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The Organizing Upgrade site has rebranded as Convergence. Here is one of its noteworthy essays.
Excerpt: DSA can focus outward and continue on the path most connected to its recent growth: establishing itself as a socialist force within the progressive trend in U.S. politics whose most prominent figures are Bernie and the Squad. Taking that course would mean focusing, like the vast bulk of that trend, on both defeating the authoritarian right and building the independent strength of social justice and socialist forces in the process. Full text is here.
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Four DSA members discuss their conceptions of internationalism, imperialism, and the responsibilities of socialists living in the US.
BY BILL FLETCHER, JR., PAUL GARVER, RON J., MIRAH W. - SPRING 2022 What are the internationalist responsibilities of socialists living in the United States? Do the principles of international solidarity and non-interference in other countries’ affairs conflict, and if so how should socialists navigate that tension? If the world is entering a new multi-polar era, how will this affect our understanding of and practical opposition to imperialism? https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/spring-2022/between-sovereignty-and-solidarity/ by Peter Dreier
Despite over a century of anti-socialist propaganda, it is remarkable that 38% of all Americans over 18 have a positive view of socialism, according to a Gallup Poll survey conducted in October 2021. • There are 258 million Americans over 18, according to the 2020 Census. That means that 98 million Americans have a positive view of socialism. (That's different, of course, from calling yourself a socialist). • The same poll found that 47% of Americans between 18 and 34 have a positive view of socialism. • There are 76 million Americans between 18 and 34. That means that 36 million Americans between 18 and 34 have a positive view of socialism. • The same poll found that 65% of Democrats (compared with 40% of independents and 10% of Republicans have a positive view of socialism. (Who are those 10% of Republicans, by the way?) • The same poll found that 43% of women and 34% of men (over 18) have a positive view of socialism. • In addition, 54% of non-white Americans over 18 (that's how the Gallup Poll categorized them), compared with 31% of white Americans over 18 have a positive view of socialism. • Finally, 44% of Americans who are high school grads or less, 30% of Americans who have some college education, and 40% of college graduates have a positive view of socialism. by David Anderson
Are the Republicans going crazy? They are banning books, criminalizing abortion, attacking public school teachers who talk about racism, passing anti-LGBT laws and indiscriminately accusing opponents of being pedophiles. Broadly speaking, this isn’t terribly popular and these issues aren’t what most people are concerned about. Nevertheless, those issues are vehemently supported by a loud, well-funded and highly organized minority. In this midterm year, the Republicans need to win over moderate voters, but they calculate that many of them might not be paying attention. By Van Gosse and Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Portside Whose side are we on? That is the question that anyone professing a commitment to anti-imperialism should be asking, when a sovereign nation is invaded by a Great Power. Blinded by American Exceptionalism, however, many of the U.S. Left are not able to answer the question, and their silence speaks. We must always oppose empire, under any heading. No nation has the right to dominate another, let alone invade and occupy it. That was the principle we as leftists affirmed in 2003, when George W. Bush led the United States into a war of aggression against Iraq. We should state it plainly, in terms of international law. Aggressive war is the first crime of war, from which all the others flow. As the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Vladimir Putin has now committed this crime of war, and that is the premise from which we should analyze the crisis in Ukraine: Whose side are we on? That of the war criminals who started the war, or those who are defending their sovereignty? For ourselves, we are on the side of the Ukrainian people against an unprovoked war of aggression by an imperialist Great Power demonstrating in unmistakable terms what V.I. Lenin denounced as “Great Russian chauvinism.” Here are some questions to consider. by John Limaldi, Central New Jersey DSA
Many on the Left dream of the early days of the 20th century in which Eugene Debs had a chance for president and where Socialism was gaining popularity around the world. The Left in the United States was crushed for a variety of reasons, not limited to the liberalism of the New Deal “fixing” the capitalist crisis of 1929 rather than transition to socialism[1]. We see now that not only are the monopolistic giants gaining power fast[2] (with a weaker antitrust apparatus[3]) we see that the “gifts” given to workers were fragile because of their Liberal nature. The benefits excluded many industries and classes, and they remained in the privatized sphere. Combine this with the growing crisis of climate change, wage stagnation, and declining social mobility, and the class struggle is heating up. We are seeing quite clearly that the contradiction between labor and capital cannot be resolved within the capitalist mode of production. The workers are starting to accept this. by J. Hughes
The survey was fielded on April 4 to the 330 or so people who had joined North Star caucus, and to another 350 or so people who had signed a North Star statement. Of the 115 people who responded, 80% were DSA members, and 74% considered themselves members of North Star. So the response rate among North Star members was about one in four. Of those who were still members of DSA (92), 23 were considering leaving, and 20 of those are North Star members. by Susan Chacin, North Star Steering Committee Co-Chair
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is going through an internal crisis. Members of the National Political Committee, NPC, have resigned and leaders from various tendencies are at odds with each other. Many chapters have been weakened by sectarian disputes. The details of these disagreements are less important than the fact that the dissention is distracting us from what should be our focus: building a broad political movement capable of winning influence and actual demands at the local, state, and national levels. North Star, a caucus of DSA, is calling on everyone we know to organize and participate in the most urgent struggle of our times: the fight to save representative democracy in the U.S. Many DSA members and friends are already active in such struggles. They see that the Left has an important role to play in building people power. As a “big tent” organization that includes a wide range of leftists, DSA members can disagree about how best to advance the struggle to meet human needs, defend working people’s rights, uproot racism, sexism and homophobia, and save life as we know it on this planet. What we must not do is let our differences inhibit our role in building a left-center electoral force that rejects the authoritarian, right-wing assault being carried out on our imperfect democracy. If we dare to struggle on this terrain, we have a good chance to defeat the MAGA-dominated Republican Party at the midterm elections. Max Sawicky
In the U.S., upsurges from the left have come and gone. In recent decades there were mass demonstrations against predatory finance at ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ which turned out to set the stage for the Bernie Sanders’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. I was well pleased by the breakthroughs in public awareness fostered by Sanders, as well as by the parallel, explosive growth of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). After my years in the political wilderness, I thought, “Isn’t this lovely. Bernie has broken the ice on socialist rhetoric in top-level U.S. political discourse, and the adorable Bernie youth are swelling the ranks of an explicitly socialist organization. Now I will join too.”  Cesar Chavez and author Duane Campbell, 1972, from Democratic Left and Talking Union
On March 31, 2022, Eleven states will hold holidays celebrating labor and Latino Leader Cesar Chavez. Let us be clear. Chavez was religious, but he was not a saint. Neither were the growers, their Teamster collaborators, nor corporate agribusiness saints. Celebrations should not be about hero worship or uncritical praise, nor should we ignore the present oppression of farm workers in the U.S. What they did accomplish along with Philip Vera Cruz , Marshall Ganz, LeRoy Chatfield, Gil Padilla, Eliseo Medina and hundreds of others was to organize in California the first successful farm worker union against overwhelming odds. Carl Davidson & Bill Fletcher Jr.,
From Truthout In the current crisis, the left needs a full and thorough understanding of Vladimir Putin and his aspirations for Russia. We have been troubled by some of the statements from the U.S. left concerning the invasion of Ukraine. It seems when confronted with a complex array of contradictions, too many have lost an ability to sort out and grasp the principal contradiction: the Putin regime’s effort to subjugate Ukraine, end its sovereignty and deny its right to exist independently. (We urge all DSA members to sign on to this letter. A link for that purpose is here.)
We, the undersigned DSA members, support the NPC’s unfortunate but necessary decision to decharter the BDS Working Group and move DSA’s critical BDS and Palestinian solidarity work to the International Committee. The BDS Working Group’s actions, as detailed by DSA’s National Political Committee, undermine legitimate decisions made by the NPC and are straightforwardly antidemocratic. Whatever one’s position on the calls to expel Jamaal Bowman from DSA—indeed, on any of the hotly contested internal debates within the organization— national working groups and other similar entities must be subject to democratic governance. DSA’s working groups and committees do crucial work carrying out democratically decided priorities, resolutions, and strategies. Some of these bodies are appointed by the NPC; others are self-selecting; all are subordinate administrative bodies that do not have the right to set DSA’s policy on behalf of our over 90,000 members, or to make strategic and tactical decisions that directly undermine the elected leadership of the organization. While informal caucuses and individual members are rightly empowered to dissent from official organizational decisions, the use of official working group resources to undermine DSA’s official positions damages our capacity to function as a coherent political entity and makes us vulnerable to attacks from our enemies. As DSA matures as an organization, we must guard against the possibility of small factions co-opting and weaponizing official DSA bodies to undermine the democratic integrity of the organization. That is why the NPC’s decision to create social media guidelines for all national working groups, committees, and similar bodies was one we welcome; that is why every other DSA national working group, committee, and similar body accepted those guidelines and timely shared social media passwords to staff, as mandated by those guidelines. Leo Casey
Over the last few weeks, I have been struck by how passionate our discussions of the current state and future of DSA have become. This turn should not surprise us: we are discussing not only political principles and deep commitments, but also relationships and emotional attachments that are important to us. Together, they are what give our lives purpose and meaning. At some point in our lives, all of us have poured blood, sweat and tears into DSA and its predecessor organizations; some of us have even invested decades of our lives in it. As we contemplated where it is headed, with more causes for concern growing as each day passes, it would be surprising if we were not filled with passion and strong emotions. I think we need to find a language to talk about those feelings and passions with each other, or we will not be able to understand each other, and we will find deep chasms opening up in our midst. I first became convinced of this when I read the responses here to “Whither DSA?” What I had written was an analytical piece: I am of an analytical cast of mind, and I tend to dissect problems and issues, thinking about them in terms of relationships and connections, figuring out how one thing follows from the next, and then reaching conclusions. But it was clear to me from the responses to what I wrote that while many of us were thinking about what was happening in the same analytical mode as me, others had a different approach, and were thinking about things in ways that were more grounded in long-standing relationships and feelings. I felt a need to try to find ways for us to communicate with each other that were mutually intelligible, so that we could understand each better; then, even if we did not reach agreement, we would not feel alienated from each other. This is a new blog post series Our goal is to post several items on the important internal disputes related to our present vigorous discussion of DSA. Note these posts on Inside Baseball are not statements of the policy or decisions of North Star. They are posted to record the events in a manner that will assist comprehension. The editors.
Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies. 1776. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. …. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, an organization and to provide new Guards for their future security. To prove these charges, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. 1. Whither DSA ? Leo Casey. 3/11/2022. 2. DSA Edging Toward the Sectarian Abyss. Max Sawicky. 1/10/2022 3. The Campaign to Expel Jamaal Bowman. Steering Committee of North Star Caucus, DSA 4. The Dangers of Factionalism in DSA 4/6/2021 If the Left is to succeed where past generations have failed, it can’t allow sectarian organizations to operate as “parties within a party.” ...The remarkable growth of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) over the past four years, from a group with a few thousand members to one with fifteen times that number, has made it the most significant U.S. socialist organization in nearly a century. Successful campaigns to elect open democratic socialists to public office have given the DSA real, if still embryonic, political influence. Four members -- Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib -- now sit in the House of Representatives. Together with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, this is the largest number of self-avowed democratic socialists ever to hold Congressional office simultaneously, to say nothing of the scores of DSA members who have been elected to state legislatures, county boards and city councils in recent years. 5. Austin Gonzalez resigns from the NPC. March 19, 2022 Austin Gonzalez resigns from DSA, and thereby the NPC and IC. Putatively in solidarity with the BDSWG, but his letter makes clear the pressure his campist line brought on him and DSA. Also complains about the handling of grievances. 6.. Conflicts in Metro Atlanta DSA July 2020. 7.. Letter from DSA members to NPC supporting the NPC statement and action on the BDS decision. The letter describes several views of the recent problems in DSA.- Not a policy statement by North Star. The actual decision of the NPC is not yet up on the website. It is described in detail on the Discussion Board. The Discussion Board is open only to registered members of DSA. 8. A New Vision for DSA. Susan Chacin. Winter 2021. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/a-new-vision-for-dsa-the-socialist-voice-in-a-progressive-united-front 9. To Save DSA: https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/to-save-democratic-socialists-of-america-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-till-its-gone 10. Background piece on the Jamaal Bowman controversy. https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/democratic-socialists-j-street-bds-israel-palestine-iron-dome-aoc Watch this site for a growing listing of articles on our blog on these subjects. by Leo Casey,
When I first began writing an answer to this question three weeks ago, I had just participated in four separate conversations where I had to convince comrades – savvy, committed people with decades of political work and organizing experience – to not leave DSA. In the last week, following the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and what can only be described as a series of disastrous blunders in DSA’s response, I have seen those earlier signs of trouble turn into actual declarations by individuals that they are resigning from DSA. I begin here with my earlier conversations, as they provide the stage on which the latest tragedy is playing out. My conversations were anecdotal, but the events of the last week have confirmed that they represent something more than just a few outlier events. We know that DSA has been losing members for some time, although there is not a lot of transparency about how many. The solution of the NPC, the national DSA leadership, was to mount a membership recruitment drive. That avoided the political question of why DSA is losing members, and the political question is at the core of what DSA would have to do to address this loss. The following was originally published on February 25 in openDemocracy and Commons. The letter is republished here to further discussion and thinking on how the US left should react to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The Democratic Socialists of America’s elected National Political Committee responded to the crisis in a statement published on February 26.
By Taras Bilous I am writing these lines in Kyiv while it is under artillery attack. Until the last minute, I had hoped that Russian troops wouldn’t launch a full-scale invasion. Now, I can only thank those who leaked the information to the US intelligence services. Yesterday, I spent half the day considering whether I ought to join a territorial defence unit. During the night that followed, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a full mobilisation order and Russian troops moved in and prepared to encircle Kyiv, which made the decision for me. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an unprovoked act of aggression, the deed of an authoritarian regime and revanchist imperial power seeking to subjugate by force a weaker neighbor. It is the waging of war that can only result in needless death and devastation on a massive scale.
The justifications offered by the Russian despot Vladimir Putin for this flagrant violation of international law – such as the offensive claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jew whose grandfather was wounded twice while fighting in the Red Army against the Nazis and whose three great uncles were murdered in the Shoah, is a “neo-Nazi” – are nothing more than fantastical propaganda. In this moment of their trial, we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and its working class. We join with them in saying: this attack on the independent and sovereign nation of Ukraine must end, and Russian armed forces must immediately withdraw from all Ukrainian territory. Our internationalist duty as democratic socialists and anti-imperialists requires that we make this call our first and primary demand. If Russian peace and democracy activists can risk their freedom and safety by protesting the invasion on the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow and other Russian cities, there is no excuse for those us in relative safety from doing our best to ensure that this war of aggression does not prevail. Diplomatic negotiations and meaningful progress toward a lasting peace cannot take place at the point of a gun, so powerful pressure must be brought to bear against the Russian regime to end its invasion. To this end, we support the levying of stringent diplomatic and economic sanctions that target the Russian state and the Russian oligarchic elite who are responsible for this war of aggression. We endorse the statements of the four DSA members of the House of Representatives and of Senator Bernie Sanders in favor of such sanctions, as well as their calls for the U.S. and NATO to accept refugees from the fighting in Ukraine. With these comrades, we would oppose military intervention by the U.S. or other NATO nations inside Ukraine, were such a step to be seriously contemplated, as a dangerous escalation which could lead to world war. It is precisely because we oppose outside military intervention that we have an obligation to advocate for other means to compel a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, and sanctions are the only other means that could conceivably produce such a result. In our view, to oppose sanctions is to surrender to the Russian invasion, a betrayal of the Ukrainian people and working class. For these reasons, we repudiate completely the statement of the DSA International Committee made immediately prior to the invasion, which contained not a single word critical of Russia’s unmistakable preparations for its war of aggression, and its tweets after the start of the invasion, which have opposed the levying of sanctions. These declarations are a perversion of true internationalism, an ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools. In this moment of international crisis, we are moved by the courageous Ukrainians defending their homeland against much stronger Russian armed forces and by the courageous Russians demonstrating against the war of aggression undertaken by the dictatorial regime which rules their nation. Their example motivates us to act on their behalf. By Bill Mosely
By now it’s commonly accepted in even the most mainstream of media that the Republicans are planning a ruthless campaign to win back the House and Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024. If they can win fairly, fine for them; if not, they plan to use manipulation, voter suppression, threats — and, if necessary, violence. Only GOP apologists deny this. This has implications not only for the Democratic Party, and not only for the survival of constitutional government, but for the broader left/progressive agenda as well. The irony of the Trumpists’ slogan “Stop the Steal” was that in reality it was Trump and his cronies trying to steal the 2020 election, while Democrats — and a few Republicans — were trying to deliver an honest count of the results. Although Trump et al. ultimately failed in 2020, they began writing a playbook that they can repeat and expand on in the future. This member statement is a response to a statement published in Metro DC DSA's February 25th Weekly Update. The weekly update is prepared each week by a team of volunteer members.
By Elizabeth Stanley I feel that the DSA statement [in the Friday, February 25 Weekly Update] on the Russian invasion of Ukraine was deeply disappointing. Frankly, I found it self-centered and in poor taste. We can do better than this. I don't disagree that this senseless mess is a result of the usual military-industrial capitalist nationalist power wrangling. However, I can't believe I'm writing this, but it is beyond wrong. In fact, it is outright abusive to imply that we must give violent actors, whether individuals or states, what they want so they won't do something worse. Furthermore, treating an actual active invasion like an opportunity for an "I told you so" is repulsive. People are fleeing their homes and getting killed. At this point, what may have been a predictable outcome doesn't matter that much. We can talk about that failure later. The war is happening today. We must engage with today. By Max B. Sawicky
(This essay does not necessarily represent the views of anyone else in North Star.) "The question is that the world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with each other … enrolling everyone in their armies. … Let us avoid false optimism and approved gestures. And seek truth." —Thomas Merton In high schools around the country, we periodically see the staging of Model United Nations conferences. Students assume the identities of different nations’ representatives and play UN General Assembly. In Democratic Socialists of America, and in socialist organizations of the past, the same sort of exercise has gone on. Debates over which national government should do what, and what we think about it, give rise to votes and statements. The statements’ texts are wrangled over like the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, albeit by utterly powerless conferees. Can we come back to planet Earth for a moment? The truth is the impact of any U.S. socialist proclamation on the foreign affairs of nations is nil. The real impact is on what others may think of DSA, which in turn will have a bearing on DSA’s growth, or lack thereof. We should care about this because we want to see DSA continue to grow. Kurt Stand
Socialist Forum Winter 2022 A look back at the late 1940s and its lost opportunities ought to give us pause as we consider our situation today. We now need to press for deeper change that goes to the roots of our system’s dysfunction if we are to put an end not just to the Trump administration, but to the reasons his outlook continues to command as much support as it does. That will only be possible if we find a way past the tension between those who oppose Trump in the name of a “return to normalcy” and those who seek to root out the oppressions that have prevailed throughout our history. Holding onto the dynamic of both ought to be central to creating an alternative political culture in our society, a culture that can also address the anger of those who point a finger at those deemed “other” others in a game that victimizes all. More: https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/winter-2022/peekskill-1949-what-was-lost-what-remained-what-it-means-today/  Bishop William J. Barber II leads the march from Union Station in Washington with the Poor Peoples Campaign and the Unite union to protest voter suppression laws on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) We are only one year into a presidency that more than 81 million Americans supported. Surely we can fight for more than one legislative season before we say it’s over and we have done all we can. William J Barber II As terrible as the obstructionism of Manchin, Sinema, and their Republican colleagues may be, we have no right to despair. Those who fought for democracy before we did faced far worse with far fewer resources than we have now. But now, as then, we can find hope in the uprising of poor and low-income people who are refusing to work for poverty wages, resisting evictions in the midst of a national housing crisis and taking nonviolent direct action to demand action from their elected representatives. We have not yet persuaded 52 senators that democracy is more valuable than a Senate rule. But we have persuaded 48 of their colleagues, the vice president, and the president, many of whom did not see the urgency of this moment just a few months ago. We have not won a majority of the Senate, but poor and low-wealth voters have the power to determine the outcome of upcoming Senate elections in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We have not yet won, but 70 to 80 percent of Americans want living wages, just voting laws, and universal access to healthcare Max Elbaum
Organizing Upgrade Democracy Defenders need to unify, strategize, and pull from deep wells of conviction to turn back the MAGA tide. David Duhalde
Jacobin Socialists need to understand the class antagonisms and nuances of campaign finance law. Jamaal Bowman, the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York's 16th congressional district, greets supporters on June 23, 2020 in Yonkers, New York. His successful campaign against incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel benefited from a super PAC intervention on his behalf from Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party. More: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/socialists-super-pacs-campaign-finance-justice-democrats? Nathan Newman Why did so many non-college whites lurch towards Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections--and conversely why are more educated whites trending towards the Democrats?  |
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