A DEMOCRATIC FOOD SYSTEM MEANS UNIONS FOR FARMWORKERS
By David Bacon
Food First, 4/14/21
https://foodfirst.org/publication/a-democratic-food-system-means-unions-for-farmworkers/
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-democratic-food-system-means-unions.html



BURLINGTON, WA - Migrant indigenous farm workers on strike against Sakuma Farms, a large berry grower in northern Washington State, blocked the entrance into the labor camp where they live during the picking season.  The strikers wanted to stop the grower from bringing in contract guest workers from Mexico to do the work they usually do every year.


The people who labor in U.S. fields produce immense wealth, yet poverty among farmworkers is widespread and endemic.  It is the most undemocratic feature of the U.S. food system. Cesar Chavez called it an irony, that despite their labor at the system's base, farmworkers "don't have any money or any food left for themselves."  

Enforced poverty and the racist structure of the field labor workforce go hand in hand.  U.S. industrial agriculture has its roots in slavery and the brutal kidnapping of Africans, whose labor developed the plantation economy, and the subsequent semi-slave sharecropping system in the South.  For over a century, especially in the West and Southwest, industrial agriculture has depended on a migrant workforce, formed from waves of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, South Asian, Yemeni, Puerto Rican and more recently, Central American migrants.  

The dislocation of communities produces this migrant workforce, as people are forced by poverty, war and political repression to leave home to seek work and survive.  Any vision for a more democratic and sustainable system must acknowledge this historic reality of poverty, forced migration and inequality, and the efforts of workers themselves to change it.

California's Tulare County, for instance, produced $7.2 billion in fruit, nuts and vegetables in 2019, making it one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Yet 123,000 of Tulare's 453,000 residents live below the poverty line.  Over 32,000 county residents are farmworkers; according to the US Department of Labor the average annual income of a farmworker is between $20,000 and $24,999, less than half the median U.S. household income.  

Poverty has its price.  It has forced farmworkers to continue working during the COVID-19 pandemic, although they are well aware of the danger of illness and death.   As the gruesome year of 2020 came to an end, Tulare County, where the United Farm Workers was born in the 1965 grape strike, had 34,479 COVID-19 cases, and 406 people had died.  That gave it infection and death rates more than twice that of urban San Francisco, or Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County.  COVID rates follow income.  Median family annual income in San Francisco is $112,249 and in Santa Clara it's $124,055.  Half of Tulare County families, almost all farmworkers, earn less than its median $49,687.  

Democratizing the food system starts with acknowledging this disparity and seeking the means to end it.  And in fact, the broader working class of California has concrete reasons for supporting farmworkers.  COVID and future epidemics, for instance, do not stay neatly confined to poor rural barrios, but spread.  Pesticides that poison farmworkers remain on fruit and vegetables that show up in supermarkets and dinner tables.  Labor contractors and temporary jobs were features of farmworker life long before precarious employment spread to high tech and became the bane of UBER drivers.  

The rural legacy of economic exploitation and racial inequality was challenged most successfully in 1965, when the grape strike began first in Coachella, and then spread to Delano.  It was a product of decades of worker organizing and earlier farm worker strikes, and took place the year after civil rights and labor activists forced Congress to repeal Public Law 78 and end the bracero contract labor program.  

The grape strike was a fundamental democratic movement, started by rank-and-file Filipino and Mexican workers.  Although some couldn't read or write, they were politically sophisticated, had a good understanding of their situation, and chose their action carefully.  Growers had pitted Mexicans and Filipinos against each other for decades.  When Filipinos acted first by going on strike, and then asked the Mexican workers, a much larger part of the workforce, to join them, they believed that workers' common interest could overcome those divisions.  Their multi-racial unity was a precondition for winning democracy in the fields.

Philip Veracruz, a Filipino grape picker who became a vice-president of the UFW, wrote during the strike's fourth year:  "The Filipino decision of the great Delano grape strike delivered the initial spark to explode the most brilliant incendiary bomb for social and political changes in U.S. rural life."

The strike's impact was enormous.  Fifteen years after it started, farmworkers achieved the highest standard of living they've had in the years before or since.  In the union contracts negotiated in the late 1970s the base wage was 2.5 to 3 times the minimum wage of the time, the equivalent in California of what would be $37-45 per hour today.  The worst pesticides were banned, and for a decade union hiring halls kept labor contractors out of the fields.

By striking, farmworkers in 1965 were demanding the democratization of the food system.  Winning the first and most basic step - a union contract - required overcoming the division between rural and urban people.  Workers left the fields, traveled across the country, recruited allies, and stood in front of stores in the cities, appealing to consumers not to buy the struck grapes.  Of all the achievements of the farmworkers' movement, its most powerful and longest enduring was the boycott.  It leveled the playing field in the fight with agricultural corporations over the right to form a union, and led to the most powerful and important alliance between unions and communities in modern labor history.
    
Farm worker strikes have traditionally been broken by strikebreakers, and all too often, drowned in blood and violence.  No country has done more than the U.S. to enshrine the right of employers to break strikes.  From their first picket lines in Delano, members of the new union, the United Farm Workers, watched in anger as growers brought in crews of strikebreakers to take their jobs.  The boycott couldn't end the violence, but after farm workers crossed the enormous gulf between the fields and the big cities, they didn't have to fight by themselves.

The boycott was a participatory, democratizing strategy, and since then it has become a powerful tool for community-based union organizing.  Today alliances between unions and communities are a bedrock of progressive activism.  Farmworker strikes and boycotts helped develop this strategy, and gave the UFW its character as a social movement.  

In 2013 farmworkers used that experience when they went on strike against the Sakuma Brothers blueberry farm in Burlington, Washington.  For four years they combined strikes in the fields with a boycott of Sakuma's main client, Driscoll's, the world's largest berry distributor.  Their campaign succeeded in winning a union contract, and developed new ways to fight for rural democracy.

To see more photos go to the linked articles.

Since the mid-1980s a growing part of the migrant flow into U.S. fields has come from the states of southern Mexico, especially the indigenous Mixtec, Triqui and other communities of Oaxaca and the most remote parts of Mexico's countryside.  Migrants speaking the languages of these towns formed a new union in the heat of the Sakuma strike, Familias Unidas por la Justicia.  Their fight for higher wages was closely bound to the right to speak Mixteco and Triqui, and to develop indigenous culture in rural Washington state towns two thousand miles from their home villages.  Their struggle for cultural rights expanded the meaning of rural democracy.

The strike at Sakuma Farms started when the company made obvious its intention to replace its existing workers with a new set of migrants, recruited in Mexico and brought to the U.S. in the H2-A visa program.  The union fought successfully for the rights and jobs of Sakuma's existing employees, the Mixteco and Triqui farmworkers already living and working in the U.S.  But in the years that followed their union also became the primary source of support for H2-A workers themselves, when they protested about abusive conditions.  

Familias Unidas organizers came to the defense of workers at one company, who were fired and forced to leave the U.S. after protesting the death of an H2-A worker, Honesto Silva.  They helped guestworkers on other farms protest exhausting production quotas.  And when H2-A workers began to get sick and die after contracting the coronavirus in their crowded living quarters, Familias Unidas por la Justicia sued the state over grower-friendly regulations that allowed the virus to spread.

Sakuma Farms workers discovered in the course of their strike that the U.S. food system is a transborder system.  In 2015 a similar strike movement began in Baja California, among the strawberry pickers at Driscoll's and other growers in the San Quintin Valley.  Workers there come from the same towns in Oaxaca, even the same families, as the strikers in Washington State.   Both groups found that challenging the big growers, and winning the right to a voice over working and living conditions, ultimately means cooperation and solidarity across the U.S./Mexico border.

The largest agricultural employers have responded to demands by workers for economic and racial democracy by proposals to expand the H2-A contract labor system, criticized for being "close to slavery."  The largest recruiters of H-2A workers have enormous influence over immigration policy. With no limits on the number of visas issued annually, their recruitment of workers has mushroomed from 10,000 in 1992 to over 250,000 in 2020 - a tenth of the U.S. agricultural workforce.

Their principal proposal in Congress today is the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.  It sets up the conditions for enormous growth in the H2-A program, and would likely lead to half the farm labor workforce in the U.S. laboring under H2-A visas within a few years. The bill will prohibit undocumented workers from working in agriculture, while implementing a restrictive and complex process in which some undocumented farmworkers could apply for legal status.

Instead of competing for domestic workers by raising wages, growers seek a supply of H2-A workers whose wages stay only slightly above the legal minimum.  This system then places workers with H-2A visas into competition with a domestic labor force, depressing the wages of all farmworkers.  As the program grows, domestic workers have to compete with growers for housing, and rents rise.  When guest workers are pressured to speed up their work, an exhausting work pace spreads to the other farmworkers around them.


For farmworkers trying to organize and change conditions, the H2-A program creates enormous obstacles.  When H-2A workers themselves try to change exploitative conditions, employers can terminate their employment and end their legal visa status, in effect deporting them. Workers are then legally blacklisted, preventing their recruitment to work in future seasons.  Farmworkers living in the U.S., thinking about organizing or going on strike, have to consider the risk of being replaced.

Growers threaten that if wages rise, consumers will have to pay much higher prices for food.  Yet a woman picking strawberries in a California field gets less than 20¢ for each plastic clamshell box, which sells in the supermarket for $3-4.  Doubling her wage would hardly change the price in the store.   Yet the food system is built on her poverty, and growers' efforts to build a labor force of temporary workers cements that poverty into place.

Democracy in the fields is based on the idea that farmworkers belong to organic communities - that they are not just individuals without family or community, whose labor must be made available at a price growers want to pay.  When Familias Unidas por la Justicia set up a coop to grow blueberries, Tierra y Libertad, it sought to create instead a new basis for community,  a system in which workers could make the basic decisions as a community - about what to grow, how land should be used, and how to share the work without exploitation.

Rosalinda Guillen, the daughter of a farmworker family and founder of Communty2Community, the main support base for the strikers at Sakuma Farms, believes that a democratic system for food production can't be achieved if farmworkers continue to be landless.  "The value of what we bring to a community is blatantly waved aside," she charges.  "We're invisible.  Our contributions are invisible.  That's part of the capitalist culture in this country.  We are like the dregs of slavery in this country.  They're holding onto that slave mentality to try to get value from the cheapest labor they can get.  If they keep us landless, if we do not have the opportunity to root ourselves into the communities in the way we want, then it's easy to get more value out of us with less investment in us. It's as blunt as that."
        
Organizing a union doesn't give farmworkers land, and Guillen cautions that its goals are more immediate and limited.  " It's not enough to say we've got X number of union contracts," she say. "Those workers are still in a fight. They're fighting everyday for their existence."  

But getting land and reorganizing production requires political power, just as raising wages does.  And the food monopolies controlling land and production won't give up their power without a fight.  Unions for farmworkers, therefore, are the first, most basic step to power.  Democratizing the food system without the organized power of the workers within it will remain just a dream.


BELLINGHAM, WA - Marchers commemorate the death of H2-A guestworker Honesto Silva, and support the creation of the new farmworkers cooperative, Tierra y Libertad.
 

Online Interviews and Presentations
 
Exploitation or Dignity - What Future for Farmworkers
UCLA Latin American Institute
Based on a new report by the Oakland Institute, journalist and photographer David Bacon documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKa2lHJXMs

If the Left is to succeed where past generations have failed, it can’t allow sectarian organizations to operate as “parties within a party.”
BILL BARCLAY, LEO CASEY, JACK CLARK, RICHARD HEALEY, DEBORAH MEIER, MAXINE PHILLIPS, CHRIS RIDDIOUGH AND JOSEPH M. SCHWARTZ MARCH 30, 2021


The remarkable growth of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) over the past four years, from a group with a few thousand members to one with fifteen times that number, has made it the most significant U.S. socialist organization in nearly a century. Successful campaigns to elect open democratic socialists to public office have given the DSA real, if still embryonic, political influence. Four members -- Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib -- now sit in the House of Representatives. Together with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, this is the largest number of self-avowed democratic socialists ever to hold Congressional office simultaneously, to say nothing of the scores of DSA members who have been elected to state legislatures, county boards and city councils in recent years. 
As DSA has grown in size and political influence, so too has the interest it has attracted from small political groups to its left. These ​“sects,” short for sectarian organizations, see opportunities for themselves in the large numbers of young people new to politics who have joined DSA, viewing them as potential recruits for their emaciated ranks. 

The recent announcement of the Trotskyist organization Socialist Alternative (SAlt) that its members were coming aboard, followed by a similar declarationfrom its leading member, Kshama Sawant, has simply made public a process that has been underway for some time -- that various marginal Trotskyist organizations have infiltrated the DSA in a practice known as ​“entryism.”

What is entryism and what kind of impact could it have on DSA? 
Let’s start with this disingenuous passage in the SAlt announcement:
We realize that DSA has a national ​“ban” on members of democratic centralist organizations joining. However, many DSA members we’ve talked to oppose this Cold War holdover and are excited about Socialist Alternative members joining. While this rule was originally created to prevent Marxists from joining DSA, in recent years, a new generation of DSA activists have changed the organizations’ politics for the better, many of them identifying as Marxist. We think DSA should remove this exclusionary rule as another useful step towards transforming the socialist left into an important component for the emerging class struggles. 

We, the undersigned, were involved in the crafting and adoption of the DSA Constitution that the SAlt communiqué alluded to. We have been a part of DSA’s first generation of national leadership, and we have served in its two predecessor organizations, the New American Movement and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. SAlt’s claim that Marxists have been ​“banned” from joining DSA is a self-serving fiction, and they know it. 

Many in the original leadership of DSA identified as Marxists. Michael Harrington, one of our two national co-chairs and our most prominent leader at the time of DSA’s founding, wrote a number of widely read books in which he made a case for Marx’s vision of socialism as democratic. Others of us who did not call ourselves Marxists never considered that they should be excluded from DSA. 

Even if DSA’s founders had not included many self-avowed Marxists, simple logic dictates that if we did not want them in our ranks, our Constitution would have explicitly prohibited them from joining. It did not. Contrary to the fables of SAlt, there are no political or ideological tests for joining DSA, no ​“bans” on who can join, and no approval process for new members. Don’t take our word for it: Read the document as it’s written. Ask yourself how any member of SAlt, past and present, could have joined DSA. 

DSA’s founders believed that we should assume the good faith of those who wanted to join our ranks, but we were not naïve. We were experienced and battle-hardened democratic socialists who had come from every part of the U.S. Left: women and men who had been leaders of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and various Trotskyist organizations, who were part of the Old Left of the 1930s and the New Left of the 1960s, and who came out of trade unions and civil rights, feminist and LGBTQ groups. 

Assumptions notwithstanding, our rich collective memory told us that there would be small numbers of people who joined DSA in bad faith, that these people would behave in ways that were injurious to the mission and work of DSA, and that this behavior would need to be addressed. We knew from our history that the more successful DSA became, the more people would enter it for reasons other than advancing its mission. In the most extreme of these cases, DSA could well find that it needed to use the most serious penalty a democratic organization can levy against a member -- expulsion. And given the gravity of such a step, we wanted to make sure that the Constitution specified its conditions so it would not be employed capriciously. Moreover, we wanted to ensure that there was due process for the member being expelled.

With this in mind, we wrote the following:
Members can be expelled if they are found to be in substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization or if they consistently engage in undemocratic, disruptive behavior or if they are under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization. Members facing expulsion must receive written notice of charges against them and must be given the opportunity to be heard before the NPC or a subcommittee thereof, appointed for the purpose of considering expulsion.

The first two grounds for expulsion are self-explanatory. The last ground -- that a person was ​“under the discipline of any self-defined democratic centralist organization” -- requires some historical background.

Entryism in the 1930s
In 1928, the U.S. Communist Party banished a small group of individuals from its ranks on the grounds that they were associates of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader who had been purged from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during a factional struggle that had broken out after Lenin’s death. For years, these renegades were spurned by the rest of the U.S. Left while they sought readmission to the CP in vain. By the mid-1930s and the start of the Moscow Trials in the Soviet Union, it was clear that their expulsion would not be reversed, and the Trotskyists began to look for ways out of the political wilderness in which they found themselves. 

In the American Workers Party (AWP), organized by labor educator A. J. Muste, they saw a path back to relevance. The AWP was an attempt to form a uniquely American revolutionary Marxist party that broke with a U.S. Left whose politics were beholden to different strains of European socialism and communism. In its very brief existence, the AWP had done impressive labor organizing, highlighted by its leadership of the Toledo Auto-Lite strike -- one of the epic work stoppages of the 1930s. 

Muste was initially skeptical of Trotskyist appeals to combine forces. The AWP was a more substantial organization with deeper roots in the labor movement, and he found the Trotskyist leaders to be dogmatic and uncreative in their politics. Nonetheless, New York intellectuals Sidney Hook and James Burnham convinced him that a merger was a good idea. But Muste did place one condition on agreeing to the merger: that the Workers Party (WP) would not enter the Socialist Party. 

This was a key point for Muste because the French Trotskyists, acting under the direction of Trotsky himself, had just allied with the French Socialists in a maneuver that came to be known as the ​“French turn.” After a short stay in the French Socialists, during which they garnered recruits and promoted their politics, the Trotskyists split its ranks, denounced the Socialists, and reorganized as a purely Trotskyist party. Muste was promised that this would not happen in the United States.

Almost immediately, the Trotskyists went back on their word, forcing the question of entry into the U.S. Socialist Party. Weakened by the loss of long-term political associates who were unwilling to join forces with the Trotskyists, Muste lost the vote and the Workers Party, now firmly under Trotskyist control, entered the Socialist Party. 

Once inside, the Trotskyists acted as a ​“party within a party,” maintaining their own leadership structure (which regularly plotted factional moves within the Socialists) and publishing their own newspaper (which criticized the policies of the Socialist Party and promoted such Trotskyist projects as the founding of a Fourth International). Most important, all of the Trotskyists in the Socialist Party acted as one, under a single organizational discipline: they followed a pre-established ​“political line” Trotskyist leadership had laid down in all debates and votes inside the Socialist Party. 

In short order, the Trotskyists forced a split in the Socialists and left with a thousand new members for their Socialist Workers Party (SWP), including much of the Socialists’ youth section. After this stratagem was complete, Trotskyist leader James Patrick Cannon boasted not only of the Trotskyists’ success in growing their numbers, but also of the fact that they had left the Socialist Party in shambles. 

Cannon took pride in having engineered a major setback for the U.S. Left: By the 1930s, the ranks of the Socialist Party had grown dramatically, making it into a potentially significant force in U.S. politics. But after a series of misjudgments and internal crises, cresting with its disastrous co-habitation with the Trotskyists, the Socialist Party ended the decade as a shadow of its former self. For U.S. socialists of the 1930s, a number of whom would co-found the DSA decades later, this was a searing political ordeal they would not forget. Muste himself was deeply shaken by these events, which he would describe as a violation of ​“working class ethics,” and he left the Trotskyists.

The Trotskyists’ entry into the Socialist Party, organized as a disciplined ​“party within a party” to garner recruits and split its ranks, established the template for what we now call ​“entryism” on the U.S. Left.

Entryism in the 1960s
Entryism is not a practice limited to Trotskyist sects, as the experience of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s shows. The 1960s were a period of mass upsurge, much like the 1930s and our current time. The civil rights movement and the opposition to the war in Vietnam generated unprecedented levels of political activism among young people, and SDS grew mightily among white students, approaching an estimated 100,000 members at its peak. Much like DSA and the earlier Socialist Party youth section, the vast bulk of the SDS recruits were new to politics, making it a rich hunting grounds for small, disciplined ultra-left groups. 

One of these was the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Founded in 1962 after splitting from the Communist Party, PLP was initially supportive of Maoist China but would soon decide that even Mao was insufficiently communist for their tastes. It would then position itself as the most dogmatically Stalinist sect on the U.S. Left. 

By 1966, PLP was recruiting inside the SDS, where it urged members to adopt its ultra-Stalinist politics and seize control of the SDS organizational infrastructure. PLP’s efforts at taking over SDS set off a destructive cycle, producing counter-factions that included a group that later became the Weathermen. Within a decade, the SDS would be destroyed.

Herein lie the dual dangers of entryism. On the one hand, it poses a threat to the organizational integrity of an open and democratic organization. Entryism is the sectarian equivalent to a hostile corporate takeover designed to split or seize control of its target organization. At a minimum, it seeks to poach members new to politics who may not be aware of the stratagem being employed. On the other hand, it disrupts the internal democratic processes of that organization, which depend on members engaging in honest debate and deliberation over policies and political strategies.
 
Entryists enter all debates and votes not with an open mind and a willingness to be persuaded, but with the express intent of advancing a political line that has already been decided in advance. Such tactics can quickly poison democratic political cultures, especially when opponents resort to the kinds of tactics they did in SDS.

To be politically effective, democratic socialist organizations need to develop methods of unity in action. These include open and full discussions of issues, democratic decision-making processes, and a commitment by all not to impede or undercut decisions once they have been democratically made. When entryist sects function as a disciplined ​“party within a party,” they undermine that unity in action.

Just as DSA’s founders remembered what the Trotskyists did to the Socialist Party in the 1930s, its first generation of members saw what Progressive Labor did to SDS in the 1960s. Two organizations that gave the Left its best chance to exercise real political power in the U.S. had ended disastrously, in large measure because of sectarian entryism. (These techniques similarly sabotaged a promising national movement of socialist-feminists in the 1970s.)

DSA’s Constitution singles out members ​“under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organizations” for possible expulsion to prevent these very outcomes. The drafters chose their words carefully: they do not specify a political belief or even membership in an organization, instead targeting those who aim to form a ​“party within a party” like the Trotskyists and the Stalinist PLP before them. This language has everything to do with ensuring the survival of an open, democratic institutions and absolutely nothing to do with ​“Cold War” politics.

The Socialist Alternative understands this, despite its claims to the contrary. After all, SAlt is the progeny of one of the best-known entryist projects in international socialist history, the Militant Tendency of the British Labour Party. From their founding in 1964 to their expulsion in the 1980s, these Trotskyists operated as a disciplined ​“party within a party” inside of Labour, using the entryist tactics described above. 

SAlt was founded as Labor Militant in 1986 by members of the British Militant Tendency who had moved to the United States as part of an organized effort to create a Trotskyist international. (It adopted its current name in the late 1990s.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, the organization has splintered into several smaller factions since its founding amid personality conflicts, and there now exist competing internationals, although SAlt remains the largest group in the United States.

Why, then, is it trying to join DSA? SAlt’s own statement indicates that it opposes the very strategy that has allowed DSA to grow over the last four years -- campaigns to elect democratic socialists to office, using the Democratic Party ballot line -- so it would be hard to make a case for a political convergence. In this light, SAlt’s call to eliminate any barriers to entryism in DSA constitution is telling.

Openings for socialists don’t come along often in United States: only three times in the last 100 years has the Left had a change to make a major political breakthrough. DSA, with its rapid growth and electoral victories, could be central to such a breakthrough. Which is why we must acknowledge the deleterious role entryism played in the radical movements of the 1930s and 1960s. If we are to succeed where past generations have failed, it is vital that we not repeat their mistakes.
​
BILL BARCLAY is an economist who served as Political Secretary of NAM and was a member of its National Committee; he was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding.
LEO CASEY is a teacher unionist who was a member of NAM’s National Committee; he served as the National Field Director of DSA and a member of its National Political Committee at its founding.
JACK CLARK is a workforce educator who was the first national organizer of DSOC and member of its National Committee; he was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding.
RICHARD HEALEY is a political organizer and strategist who served as National Director of NAM and was a member of its National Committee; he was a member of NAM’s National Political Committee at its founding.
DEBORAH MEIER is an educator who was a Vice-Chair of DSOC and a member of its National Committee; she was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding.
MAXINE PHILLIPS is an editor who served in that role for the national publication of DSOC and DSA, Democratic Left; she was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding, and would later serve as its Executive Director.
CHRIS RIDDIOUGH is a strategic planner in the field of information technology who was a member of NAM’s National Committee; she was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding, and would later serve as its Executive Director.
JOSEPH M. SCHWARTZ is a political scientist who was a national organizer of DSOC’s Youth Section and a member of its National Committee; he was a member of DSA’s National Political Committee at its founding and for many decades after.
​Comments welcome.
​Originally published as Opinion, in In These Times. March 30,2021

NNIRR's STATEMENT 
ON THE DREAM & PROMISE & THE FARM WORKFORCE MODERNIZATION ACTS

For 35 years, NNIRR has been an organization committed to the human rights and dignity of all migrants and refugees. We have challenged punitive policies that have led to the criminalization of migrants and the militarization and terrorization of communities in the border region, and have uplifted the important work of grassroots organizations across the country in their organizing for protections, rights and justice. As an organization rooted in the intersectional struggles of the experiences of migrants and refugees, we cannot support the two bills that passed the House on March 18, 2021 as they are currently written.

The passage of the American Dream and Promise Act (HR6) and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (HR 1063) in the House of Representatives attempt to resolve a longstanding debt to dreamers, farmworkers, and TPS holders. While these legislative bills begin to address long-standing challenges, they are still far from fulfilling the Biden administration's commitment to modernize and re-imagine our immigration system —a promise made by this administration to recognize the essential work of immigrants in the United States.

The Dream and Promise Act’s broad criminal bars and secondary review processes mirror the deep-rooted racial bias of the criminal justice system, effectively blocking youth of color, who have been targeted by racist policing, from the possibility of ever regularizing their status. For those that would qualify under this program, the proposed ten-year conditional status would subject applicants to years of negotiating a permanent residency through administrative procedures, appeals of denial, and even removal orders. This bill assumes the continued political will of the executive, congressional and judicial branches of government beyond the current administration’s time in office. Dreamers and TPS holders should be regularized unconditionally and expeditiously. They have the right to remain in this country, where they belong. 

Similarly, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act recognizes that our food and agricultural systems fundamentally depend on migrant workers. However, the bill mandates a long and complicated path to legalization, expands exploitative guest worker programs, and imposes salary freezes, among many other provisions that perpetuate labor injustices. Migrant farmworkers are one of the most exploited sectors of our workforce. For decades, the Agrobusiness industry has gone unregulated, forcing workers, documented and undocumented, to accept low-wages and exploitative working conditions that deter them from accessing healthcare, food security, and safe housing. These administrative barriers, in the form of complex procedures or restrictive interpretations, and the lack of labor oversight, undermine the purpose of this legislation.

Dreamers, TPS holders, and farmworkers continue to be on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic without basic labor or health protections. They have waited many decades to regularize their status, working in the shadows with no social safety nets. NNIRR urges congressional and community leadership to oppose provisions and legislation that would exclude thousands, if not millions, of Black, Latino, and Asian youth as well as elderly farmworkers, from gaining timely access to residency and citizenship. 

NNIRR stands with Dreamers, TPS holders, farmworkers and community organizers who have worked tirelessly for legislative relief for migrant communities. This is the time to push further for broad and inclusive legislation that regularizes the status and ensures the full integration of all undocumented migrants and refugees. It has been almost 35 years since the last window for regularization and we can’t wait another year to bring meaningful relief from fear of deportation.

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
 

http://www.nnirr.org/drupal/node/2105

 MARCH 19, 2021 by DON MCINTOSH, PUBLISHED ON DEMOCRATIC LEFT.​

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/aoc/

 

Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, best known as AOC, is DSA’s foremost socialist superstar. Her June 2018 primary win—a 29-year-old taqueria bartender defeating the third most powerful Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives—inspired up to 10,000 people to join DSA. 

The Netflix documentary Knock Down the House details her life story leading up to that victory. Since then, her influence has only grown. Earnest, fun, relatable, and fierce, she became one of Congress’ best known members overnight, and used the attention to pull the national conversation leftward. In October 2019, her endorsement revivified Bernie Sanders’ campaign following his heart attack. 

Today—with over 12 million Twitter followers, her picture on the December cover of Vanity Fair, and mass cultural appeal to teens and the not-yet-political—she continues to use her unasked-for celebrity to build support for a democratic socialist agenda. On Jan. 28, more than a quarter of a million people streamed her impromptu teach-in on the gamer platform Twitch.tv. The topic was the GameStop stock market rebellion, but the discussion encompassed a critique of Wall Street and a plug for a wealth tax. 
AOC spoke with me by Zoom Jan. 26.


What was your path to joining DSA?
I love this question because I think that my path in DSA very much shaped my organizing strategy. I didn’t grow up in an incredibly ideological household. I have friends that grew up the children of unionists, professors, individuals two or three generations deep into working class movements. That was not my family. I grew up very working class. My mother cleaned houses. My father had a small business. Both my parents grew up in extreme poverty.

What initially drew me to DSA was the fact that they showed up everywhere that I showed up. I started my work as a community organizer before I even knew about the existence of DSA, and I was busy doing work in my community, working with children, working with families, advocating for educational equity. A friend of mine invited me to a DSA meeting in the Bronx/Upper Manhattan Branch. We were in the basement of a church uptown, in Washington Heights I believe. It was my first time being exposed to DSA, and to me it was like, ‘Okay, we’re hearing all this rhetoric and having discussions.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, another group of folks talking.’ Like this is great, this is encouraging.

This was around the time when DSA was picketing one of the major camera companies in New York City, trying to call attention to the warehouse workers. And they brought undocumented warehouse workers to the meeting, and translated their testimony. And on top of that, the chapter had free childcare provided to anyone who wanted to show up. And that to me … at the end of that meeting, I was like, ‘Okay, this is real.’

You know, there’s a lot of people who talk about class issues, there’s a lot of people who are deep in the discourse of struggle. But to me, as someone who grew up in these environments, it was the translation to action that was distinctive to me.

That is what made DSA initially distinctive to me, and made it something that was flagged to me as worthy of continued attention. And then Jabari Brisport ran for City Council. It felt like something fundamentally different to me, even in the context of electoralism.

Ironically enough, before I ran for Congress, and before Jabari had run for City Council in that first race, I myself had huge doubts around electoralism. That’s why I dove into community organizing, because I was one of those folks that felt, “We’re not going to get any substantive change through electoral politics. It’s just not going to happen.”

I felt that way because I grew up around Bronx machine politics, where there was a lot of cynical use and weaponization of identity under the guise of lobbyist-driven policies and corporate policy. I had essentially given up on it, and I felt the only way we’re going to do this is by committing ourselves to our communities.

And so it was that first meeting that I felt, ‘Okay, this is something that’s real.’ Also, in the history of New York City and in communities of color, when you have the Young Lords and you have this organizing heritage, there has historically been tension between DSA and these organizing collectives of color, whether it was Latino and Puerto Rican collectives, Chicano collectives, black collectives…. It was like, “Oh, it’s these white folks. [LAUGHS.] There was this historical fissure. But it really felt like a moment where we were coming together. And so when I would see DSA showing up providing real structural support at BLM rallies, or support for abolishing ICE, where we felt like there wasn’t this class essentialism, but that this really was a multiracial class struggle that didn’t de-prioritize human rights, frankly, I was really impressed. And I felt like it was something worth being part of.

My run for Congress, so much of it was based in coalition building. In the New York City context, I wasn’t a DSA candidate that was homegrown from the start. I went through a process of earning the DSA endorsement. And that was in addition to stitching a collective together of the movement for Black lives and the movement for immigrant rights. Our congressional district is half immigrant, extraordinarily working class and just incredibly diverse in the Bronx and Queens. Along with Senator Sanders’s campaign, which I also proudly worked on, prior to all of this, you know, all of that, I think, really contributed to this moment.
And, for me, there’s a real distinction between us saying that we’re about something and us really being about it in our actions. And it was really that distinction, in the action and in the praxis, that made it distinctive to me and made it something to be a part of.

What a great story. Thank you for sharing that. 
DSA’s priorities really are your priorities as well, Green New Deal and Medicare For All in particular. There’s no getting around the fact that each of those are going to require an act of Congress. What is the most strategic thing that DSA members and chapters could be doing right now to bring that about?

I’m a big believer in exercising a dual approach. First of all, I think you’re right, there is no Medicare For All without an act of Congress. The thing is legislation after all.

I think sometimes people fall into this trap of wishful thinking about a poll question, thinking that support is solid, and that it is unsusceptible to the propaganda of corporate lobbyists and the health insurance industry. I think the first thing we need is real honesty about the work to be done ahead of us. There are some issues that poll really well, and the polling is concrete. There are other issues that poll one way or another, and the polling can really fluctuate with just one ad campaign.

Actually, we experienced this in a positive way with the Green New Deal, in that the oil and gas lobbies have gone in so hard to try to give the Green New Deal a bad name. And even after the total hammering that it experienced by the Republican Party, it still doesn’t poll that poorly. However, one thing that we do see is that even in areas where it may not poll as well as we would like, what we find is that it’s highly susceptible to positive messaging. Once we go in and either send organizers, or have other forms of messaging, and actually explain what the Green New Deal is, polling skyrockets for the issue. And so, in terms of tactics and what’s needed, I think we need to actually make the case for single payer health care that is free of cost at the point of service. And we have to say what we mean by Medicare for All, because as we know, there are a lot of cynical actors that try to add all these ellipses, like “Medicare for All who want it that make less than $100,000 per year.” And that’s why we have to engage in the work of organizing.

So I would say in terms of our strategic priorities, yes, it’s continued organizing, yes, it’s also continued support on the state level, for various health care initiatives, such as the single payer proposal in the state of New York.

There’s a lot of that work that we can do outside of electoralism. But there is critical electoral work to be done as well. I think the strategy of supporting candidates, when that strategy is very calculated, focused, precise, when we aren’t casting our net too wide beyond the capacities of any given local organization, is extremely effective. Mounting continued primary challenges or just supporting candidates in general, putting candidates in open seats … I’ve seen the impact of it from the inside—how much even incumbent members of Congress will totally reinvent themselves in a far more progressive direction, because they know that their communities are watching.

In the best case scenario, we get incredible new members of Congress, or we win these open seats, you know, Rashida Tlaib was an open seat. And at worst, we get almost a radical change in the agenda of the incumbent that is presently there. And so in many ways, it’s a win-win in getting that internal traction, that is necessary.

We’ve heard again and again from conservative Democrats, that an AOC style agenda might fly in Queens or the Bronx, but it can’t win in more competitive districts out in Middle America. What’s your answer to that?

I think it’s totally false. I think that their critique may be more aesthetic, to be honest. After all, I was born in the Bronx, and I’m bred in this community. And this is my community. So of course, you know, if I just walk over to another state in Nebraska or whomever, they’re gonna suss out real quick that perhaps I’m not a Nebraskan. But I don’t think that that is really related to policy. I think it’s because I’m a New Yorker, and I act like a New Yorker. And you know what? I need to act like a New Yorker so that I can represent New York’s 14th Congressional District. But I don’t think that critique really holds water in terms of the actual policies that we are supporting. Sure, in terms of my style of advocacy, it’s not going to be the style of advocacy for another local community. But I’m aware of that. And that’s not my job. My job is not to represent any other district than mine right now.

It also applies the other way: They could not come to New York and to our district and be successful here. So it cuts both ways. And I think it’s important that we send the message that our communities are just as necessary, and just as critical as any other. But that said, again, this has nothing to do with the actual policy. A lot of times, it’s the style of that advocacy, and I think that you can just see the importance of a multiracial, and multi-identity, multi-gendered, geographically diverse movement. That’s ultimately the strength and beauty of our collective work with Bernie.

There are communities that I’m able to speak to and organize, there are communities that Bernie and I are able to speak to and organize, and there are communities that Bernie is able to speak to and organize. And when we come together, we’re able to build trust, and expand that collective power among all the folks that resonate with each of us individually. The idea, like, “She’s not going to win in this one community or another community” … I’m not trying to, you know? What we’re trying to do is build movement in that community. And that is a very different question than trying to litigate one personality versus another.

Some on the Left have looked at Biden’s record and his differences with the Bernie wing of the party, and they conclude that no progress is going to come out of the Biden administration. What’s your view?

Well, I think it’s a really privileged critique. We’re gonna have to focus on solidarity with one another, developing our senses for good faith critique and bad faith critique. Because bad faith critique can destroy everything that we have built so swiftly. And we know this because it has in the past, and it’s taken us so many decades to get to this point. We do not have the time or the luxury to entertain bad faith actors in our movement. But also we have to value our solidarity with one another. For anyone who brings that up, we really have to ask ourselves, what is the message that you are sending to your Black and brown and undocumented members of your community, to your friends, when you say nothing has changed? Perhaps not enough has changed. And this is not a semantic argument. Just the other night, we in collective struggle were able to stop the deportations of critical members of our community. And that would not have happened in a Trump administration.
Thank you.

They were just on the belt ready to go. And you just cannot say that nothing will change. We can make the argument that not enough is changing fast enough. And these really are not nitpicking questions of semantics, because this is how the language that we use communicates to individuals who is included and who do you consider a person. When you say “nothing has changed,” you are calling the people who are now protected from deportation “no one.” And we cannot allow for that in our movement. That’s not a movement that I want to be a part of. And I know that’s not the movement that we are a part of. We’re so susceptible to cynicism. And that cynicism, that weaponization of cynicism, is what has and what continues to threaten to tear down everything that we have spent so much time building up. We’re allowed to win too, by the way. [LAUGHS.]

I prefer winning, actually.
Millions of people are excited about you being in Congress and rooting for your success. But at the same time, no other figure has been targeted by the Fox News crowd quite like you have. Why do you think that they worked to make you such a bogeyman for the right wing, and what’s it like to be on the receiving end of that?

I think they’ve done it because they know that we are a threat. Particularly because of the fact that I’m a movement candidate. If I was just some kind of one-off singular candidate, I do not believe that we would be attracting the energy and attacks that we attract. So much of this organized power and organized capital has frankly correctly identified that my candidacy is not an individual venture, but that it is representative of an actual working class movement. There is a rush to define me to the country before I have the opportunity to define myself. And if you can get enough people to just tune me out or tune any other person out before they even get the opportunity to hear what one has to say, you’re able to go a long way in preserving the current power structure. However, I don’t think that strategy lasts the test of time. I think it was a very strong short-term strategy. I mean, it continues to be a strategy. But I honestly believe that what was just attempted was: We’re going to throw the book at any candidate like this. We’re going to make an example out of her for everyone else. And then we’re just going to tar and feather her in the press. And then we’re going to mount a $3 million Democratic primary challenge against her that’s bankrolled by Wall Street, that was also a Latina, down to having a hyphenated last name. [Ed.: AOC was challenged in the 2020 Democratic primary by Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.] And it was just the most cynical, disgusting thing. But it was also trying to convince Democrats that this is too dangerous, and that this is a liability. They did that in hopes that it would succeed. And not only was it not successful, but we crushed them, just completely crushed them.

It was very exciting to see that result.
It is exciting, because they weaponized all the cynical powers of trying to get someone of my ethnicity, trying to even confuse people in terms of the name—Caruso Cabrera versus Ocasio Cortez. And [her campaign] had, you know, $3 million, she was a CNBC anchor, so she had TV and camera training and all of it. And the fact that it was so desperately unsuccessful, I think really speaks to the strength of this movement, that there is a glimmer of hope that it will not be distracted by all of the kind of tricks up this corporate establishment’s sleeve. And then beyond that, we went to a general election, which had $10 million behind it, backed by a Republican who then tried to do this whole … I might be getting my my music references mixed up, but trying to do like this whole like “John Mellencamp” vibe, trying to convince people that he’s not actually Republican, that he’s just a working class dude. So it really shows what their strategy was, which is “we’re gonna throw the book at her,” and we’re gonna try to wound her so badly that she doesn’t win re-election and this just becomes a flash-in-the-pan thing. I mean, in the general election it was the second most expensive congressional race in America.

I did not realize that. 
Yeah, in the United States, it was the second most expensive race in the country. And so their strategy was to make quick work of us. And they threw everything that they could, and it didn’t work. And now I think they have a problem on their hands. [LAUGHS]
Yeah, because you got re-elected. In fact you absolutely crushed. 
And not only that, but we also expanded our presence with the election of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. It’s really showing that this is not going away.

You’re one of 435 representatives in the House, four of whom are open socialists now. Pessimists might look at that and find that daunting, but you put on a recent Twitter video in which you listed all the specific things you personally got done in two years. You tried to do it in two minutes. It took you four, talking as fast as you could. So for our readers, what are some of the most impactful items on that list?

Well, for me, I’m already thinking about this term so far, things that aren’t in the video but have already been early wins. And by the way, this just speaks to talking about how nothing will change … we’ve already had really two very significant wins. One non-electoral, which was the Hunts Point Produce workers, being able to support them in securing wage increases and protecting their health care in their strike efforts. [Ed.: At the nation’s largest wholesale produce market, located in the Bronx, Teamsters struck for first time in 35 years. AOC skipped the presidential inauguration to join them on the picket line. After a week on strike, they won $1.85 an hour raises]

The reason I bring this up is because I do not believe that they would have had the structural and community support they were able to generate, if we hadn’t been building momentum on both electoral wins and non electoral wins. You know, if Joe Biden didn’t win the presidency, that would have been a harder strike. Even though they don’t seem connected, there is something to be said about the morale of seeing your actions manifest into change. I don’t know if as many elected officials would have shown up if they didn’t feel like more people weren’t paying attention. And so to have that institutional support for their demands, really allowed the community to rally around, along with the on-the-ground support that DSA provided.

You know, I thought one of the things that was so inspiring in talking to many of these unionists was that they expressed to me shock, every night that I was there, that so many young people showed up to the picket line. They had no idea what was going on. But they were thrilled. And they knew that it was adding so much power to their strike efforts. And it really kind of goes both ways too. It elevated the consciousness of even the unionists, of the fact that they weren’t alone, and that their struggle was part of a larger collective one, really made the strike stronger. And the other [win] was being able to secure $2 billion for FEMA reimbursements for funeral expenses.

For those who died of COVID.
Yeah, for individuals who have died of COVID. And there’s a couple of reasons why this was so important. First of all, this was a homegrown effort. New York 14 was the most heavily impacted congressional district at the outbreak of the pandemic. And Elmcor and our constituents in East Elmhurst, which is kind of in the shadow of Elmhurst Hospital, the most heavily hit hospital in the country at one point, they reached out immediately. And they said, this is a disease that is disproportionately impacting people along lines of race and class. It is disproportionately impacting the Black, the brown and the low income. And as a consequence, the subsequent deaths, particularly at the beginning, were concentrated among Black patients, brown patients and low income patients.

So you take that a step further, and the expenses for a funeral can go $5,000 to $10,000. That is a life-altering expense for a working class family, when the average American has 400 bucks in savings, especially in the middle of a pandemic, when this is not something that is planned or expected at all. That’s the kind of death that is earth-shattering, that can put a family under for a decade plus, if not more. I experienced this myself when my family lost my dad, and we saw how expensive it was. And it took a decade to get out from that debt.

So when you target this for reimbursement, it’s actually quite a progressive cash transfer. Because when you are reimbursing those who have died of COVID, and COVID is disproportionately impacting the Black and the brown and the working class, you are able to lift those families or at least patch them through to prevent inequity and inequality from further bottoming out the bottom. And that’s the reason we prioritized it so much. The fact that we were able to actually pass it on to the Trump administration is pretty remarkable. We were able to get $2 billion authorized under Trump. Now that FEMA is operating under Biden, we can now work with the administration to administer these funds, and dole them out in a way that is not going to be as stonewalled or corrupt as it would be under the Trump administration.

One of the exciting things about your early days in Congress was your willingness to break from convention, like when you blew the lid on the freshman orientation that was crawling with corporate lobbyists, or appeared at the Sunrise Movement sit-in in Pelosi’s office. Has your strategy shifted at all from those days?

I don’t think so. I do think that the pandemic has complicated those things a little bit, because a lot of stuff really does happen behind closed doors. And it’s funny, but you know, people will say and do things at a cocktail party that they will not do on a Zoom call. So I would say that the opportunities for disruption have varied a little bit in this digital situation that we’re in, but I still think they exist.

One thing I do think has changed is that I do believe we’re getting more sophisticated. I think about all of our tactics as different tools in a toolbox. And when I first started, I had a hammer. And when you have a hammer, everything’s a nail, as they say. But then as you learn about other methods, you can get a wrench, and then you get a screwdriver, and then you’re able to add a lot more to your tools. You add the tools of electoralism — supporting other members to join. You have the tools of sunlight.

There’s this one moment I’ll never forget. We were going through the appropriations process, I believe in 2019 or so. And basically, this is how we fund the entire government, we go along and we fund each agency after the other. And there are these massive multi-thousand-page packages. And I remember finding … sometimes it’s as simple as hitting Control-F and just trying to find every policy-related keyword, to see what’s getting appropriated, and see what you can dig through. That’s literally how some folks go about this, when you’re given 1,000 pages of legislation 48 hours before it drops. But we found this really bizarre appropriation for fossil fuel facilities, and it was like a multi billion dollar giveaway, I believe, at the time. And we were like, “Where did this come from? Did someone slip this in?” And we were gonna propose an amendment to take it out. So we raised the question about this. And because no one wanted to ‘fess up and actually own that they were the one who put that in, it was withdrawn without actually making it a floor fight. Yeah. I don’t think we ever got to the bottom of who was behind that. Clearly, you know, this is lobbyist driven. This was a lobbyist’s language that someone asked to put in. But because the actual line item was so shameful, no one wanted to actually ‘fess up to the fact that they put this in.

There are so many of these wins, that aren’t necessarily public fights every time. They are wins to the tune of millions and billions of dollars that could then be shifted to other priorities. Some of that work is quiet, but it is just as significant as some of the public fighting and organizing. Not to disparage that either, but they complement one another.

You’re famous for skillfully clapping back at haters from time to time, but you don’t come off as mean, and you never punch down. How do you stay so positive?

Oh, thank you. Well, you know, positivity is an organizing tool. And I say that with so much earnestness. There’s a reason why Jabari [Brisport] won, there’s a reason why Zohran [Mamdani] won, there’s a reason why Marcela [Mitaynes] and Phara [Souffrant Forrest] — these wins that we had on the state level, why those candidates won. Look at them. They are relentlessly positive. They are people that you want to be around. And they are not cynical, and they do not engage in “more socialist than thou.” They are just relentlessly positive.
​
And I think the most important thing that we can do in order to win is to be people and spaces that people want to be around. And that is our organizing priority. We have to make Medicare for All something that everyone wants to be a part of. We have to make Green New Deal something that everyone wants to be a part of. I think people sometimes are dismissive of this, in thinking that it’s less serious than study. But who’s gonna join your book club if it sucks? Who’s gonna join your reading group if they feel judged? So the important thing we need to do is to really create something … excuse my language … but that’s fucking fun.

Collective Statement

On March 16, eight people were killed at three different spas in North Georgia including six Asian women. We are heartbroken by these murders, which come at a time when Asian American communities are already grappling with the traumatic violence against Asian Americans nationwide, fueled by the United States’ long history of white supremacy, systemic racism, and gender-based violence.

As we collectively grieve and respond to this tragedy, we must lead with the needs of those most directly impacted at the center: the victims and their families. And during this time of broader crisis and trauma in our Asian American communities, we must be guided by a compass of community care that prioritizes assessing and addressing our communities’ immediate needs, including in-language support for mental health, legal, employment, and immigration services.

We must also stand firm in decrying misogyny, systemic violence, and white supremacy. We must invest in long-term solutions that address the root causes of violence and hate in our communities. We reject increased police presence or carceral solutions as the answers.
For centuries, our communities have been frequently scapegoated for issues perpetuated by sexism, xenophobia, capitalism, and colonialism. Asians were brought to the United States to boost the supply of labor and keep wages low, while being silenced by discriminatory laws and policies. From the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, to the forced migration of refugees from U.S.-led military conflict in Southeast Asia, to post-9/11 surveillance targeting Muslim and South Asian communities, to ICE raids on Southeast Asian communities and Asian-owned businesses, Asian American communities have been under attack by white supremacy.

Working class communities of color are disproportionately suffering from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration’s relentless scapegoating of Asians for the pandemic has only exacerbated the impact on Asian business owners and frontline workers and inflamed existing racism. The hypersexualization of Asian American women and the broad normalization of violence against women of color, immigrant women, and poor women make Asian American women particularly vulnerable. Hate incidents against Asian Americans rose by nearly 150% in 2020, with Asian American women twice as likely to be targeted.

We are calling on our allies to stand with us in grief and solidarity against systemic racism and gender-based violence. Violence against Asian American communities is part of a larger system of violence and racism against all communities of color, including Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
​
In this time of crisis, let’s come together and build just communities, where we are all safe, where all workers are treated with dignity and respect, and where all our loved ones thrive.
​
To sign on to the statement as an individual or a group, or make a donation to communities in need, go to https://www.advancingjustice-atlanta.org/aaajcommunitystatement
This statement was initiated by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and developed in collaboration with the Georgia NAACP and several BIPOC organizations; within 24 hours, more than 800 organizations in Georgia and around the country had signed on.

En Dolor y SolidaridadMARCH 17, 2021
We mourn the lives of the 8 people, including 6 Asian women, who were murdered last night in Georgia and send love to their families and communities.
These attacks fit into a xenophobic pattern of anti-Asian violence that the capitalist class not only condones, but welcomes as a scapegoat for their complete inaction in the face of the COVID crisis. Of the thousands of incidents targeting the AAPI community, many have been geared especially toward women, the poor, the elderly, and the undocumented.
That the gunman’s victims were chosen due to perceptions about their workplace reflects the ongoing misogyny, objectification, and hypersexualization of Asian women, rooted in a long history of imperialism, a continuous dehumanization of the Asian working class, as well as the ongoing criminalization of sex workers. We all deserve safety in our workplaces. While there is a rush to classify these crimes as hate crimes, it is not hate that is allowing this violence but power: the power of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation whose violence is minimized as hate between individuals based on race and/or gender. The response so far has been an increase in police presence: violence met with more violence.  We know the carceral state protects white men who kill individuals, shielded by white men in power who continue to inflict violence on the masses. As long as both the Republican and Democratic parties continue to sustain the Sinophobic rhetoric as related to COVID and US-China relations, the attacks against Asian Americans, regardless of their ethnicity, will continue. So we commit to building socialism and dismantling the systems and structures that uphold white supremacy, empire, and perpetuate racist violence.
We stand with the Asian-American community in grief and solidarity.
Rest in peace, Delaina Ashley Yuan, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Yan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.

En Dolor y SolidaridadLamentamos las vidas de las 8 personas, incluidas 6 mujeres Asiáticas, que fueron asesinadas anoche en Georgia y les enviamos amor a sus familias y comunidades.
Estos ataques encajan en un patrón xenófobo de violencia antiasiática que la clase capitalista no sólo aprueba, sino acoje como chivo expiatorio por su completa inacción ante la crisis de COVED. De los miles de incidentes contra la comunidad de la AAPI, muchos se han dirigido especialmente a las mujeres, los pobres, los ancianos y los indocumentados.
El hecho que las víctimas del pistolero fueron elegidas debido a las percepciones sobre su lugar de trabajo refleja la continua misoginia, objetivación e hipersexualización de las mujeres Asiáticas, arraigada en una larga historia de imperialismo, una deshumanización continua de la clase obrera Asiática, así como la continua criminalización de las trabajadoras sexuales. Todos merecemos seguridad en nuestros lugares de trabajo. Si bien hay prisa por clasificar estos crímenes como crímenes de odio, no es el odio lo que permite esta violencia sino el poder: el poder de la supremacía blanca y la explotación capitalista cuya violencia se minimiza como el odio entre individuos basados en la raza y/o el género. La respuesta hasta ahora ha sido un aumento de la presencia policial: la violencia enfrentada con más violencia. Sabemos que el estado carcelario protege a los hombres blancos que matan individuos, protegidos por hombres blancos en el poder que continúan infligiendo violencia a las masas.
Mientras el partido republicano y el partido demócrata continúen sosteniendo la retórica sinofóbica relacionada con COVED y las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y China, los ataques contra los Estadounidenses de origen Asiático, independientemente de su origen étnico, continuarán. Así que nos comprometemos a construir el socialismo y desmantelar los sistemas y estructuras que defienden la supremacía blanca, el imperio y perpetúan la violencia racista.
Apoyamos a la comunidad Asiática-Americana con dolor y solidaridad.
Descanse en paz, Delaina Ashley Yuan, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Yan, 49; y Daoyou Feng, 44.

​The NPC of DSA

​I would suggest that perhaps more relevant than what went on in the SWP is what went on in SDS. Heather Booth, Evie Goldfarb, and Sue Munaker wrote this up in Toward a Radical Movement - a paper that was among the things that ultimately led to the founding of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union. There's more at cwluherstory.org. I've also put a lot of these documents up on my website at www.riddiough.org/CWLU. The film, She's Beautiful When She's Angry, also documents these issues.
 
Chris Riddiough 
 

By David Bacon
Jacobin, 3/9/20
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/biden-guest-worker-program-immigration-farmworker
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2021/03/joe-biden-should-roll-back-exploitative.html

Members of the Yakama Nation of Native Americans join farmworkers and other immigrants to celebrate May Day in 2017 and protest continued deportations and detentions. (Photo (c) David Bacon)










​The current guest worker system prioritizes agricultural growers' profits over immigrants' and workers' rights. Joe Biden should seek a different way: building an immigration system based on family reunification, community stability, and immigrant workers' rights to decent wages, health, and housing.


The intention of the US guest worker program for agriculture, called the H-2A program, couldn't have been stated more clearly than it was by agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue in a January 2020 speech to growers. He wanted, he said,

​International Women’s Day is intended to honor the contributions of women and femme-identified folks. What we know for a fact is that women, femmes, girls, and their families are suffering. This ongoing pandemic has created illness, joblessness, challenges caring for small children, and shuttered businesses. The American Rescue Plan is not perfect, but it’s a start towards the relief we need to thrive during these unprecedented times.
 
The People's Bailout is hosting a Livestream event at 7pm ET on International Women's Day, Monday, March 8, called Bread & Roses: Demanding Care & Relief. International Women’s Day is the eve of what may be the Senate vote for the American Rescue Plan. Senators will be voting on a bill that would mean relief to millions of hurting families.
 
During The People's Bailout Bread & Roses: Demanding Care & Relief livestream, we'll hear from organizers and leaders across the nation; we’ll also have an opportunity to take action demanding bread, a bailout, and roses, too! Highlander is proud to support by sharing the livestream on our Facebook page Monday.
 
Register today: http://bit.ly/bread-roses-21.

​
 
 Poor People's Campaign


Healing the earth means healing our people. That’s why on Monday we’re lifting up struggles from across the nation to protect our land and freedom from the evils of ecological devastation, poverty wages, environmental racism and denial of health care. From the struggle to defend Apache sacred land in Oak Flats from a corporate mining giant to Cancer Alley in Louisiana to toxic factories in West Virginia and Chicago, to name just a few, we’ll hear directly from communities that are fighting back and demanding economic and environmental justice. 
 
Join us on March 1, 2021 for Moral Monday: Heal the Earth, Heal our People at 3pm ET / 12pm PT and hear the stories of communities who have been targeted with destructive practices by corporations and governments, but are building movements that hold the key to a sustainable future. Join us Monday as we continue to push Congress and the White House to enact our 14 Policy Priorities to Heal the Nation.
 
***The online event will be ASL interpreted and open captioned***

 

 

BRIAN W.
Reposted from the Washington Socialist.
 
I have been in DSA since the spring of 2016. Like many, I was tired of feeling politically lonely and isolated. I saw DSA as one of the only places where I could find others that shared my anger at the state of the world, but with a focus on doing whatever possible in our area to improve things. By joining in early 2016, I was fortunate to watch as wave after wave of new members came into the chapter. Each new group helped propel the organization forward and continue our momentum.

Regardless of the particular circumstances around each new wave of members joining, I found one trend that repeated itself over and over again: the “liberal-to-ultraleft pipeline.” This discovery is not my own and I have heard it talked about in chapters across the country, so I don’t believe it is unique to my own chapter either. Many people are familiar with Peter Camejo’s work on the subject, but he was fortunate enough to organize before the existence of online aesthetic leftism. Almost a year after the zenith of the Sanders campaign, this pipeline has become increasingly relevant as prominent left podcasters declared that they “radicalized so quickly over the past year” that they “basically skipped DSA.” I hope to talk about the pipeline briefly so we can identify it when it is happening, specifically address it in our organizing practices, and hopefully, break the cycle from repeating itself over and over again.

Identifying Ultraleftists: Liberals with Radical Aesthetics
It is funny to use the term ultraleftist in 2021 when thinking back on what it meant historically. To the Bolsheviks, an ultraleftist was typically someone that wanted to do a bombing or assassination campaign.  In the contemporary US left, this phrase refers broadly to the amalgamation of anti-capitalists whose entire ideological motivation and self-conception is that they are “to the left” of XYZ, typically DSA. While there are organizations that participate in this sort of branding, it is most commonly done on an individual level. We can disagree on whether ultraleftist is a helpful term, seeing as it is best defined by an “I know it when I see it” approach, but I think the title applies to enough of a grouping that it is worthwhile. Terminally online, constantly accusing others of being sheepdogs or sellouts, and rarely working with others to expand the socialist movement through mass action are some of their calling cards. Their actions speak to wanting to be King of the Smallest Kingdom.

The liberal-to-ultraleft pipeline is often accompanied by an obsession with labels that have no applicability outside of branding on internet forums. What’s the difference between a De Leonist, Council Communist and a Syndicalist when none are able to fill the room they reserved at the library with working people?
So why are newly radicalizing liberals so susceptible to ultraleftism?

First, because it allows them to continue their sense of superiority felt that they had from being the furthest left in the room and most moral for most of their lives. For many newly radicalizing liberals, their political beliefs have always been deeply tied with their sense of self as a good person. This is described by Ben D., another MDC DSA member, as the liberal tendency to imagine politics “as something you have and not something you do.” With this approach, having the correct position, the most moral one, or the one that stakes out the furthest left position, is practically the same as being a good socialist.
‍

A common meme that floated around following both the end of the Sanders 2016 and 2020 campaigns

​Secondly, because newly radicalized liberals develop an obsession with “radical tactics.” Many radicalizing liberals look briefly at the history of organized mass movements of working people and correctly gather that we need to learn from their successes. But instead of recognizing the steps in between where the US left is today and where we need to be, it just becomes an army of internet leftists tweeting #GeneralStrike and saying that anyone who has skepticism of its effectiveness is a scab. This also applies to electoral abstentionists, many of whom were loudly and proudly part of the mass support for democratic socialist candidates in the past. These newly radicalized liberals then abandon the very mass work that brought them and countless others into the movement in favor of “more radical tactics.” The obsession with radical tactics comes from the fact that liberals believe that they had always been armed with the right morality and analysis but had simply lacked the right tools to succeed. This ignores the fact that there is no such thing as an inherently radical tactic. Almost all tactics have been used by various political actors of differing opinions throughout history to fit the needs of their strategy at the time.

Thirdly, a skepticism of mass politics. This was ultimately Camejo’s thesis. But the major distinguishing point between those with a socialist analysis and those without one is the role of the masses. Socialists, even those with vanguardist politics, unquestionably support mass politics and do everything in their power to deepen their ties with mass movements with the goal of one day leveraging those connections for revolutionary change. Liberals and ultraleftists view many of these efforts as opportunism or betrayal. For socialists, we recognize that change is only possible with the masses on our side. So even if we have the correct ideas, we are powerless to enact them unless we engage in mass politics.

It's difficult to tell if this image is satire or something else. When asked whether he agreed with the labels, @ProudSocialist shared this image in early February, adding that "It’s not a perfect chart, but it’s not wrong either. The only thing I’d say is the far left box needs more socialists/communists. This moment in history demands revolutionary change so I wouldn’t trust anyone peddling the status quo right now."

Fourth, a view of “the left” as a consumer subculture and not organizations. Many newly radicalized liberals approach politics as if it's about what podcast you listen to or magazine you subscribe to. This thinking promotes acting as a fandom rather than an organization. This can be seen most recently with leftists on social media circulating their own rankings of other left twitter accounts and podcasters as if the left was a fantasy sports league. Whether it's flag emojis in their bio, revolutionary symbols in their handle, or even coordinates on a political alignment chart, all of these are an attempt to signal to others that they’re part of the in-group of real revolutionaries. Think of how many people online spout off how they’re “not a SocDem” as if there truly was any organized coherent social democratic movement in the US currently. What they mean by it is “I’m not a sellout, I want a revolution, unlike those other guys.” But it’s as relevant to modern politics as saying “I shop at Target, not Walmart like those other guys.” It's an attempt to cultivate a unique brand of having correct politics, even if those politics have no bearing or influence on the world at all.

How We Got Here
For the past five years, Democratic Socialists of America has unquestionably been the natural place for the left wing of the movement that supported Bernie Sanders to coalesce. This was key to DSA’s explosion of growth as millions became aware of democratic socialism through Bernie and tens of thousands ultimately joined DSA. The American “Progressive” movement has almost always been extremely incoherent in its beliefs due to its lack of a uniting organization or specific base as is the case for the left in other countries. Though the Sanders campaigns helped shape this progressive movement into having a more clear message around class politics, it was unable to fully convert the existing progressive movement into a democratic socialist one. This meant that many new members of DSA were joining as liberals. This is nothing we should be ashamed of, in fact, it's something that we should be proud of. DSA, through political alignment, branding, and its campaigns was able to bring many liberals into the tent. The issue is thinking about what happens (or doesn’t) next.
​
DSA is a multitendency socialist organization. From its inception, as the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement, it was conceived explicitly so. This was meant to distance DSA from the sectarianism and splits that were so common during that time. But, this multitendency nature was importantly not meant as a rejection of its socialist identity or place within the socialist tradition. During the upsurge of growth from 2016 onward, many took multitendency to mean “anyone believe anything” and that the organization was not explicitly a socialist one. This hampered efforts to provide coherent socialist education to our members. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that many of our new members were liberals. I want to clarify that I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense. They were liberals because we as an organization were failing to do the education necessary to get them to think and act in a socialist framework.

This lack of education left a void. There comes a time for many people on the left where they realize that Sanders’ platform might not be enough to avert climate catastrophe, enough to root out systemic oppressions or enough to redistribute power in society. It’s at this time that these “former liberals” go exploring for answers. Our members were looking for a “political” political education curriculum but it was nowhere to be found. If there is one thing that can be said about those on the fringes of the socialist movement, is that they often focus on political education and readings to a fault. These groups swooped in. Podcasts, YouTube and caucuses became some of the primary providers of political education within the organization. There was no systematic approach to helping members break with their liberalism. In its place was a Twitter-driven, clout-based media ecosystem that rewards outlandish opinions and is completely disconnected from the way membership organizations function or how to think like an organizer.

Potential Solutions
I wish I had a magic bullet to solve the problem of the liberal-to-ultraleft pipeline. Luckily, for those that stick around in DSA, many of them eventually develop socialist politics based on concrete analysis of concrete situations. I really can’t emphasize this enough, some of DSA’s best organizers are former ultraleftists that developed better politics. But a wait and see approach is not fast enough when we are trying to build DSA into a mass organization. It would be a recipe for an SDS-style disaster, where one half of the room is chanting for Warren and the other is chanting for Hawkins.

I have a few suggestions: one based in political education, one based in recruitment, and the final in mass organizing.

Regarding political education, we really can’t shy away from a DSA-focused approach to political education. This means a curriculum that we strive to get all new members through that doesn’t avoid talking about what we believe, why DSA is different, and how our organization works. We shouldn’t apologize for our work and shouldn’t hide the fact that the US left has been a largely marginal force for decades and our job is to end that. We should also try to explain some of the many dead ends the left has fallen for in the past with the goal of steering our members away from those in the future.

Regarding recruitment, we have to recognize that the era of Sanders-branded passive recruitment might officially be over. The Sanders coalition, especially in the second campaign, was incredibly diverse and fundamentally rooted in the working class. Despite this, DSA’s primarily online approach to recruitment has disproportionately brought in its overly online segments. We need to commit ourselves to recruit less through online outreach and more through organic relationships in our communities and workplaces. The DSA100k campaign was an incredible expression of how powerful our members can be when we collectively prioritize recruitment. Efforts like this should be a natural part of all of our work.

Lastly, we should always prioritize winnable campaigns that place members into direct contact with other working people. Campaigns that involve canvassing or speaking with workers outside of the left are the ultimate antidote to ultraleft opinions. It’s hard to believe that the General Strike is just a few weeks away when you meet a worker at their door who will only vote for your socialist candidate if they ban 5G. These campaigns shouldn’t aim to dispirit the newly radicalized or curb their ultimate ambitions, but show them how well planned and strategic collective action can help make a difference.

These proposals may seem insufficient to the scope of the problem we’re facing. But I am confident that this organization and movement, with more members and supporters, will be able to win bigger and better victories until the day when revolutionary questions are actually relevant. I am confident of this future because I am a socialist and I believe in mass action.

ed. note. I recommend going to the on line issue of Washington Socialist to see the great graphics in this piece. Use the link below. 

SEE MORE IN CATEGORY RETURN TO ISSUE

 
 

by José Pérez,
​
Atlanta DSA met Saturday, February 27; first meeting I've gone to in a few months. I did so specifically to oppose a resolution that at its core stipulated that: 
 
Atlanta DSA will campaign to pass the PRO Act as our number one priority through May 2021.



I opposed it because right now there is a war raging in our state legislature over Republican voter-suppression bills. Dozens have been introduced because Republicans know that come 2022, they are likely to lose statewide again, and the way to prevent it is to try to stop "those people" from voting. DSA is abstaining from this fight, even though among those leading the resistance at the state house are actual DSA members, even if they're not too public about it (and given the DSA's reputation among Black and Latino activists, never mind the other political liabilities, I can hardly blame them). I just posted on twitter a thread explaining my position. Here it is:



As the battle against Republican voter suppression bills rages in the Georgia state legislature, today the Atlanta DSA voted to instead "campaign to pass the PRO Act as our number one priority through May 2021." 
 
I say "instead" because I spoke against adopting that as "our number one priority," saying that the fight to defend the right to vote had to be our top priority. A supporter of the resolution spoke after me saying the Democratic Party was already taking care of that issue.
 
The PRO Act is a very good and necessary proposal but it is simply not an issue people are talking about or moving on in Georgia. By focusing on it, Atlanta DSA is, in effect, taking a dive, deserting the Black and Latino communities in the heat of battle.
 
And it is not just Atlanta: the DSA's national leadership has also has made the PRO Act "our top external priority," even though the huge political fights in the country are around Biden's Covid rescue bill, $15 and legalization of the undocumented. 
 
In practice, this class reductionism is white supremacy in socialist drag. You prioritize "class wide" demands that also directly benefit anglos; but those that "only" address the specific needs of the most oppressed, like Black and Latino communities, go to the back of the bus
 
Moreover, there is a total disconnect between the DSA and the democratic socialist movement's real national political leaders, Bernie in the Senate and the squad in the House, especially AOC. They support the PRO Act but that is not a central battle they are waging right now.  
 
And this is a repeat of what happened in November, when Bernie campaigned for Biden and DSA did not. And it was just repeated in the GA runoff: AOC endorsed Ossoff, and DSA would not put his name on DSA's canvassing palm card.
 
Is DSA becoming a bait-and-switch fraud? People join inspired by Bernie or AOC but then chapters like Atlanta follow a different, sectarian policy. Result? Atlanta has maybe 2,000 members, less than 100 came to a Saturday afternoon zoom meeting.
I honestly believe that almost certainly the DSA is headed towards a catastrophic explosion, and I'm thinking perhaps that would be preferable, compared to it becoming a socialist sect, given the size, influence and resources it now has.
 
I honestly believe that unless it changes course, the DSA might be headed towards a catastrophic explosion as happened to SDS a half century ago, and over exactly the same issues.
 
José Pérez, Atlanta 

Another view of the vote.

At the Atlanta DSA meeting yesterday I spoke out and voted in favor of making the PRO act a priority for Atlanta DSA. I did so for the following reasons. 

First, the PRO act would do much to increase union power in representation elections and collective bargaining. The act provides for serious penalties for violations of worker rights, ends captive audience meetings, prevents the replacement of workers on strike, prohibits the misclassification of workers as independent contractors, overrides right-to-work laws, and removes restrictions on boycotts and picketing in support of other workers.

Second, Atlanta DSA members were already actively engaged in support of PRO since one of Georgia's Democratic members of Congress had voted against it. Working groups targeted this rep over the past month with a blizzard of calls urging support of PRO and made contacts with unions who were lobbying the rep as well.

Third, the chapter was intent on building relationships with unions thru joint work. The labor working group had initiated programs on labor history, begun planning a labor film program, surveyed its members about their work and union affiliation, organized industry circles for teachers, nonprofit and digital workers.

Finally, the chapter would not be able to provide added value as a separate organization in taking on voter suppression. With Tracey Abrams organizing network and Coalition for a Peoples' Agenda doing the critical heavy work, the best that DSAers could do would be to volunteer in their organizations.

The discussion on the resolution at the meeting was open. Only one person spoke against it. The vote in support was near unanimous. The chapter also endorsed one member who is running for Atlanta Council, heard reports from the Afro-socialist caucus, defund the police working group and the social event "eat drink and be Marxist." I am impressed with the work of this newly elected chapter leadership.

Milt Tambor

 
 

To Honor Black History, Fund Our Front Line Workers 
By Lee Saunders and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II February 25, 2021
AFSCME.medium.
 
AFSCME President Lee Saunders and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II address delegates to AFSCME’s 42nd International Convention in Las Vegas on July 20, 2016. (Photo by Tessa Berg)

You cannot add jobs by subtracting jobs.

That is the simple truth behind desperately needed aid for states, cities, towns and schools. Over the last year, some 1.3 million public service jobs, many of them held by African Americans — including nurses, teachers, EMTs and sanitation workers — have evaporated because of holes the pandemic blew open in state and local budgets.

One of the most effective ways for Congress to crush this virus and get our economy moving again is to help states, cities, schools and towns bring these workers back and hire more of them. It would also be a way, during Black History Month, to remain faithful to our past and continue advancing the cause of racial justice.

For generations and to this day, public service jobs have been a sturdy ladder of opportunity for African American families climbing their way to the middle class. At a time when systemic discrimination blocked so many pathways, African Americans were hired in the public sector as postal workers, teachers, librarians and more.

These jobs came with security and stability — not just a decent income, but good health care benefits, a pension and very often a union card that provided surefire rights and protections. To this day, one in five African American workers have public sector jobs, helping close the racial wealth gap. Among those employed in the public sector, white households have about twice the wealth of Black households. That is troubling to be sure; but, by comparison, in the private sector, that gap becomes a chasm — Black households have only about a dime of wealth for every dollar held by white households.

Through their work in public education, public transit and public health, millions of African Americans have been able both to provide for their families and strengthen their communities. But now, those jobs are on the chopping block. Without federal aid, more layoffs loom, dragging down the entire job market with it. How do we know? The same thing happened a decade ago.

With the nation in the throes of the Great Recession, politicians of both parties responded by drastically cutting spending. Austerity became the watchword. Right-wing activist Grover Norquist, who once famously said he wanted to shrink government to the size he could drown it in the bathtub, had his day in the sun. States and communities nationwide slashed public services to the bone, and African American families took the biggest hit. In 2012, 200,000 fewer African Americans held public sector jobs than just four years earlier.
​
Ten years later, inexplicably, we are in danger of making the same public policy mistakes again. It is devastating enough that African Americans are disproportionately contracting COVID-19 and dying at higher rates than the population at-large. But because of the gutting of public services, we are also being pummeled economically. In just a year’s time, between September 2019 and September 2020, the number of Black people on the nation’s public payrolls shrunk by 211,000. This is one of the critical, yet often unspoken, reasons the pandemic has raged out of control. Giving pink slips to the very people who can bring the virus to heel is the worst possible crisis management strategy.

And things will get worse if Congress does not step in. Who will get shots into arms if more public health professionals are axed? How will laid off Americans get the unemployment benefits they have paid into when states shed more claims processors? How will small businesses survive when basic services like sanitation, clean water and road maintenance — normally so dependable that they are never included in any business model — erode even further?

In the immediate term, we need Congress to come through with emergency aid to save these jobs and services. But in the long term, to vanquish the virus, build a prosperous economy for all and ensure that people earn a living wage as well, it is time to bury for good the fake news of austerity: that somehow a race to the bottom will take us to the top.

This is the moment to remind people about the power of government action, especially but not exclusively during moments of crisis. When it is run competently, when public services are performed by dedicated and compassionate people, government can affirm human dignity, provide basic needs and improve lives on a grand scale.
​
Let’s get public service workers back on the job and bring back real investment in the essential services that sustain us all.

Lee Saunders is President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is the President & Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Architect of the Moral Monday Movement and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival.

 

​
BILL FLETCHER JR 
FERNANDO E. GAPASIN
​
The late AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney was an admirable figure who had a vision for reinvigorated US labor unions. But he only tried to reform a union movement that needed a more fundamental refoundation.
 
Essay in Jacobin Magazine.
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/john-sweeney-obituary-seiu-afl-cio-labor
 
Of course John Sweeney was a member of DSA for a number of years. It was not a part of his leadership of the AFL-CIO.
This history is important in understanding labor’s past, present and future. 

In Celebration  of Black History Month. 
​


Manning Marable was a prolific  African American  scholar,  academic, writer and political organizer who made significant contributions to  building   the U.S. left and  Black left   from 1980 until his passing in 2011. He was the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Center for the Study of Contemporary Black History at Columbia University.  
Manning’s first book, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983 & 2015), along with Race, Reform and Rebellion- The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006, ( 1983 & 2007), provide crucial political and social history of African American struggles while developing a Marxist tradition of scholarship and activism Let Nobody Turn Us Around (2000 and 2005 co-edited with Leith Mullings), which traced the history of “transformational” (left) politics in black political writing from the time of slavery to the present, became one of the most widely used textbooks in black studies.   He wrote or edited more than twenty-two books throughout his extraordinary career. His final book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, 2011,  a carefully researched, critical study of an extraordinary, political leader, was awarded  the Pulitzer Prize.  Marable’s scholarship and publications were superb and widely recognized within academia,  and were read by activists throughout the world
 
In 1983, Dr. Marable was a professor of economics and history and the director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University. He went on to direct  the Africana and Latin American Studies program at Colgate University, and then  chaired the Department of Black Studies at Ohio State University. Marable also taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1994, he joined the faculty at Colombia University, where he established the Institute for Research in African American Studies. During the 10 years he directed the Institute, he molded it to be not only a center of critical scholarship, but also to produce initiatives and work that was useful and accessible to the black community. He was also the founding editor of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, where many currently well-known black scholars published their early work. He completed his academic career as a professor of public affairs, political science, history and political science at Columbia University where he directed the university’s Center for Contemporary Black History. until his death in 2011.   In these programs Dr. Marable created pathways for graduate study for generations of  African American  scholars that are now  teaching  in universities throughout the nation. 
 
In addition to his academic career, Manning was extraordinary for his lifelong commitment to his role as a  public intellectual  making his scholarship accessible to all.  Beginning in 1976,  his nationally syndicated column “Along the Color Line, “ was distributed  free of charge to more than  100 newspapers and journals in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and India.  
 
Democratic Socialists of America
Dr. Marable played a significant role in creating left organizations and promoting  left unity in the U.S.  He was particularly interested in  bringing a Marxist analysis to the project of creating a left built upon pursuing racial and gender justice. He was a leader in NAM ( New America Movement) and the National Black Independent Political Party  and helped to negotiate the merger of NAM and DSOC (the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee)  in 1980-1982.    The new organization became DSA. With  his participation, the negotiated  points of unity between NAM and DSOC were carefully drafted to reflect the strengths of each organization including the vision of creating a multiracial, feminist inspired, left- a major step forward for this time.   
In the summer of 1983 Manning  organized a conference of Third World Socialists (people of color ) at Fisk University, bringing together a diverse group of  left academics and activists.  At this conference DSA created new commissions each  focused on self-determination: a Latino Commission, an African American Commission and an Anti-Racism Commission within DSA.  These commissions went on to  support  the Jesse Jackson run for President in 1984,  and then convinced the  DSA itself  to support  the Jackson effort in 1988. 
    One of Manning’s many   contributions to DSA  was to develop a new journal, Third World Socialist,  that brought together a  widely diverse group of activists and scholars of color.  In addition to writing  columns in the African American press with the by- line Along the Color Line, he spoke at hundreds of college campuses promoting a multi -racial democratic socialist perspective among faculty and students.       
            Dr. Marable was both a Vice Chair of DSA  and a member of the National Executive Committee ( later the National Political Committee)  where he provided a strong  Black voice for supporting the efforts of socialists in Third World struggles and for  attracting a significantly multiracial membership to  DSA. 
             As a result of his frustration that DSA’s anti-racists work did not grow significantly over time, Manning shifted some of his political activism to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in 1995. Nevertheless, he remained a strong supporter of anti-racism efforts within DSA and was a frequent speaker at DSA Youth Section conferences.
 
Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism      

   On December 6-8, 1991,  some 900 plus members left the Communist Party and  formed the Committees of Correspondence. The new  Black led C of C  was dedicated to” renewing the struggle for social progress and socialism, and putting an end to what they saw as the undemocratic practices  that damaged  the Marxists and Communist movement.” 1
Manning Marable joined  the new CofC and made enormous contributions to the building for the new  CoC’s national conference in July 1992 which brought together 1,300 diverse left individuals and organizations.  He and others drafted the declaration of principles of the Committees of Correspondence – “Where We Stand”-- for the founding conference, reflecting the need to seek the broadest possible unity to achieve immediate goals. 
    Manning Marble was elected as one of the five co-Chairs and he served on the National Coordinating Committee.  Within the CoC he  guided the development of the People of Color committee and provided political guidance on left unity and anti-racism. Manning  Marable enthusiastically undertook the organizational tasks of building a new organization (e.g. CoC), but always held firm to the idea  of left unity and multi-racial action – that  the unity of left forces was essential for building independent progressive political forms.  (In 2000, the CofC  changed the name to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.)
 
The Black Radical Congress

 In 1995 Manning,  along with 4 other prominent Black activists Barbara Ransby, Abdul Alkalimat, Bill Fletcher, and  Leith Mullings, each from diverse political backgrounds   met to plan a response to the deterioration of the lives of Black people in the nation and around the world.     They were soon joined by some 35 prominent Black activists from diverse left organizations—socialist, communist, radical feminism, revolutionary nationalism  from around the country to organize what became the Black Radical Congress. 
  They had not initially planned   to form a new political organization but instead find ways to encourage coalition building and joint activities among existing groups. 

   However at the first conference,  in June  1998, with over 3,000 in attendance, the  energy and enthusiasm of  assembled group convinced them to form a united front of Black progressive politics--a network   that self-identified as anti-capitalist and rejected the class reductionism among the white left and the growing patriarchal trend in Black U.S. politics.
The National Council of the BRC adopted a mission statement on 26 September 1999 in East St. Louis, Illinois.

The opening paragraph states:
The purpose of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) is to promote dialogue among African American activists and scholars on the left; to discuss critical issues on the national and international scene that pertain to the Black community; to explore new strategies and directions for progressive political, social and cultural movements; and to renew the Black radical movement through increased unified action.[4]
 
The BRC formed local chapters that worked on a range of issues including police brutality, incarceration, public education, labor rights and gender justice, promoting  a Black left with the critical inclusion of Black feminist  positions  within the Black community , Black scholarship, and Black politics until 2008. 
Several members attended the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Xenophobia sponsored by the United Nations and held in Durban South Africa in 2001. This conference, and the follow up reports from the conference highlighted the long tradition of including an internationalist perspective within the movements of the Black Left. 
The struggle of  Marable and the BRC  attempted to address  the longstanding  tendency in much of the left-leaning social movements and  scholarly literature to view black social movements with ambivalence, dismissing them as “identity politics” that compare unfavorably to social movements  explicitly calling for revolutionary change.3
Noting that the black freedom struggle has always contested both race and class inequality,   scholar and co-founder of the BRC  Leith Mullings notes,
“If progressive forces are to move forward in the United States, it is essential that they deal honestly with the role of racism and recognize the coproduction of racism and capitalism rather than dismissing anti-racist struggles
as “identity politics.” 3.

 Marable’s work and that of the others in the BRC:,  as well as the National Rainbow Coalition; the successful electoral campaigns of Harold Washington for Chicago’s mayor in 1983 and 1987  and the tens of thousands of community-based organizations produced many activists  connections  to the  exciting explosive growth of the  current broad based Movement for Black Lives.

Notes. 

1. “Upheaval in the CPUSA: Death or Rebirth ?,  Max Elbaum,  Crossroads. January 1992, No.17. 
2.  "Mission Statement of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) Archived February 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine", accessed 2 January 2007

  3.  Leith Mullings, “Neoliberal Racism and the Movement for Black Lives in the United States.”, Chapter 8.
Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas : From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash, edited by Juliet Hooker,
Lexington Books, 2020. 

This tribute by: 

Duane Campbell, retired professor Bilingual/Multicultural Education, California State University -Sacramento  former chair of Anti Racism Commission of DSA (1983-2004)  and currently a co-chair of DSA’s Immigrants’ Rights Working Group,
Carl Pinkston. Operation Director of Black Parallel School Board (Sacramento) and  former member of Liberation Road and Institute for Social and Economic Studies.

This tribute written for the forthcoming, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AMERICAN LEFT,
 
 

DSA should focus our energies on joining and building a Left alliance capable of winning socialist demands.
BY SUSAN CHACIN - WINTER 2021  


The Left in the US is facing unprecedented challenges. Fortunately, we bring unprecedented resources to this struggle. In this article, I will argue for a refocusing of DSA’s resources to join and build a Left alliance capable of winning socialist demands.


The ruling elites in this country have managed to mobilize widespread support for an anti-democratic, authoritarian assault on our civic institutions and the very democratic process by which we purport to govern ourselves. They have done this by feeding conscious and unconscious white supremacy and jingoistic patriotism, by channeling well-founded working class mistrust of the power structure, and by nurturing and amplifying disagreements among progressives.


The strength of right-wing forces mobilized against us must not be minimized. Historical precedents suggest that we could see a demagogue more capable than Trump attempt an authoritarian, neo-fascist takeover in the mid-range future. But even without considering dangers down the road, we face a current majority of white voters, even white women, who supported the most racist, grifting, con man ever to occupy the Oval Office. Adherents of ludicrous right-wing conspiracies are a minority of Trump’s supporters, but they demonstrated their virulence when they stormed the US Capitol in January.


The self-styled “Christian” Right originally gained power opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, gay rights, diversity in textbooks, and most recently transgender rights. “Patriot” churches have recently emerged supporting an explicitly pro-Trump gospel. The Business Roundtable and rightwing think tanks funded by deep pocket donors such as the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer have been organizing to defend capitalism since before Reagan. The California “taxpayer revolt” movement that originated in 1978 was still strong enough in November 2020 to defeat restoration of equitable industrial and commercial property taxes. The opposition overcame labor, community, and DSA support with a massive advertising campaign. California’s nominally “blue” electorate in November also defeated gig-workers’ employee rights and refused to restore affirmative action.


The white supremacist movement surged after Obama’s election and new adherents such as the Proud Boys have joined the older neo-Nazi, skinhead, militia, and KKK varieties of racists. Death threats against election officials and elected representatives since Trump’s defeat and the invasion of the Capitol prove that the right’s violent rejection of democratic norms and repudiation of our institutions have become widespread. Racist police murders defended by cities around the country and the reported strength of proto-fascist elements in the military represent an armed element in the array of forces against us. The number of Republican representatives and senators who voted to overturn the election is further evidence of the erosion of support for democracy.


At the same time, in part because of the Right’s success, progressives have mobilized unprecedented forces. The Left’s mobilization has been fueled by the crisis of the neoliberal economy, horrifying evidence of fast worsening climate chaos, rampant homelessness, crimes against immigrants, the erosion of workers’ rights, student and consumer debt, widespread hunger, and police violence. This mobilization is continuing, committed to achieving universal healthcare, climate and environmental justice, immigrant and refugee rights, income equality, workplace safety, protection for Social Security, reproductive rights, housing, police accountability, and voting rights. The Left must fortify itself in the Biden administration’s early days and be ready to surge forth when needed to confront Congress and the administration.


Where Does DSA Stand in This New Political Landscape?

I am worried that DSA will miss the opportunity to make the most positive contribution we are capable of in the coming political period. DSA could represent a socialist voice in a strengthened united front if we are willing to stand in solidarity with other progressives. The reason I am worried is not because we lack energy or momentum. It is because as an organization we were on the sidelines of the historic campaign and strong voter turnout for the 2020 elections. Elections are not, and should not be DSA’s principal focus. However our approach to electoral coalition work is indicative of our general attitude toward the rest of our organizing. To be part of a unifying progressive Left, we must learn to play well with others.

In a recent article titled “On the Sidelines: DSA Abstentionism on Biden vs. Trump,” labor organizers Peter Olney and Rand Wilson argue that “It’s time to acknowledge that ‘Bernie or Bust” was a major tactical and strategic error.” They compare the challenge national DSA will face in attempting to influence the new administration 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.”

Olney and Wilson acknowledge that members of DSA were more aware of what was at stake than our leaders. “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.” Local DSA members did this work despite the refusal of our National Political Committee to encourage swing state members to participate in the broad anti-Trump mobilization. When Bernie lost the nomination and urged his supporters to support Biden to defeat Trump, DSA leadership refused.

Thanks to the rest of the Left spearheading the grassroots drive that pushed Biden over the top, DSA dodged the bullet of being blamed for a catastrophic defeat. But it was a much nearer thing than most of us realized.

Willingness to work to defeat Trump did not mean that grassroots DSA members ignored Biden’s shortcomings. Olney and Wilson agree that “few if any of the comrades we campaigned with had illusions about the reality of who Biden actually is or what he represents.” Denunciations of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s roles in collaborating with the right on many issues including criminal injustice, trade deals that handicap labor and regulatory rights, welfare “reform,” and the financial powers’ raids on the economy are chapter and verse among progressives organizing in the Democratic Party. So are criticisms of Barack Obama’s refusal to hold the financial class to account, his administration’s role in massive deportations, and his inability to end the pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Centrist apologists minimize these betrayals, but honest progressives take them into account and agree that the Democratic Party has a great deal to answer for concerning these issues.

What the broad range of progressive activists that mobilized to defeat Trump do not accept is that these failings rule out working inside the Democratic Party. Bernie was far more successful contending for the Democratic Party nomination that he ever could have been running as an independent, and scores of progressive candidates are running and winning on the Democratic ballot line without sacrificing their principles. The presence of winning progressive candidates at all levels is catalyzing class struggle within the Democratic Party.

With the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we are entering a new era of political struggle. Predictably, allies brought together to oppose Trump will regroup and even oppose each other under the new administration. Many progressives who mobilized support to defeat Trump are old hands at advocacy and will not be surprised to find the Biden-Harris administration resistant to demands that they fulfill the 2020 Democratic Party platform. Newer and less wary activists may be disappointed by the administration’s anticipated reluctance to implement even portions of the platform that they could make good on. In both cases, socialists in general, and DSA in particular, must accept that electoral organizing always entails exacting accountability. It is our job to point out gaps between campaign promises and implementation without snarkily claiming “we told you so, this is what you get when you trust a Democrat.”

The Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020, the election of significant numbers of leftists to congressional, state and local offices in both 2018 and 2020, and even Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 campaign have moved the goal posts of the “possible” to the left. Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the Fight for $15 are being accepted more and more as common sense demands rather than radical socialist fantasies.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is stronger than ever, and has issued “The People’s Agenda: A Progressive Roadmap for Congress in 2021.” In the face of media attempts to blame socialists for down-ballot Democratic defeats, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has countered, arguing that progressive candidates were able to win by advocating the progressive agenda even in “swing” districts. AOC emphasizes that Democrats can prevail when they go to the grassroots and campaign on an activist, working people’s platform. AOC’s example of pressing Nancy Pelosi to demand support for younger, more progressive leadership while offering support for the Speaker’s reelection should be instructive to us. In real life, we must combine confrontation with collaboration.

What were the sources of DSA’s refusal to join in the broad coalition working to defeat Trump? Olney and Wilson suggest that “DSA’s experience in the 2020 election can be a teachable moment.” I agree. However to use this opportunity to its best advantage, we have to examine a number of hard truths about the organization.

There are a number of deep-seated sources of harmful ideas in DSA. As a veteran of socialist organizing, I recognize many of these wrong-headed tendencies because I have had to admit them in my own work. It is important for us not to repeat the history of socialist organizations around the world in which disagreements lead to divisions. A classic joke about how misguided criticism can become is that when the Left needs a firing squad, we draw up in a circle. As a “big tent” organization, DSA must not try to enforce ideological purity. We are not bound by the Leninist policy that all members must commit to carrying out the line once it is decided by the members or their leaders. This openness allows us to point out when a position adopted by some of us has failed, without calling for their expulsion.

I am calling on members of all our opinions and caucuses to examine the following ideas. If they are helpful, they may contribute to growing our organization and making it more welcoming. There may be others I have not identified. As an organization that has experienced an extraordinary surge in membership, we owe it to each other to increase positive dialogue and learn from each other. Finger pointing, trolling, and subterranean maneuvers to gain organizational influence are toxic and must be identified when they occur.

Here is my list of what some Marxists call “deviations,” tendencies I believe are distorting our political positions:

Ultra-leftism: DSA members tend to come to socialism from middle-class backgrounds and have college educations. That’s me too. As soon as I rejected my class background, I affiliated with a movement for “third-world” revolution and spent years ignoring the evidence that “the people” were not winnable to the revolution we imagined. I believe my ultra-left fervor reflected fear that I could be sucked back into my white middle-class privilege if I didn’t become sufficiently radical.

DSA seems to have many converts to socialism who think that the farthest left positions are the most righteous. It’s not okay to chant “Eat the rich!” or “Defund the police!” if doing so alienates people we could attract. If we only support avowedly socialist candidates, it can isolate us from community movements that have local working class support. Calling for the founding of a labor party in today’s political landscape marks DSA members as wildly unrealistic. We also must beware of not listening to smaller DSA chapters and chapters in conservative areas. Those of us in “blue” enclaves need to support what works for our members in other places and environments. These chapters and members can help the organization relate to a broader, more working class constituency than we currently attract.

DSA’s refusal to campaign for Biden against Trump in swing states proclaimed that we valued our ideological purity above taking part in the dynamic mobilization organized to defeat Trump. It also showed that DSA did not take seriously the huge damage to environmental, racial justice, and labor protections done by Trump’s administration and supporters. Our purity was more important than fighting neo-fascism. We did not take a stand against his animation of the worst right-wing resurgence since the civil rights movement.

Unconscious white privilege: The Left has a problem accepting that our views are shaped by white supremacy. We overtly reject racism and are committed to equality. But that is not enough. I reacted to the assault on Congress with optimism: it was showing how violent Trump’s supporters can be, it discredited them. An interracial friend told me it frightened her: troupes of racist thugs perpetrating violence are terrifying. I apologized to her for minimizing the danger she feels. Unconscious bias is impossible to overcome completely, it has taken me years of work to even be aware that I am subject to it.

DSA is not exclusively white, but we have acknowledged for years that we do not have strong enough participation by people of color or a credible presence in racial justice movements. I believe this is why the organization did not stand in solidarity with the strong anti-Trump movement among organizations representing people of color. Bernie Sanders’ positions on racial justice fell short of what many of us hoped for and are widely believed to have cost him support among constituencies of color, particularly older Black voters. I believe that DSA’s racial makeup, coupled with our socialist ideology–seeing the capitalist economic base of society as the fundamental cause of inequality and oppression–have blinded us to the role that racism is playing in the growth and virulence of the Right.

In mid-2020, I contacted labor activist and DSA member Bill Fletcher Jr. and asked “I wonder if you share my concern over the strong tendency in DSA to minimize the danger of the mobilized Right? I think part of DSA’s problem is an intellectual position minimizing the role of white supremacy in U.S. politics. It is popular in DSA to oppose ‘identity politics’ under the rubric of advocating working class leadership. I think this is a reflection of intellectual arrogance and a form of ultra-leftism. It is not exclusively white members who maintain this position.” Fletcher responded: “I think that you are absolutely correct. Too many DSAers fail to grasp the essence of right-wing populism. DSA has never has a solid grasp of racism and national oppression.”

Ian Haney López’s recent book Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, presents hard data on how progressives can best argue against right-wing “dog whistles” that animate racial anxiety in undecided constituencies. The Race/Class project, in collaboration with the progressive think tank Dēmos, helped me understand why Sanders’ message fell flat with important segments of the African American electorate. Sanders claimed that fighting economic inequality would lift African Americans’ lives and solve their oppression. His references to having marched for civil rights were weak and outdated for audiences asking how he would address white terrorism, police violence and other current forms of Black oppression

López points out that Sanders’ message relied heavily on economic measures to “lift all boats.” But economic uplift does little to interrupt systemic white supremacy. DSA’s approach to racial injustice is hampered by members’ unwillingness to admit that all of us are affected by the prevailing caste system. We have work to do. Joining Black Lives Matter demonstrations does little to counteract the anti-identitarian positions frequently voiced in DSA.

Patriarchal attitudes: Socialist feminism does not consist solely in supporting gender and reproductive rights, advocating for equal pay, or electing more women to office. Radical feminism provides a lens to critique the competitive, hierarchical social norms enshrined in our domestic, economic, and civic interactions. As a lesbian feminist, I find DSA rife with organizational dynamics and attitudes that reflect the dominance hierarchy prevalent in traditional gender relationships. Too often, DSA members approach organizing as if it were a competition with other groups and philosophies rather than a collaboration to build “the beloved community.” Attitudes toward liberals in DSA are particularly bitter. Seeing other groups as enemies rather than potential allies alienates potential recruits and can lead to hostile interactions.

The “Bernie Bro” meme was true enough that when the Working Families Party endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, I could not tell whether the vicious reactions were coming from comrades or had been planted by malicious bots. Various groupings in DSA voice open hostility toward the positions of other tendencies. I have had a harder time writing this article than I expected because I am aware that I may receive personal attacks as a result of my opinions.

Ageism and negative attitudes toward DSA’s history: DSA’s rapid growth and organizing successes following the 2016 presidential election have led many new members to disregard the experience of DSA’s elder statesmen and women. Ageism is a thing, it leaves many older members feeling unseen, disrespected and patronized. It is the flip side of the capitalist marketing of youth and beauty. Remember: if some of us had not worked hard to keep DSA alive for years, there would have been no gathering place for the thousands of people radicalized by Bernie’s campaigns and Trump’s election.

We face a generation gap between graying DSA culture-bearers and the huge number of newer members. Political positions do not align neatly with this division, but many older, longstanding members profess more moderate socialist positions, and many younger members and members joining from other socialist tendencies advocate a 180 degree change away from our grounding in democratic socialist principles. Adding to this dichotomy, older members are often less skilled at using social media tools, and may have less energy for organizational struggles and contention. It is right for young, enthusiastic socialists to question what has gone before them, to challenge received wisdom. It is also healthy for DSA to conserve our roots and sustain an ongoing dialogue between revolutionary and evolutionary socialists. Making this a productive, comradely enterprise is everyone’s responsibility.

What is to Be Done?
​
There is a strong tendency in DSA to “go it alone,” to believe that because we have become the predominant socialist organization in the US we should catalyze the progressive agenda and drive it toward revolutionary change. Proud of our growth and the militancy of our membership, important sectors of DSA run the risk of isolating us from the very forces that should be our best allies and comrades in struggle. This stance harms DSA’s reputation and credibility, but more importantly, it shirks the leadership role that we should be playing on the left.

I am arguing the DSA should reach out and build relationships with honest individuals and groups from the broadest progressive sources. DSA, organized labor, and a wide swath of advocacy groups have been doing this. Witness the new acceptability of concepts such as the $15 minimum wage, free higher education, and the Green New Deal. If socialists see ourselves as competing with other progressive organizations, we are failing to meet our political potential. Denouncing other progressive groups and positions rather than cooperating, collaborating, and coordinating marks us as sectarian. A primary task of the Left today is building greater solidarity among ourselves as we take action to implement our vision for society.

The anti-Trump social justice forces defeated the head of the Republican Party in 2020, but to win as leftists, we have to continue and strengthen this mighty mobilization across our ideological differences. To actually win demands, we have to carry the collaboration into community work, particularly important in the crises generated by COVID-19, massive unemployment, and climate chaos.

Building this kind of Left unity will also allow us to withstand the inevitable realignment that will be necessary to carry our demands into an administration governed by Democrats. If we unite rather than “punching horizontally,” we build support for our policy demands and demonstrate the strength of our agenda to centrists and to the institutional elite of the Democratic Party. If we are not unified, the Left will be more easily dismissed as “fringe elements” without the organizational power to demand accountability. By refusing to pull each other down, we wage class struggle inside as well as outside, and we can pull the Democratic Party further to the left.

In the current political landscape numerous organizations such as the Poor People’s Campaign, Swing Left, the Movement 4 Black Lives, Dēmos, MoveOn, Indivisible, the Women’s March, and the Working Families Party are our allies, not our opponents and certainly not our enemies. My understanding of history says that Hitler’s success was facilitated by mutual attacks between the communists and social democrats, failing to see the extreme danger posed to both by fascism. It is hard to believe that anyone can doubt the harm that has been done by the ultra-right acting through Trump’s first term. This constituency is not going away! No one is asking DSA or any other group to stop explaining how capitalism has brought us to this pass – but this is not the moment to be excoriating progressives who do not call themselves socialists.
​
Within DSA, like-minded folks must continue to coalesce. I am a member of the North Star Caucus. I hope that North Star and other groupings will be able to present a unified and unifying coalition at the national convention. Internal organizing is an urgent task. DSA’s 235 chapters and organizing committees deserve to be encouraged to connect and forge the kind of unity that will sustain us as DSA grows into its potential.

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About Susan Chacin
Susan Chacin is a veteran socialist and labor movement activist. She is a former member of the New American Movement of the 1970s, and served two terms on DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She is a member of East Bay DSA.
More from This Issue

​

 
Last week there was a deadly chemical explosion at a food processing plant in Gainesville, GA where the majority of the workers are immigrants. The Georgia's Immigrant Rights Alliance, which Atlanta DSA is a part of, released a letter with demands around Foundation Food Workers Are Fearful of Retaliation Based on Immigration Status and their Cooperation with Federal Investigators which can be found here:


Open+Letter+to+Federal+Invest…
​

Returning to the Fold: DSA and Coalition Politics After Trump
By David Duhalde

Since the 2020 general election, the Democratic Socialists of America – locally and nationally – have been moving towards a coalition politics that puts the organization and its chapters in a unique niche that is differentiated from the Democratic Party, from mainline liberal-left organizations, and from marginal tendencies in U.S. left-wing politics. As socialists, we must hold Democrats accountable to the base that elected them, and also avoid returning to the obscurity in which DSA spent the years before Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid. To do so effectively, the DSA must avoid self-imposing many of the constraints that limited its work in the 2020 presidential race after the end of Sanders’ candidacy.
The Bernie or Bust resolution of DSA’s 2019 convention exemplified such a voluntary foreclosure on political possibility. The delegates overwhelmingly voted for DSA to refrain from endorsing any Democrat besides Sanders in the 2020 general election. At the event, I spoke against the proposal on the grounds it would limit DSA’s potential to help Sanders leverage support at the 2020 Democratic convention (DNC) such as coordinating actions by DSA members serving as DNC delegates should he back another candidate.

To be clear, affirmatively throwing DSA’s support behind any candidate besides Sanders would not be a particularly viable or likely outcome. As I wrote in The Nation, DSA had only endorsed two Democratic presidential candidates – John Kerry and Barack Obama in his first race – since 2000. I was also heartened to see the lukewarm reception across the organization to the handful of chapters who encouraged DSA to actively back Howie Hawkins’ Green Party candidacy. Despite my critiques of the resolution binding DSA outside of any coalition politics that involved Democratic presidential candidates, the socialist organization did avoid hitching our political capital to a marginal, but socialist, campaign too — one which ended up receiving only one quarter Jill Stein’s 2016 vote total despite 25 million additional ballots being cast.

SELF-IMPOSED ISOLATION
My real concern, which I then saw validated, was that the resolution would close off DSA to allies. While DSA convention delegates in 2019 reached a clear consensus on only endorsing Bernie — the same could not be said for membership’s orientation towards the general election — particularly as the election consumed more and more of the public’s political imagination. While people knew DSA was “not endorsing Biden,” it was unclear what the largest group of socialists in the country would do. It also was the only group in the People Power for Bernie coalition to opt out of its follow-up, the United Against Trump coalition to coordinate activism to defeat the now-former president.
The National Political Committee (NPC, or DSA’s elected leadership) debated but voted down a proposal at its May 5 meeting to turn out anti-Donald Trump votes in swing states. They agreed to provide guidance to chapters in the short term and prioritize defeating fascism through social movement work. The NPC issued a statement a week after their vote expressing opposition to Trump and solidarity with Sanders’ call to defeat him — but did not provide open guidance for what members and chapters could do to specifically engage with the presidential election beyond broad calls to build the socialist movement. By September, the NPC gave internal guidance to chapter leaders on strategy and messaging, an action kit focused on a united front of the left, and guidance on incorporating the urgency of the moment in the recruitment drive.

DRIVING TURNOUT WITH DOWN-BALLOT RACES
In the absence of any public direction, I and two comrades – former Bernie 2020 labor staffer Jonah Furman and NPC member Maikiko James – organized a letter for individual DSA members to state their support for organizing as socialists to defeat Trump by driving turnout for progressive down-ballot candidates. Several hundred people signed and volunteered throughout the fall. During the Bernie or Bust debate, advocates of the resolution repeatedly assured delegates that individual members could support the nominee on their own. And while our letter never endorsed electioneering for Joe Biden, even if we had, we would be doing so in our individual capacity, respecting the letter and spirit of our convention’s democratic decision for DSA as an organization.

Others did not see it this way. Our open letter faced public pushback from fellow DSA members who did not share our urgency in taking specific action to remove Trump via down-ballot work. They did so not because they viewed Trump favorably, but out of a firm conviction that socialists shouldn’t support neoliberal candidates and that the convention resolution mandated that DSA and its members do nothing – direct or indirect – that would advance Biden’s candidacy. The contention, taken to this logical end, meant DSA members ought to be bound against formally endorsing any effort to stop Trump even as his mismanagement of a nationwide pandemic and failure to deliver relief immiserated millions of working families.

Luckily, Biden defeated Trump, in no small part due to mass organizing by UNITE-HERE and other grassroots movements to fill the gap left by the Democratic Party’s refusal to canvass voters door-to-door. Though U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib was a shoo-in for the general election, her campaign echoed my proposed fall strategy by driving up turnout in her heavily Democratic district to increase the vote for Biden in Michigan.

POST-ELECTION PIVOT
While DSA hadn’t backed these actions and played no formal role in them, the NPC issued a statement immediately following election day that praised the work of UNITE-HERE and Bernie Sanders to defeat Trump. In that missive, DSA did not celebrate the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Instead, the organization explicitly criticized the incoming administration and put them on notice. But for the first time in 2020, national DSA was uplifting the popular front work that defeated Trump. More importantly, the next day, the national and chapter leadership called for members to join the November 7 demonstrations with other allies to demand democracy from Trump and condemn the public attempts by him and his followers to steal the election by overturning the Electoral College results in swing states.

Many of the pro-democracy gatherings that day became victory celebrations as news networks officially called the election for Biden-Harris that afternoon. In New York City, I marched alongside hundreds of DSA members and thousands of other Big Apple residents as we took the streets of Manhattan. Across the country, there was a sigh of relief that Trump at least would be removed from office. None of us knew what would happen nearly two months later in the Capitol. But we did know the Senate balance fell onto Georgia.

Across the country, centrist Democratic Senate candidates substantially underperformed their polling, losing races in states like Maine, North Carolina, and Iowa. Trump’s surprising ability to bring out new voters kept at least 50 Senate seats in Republican hands. But now, control of the Senate, and with it, any hope of the Biden Administration delivering on the commitments that Sanders and DSA’s allied groups had fought for rested on the Georgia runoffs.

Fortunately, DSA took a different stance in the Peach State than it had in the presidential race. Instead of abstaining, DSA chapters in Georgia (with support from the national infrastructure) conducted an anti-Republican turnout effort. DSA’s four Georgia chapters didn’t — and didn’t need to — endorse either Democrat to do that, especially given John Ossoff’s anti-Medicare-for-All stance. Instead, the chapters collaborated with the national DSA and the Ecosocialist Working Group to tie the results to the Green New Deal and other policy outcomes that would only be possible under a Democratic-controlled US Senate.

ISSUE-BASED ELECTIONERING
Georgia DSA members coordinated out-of-state volunteers to text and phonebank Georgia voters with an issues-driven turnout message. Marquita Bradshaw, a DSA-aligned activist and 2020 Democratic-nominee for the Tennessee US Senate race, emceed a volunteer call to rally grassroots energy. In addition, they canvassed with flyers featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive agenda she and DSA back, urging Georgians to cast their ballots with those issues in mind.

This strategy wasn’t universally embraced — meeting many of the same critics as our anti-Trump letter. Still others felt it wasn’t vocal enough in supporting the Democrats. This time, absent the chilling effect of a Bernie-or-Bust-style resolution, the NPC was able to back up the work of our Georgia comrades to defeat incumbent GOP senators. This issue-based electioneering paid off as both Republicans lost their seats, tilting the balance of the US back to Democratic control. Without the presidential race’s self-imposed constraints, the organization’s leadership and membership were able to join active struggles required to defeat the far right — which take place regardless of DSA’s actions, and do not require our positive endorsement of neoliberal Democrats to engage with.
January 6, the day after Ossoff and Warnock’s victory, thousands of Trump’s most reactionary supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bizarre and extremely dangerous gamble to overturn the election results. Their putsch failed, sparking a huge backlash across the political spectrum. DSA jumped further into coalition politics at this moment, joining the racial justice-oriented Frontline’s full-page advertisement in The New York Times calling for Trump’s removal. The next day, the national leadership issued a statement in both English and Spanish urging both trade unionists to pass resolutions in support Trump stepping down alongside uplifting of Reps. Cori Bush’s call for an investigation into the insurrection and Ilhan Omar’s resolution for Trump’s impeachment.

DEMANDING DEMOCRACY
Furthermore, the leadership explicitly called for chapters to join coalitions to “demand democracy.” I attended one such event that night outside of Brooklyn’s Barclay Center. New York City DSA leaders called a rally with the city’s Working Families Party, Sunrise chapter, and an SEIU local to stand together against a fascist attempt to violently overturn a democratic election. The cathartic gathering was for democracy in both the short and the long term. “As democratic socialists, we recognize that in the long term, the only way to beat the forces of reaction is to build a multiracial working-class mass movement rooted in justice, solidarity, and liberation,”  said New York City DSA Co-Chair Chi Anunwa.

“And so in addition to our demands for impeachment and electoral reform, we are also committed to fighting for a more just vision of American society that puts people over profit and where the entire working class can experience true democracy in our government, in our workplace, and in our economy,”  she added. Anunwa, myself, and nearly 1,000 others marched on December 7 from the arena to soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s house to demand he act decisively to defend democracy and hold the Republicans who attempted to throw out millions of votes accountable.

The quick action by DSA and the coalition politics of early January stood in stark contrast to the fall,  when individual members could only coordinate amongst themselves — in a way that could not build power for DSA or strengthen its coalitions — as Election Day drew near. In a hypothetical world where DSA had also passed a binding resolution, over a year in advance, for the DSA to refuse any engagement in the Georgia Senate race, we would have missed this opportunity as well. But instead, we were able to assess the political situation in the moment and act appropriately. Importantly, we were able to do so without moving towards the Democratic Party or even formerly endorsing. Instead we functioned as an independent socialist organization working to mobilize voters to defeat the far right.
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DSA will be most effective by keeping its political options open — carving a niche that is apart from the Democratic liberal-left, but that is also separate from the margins of left politics. We cannot solve our political problems through pre-emptive, binding resolutions. Rather, we need collective struggle marked by continued debate in response to the political opportunities before us. I am happy to see the socialist organization to which I have dedicated my adult life returning to its coalition roots- albeit in an updated fashion. That’s the DSA that will change this country and the world.
 
 
Posted on Organizing Upgrade.
https://organizingupgrade.com/returning-to-the-fold-dsa-and-coalition-politics-after-trump/
 
with comments from N.S. members. 

Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan

​ President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris leapt into action after taking the oath of office on Wednesday. Biden signed 17 executive orders, dismantling many of Donald Trump’s signature policies. Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, ended the Muslim travel ban, halted most deportations and construction of the border wall, fortified DACA, rescinded the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, implemented a nationwide mask mandate on federal property, and more.

Kamala Harris is the first woman, first African American, first Asian American, first Indian American and the first Caribbean American to hold the office of Vice President. As President of the Senate, she swore in Alex Padilla, California’s first Latinx U.S. Senator, appointed to fill the Senate seat she vacated, as well as Georgia’s two new Democratic Senators, Jon Ossoff, the first Jewish Senator from Georgia, and Reverend Raphael Warnock, the first African American Democrat elected to the Senate from the South. The Democrats thus gained control of the Senate, albeit by a razor-thin, 50-50 margin, with Vice President Harris able to cast tie-breaking votes.

All this was made possible by the mass movements that brought these politicians to power. Like the elected officials they supported, movement organizers also wasted no time, announcing pressure campaigns to push the Biden-Harris administration to pursue progressive policies.

Politicians respond to pressure. “Make me do it,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously told union and civil-rights organizer A. Philip Randolph, who was demanding help for African-Americans and working people.

“It is a time for Joe Biden to deliver results for the multiracial majority that delivered the presidency to him,” Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “We want to see Joe Biden deliver on the four issues that he says he has a mandate on: the pandemic, the economy, the climate crisis and systemic racism.”

The climate-focused Sunrise Movement started with protests focused on Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, and a national Sunrise Day of Action on the day after Biden’s inauguration. “In the midst of major crises, including the hottest year on record, a global pandemic, record inequality and a failing democracy, America is at a crossroads,” Sunrise Movement’s Executive Director Varshini Prakash said in a statement. “The Decade of the Green New Deal must start now.” The Sunrise Movement is calling for a massive mobilization to transition our society off of fossil fuels.

The window to enact change is narrow; Democrats control the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, but the 2022 election may shift control of Congress back to Republicans. Senator Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign inspired and engaged tens of millions of progressives, is advocating for swift action using a procedure known as “budget reconciliation,” through which major legislation can be passed in the Senate by a simple majority vote, bypassing the filibuster. Sanders is now the chairperson of the Senate Budget Committee, and thus will wield significant influence over Congress’ power of the purse.

Democrats are also hoping to pass H.R. 1, The For the People Act, a bill to strengthen fundamental aspects of our democratic process. It passed the House in 2019, and has languished in the Senate under Mitch McConnell. It would end partisan gerrymandering, make it much easier to register to vote, declare Election Day as a national holiday, provide public funding for campaigns, and more.

This year, state legislatures will use the results of the 2020 U.S. Census to redraw Congressional districts. Republicans control the legislatures in 31 states, where they are expected to carve up districts to maximize their political power, even while representing a minority of U.S. voters. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 partisan decision, ruled that federal courts could not hear challenges to gerrymandered districts; H.R. 1 would change that.

“This moment is a once-in-a-generation moment for the United States of America, that Joe Biden really could be known historically as one of the most transformative presidents in American history, like a Lincoln, like an FDR, like an LBJ,” Waleed Shahid said on Democracy Now!.

One of Wednesday’s highlights was the nation’s youngest poet ever to read at an inauguration. Amanda Gorman finished writing “The Hill We Climb” just after the violent January 6th attack on the Capitol. It includes the lines,

“We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.”
​
Progressives faced a wall, literally and figuratively, with Donald Trump. With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the wall has become a door. Whether it gets slammed shut or kicked open depends on the efforts of mass movements.
 

​Harold Meyerson 
January 20, 2021
The American Prospect

Joe Biden’s call for unity is a stretch, but that doesn’t mean progress is off the table.


Joseph R. Biden’s presidential inauguration came as a golden oldie, a restoration of the familiar even as it broke new ground by also inaugurating Kamala Harris as his veep.

But January 20th was a day when new ground was broken simply by the necessity of invoking values so old that merely to affirm them is, in normal conditions, boilerplate, lip service, cliché upon cliché. Yes, we value democracy. Yes, we need and value truth.

Affirming those values today, however, wasn’t lip service. That’s how grotesque things had become during the misrule of Donald Trump.

“There is truth and there are lies,” the new president said. The right-wing “intellectuals” who’ve been bemoaning postmodernism for years finally had a president who refuted its central creed. That president, however, was unmistakably referring to the postmodern (or premodern, pre-Enlightenment, pre-empiricism) demagoguery routinely spouted by the Goebbels-esque combine of his predecessor, senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, congressmembers like Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, Rupert Murdoch’s many henchmen, and the whole of the counterfactual American right.

Biden’s was far from the most eloquent of inaugural addresses, but it surely was among the most heartfelt. It didn’t soar, but it movingly beseeched, calling for an end to the demonization of political differences, to the scourge of white supremacism, to the “uncivil war” that has defined our times. That he personally felt these missions, and the need to mount an effective federal response to the pandemic and the economic havoc it has wrought, was made clear, however inadvertently, by his lapsing into his own Bidenesque forms of sincerity. I can’t recall an inaugural address (and I’m old enough to have heard a whole lot) so punctuated by a new president’s use of the word “folks” as a form of direct address. It’s Biden’s way of suggesting that we’re all in this together—a reflexive, rather than a strategic, word choice; a word that prefaces his appeals to all of us to get serious, a word that signals he thinks of himself as one of us and hopes that we’re part of that “us,” too.

There was a more eloquent statement of Biden’s themes in today’s ceremony; to my surprise and, I suspect, that of virtually everyone, it came from the inaugural’s designated poet, performing what is usually a pro forma part of the services. There was nothing pro forma, though, about 22-year-old Amanda Gorman and her poem, which sounded Biden’s calls for inclusiveness, justice, and democratic norms in a rap-like tempo, making a hoped-for history rhyme. As Biden spoke as the “folksy” grandpa trying to bring the nation around to a more commonly shared sense, so Gorman spoke as the quicksilver street kid demanding a better tomorrow—but both, somehow, sounding the same message and affirming the same values.

Donald Trump, of course, was absent from the ceremony. He had begun the day by rescinding his own executive order that had forbidden former members of his administration from quickly going to work as lobbyists, particularly as lobbyists for foreign powers. This recission followed hard upon his pardoning of Steve Bannon, who now, freed from the looming threat of justice, can go to work directly for Vladimir Putin, or, perhaps, Putin, the Mercer family, Rupert Murdoch, and My Pillow simultaneously.

The transition from Trump to Biden signals many changes, not least of which is a refocusing of government away from the personal needs, hates, and fears of the president himself. During Trump’s term, the Republican Party essentially became the action arm of the president’s psychological deficiencies—in the past several months, of his inability to see himself as a loser, his rejection by the American electorate notwithstanding. By the time he left office, the base of his party had itself embraced that inability.

If that’s not a prime example of mass psychosis, I don’t know what is. When coupled with the party’s failure to produce a platform in 2020, what the nation is left with is a party defined by raging resentments, fear of our multiracial future, and the hungry swallowing of lies that reinforce those fears and resentments. And precious little else.

That puts Biden’s hoped-for unity well out of reach, though some more temperate Republicans have fled or are now fleeing their former political home. What it doesn’t put out of reach is progress—toward a more efficient distribution of vaccines; toward greater racial, gender, and economic equity; toward a political system less dominated by big money. Getting there will require scrapping the ability of a Senate minority to block a Senate majority, which is to say that one of the democratic norms this nation has yet to realize is real majority rule. That’s one more value to which we’ve given lip service but never actualized, one of those old values to which old Joe Biden must give new meaning if his presidency, if his nation, is going to succeed.

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.

​Deep canvass conversations, storytelling, acknowledges people’s experiences while suggesting a different way to understand and respond. Race-class narrative highlights the stake that white people have in fighting racism and ways to take action.
Marcy Rein

The worries and problems canvassers heard on the phones and at the doors were no surprise: COVID. Losing, or being afraid of losing, work and housing. Needing unemployment benefits, COVID relief and health care. High utility bills, hospitals closing in rural areas. Scratch the surface, dig under the Fox News talking points, and most people felt the government had abandoned them.

“People feel lonely and isolated especially during COVID,” Jules Berkman-Hill said. “They feel their government abandoned them with not providing enough relief. Small business owners, people experiencing housing insecurity, getting laid off. People were really angry, really upset, and really scared.” People don’t identify as left, right or center, according to Berkman-Hill. “The most common political position was alienation,” she said. At the December 2020 Rootscamp panel on building multi-racial organizing, organizers from different regions confirmed this assessment.

Corruption emerged as the top issue for 10,000 voters surveyed by West Virginia Can’t Wait in summer 2019. “That didn’t imply any allegiance to the Democratic Party,” said panelist Cathy Kunkel, who ran for Congress as part of the group’s effort to bring in a “people’s government.” West Virginia voters feel “disenfranchised” by both parties, she said. Eighty-seven percent of rural voters “believe government reflects the will of the rich and influential,” according to a March 2020 survey by RuralOrganizing.
​
“A lot of people don’t vote,” Beth Howard said. “But for so many working people where I grew up, things didn’t really change for them no matter who they voted for. In the 80s and 90s when I grew up, when they voted for Democrats NAFTA happened, their jobs were gone, unions were broken up. They’ve been lied to by both parties. The party that is supposed to be taking up for poor people isn’t. They’re also run by billionaires.”


Can We Crack the Right’s White Block
https://organizingupgrade.com/can-we-crack-the-rights-white-bloc-these-organizers-say-yes/


Can We Crack the Right’s White Bloc? These Organizers Say Yes
Marcy Rein  ORGANIZING UPGRADE
Deep canvass conversations, storytelling, acknowledges people’s experiences while suggesting a different way to understand and respond. Race-class narrative highlights the stake that white people have in fighting racism and ways to take action.


https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/word-on-the-doors-politics-suck

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by Thomas Jackson
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In 1968, a united black community in Memphis stepped forward to support 1,300 municipal sanitation workers as they demanded higher wages, union recognition, and respect for black personhood embodied in the slogan “I Am a Man!” Memphis’s black women organized tenant and welfare unions, discovering pervasive hunger among the city’s poor and black children. They demanded rights to food and medical care from a city and medical establishment blind to their existence.

That same month, March 1968, 100 grassroots organizations met in Atlanta to support Martin Luther King’s dream of a poor people’s march on Washington. They pressed concrete demands for economic justice under the slogan “Jobs or Income Now!”

​ King celebrated the“determination by poor people of all colors” to win their human rights. “Established powers of rich America have deliberately exploited poor people by isolating them in ethnic, nationality, religious and racial groups,” the delegates declared.

So when King came to Memphis to support the strike, a local labor and community struggle became intertwined with his dream of mobilizing a national coalition strong enough to reorient national priorities from imperial war in Vietnam to domestic reconstruction, especially in America’s riot-torn cities. To non-poor Americans, King called for a “revolution of values,” a move from self-seeking to service, from property rights to human rights.

King’s assassination—and the urban revolts that followed—led to a local Memphis settlement that furthered the cause of public employee unionism. The Poor People’s March nonviolently won small concessions in the national food stamp program. But reporters covered the bickering and squalor in the poor people’s tent city, rather than the movement’s detailed demands for waging a real war on poverty. Marchers wanted guaranteed public employment when the private sector failed, a raise in the federal minimum wage, a national income floor for all families, and a national commitment to reconstruct cities blighted by corporate disinvestment and white flight. And they wanted poor people’s representation in urban renewal and social service programs that had customarily benefited only businesses or the middle class. King’s dreams reverberated back in the movements that had risen him up.

It is widely believed that King’s deep dedication to workers’ rights and international human rights came late in life, when cities burned, Vietnamese villagers fled American napalm, and King faced stone-throwing Nazis in Chicago’s white working-class inner suburbs. But King began his public ministry in Montgomery in 1956, dreaming of “a world  in which men will no longer take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” He demanded that imperial nations give up their power and privileges over oppressed and colonized peoples struggling against “segregation, political domination, and economic exploitation”—whether they were in South Africa or South Alabama.
 
King’s commitments to economic justice and workers’ rights are becoming more widely appreciated today as we continue to confront all of the unresolved challenges King confronted in his day.

Beyond Civil Rights
Around 1964, King announced that the movement had moved “beyond civil rights.” Constitutional rights to free assembly, equality in voting, and access to public accommodations had marched forward with little cost to the nation, he said. Human rights—to dignified work, decent wages, income support, and decent housing for all Americans—would cost the nation billions of dollars. In other speeches, however, King recognized that human rights and civil rights were bound up with each other, part of a “Worldwide Human Rights Revolution.”

The practical experience of building a movement had already made these connections. In Montgomery’s struggle to desegregate bus seating, for example, King heralded the American “right to protest for right,” but discovered that it was inseparable from the human rights to work and eat.

Why? Hundreds of African Americans were fired or evicted or denied public aid for expressing themselves politically, and King was intimately involved in campaigns for their material relief.
This pattern continued throughout the 1960s. The southern struggle for rights became a struggle against poverty long before Lyndon Johnson’s wars in Vietnam and on poverty.

Similarly, in New York City in 1959, King joined A. Philip Randolph and Malcolm X in supporting the white, black and Puerto Rican workers of New York’s newly organized Local 1199. Over 3,000 hospital workers— laundry workers, cafeteria workers, janitors and orderlies—struck seven New York private hospitals. At the bottom of the new service economy they were legally barred from collective bargaining; excluded from minimum wage protections and unemployment compensation; and denied the medical insurance that might give them access to the hospitals where they worked. Harlem’s black community rallied to their defense. King cheered a struggle that transcended “a fight for union rights” and had become a multiracial “fight for human rights.”

Today We Continue the Struggles
King’s commitments to economic justice and workers’ rights are becoming more widely appreciated today as we continue to confront all of the unresolved challenges King confronted in his day. Joblessness is still pervasive under the official unemployment statistics, and wages remain too low to lift millions of people out of poverty.
Conservative politicians and globalizing corporations have relentlessly chipped away at union rights and workplace safety. Tattered safety nets have become even shoddier for poor people who are not capable of earning. Forty-seven million Americans are, medically, second-class citizens. Unequal landscapes of wealth and opportunity in housing and schools still make the words “American apartheid” a dirty but accurate epithet. And again, in a different part of the world, our military wages a war of empire cloaked in robes of democratic idealism. On the right, complacent religious leaders preach family morality and personal responsibility, while neglecting our collective moral commitments to materially supporting “the least of these.”

But across the country too, citizens are uncovering stones of hope and finding new democratic determination. We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go, as King would say. Lost ground and shattered dreams are bearable, he would have preached, as we continue the struggles for multiracial democracy, economic justice, and human dignity that were begun long ago, under even more challenging circumstances than we face today.
​
Thomas F. Jackson is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and author of the prizewinning From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) Originally published on Democratic Left. 
Democratic socialists A. Philip Randolph and
Bayard Rustin worked closely with King



We also feature the Poor Peoples Campaign and an interview with Bayard Rustin's biographer about nonviolence:

https://www.religioussocialism.org/

And over at Democratic Left, we have

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/saving-martin-luther-king-jr-and-others-from-the-capitalist-memory-hole/

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/on-the-shoulders-of-others-three-black-giants-for-today/
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Resources
 

• Poor People’s Campaign:  National Call for Moral Revival on the Events of January 6, 2021 by Rev. Dr. William Barber, II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis , visit: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/january-6th-statement/
• 14 Policy Priorities to Heal the Nation: A Moral and Economic Agenda for the First 100 Days, visit:https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/resource/policy-and-legislative-priorities/

Trump, the Big Lie, and Fascism   Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.


The American Abyss
A historian of fascism and political atrocity on Trump, the mob and what comes next.
By Timothy Snyder

• Jan. 9, 2021  New York Times. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html?
​

​JANUARY 7, 2021
Yesterday’s events were an ugly attempt by white nationalists — led by President Trump and emboldened by right-wing political elites like Senator Josh Hawley — to overturn the results of a democratic election.
The last year has been a particularly brutal one for the multiracial working class. The crisis of capitalism, exacerbated by the pandemic and the ongoing austerity measures imposed by Republicans and corporate Democrats alike, has continued to devastate our communities. The brunt of this has fallen disproportionately on Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, incarcerated people, immigrants, women, queer and trans people and the poor.

And yet, the working class, through our organizations and labor unions, came together in November, and again in Georgia this week, to not only overwhelmingly reject Trumpism and white supremacy but to expand the electorate and fight for democracy.

We are socialists. We must embrace the struggle to create a true multilingual, multiracial democracy in the United States. We must abolish the racist system of policing that aided and abetted the instigators of yesterday’s attempted coup. We must reject the white supremacist and anti-democratic politics enshrined in the Constitution and the Electoral College. We must replace capitalism with socialism: a system built for human need and run democratically by the working class.

We know we cannot trust the corporate Democrats to do it. We must mobilize across the country to force our congresspeople to reconvene and advance the measures put forth by Representatives Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar: to remove Trump from office and expel the Republican legislators who instigated the violence.

We must continue our struggle for the better world we know is possible: a world without white supremacy, a world where no one goes hungry or sick or cold or poor. That’s why we fight:

1. For immediate COVID relief payments of $2,000 a month.
2. To defund the police and move toward abolition, shifting resources away from the institution of racist policing and toward human needs such as mental health counseling, youth programs, and public health initiatives. We must work alongside our comrades in the Movement for Black Lives to pass the Breathe Act.
3. For democracy and to abolish the Electoral College, expand electoral reform, and fight voter suppression.
4. For Medicare for All and emergency health care in the pandemic. Congress must pass the Healthcare Emergency Guarantee Act and the COVID-19 vaccine should be free.
5. For workers’ rights and to pass the PRO Act. To build our power, we must expand and protect workers’ rights to organize in their workplaces.
6. To address the climate crisis, the economic crisis and to win a Green New Deal. We must demand an eco-socialist program, starting with a public jobs guarantee.
7. To Abolish ICE and ensure that immigrants, undocumented people and incarcerated people are included in relief efforts.

We call on our members to: 
· Engage with the work of their chapter and organize in their neighborhoods and workplaces.
· Where possible to do so safely and in large numbers, we encourage all chapters to coordinate with local coalition partners and mobilize to demand democracy. There are more of us than there are of them.

• For members who are in unions, use these sample resolutions and bring them to your union. Follow the example of unions such as IBEW, AFL-CIO, and CWA (among others).

Los acontecimientos de ayer fueron un feo intento de los nacionalistas blancos — dirigidos por el presidente Trump e inspirados por los élites políticos de la derecha como el senador Josh Hawley — de anular los resultados de una elección democrática.

El último año ha sido particularmente brutal para la clase obrera multirracial. La crisis del capitalismo, exacerbada por la pandemia y las medidas de austeridad impuestas por los republicanos y los demócratas corporativos por igual, ha seguido devastando nuestras comunidades. El peso de esto ha recaído de manera desproporcionada sobre los negros, los indígenas, las personas de color, las personas encarceladas, los inmigrantes, las mujeres, las personas homosexuales y trans y los pobres.

Y sin embargo, la clase obrera, a través de nuestras organizaciones y sindicatos, se reunió en noviembre, y de nuevo en Georgia esta semana, no sólo para rechazar abrumadoramente el trumpismo y la supremacía blanca, sino para ampliar el electorado y luchar por la democracia.

Nosotros somos socialistas. Debemos abrazar la lucha por crear una verdadera democracia multilingüe y multirracial en los Estados Unidos. Debemos abolir el sistema racista de la policía que ayudó a los instigadores del intento de golpe de ayer. Debemos rechazar la política supremacista blanca y antidemocrática consagrada en la Constitución y el Colegio Electoral. Debemos reemplazar el capitalismo con el socialismo: un sistema construido para la necesidad humana y dirigido democráticamente por la clase obrera.

Sabemos que no podemos confiar en que los demócratas corporativos lo hagan. Debemos movilizarnos por todo el país para forzar a nuestros congresistas a volver a reunirse y hacer avanzar las medidas propuestas por los representantes Cori Bush e Ilhan Omar: quitar a Trump de la presidencia y expulsar a los legisladores republicanos que instigaron la violencia.

Debemos continuar nuestra lucha por un mundo mejor que sabemos que es posible: un mundo sin supremacía blanca, un mundo donde nadie pase hambre o enfermedad o frío o pobreza.

Es por eso que luchamos:
· Para pagos de socorro inmediatos de COVID mensuales de $2,000,
· Desactivar a la policía y avanzar hacia la abolición, trasladando recursos de la institución de la policía racista hacia las necesidades humanas, como consejería de salud mental, programas para jóvenes e iniciativas de salud pública. Debemos trabajar junto a nuestros camaradas del Movimiento por la Vida de los Negros para aprobar el Breathe Act.
· Por la democracia y la abolición del Colegio Electoral, ampliar la reforma electoral y luchar contra la supresión de votantes. 
· Para Medicare para Todos y atención médica de emergencia en la pandemia. El Congreso debe aprobar la Ley de Garantía de Emergencia Sanitaria y la vacuna COVID-19 debe ser gratuita.
· Por los derechos de los trabajadores y para aprobar la Ley PRO. Para construir nuestro poder, debemos ampliar y proteger los derechos de los trabajadores a organizarse en sus lugares de trabajo.
· Para abordar la crisis climática, la crisis económica y ganar un Nuevo Pacto Verde. Debemos exigir un programa eco-socialista, comenzando con una garantía de empleo público. 
· Abolir el ICE y asegurar que los inmigrantes, indocumentados y encarcelados sean incluidos en los esfuerzos de ayuda.
Instamos a nuestros miembros a: 
· Comprometerse con el trabajo de su sección y organizarse en sus vecindarios y lugares de trabajo.

· Siempre que sea posible, lo hacemos de forma segura y en gran números, alentamos a todos las secciones a que se coordinen con los asociados de las coaliciones locales y se movilicen para exigir democracia. Tememos más a nuestro lado que de ellos.
​
Para los miembros que están en los sindicatos, utilicen estas resoluciones de muestra y llévelas a su sindicato. Sigue el ejemplo de sindicatos como IBEW, AFL-CIO y CWA (entre otros).
 

When The Washington Post runs its "Democrats Win Control of the Senate" piece on page 6, as it did today, you know something big must be going on.


As indeed it is. The conversion of the base and a good deal of the superstructure of the Republican Party to a neo-Confederate rabble that stormed the Capitol yesterday to prevent the certification of a presidential election isn’t merely news. As an uncharacteristically eloquent Chuck Schumer noted yesterday, it enters history as yet another Day of Infamy.


By now it’s clear that the Trumpified Republican Party can trace its roots to the Night Riders and Southern Filibusterers who blighted our history for centuries. Josh Hawley’s Missouri heritage runs straight back to Quantrill’s Raiders and the James gang, who, like Hawley yesterday, wreaked deadly havoc in the cause of white supremacy.


The pivotal year in the creation of the modern Republican Party is 1964, when Lyndon Johnson’s lobbying for and signature on the Civil Rights Bill cast the formerly Democratic Dixiecrats adrift, and when Barry Goldwater, one of just six Republicans who voted against the bill, won the Republican presidential nomination. With that, the 65-year devolution of the Republican Party into a neo-Confederate, white supremacist party of lumpen bigots and the lumpen rich began. While Donald Trump has taken this transformation to greater depths with his complete indifference to the concepts of equality before the law, democracy, and majority rule, we must remember that this transformation has been ongoing for more than half a century.


During that time, voter suppression, once the Jim Crow property of the South, spread north as Republicans placed obstacles to minority voting everywhere they could. The union-busting "right to work" laws of Southern states—reincarnating the antebellum practice of Southern slavery as a kinder, gentler disregard for worker rights—came to the industrial heartland when Republicans with Dixiecrat values won control there in the early 2000s. That Trump entered our current political landscape by insisting that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and is leaving it by inciting a Confederate flag–waving mob to disrupt the ratification of the pro–civil rights Joe Biden is, of course, heinous, but it’s also just the latest developmental stage of the transformation of the GOP into a dangerous thugocracy divorced from reality.


Today, a number of prominent Republicans are looking in the mirror and suddenly beholding what they’ve become. It’s been clear to a lot of us for a very long time. 
~ HAROLD MEYERSON, the American Prospect 
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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