanka Beckles, a queer black Latina immigrant, made a compelling pitch to working class voters in running for the California state assembly in 2018. Though losing narrowly, she racked up 90,000 votes. It was something to build from.
And build they did. The infrastructure created in this campaign allowed the East Bay DSA to play the key support role in the Oakland teachers strike a few months later.
Bigger than Bernie radiates optimism, from chapter to chapter, because of the sense that American capitalism has overstepped its capacities, outraging the young in particular, who seek a path to a better future. 
Another recent volume on American socialism, We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism—American Style, is at once more ambitious and more distant. 
 

"We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism—American Style" edited by Kate Aronoff, Peter Dreier, and Michael Kazin
A collection of essays edited by Kate Aronoff, Peter Dreier, and Michael Kazin, the book has been described by leading DSAers as the perfect compromise between “social democracy” and “democratic socialism,” lying somewhere between Hillary Clinton’s more or less neoliberal views and Sanders’s vision of a different kind of society. 

By Max B. Sawicky
At the risk of exploiting unforeseeable turns of events to validate all my priors, I want to argue that the unfolding of the 2020 Democratic primaries does not invalidate a DSA, class-oriented approach to politics. An example of a contrary view is Zack Beauchamp in “Why Bernie Sanders Failed.”
His basic argument is that the Sanders’ campaign strategy rested on two premises that didn’t prove out. One was to ground the appeal to the working class and youth, which fell flat because black voters supported Biden, white workers who flirted with Bernie in 2016 are now for Biden or Trump, and youth didn’t turn out. 
Beauchamp concludes that identity and party affiliation trumped class. He fails to consider that those things are themselves founded on material self-interest, which is to say, class.
There is widespread acknowledgment that Sanders’s proposals are popular. We could imagine that voters interpreted their class interest more broadly, and more pragmatically, than by supporting ambitious proposals such as Medicare For All, etc. In other words, they could have thought that Biden was the most electable candidate, so a vote for Biden was the best guarantor of their class interest. You could disagree with that judgment, but it’s not crazy, nor is it bereft of class consciousness.
Some of us in DSA think a second Trump term will be a harbinger of a more open fascism. Defeating fascism is a legitimate, class-based interest too. 
Similar arguments apply to questions of identity or party affiliation. It’s plausible that Trump is viewed as profoundly inimical to black material interests, over and above his class warfare. Trump screws the working class, but there’s an extra turn of the screw for minorities. In this way of thinking, class may be de-centered, but it is not irrelevant.
Nor is it a stretch for POC to reason that political power depends on alliances, which points back to electability. In other words, insofar as anyone understands at least some common interests with a broader group – the working class – they could see some sense in voting for Joe Biden.
The same argument pertains to women, whose gender interests supplement, but do not supplant, those of class. As for racial or religious minorities, a pragmatic choice should not be conflated with indifference to class.
Sanders was often criticized for a de-emphasis on race and gender. When the choice was between him and Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, any hint of a relative shortcoming on issues of race was ridiculous. We could concede some grist for this mill in the case of gender, but only in comparison to Clinton. 
When it comes to party, Sanders has always rejected formal membership in the Democratic Party. But why are Biden voters Democrats in the first place? Is it possibly out of some conception of their class interest? We cannot reject that possibility out of hand.
The Sanders movement may have been hampered by some misconceptions or biases.
One goes to a running argument I had with those who complained that he failed to drop out in 2016 or this year when it became obvious he would not be nominated. But like DSA, the Sanders campaign is a movement, not a mere electoral vehicle. Its raison d’etre is to be self-sustaining. Sanders’s agitation for effective anti-virus policies are a current example. A presidential primary is another opportunity to preach the gospel.
The irony here is that winning is not the only thing. Of course, it is better to win than not, but how you win or how you lose are equally important. You could win and be hamstrung, and discredited, or you could lose and have a lot of leverage. In either case, the table is set for future political opportunities.
How you win or lose stems from how you campaign. It’s been reported that the Sanders campaign strategy was premised on the objective of beating other candidates, one-on-one, with a plurality of votes, what we could call a ‘thirty percent strategy.’
The urgency of winning this year by hook or crook, since it would be Sanders’s last rodeo, was totally understandable. But since the campaign is an ongoing movement to radically change capitalism, not just an electoral campaign, it should have been clear that this is not accomplished with 30 percent pluralities and a Congress full of meh Democrats. It’s a long-term project, a marathon rather than a sprint. Politically it requires not a thin majority, but a crushing one.
Moreover, it must be about more than Sanders. There ought to be a new raft of emerging leaders. I love AOC as much as anyone, but we need more than one or four of her, and probably some with a decade or two of additional experience. 
The white component of the working class has played a positive political role at some points in U.S. history. It has not been uniformly negative, especially outside of the states of the Confederacy. Given the closeness of the 2016 election, it only requires the defection of a slender margin of Trump voters to swing the outcome.
The usual alternative proposed to class politics is an appeal to ‘the suburbs.’ This is a bit of a misnomer. Of course, there are working class suburbs. What’s really in question is politics without a material, redistributive edge. “The suburbs” are invoked as being above class, as implicitly well-off, beyond precarity.
A ‘suburban strategy’ is just a rhetorical device to evade class, an objectively anti-working-class stance. There is no neutrality in this dimension. You’re always on one side or the other. 
It remains the case that removing the Trump Administration is a necessary condition for progress, since progress requires democracy. Another four years of Trump further erodes voting rights, especially for youth and minorities, fills out the Federal judiciary with right-wing ideologues, and removes all regulatory constraints on capitalist predation. In that scenario, survival, much less opportunities for our revolution, look less likely. The 2020 primary campaign is over, but our movement goes on.
 Also See: Progressive Capitalism ?
Review of Joseph E. Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).
By Max B. Sawicky

Joseph Stiglitz’s commitment to a “progressive capitalism” calls to mind the famous response of Gandhi to the notion of Western civilization: “It would be a very good idea.”
Published in Jacobin. 
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/progressive-capitalism-joseph-stiglitz- a review
 
 

Developed by on line discussion among North Star members.,
​​The proposed position. 

On April 13, 2020 Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden for President. It is highly likely that Biden will be nominated at the Democratic National Convention. This is, of course, disappointing to the movement that coalesced around Bernie’s campaign, and to the many DSAers that have played an active role within it. 
 
At the DSA convention in August 2019, DSA adopted a resolution to not endorse a Democrat if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee (Resolution 15). We respect the decision that DSA should not explicitly endorse a candidate for president who is not a democratic socialist. We are confident that DSA members recognize the danger of further consolidation of the nativist movement and that we will work with our allies to defeat Donald Trump.
 
Donald Trump is unfit to be president. The list of his crimes is long and well known. The most glaring failures, corruption and depravity of his presidency have become fully realized with the Covid 19 crisis.  The death toll of Covid 19 has struck the working-class as a whole, and African Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color in particular, in greater proportion than people working from home. Trump’s racism in calling the coronavirus the “China Virus” has incited many racist acts against Chinese Americans and Asian Americans more broadly. 
 
Despite Biden’s shortcomings and checkered past, a full array of issues overrides our reservations about him. At stake are issues such as judicial nominations; the climate crisis; women’s rights and reproductive choice; people of color’s and LGBTQ rights; the assault on immigrants; and the increasing burdens upon the working class. Most troubling is the Trump presidency’s promotion of incipient neofascism and racist white ethno-nationalism, and his ongoing efforts to dismantle governmental and social institutions.
 
We therefore ask DSA members and allies who live in battleground or swing states and congressional districts to organize for the defeat of Trump. Of course, this includes voting for Biden, but it also means much more. DSA members should work with the myriad of organizations that will seek to push Biden to the left, in terms of both his policies and his appointees, including his choice for running mate. It also means helping elect democratic socialist and progressive candidates, especially those supporting Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, and taxing the rich, to Congress and state houses across the country.  Ending control of the US Senate by the current GOP majority in thrall to the radical right is particularly crucial.
 
We understand that the nomination of Biden confirms that for 2020 we have to choose between one candidate who is far from being a democratic socialist and another who is close to being a neofascist, but it is clear that another Trump term would be horrific. The opportunity to work with other socialist, progressive, and liberal groups can further build democratic socialism in the USA. We acknowledge that during the primary season working-class voters and African American voters made a choice that they felt was paramount in saving their lives. We commit to listen to the concerns of voters of color with respect and trust.
 
We ask that DSA members in decisive locations work to defeat Trump in broad coalitions or fronts that allow others to see that DSA members are working for the common good. By working with others and selflessly giving our talents and energies in defeating the danger of neofascism, we will awaken in the people support for democratic socialism and respect for DSA.
 
North Star members please vote
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You must be a member to vote.  You can only vote once.
 
First.  Click on the link and go to the ballot.
 
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Fill out the forms.
 
Submit your ballot.
 
 
 

As democratic socialists, you and I know that real COVID-19 relief needs to center working class needs, not prop up big business. You can help organize for real solutions now — sign up to support the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act today!
Coronavirus relief bills have largely gone toward bailing out big corporations. And neoliberal Democrats want to keep it that way. Their plan for keeping laid-off workers insured during the pandemic is to give away massive subsidies to COBRA. Using tax dollars to cover increased premiums under COBRA for already expensive insurance plans is a massive bailout for private insurers.
DSAers are leading the way for a relief package that centers the working class. That includes an emergency Medicare for All bill, which is why we are excited to endorse the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act.
Sen. Bernie Sanders just introduced this act as part of his coronavirus relief priorities. This emergency legislation would empower Medicare to cover all healthcare costs for the uninsured and all out-of-pocket expenses for those with insurance for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.
We are launching a nationwide campaign to call on our representatives to support these priorities, and the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act specifically.
No sick person, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this pandemic.
We are asking you to participate in virtual phone banks to mobilize DSA members and pressure your representatives to support Bernie’s legislation.
Sign Up to Make CallsWe know that this is a difficult and uncertain time. But we need to do everything we can to ensure that the next relief bill puts the working class first.
We’re working on creating resources for chapters. And here’s some resources you can use for your calls:

• Template script pressuring your representatives
• Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act Summary
• Bernie’s priorities for the next coronavirus relief package

If you want to get involved in this work but aren’t sure how, reach out to your chapter leadership, or let us know by signing up here.
Solidarity,
Maria Svart
DSA National Director

​
Dissecting DSA’s battles to define its role in American politics
BY HAROLD MEYERSON  AUGUST 9, 2019
 No, you are not reading an outdated piece.  It is reposted here to clarify and explain the role of some caucuses and some “militants” in DSA. ( ed) 
It's a good thing that organizations don't have children or grandchildren. If they did, you could envision little tykes (well, little infant prodigies) 50 years from now asking their grandparent—the Democratic Socialists of America—“What did you do in the war against the neofascist Donald Trump?” only to be met by an awkward pause.
At its biennial convention last weekend in Atlanta, DSA (which, with 56,000 members, is now the largest American socialist organization in the memory of anyone under 80) passed a headline-grabbing resolution declaring that it would not endorse any Democrat save Bernie Sanders in next year's November presidential runoff.
The vote on the resolution was actually fairly close, though support for Sanders in the primaries is overwhelming within the organization. And its proponents provided a number of qualifications and caveats, making clear that DSA members are free to campaign for the eventual Democratic nominee if they so choose, and that in 2016, DSA locals did campaign against Trump (and members for Hillary) in swing states.
Still, inasmuch as DSA locals work closely with immigrant-protection groups, and the national organization has called for the abolition of ICE, it could be difficult to explain to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, facing deportation and family separation, why the group won't join its allies in a forthright fight to dump Trump.
However, I find myself of two minds in assessing DSA's position. As a member of the organization and one of its predecessors (the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee) for the past 44 years, I'm embarrassed and regretful that my organization hasn't grasped the primacy and urgency of joining, in a public and full-blown way, the battle to rid the world of Trump. In 1944, the U.S. Communist Party effectively, if temporarily, self-abolished so its members could support Franklin Roosevelt's re-election bid, as part of the fight against fascism. To be sure, that move came at the behest of Joseph Stalin, whose nation was allied with ours in the existential battle against Hitler. But for all its myriad and ultimately fatal flaws, and granting that its self-abolition was a typical CP overreaction, the U.S. Communist Party understood the gravity of the fascist threat. Why not DSA?
That's the reaction of my DSA mind. But partly through my long-ago work with DSOC, which led to my political work for some left-wing unions, which led to my own work for left-wing candidates and causes, I also seem to have a political-consultant mind. And that mind tells me that the eventual Democratic presidential nominee needs the formal endorsement of DSA like a hole in the head. Where DSA is strong and where socialist and progressive candidates can win—generally, in cities with substantial populations of millennials, immigrants, and minorities—a DSA endorsement can make all the difference, producing scads of the most tireless precinct walkers and dedicated phone-bankers. It has made that difference in New York, Chicago, and any number of smaller cities. In nearly every state, and certainly in the nation at large, however, a DSA endorsement would be one more item on the bill of particulars the Republicans would hurl at the Democratic nominee in hopes of revving up more of their right-wing base. In every encounter with reporters, the nominee would be pressed about DSA's endorsement. Just as well, says my consultant mind, that DSA takes a pass—particularly since I have no doubt most of my fellow members will end up helping that Democratic nominee in states where that help matters.
I wouldn't be of two minds about DSA's electoral stance if the convention had passed one other resolution put before it last weekend, which laid out a list of conditions that candidates seeking DSA locals' endorsement for elected offices had to meet. Most of those conditions were unexceptionable; some could be met by nonsocialist progressives (Medicare for All) and some even by most mainstream Democrats (card check for union recognition, more-progressive taxation). The sticking point, though, was the condition that a candidate must publicly declare that he or she was a democratic socialist. Fortunately, DSA now has locals in 49 states, and delegates from some of those states noted that they came from terrains that didn't politically resemble Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's congressional district in Queens and the Bronx. If a candidate's self-identification as a socialist was a requirement for their local's endorsement, they pointed out, they'd likely make no endorsements at all for the foreseeable future. Happily, the measure was defeated.
Realism always welcome.
How to explain that such measures nonetheless were backed by a core of more sectarian delegates, a number of whom make no bones about the fact that they'd prefer DSA to devote resources to building an explicitly socialist third party rather than back Democrats? That requires a look at the ideological makeup of DSA's activists, many of whom are affiliated with fairly well-defined caucuses.
For most of its long history, DSA (and DSOC before it) didn't have ideological caucuses. It was at once both a small membership and big-tent organization. If you believed in democratic socialism, and thought that founder Michael Harrington made sense when he argued that socialists should be publicly active within the Democratic Party (thereby gaining more visibility for socialist candidates and causes, avoiding the third-party spoiler role, and easing outreach to progressive groups compelled to work in real-world politics), that sufficed as a minimal ideological and strategic orientation. Within those parameters, members had all kinds of different beliefs, orientations, and priorities, but not to the point of forming hard and enduring caucuses. (I do recall some particularly hefty guys in DSOC forming a “Mass Caucus,” with the slogan “One pound, one vote!” but its appeal was weightily limited.)
Beginning with Bernie Sanders's declaration of his candidacy in 2015, DSA membership began to surge, and that was followed by two subsequent surges when Donald Trump was elected president and then when AOC ousted a prominent congressman in a 2018 Democratic primary. By early 2017, it was clear that DSA was fast becoming the largest socialist organization—by far—that America had seen in many decades. Which prompted a number of longtime socialists with perspectives substantially different from DSA's historic Harringtonism to join as well. DSA had become the arena where the future of American socialism was to be shaped; it provided an opportunity not to be missed.
Among those who joined was a cadre of what Charles Lenchner has referred to as Post-Trotskyists, though I think a better, if even more obscure, characterization would be Neo-Draperites. No American left tendency has been more fissiparous than the Trotskyists, who repeatedly have split over differences in doctrine, strategy, and sometimes personality, into various subgroups and sects, most demanding their members tithe a portion of their income to the group, some becoming hermetically sealed off from larger political arenas. Hal Draper was a democratic socialist who became a Trotskyist in the 1930s, followed Trotskyist heretic Max Shachtman into the Workers Party in the 1940s, and left to found the Independent Socialist Club in the 1960s, which became the International Socialists in 1968 (a heady year for the left), which he then left three years later, saying the group had become a sect. The International Socialist Tendency and groups like the International Socialist Organization soldiered on, never claiming much more than 1,000 members, if that, and sharing Hal Draper’s perspective that the Democratic Party was an arena to be shunned while third-party insurgencies provided opportunities for consciousness-raising and growth. These groups also believed that members should focus their labor involvement on rank-and-file activism and generally viewed union leaders and staff as bureaucrats retarding whatever embryonic revolutionary impulses could be found or nurtured among the workers.
Under the banner of DSA's Left Caucus, renamed Momentum, then re-renamed Bread and Roses, a number of Neo-Draperites joined and came together in the newly vibrant DSA. In an organization of tens of thousands of new members, the vast majority in their twenties with little or no history of involvement in socialist groups, the Neo-Draperites were often the most experienced, and clearly the most organized, of DSA's new members. The problem was, their experience had been life in or around a small, disciplined sect. At the 2017 convention, for instance, they proposed a dues structure that amounted to tithing a portion of a member's income. That was how sects sustained themselves, but DSA was not an organization of professional revolutionaries (or even of professional evolutionaries), and the motion lost badly. At last weekend's convention, the motion to require all candidates that the organization endorsed to pronounce themselves socialists was also an expression of this sectarian impulse, and it lost badly, too.
The irony here, of course, is that the Neo-Draperites would not have joined DSA in the first place if the group's Harringtonian strategy—calling for socialist activism within the Democratic Party rather than in ideologically purer third parties—had not been so clearly vindicated by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose campaigns were what persuaded tens of thousands of young people to join DSA. The anti-establishment politics of the Neo-Draperites clearly had appealed to many younger members, and doubtless had some effect on the group's decision to withhold backing from any Democratic presidential nominee save Bernie. But it's hard to argue against any involvement in the Democratic Party when it was Bernie’s and AOC’s successes in Democratic primaries, and such successes in contests like those for the Chicago Board of Aldermen (five of whose members are now DSA members, too), that prompted thousands of young people to join DSA.
The Neo-Draperite resistance not just to the Democratic Party but to the labor “establishment” as well had limited purchase on the delegates' sentiment. One such resolution, commending only rank-and-file involvement, passed narrowly, while a somewhat contradictory second resolution commending a more flexible involvement with the labor movement on multiple levels passed overwhelmingly.
As one veteran DSA activist of decidedly Harringtonian perspectives told me, the Neo-Draperites “are a good group of people to have in the organization, given how deeply they commit themselves to the group's success. But they're constitutionally incapable of running a broad-based organization; their entire frame of reference is to life in a cadrefied movement.” In various locals, where Bread and Roses caucus members have been in leadership positions, members have revolted against top-down policies. At the national level, one anti-Momentum (then anti–Bread and Roses) Caucus, initially called Praxis, now called Build, has appeared to reject any form of central organization, calling variously for cutting back dues payments to the national organization, or even eliminating dues altogether. Fortunately, just as convention delegates rejected tithing two years ago, so last weekend they rejected shutting off the dues spigot to national DSA.
Though Build favors maximal decentralization for DSA, it appears to be a disciplined and centralized caucus itself—as does Bread and Roses, but at least Bread and Roses is consistent in its commitment to organizational discipline. In the face of these two disciplined caucuses, other caucuses have formed to keep DSA from morphing into anything other than a broad-based, big-tent, democratic organization. Making plenty of errors along the way, like many of the youth organizations that DSA demographically resembles, I think the majority of DSA members will succeed in keeping the group from descending into the Scylla and Charybdis of sectarianism and anarchy. The electoral successes of DSA members running as Democrats—and there are now roughly 100 DSA members in elected office—will not just build the organization but help anchor it in the real world.
And the presidential runoff of 2020? I think DSA's national political committee might take a leaf from the group's Atlanta local during Stacey Abrams's 2018 campaign for governor. At the time, the local wasn't endorsing nonsocialists, and some of its members likely believed—rightly, I'd say—that a DSA endorsement would be one more cross Abrams would have to bear in her bid to carry Georgia. Nonetheless, every other progressive group inside and outside the state was enthusiastically backing her, and many DSA members were eagerly working on her campaign. Here's what the local said:
For many reasons, we cannot endorse Abrams ourselves, but neither can we stand aside while our friends and allies fight for something they know will make their lives better. We voted to encourage our members, if they feel so moved, to stand up and fight in this election cycle.
In 2020, DSA's friends and allies—in immigrant communities and communities of color, in groups seeking to combat the climate crisis and save the planet, in organizations of working people seeking a radically more equitable economy and society—will be fighting for their lives to replace Trump with a Democrat. It won't be a battle between socialism and barbarism, but it will be a battle against barbarism, and the Atlanta statement offers a way that DSA can join it.
HAROLD MEYERSON AGENDA 2020 ELECTION 2020 BERNIE SANDERS

Here is the original. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/prospect.org/api/amp/power/socialists-just-did-and/

 You’re invited to their A Planet to Win webinar this Sunday, 4/26 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT! 

DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group invites you to join us for a national webinar with Thea Riofrancos, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Alyssa Battistoni, the authors of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal, in conversation with Sydney Ghazarian, member of the DSA Green New Deal Campaign Committee and founding member of DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group.
RSVP here for the webinar on Sunday, 4/26 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT.
Join us to talk about organizing in the midst of a global emergency heightened by a trio of ongoing crises — ecological breakdown under global warming, social breakdown under massive racial and economic inequality, and public health breakdown under threat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
What can a radical Green New Deal look like? How can we connect the politics around these three civilization-threatening crises to build and win power to make a better world? How can DSA organize for a Green Stimulus and ensure that any Green New Deal incorporates radical demands around ecosocialist principles?
This panel will be an opportunity to hear the authors’ thoughts on these topics and to ask your own questions about strategy and organizing for this moment. After discussion and Q&A we’ll outline a series of Next Steps that will get you plugged in to our ongoing Green New Deal campaign. This will include the release of our Chapter Discussion Guide for the book, which will help chapters run political education around Green New Deal organizing as applied to your local conditions.
You can find A Planet to Win at Verso Books. Grab it now, read it twice, and get ready for an hour (or so) of careful socialist analysis and intelligent inspiration for your own organizing projects.
And if you’d like to get involved on a regular basis, please become a member of the national Ecosocialist Working Group by filling out this form.
Solidarity and we'll see you on Sunday, 4/26 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT.
 

Start at 22 minutes.

This Is Barbarism
Over 100 years ago, in the midst of the death and destruction of the First World War, German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg wrote that capitalist society was at a crossroads and would either “transition to socialism or regress into barbarism.” In the 1930s, fascist parties took over Germany and other countries, and they indeed descended into genocidal barbarism.
Today, in the center of western capitalism, the United States, the president, Republican senators, and major financial leaders are calling for an imminent return to business as usual that could kill millions — but at least temporarily save corporate profits. 
This is barbarism.


The Evolving Crisis
There are now nearly half a million confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide, with more than 40,000 confirmed cases in the United States quickly spreading in the South. Our caseload trajectory is rising faster than anywhere else in the world and could soon make the U.S. the center of the global pandemic. 
The virus is ravaging New York’s healthcare system, and in Washington nurses describe their work as analogous to war: “You’re in a battlefield where supplies are limited. The help’s slow to get to you and there’s lots of casualties and … you can’t see the enemy.” Decades of neoliberal austerity have left most local governments and public health systems totally ill-equipped to handle the crisis.
50% of those who die from Covid-19 have dying from secondary bacteria infections, something Mike Davis warnedabout in his critique of big pharma’s drive for profits.
The FDA granted the pharmaceutical giant Gilead seven years of monopoly on its drug, remdesivir, a possible treatment for coronavirus. Gilead is already known for price-gouging life-saving HIV drugs.
Activists with Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) are sounding the alarm about an uptick in violent attacksagainst hundreds of Asian Americans, fueled by Trump’s racist rhetoric.
Stock markets are rallying as investors welcome the latest bailout package. But Fed officials predict unemployment figures as high as 30 percent, which will snowball the economic havoc that’s in store.


Government (In)Action
Across the country, we’re seeing murderous levels of neglect and inaction. With Trump pushing for a return to work by Easter, the new strategy is to starve workers to protect the profits of a few, risking the lives of millions in the process. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to force workers back to work in the epicenter of the US outbreak while he recommended $400M in cuts to Medicaid.
The passing of the buck to state and local governments has resulted in wildly uneven responses across the country. This will only prolong the pandemic.
Democrats have reached a deal with the Trump White House on the largest stimulus package in history — $2 trillion, including $500 billion in corporate aid. Early reports indicate that Bernie succeeded in his fight to add improved unemployment support for workers. Bailouts may be in order, but they must be equitable and put people over profit.We must reject a repeat of the post-2008 corporate giveaway that lined capitalists’ pockets at the expense of workers!
Some local governments have pursued steps guaranteeing rent grace periods, eviction moratoriums, and other relief measures aimed at cushioning the blow for workers. 
Joe Biden broke his week-long silence on Monday with bizarre and jumbled videos and interviews, displaying a lack of basic leadership capacity. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has seen his highest approval ratings as President, with a majority of Americans approving of his handling of the crisis. The leadership vacuum from anyone left of Trump shows why it’s more important than ever for Bernie Sanders to remain on the national stage. Bernie can retool his campaign to lead the charge against coronavirus and disaster capitalism as a surrogate for an absent workers’ party.

Workers Strike Back
The diverse working class is organizing like we’ve never seen — fighting to shutter nonessential businesses to stop the spread of COVID-19 while winning paid time off for workers. Essential workers in healthcare, logistics, transportation, and grocery are fighting to protect themselves and our whole society.
Healthcare: People are stepping up to donate medical supplies to hospitals. It may not be fully sufficient, but this mutual aid is an important and much-needed act of solidarity! East Bay DSA is hosting a digital townhall to hear from frontline healthcare workers in Oakland. Don’t miss it.
Transit: Following Detroit’s example, organized transit workers in Toronto and Alabama won rear boarding and free fares for riders to protect the public and the workers. Union taxi workers in Los Angeles have issued demandsranging from social distancing protocols to the expansion of SNAP for all essential workers.
Logistics: The presidents of two of the largest unions at Bath Iron Works on Tuesday called on the company to close and give employees paid leave for two weeks to protect the company’s 8,000 workers.
Grocery: Grocery workers in Berkeley won a $2/hour raise as hazard pay during the pandemic after gathering over a thousand signatures in their petition. H-E-B workers also won a temporary $2/hour hazard pay raise. Bosses at Kroger are so scared of workers organizing that they banned the website Labor Notes on their wifi. Check out the article that shook them up. Instacart is hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers to handle new demand for delivered groceries. We must support these workers in getting protection, support, and hazard compensation for this frontline work.
Agriculture: In Georgia, Perdue plant workers walked out in protest of their unsafe working conditions and lack of hazard pay.
Coffee Shops: After gathering over 24,000 signatures on a petition demanding the company close stores, Starbucks workers won.

We’re Fighting For the World 
Like Rosa Luxemburg a century ago, democratic socialists are fighting for a just, equal, healthy, and environmentally sustainable world. 
Under capitalism, private profit for billionaires drives our economy, our energy system, our government, and more. This profit is in effect stolen from the labor of millions of exploited, oppressed, overworked, and underpaid workers and from our environment. The pursuit of profit drives the privatization of energy, water, schools, transportation, and healthcare — driving the coronavirus pandemic to cause far more human suffering than it would otherwise. Profit drives the military and prison industrial complexes, the division of workers along the lines of race and nationality, and the devastation of our planet. Capitalism as a social system only benefits the already rich at the expense of everyone else. 
Democratic socialism is the only cure to the disease that is capitalism. Workers—united across geography, ethnicity, gender, and age—are the ones who will win it.

DSA Announcements

• Want to organize a COVID-19 response in your workplace or know someone who does? Fill this out, and share it far and wide.
• Here is a state by state guide to unemployment resources and benefits, from the AFL-CIO. Useful to 3.3 million more people than last week!

 Bernie Sanders,
​In terms of potential deaths and the impact on our economy, the crisis we face from coronavirus is on the scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly. We must begin thinking on a scale comparable to the threat, and make sure that we are protecting working people, low-income people, and the most vulnerable communities, not just giant corporations and Wall Street.
Empower Medicare to Lead Health Care Response

• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will receive all the federal funding necessary to ensure universal emergency health care coverage for all, regardless of income or immigration status. CMS will work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), other federal agencies, and the private sector to centralize information about what’s needed and direct resources to ensure that all health care needs are met at no charge for the duration of this crisis.
• Cover all health care treatment for free, including coronavirus testing, treatment, and the eventual vaccine. Under this proposal, Medicare will ensure that everyone in America, regardless of existing coverage, can receive the health care they need during this crisis. We cannot live in a nation where if you have the money you get the treatment you need to survive, but if you’re working class or poor you get to the end of the line. That is morally unacceptable.
• Greatly increase our health care capacity to handle a surge in cases. There is a major shortage of ICU units and ventilators that are needed to respond to this crisis. The federal government must work aggressively with the private sector to make sure that this equipment is available to hospitals and the rest of the medical community.
  • Increase provider capacity. Our current health care system does not have the doctors and nurses we currently need. We are understaffed. During this crisis, we need to mobilize medical residents, retired medical professionals, and other medical personnel to help us deal with this crisis.
  • Implement successful testing models. Our testing capacity and process has been woefully inadequate. We must massively increase the availability of test kits for the coronavirus and the speed at which the tests are processed. We must look to successful coronavirus testing models in other countries and implement best practices here.
  • Use the Defense Production Act to mobilize resources. Under this proposal, we will use existing emergency authority to dramatically scale up production in the United States of critical supplies such as masks, ventilators, and protective equipment for health care workers.
  • Utilize the National Guard, the Army Corp of Engineers and other military resources. Several governors have already called in state National Guard forces. Our armed forces are trained for emergency response and must be immediately activated to build mobile hospitals and testing facilities, assist providers, reopen hospitals that have been shut down and expand our health care capacity in at-risk areas.
  • Dramatically expand community health centers.Pass emergency funding to dramatically expand access to community health centers which provide primary, dental, and mental health care, as well as low-cost prescription drugs, to nearly 30 million Americans, 63 percent of whom are racial and ethnic minorities. We need to greatly expand our primary health care capabilities in this country, and that includes expanding community health care centers.
• Keep health care workers safe. We need to make sure that doctors, nurses and medical professionals have the instructions and personal protective equipment that they need
• Ensure federal funding parity for the territories and tribes for any and all health care relief programs.

2. Establish an Emergency Economic Crisis Finance Agency to manage the economic crisis
This emergency agency, modeled after the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, will be empowered to cover affected businesses’ payroll, make zero percent loans and loan guarantees to businesses, finance new construction of factories, emergency shelters, and production of emergency supplies such as masks and ventilators, and create new jobs and economic development. This agency will provide all the necessary funding for fighting this economic crisis.

• Keep workers on payroll. Small and medium sized businesses, especially those in severely impacted industries such as restaurants, bars, and local retail need immediate relief. We must tell these businesses, who are being forced to lay off their entire staff or possibly even shut down through no fault of their own, that we will not allow them to go out of business. The federal government will work with affected businesses to provide direct payroll costs for small and medium sized businesses to keep workers employed until this crisis has passed.We will provide all necessary assistance, including tax deferrals, utility payment suspension, rental assistance, affordable loans, and eviction protection for struggling businesses. When this crisis passes, we will be ready to start our economy up again without the risk of losing the stores and restaurants integral to our communities. None of this financial assistance shall be used for executive bonuses, stock buybacks or profiteering.
• Provide direct, emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person in America every month for the duration of the crisis. We are likely already in a recession. Workers are losing income while their bills pile up. We must begin issuing cash payments of $2,000 a month for every person in America to provide households with the assistance they need to pay their bills and take care of their families.
  • Under this plan, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department, credit unions, community banks and other financial institutions will work together to make sure this assistance reaches every American as quickly as possible. Millions of Americans are unbanked or underbanked, and hundreds of thousands have no permanent address. We must make sure we are getting this money into the hands of the most vulnerable.
  • It is key that we get this money out and to families as soon as possible, which means we must make the payments universal with little bureaucracy. For those who will not need their payments, we will partner with organizations to take donations from patriotic families who can contribute their payments to fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
• Expand Unemployment Insurance. We must provide emergency unemployment assistance to anyone who loses their job through no fault of their own. Under this proposal, everyone who loses a job must qualify for unemployment compensation at 100 percent of their prior salary with a cap of $75,000 a year.
  • Protect non-traditional workers. In addition, those who depend on tips, gig workers, domestic workers, freelancers, and independent contractors shall also qualify for Unemployment Insurance to make up for the income that they lose during this crisis.
• Emergency paid family and medical leave for all.Anyone who is sick or who needs to stay home should be able to stay home during this emergency and receive their paycheck. At a time when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck and must go to work in order to take care of their family, we do not want to see people going to work who are sick and can spread the coronavirus. This is especially important for hourly workers who may not have any or sufficient paid sick days to avoid coming into work when feeling ill.
• Guarantee that no one goes hungry. We need to make sure that seniors, people with disabilities and families with children have access to nutritious food. That means expanding the Meals on Wheels program, the school meals programs, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) so that no one goes hungry during this crisis and everyone who cannot leave their home can receive nutritious meals delivered directly to where they live.
• Place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs, and suspend payment on mortgage loans for primary residencies and utility bills. No one should lose their home during this crisis and everyone must have access to clean water, electricity, heat and air conditioning. And we must restore utility services to any customers who have had their utilities shut off. We must also provide funding for states and localities to provide rental assistance for the duration of the crisis.
• Waive all student loan payments for the duration of the emergency. More than 45 million Americans struggle with $1.6 trillion in student debt. We must lift this burden during the crisis and for one month after. Long-term, we must cancel all student debt and make public colleges, universities, and trade schools tuition free and debt free.
• Construct emergency shelter and utilize empty or vacant lodging. We must ensure the homeless, survivors of domestic violence and college students quarantined off campus are able to receive the shelter, the health care and the nutrition they need and connect those individuals with social services to ensure nobody is left behind. We must also utilize empty hotel beds and other vacant properties to ensure everyone is safely housed during this crisis.
• Use the power of the Federal Reserve to support state and local governments. Through the power granted under section 14(2)(b) of the Federal Reserve Act, the Fed will buy short-term municipal debt securities. This will help stabilize state government finances and provide states and localities the financial support they need to address this health and economic crisis.
• Protect farmers. Suspend all Farm Service Agency loan payments to protect farmers during this crisis, extend crop insurance and emergency loans to all affected farmers, extend rural development loans, and expand the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) to both help alleviate hunger throughout the country and support our farmers during this crisis.
• Ensure federal funding parity for the territories and tribes for any and all economic relief programs.

3. Create an Oversight Agency to Fight Corporate Corruption and Price-Gouging
Our response to this health and economic crisis cannot be another money-making opportunity for corporate America and Wall Street. We need to establish an oversight agency to ensure no one is profiting off of the economic pain and suffering of our people in crisis.

• Bail out working people, not corporate executives. Any emergency credit extensions or loans to insolvent companies or industries as a result of this crisis must come with strict protections and benefits for workers, unions, and customers, not no-strings-attached handouts for executives.  During this crisis, we will ban stock buybacks and bonuses for executives. We will put conditions on this financial assistance to make sure that any corporation in America that benefits from emergency aid does not lay off workers, pays workers a livable wage, provides equity to the government, puts workers on corporate boards, and does not rip-off consumers.
• Prevent price gouging by pharmaceutical companies.As soon as a coronavirus vaccine is developed it must be sold for free. Further, all prescription drugs that are developed with taxpayer dollars must be sold at a reasonable price. This agency shall use the federal government’s authority to take away patents from pharmaceutical companies that are gouging consumers and allow generic companies to manufacture prescription drugs at a substantially reduced cost. The pharmaceutical industry must be told in no uncertain terms that the medicines that they manufacture for this crisis will be sold at cost. This is not the time for profiteering or price gouging.
• Investigate and prosecute price-gougers and corrupt dealings. This agency will have the authority to crack down and prosecute illegal price gouging and corruption. It shall also conduct an independent and transparent audit of all of the emergency financing programs to make sure that American taxpayer dollars are not wasted.
• Senator Bernie Sanders 

Wow! Over 1180 people joined our COVID-19 People Over Profit Mass Call last night. You can watch the recording here.
Every day we hear more bad news, but there are also amazing stories of workers fighting back or people helping their neighbors. We’ll pull through if we pull together, and last night with you felt powerful.
As promised, here are critical links we discussed on the call.
Sign up to get our new DSA COVID-19 Bulletin several times a week.
Sign and share DSA’s COVID-19 Demands petition.
Register for an upcoming national Zoom organizing call.

• Thursday March 26 – Training: Structured Organizing Conversations During Social Distancing
• Thursday April 2 – Training: Strategic Mutual Aid
• Saturday April 5 – Q&A About DSA for curious non-members

Check out the DSA Collaborative COVID-19 One-Stop memo. It includes info about the Twin Cities phone zap tactic if you want to try it in one of your campaigns!
Sign up to get advice on organizing with your co-workers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Join DSA if you’re not already a member, become a monthly member if you’re not already, or ask 3 of your friends to join.
Onward!
Maria Svart
DSA National Director

Join us this Thursday, March 19, 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT for a Mass Call on COVID-19! On this call, we’ll discuss the work we’re doing right now as we lay out our demands for a COVID-19 response that puts people over profit.
The last few days have been scary and stressful for all of us. It’s become clearer than ever that our for-profit healthcare system does not protect human health. The Trump administration will try to tell us that the private sector will save us, but we know that any “solution” that reaps profit for a few at the top is no solution at all. The only choices we have in this moment are socialism or barbarism.
That’s why it’s important for us to come together and organize for a working-class solution to this crisis.
This mass call is for both members and non-members to get organized and work together in this moment. RSVP today!
In solidarity,
Your DSA National Political Committee
 
This is not the planned North Star call on the political crisis,.

Now is the Time for Solidarity: DSA National Statement on COVID-2019
From the 2008 global financial collapse to the natural disasters caused by climate change that rocked Northern California, New Orleans, New York, and Puerto Rico, capitalism is causing devastating human crises. During each of these crises, it has been poor, working-class, and already marginalized people who have suffered the most — while banks, energy companies, and the real estate industry have been bailed out.
Now with the COVID-19 outbreak and a looming economic recession, it is hospital workers, poor and unhoused people, the elderly, incarcerated people, the immunocompromised, immigrants, and other marginalized groups who will likely bear the most impact. Millions of people have inadequate health insurance or none at all, millions are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions more are not given paid time off from work. That means that workers and poor people will be vulnerable to illness while being unable to afford treatment or even testing, endangering whole communities. Many who miss work because of the outbreak will lose pay, lose their health insurance, be unable to pay utility bills, or face eviction.
All of this is worsened by the fact that our government has been slashing budgets for services such as SNAP (food stamps) while handing bailouts to oil and natural gas companies. It is clear our irrational and expensive privatized healthcare system, organized not to protect human health but to extract profit, is unable to handle a crisis such as a sudden global pandemic.
Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans are exploiting the crisis to blame scapegoats: immigrants, Chinese people, and the European Union are demonized, encouraging racism and xenophobia. Further, Trump’s stimulus plan will decimate Social Security if passed, one of our last truly universal social programs and a line of defense for seniors who are some of the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
As socialists, we reject austerity, privatization, racism, and xenophobia. Instead, we — the Democratic Socialists of America — stand with the working class, poor, and marginalized of our society and demand a working-class solution to this crisis.
A pandemic like COVID-19 confirms the truth in the radical labor movement slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” We need to rapidly reorient our society away from the principles of individualism and private profit and toward the principles of justice and solidarity.
We support the measures proposed in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, including federal funding for free coronavirus testing for all and paid emergency leave.
However, Congress must go further.
First, Congress must pass Bernie Sanders’s proposed Medicare for All legislation. Without providing comprehensive healthcare, free at the point of use, to all US residents, we cannot mitigate this crisis or its vastly disproportionate impacts on poor and working-class people. It is unacceptable that almost a hundred million people in the US are uninsured or underinsured during a massive public health crisis, while health insurance CEOs take home annual salaries in the tens of millions of dollars.
Second, Congress must pass an emergency moratorium on evictions and on utility shut-offs until the crisis abates. If workers are unable to work because of quarantines, they should not be punished for being unable to pay their rent and utility bills. Ultimately goods like housing, water, electricity, internet, and more should be provided as social rights to everyone, not hoarded for the profit of a few billionaires.
Third, instead of bailing out oil and natural gas companies during this crisis as Trump has suggested, Congress should take advantage of low oil prices to begin to phase out domestic oil production while introducing aggressive Green New Deal legislation that mandates carbon neutrality by 2030 while creating millions of good, green jobs. If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change — which will make natural disasters like hurricanes and global pandemics like coronavirus much more frequent and much more intense — we need to transition our economy off of fossil fuels starting immediately. With a looming economic crash that could put millions out of work, low interest rates and a oil price crash make this the perfect time for the Federal Government to begin this transformation.
In the face of a pandemic, we recognize we are only as safe as the people most impacted by our current systems. As a fourth demand, we call for a nationwide end to cash bail and a moratorium on deportations. The US is home to the largest detention system in the world. Given the torturous conditions, overcrowding, and unaccountable nature of our current carceral system, we call for individuals in prisons, jails, detention centers, and camps to be let go and that facilities are properly staffed with medical teams to ensure the well-being of those who cannot be temporarily released. We demand a moratorium on deportations to ensure that immigrant communities are kept safe and are not discouraged from seeking treatment.
We echo the demands laid out by Bernie Sanders earlier today, as he calls for state and national hotlines for residents to use for resources, information, and updates. We agree that this level of transparency must be relayed by scientists and health experts and not politicians. A vaccine, when developed, must be free, and that any medicine developed to help with the crisis must be sold at cost. The ICU and ventilator shortage must be addressed, and medical residents, retired medical staff, and other medical personnel should be mobilized, staffed with proper instruction and personal protective equipment, to ensure adequate staffing. We also agree with his call for emergency unemployment assistance at 100% of a worker’s income for ALL people, including those who work off tips, gig workers, domestic workers, and independent contractors. There must be emergency shelters erected, complete with healthcare and food, for the unhoused, domestic violence survivors, and college students.
Finally, all of this social spending should be paid for by taxing the rich. The American working class has repeatedly bailed out the same massive corporations and billionaires that cause and exacerbate crises. The Trump administration’s proposed solution, a payroll tax cut, would not provide any relief for the working class and, in fact, would exacerbate the issue by providing an incentive to continue working, even if sick, particularly for those without remote work settings or paid sick leave. The proposal would also endanger some of our most vulnerable populations by gutting funding to Social Security and Medicare. Time and again, the ruling class uses crisis to pit us against each other. This time, the rich — whose wealth is produced by workers — should foot the bill.

Leo Casey 
I watched the Bernie Sanders interview on the Rachel Maddow show last night, and I came away thinking that he fails to understand why the nomination campaign has taken the direction it has, and consequently will be unable to adapt and to win.
Sanders' response to the question of why he continues to do poorly with African-American voters was tone deaf and worse, but it also goes to what he is failing to understand about the campaign. His response was part denial, even though the numbers are quite clear and follow the 2016 pattern, and part patronizing, that African-Americans were voting for Biden because he was Barack Obama's Vice President.
Let me suggest a different thesis, that goes straight to why the campaign is turning in its current direction. Democratic voters (or at least between 2/3 and 3/4 of them) are telling us they have one priority above all others -- removing Trump from the White House and ending GOP control of the Senate. They understand the stakes of the election, and what it means for the survival of American democracy, and they are saying that their vote is first and foremost an anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian vote. They assess candidates on whom they think gives us the best odds to accomplish this goal, and vote on that basis. There are not blind to the flaws in Biden and Bernie as the candidate to accomplish that objective, which is why Biden's support fell when his flaws became evident, but they are realists and will pick the candidate who, in their opinion, gives us the best shot.
African-American voters -- especially older African-American voters -- have a deep collective memory of having lived in an age of home grown American totalitarianism: that's what the Jim Crow South was for African-Americans. Trumpism is all too reminiscent of Jim Crow, and African-American voters are telling us with their votes that what they care about, more than anything else, is stopping it in its tracks. And, my white friends, if you think this is a hyperbolic formulation, you need to read the literature on how the Nazis studied and used the Jim Crow legal codes as they formulated the racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws, starting with James Whitman's Hitler's American Model. We need to give our African-American brothers and sisters the credit of being every bit as serious and thoughtful political actors as the rest of us, and stop patronizing them with the idea that they make their decisions based on whom was close to Barack Obama.
There are three important corollaries of this thesis.
​

Save the Date !!!

We regret to inform you that the planned Webinar on What Is To Be Done by the North Star Caucus is postponed indefinitely.
With the growing expansion of issues and conflicts around the political response, our selected speakers are no longer available.
Please continue your conversations on line.
 
DSA national is holding a related call on Thursday. Open to all DSA members and allies.
Join us this Thursday, March 19, 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT for a Mass Call on COVID-19! On this call, we’ll discuss the work we’re doing right now as we lay out our demands for a COVID-19 response that puts people over profit.
 
For those of you who join us for discussion, but have not joined the caucus, 
Membership in the North Star Caucus requires filling out the application at the bottom of our manifesto:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfcEo8j3v90V8Nm_tHG51cmjiZ2Bv3G743eKbs6eSG7OxkBvg/viewform 
 
 
Please be safe, healthy, and kind to one another.
 
Duane Campbell, for the 
North Star Steering Committee

After Super Tuesday, ( still counting in California)  nearly forty percent on the delegates to the Democratic Party convention will have been chosen, and the trajectory of the campaign to win the Democratic nomination for President will be much clearer. We will bring together a panel of political observers on the left to discuss their analyses of the state of the campaign and its likely direction, together with their prognosis of 'what is to be done' by activists and organizations on the left in general, and Democratic Socialists of America in particular.
 
Watch our  google group and our blog for details.
 
Posted by Duane Campbell 
 

A product of the Immigrant Rights Working Group of DSA.
Please share widely. 

​BY PETER OLNEY AND RAND WILSON
The American presidential primaries began in earnest on February 3, 2020, with the now infamous Iowa caucuses.[1] Iowa is a small mid-western state with a population of 3,155,070. Almost 85% of its residents are white – hardly representative of the U.S. as a whole, yet this is where the voting begins every four years to nominate candidates to the Democratic and Republican parties. It is a process of thousands of local meetings held across the state where voters come together to “caucus” for their chosen candidates. While most American states have simple ballot voting for candidates, the Iowa system choses its delegates based on a complicated formula “initial alignment votes” and “final alignment votes” that are used to determine the statewide number of “state delegate equivalents” for Iowa’s 41 delegates to the Democrats nominating convention 
One thing is clear: democratic socialist Bernie Sanders won the popular vote with 42,672 first choice votes, about 6,000 votes more than former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. However, the byzantine caucus system apportioned 13 delegates to Buttigieg and only 12 to Sanders.
Sanders’ strong showing in Iowa was followed by a narrow victory on February 11 in the New Hampshire primary — another small and racially unrepresentative state — but an important bellwether of voter sentiment on the road to the nomination. Sanders won with 25.7% of the vote, Pete Buttigieg came in second at 24.4%, followed by a surprising strong third place finish for Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at 19.8%.[2] The dismal fourth place finish for Senator Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts at 9.2% is of concern to the left because she and Sanders represent the anti-corporate wing of the electoral field.
Support for Sanders’ is surging with a strong base of young people and working-class voters. Amazingly, more than 1.5 million people have donated to his campaign with an average contribution of only $18. Unlike other candidates, who rely on major donors from Wall Street and corporate America, Sanders’ grass roots effort has shattered all previous records by raising over $121 million dollars — $25 million in January 2020 alone.[3]
Despite Bernie’s initial successes, many Democrats have raised concerns about whether Bernie is the best candidate to beat Republican President Donald Trump on November 3, 2020. Beating Trump will require a “united front” of voters who may not be ready to support Bernie’s more radical “social democratic” proposals. For example, Sanders has championed Medicare for All and free college tuition for all, policies that are long established in Europe but viewed as very radical in the United States.
The U.S. “winner-take-all” Electoral College system does not lend itself to building electoral support with your preferred candidate in the election and then making parliamentary alliances after the election to form a government. In the case of the U.S., it will require broad unity behind one candidate for the Democrats to defeat Trump. 
While the corporate-controlled news media is constantly degrading Bernie’s chances, there is a strong argument that he is the best candidate to form the broad coalition needed to beat Trump. In a head-to-head match-up with Trump, Bernie Sanders is the best candidate to:

• Peel off white, working-class voters who helped elect Trump in 2016 out of disgust with neo-liberal Hillary Clinton;
• Inspire a grassroots movement for social and economic justice along with the passion and energy of millennials that is essential for the on-the-ground, door-to-door mobilization needed to beat Trump;
• Perform especially well in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan – the three states that went to Trump by a margin of only a little more than 80,000 votes in 2016.

The Sanders’ candidacy — and his prospect of becoming president — seriously threaten the neo-liberal Wall Street regime and the military industrial complex that have so richly profited from America’s unbridled “frontier capitalism.” For that reason, the Democratic Party establishment will stop at nothing to prevent his nomination.