Forget about the debt. Boosting the economy and sending people money isn’t just good policy, it’s smart politics.


Max B. Sawicky 

Expectations are high for the incoming Joe Biden administration, not because the political circumstances are advantageous, nor because of Biden himself, but because our troubles are so great. 

Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed. The death toll from Covid-19 in the United States now tops 300,000. An avalanche of evictions and foreclosures is on its way. And this is on top of our ongoing political crisis: A stubborn minority of voters refuse to recognize the results of the election, while many of President Trump’s supporters remain unwilling to observe elementary safety measures to reduce the further spread of the virus. In Washington, D.C. last week, a rampaging mob of fascist goons assaulted random passers-by and vandalized black churches -- ostensibly as a way to show fealty to Trump. To put it mildly, America is in bad shape.

Much of the Biden administration’s ability to respond to the health and economic crises we face depends on the outcome of the January 5 run-off elections in Georgia that will determine which party controls the Senate. But even with victories in both of those races, centrist Democrats in Congress will continue to oppose major progressive policies. And Democrats’ narrow majority in the House (and, if we’re lucky, the Senate) will make it difficult for President Biden to spend as much money as necessary. 

Nevertheless, there is a lot of new spending we need, and elevating the most urgent priorities is an important political task: It applies pressure on current Democratic officials, including the president himself, and educates and motivates people who can vote for a new, more progressive Congress in 2022. 


Here are four of the top priorities:

1. Send money now! When it comes to stimulus, there are always dual objectives: boosting the economy, and providing relief for those in the greatest need. Sending checks to everybody, extending unemployment benefits, and bailing out beleaguered small business have already been shown to be effective. The recession and pandemic are far from over, so these policies should continue. The skinny compromise that might be struck in Congress provides no more than a small respite. To speed up a return to economic health, the first step is to avoid sinking deeper into the current rut. 

Just as important is providing relief to state and local governments, which provide services of vital importance to working people. These governments never quite recovered from the Great Recession of 2007 – 2008. They are obliged to balance their budgets, so unlike the federal government, their borrowing capacity is restricted. The triple hit to state and local finance -- reduced tax revenue, added recession-related spending, and additional virus-related expenses -- has depleted their reserves.

2. Public investment and the Green New Deal: do everything. A recession is always an opportune time to ramp up public investment on a permanent basis. Many possibilities will compete for funding. Two important angles should be kept in mind.

The traditional sort of investment in ​“infrastructure” -- roads, bridges, school buildings, airports and rail systems -- has been neglected for decades. A revival, however, needs to be done through the lens of climate change awareness. Among other things, this means a preference for public, mass transit rather than roads; the upgrade of public facilities (including rail systems) with a view towards reducing carbon emissions; and the modernization of the nation’s power grid. 

The other consideration is to take seriously what might be called an infrastructure of care: workers and facilities devoted to housing and caring for those unable to do so for themselves, including the persistently unemployed, the indigent elderly, the differently abled, those in failing mental health, those without housing, the incarcerated, and beleaguered immigrants.

3. The Peace Dividend. Currently, the federal budget devotes $697 billion to national defense. When it comes to the federal government actually doing things other than mailing checks to individuals and medical care providers -- what is classified as ​“discretionary spending” -- defense takes nearly half. Much of this money is devoted to supporting the capacity to wage war, and we have to ask, against whom? The interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have not gone well, to say the least.
 
It is possible to overstate how quickly a peace dividend could be pried out of the defense budget. Workers and uniformed military cannot be summarily dismissed -- they will need transition assistance. Big-ticket hardware contracts that are set for a period of years cannot be instantly canceled. Even so, there is an opportunity to redirect a large quantity of funding to non-defense purposes.

4. Forget about the national debt. In a downturn, the economy loses more than it gains by failing to ramp up federal deficit spending. Of course, Republicans have shown themselves to be comical hypocrites when it comes to worries about deficits. Unfortunately, some influential Democrats may actually believe such nonsense. They would be well-advised to read a recent paper by Jason Furman, Obama’s chief economist, and Larry Summers, omnipresent Democratic Party economist, wherein they basically admit everything they used to say about budget deficits was hogwash and is particularly inappropriate under current circumstances. As far as elite economic thinking is concerned, there should be no obstacle to massive increases in non-defense deficit spending.

Biden will also have important tools that do not depend on Congress. A recent column by Dave Roberts provides a nice overview, both technical and political. Biden can issue executive orders, make recess appointments of nominees the Senate refuses to approve, fumigate Trump’s termites from the woodwork of the federal civil service, re-regulate what has been deregulated, and un-fire good people who were dismissed by Trump. 
​
Trump flouted every conceivable legal and informal constraint on his rule, to the utter silence of the Republican Party. He has given Biden a license to do likewise. No credibility should go to any Democratic stuffed shirt who bleats about restoring norms. Working people are desperate. This is class war, folks.


MAX B. SAWICKY is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR​.NET). This column is adapted from a forthcoming report.

Reposted with thanks from In These Times (link):
https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-stimulus-covid-debt-green-new-deal

​Statement on DSA Internationalism.
DSA voted to leave the Socialist International in 2017. 

​


​In 1989, the Socialist international (S.I.) updated the Frankfurt declaration, which was originally set forth in 1951 under the title, The Aims and Tasks of Democratic Socialism.The revised document in 1989, principally written by American MIchael Harrington, is known as The Stockholm Declaration. It has been said that The Stockholm Document is truly a DSA Internationalist document. 
 
With its soaring grammar, it is a manifesto of hope and a call for global democracy, equality, human rights, liberation for the oppressed, ecological justice, and new forms of decentralized democratic ownership of the means of production. 
 
Michael Harrington was a well-read and informed democratic Marxist, however, the document is light on class struggle. It’s revisionist perspective could have been written by Edward Bernstein. Harrington saw a collectivist future, but also questioned whether this collectivist future would be authoritarian or democratic; a collectivism dominated by financial and corporate elites, and functioning for their primary benefit, or a democratic collectivism, created by and for the benefit of all humanity. 
 
Daniel Frankot
​
  to https://www.socialistinternational.org/about-us/declaration-of-principles/.



 

Both the Stansbury Forum and Organizing Upgrade felt it important to maximize the exposure of this piece and are co-publishing.

​The results are in: Trump was defeated and Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president on January 20, 2021. This victory is the product of a broad, popular united front. Popular, because there was an alliance of cross-class forces that opposed Trump. United, in that these forces agreed on a shared objective – electing Biden and Harris – to remove him from office. In such a broad front, the reasons for uniting to throw out Trump were varied. Many were offended and outraged by his anti-democratic rhetoric and conduct. He repulsed millions with his overt racist, jingoist and sexist behavior, and his cultivation and encouragement of white supremacists. 

Activists in the labor movement saw his attacks as weakening our already feeble bargaining power and ability to fight for our members. Regulations protecting everything from air quality and wilderness areas to labor and occupational health standards were gutted.  The left clearly understood that four more years of Trump and his deepening authoritarianism would make it nearly impossible to realize progressive reforms like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and the much needed labor law reforms proposed in the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. 

The heroes of this election victory are the thousands of grassroots political activists who busted their butts to defeat Trump by working for Biden, particularly in the key battleground states. Thousands of our comrades in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other socialists worked side-by-side with leaders and activists in black and brown organizations, women’s organizations, and labor unions like UNITE-HERE and SEIU.  Because of our collective participation in this struggle to elect Biden and Harris we have forged new or deeper ties with organizations and individuals open to discussion and struggle over the way forward in the future Biden administration.

Few, if any, of the comrades we campaigned with had illusions about the reality of who Biden actually is or what he represents. They can recite chapter and verse his personal flaws and long history of complicity with the neo-liberal project. Nevertheless, there was a broad understanding that Trump had to go — and that our efforts would be key to an electoral victory. 

BERNIE OR BUST
But where was DSA — the largest socialist organization in the U.S. — during this Presidential election? While many members individually were leaders in the work to elect Biden — as an organization, we sat on the sidelines. This was the result of a “Bernie or Bust” position requiring DSA to abstain from supporting Biden pushed through by a narrow majority of delegates at DSA’s 2019 convention. 

That puts DSA in the embarrassing position of now advancing a program and promoting actions for the first 100 days of the Biden administration, while as an organization it played no formal role in achieving that opportunity. Are we to understand that it would have been an equally useful result to be heading into the first 100 days of a Trump administration? Of course not! As long time trade unionists, we view this refusal to come off the sidelines as analogous to a faction within the union deciding that they don’t like the leaders of a strike or their politics. The faction doesn’t participate in picketing, or the strike kitchen, or the mass demonstrations. Then, these “do nothings” who essentially sat out the strike, come to the union hall insisting on a major role in determining the terms of the strike settlement.

A SOCIALIST’S PLACE IS IN THE STRUGGLE

DSA’s formal abstention from the Biden campaign reflects a larger ideological issue that plagues the organization: a flawed understanding of the “special role of socialists.” The constant refrain from many members is, “We are socialists and we have a special role!” Yes, socialists do have a special role to play in leading popular movements by being the most active and dedicated fighters in the struggle. That dedication and commitment — not pontificating about the problems with the “misleaders/sheepherders” or the neo-liberal from Delaware — is what opens up the opportunity to win the “uninitiated” to our socialist ideas and class analysis. 

If this simple concept needs political window dressing from the socialist liturgy, here is a quote from Karl Marx from 1875 in a letter to Wilhelm Bracke: “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.”

Bernie Sanders’s entrance onto the national election stage as a Democratic Socialist in the 2016 Democratic primaries was one of the principal causes of DSA’s rapid growth. Instead of choosing a third party route, Sanders wisely jumped into the admittedly murky swamp of Democratic Party politics. And by doing so, his socialist message and working class perspective blossomed and flourished in the mainstream in ways that were hitherto unimaginable.

Again in 2020, Sanders ran as a Democrat in a much more complicated candidate field. Bernie’s campaign forced the other candidates to contend with his programmatic initiatives addressing a rigged economy and our broken democracy. After the Democratic Party consolidated its support behind Biden and Bernie withdrew, he clearly understood what was at stake. Facing “the most dangerous president in US history,” he actively campaigned to get his base to support Biden and Harris.

DSA’s experience in the 2020 election can be a teachable moment. It’s time to acknowledge that “Bernie or Bust” was a major tactical and strategic error. Now, with critical reflection, it can lead to a more mature approach to our electoral politics. That maturation should begin with a disavowal of the position taken by many DSA chapters in local races that they can only support self-proclaimed socialist candidates. This too has again led to the isolation of socialists from the actual struggle over the needs and interests of our class. Many candidates stand with us on the issues. They stand for positions that will benefit the lot of working people and people of color. Their successful election would result in policies benefiting the lives of the working class. Again, this abstention is contradictory to the needs and interests of the people we purport to fight for. It just isolates us from the potential to make gains, win reforms and win respect for our analysis and ideas.

Let’s learn from 2020. Now it’s time to fight for two Senate seats in Georgia to create the most favorable playing field on which to challenge — and push — the neo-liberal President-elect Joe Biden. 
​
…
Peter Olney is on the Steering Committee of DSA’s Labor Commission and a lifelong union organizer.   In 2020, he volunteered with Seed the Vote (STV) to work on the Biden campaign in Maricopa County Arizona. Rand Wilson, also a lifelong union organizer, has been a member of DSA since 1986. After Sanders declared for the Democratic nomination in 2015, Wilson registered as a Democrat for the first time. He was elected a delegate to the 2016 DNC convention and was a member of the DNC Credentials Committee for the 2020 convention.
 

Building a Multiracial Working-Class Movement Alongside the Immigrant Rights Movement
 
DEMOCRATIC LEFT 2020 BY ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ
 
“¡Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos! ” is a chant you’ll hear from Latinos in the movement that translates to “We are here and we are not leaving.” We mean it: the immigrants’ rights movement is everywhere, and it’s from and by the working class!

At the August 2019 DSA convention, delegates overwhelmingly passed Resolution #5, “Defense of Immigrants and Refugees,” which reads, in part, that
“the Democratic Socialists of America support the struggle of immigrant communities, including around partial demands as well as the right of immigrants and their communities to lead this struggle and determine its tactics” [Emphasis added]

If you look at the immigrants’ rights movement today, you can see that there is no shortage of leaders to learn from as we build the truly multiracial working-class base necessary to win power. The Immigrants’ Rights Working Group (IRWG) of DSA recently hosted several of those leaders for a webinar covering work being done exposing human rights abuses at ICE detention centers, indigenous migrant workers winning union contracts, dairy farm workers in Vermont calling on dairy companies to ensure respect for human rights in their supply chain, and the importance of workers’centers as a place for workers to learn about their rights and organizing.

​

It’s clear that the movement is broad and everywhere, engaging in struggles wherever power can be contested. If we are serious about building a powerful multiracial working-class base, we, too, have to be part of the immigrants’ rights movement. The key word here is “part.” We must be willing to be led by those most affected.
​
Here are some steps you and your chapter can take now:
Educate yourselves 

Following the 2019 convention, the Steering Committee of the Immigrants’ Rights Working Group (IRWG SC) put together an Organizing Guide to introduce DSAers to the initial steps in understanding and getting involved in the immigrants’ rights movement. This is a living document that will be changed as the situation changes.

Having a basic understanding of the immigrants’ rights movement and the issues of the day will give members context for the moment we are in and help guide chapters and individuals. We understand that some of the more heinous crimes of the Trump administration will end, but the policies and conditions that lead to migration continue.

Connect with the movement

In Atlanta, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) is an immigrant-led grassroots organization that has helped expose human rights abuses in detention centers, organize communities into resistance, and promote civic and political education. “If there’s a vanguard of the working class in Atlanta, it’s those organizations like GLAHR and Mijente, rooted in and led by working class immigrants,” said Metro Atlanta DSA member Daniel Hanley.

GLAHR has been waging an over-10-year campaign against the 287g program, a Federal program that deputizes local law enforcement for ICE. Following GLAHR’s lead, MADSA was part of the coalition victory that saw the Dekalb County Sheriff end cooperation with ICE.

During the 2020 election, GLAHR Action Network and Mijente led a campaign to oust sheriffs who supported 287g in Cobb and Gwinnett counties. This down-ballot work was crucial to the coalition that put Biden over the top in Georgia.

The likelihood is high that there’s ongoing immigrants’ rights work near you. Hanley added that “any coalition work must be undertaken in earnest to support and learn from those closest to the struggle.” If you haven’t already done so, find those links and learn from and connect with those organizing near you.

Make local demands

 The movement is everywhere. There are surely local links to highlight and organize around our demands of abolishing ICE, Closing the Camps, and gaining permanent status and citizenship for all.

On a recent IRWG call we heard from members in Los Angeles engaged in coalition work with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) focused on Black immigrants who continue to be disproportionately arrested by ICE. In Atlanta, coalition efforts contributed to the city ending its contract with ICE and moving toward shutting down the Atlanta City Detention Center.

We also heard from students organizing around Sanctuary Campuses and around MiJente’s national call for #NoTechforICE, raising awareness and fighting to end the cooperation of tech companies with ICE. YDSA Georgia Tech turned out one of the most successful pledge drives, with tech students pledging not to work for Palantir, one of the contractors facilitating ICE in their abuses. Metro Atlanta DSA and YDSA Georgia Tech organized in a coalition that included GLAHR, MiJente, BAJI, labor, and more. 

The immigrants’ rights movement will not shy away from a diversity of tactics with a clear political strategy. Keeping in mind that the risks faced by immigrants, particularly undocumented folks, is growing exponentially, DSAers must understand that those who have the privilege of citizenship cannot endanger those who do not. There is work to plug into right now, if we are willing to learn.

Posted with permission from Democratic Left
​
 
About Alexander HernandezAlexander Hernandez is co-chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Working Group and a union representative working in Atlanta and throughout the Southeast.
 
 

The resurgence of democratic socialism has occurred during a period of growing activism against widening inequality, persistent racism and looming environmental disaster. 

​
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 11: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a town hall hosted by the NAACP on September 11, 2019 in Washington, DC. Also pictured is Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). 
 
By Peter Dreier
|
December 11, 2020 
 
While Democrats debate whether the party has moved too far to the left or not far enough, Democratic Socialists of America — the nation’s largest socialist organization — scored its biggest victories in this year’s election cycle. There are currently 71 DSA members holding public office. This year, one was defeated for reelection and two did not run for reelection. 

Another 33 DSAers were elected this year for the first time, bringing the total to 101 when the new winners take office in January. This is greater than at any time since about 1912, when the Socialist Party had a strong foothold in both urban and rural America. Most of the socialists who have recently been elected to office represent safe blue areas, but they have also made inroads in purple areas, including Montana, Indiana, North Dakota, Texas and Tennessee. DSA also spearheaded several impressive ballot measure victories around progressive causes like the minimum wage, rent control and universal pre-school.

The number of democratic socialists in the U.S. House of Representatives will soon double — from two to four. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), both elected as part of the 2018 blue wave, will be joined in January by Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who were elected in November. 

Bush, a registered nurse, pastor and formerly homeless single mom, became politically active as part of the Ferguson protests in 2014. In 2018 she garnered only 37 percent of the vote in her Democratic primary fight against long-term incumbent William Clay, but this year she defeated him by almost 5,000 votes and went on to win in November on a platform that included Medicare for All, public housing, nationwide rent control, tuition-free public college and a Green New Deal. Bowman, a founder and principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in the Bronx, upset 16-term incumbent Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary and easily won the seat on November 3.

And, of course, over in the Senate, there’s Bernie Sanders, the Vermont democratic socialist, whose vote-getting and fundraising success for his two presidential campaigns caught America by surprise. These five politicians mark an all-time high for the socialist presence in Congress. 

DSA had only 6,000 members a few years ago but now it has over 87,000 dues-paying members with several hundred chapters in all 50 states. A much larger number of Americans embrace its ideas and its activities, too. Many of DSA’s rank-and-file activists have become skilled political operatives, helping elect progressive candidates, at all levels of government. In addition to helping its own members win election campaigns, DSA has endorsed at least 45 other progressive candidates who will be serving in office in January, including 31 elected for the first time this year. Among them community organizer Carroll Fife, who was elected to the Oakland (CA) City Council, Torrey Harris, the first LGBTQ candidate elected to the Tennessee legislature, Kim Roney, a piano teacher and founder of a local alternative radio station, who won a seat on the Asheville (NC) City Council, teacher Jessica Vaughn, who was elected to the Hillsborough County (Tampa, FL) school board and attorney Shadia Tadros, who won her campaign for judge on the Syracuse (NY) municipal court. 

Recent polls show that Americans — especially young people — are warming up to the idea of socialism. A Gallup Poll last year discovered that 43 percent of Americans say socialism would be a good thing for the country. Among 18-34-year-olds, 58 percent embraced the idea, compared with 40 percent of those between 35 to 54, and 36 percent among those 55 and older. Among Democrats, 70 percent said they think socialism would be a good thing for America, in contrast to 45 percent of independents and 13 percent of Republicans.  

Many people who express positive views of socialism have only vague ideas on what that would mean in practice, but the poll reflects widespread frustration with American-style hyper-capitalism. The resurgence of democratic socialism has occurred during a period of growing activism against widening inequality, persistent racism and looming environmental disaster. The COVID pandemic has exposed the fragility of our economic, health care and housing system. A growing number of Americans seem to be saying: if this is capitalism, what’s the alternative? Let’s give socialism a try and see if it works.

“I’m so scared of this anti — Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” Frank Luntz, an influential GOP pollster and strategist, warned the Republican Governors Association at its Florida meeting in December 2011, a few months after the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” 

The Republicans took Luntz’s warning seriously, ratcheting up their red-baiting campaign. Donald Trump embraced it with fervor. 
“We are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union speech in January. “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” 

There are parts of the country where the label “socialist” would annihilate anyone running for office. But Sanders’ two presidential campaigns demonstrated that many voters will support a “democratic socialist” if they think his or her ideas will improve their lives. In 2014, voters in Seattle elected socialist Kshama Sawant, a community college professor and Occupy activist, to city council. The next year, she helped spearhead that city’s path breaking $15 minimum wage law. 

Neither Sanders nor Sawant are DSA members, but their examples inspired many DSAers to run for office, typically with the backing of local DSA chapters as well as local unions, the Sunrise movement, Black Lives Matter and other progressive activists.

In the last few years, New York City DSA has become a powerful electoral machine. In 2018, it helped elect Ocasio-Cortez to Congress and Julia Salazar to the state Senate. This year, they catapulted Bowman to Congress and DSA member Jabari Brisport to another state Senate seat. Brisport will be the first openly gay person of color in the state legislature. Five DSA activists — tenant organizer Marcela Mitaynes, union nurse Phara Souffrant Forrest, housing advocate Zohran Mamdani, community organizer Emily Gallagher and immigrant rights and health care activist Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas — won seats in the state assembly. With many progressive allies in both houses, the DSA caucus will have a voice in legislative maneuverings. 

Two community organizers with Reclaim Philadelphia, DSA members Nikil Saval and Rick Krajewski, were elected on their first try to the Pennsylvania state Senate and State House, respectively. In the Democratic primary, Saval beat a 10-year incumbent while Krajewski dethroned a 35-year party stalwart. When they arrive at the state Capital in Harrisburg in January, they will join three other democratic socialist who were all reelected to second terms. 

Minnesotans sent two DSA members — community activist Omar Fateh (the son of Somali immigrants) in Minneapolis and labor lawyer Jen McEwen in Duluth — to the state Senate. In January, state legislatures in that state as well as Rhode Island, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire will have two DSA members. DSAers will also add their left-leaning voices to the debates in the legislatures in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Vermont, Virginia and North Dakota, joined by other progressives who DSA endorsed and worked for. 

Voters in a traditionally Republican Fargo district reelected DSA member Ruth Buffalo, a native American, to represent them in North Dakota’s state House of Representatives. In 2018 she defeated incumbent Republican Randy Boehning, the primary sponsor of a voter ID law designed to disenfranchise Native Americans. 

Twenty-five old Alex Lee, who had previously worked as an aide to two state legislators, beat out a crowded field in the Democratic primary to become California’s first Gen Z state legislator as well as its only bisexual member. He won 73 percent of the vote to win a vacant Assembly seat in the San Jose area. Lee, the offspring of Chinese immigrants, told the New York Times that even though the Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the legislature and control all statewide offices, “we can’t seem to do the things that are big and progressive. We haven’t gotten universal health care, or even close to it. We haven’t guaranteed housing for everyone. Wealth inequality is out of control. There’s something deeply wrong about that. And I think that frustration in the system drove me to run.” 

In 2017, Lee Carter, a 30-year old Marine veteran and DSA member, ran for the Virginia state legislature after he was injured at work and discovered the inequities of the state’s workman’s compensation system. A Democrat, he beat a six-term Republican incumbent, but quickly learned that he would have little influence in the Republican-controlled legislature. While many of his legislative colleagues had cushy jobs with corporations that influenced their votes, Carter worked as a low-wage Lyft driver in order to give him the flexibility to attend legislative sessions and meet with constituents. Last year, however, the Democrats won a majority of seats in the legislature and Carter was reelected, buoyed by support from DSA, the Democratic Party, the Sierra Club, Indivisible, NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Earlier this year, the legislature finally passed one of his bills — to extend the state’s minimum wage to workers at Dulles and Reagan airports.  

Besides Sanders, DSA’s only statewide elected official — Michelle Fecteau, who was elected in 2012 to an eight-year term on the Michigan state Board of Education — did not run for reelection this year. She remains the executive director of the faculty union at Wayne State University. 

Sixty-one DSA members will be serving in local and county government offices come January, as well. They range from planning commissions and town councils in small towns to city council members and law enforcement officials in some large counties and municipalities, including New York City, Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Knoxville, Austin, Houston, New Haven, Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

The upsurge of protests around the nation’s criminal justice system led voters to elect a wave of progressive District Attorneys and county sheriffs to challenge police misconduct, racial profiling, cash bail, prosecutions for low-level drug crimes and mass incarceration. One of them is Austin, Texas DSA member José Garza — a public defender and labor and immigrants’ rights attorney — who defeated Travis County’s incumbent DA and then trounced his Republican opponent on November 3 with 70 percent of the vote. He joins reformer Franklin Bynum, a DSA member from Houston who has been a public defender and defense attorney, who two years ago was elected a judge on the Harris County Criminal Court in order to challenge the criminal justice system’s “oppressive punishment bureaucracies” because, he said at the time, “people need care, not cages.” 

Six DSAers currently serve on the 50-member Chicago City Council, although none of them were up for reelection this year. In San Francisco, DSAer Dean Preston, a leader of the statewide renters’ rights group Tenants Together, won reelection to the Board of Supervisors, while first timer Nithya Raman, an urban planner, won a huge upset, beating pro-business incumbent David Ryu for a seat in one of Los Angeles’ most conservative city council districts.
 
DSA member Bertha Perez has a new position on the city council in Merced, a city in central California where almost one-third of its 84,000 residents live in poverty. Shortly after starting her $31,000-a-year job cleaning buildings at the University of California’s Merced campus, mostly working the graveyard shift, she got involved with her union — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees  — and was soon elected to its negotiating team by her fellow workers. She helped lead a three-day strike and was part of the team that won a new contract worth over a $1 billion for 27,000 service workers in the UC system. ” Emboldened by her union experience, Perez decided to run for the city council, explaining, “working class people like myself need to take action and get involved if we want a city council that reflects the needs and desires of every resident.“

DSA member Konstantine Anthony, a formerly homeless Uber driver, SAG-AFTRA union member, and rent control activist, won a seat on the Burbank (CA) city council. Tenant activist and DSA member Katie Valenzuela defeated an incumbent for a seat on the Sacramento City Council, while DSAer Janeese Lewis George, a prosecutor in the Washington, D.C. District Attorney’s office, upended an incumbent on the City Council in the nation’s capital. DSA member Jovanka Beckles, a Black lesbian and former Richmond, CA city council member, won a seat on the board of BART, the Bay Area’s regional transportation agency. This month, DSAer Gregorio Casar, a long-time labor organizer who was elected to the Austin (TX) city council in 2014 and reelected in 2016 and again this year, was elected co-chair of Local Progress, a national network of lefty local government officials.

DSA was the driving force behind the People First Portland (PFP) coalition that last month won four out of five game-changing ballot initiatives in Maine’s largest city. These include creating a $15 minimum wage (with time-and-a-half hazard pay during emergencies), local rent control and other tenant protections, a ban on the use of facial surveillance technology by local police and support for a local Green New Deal for sustainable construction. Voters defeated one PFP measure, which sought to restrict short-term rentals like Airbnb, with 52.1 percent voting “no.” The PFP campaign was embraced by Progressive Portland, the Southern Maine Workers’ Center, Black Lives Matters, the Maine People’s Housing Coalition, the Southern Maine Labor Council and several building trade unions. The DSA-led coalition prevailed despite being massively outspent by business groups like Airbnb, the National Association of Realtors, the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Maine Landlord Association.

In Multnomah County, Oregon — which includes the other Portland — DSA spearheaded a successful campaign called “Preschool for All.” Sixty four percent of voters approved the ballot measure to provide tuition-free preschool to all three- and four-year-olds whose parents want it, while also raising the pay of preschool teachers to parity with pay for kindergarten teachers. The county will pay for the program with an additional 1.5 percent income tax on individuals earning more than $125,000 and couples making over $200,000. 
In Boulder, Colorado, DSA was the catalyst for the successful No Eviction Without Representation campaign. Fifty-nine percent of voters approved the measure to tax landlords and use the money to provide legal representation for tenants facing eviction, provide rental assistance and help educate renters of their housing rights. Boulder is now the seventh city in the country with a right to counsel program. Florida’s DSA chapters invested significant resources in the ballot measure campaign to raise the state’s minimum wage from its current rate of $8.56 to $15 in September 2026. Sixty-one percent of the voters approved this landmark victory for fast-food cooks and cashiers and other essential workers from nursing home attendants, to janitors, to airport employees and more, which will raise wages for 2.5 million working people in the state over the next six years, and will continue to rise with inflation. Florida is now the eighth state to pass a $15 minimum wage.
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While it’s currently regaining popularity as a new mainstream concept, democratic socialism history has deep roots in American politics "

The resurgence of democratic socialism may be a surprise, but the idea and the movement have deep American roots. In the early 1900s, socialists led the movements for women’s suffrage, child labor laws, consumer protection laws, the progressive income tax and workplace safety. Their constituents included activists from old American families, among them some wealthy “traitors to their class,” as well as many recent immigrants, including Jewish and Italian garment workers, Scandinavian farmers, Polish and Czech steelworkers, and Milwaukee’s German brewery workers.

Labor leader Eugene Debs, who founded the Socialist Party in 1901 and ran for president five times under its banner, never received more than six percent of the national vote (garnering more than 900,000 votes in 1912), but he was a popular public figure. At its peak in 1912, about 1,200 Socialist Party members held public office in 340 cities, including 79 mayors in cities such as Milwaukee, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Reading and Schenectady. Many cities had socialist newspapers. The Appeal to Reason, based in Kansas, had national circulation of over 500,000. Local socialist leaders, whose ranks included working-class labor union members and middle-class professionals such as teachers, clergy and lawyers, worked alongside progressive reformers to improve living and working conditions in the nation’s burgeoning cities. They pushed for public ownership of utilities and transportation facilities; the expansion of parks, libraries, playgrounds and other services; and a friendlier attitude toward unions, especially during strikes. Candidates running as Republicans, Democrats and Progressives stole many of the Socialist Party’s ideas, watered them down and got elected.

Voters in Milwaukee elected Victor Berger, a Jewish immigrant from Austria-Hungary, editor of several labor-oriented newspapers and a founding member of the Socialist Party, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1910. In 1914, voters in Manhattan’s Lower East Side sent another Socialist Party founder, Meyer London, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who became a lawyer for the city’s burgeoning clothing workers labor movement, to Congress. 

Berger and London pushed such then-radical, now commonplace, issues as unemployment insurance, abolition of child labor, women’s suffrage, a system of public works jobs for the unemployed, self-government for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and anti-lynching legislation, as well as federal ownership of the railroads and the withdrawal of federal troops from the Mexican border. London consistently fought against the federal government’s racist immigration quotas on Asian migrants as well as Jews. Such restrictions, he argued, “violate the fundamental principle of Socialism, which prohibits you from discrimination.” Berger sponsored the first bill in support of old age pensions. It got few votes but FDR resurrected the idea two decades later and called it Social Security — an idea that even today’s conservatives embrace. 

Elected president in 1932, when one-quarter of Americans were out of work, Roosevelt tapped into Americans’ frustrations — and reacted to mounting protests among workers, consumers, farmers, renters, and others — by promoting ideas that a few years earlier would have been unthinkable. He met with Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas and other leftists and invited a number of pragmatic radicals like Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins and Sidney Hillman into his inner circle. They crafted the New Deal program — public jobs, Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment compensation, the right of workers to unionize, tough regulations on banks — ideas that were first espoused by socialists. 

Right-wing groups, business leaders, Republicans and much of the press branded Roosevelt as a socialist. In a 1934 speech defending his New Deal goals, Roosevelt said: “A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism’, sometimes ‘Communism’, sometimes ‘Regimentation’, sometimes ‘Socialism,’ But, in so doing, they are trying to make (a) very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.”
The New Deal was a mosaic of left-wing and liberal ideas. After World War 2, big business feared that FDR had whetted Americans’ appetite for an even bolder role for government to tax the rich, expand the safety net, and strengthen unions. They instigated another wave of hysteria designed to discredit liberalism by calling it communism. Anyone who questioned the nuclear-arms race, supported racial integration, believed in government-subsidized health insurance, or called for higher taxes on the rich could be branded an anti-American Communist. Not even Martin Luther King Jr. was exempt. In the 1960s, segregationists and right-wing groups erected billboards around the country vilifying him as a communist. The Cold War red-baiters didn’t make distinctions between socialism and communism, even though American socialists opposed the totalitarian governments of the Soviet Union, China, and their satellites.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, socialism had almost disappeared from the American political landscape. But some activists kept the ideas alive. One was Michael Harrington, a charismatic orator, writer, organizer, and close confidant of King. His best-selling 1962 book, “The Other America,” helped inspire the war on poverty. In 1973, Harrington pulled together his friends among labor activists, writers, student radicals and civil rights crusaders to form the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which changed its name to DSA a decade later. Harrington’s goals were modest. He had abandoned the idea that a separate Socialist Party should run candidates for public office. Instead, he hoped to keep alive the moral values of democratic socialism as well as encourage activists in the labor, women’s, civil rights, and environmental movements that, working together as a coalition, they could transform the Democratic Party into a more progressive force, more closely aligned with Europe’s social democratic parties. 

During the 1970s and 1980s, a few DSA members ran for public office and some of them won, including New York City Mayor David Dinkins, Cambridge City Council member David Sullivan, San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, and Sanders, who was elected Burlington’s mayor in 1981 and re-elected twice. Voters in the Bay area elected DSA member Ron Dellums to Congress from 1971 through 1998, while Brooklyn voters sent DSA member Major Owens to Congress from 1983 through 2007. Rep. John Conyers, who represented Detroit in Congress from 1965 to 2017, was a frequent speaker at DSA-sponsored events. They were joined by Sanders, whom Vermont voters sent to the House in 1991 and to the Senate in 2007. 

Since the end of World War 2, Republicans have consistently used red-baiting against Democratic candidates. That tactic never went on hiatus, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. After Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the GOP, Tea Party, Chamber of Commerce and conservative media gurus like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh labeled anything he proposed, including his modest health-care reforms and his efforts to restore regulations on Wall Street, as “socialism.” 

The Republicans ratcheted up their crusade against socialism after the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in September 2011, attacking corporate greed and the “1 percent.” During the 2012 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney attacked Obama for trying to make America “far more like Europe, with a larger, more dominant, more intrusive government”— all code words for socialism. 

Over the centuries, many horrors have been done in the name of patriotism, Christianity and socialism. In this year’s elections, we saw no ads attacking candidates for their commitment to patriotism or Christianity. But Republicans spent (and continue spending) a fortune trying to persuade voters that every Democrat running for office — President, Senate and House as well as local races for mayor, city council, and state legislator — is an unrepentant socialist. 

In one speech in September, Trump said: “The Democrat Party is pushing a socialist nightmare. Their plans will result in rationing care, denying choice, putting Americans on wait lists, driving the best doctors out of medicine and delaying lifesaving cures.”

Trump’s red-baiting rants were part of the GOP’s overall strategy to stoke up fears of a new Red Menace. Across the country, but especially in key swing states and congressional districts, Republicans sought to discredit even moderate Democrats by falsely branding them as socialists. 

In an unsuccessful effort to unseat freshman Democrat Abigail Spanberger from her swing district seat in Virginia, the conservative Club for Growth PAC claimed in a TV ad that she “votes nearly as much with socialist AOC.” A Republican attack ad accused another freshman Democrat,  Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, of supporting a “socialist takeover of your prescription drug benefits.” Spanberger narrowly won her reelection bid, but Finkenauer lost hers. 

​In the Georgia Senate races, a precursor to the upcoming run-off in January, GOP Senator David Perdue referred to his Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff as a “socialist,” while fellow Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler falsely accused Rev. Raphael Warnock, her Democratic opponent, of hosting Cuba’s then-leader Fidel Castro at his Atlanta church when Warnock was a youth pastor decades ago. In their most recent debate, Loeffler called Warnock a “radical” 23 times and claimed that “he wants to fundamentally change America into a socialist country.”

For Trump and other Republican candidates, branding Democrats as socialists is red-meat to increase turnout among their base. The Gallup Poll last year found that among Republicans, only 13 percent viewed socialism favorably, while 84 percent had an unfavorable view.

Of course, most Americans don’t consider themselves socialists, but an increasing number of voters are now willing to support candidates who call for bold reforms of our political and economic system, depending on how these ideas are presented and whether voters think they are viable and effective. 

The policy ideas espoused by American socialists today are considered mainstream in most European countries, and even in Canada and Australia. If today’s American socialists have any model at all, it is not Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela, but the social democracies of Scandinavia, like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway — countries with greater equality, a higher standard of living for working families, better schools, free universities, less poverty, a cleaner environment, higher voter turnout, stronger unions, universal health insurance, and a much wider social safety net. Sounds anti-business? Forbes magazine ranked Sweden as the number 2 country for business. The United States ranked number 17.

What most DSA members want — indeed, what the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which will have over 100 members when the new Congress is seated in January, also wants — is an updated version of the New Deal. Their vision is bold but pragmatic. They don’t want the federal government to take over Walmart, Microsoft or Wells Fargo. They do want to reduce the political influence of the super-rich and big corporations, increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for expanded public services like childcare, public transit, higher education and decent housing. They want to make it easier for workers to unionize. Many agree with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sanders’ idea to require corporations to allow workers to elect representatives to the boards of directors. 

Along with most Americans, they want to reduce barriers to voting and enact background checks on gun purchases and limit the sale of military-style assault weapons. They support strengthening regulations of business to require them to be more socially responsible in terms of their employees, consumers and the environment. 

They believe that banks shouldn’t engage in reckless predatory lending. Energy corporations shouldn’t endanger the planet and public health by emitting too much pollution. Companies should be required to guarantee that consumer products (like cars and toys) are safe and that companies pay decent wages and provide safe workplaces. They want to allow undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to stay in the country. Like three-fourths of Americans, they support federal legislation to require pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices for prescription drugs.

Even progressive  Democrats’ most left-wing idea — Medicare for All — doesn’t call for government ownership of hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and health-care clinics. It views the government as a provider of insurance, and setter of standards, while doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and other practitioners working for private and nonprofit organizations provide the services. (The one exception is the Veterans Administration, a government owned and run health-care system.)
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Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans (and even some Republicans) agree with these ideas.  "

What most Americans emphatically do not want to “defund” the police. Not a single Democrat running for Congress this year embraced that idea, but the Republicans nevertheless used it as a weapon against them. A recent Gallup Poll found that only 15 percent of Americans, and 22 percent of Black Americans, support abolishing local police departments. But most Americans now believe that the police and criminal justice system do not treat people of color and whites equally and are concerned over racial profiling and other forms of police misconduct, mass incarceration of people of color and the racial disparities of the war on drugs. 

While Trump sought to tamp down these attitudes with racist appeals to “law and order,” including the use of federal troops to quell protests in Portland, Oregon, and other cities, the idea that “Black Lives Matter” echoed from the streets into the voting booth. This year, voters in many cities, suburbs, and states embraced candidates and ballot measures to reign in the police, restore voting rights to people on parole, relax drug laws and challenge long-standing racist practices.  

Young people, many of whom got their first taste of political activism in one of Sanders’ campaigns, account for most of the dramatic increase in DSA membership. They have translated their youthful idealism and energy into practical politics, learning the organizing skills needed to win issue campaigns and electoral races. Many DSAers have become staffers and activists with unions, environmental groups, community organizing and tenants rights groups, and other parts of the broader progressive movement. They have learned to forge coalitions that make DSA’s influence greater than its numbers would suggest. 

Unlike some of the more zealous leftists during the 1960s, most DSAers don’t expect to see a revolution any day soon. But within DSA, a small but vocal number of members pursue ideological purity over political pragmatism.  Several years ago, for example, some DSAers sought to expel an elected member of its national board — an effective activist for immigration, worker and LBGT rights who had helped build DSA in Texas — because he had once worked for a union that represented police officers. 

Most members DSAers initially embraced Sanders and (to a lesser extent) Warren, but voted for Biden last month, some more enthusiastically than others. Even so, outbursts of rhetorical posturing occasionally lead to awkward moments, such as a statement issued by DSA’s National Political Committee on November 19.  

“While we’re glad Trump lost and we celebrate our wins, we are also not welcoming Biden,” it proclaimed. “We’re warning his administration: a better world is coming, and it’s time we put those who stand in our way on notice.” 

Such hubris does not reflect the thinking of most rank-and-file DSAers, who recognize that while the left, liberals and centrist wings within the Democratic Party don’t agree on many policy matters, the success of the left depends on its ability to work in coalition with the party’s more moderate officials and voters. 

Biden has moved significantly leftward over the past year, in part due to the reality that nation’s deepening problems require bold approaches, but also because he  understands that public opinion has shifted in that direction. Even if the Democrats gain control of the Senate with two victories in the Senate run-offs in Georgia in January  — a big if — Biden’s administration will, out of necessity, be a center-left coalition, reflected in both his key appointments and his policy initiatives. For example, his key economic team includes at least two well-known progressives — Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein — who will serve as the left flank within the administration. But they won’t be the only voices in Biden’s inner circle.

“Biden is right that we’re in a battle for the soul of our country, but that battle will be won not by giving platitudes,” said Maria Svart, DSA’s long-time national director. “It will be won by fighting for material improvements in the lives of the multi-racial working class.”
Left-wing radicals often fear that their ideas will be “co-opted” by the establishment, but that’s a misreading of history. The success of radical movements occurs when it is co-opted by the forces of reform. Read the 1892 Omaha Platform of the People’s Party, or the 1912 platform of the Socialist Party, or Upton Sinclair’s 1934 “End Poverty in California” platform for his campaign for governor of California, or the 1948 platform of Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party campaign for President.

Many of the ideas proposed in these documents were considered radical in their day. Eventually, aspects of these platforms were adopted by one of the two major parties. That’s success, not failure. 

When there’s enough political pressure, the reactionary and conservative wing of the establishment tries to beat the movement back using repression. But the moderates and liberals within the establishment use the fear of disorder and radicalism to push through reforms that are modest versions of what radicals have been demanding. Those changes often become stepping-stones for further reform.

​The challenge for today’s democratic socialists, including DSA, is to find ways to turn their ideas into practical reforms that politicians and voters can embrace, and that move the country in a more progressive direction. DSA’s founder Michael Harrington argued that the role of American socialists should be to push for the “left wing of the possible.” From New York to New Mexico,  North Dakota to North Carolina, DSA is putting that strategy to the test. 


Talking Points Memo
talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/number-democratic-socialists-congress-soon-double-down-ballot-movement-scored-biggest-victories.  
 

 


Peter Dreier is professor of Politics and the founding chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His books include Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, and the forthcoming Baseball Rebels: The Reformers and Radicals Who Shook Up the Game and Changed America.


 

​NOVEMBER , 2020 BY PAUL BUHLE.  DEMOCRATIC LEFT 
 
Any estimation of socialist prospects in the United States must include the defeat of Donald J. Trump, the election of the Biden-Harris ticket, and… dancing in the streets. Was it Socialist Dancing? We would surely like to think so. Such a massive outburst of joy brought by the defeat of racism, misogyny, and nativism will mean much to DSA, and should turn our careful attention to the subject of socialist possibilities. Cue author John B. Judis and his new book, The Socialist Awakening: What’s Different Now About the Left.
 
This compact and useful little book offers a mostly optimistic prognosis for the revival of socialist ideas and also an optimistic version of a contemporary policy savant’s own turn of mind. Judis, a key drafter of the formulations for the first issue of the journal Socialist Revolution (1970), drifted away, as he told viewers of a recent dialogue with E.J. Dionne, but has come back to socialist faith in a new way. This time, it’s not Marxism, but it has a lot in common with Bernie Sanders and even the recent growth of DSA. Judis believes that if socialists can stay away from wild rhetoric and third party experiments, they may become a decisive lever for progress.
 
Judis makes a strong case for the advance of socialistic ideas, often without the label, especially from the New Deal onward. Insisting upon the progress of a “socialism without capitalism” suggested long ago by Karl Polanyi and elaborated in recent times by Thomas Piketty and others. These steps seem to him a foreshadowing of more and better, within the guise of the Democratic Party mainstream. In order to become victorious, he argues, they must be combined with a clear and positive claim of national identity. Socialism will be American socialism, perhaps even American something-else that adds up, in time, to socialism.
 
Here, some conceptual difficulties kick in. Judis’s otherwise convincing themes and arguments put race, war and the clash of empires aside. These giant and depressing features that toppled the socialist movement early in the twentieth century still haunt us today. Within Judis’s political lifetime, they halted the Great Society and arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. 
 
How is the circle to be squared? One of Judis’s strongest arguments draws upon a Bernie Sanders discussion, made even better by famed leftwing historian Eric Foner, in response to a Nation editorial of 2015. In that seemingly distant time, Bernie suggested, and the Nation editors echoed, the value of Scandinavian successes in creating a modern, relatively egalitarian welfare state. Foner, in a provocative open letter to Sanders, argued that it might be better to look at Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, the Second New Deal and the Second Bill of Rights proposed by FDR in 1944. Pressed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, crucial in Democratic victories that year, a dying Franklin Roosevelt promised a new slate of fundamental rights. These were not to be delivered by Harry Truman or any other subsequent president, and we are still waiting.
 
Judis also looks usefully at major experiments in social reform, most persuasively by the British Labour Party’s introduction of the National Health Service (NHS) following the Second World War. His description of this Labour history touches upon one of the book’s strongest arguments:, the ways in which the argument was made for an advanced welfare system in the name of national, in this case British, achievement. 
 
The victory of the Left within the Labour Party in 2017, answering the humiliations of neoliberal, war-mad Tony Blair, seemingly offered a way forward. But Brexit proved an issue hugely difficult to handle in 2019, and he argues that Labour’s leadership made the wrong tactical choice, i.e., neither for nor against leaving the EU. Judis does not, however, offer a convincing argument that a bitterly divided Labour Party could have made any better choice without ripping itself apart. It was a no-win situation custom made for Boris Johnson. If the election had been held even six months later, who knows?
 
Coming back home, Judis suggests in the strongest terms that DSA has the opportunity to do what Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters could not do, but only by jumping into the Democratic Party with both feet, arms and other body parts. It’s a good argument as we anticipate a Biden-Harris administration.
 
Is this the road to socialism? None of the legitimate U.S. reform heroes actually argued for socialism, raising once more the old problem of socialism sneaking into the polis described as something else, something more ‘American,” definitely less frightening. And yet it has been precisely the rebranding of “socialism” by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in particular, that draws the attention and devotion of young people and not only them.
 
A legitimate and popular socialist movement is not likely to arise without a serious consideration, indeed reorientation, around issues of race, empire and war, all of them causes of the climate crisis already at hand. But Judis makes his case well, and we should be listening.

First published in Democratic Left.
 
https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/is-there-a-socialist-re-awakening/

​Web call for  DSA North Star members.

You are invited to join us for a  Zoom web call with Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher Jr. to discuss their summing up of the election and the road ahead. 
 
Post Election  Reckoning: New Hypotheses for the Road Ahead.  
Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher, Jr. 
November 7, 2020
Organizing Upgrade
 
 Call.     
 Dec. 6., 2020.  3 PM Pacific.  6 pm Eastern.
 
      Please read the piece on the NS blog, or on Organizing Upgrade and prepare to discuss the ideas.
    Please read the piece and prepare to discuss it,
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/after-the-election-the-road-ahead

there is a link at the end of the post to continue with the remainder of the piece on Organizing Upgrade. 
 
Also read the statement of the NS Steering Committee.
www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/north-star-statement-on-the-election-and-our-tasksDSA NORTH STAR  STEERING COMMITTEE STATEMENT ON THE ELECTION AND OUR TASKS. 
 
 
Zoom call in information will be shared 1 day before the webinar - here. 
 
The webinar will include time for discussion and dialogue.  Here are some guides to dialogue when conversing with allies and building an organization.
Dialogue was the heart of the organizing effort of Paulo Freire and others to build a left in Latin America.
 
Dialogue: 
​
I search for basic agreements.
I search for strengths in your position.
I reflect on my position.
I consider the possibility of finding a better solution than mine or yours.
I assume that many people have a piece of the answer.
I want to find common ground.
I submit my best thinking hoping your reflection will improve it.
I remain open to talk about the subject later on.

Anti-dialogue:
I search for glaring differences.
I search for weaknesses in your position.
I attack your position.
I denigrate you and your position. 
I defend my solution and exclude yours.
I am invested wholeheartedly in my beliefs.
I assume there is one right answer, and that I have it.
I want to win.
I submit my best thinking and defend it to show it is right.
I expect to settle this here and now.
I seek to silence those who disagree with my position. 

Adapted from, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education.  4th. edition. Duane Campbell.  2010.  Allyn and Bacon. 
 
 
 

North Star Steering Committee Statement on the Election and Our Tasks

A.    Five Takeaways from the 2020 U.S. Election

1.    Increased Turnout

Voter turnout was the highest in more than a century.  About two-thirds of registered voters cast ballots. Despite concerns expressed in the run up to the election that Republicans were registering more new voters, first time voters, almost 1 in 7 of all voters, split for Biden 2:1.  As a result, Biden’s strongest age demographic was voters 18-29 who gave him 60% of their votes.  Overall, Biden lost male voters but more than made up for that by winning female voters.

2.    Who Turned Out to Vote

Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American as well as young voters of all races were mobilized at record levels by volunteer field organizing efforts and energy of grassroots organizations, particularly in swing states.  These groups, with many first time voters, provided the margins of victory for the Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, states that supported Trump in 2016. Although Trump kept much of his base of rural, non-college educated white voters, his margins among this group were smaller than in 2016.  In Georgia, progressive Black-led organizations like Black Voters Matter, New Georgia Project and Fair Fight had registered 800,000 new voters, mainly younger voters and people of color. Groups associated with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and the Arizona LUCHA delivered record turnouts of Latino voters.

Progressive often speak of “the Latino vote” or the “POC vote” but this does not reflect on-the-ground realities. This is particularly true for Latinos, who are very diverse and whose voting power is undermined by the archaic Electoral College system that is the U.S. presidential election.  Almost one-third of Latino voters live in California, a (today) reliably Democratic state and have been strongly Democratic for some time.  However, Biden was unable to take Texas, where another one quarter of Latino voters reside as Trump maintained his (minority but still significant) Latino vote share.  And Trump won Florida, whose very diverse Latino vote is divided among immigrants and communities with roots in the Caribbean (including Puerto Rico, Cuba and other), Latin America and Central American.

3.    The Squad Triumphant – and Helping Biden Win Swing States

Two members of the Squad of Left Congressional Democrats were instrumental in driving Democratic voter turnout in the key states of Minnesota and Michigan. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar overcame Trump’s personal Twitter hate vendetta against her as a Muslim born in Somalia and the $10 million campaign funding for her Republican opponent, to win almost 65% of the vote in her race along with an incredible 88% turnout in Minneapolis that helped provided Biden’s margin of victory in Minnesota.  Omar’s campaign featured in-person door-to-door canvassing that the Biden campaign did not do. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib,  also a Muslim and a DSA member,  focused in Detroit/Wayne County on engaging some 200,000 voters who had not voted in 2016 to ensure her own re-election and help deliver Michigan to Biden.
     
4.    The Campaign Messaging and the Vote Counting

During the Democratic primaries, the (seemingly endless) number of debates had focused on the policy differences and convergences among the large number of candidates. But the presidential election saw very little policy focus—by either party. As many commentators noted, this election was largely a referendum on Trump.  

The national Democratic Party focused its efforts on massive TV advertising trying to persuade suburban swing voters who had voted for Trump in 2016 to vote for Biden and moderate Democratic Senate and House Democratic candidates in 2020.  Biden’s messaging was that he would restore normalcy and decency to the White House and undo the harm wreaked by the Trump administration, which, probably because of the experience of Trump’s four years, made more sense for his own candidacy than Hillary Clinton’s failed “I’m not Trump” campaign did in 2016.  

However, it did not much help down-ballot Democratic candidates, since it failed to deliver a positive or inspiring message to economically distressed former Democratic or independent voters.  Democrats both failed to flip the 10 CDs they  had targeted and lost a few net House seats, mainly of more conservative Democrats; two of the House losses were to Cuban American Republicans in Florida. More importantly and problematic for both the incoming Biden administration and the ability of the Left to win progressive policies, they failed to gain a majority in the Senate.

As noted above, much of Trump’s base support of rural voters, evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics, along with white men in general with less formal education, remained intact.  He campaigned vigorously, ignoring corona virus precautions, and the Republican Party may have done a better job of turning out its voters through social media and direct canvassing than the Democratic Party did.  But, as was the case for Biden, there was little if any policy message, reflecting the frequent cult-like nature of Trump’s support and a sobering reminder of where we find ourselves politically.  He lost the popular vote by more than 6 million and the Electoral College vote by the same margin he won it in 2016. 

Mail in and early in-person voting exploded in 2020 as the pandemic worried many, especially Democratic and independent voters.  For states on the West Coast with long experience of these voting methods, there were very few problems or concerns. That was not the case in many other, especially swing, states and contributed to the drawn-out nature of the final decision.  

The main television media did a fairly credible job of patiently waiting for all the votes to be counted, but Trump and the Republicans are still using right-wing and social media to spread disinformation and discredit the vote count where the final tallies narrowly favor Democrats.  These efforts appear to be foundering. 

5. The Election Heroes

Just as “essential workers” are the real heroes and heroines of the pandemic, postal workers, local and state election officials and volunteers may be the saviors of the tattered framework of American democracy.  Whether Republicans or Democrats, they toiled for many days to ensure that every vote was counted as thoroughly and accurately as possible.   Tens of thousands of Americans rallied throughout the country the day after Election Day to demand that every vote be counted, and a broad coalition of organizations remains on alert to mobilize millions more if Trump and his Republican enablers continue to try to thwart the will of the electorate.

B. The Tasks Ahead of Us

The dancing in the streets, the ringing of the church bells in France and other celebrations after Biden’s victory demonstrate the widespread disgust with Trump and his politics.  But remember that 73 million of our citizens voted for him.  

Today, every responsible organization of the broad American Left is preparing its members and supporters not only to defend democratic rights, but to mobilize to push for a broad progressive agenda, including racial justice, environmental justice, universal health care, immigration reform, and a just and equitable recovery from the pandemic.

Although progressives helped Obama to victory in 2008, the Left was not strong enough to drive an agenda that was other than a return to pre-Great Recession “normality,” and Obama’s vision was limited to that goal.  This was a crisis that went to waste.  

Because of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns of Sanders and the growth of POC (People of color organizations), we are stronger now, although we also face a more mobilized, self-conscious neo-fascist right.   If the Biden presidency is unable to deliver more than some better, and less venal, appointed officials and executive orders reversing some of Trump’s mayhem against immigrants and the environment, it will lose credibility with its supporters.  Substantive improvement is particularly important to retain the commitment of the large segment of voters who turned out for the first time.  We must do all we can to insure that the midterm elections in 2022 do not result in a revival of Trumpist Republican reaction in an even more virulent form.

1. Three Immediate Tasks

The first immediate priority has to be remaining vigilant against a “soft coup” aimed at keeping Trump in the White House. The second, a definite long-shot, has to be a last-ditch attempt to block a Republican majority in the Senate.  With two Senate seats at stake in January 2021 run-off elections in Georgia, victories of the two Democratic candidates would knot the Senate at 50 Republicans/50 Democrats, with Vice-President Kamala Harris breaking the ties.  That result would not only ease the stranglehold on the legislative process currently exerted by Mitch McConnell’s Republican majority, it also would make it more difficult for the Democratic Party to claim it is not responsible for failing to enact progressive reform legislation.

An equally important task is to combat the right-wing effort, led by Trump and his GOP minions, to delegitimize the election results.  They may not be successful in reversing the outcome, but their goal is also to constrain or even eliminate the ability of Biden and Harris to govern.  They seek to do this both institutionally by making obstruction the primary function of the senate and culturally by casting doubts in any way shape and form possible on the reality of the election outcome.  This despite the growing gap in the popular vote where Biden’s lead has grown to more than 6 million votes and may approach 7.5 million by the end of the vote count.

2. The Intermediate Term Tasks

As we argued above, the Left must work harder than we ever have before, to avoid another crisis going to waste.  And, surprisingly enough, Biden’s first post-election policy speech has told us exactly where to focus our time and energies.  He articulated four priorities for the incoming administration: economic recovery, combatting COVID-19, racial justice and climate change.  

Importantly, Biden’s economic and health advisors understand that numbers one and two are not either/or; they are possible only as both. No success against COVID-19 = no economic recovery for the majority of our people.  We must pressure—whether by contacting our legislators, organizing in our communities or agitating in the streets—for an economic package that includes direct payments to working people, a national testing and tracking regime, a coherent plan for distributing whatever vaccine(s) become available and funding for state and local governments. A major reason for the very slow recovery from the Great Recession was the failure to provide the last piece in this legislation.  And the resulting slow return of jobs and public services in part nourished Trump and Trumpism.  

The Left must play a key role in demanding that a Covid-19/economic recovery plan prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable communities and persons, especially African-Americans, Latino/a, Native Americans and immigrants.  

In the next period it may be the area of climate change where there are the most openings for the Left.  Although Trump and his minions have clung to the “climate change is a hoax” meme, that has lost ground, even among self-identified Republicans.  It has also lost ground among members of our economic elite, and there are state governors and legislatures that now take climate change seriously. Late and too little, but the ground is being laid for an energy regime transition.

Although the Biden administration will be able to use executive orders to undo some of the worst regulatory damages done by the Trump administration, it is not likely to advocate or enact a sweeping Green New Deal program adequate to the scale of the emergency. We will fight for a major national  infrastructure program that creates millions of good unionized jobs through renewable energy and retrofitting public and private housing.  However expanding the positive and exemplary role of state and local governments  will be a crucial arena for the struggle for environmental justice that prioritizes vulnerable communities.

3.    A Final Consideration

We didn’t fall over the precipice as a victorious re-election of Trump would have represented, but we remain too close to the rim of destruction for U.S. democracy.   Democratic socialists defend democracy in order to deepen and extend it further so that the broad working class has more decision-making power.  It is sobering to note that a majority of white voters still voted for an incompetent, egocentric demagogue who demonized immigrants and Blacks to try to maintain power.  If Trump had not blundered so egregiously by denying the pandemic, he might have been re-elected despite his low approval ratings.

Democratic primary voters and Democratic Party leaders played it safe with Joe Biden, with the resulting lack of any ambitious reform program articulated during the campaign.  The restoration of the Obama era message worked—just.

At best, with the 2020 election we barely escaped from the beaches of Dunkirk.  We remain too distant from D-Day.

Statement authored by members Paul Garver and Bill Barclay at the invitation of the NS Steering Committee. Statement is by the NS Steering Committee.

Comments are welcome.

While Trump plots, Democrat Joe Biden looks set to take over in the White House. How did the Democrats win the poll and how influential will the socialist left be? 

Paul Garver on the takeaways from the US elections

At about 70%, the overall voter turnout was higher than the normally miserably low US standard. Black, Latino, Native American and young voters of all races were mobilised at record levels by volunteer field organising efforts and the energy of grassroots organisations in the key battleground states, providing the margins of victory for the Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, all of which had supported Trump in 2016. In Georgia, progressive Black-led organisations like Black Voters Matter and the New Georgia Project had registered 800,000 new voters, mainly younger voters and people of colour. Groups associated with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and the Arizona LUCHA delivered record turnouts of Latino voters.

Two members of the ‘Squad’ of left Congressional Democrats were instrumental in driving Democratic voter turnout in the key states of Minnesota and Michigan. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar overcame Trump’s personal Twitter hate vendetta against her, as a Muslim born in Somalia, and the $10 million campaign funding for her Republican opponent, to easily win her own re-election in Minneapolis with an incredible 88% voter turnout that helped provide Biden’s margin of victory in Minnesota. Omar’s campaign featured person door-to-door canvassing that the Biden campaign did not do. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (also a Muslim and a DSA member) focused in Detroit/Wayne County on engaging some 200,000 voters who had not voted in 2016 to ensure her own re-election and help deliver Michigan to Biden.

The national Democratic Party focused its efforts on massive TV advertising, trying to persuade suburban swing voters who had voted for Trump in 2016 to vote for Biden and moderate Democratic Senate and House candidates. Biden’s messaging was that he would restore normalcy and decency to the White House and undo the harm wreaked by the Trump administration. This message made more sense for his own candidacy than Hillary Clinton’s failed “I’m not Trump” campaign did in 2016. However, it did not much help down-ballot Democratic candidates, since it failed to deliver a positive or inspiring message to economically distressed former Democratic or independent voters. Democrats lost a few net House seats, mainly of more conservative Democrats, and failed to win a majority in the Senate.

Trump’s base support of rural voters, evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics, along with white men in general with less formal education, remained substantially intact. He campaigned vigorously, ignoring coronavirus precautions, and the Republican Party did a better job of turning out its voters through social media and direct canvassing than the Democratic Party did. By the time all the votes are counted, the Republican vote count will exceed that of 2016. However, Trump still lost the popular vote by a large margin and the electoral vote more narrowly, due to the unusually large turnout of Black, Latino, young and big city voters.

The widespread use of mail-in ballots and early voting due to the pandemic encouraged overall voting turnout, probably helping Democrats, but confused the counting of the votes themselves. More Republicans voted on election day itself, suggesting that Trump would win key states like Pennsylvania, before the mail-in ballots were counted. The main television media did a fairly credible job of patiently waiting for all the votes to be counted, but Trump and the Republicans are still using right-wing and social media to spread disinformation and discredit the vote count where the final tallies narrowly favour the Democrats.

Just as “essential workers” are the real heroes and heroines of the pandemic, postal workers, local and state election officials and volunteers may be the saviours of the tattered framework of American democracy. Whether Republicans or Democrats, they toiled for many days to ensure that every vote was counted as thoroughly and accurately as possible. Tens of thousands of Americans rallied throughout the country the day after Election Day to demand that every vote be counted, and a broad coalition of organisations remain on alert to mobilise millions more if Trump and his Republican enablers continue to try to thwart the will of the electorate.

The dancing in the streets after Biden’s victory became evident was justified. However, every responsible organisation of the broad American Left is preparing its members and supporters not only to defend democratic rights, but to mobilise for a broad progressive agenda, including racial justice, environmental justice, universal healthcare and a just and equitable recovery from the pandemic. We do not intend to repeat the demobilisation of the progressive movements that occurred after Obama won the presidency in 2008. If the Biden presidency is unable to deliver more than some better or less venal appointed officials, and executive orders reversing some of Trump’s mayhem against immigrants and the environment, it will lose credibility with its own base supporters. The midterm elections in 2022 might then result in a revival of Trumpist Republican reaction in an even more virulent neo-Fascist form.

If one immediate priority has to be remaining vigilant against a ‘soft coup’ aimed at keeping Trump in the White House, the second has to be a last-ditch attempt to block a Republican majority in the Senate. With two Senate seats at stake in the January 2021 run-off elections in Georgia, a Democratic double victory would knot the Senate at 50 Republicans/50 Democrats, with Vice-President Kamala Harris breaking the ties. That result would not only ease the stranglehold on the legislative process currently exerted by Mitch McConnell’s Republican majority – it would make it more difficult for the Democratic Party led by Biden to claim a lack of responsibility for advancing progressive reform legislation.

Within days after the election, conservative Democrats were blaming their losses in the House of Representatives on advocacy of “socialist” issues like the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, and on advocacy for defunding the police and Black Lives Matter. Members of the Squad, and their supporters like the Justice Democrats, blamed the losses on the Democrats’ lack of a compelling progressive economic message like a Green New Deal jobs programme, and on the failure of some Democratic candidates to make effective use of social media and direct contact with voters. That debate will continue within the Democratic Party for years to come. In the long run, even if it wins some elections, a weak, centrist and vacillating, Republican-lite Democratic Party cannot compete ideologically with a virulently right-wing Republican Party that rejects any reasonable compromises to further a multiracial, working class agenda that is favoured by the base supporters of the Democratic coalition.

A final consideration: whereas we did not fall over the precipice that a victorious re-election of Trump would have represented, we still remain too close to the rim of destruction for US democracy. Democratic socialists defend democracy in order to deepen and extend it further so that the broad working class has more decision-making power. It is sobering to note that a majority of white voters still voted for an incompetent, egocentric demagogue who demonised immigrants and blacks to try to maintain power. If Trump had not blundered so egregiously by denying the pandemic, he would likely have been re-elected.

The Democratic Party played it safe with Joe Biden by running away from any ambitious reform program other than restoration of the Obama era. Biden eschewed any commitment to pursue fundamental reforms. Yet the threats posed by climate catastrophe, growing economic inequality and racial injustice are growing not diminishing in scale and urgency, and call for decisive actions.

At best, with the 2020 election we barely escaped from the beaches of Dunkirk. We remain too distant from D-Day.

​reposted from
https://www.chartist.org.uk/trump-defeated-but-trumpism-rages-on/

​Note; British spelling of terms like Organize, mobilize, are not corrected.

Post-Election Reckoning: New Hypotheses for the Road Ahead
By Carl Davidson and Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Hypothesis No. 1. One cannot understand this election unless one begins with a recognition of voter suppression:  Since 2008, the Republican strategy has increasingly focused on voter suppression.  The weakening, if not evisceration, of the Voting Rights Act was one significant piece of that. In the lead up to 2020 the Republicans, under Trump, have pushed this further by undermining the basic right to vote; making it more difficult; encouraging intimidation; undermining the U.S. Postal Service, long voting lines, fewer polls in Black neighborhoods, and so on.
 1.1 Thus this election was about racism and revanchism:  The politics of this race do not make any sense unless one factors in racism and revanchism, the seeking of revenge. The Trump message of allegedly keeping America great, was a message against traditionally marginalized populations, including but not limited to African Americans, non-immigrant Latin@s, women, and immigrants from the global South.  Trump continued to stoke fear among whites, while also playing to “colonial mentality” among some populations of color. His message to Latin@ immigrants seemed to imply that a vote for him was a vote for them having the chance of becoming ‘white.’ But the election was about a broader sense of revanchism. There was anti-communism aimed at Cuba and Venezuela.  It was also a revanchism aimed at shifting gender roles.

THERE IS A RIGHT WING MOVEMENT
Hypothesis No. 2. There is no doubt that there is a right-wing mass movement:  Much of the U.S. Left has attempted to deny or equivocate on the existence and strength of the right-wing populist movement.  One can no longer debate this. This movement exists and it has an armed wing. Along with overtly fascist groups in its core. It is a movement against the 20th century victories of progress. The fact that anyone could be convinced that Biden was a socialist not only illustrates the irrationality of the movement, but also should remind us that Sanders would not have had it any easier had he been the nominee. The right-wing movement sees any progressive reforms as equaling socialism. While many on the Left have fallen into the trap of thinking or wishing that were true, we must be in touch with reality and recognize that reforms under democratic capitalism do not equal socialism.

2.1 The Trump vote was a vote against reality:  This is one of the most difficult conclusions from this election. In the face of the worst global pandemic since 1918-1919; one in which the total incompetence of the Trump administration has been on display, millions were willing to live in absolute denial, many of them continuing to believe that COVID-19 is nothing more than a bad flu. This rejection of reality translates into other areas including, but not limited to, racial relations, foreign policy, and the environmental catastrophe. This is a movement whose slogan really should be the closing line of the comedian George Wallace who would say:  “That’s the way I see it, and that’s the way that it ought to be.”

2.2 Every vote must be counted: In the context of massive voter suppression, every vote must be counted, whether the vote was offered in person, through the mail or in drop-boxes. There is no Constitutional reason that a vote count should be stopped.

2.3 There is no monolithic Latin@ vote; there are Latin@ voters: The election results illustrate that there is no cohesive Latin@ vote. The Puerto Rican vote in Florida, for instance, bore absolutely no resemblance to the Cuban or Venezuelan vote. The reasons that various populations have come to the U.S.A. and the class character of many of those who have arrived here, have helped to shape their politics. Trump played to the fear among many Floridian Latin@ immigrants regarding socialism and communism. That did not work so well with Puerto Ricans. They also played to social conservatism among Chican@ voters in Texas. Though this was shrewd politics on Trump’s part, we on the Left must not fall into the trap of believing that there is a monolithic population out there. That said, the Democrats made a significant error in their work in Florida and Texas in not putting greater resources into reaching and mobilizing Latin@ voters.

ASSESSING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAMPAIGN 
Hypothesis No. 3. The main problem in this election was not the Democratic Party leadership; the strategic situation has become far more complicated:  There are already those on the Left who believe that the main problem in this election was the leadership by the Democratic Party establishment. While there were many errors made, including the matter of polling (which needs to be studied in order to understand the errors), and insufficient support and vetting of statehouse candidates, (no gains were made) to a broader array of mass initiatives, the explanation for why there were not greater victories in the election cannot be dropped simply on the D.P. The factors noted above are far more significant, especially the power of right-wing populism at the base.  That said, there must be major changes made, including a DP rural organizing project, continuous outreach, stronger organization at the county level, and support of electoral efforts among traditionally marginalized groups (including but not limited to African Americans and Latin@s). Though the D.P. platform was probably among the most progressive in D.P. history, the party must champion a progressive, populist message that is both anti-neo-liberal but also anti-right-wing populist. This is a critical fight to wage within the D.P., and it’s one that will strengthen the Bernie-inspired forces at the base over the Third Wave centrists.

3.1 This is a moment where we must initiate a mass campaign of “one person, one vote”:  The Electoral College was created in order to support the slave-owning states and to limit the strength of the nation-state. It is an archaic institution that must be brought to an end. In almost any other country on this planet, the person who receives the most votes wins…period. Our reliance on the Electoral College means that, in effect, only certain states really matter. The struggle for “one person, one vote” needs to be a national campaign for the expansion of democracy. This includes alternative methods for allocating votes, e.g., proportional delegates rather than a state committing all of its delegates to the top vote getter, as well as new and concrete efforts to undermine voter suppression.

“MOVEMENT BUILDING”?
Hypothesis No. 4. We need to think through this election in a wider context of ideas related to strategy and tactics. We can start with ‘movement-building.’

4.1 ‘Building a Movement’ is a flawed concept. But you can find it at the end of nearly every article or speech. It appears so often that it has more uses than aspirin as a cure for our ills. But we need to set it aside, or get a deeper understanding. Why? Because we don’t build them. Mass movements are largely built by capitalist outrages inflicted upon us, and capitalism will continue to do so, whether it’s another police murder, and invasion abroad, or a poisoning of a city water system. At most, we can fan the flames, which is fine but secondary. Our real task is to build organizations and campaigns within mass movements.

​Read more.
https://organizingupgrade.com/the-post-election-reckoning-new-hypotheses-for-the-road-ahead/?

The North Star Caucus came into existence to advance a practical democratic socialist politics within DSA. The 2020 election clearly revealed the value of this approach and the caucus.

We first advanced a position on voting to defeat Trump and Trumpism in one of our resolutions to the 2019 DSA convention.
 
"Whereas, our first priority is the electoral and political defeat of Donald Trump, the Trumpist Republican Party and all of the authoritarian forces aligned with them. The white nationalist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses a ‘clear and present danger’ to working people and their unions, to people of color, to women, to LGBTQIA people, to immigrants, to members of minority religious faiths and to democracy itself. Trumpist victories in the 2020 elections would mean the consolidation of an authoritarian state with the most reactionary politics, the expansion of imperial aggression abroad and the collapse of the political space for democratic and left forces at home. The defeat of Trumpism is thus a strategic imperative, the most important political task of our time."
 
Our position did not get consideration at the convention, competing views won out.
 
We then developed an effort to advance this position as an educational and activist campaign within the broad left.  We organized this petition that was published in the Nation and circulated broadly.
https://www.dsanorthstar.org/defeattrump.html
​www.dsanorthstar.org/defeattrump.html
 
“We, the undersigned democratic socialists, want to make clear that the priority for the left in 2020 should be the electoral defeat of Donald Trump and the Trumpist Republican Party in November. At present, the only way to accomplish that will be to vote for his Democratic opponent.
The racist, xenophobic, misogynist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses an immediate existential danger to people of color, to immigrants, to reproductive rights, to trade unions, to LGBTQIA people, to Muslims, to Jews, to members of other religions, and to democracy itself. A Trump victory would fortify our authoritarian State, expand imperial aggression, and collapse the political space for democratic and left forces at home. Reversing the creeping neo-fascism at play in our country is a strategic imperative, the most urgent political task before us.”
 
The obvious facts  in the nation, on the  electoral ground, led thousands of left organizers, union leaders, political activists and citizens to adopt similar emphases.

My conclusion is that the effort of North Star Caucus provided leadership in developing a democratic socialist position in the election.  Good work to all.

Additional notes.  Newsperson Juan Gonzalez provides an important critique of main stream media’s coverage of the Latino Vote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIrr4Ka6KAg&feature=emb_logo


​and provides this graphic.

​

​

​
Duane Campbell,
North Star Caucus.  DSA. 

Jose Perez,

A lot of people are scratching their heads and wondering, how did Georgia wind up Blue in the electoral college maps while Texas, North Carolina and even Florida remained red?

There are undoubtedly many factors to take into account, but at least in Georgia, I believe the difference came from two extraordinary women political leaders who inspired the sort of grass-roots, from below organizing work that leads to permanent change.

One is Stacey Abrams, who everyone has heard of, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 who established the New Georgia Project (in its various incarnations).
 
The other is Adelina Nicholls, who almost no one has heard of, and is the founder and executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR). 
 
Yes, Stacey Abrams is, in a sense, more significant, for her ties are to the much larger Black community. But as we say in GLAHR, "Aquí estamos y nos nos vamos," we're here and we're not leaving, and this year, we Latinos have made ourselves felt. 
 
I have not an ounce of doubt: we pushed Biden over the top. Yes, we stood on the shoulders of a giant, the Black community, and proudly so, and so we flipped the state from red to blue. 

It is not a question of who deserves more credit, but of what together we can accomplish.
 
The activist movement associated with GLAHR (GLAHR itself is a 501c(3) non-profit and was not directly involved in many phases of this) targeted suburban Atlanta's two main (until now) Republican-dominated counties for a sustained campaign beginning with voter registration and culminating with dozens of election defender teams at polling places on  November 3. 
 
For the Latino movement, the central objective of the overall campaign was NOT electing Biden but knocking out the 287G "polimigra" programs which are authorized by the elected sheriffs of the two counties. 
 
Key in that was defeating the Republican candidates for Sheriff, one an incumbent, the other the chief deputy of the retiring office holder.

In that, GLAHR made an alliance with activists from SONG (Southerners on New Ground), and people activated by the BLM upsurge this summer. 

Because of Covid-19 and my age (I'm 69), my participation has been limited to the streaming show GLAHR folks do every day, otherwise. I've been mostly observing from the sidelines while this has been going on But these activists conducted a year long campaign and in the decisive phase this fall, knocked on 120,000 doors in Cobb and Gwinnett. If you want to see the biggest vote total shifts in Georgia, go look at those two counties and compare them to 2016.
 
But of tremendous importance to the Latino community, both counties elected candidates for sheriffs that are pledged to stop 287G, the program that creates a direct pipeline to deportation from a county jail where people can be booked for nothing more than a traffic ticket.

Although various Latino groups are claiming they did all sorts of things in Georgia, so many thousands of phone calls and tens of thousands of texts, that  I know of, no one else was on the ground in Georgia knocking on doors and talking to people apart from Stacey Abrams' and Adelina's movements. And if you're questioning the reality of what I'm saying about the Latino activist side of this, on this facebook page you can examine the receipts.

And as for South Georgia, the only group that I know of who also did door-knocking GOTV there were the activists from GLAHR's local "Comités Populares." 

Various reports have highlighted the role played by the campaign against Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (Phoenix & metro area) in leading to this year that state going blue.
 
But people are not aware that the same idea has been followed in Georgia. Which is, of course, no coincidence. Because many leaders of both the Georgia movement and the Arizona movement are part of Mijente, which grew out of the "not one more" campaign aimed at deporter-in-chief Barack Obama in the last years of his administration. 

Some people say that we in Georgia followed AOC's call for "deep canvassing," going out and actually talking to people, and not just buying ads on TV and sending mailings. Others noted that we've been following what Brazilian Paulo Freire taught more than a half century ago in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

I hope some day soon some progressive national media will come down to Georgia and present to the country a more complete picture of this extraordinary victory.

Bernie Sanders: Why Is Georgia So Important?

In battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia young voters very strongly supported Biden and other Democrats. In Georgia, for example, 90% of young black voters and 62% of young white voters chose Biden over Trump. And that made all the difference not only in winning that state for Biden, but forcing two Republican senators into runoff elections that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. One of the candidates in that runoff election is Reverend Raphael Warnock, whom we strongly supported.

Bernie Sanders 
Turning Arizona Blue: On the Ground in Maricopa CountyThe heroes of this election season are the millions of citizen volunteers who texted, phoned and post carded, but perhaps the biggest contribution nationally was the work of the beleaguered HERE which lost 80% of its members due to COVID impacts. 
​
portside.org/2020-11-09/turning-arizona-blue-ground-maricopa-countyhttps://portside.org/2020-11-09/turning-arizona-blue-ground-maricopa-county
 
Georgia on My Mind:
Next stop is Georgia. Let’s make sure that Biden is not tempted to “Reach Across the Aisle” to make deals with Mitch McConnell. January 5th in Georgia we will have the chance to flip two Senate seats and create a 50-50 Senate with Kamala Harris casting the deciding ballot! All eyes are on Georgia, and all hands need to be on deck to flip both those seats. Georgia activists may not want Yankee carpetbaggers, but they will want texting, phoning, post carding and money. And hopefully this time labor unions will all unite to bang the doors. If volunteers for the doors are needed, my bags are already packed!
Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California.
 
 

By Max B. Sawicky

MetroDC DSA

I’m seeing a bunch of lefty “O.K., now let’s go after Joe Biden.” I expect to be in that game myself, but some preliminary cautions are appropriate. At the very least, shouldn’t we hold back criticism until some proposals are rolled out? Some of them will be in the form of trial balloons, which can be shot down as needed. Others will be more forthright. In either case, our brickbats should be substantive.

The fate of Senate races in Georgia will of course be enormously consequential, but they don’t make as much difference when it comes to our longer-term aspirations. Whether or not the Senate ends up even (with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote), our vision for social transformation is the same. What is different will be the short-term bargaining situation.

One thing to avoid is binary, all-or-nothing responses. For instance, Biden will propose to expand coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Rejecting any such proposals because they are not “Medicare For All” would be unwise. The convenient and inconvenient thing about health care is that it is infinitely divisible along a continuum. There are always ways to get a bit more, or a bit less. Of course we should demand more than what we expect to get in the end. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with the M4A slogan.

Even so, Medicare For All is an empty box. I’m on Medicare, and I can assure you that in its present form, by itself, it is woefully inadequate as health insurance. M4A proposals in Congress substantially expand Medicare benefits and coverage. With a hostile Senate, expansion of Medicare will be daunting. It will also be a potent political demand. M4A will come to signify universal coverage, something hard to reject for Republicans who are up for election in 2022.

The Biden plan will put a ceiling, at least in the short term, over what is possible. Any such cap is — should be — vulnerable to criticism. Ironically, the more intransigent a Republican Senate could prove to be, the more flexibility it lends to the side of full-blown M4A. If McConnell refuses to deal and keeps his people in line, then there is no incentive to noodle with compromises. If the Senate isn’t blue by January, M4A can make it so in two years.

Aside from genuinely popular initiatives of the sort introduced by Bernie Sanders, Biden has another source of leverage: executive decisions that do not require legislation. Threats on this front might motivate some stray Republican votes on measures that do require legislation. We have every right to expect a blizzard of executive orders that fill the hopper and will be ready to go, the day after the inauguration. The other immediate priority is another Covid/recession relief measure, since anything negotiated with Mitch McConnell and Trump prior to January 20th is likely to be inadequate.

Two things worry me the most.

One is a return to the old-time religion of deficit reduction. Most Democrats have wised up to the political chicanery embodied in this issue. Republicans care about deficits when it comes to Democratic proposals, never when it comes to their own. The problem is, some Democrats, including some liberal economists, still think the national debt is a Problem. Like Obama, Biden might be gulled into some kind of ‘grand bargain’ that entails cuts in Social Security and Medicare and tax increases. It will be marketed as “Saving Social Security.” Such a decision would certainly lead to disaster in the next midterm elections, as did similar decisions by Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010. It would also pave the way for Trump: The Sequel in 2024.

The other thing that bothers me is the prospect of Biden returning to the traditional, bipartisan posture of U.S. world policeman hegemony that leads to debacles in Libya and Iraq. The flashpoints include North Korea and Iran. I count the latter as less likely since Biden would probably resurrect the agreement with Iran made by Obama. But by and large, this is an appetite that is never satiated. Ironically, Trump’s signal contribution to the national well-being lay in his aversion to any such grand-scale projects. His violence was focused on defenseless drone victims in the Middle East and desperate asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border.

One tip-off will be the new administration’s plans for the military budget. The need for the “empire of bases” or the ability to fight a couple of ground wars has never seemed less persuasive. The most evident threats to U.S. national security would seem to be in cyberspace, where meddlesome state actors and potential terrorists communicate.

Many of us are finding ourselves quite apprehensive, even fearful, because of what is happening with the 2020 elections and in American political life. There is value, I want to argue, in taking a moment to analyze those feelings, the role they play in the elections and what we can do about them. I will offer some practical recommendations on that front at the conclusion of this post.
 
We generally find it difficult to talk about our feelings in public forums, but they are far from a purely private matter: they are a vital element of politics, because they influence in powerful ways what is important to us and how we act on what is important. To the extent that we are self-aware of the political sources and political impact of our feelings, we are more effective political actors. A sound political strategy accounts for the emotional dimension of politics, and chooses political interventions with them in mind.
 
So let us start with this public acknowledgement: we – those of us on the broad progressive left – are terribly anxious, and we are deeply fearful. We hear it in each other’s voices when we speak, we see it in each other’s faces on Zoom and when we meet in person, and we read it in each other’s words on social media.
 
There are good reasons why we have these feelings. You don’t need me to recite the ways in which Donald Trump has undermined democratic institutions and norms and promoted racial hate and division over the past four years. Today, it is painfully obvious that in his bid to hold on to power, Trump is prepared to violate the most fundamental principle of democracy – that the people chose who will govern through free and fair elections. The stakes in the election are nothing less than the survival of American democracy. That has to be worrisome.
 
Let’s delve into the emotional dimensions of this Trumpian moment. Like other demagogues of the authoritarian right, Trump trades primarily in two political emotions – fear and ressentiment. The latter term is drawn from social science and philosophy, where it is used to describe resentment and hostility directed toward marginalized ‘outgroups’ that are scapegoated as the cause of various economic and social ills. In his appeals to his base, Trump weaves these two emotions together in the form of fear and ressentiment directed at the ‘other,’ with the most frequent targets being along the lines of race – Latinos, African Americans, Muslims, immigrants and refugees. During the election campaign, these emotions have become the foundation of increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories that the Democrats are controlled by violent radicals looking to overturn the entire social order. In this Trumpian narrative, Democrats are forcing these ‘others’ on the America of “Make America Great Again,” that old world in which marginalized outgroups knew their ‘proper place’ as subordinates. Trump’s embrace of the Proud Boys and the QAnon conspiracy theorists is only the clearest manifestation of this approach.
 
Progressive appeals to solidarity and the common good are based on contrary emotions, hope and empathy instead of fear and ressentiment. Trump is not going to convince us that we should be fearful of racial ‘others.’ But that does not mean that we are unaffected by Trump’s manipulation of emotions. Trumpian discourse is designed to stoke fear amongst us – a different fear than that fueled by Trump in his base, but a real fear nonetheless. Trump knows full well, for example, that his support of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, his incitement of the Proud Boys and the QAnon crowd, makes us fearful of what they will do. He wants us to be fearful, because stoking fear in one’s democratic opponents can produce a number of political effects. If we allow it, fear can demoralize and even intimidate us. Fear can paralyze us. When we act out of our fears, we don’t think as clearly and logically as we might. Fear can induce the ‘flight or fight’ response, in which our body’s physiology seizes control of us.
 
But when we understand that our fears are being stoked for political purposes, there are ways to counter it. Here are the three practical ways.
 
First, constructive action directed at the source of our fears is central to overcoming the sense of being overwhelmed by them. Our task through Tuesday, November 3 is clear: get as large a vote for Biden-Harris as possible. The bigger and more decisive vote, the more total and decisive the political defeat of Trump and Trumpism, and the more diminished the room of maneuverability in attempts to overturn the election results. YOU can be involved. I am heading up to Philadelphia for the next two days, but the upside of an election in a pandemic is that you don’t need to do that: you can play a positive role from your living room, making calls and texts. My union, the American Federation of Teachers, has an app (AFT Votes) you can download or a website you can go to (https://www.aftvotes.org/) that provides a number of ways you can volunteer to win this election. Other unions provide the same opportunities. There are a multitude of organizations out there – Working Families Party, Our Revolution, Indivisible, Move On, Warren Democrats – that will happily involve you in this work. (I know because they all text me several times a day asking me to volunteer. {-;) Doing this will make you feel better, and it is the best way to stop Trump in his tracks.
 
Second, DO.NOT.PANIC. Understand what will happen the evening of election day. There has been a massive, entirely unprecedented early vote in this election. For example, the number of Texans voting early has surpassed the entire number of 2016 votes in that state by 700,000. This early vote has been strongest among the solid majority of the population which is supporting Biden-Harris. This means that the election day vote may be more favorable to Trump. Since the election day vote is counted first, Trump could well have an early lead on election night expect that in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. But as the early votes are counted, that lead will disappear and Biden-Harris will win handily. Trump’s strategy will be to announce victory based on these early results, and then create chaos and call upon the courts to stop the counting of the rest of the votes. If we react to his announcements out of fear, we will be biting on his bait. We must win the narrative on Tuesday night and for the remainder of the count, which will take days at a minimum. #COUNTEVERYVOTE must be our mantra until every vote is counted.
 
Third, there is a very real possibility that Trump and his enablers will attempt to overturn the results of the popular vote, by one means or another. If that is the case, we will need to defend the popular vote and American democracy in the streets with non-violent, mass protests. Trump and his neo-fascist supporters will attempt to use fear to intimidate us from protesting. But we can do what we must while taking sensible precautions for our safety. First, the best way to make protesting safe is to put millions of Americans into the streets: the greater our numbers, the harder it will be to suppress a democracy movement. Second, we need to organize our protests in ways that make it possible to look out for each other. We should not be going to protests as individuals, but in organized groups, with those we know and trust – family members; our unions; our churches, synagogues and mosques; our neighborhoods; and so on. Teachers should create affinity groups with those you know and trust in your schools; health care professionals with those in your hospitals and clinics; state and local government workers with those in your workplaces. Plan to meet up in advance and stay together throughout the entire protest. When protests are organized internally in this way, it is much easier to maintain discipline and keep the focus on their purpose, and to isolate individuals who come to disrupt. Democracy movements that succeed take this organic form, building on the relationships of trust ordinary people have with each other.
 
Only “we the people” can save American democracy. And to do so, we must  overcome the efforts to use our fears against us. Franklin Roosevelt may have indulged hyperbole when he said that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but he was certainly right that our refusal to respond to attempts to instill fear in us is the foundation of a democratic politics.
 
 
Leo Casey
Executive Director
Albert Shanker Institute
555 New Jersey Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
 
See post below.
​

​

​
​Listen to what Trump says.  He plans to steal the election!
It is hard to believe that it has come to this. We have to defend democracy itself.
 
We must plan to stop him ! 
 

 
 








​
Step #1.  Defeat him at the polls.
It is time to plan for steps 2-10.
  
 
How would you like a strategy that does all of the following?

Enables you and your friends to act close to home.

Gives you some “wins” on the way to the big goal of defeating a power grab.

Is easy to explain to your friends.

Allows any number of people to participate because it will all add up.

Reduces the risk of violent confrontations.

Can be calibrated to the amount of risk of arrest that you can handle.

Can be done in-person in a way that keeps the pandemic at bay.

Targets a set of people who especially have a personal stake in the elective process.

Takes on the politically powerful who are hesitating to commit, pressuring them to do the right thing.

Draws on the strengths that already exist in our political system.

Puts us on the offensive instead of merely protesting.

Maximizes the number of people who participate in the movement.

Doesn’t have to be the only strategy being carried out in order to be successful.

OK, here’s the idea: Go to people who hold elective political power near you, in your town, county, city, state. Urge them to “Join us in demanding every vote be counted.”
Continue with this plan here.  George Lakey. 
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/09/what-will-it-take-to-defend-the-election-heres-one-winning-strategy/  

Here is a detailed plan for another series of strategies.
Hold the Line. A Guide to Defending Democracy
 
http://holdthelineguide.com

​We should begin planning now. There is work to be done for all who are willing.



Share the pledge to resist . The only way to maintain momentum is to continue sharing information, resources, and actions with our friends and family. Sign the pledge and share it with everyone you know. If you tag us in a tweet or on your stories, we will share!

Additional resources

What If Trump Won’t Leave ?
Francis Fox Piven & Deepak Bhargava
 
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/11/trump-november-2020-election/
 
Video talk;  Strike- 
"Social Self Defense Against the Impending Trump Coup"

Jeremy Brecher
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBFn120hmI0&feature=youtu.be

https://organizingupgrade.com/strike-for-democracy/

https://protecttheresults.com/
​
 
 

PROTECTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The 2020 election is a test of who we are as Americans and what we will do to preserve our democracy when it is in mortal peril.
Throughout our history, Americans have risen to the moment to extend and defend democracy. From the abolitionists and suffragists who risked their freedom in the fights against slavery and to secure the vote, to the working people who faced violence and repression when they organized unions and defended free speech, and from the armed forces who defeated fascism in a world war, to the civil rights activists who fought the Jim Crow South, Americans have made immense sacrifices and put our lives on the line to make the democratic promise of “liberty and justice for all” a reality. The American Federation of Teachers—our members, our locals, our state federations and our national organization—has been part of that democratic quest: We fought against fascism here and abroad, including our participation in the great battles of all of our civil rights movements.
Today, we in the AFT face a historic challenge. Donald Trump’s presidency has been marked by a series of attacks on the democratic institutions and norms of our government and civil society: assaults on the rule of law; an independent judiciary; a free press; the separation of governmental powers; the right to protest; equality under the law; the rights of people of color, believers in minority religious faiths and immigrants; the freedom of association of working people; and more. This endless barrage has taken a deep and destructive toll on our political life, our national psyche and our national identity, threatening to lay waste to our country’s motto: E pluribus unum—out of many, one.
Now, in the final week leading up to the 2020 election, in the midst of a surging coronavirus pandemic and as Americans are voting, Trump and his supporters have mounted an offensive on the very foundation of democracy—the power of the people to choose their government through free and fair elections.
The AFT is unequivocal and unwavering in our response: We stand for American democracy. Democracy is a defining principle of our work as educators, healthcare professionals and state and local government workers, and a core value of who we are as unionists and citizens. Our vote is our voice and a sacred right upon which freedom depends. We see no choice: To be true to ourselves and the values we hold dear, we must rise to the defense of democracy.
While our opposition to Trump is clear, our defense of the right to vote, the requirement to count every vote and the assurance that the will of the voters must determine who is president must not depend on a presidential preference.
In the coming days, we will do everything in our power to support our fellow citizens in the effort to exercise their democratic franchise and cast their votes. We will remain engaged with fellow democracy defenders to see that those votes are counted and that the will of the people is reflected in the peaceful transition of power to the legitimate winners of our free and fair elections.
To ensure that the will of the people is respected in the 2020 elections, we dedicate ourselves to the following four propositions:

• •    Every American citizen registered to vote must be able to vote. In the context of the current pandemic, voters must have the ability to cast their ballot in ways that do not endanger their health, such as mail ballots and early voting, as well as have sufficient ways to vote on Nov. 3. There must be sufficient numbers of polling stations and election officials for all voters to vote. Intimidation of voters must not be allowed to stand.
• •    Every vote must be counted. Given the unprecedented numbers of votes that have been cast early and by mail, the final tally will not be known on election night. Indeed, there may not be enough of a vote count available on Nov. 3 to project who has won. Counting must continue until all votes have been counted.
• •    The electoral verdict of “we the people” must be respected. It is not the right of those in power—whether they be in the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, or in state capitols and local governments—to decide who governs us. It is the right of the people, and the people alone. The reins (or leadership) of government must be transferred peacefully to the choice of the people.
• •    We will not be intimidated. AFT members have a proud tradition of engaging in the peaceful struggle for American democracy. In the tradition of our teachers, Martin Luther King Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, we will organize and participate in peaceful, nonviolent mass protests against any efforts to thwart free and fair elections and to undermine American democracy. When democracy is in danger, we will be in the streets and in our workplaces with our colleagues in the labor movement and allies in the community, defending it against its enemies—foreign and domestic.

Make no mistake, the AFT believes that the American people should freely elect this country’s next leader, and we will accept the legitimate outcome of the election regardless of the victor. However, as a union deeply rooted in democratic principles, we will do whatever it takes to stand by our commitment to reject election interference, threats, tampering, stealing, acts of violence or other actions that undermine the will of the people in this exercise of Americans’ democracy. We, the people, must decide.
AFT Executive Council  http://www.aft.org

Above is a very interesting, thoughtful discussion of The Socialist Awakening, a new book by John Judis, a leftwing jounalist, at right in the video. It’s well worth spending an hour to watch. Judis and Peter Dreier, at left, make great points about socialist history and theory, the weaknessss of the New Left generation they were part of, and some of the strengths of the new generation of leftists. Judis offers important advice about the importance of reaching out beyond the East and West Coasts, major cities and college towns, and of finding a way to talk to more Americans in ways that aren’t alienating.

Yet I was dismayed by the sharp difference between this discussion and The Struggle or the Sidelines: DSA and the 2020 Elections, a webinar that DSA’s Socialist Majority Caucus hosted Sunday night.


The Struggle or the Sidelines was an interview with historian Barbara Ransby and labor movement veteran Jose La Luz. Like Judis and Dreier, both are what MC Abdullah Younnous called “OG,” or older generation. But Ransby is African American, La Luz is Puerto Rican and a long-time DSA leader. Dreier and John Judis are both white Jewish men; Dreier a long-time DSA member; Judis I think is a former member.
The Struggle or the Sidelines discussion is here.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=801755180659062&ref=watch_permalink

Theories of racial capitalism and colonialism are central to Ransby and La Luz’s talks on why it’s crucial reasons to be engaged in the struggle against Trump and Trumpism and for socialism. They called for a multiracial movement that is antiracist and anticolonial. Deier and Judis barely mentioned racism and colonialism, and then onliquely in discussing immigration and protests against racist policing.

Dreier, a professor of Politics and Urban Policy, notes that while his own generation read Marcuse, his students read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Neither he nor Judis noted that their generation included SNCC, not just SDS; neither noted, as Ransby and La Luz did, that the recent protests sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others were the largest protest in American history—and remarkable for the large share of young whites participating.

I firmly believe that Peter Dreier and John Judis are anti racist and anti imperialist, AND  I think their virtually omitting racism and colonialism from the discussion is typical of white leftists of their generation, who I grew up with. I sometimes make the same omissions myself.

The younger Socialists I know, white, black, Latinx and Asian, seldom do. They clearly prefer the vision and and analysis that Ransby and La Luz articulated. I do, too. Many of us old white leftists haven't listened enough, or absorbed deeply enough, the perspectives of our comrades of color. I’m glad the younger generation, whites as well as POC, seems to be doing better.


Miriam Jean Bensman
NYC

With 170+ 'Protect the Results' Events Planned for Nov. 4, Pro-Democracy Groups Vow to 'Ensure Voters Have the Last Word'

"We will honor the valid results of the 2020 election, ensure that every vote is counted, and show up to demand that the losing candidate put their ego aside and concede for the good of our country."
by
Julia Conley, staff writer, Common Dreams.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/16/170-protect-results-events-planned-nov-4-pro-democracy-groups-vow-ensure-voters-have

Projecting the 78 Harrowing Days After the Election.  David Dayen.
https://prospect.org/politics/winter-of-our-discontent-trump-2020-election/

A new book and a new film speak to different audiences about the movement’s revival and prospects.
BY HAROLD MEYERSON
 
OCTOBER 9, 2020
 

While Joe Biden has been making it unmistakably clear that he’s nobody’s socialist tool, the American socialist movement—most of whose adherents will be voting for Biden—has continued to expand. The Democratic Socialists of America (to which I’ve belonged since the Neolithic Age) now has more than 70,000 members and has launched a campaign to raise that number to 100,000. At its current rate of growth, its membership rolls may well surpass that of the Debs-era Socialist Party, which claimed 118,000 dues-payers at its early-20th-century zenith.

The rebirth of American socialism has come complete with any number of explanatory and exhortatory books, the best of which was published late last month: The Socialist Awakening: What’s Different Now About the Left, a brief, incisive volume by veteran political journalist, longtime democratic socialist, and sometime American Prospect contributor John B. Judis. The book is Judis’s third in a series published by Columbia Global Reports. In it, as in its two predecessors The Populist Explosion and The Nationalist Revival, Judis tracks the consequences of the failures of globalized capitalism to sustain working- and middle-class prosperity and stability since the 2008 collapse, and the concomitant rise of both left and right in the wake of those failures. As is not the case in the other two volumes, however, Judis writes not merely as an analyst of an ideology’s return but as an advocate for its necessity, with particularly shrewd assessments of how the new American socialism can advance, and, alternatively, how it may marginalize itself into irrelevance.

Judis focuses on two periods in American socialism’s long history: the Debs Era of 1900 through 1920, and the Bernie Sanders Surge, which began to incubate with the Occupy movement of 2011 but didn’t really take off until Sanders began running for president in 2015. Both were periods in which capital concentrated wealth and power, in which little of either trickled down to most Americans, in which the New Deal’s semi–social democratic reforms had either not yet been enacted or had been discarded in the post-1970 turn toward laissez-faire.

Sanders has always made it plain that socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was his hero, but in Judis’s telling, the key to Sanders’s zeitgeist-changing success was his move away from the socialist insularity that Debs espoused. While nominally remaining a political independent, Sanders won election to Congress on a social democratic platform of greater regulation of capital, greater power for workers, an expansion of social welfare and economic rights, and a pledge that he’d caucus with the Democrats.

When he began running for president in 2015, Sanders made clear his model of socialism was the Scandinavian mixed economy. But as Judis recounts, after Columbia University historian Eric Foner sent him an open letter that emphasized a more American pedigree for socialist initiatives, Sanders took the hint. As I recounted in the Prospect, in Sanders’s two speeches that he billed as his definition of socialism—one given at Georgetown University in 2015, the second at George Washington University in 2019—he cited Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King as his forebears in the struggle for socialist reforms.


In keeping with that expansive definition, Judis emphasizes the broad socialist “network” that’s emerged today, which extends well beyond DSA card-carriers. It includes a range of progressive think tanks (like the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute) and magazines; most importantly, it includes not just the avowed socialists in elected office but a host of progressives whose politics are indistinguishable from the socialists’ politics, as Elizabeth Warren’s were from Sanders’s.

Expanding that network, as socialists like union leaders Sidney Hillman, A. Philip Randolph, and Walter Reuther did during the New Deal and the postwar period, will be as important, if not more important, to the social democratization of today’s United States than the growth of DSA per se, Judis contends. What could retard that growth, he continues, would be continuing the hold that a relatively small group of orthodox Trotskyists now have over DSA’s leadership. The majority of DSA members, he argues, are Berniecrats, happy to work for socialist and other progressive candidates seeking office as Democrats. (I believe he’s right about this.)

They understand, as Sanders does and as DSA founder Michael Harrington did, that third-party politics are a dead end in the current configuration of the American electoral system, and that socialists have won power in democracies only when allied with other progressives on behalf of social democratic programs. Such an approach is anathema to the neo-Trotskyist cadres in DSA, for whom a kind of socialist identity politics eclipses both class politics and that of a 21st-century popular front.

Judis also makes the case for a socialist version of nationalism, at which many in today’s socialist movement will look askance. So long as democratic nations offer the one kind of government where majority rule holds sway, though, I think Judis has a point. While capitalism has had no trouble going global (in part to escape the regulations enacted by democratic nations), socialism cannot yet call on any planetary democratic body to reform the global economy. Moreover, people’s support for welfare states funded with their taxes, Judis points out, seldom extends beyond their nation’s borders. To advance a slightly different viewpoint, it’s worth noting that the nation that has given the highest share of its GDP in foreign aid—sometimes to insurgent movements, like the African National Congress—was Sweden under the Social Democrats. Of course, that was when Sweden also had the world’s most expansive welfare state for its own citizens.

Judis writes not merely as an analyst of an ideology’s return but as an advocate for its necessity.

As events would have it, the publication of Judis’s book coincides with the premiere of a film that seeks to introduce and normalize socialism to American viewers. Indeed, The Big Scary ‘S’ Word, a film by documentarian Yael Bridge, will have its first festival screening later today.

In Judis’s terminology, The Big Scary ‘S’ Word is a film about the broad socialist network, and broad left history, rather than a look at, say, the American Socialist and Communist Parties, or at DSA today. The focus is on progressives in motion, then and now, and their connection, explicit or implicit, to socialists and socialism, as distinct from the substance of their involvement in the socialist movement as such. Rather than disentangle the socialist and nonsocialist threads that came together to make the civil rights movement, for instance, the picture simply documents the socialism of Martin Luther King. Some of the environmental protests it shows may not have been populated by socialists, but they’re juxtaposed with interviews with Naomi Klein in which she connects a socialist perspective to any serious effort to save the planet.

There’s a marvelous segment, replete with old films and photos, on the socialists’ 40-year control of Milwaukee’s city government, but no discussion of the social democratic meliorism of Victor Berger, the Milwaukee socialist leader and a contemporary of Debs who did not share Debs’s antipathy to reformist socialism. For that, you need to consult Judis’s book, which is pitched at a narrower audience than Bridge’s film.

Just as Eric Foner plays a key role in Judis’s account of the Americanization of Bernie Sanders’s socialism, so Foner plays a key role in explaining the contributions of socialists to American struggles for justice in Bridge’s picture. In this task, he is joined by Klein, Cornel West, The Nation’s John Nichols, and a host of others. In documenting the rise of socialism today, the picture focuses on Lee Carter, a DSA member and the one socialist in the Virginia legislature, as well as on a teacher who assumed a leadership role during the Oklahoma teachers strike and became a socialist in the process.

As its title suggests, The Big Scary ‘S’ Word makes a broad and pointedly reassuring case for socialism as the remedy to our towering inequities. Judis’s book makes a compelling case for what it will take to roll the revived socialist movement on, and offers a pointed critique of how sectarianism could derail it. The former is essential viewing for a broad audience; the latter essential reading for progressives and socialists.
Harold Meyerson 

Let me begin by wishing the president and the First Lady a full and speedy recovery from the COVID-19 illness they are now dealing with. And I, of course, wish the same for my colleagues in the Congress who have also been infected with the virus, as well as the many, many other Americans who are struggling with this terrible disease.

What the last few days have told us is that, if there was ever any doubt, it should now be clear now that no one, no one, is safe from this pandemic. It doesn't matter if you are a front line worker in a hospital - and we thank our medical personnel for the extraordinary sacrifices they have made for us during this pandemic. It doesn't matter if you are an essential worker at a supermarket, a packing house worker, or a bus driver. And it doesn't matter if you are president of the United States. Each and every one of us is vulnerable. And we will remain vulnerable until there is a vaccine or a perfected cure. That's the reality, and there is no getting away from that.

There are some who say that we have to make a choice between having a strong economy and protecting the American people from this terrible disease. I disagree. The truth is that we will never have a strong economy so long as this pandemic continues to surge — as it is today. We will never have a strong economy if people are afraid to go to work, afraid to go to school, afraid to shop, afraid to go to a restaurant or afraid to do all of the things that we have always done. We will never have a strong economy unless we get this pandemic under control.

Is the solution to this crisis to shut down the economy and lock everyone in their homes? No it is not. We can keep our country moving forward if we do so in a way that is disciplined, not dangerous — that is responsible, not reckless.
 
And now I want you to ask yourselves some very simple questions. Which candidate for president has shown that he will be disciplined, that he will be responsible, in dealing with this pandemic? Which candidate for president has made it clear that he will develop policies based on the advice of the best scientists in our country and the world? Which candidate for president will develop national protocols and guidelines, and model the behaviors we all need to engage in to keep our families and our neighbors safe? Which candidate has the temperament to see us through this difficult crisis? Let me repeat. Which candidate has the temperament to see us through this difficult crisis? I don't think there is any doubt that the answer to those questions is, that in the worst public health crisis in 100 years, we need Joe Biden as our president.

And now let me say a word about the economy.

Let’s be clear: The working class of America is in more desperation today than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Tens of millions of our fellow citizens have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. They have lost their incomes. They have lost their health insurance. They have depleted their life savings. They cannot afford to pay rent or mortgages. They cannot afford to put food on the table. And they are going deeper and deeper into debt.

Today, the percentage of Americans who don’t have jobs is at its highest level in 45 years — while tens of millions of Americans who do have jobs are often working part-time for starvation wages.

And as bad as the economy has been in general it has been far, far worse for African Americans and Latinos. During the pandemic, nearly 60% of Latino families and 55% of African American families have either experienced a job loss or a pay cut.

Meanwhile, not everyone is hurting in America. While the middle class is being devastated and poverty is growing, we are witnessing a massive increase in income and wealth inequality. Over the past 6 months, and I want you to hear this, 643 billionaires have seen their wealth go up by $845 billion.

Let me repeat. While 30 million Americans have lost their jobs, while 12 million Americans have lost their health insurance, while 29 million Americans do not have enough food to eat, while 40 million Americans face eviction, 643 billionaires increased their wealth by $845 billion over the past 6 months alone.

That is the state of the economy in America today. The very rich get much, much richer, while nearly everyone else gets poorer and poorer.
And let’s be clear: Despite what you may have heard, over the past 4 years the economy has not been good for the working class — not before the pandemic, not during the pandemic.

No. It was not a good economy when over half of the American people were living paycheck to paycheck, as was the case before the pandemic, with no ability to put a nickel in the bank.

It was not a good economy when 87 million people were uninsured or underinsured and 68,000 Americans were dying each year because they could not afford to go to a doctor.

It was not a good economy when over 40 million workers in America were earning starvation wages of less than $15 an hour.

It was not a good economy when half of older Americans had no retirement savings and no idea how they would be able to retire with any shred of dignity.

It was not a good economy when over half a million Americans were homeless and 18 million families were spending more than half of their incomes on housing.

Yes, it was a great economy for the billionaire class, and it has become even better for them during this horrific pandemic, but it has been an absolute disaster for working families.

But, truth be told, the economy has not been good for the working class for decades.

Over the past 45 years, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America, but it has gone in the wrong direction — from the working class and the poor to the very richest people in our country.

Since 1990, while the top 1% saw their wealth go up by $22 trillion, the bottom 50% of Americans saw their wealth go down by $776 billion. 
Incredibly, if income inequality had remained the same as it was in 1975, the average worker in America would be making $42,000 more today.
Instead, the average worker in America is now making $34 bucks a week less than he or she made 47 years ago — after adjusting for inflation.

Corporate Greed 

Brothers and sisters: What I understand and what you understand is that the American people are getting more and more disgusted with the corporate greed they experience every single day.

They are sick and tired of large, profitable corporations shutting down in the United States, throwing American workers out on the streets as they move their factories to low-wage countries. 

They are sick and tired of corporate CEOs who now make 300 times more than their average employees, while they give themselves huge bonuses and cut back on the health care benefits of their employees.
They are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the largest drug companies in America make tens of billions in profits year after year after year.

In my view, we can no longer tolerate a rigged system that allows the three wealthiest people in our country to own more wealth than the bottom 50%.

We can no longer tolerate a rigged tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than nurses, teachers and truck drivers while we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth.

We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%.

Joe Biden will improve the economy

Now, it is no great secret that Joe Biden and I disagree on a number of issues.

But there is no question that the economic proposals that Joe Biden is supporting are strong and will go a long, long way in improving life for working families. 

Let me tell you about just some of those proposals.

Minimum Wage – When Joe Biden is president he will increase the federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of $15 an hour. What Joe understands is that if you work 40 hours a week you should not be living in poverty. A job in America should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it. And let’s be clear: When we increase that minimum wage to $15 an hour we will be raising the wages of more than 40 million workers. 

And Joe Biden also understands that we have to guarantee that every woman in America gets equal pay for equal work. Women in America don’t deserve to be making just 80 cents on the dollar compared to men. They deserve the whole damn dollar.

Joe Biden also knows that if we are going to expand the middle class in this country, we must make it easier for workers to join unions, engage in collective bargaining and end the heavy-handed corporate tactics that make it hard for workers to unionize in America.

And Joe Biden also understands that we have got to stop providing corporate welfare to companies that are throwing American workers out on the street and moving abroad.
 
It is absolutely unacceptable that more than 300,000 American jobs have been shipped overseas over the past 4 years, while some of the biggest corporate outsourcers in America have received over $400 billion in government contracts. When Joe Biden is president he will sign an executive order to prevent companies that ship American jobs abroad from receiving corporate welfare.

Infrastructure – Here's something else that Joe Biden understands. And that is that, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes, we need to create millions of good paying jobs through a massive investment in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure — our roads, bridges, sidewalks, schools, water systems and affordable housing.

Paid Family and Medical Leave – I'll tell you what else Joe understands. Like most of us, he is embarrassed that the United States is the only major nation on earth not to guarantee paid medical and family leave. When a woman in this country gives birth, she should not be forced to go back to work after one or two weeks. When a kid gets sick, mom or dad should be able to stay home and not lose a day's pay. That’s why Joe has proposed at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for working families.

Childcare – When we talk about babies and young children, we all know that our current childcare system is totally inadequate. Our children and their parents deserve high quality, reliable and affordable childcare. That’s why Joe has proposed universal pre-K education for every 3 and 4 year old in the country. 

Colleges – When we talk about making sure that we have the best educated workforce in the world, Joe understands that we have got to make public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition free for working families and substantially reduce student debt in America.
 
Tax Reform – At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, Joe Biden understands that we must demand that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America pay their fair share of taxes. No more tax breaks for billionaires while veterans sleep out on the street and children go hungry. No more tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas or shift their profits to the Cayman Islands.

Prescription Drugs – As some of you may recall, last year I traveled to Canada with a group of diabetics to buy insulin, a life and death drug for more than 30 million Americans. And here's what we found. You can buy insulin in Canada, a few miles from our border, for one-tenth the price that it is sold here. No. You didn't mishear me. The same product, made by the same company, is sold for one-tenth the price that it's sold here. But it's not just Canada and it’s not just insulin. While the drug companies, through their collusion, price fixing and greed, make obscene profits, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Joe Biden understands that we must take on the pharmaceutical industry and significantly lower drug prices in this country.

Health Care – As many of you know the United States is the only major country not to guarantee health care for all people. Meanwhile, despite paying almost twice as much per capita for health care as the people of other countries, over 90 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and over half a million Americans go bankrupt because they cannot afford to pay their medical bills.

While Joe and I disagree on the best path to get to universal coverage, his proposal will greatly expand access to health care and make it more affordable for tens of millions across this country. He will lower the eligibility age of Medicare from 65 to 60. He will expand Medicare to cover dental care, eyeglasses and hearing aids. And he will substantially increase funding for community health centers to make sure that millions of Americans get the primary health care and mental health care that they desperately need.

Conclusion

My friends: 

In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we need an economy that works for all of us and not just the 1% and large corporations. 

There is no excuse for millions of workers in our country being unemployed, and for tens of millions lacking health insurance. There is no excuse for America having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, for starvation wages, for a dysfunctional child care system, for homelessness and for massive student debt.

Let us stand together — Black and white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, gay and straight and elect Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.

Thank you all very much.

Bernie Sanders