 'A Just Society': Ocasio-Cortez Unveils Legislative Package to Tackle American Poverty and Inequality"It's a visionary plan that makes moral and economic sense, and most importantly, is informed by what's moving in communities all around the nation."
by Jessica Corbett, staff writer https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/25/just-society-ocasio-cortez-unveils-legislative-package-tackle-american-poverty-and
0 Comments
A road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon
Ian Haney López believes that Trump wants 2020 voters debating whether he is a "racist" — it's his strategy for winning. In 2014, he published Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. In the book, he named and explained how politicians used coded racial appeals as part of a strategy of racial divide-and-conquer to help the 1% get even more powerful. His new book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, explains how the political exploitation of coded racism has evolved under Trump — and suggests an evidence-based approach on how to beat it. The evidence comes from the two-year race-class narrative research project involving focus groups and national polling. The takeaway is that naming racism as a weapon of the rich and calling for coming together across racial lines proved to be the most effective way to defang the Right’s racial fear narratives and to build broad cross-racial support for racial justice as well as for economic populism. Download Chapter 10: 20/20 Vision: Comparing the Left’s Possible Responses to Anti-Immigrant Dog Whistling here. US Sanctions Are Designed to Kill
BY KEVIN CASHMAN ,CAVAN KHARRAZIAN, US sanctions are killing ordinary Iranians by the thousands. Through its control over the world banking system, America’s sanctioning power flouts international human rights law and poses a threat to the world. Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/us-iran-sanctions-donald-trump-iran-deal-oil-banks? prospect.org/laborThe American Prospect has a new website. They have a specific link for labor issues.
Here. https://prospect.org/labor An interesting series of articles in Jacobin.,
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/working-families-party-endorsement-elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders The AFL-CIO this week launched a website parodying Scalia's resume. "After years of quashing and eroding the rights and safety of working people, never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be nominated to lead the Department of Labor,"
Right now, nearly 50,000 UAW workers in 19 states are striking against General Motors. I’m sending this statement and support suggestions from our DSA Democratic Socialist Labor Commission. Read on for more about the strike and how you can help!
In solidarity, Maria Svart DSA National Director Statement from the DSA Democratic Socialist Labor Commission: DSA stands with the United Auto Workers on strike against General Motors Our union brothers and sisters at GM are the poster children of the slogan “They got bailed out, we got sold out.” While GM has enjoyed record profits, $11.8 billion last year, the company continues to squeeze concessions from workers. As socialists we know that the employer’s profits come from our labor. That is why we are heartened to see UAW workers declaring that they are ready to fight back. We stand in solidarity with them until they are victorious. We stand with them in their fight to beat back healthcare takeaways, end the two-tier wage system, and secure real wage increases. This strike connects deeply to two of DSA’s major campaigns: Medicare For All and building a democratic, militant union movement. One of the major proposed takeaways is around healthcare. Medicare For All is vital not only because healthcare is a human right but because Medicare for All would eliminate one of the major burdens in contract negotiations. GM is wielding health insurance as a cudgel to scare workers to accept concessions and the two-tier status quo. Winning M4A will strip such power from the capitalist class. The reports about the preparation for the strike are a textbook example of why we need democratic unions. In the lead-up to the strike members were not included in decisions; there were no informational pickets, no open bargaining, and no community outreach. We hope that this strike will help workers build a vibrant reform movement in the UAW and rebuild a union that is able to fight against the corporations. Any problems with the UAW officialdom do not diminish the importance of this strike, though. Members are standing strong. DSA will stand in solidarity with the workers until they win!Here is how you can help:
See also: What’s at Stake in the General Motors Strike Only a strong movement can put the management of capitalism on the political agenda. Nelson Lichtenstein September 20, 2019, Dissent. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/whats-at-stake-in-the-general-motors-strike Meyerson on TAPWhy the Striking Autoworkers Need to Win Big. Anyone who understands the need for the United States to reduce its stratospheric levels of economic inequality and to give its workers a boost into the middle class has to be rooting for the United Auto Workers members on strike now at General Motors. Those workers sacrificed a good share of their incomes to help GM weather the 2008 financial collapse, as Mike Elk reported yesterday at prospect.org, and now that the company has record profits, totaling more than $30 billion during the past three years, their demands—to reopen factories whose work GM has offshored; to provide full pay, hours, and benefits to the workers whom GM has relegated to a second tier or to the status of temp—are more than just.
Perhaps even more important to the nation at large, though, a successful strike at GM would continue to signal the return of the most important income equalization tool in American history: the strike. Over the past 18 months, teachers, hotel workers, and telephone company workers have waged and won major strikes, after decades in which the strike had almost disappeared from the nation’s economic landscape. Low unemployment rates embolden workers, but there’s nothing like a string of successful strikes to embolden them more. (And all praise to the telecom workers’ union—the Communications Workers of America—for persisting in waging, and winning, strikes over the past decades when most other unions hadn’t done the work required to strike and win.) When GM was the nation’s largest employer, and when unionization rates were so high that even non-union workers got raises so their employers could keep them from defecting to unionized firms, the UAW’s strikes at GM had far greater impact on the nation’s economy than today’s strike can have. America’s mid-20th-century middle-class majority was largely the creation of the more than 300 major strikes the nation experienced every year during the 1950s. We’re a long way from that level of broadly shared prosperity now, but one indispensable way to begin to re-create it is to roll the union on. Ergo: Go, UAW! ~ HAROLD MEYERSON LUKE ELLIOTT-NEGRI PUBLISHED IN JACOBIN. Aug.26, 2019 If we're going to revive the labor movement, we need a strategy that's rooted in socialist principles but flexible enough to adjust to changing conditions in the US workforce… DSA is perhaps the only organization on the US left right now that could imagine supporting its members to take on such work in a systematic way. The organization could even, for example, explore purchasing or renting homes near targeted facilities and providing free or subsidized rent for salts. I have very modestly supported DSA salts to buy a car that they share, but we can be much more thorough in our support of people willing to take on this grueling, vital work. We should also be actively assessing the willingness of existing left-led unions — even ones where the target industry or company is not a perfect fit — in their willingness to support such efforts. That is, we don’t just need to wait until new activists who are targeting unions for takeover have success — there are already unions that have a vibrant, left-wing, democratic culture. Leftists can build relationships with left-led unions. To the point above, some unions already experience the vibrant and militant internal life that is the goal for many on the Left to achieve when they get jobs on the shop floor of existing bargaining units. We could be building relationships with such unions to assess opportunities for collaboration — on new organizing, working-class legislative goals (like the new rent laws in New York), solidarity in the midst of pitched industrial battles, and much more. Leftists can support or build workers centers. Workers centers are one of the more creative organizational forms generated in the recent decades of general labor movement decline. At their inception, they did not aim to negotiate collective bargaining agreements like traditional unions, but rather they organized low-wage workers to fight the boss, often using wage-and-hour violations as leverage... This is especially important with respect to the looming environmental crisis — if we cannot pivot the bulk of the existing labor movement to a coordinated approach to transitioning to a sustainable economy, there will be no labor movement because there will be no humans to populate it. Leftists can run campaigns and win elections. If it weren’t for Bernie Sanders bringing democratic socialism to the millions through a Democratic Party presidential primary, we would not have the current scale of organized left to even host the discussion we’re having right now about labor strategy. There are stakes to this debate in part because there is an organization with nearly sixty thousand members that could really take a crack at deep and serious involvement in the labor movement. At this level alone, elections matter and should be understood as an essential tactical element of left labor strategy. Projects like Labor for Bernie suggest further possibilities — leverage high-profile elections to build connections with and among regular workers who have politics to the left of their unions. Such projects are another potential path to identifying and cohering shop floor leaders, even if they don’t fit the typical mold. Read the entire piece on Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/rank-and-file-strategy-dsa-labor reposted with permission,
Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect At its biennial convention last weekend in Atlanta, DSA (which, with 56,000 members, is now the largest American socialist organization in the memory of anyone under 80) passed a headline-grabbing resolution declaring that it would not endorse any Democrat save Bernie Sanders in next year’s November presidential runoff. The vote on the resolution was actually fairly close, though support for Sanders in the primaries is overwhelming within the organization. And its proponents provided a number of qualifications and caveats, making clear that DSA members are free to campaign for the eventual Democratic nominee if they so choose, and that in 2016, DSA locals did campaign against Trump (and members for Hillary) in swing states. Still, inasmuch as DSA locals work closely with immigrant-protection groups, and the national organization has called for the abolition of ICE, it could be difficult to explain to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, facing deportation and family separation, why the group won’t join its allies in a forthright fight to dump Trump. However, I find myself of two minds in assessing DSA’s position. As a member of the organization and one of its predecessors (the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee) for the past 44 years, I’m embarrassed and regretful that my organization hasn’t grasped the primacy and urgency of joining, in a public and full-blown way, the battle to rid the world of Trump. In 1944, the U.S. Communist Party effectively, if temporarily, self-abolished so its members could support Franklin Roosevelt’s re-election bid, as part of the fight against fascism. To be sure, that move came at the behest of Joseph Stalin, whose nation was allied with ours in the existential battle against Hitler. But for all its myriad and ultimately fatal flaws, and granting that its self-abolition was a typical CP overreaction, the U.S. Communist Party understood the gravity of the fascist threat. Why not DSA? That’s the reaction of my DSA mind. But partly through my long-ago work with DSOC, which led to my political work for some left-wing unions, which led to my own work for left-wing candidates and causes, I also seem to have a political-consultant mind. And that mind tells me that the eventual Democratic presidential nominee needs the formal endorsement of DSA like a hole in the head. Where DSA is strong and where socialist and progressive candidates can win—generally, in cities with substantial populations of millennials, immigrants, and minorities—a DSA endorsement can make all the difference, producing scads of the most tireless precinct walkers and dedicated phone-bankers. It has made that difference in New York, Chicago, and any number of smaller cities. In nearly every state, and certainly in the nation at large, however, a DSA endorsement would be one more item on the bill of particulars the Republicans would hurl at the Democratic nominee in hopes of revving up more of their right-wing base. In every encounter with reporters, the nominee would be pressed about DSA’s endorsement. Just as well, says my consultant mind, that DSA takes a pass—particularly since I have no doubt most of my fellow members will end up helping that Democratic nominee in states where that help matters. Read the essay https://prospect.org/article/what-socialists-just-did-and-why  Media coverage of the DSA convention. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/06/democratic-socialists-us-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2019/08/06/the-trailer-they-re-open-to-candidates-other-than-bernie-sanders/5d484b6288e0fa1454f8014e/ DSA convention and North Star made the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialists-america.html#click=https://t.co/gEt9EpBBJn --  Michael Harrington Harold Meyerson, I was present for a speech Harrington gave to the 1983 convention of the UAW where he told delegates their enemies weren’t Mexican workers but the companies that pitted workers against each other. The delegates were largely silent at first, but as Harrington’s logic unfolded and his passion exploded, they raised the roof with their cheers. Harrington died in 1989, just sixty-one years old. He did not succeed in building a mass socialist organization — that would require two decades more of capitalism’s erosion of democracy and economic security, the crash of 2008, and the elite recovery that followed. But no one who’d read Mike’s writing or heard him speak could be completely surprised at the instability and cruelty of capitalism, nor by the current democratic-socialist surge against the devastation that capitalism has wrought. In a time when America and the world were moving rightwards, Harrington kept the socialist flame burning, and fitted the socialist idea to the global challenges of the twenty-first century. Maurice Isserman, Maxine Phillips and I each have Mike stories up on Jacobin's website today: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-dsoc-democratic-socialism https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-democratic-socialism https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-legacy-maxine-phillips The North Star Caucus is a group of DSA members, democratic socialists, who share a broad outlook around the political questions that face DSA and the broader US left. We are not a faction, a group wanting to take over DSA and remake it in our own image. See our statement of principles.
We believe that defeating Trump and the Republican agenda is the most pressing political priority facing the U.S. left today. North Star Endorsed DSA Convention Resolutions There is a large number of resolutions proposed for discussion at the 2019 DSA Convention, many of which have merit. In particular, North Start urges votes for the following four resolutions: Resolution #5: Defense of Immigrants and Refugees Resolution #13: Defeating Trump, Trumpism, and Electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives. Resolution #27: Proposed 2019-2020 National Priorities for DSA. Resolution #34: Ecosocialist Green New Deal Priority. North Star Endorsed NPC Candidates Based on discussions both within North Star and with other DSA members, North Star endorses the following candidates for the 2019 - 2021 NPC. They are listed in order of our recommended ranking: Rank order is important. 1. Russell Weiss-Irwin 2. Maikiko James 3. Timothy Zhu 4. Abdullah Younus 5. Hannah Allison 6. Kristian Hernandez 7. Theresa Alt 8. Jose A. Perez 9. Blanca Estevez 10. Dave Pinkham 11. Natalie Midiri 12. Marsha Niemeijer 13. Marianela D’Aprile 14. Megan Svoboda 15. Rachel Zibrat 16. Daniel Merrill  An appeal by the DSA National Immigrant Rights Working Group
The National Immigrant Rights Working Group (NIRWG)of the Democratic Socialists of America calls on DSA members and all working people to mobilize in support of actions such as the Lights for Liberty Vigils to End Human Detention Camps on July 12, the demonstrations organized in San Diego and elsewhere by the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps and the July 13 Action to End Criminalization, Detention, & Deportations in Chicago. Trump's attacks on the human rights of the most vulnerable has once again galvanized the nation's conscience. We should make this the beginning of a concerted drive against immigration detention and child abuse, as well as the unjust immigration system that has empowered Trump's racist attacks as well as the campaigns to jail and deport the undocumented of past administrations. We urge our members to call for an end to family separation, to concentration camps, to immigration detention, to criminalization, to deportation. The real solution to the immigration crisis is legalization of the undocumented as permanent residents ("green card" status) with the same rights as all other immigrants, including the right to apply for citizenship. NIRWG Steering Committee July 3, 2019 . The Immigrants Rights Working Group Steering Committee asks DSA members and friends to distribute this statement widely through social media, web sites and mailing lists. We urge DSA bodies, such as chapters, steering committees, working groups and convention delegations to discuss and sign on to this statement at http://bit.ly/SupportDSAImmigrationAppeal. A new issue of the DSA publication Socialist Forum has been posted with an emphasis on electoral strategy. Here. https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/spring-summer-2019/electoral-politics-class-formation-and-socialist-strategy/ The editors selected articles that seem not to notice that Latinos participate in politics and there is a pivotable election in 2020. The Latino vote is growing rapidly in key states. 44% of Latino voters are millennials. A second item missing from this article and the selection of articles is a recognition of how important the election of 2020 is to communities of color. I had proposed a piece for Socialist Forum based upon the work of the North Star caucus with such an anti-racism focus. Here is our argument in brief. "Our first priority in this election is the electoral and political defeat of Donald Trump, the Trumpist Republican Party and all of the authoritarian forces aligned with them. The white nationalist authoritarianism of Trumpism poses a ‘clear and present danger’ to working people and their unions, to people of color, to women, to LGBTQIA people, to immigrants, to members of minority religious faiths and to democracy itself. Trumpist victories in the 2020 elections would mean the consolidation of an authoritarian state with the most reactionary politics, the expansion of imperial aggression abroad and the collapse of the political space for democratic and left forces at home. The defeat of Trumpism is thus a strategic imperative, the most important political task of our time. Given the central role of racism, white nationalism and bigotry against immigrants and Muslims in the political agenda of Trumpism, and the echoes of the most shameful racist moments of past U.S. history in Trumpian discourse, a failure to prioritize its defeat would be nothing less than the abandonment of the struggle against racism. " See here. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/proposed-resolution-defeating-trump-trumpism-and-election-democratic-socialists-and-progressives The editors selected articles that seem not to notice that Latinos participate in politics and there is a pivotable election in 2020. A similar argument has been made by members Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson in Portside, ITT, and a number of publications. https://portside.org/2019-04-23/left-strategy-2020-elections-and-beyond They, too proposed a piece for Socialist Forum and it was also not accepted for publication. A strategy for DSA and the left needs to look closely at the potential Latino vote. In 2018 the Latino participation was a relatively low 44%. This vote exists in states critical to the Democratic primary and any Democratic candidates victory. Latinos make up 28 % of Nevada, in Texas, Latinos are 39.6 % of the population, in California 39.3 %, and 21.7 % in Colorado. See Pew for more. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/historic-highs-in-2018-voter-turnout-extended-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/ A strategic direction by DSA should recognize that the electoral victories in 2018 by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and others, and the 2019 election victories in Chicago occur in districts with large Latino and other People of Color voters. Most in the democratic left have recognized this approach since at least the 1988 Rainbow Coalition campaign and it should have been included in the Socialist Forum issue. We have supported the creation, the recreation, of the Socialist Forum. At the same time, we in the North Star Caucus want to be certain that Socialist Forum is fulfilling its mandate to post a wide diversity of views on the topic of electoral participation representing the diversity of views within DSA. DSA needs to incorporate a significant anti-racism agenda in its electoral work . North Star resolutions to start from an anti-racism agenda will be considered at the DSA convention, particularly resolutions 13 and 17. We encourage members and allies to cooperate to pass these resolutions. Latino Vote. Pew https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/historic-highs-in-2018-voter-turnout-extended-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups/ Duane Campbell, Sacramento. DSA North Star Caucus The National Political Committee (NPC) has announced that it will not submit an organizational priorities resolution to the 2019 DSA National Convention. It has entered resolution # 88 to propose that the Convention endorse this decision. If the National Convention were to acquiesce in the NPC’s failure to present proposed organizational priorities to it for its consideration, the result would not be that DSA does not have organizational priorities, but that they will be determined in less democratic and less transparent ways, by subordinate bodies such as the next NPC or by the national staff. This is NOT how a healthy democratic socialist organization should function.
In the absence of an organizational priorities resolution from the NPC, the DSA North Star Caucus has submitted a Priorities Resolution. # 27. Now, the National Convention can debate and democratically decide the direction of the organization over the next year. Our resolution reflects what we believe should be DSA’s priorities, but we would urge other caucuses and individuals who have different priorities to prepare amendments reflecting their views of DSA's priorities, so the National Convention can consider the full range of perspectives in our ranks, and make a democratic decision. Proposed National Priorities for DSA for 2019-2020 WHEREAS for a membership organization to be truly democratic, it is essential that the important decisions about its political positions and its political work be made as close as possible to the membership, with the widest possible discussion and participation; WHEREAS as a democratic socialist organization, DSA has among its first principles the importance of collective action, informed by a strategic assessment of the historical moment in which we find ourselves and what it demands of us, and the necessity of deciding how we act collectively through the most democratic processes; WHEREAS in DSA, the National Convention is established “highest decision making body” in our Constitutions and By-Laws, and has the widest participation of rank-and-file members from across the country; WHEREAS the democratic venue for establishing DSA’s organizational priorities must therefore be the National Convention; if the National Convention does not act, the important decisions over organizational priorities will necessarily devolve to subordinate decision making bodies with less participation, such as the National Political Committee (NPC), or to the national staff, and be less democratic; BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED: THAT this 2019 National Convention of Democratic Socialists of America do hereby establish the top three priorities for our organizational work for the period until to our next annual Convention: Ø Defeating Trump and Trumpism, and Electing Democratic Socialists, as set forth in resolution entitled “Defeat Trump and Trumpism, Elect Democratic Socialists”; Ø Defending Immigrants and Refugees, as set forth in resolution entitled “Addressing Immigration Policy and Defending Immigrants and Refugees”; Ø Promoting the Green New Deal, as set forth in resolution on that subject sponsored by the Eco-Socialist Caucus.  Why we need new economic policies before we can fix trade deals
By STAN SORSCHER (June 10, 2019) — In 2016, Donald Trump’s trade message was very simple: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the worst trade deal ever negotiated. He has renegotiated NAFTA, rebranding the deal as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). We never quite understood his objection to the original NAFTA, and we don’t understand how USMCA fixes it. You need to squint to see the difference between NAFTA and its replacement. “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump has said. His gut instinct said NAFTA was bad. Unfortunately, gut instinct is typically simplistic, often impulsive, and by definition not strategic or coherent. We need to think of our domestic policy and trade policy together. Tariffs, like trade deals, make sense only as tools within a larger coherent strategy. Trade policy should reinforce the principles in our domestic policy. If trade policy is not working, it’s a fair bet that our underlying domestic policies aren’t either. Since 1980, the prevailing political messagehas been, “Markets will solve all our problems. Government is the problem.” The term for this is neoliberalism. “Neo” means new. In the language of economics, “liberal” means “liberated” or free from regulation. Neoliberalism “frees” markets by shrinking government, dismantling social programs, and cutting investment in education and research-and-development. Many of our biggest problems — climate change, growing income inequality, health care, food safety, and workplace safety — are textbook market failures. Neoliberalism responds with its universal prescription — make business succeed and well-being will follow. Read more. Making Sense of NAFTA and Its Replacement.  Andrew Harnik/AP photo by Harold Meyerson In 1916, amid the carnage of World War I, the great German-Polish socialist Rosa Luxemburg wrote that humanity was facing a choice between socialism and barbarism. Earlier today, speaking at the George Washington University, Bernie Sanders noted that we live in a time of rising authoritarianism, citing the regimes of Putin, Xi, Orban, Duterte and Trump as indices of the growing threat. His speech was billed as offering his definition of socialism, which, a la Rosa, was said to be the alternative to oligarchy and authoritarianism. Socialism as Sanders proceeded to define it is indeed an alternative to oligarchy and authoritarianism. What his speech left hanging was whether his socialism was in fact socialism. In 2015, as his campaign was just taking off, Sanders came to a different D.C. university—Georgetown—to deliver what was also then billed as his definition of socialism. Before a crowd of wildly cheering college students, he reeled off a series of social democratic proposals—the universal right to health care, to college education and the like – with constant reference to the great American leader who did indeed lead the successful war against barbarism in the 1940s: Franklin Roosevelt. His speech was so FDR-centric that I wroteat the time: Throughout the 1930s, Republicans claimed that Franklin Roosevelt was really a socialist. Today, Bernie Sanders said they were right. Then, as today, Sanders referenced Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union speech – FDR’s last great speech—in which Roosevelt proposed an Economic Bill of Rights. Today, Sanders formally proposed “a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights,” which included a right to a living-wage job, to “quality health care,” to “a complete education,” to “affordable housing,” to “a clean environment” and to “a secure retirement.” As if citing Roosevelt were not enough, Sanders also cited Harry Truman, whose efforts to create a Medicare for All program in the 1940s were thwarted by conservatives and the medical profession. He quoted Truman, talking about his critics, at length: Socialism [Truman said] is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called Social Security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. Nor did Sanders’s talk simply identify socialism with the social democratic reforms of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal. It also contained two crucial omissions. First, even as Sanders cited Roosevelt and Truman, but he also did not cite any avowed American democratic socialists, save, in passing, Martin Luther King Jr. He made no mention of his great hero, Eugene V. Debs. Nothing on Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party’s candidate for president in each of FDR’s four elections. Nothing on A. Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or Michael Harrington. No reference to Thomas’ line when asked if Roosevelt had actually carried out the Socialist Party’s program. “He carried it out,” Thomas said, “on a stretcher.” Second, Sanders also omitted his own more socialistic proposals. His speech skipped over some groundbreaking social democratic reforms that Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both advocated in the course of the campaign, including dividing corporate boards between shareholder and worker representatives. He made no mention of an American version of the Meidner Plan – a 1970s proposal never quite implemented in Sweden that would gradually transfer the ownership of corporations, through the yearly payment of profits in the form of stock to their employees’ organizations, to their workers. In short, Sanders’s socialism, as he defined it, is an expansion of America’s semi-demi-welfare state to include more economic rights. It’s an effort to make us a more functional social democracy—which, of course, is no small proposal and by American standards, a great leap forward. But he could have made the same proposals and labeled them neo-Rooseveltian liberalism without straining historical accuracy.  By Max B. Sawicky
One way the liberal/radical divide manifests itself is in what might be called the distinction of outcomes from process. Radicals, for instance, tended to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq because we simply rejected the rationale for the policy. Liberals tended to criticize the process under which the invasion was launched – the failure of Congress to declare war, the inability to secure support from the United Nations, the aborted search for “weapons of mass destruction.” So too in the current political situation, liberals tend to focus on the high crimes and misdemeanors of the president, while radicals prefer to center their appeals on behalf of concrete ‘meat-and-potatoes’ demands for Medicare For All, the Fight for 15, or they emphasize foundational social-justice demands in the fights against racism, sexism, and gender-identity bigotry. There is really no reason for this divide. Liberals can be won to democratic socialist goals in health care and the like. The question is whether democratic socialists can wrap our heads around impeachment. The likelihood of continued disenfranchisement of Democratic-leaning voting constituencies, and the increasing extent to which a minority of mostly white, older voters in rural states can outvote a majority of the nation in the Electoral College, not to mention the U.S. Senate, is a grave threat to any elected Democratic president, not to mention to his or her prospects for a fair election. Imagine that a genuinely progressive Democrat wins the White House in 2020. The chances of a Democratic Senate right now look slim. Of the Democrats’ xxx seats in the House, over a hundred have identified with the so-called “New Democrat” label that was mainstreamed by William J. Clinton. Not a few Democratic senators are of a similar ilk. Relatedly, the prospects for a liberal majority on the Supreme Court are also dim. The Socialist Majority Caucus of DSA is proposing the following national convention resolution: http://bit.ly/electoralpriority This is the North Star Caucus's proposed resolution on the same subject: https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/proposed-resolution-defeating-trump-trumpism-and-election-democratic-socialists-and-progressives ? Here is one view: There is nothing objectionable in the Socialist Majority Caucus resolution, but there is something crucially important missing – the necessity of defeating Trump and Trumpism in the 2020 elections. This makes the resolution radically incomplete, an ahistorical discussion of electoral politics that avoids the most central issue of electoral politics of this moment. There is a deference to the political fundamentalism of Momentum/Spring/Bread and Roses and its rhetoric of class struggle electoral politics, even as that caucus absents itself from the decisive class struggle election battles of our day, that leads Socialist Majority to duck the question. And yet there is no more important question for the future of American democracy, the left, and all of the popular forces. The debate over this issue will only take place if we take the lead in making it happen. Leo Casey. A second view. I favor Leo’s view above on Trump and Trumpism, It is difficult to imagin how much damage the Trump cartel has already caused, See, for example, Paul Krugman’s opinion piece in the NYT today on how starting many trade wars: Iran, India, China, Russia, Mexico, the EU has set back our global system. (That avoids the question of how our global system was used to further neoliberalism). And see Michael Lewis, the Fifth Risk, on how the Trump brigades have set back science and the feeding of children, among other items, I do, however, see a reasonable middle ground. We can put all of our efforts in Defeating Trump and Trumpism and electing Democratic Socialists and Progressives. However if Sanders or Warren do not get the nomination, DSA as a national organization does not need to endorse a neoliberal. - like Biden. That does not mean we will not be active in the elections. Today Warren posted a platform on trade that criticizes Trump’s trade wars, argues for fair trade, and critiques neoliberal trade. This is a step ahead on trade. DSA can encourage political participation along a broad spectrum of electoral campaigns. For example, here in California there will be an initiative _ Schools and Communities First- to tax the rich to fund schools and community development, . There will be various Medicare for All campaigns. DSA can engage electorally and lead politically to defeat Trumpism without endorsing a neoliberal Democrat. Duane Campbell What do others think?  DSA’s top three priorities for political work over the next two years, until our next national convention in 2021, will be:
Proposed amendment to the DSA Constitution re Number of NPC Members These resolutions have each received the required number of supporters and have been submitted to the appropriate convention committees. Delegates. Please support these resolutions. Rather than submitting a resolution on number 2 climate change, we chose to support the forthcoming resolution from the Eco Socialist Committee.  The National Political Committee (NPC) has announcedthat it will not submit an organizational priorities resolution to the 2019 DSA National Convention. If the National Convention were to acquiesce in the NPC’s failure to present proposed organizational priorities to it for its consideration, the result would not be that DSA does not have organizational priorities, but that they will be determined in less democratic and less transparent ways, by subordinate bodies such as the next NPC or by the national staff. This is NOT how a healthy democratic socialist organization should function.In the absence of an organizational priorities resolution from the NPC, the DSA North Star Caucus is submitting such a resolution, so the National Convention can debate and democratically decide the direction of the organization over the next year. Our resolution reflects what we believe should be DSA’s priorities, but we would urge other caucuses and individuals who have different priorities to prepare amendments reflecting their views of DSA's priorities, so the National Convention can consider the full range of perspectives in our ranks, and make a democratic decision.
Proposed National Priorities for DSA for 2019-2020 WHEREAS for a membership organization to be truly democratic, it is essential that the important decisions about its political positions and its political work be made as close as possible to the membership, with the widest possible discussion and participation; WHEREAS as a democratic socialist organization, DSA has among its first principles the importance of collective action, informed by a strategic assessment of the historical moment in which we find ourselves and what it demands of us, and the necessity of deciding how we act collectively through the most democratic processes; WHEREAS in DSA, the National Convention is established “highest decision making body” in our Constitutions and By-Laws, and has the widest participation of rank-and-file members from across the country; WHEREAS the democratic venue for establishing DSA’s organizational priorities must therefore be the National Convention; if the National Convention does not act, the important decisions over organizational priorities will necessarily devolve to subordinate decision making bodies with less participation, such as the National Political Committee (NPC), or to the national staff, and be less democratic; BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED: THAT this 2019 National Convention of Democratic Socialists of America do hereby establish the top three priorities for our organizational work for the period until to our next annual Convention:
"Only direct action—or the threat of it—will move the boss." Sara Nelson, the flight attendants union president whose strike threat ended Trump's government shutdown, on building a fighting labor movement. On May 10, 2019, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson gave a speech to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America’s annual Eugene Debs–Lucy Gonzalez Parsons–A. Philip Randolph Dinner. Jacobin reproduced the speech here in full, lightly edited for online publication. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara-nelson-flight-attendants-strikes That spirit is what led flight attendants to declare we wouldn’t work flights that facilitated the Trump Administration’s evil policy of immigrant family separations. And it’s that spirit that led us to take a firm stand during the government shutdown, when millions of people were out of work, others were forced to work without pay, all of us were increasingly unsafe, and our entire economy was on the line. With access to 360 million voters in our workplace, we intend to continue to use the spirit of our union for good. And let me tell you I’m proud to be with you, the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America. You have won some great victories here in this city this year. You have helped elect some incredible leaders. Still, some ignorant political hack or media purveyor of hate is likely talking trash right now about democratic socialists. And here’s what I have to say. Helen Keller was a democratic socialist. And so was Albert Einstein. And so was George Orwell. And Bayard Rustin. And the Reuther family. When Nazi troops came to the Warsaw Ghetto to kill the last Jews left, the men and women on the rooftops who met them with gasoline bombs were democratic socialists, and democratic socialists stood up against dictatorship throughout the twentieth century, they filled Stalin’s camps and Siberian graves. The minimum wage, national health care, worker safety rules, Social Security — before the Great Society and before the New Deal, this was the democratic-socialist agenda. And of course our democratic-socialist working heroes, Eugene Victor Debs, A. Philip Randolph, and Lucy Gonzalez Parsons. The police called Lucy Parsons “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” because of her skills as an orator, organizer, and rabble-rouser. Her cry that only direct action — or the threat of it — will move the boss is a lesson we can all do well to remember. Read more. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara-nelson-flight-attendants-strikes |
blogThe opinions expressed here are those of members and allies of DSA North Star Caucus meant to educate, inspire discussion and encourage comradely debate. Archives
November 2019
|
RSS Feed
