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
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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
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.
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.
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.
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. By 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.
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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 |
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