Socialist Alternative Issue 60 - February 2020

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WHAT WE STAND FOR FIGHTING FOR THE 99%

J Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, as a step toward a living wage for all.

J Free, high quality public education for all from pre-school through college. Full funding for schools to dramatically lower student-teacher ratios. Stop the focus on high stakes testing and the drive to privatize public education.

J Free, high quality health care for all. Replace the failed for-profit insurance companies with a publicly funded single-payer system as a step towards fully socialized medicine.

J No budget cuts to education and social services! Full funding for all community needs. A major increase in taxes on the rich and big business, not working people.

J Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed through public works programs to develop mass transit, renewable energy, infrastructure, health care, education, and affordable housing.

J For rent control combined with massive public investment in affordable housing.

J A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid!

J A minimum guaranteed weekly income of $600/week for the unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others unable to work.

J Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to fight for better pay, working conditions, and social services. Full-time union officials should be regularly elected and receive the average wage of those they represent.

J No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership.

J Break the power of Wall Street! For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.

J Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits; share out the work with the unemployed and create new jobs.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

J Fight climate change. Massive public investment in renewable energy and energyefficient technologies to rapidly replace fossil fuels.

J A major expansion of public transportation to provide low fare, high-speed, and accessible transit.

J Democratic public ownership of the big energy companies, retooling them for socially necessary green production. A “Just Transition” for all workers in polluting industries with guaranteed re-training and new living-wage jobs.

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL

J Fight discrimination based on race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, and all other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work.

J Black Lives Matter! Build a mass movement against police brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system. Invest

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in rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons! Abolish the death penalty.

J Defend immigrant rights! Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants.

J Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.

J Defend a woman’s right to choose whether and when to have children. For a publicly funded, single-payer health care system with free reproductive services, including all forms of birth control and safe, accessible abortions. Comprehensive sex education. At least 12 weeks of paid family leave for all. For universal, high quality, affordable and publicly run child care.

J Fight discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community, and all forms of homophobia and transphobia.

MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION, NOT WAR

J End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bring all the troops home now!

J Slash the military budget. No drones. Shut down Guantanamo.

J Repeal the Patriot Act, NDAA, and all other attacks on democratic rights.

BREAK WITH THE TWO PARTIES OF BIG BUSINESS

J For a mass workers party drawing together workers, young people and activists from environmental, civil rights, and women’s campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the corporate parties.

J Unions and other social movement organizations should stop funding and supporting the Democratic and Republican Parties and instead organize independent left-wing, anti-corporate candidates and coalitions as a first step toward building a workers’ party.

SOCIALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM

J Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.No to corporate “free trade” agreements, which mean job losses and a race to the bottom for workers and the environment.

J Solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples internationally: An injury to one is an injury to all.

J Take into public ownership the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the U.S. economy. Run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of the workers and the broader public.

Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small investors, not millionaires.

J A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment. For a socialist United States and a socialist world.

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WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE For most of my life I was under the impression that it didn’t matter who was in office, since the result for working people was all the same. While there is some historical truth to this, the rise of Trump and his base enraged me enough to pay attention. My only source of news at the time was corporate media and, while Bernie’s ideas sounded good, the bourgeois talking point that his platform was utopian and far too expensive worked on me. I voted for Hillary as the best chance of defeating Trump.

After Trump won, I needed direction on what to do next. It did not take long to see through the Democrats’ paper-thin “resistance”, as they blamed Russia, denounced broad working class sections of the country and offered nothing in the way of fightback.

It made no sense to me why an opposition party would be so weak in the face of such an existential threat that the right-wing agenda presents.

Eventually, I was exposed to my first anticapitalist critiques that shed light on why this was the case. In all the years I studied finance and economics in college and at work, I only ever saw analysis that described our current economic system and explained how to work within it. I had never come across any criticism that said the system itself was broken.

In classes and on spreadsheets, labor is reduced to a variable in an equation, completely ignoring the social power working people have over the value produced.

When I discovered the ideas of Marx, I learned the one problem that contains all problems: a small percentage of the global population own everything and exploit the labor of the rest of us to accumulate

Bruce Castonguay Somerville, MA extraordinary wealth. This irrational allocation of the planet’s finite resources negatively affects every aspect of my and all wage workers’ lives, including the now impending collapse of the environment.

The logical question remained: how to fix it? I discovered Socialist Alternative on the streets of Boston at a local union rally. Getting connected to the local branch here has helped me develop politically through studying working class history, theory and actively engaging in the working class struggle. I am a socialist because I now understand the daily violence perpetuated by the status quo, capitalism, and the need to organize workers to fight for a world that works for everyone. J

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2 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

POLITICS

Stop the Escalation Against Iran

No to War in the Middle East George Martin Fell Brown The new year had an ominous beginning, with the assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone attack by the U.S. military near the Baghdad International Airport. This escalation of U.S./Iran tensions created an understandable fear of an even wider conflict. There was widespread discussion among young people about the return of the military draft.

The result of the drone assassination was a further round of tit-for-tat actions between the U.S. and Iran. The Iranian military launched airstrikes against two U.S. bases in Iraq, injuring 11. Trump then introduced new sanctions against Iran and used the threat of tariffs against the U.K., France, and Germany to pressure those governments into publicly condemning Iran. Tensions have since cooled down, but are far from resolved.

The possibility of a widening conflict with Iran is very real, including the danger of this spilling out into a wider regional conflict in the Middle East. Workers and youth in the U.S. and internationally need to build a movement capable of stopping such a development. However, the danger of the U.S./Iran conflict spilling into a world war as devastating as World Wars I and II is not on the table.

Also a ground invasion of Iran, which has twice the population of Iraq, would require an enormous troop mobilization and would provoke mass opposition in the U.S. on a scale probably even greater than during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

U.S. Imperialism The assassination of Soleimani is the latest stage of an offensive by the U.S. against Iran which began with Trump pulling out of the nuclear accord negotiated under Obama. Iran has been economically crushed

by U.S. sanctions going back to the 1980s, but the Trump administration has dramatically escalated tensions with Iran.

The way in which Trump took the decision to launch the attack in itself indicates the erratic nature of his rule. Not only did he ignore Congress, which is supposed to sanction such actions, reports imply that he barely consulted his own advisors. However, the conflict can’t be blamed simply on the personal peculiarities of Donald Trump. This is part of a wider crisis facing U.S. imperialism. The overreach of the “Bush Doctrine” (America as the world’s police) has allowed the growth of rival imperialist powers, like Russia and China, as well as the strengthening of Iran’s role as a regional power.

The Trump administration’s role in the Middle East has been wildly unpredictable.

FEBRUARY 2020

The assassination of Soleimani is not the first time Trump nearly sparked a military conflict with Iran. Another standoff occurred in June of 2019. At the same time, Trump campaigned in the 2016 election under the promise to get the U.S. out of its “endless wars”. Following the June 2019 incident with Iran, Trump dumped his National Security Advisor John Bolton, one of the chief architects behind his hawkish foreign policy. In October, he withdrew troops from Rojava, the Kurdish region in Northeastern Syria, and allowed Turkish and allied forces to enter.

Behind both his warmongering, and his promise to end the “endless wars,” Trump is riding on a growing global wave of nationalism. Trump’s “America First” isolationist policy is, in large part a reaction to the view which exists among ordinary people, a section of the military, and a smaller section of the establishment that the U.S. has gained little from the massive expenditure of economic and military resources in the Middle East.

At the same time, U.S. capitalism cannot afford to withdraw from the Middle East due to ongoing economic and military interests in the region. Trump’s more hawkish actions in the Middle East have been similarly based on an “America First” approach of nakedly protecting those economic interests.

Class Struggle in Iran While socialists oppose U.S. imperialism’s self-declared “right” to assassinate its opponents, no socialist will shed any tears for Qassem Soleimani. He headed the notoriously brutal “Quds force” – the Iranian regime’s military units used for intervention abroad – where he propped up repressive pro-Iran forces in the Middle East. He has been no friend of ordinary people. When students participated in mass demonstrations in Teheran in 1999, Soleimani threatened to organize a military coup to overthrow thenpresident Mohammad Khatami if he didn’t crack down on the protests.

Soleimani’s presence in Iraq involved propping up the pro-Iranian government in the country amidst massive anti-government protests sparked by corruption and lack of jobs. These protests also demanded the end of Iranian influence in the country, and the removal of all foreign forces including the U.S. In Baghdad, Soleimani helped the Iraqi government repress this movement, boasting, “we in Iran know how to deal with protests.” The state repression against the Iraqi protests resulted in hundreds dead and many more wounded.

This however is absolutely no justification for the assassination of the general and his entourage. The assassination of Soleimani has actually helped to bolster support the

After the Iranian government admitted to downing a Ukranian plane, protests against the regime broke out across the country. theocratic Iranian regime which has stepped up its anti-U.S. propaganda, making it more difficult for the protest movement there to continue. In the immediate wake of the assassination Iran saw a wave of protests with hundreds of thousands chanting “Death to America” and carrying portraits of Soleimani.

This occurred as Iran was facing its biggest internal challenge from mass opposition since the 1979 Revolution. In 2017-2018, a mass movement developed, against attacks on working people, but soon spread to challenge the whole theocratic regime of Ali Khamenei. After a lull in 2019, the movement reemerged on a far larger scale, particularly against the lowering of fuel subsidies.

This was met by ferocious repression.

While the assassination has temporarily bolstered popular support for Khamenei’s regime in Iran, it hasn’t completely ended open defiance. After the Iranian military accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, there were widespread protests against the attempted cover-up. Authoritarian regimes will be overthrown and sectarian division overcome across the Middle East through mass struggles of the working class and youth, not through U.S. military intervention.

Build an Anti-War Movement In spite of a recent uneasy calming of tensions, the threat of wider conflict is real, and workers and youth in the U.S. and Iran need to prepare to rebuild an anti-war movement.

Bernie Sanders has correctly condemned the moves towards war with Iran. But other Democratic politicians, including other

presidential primary challengers, have limited themselves to critiquing Trump’s refusal to seek congressional approval, rather than the warmongering itself.

The Democratic Party is not a reliable ally against imperialist intervention. Before Trump, it was the Obama administration that normalized the practices of using combat drones to carry out assassinations, using the euphemism “targeted killings.” The assassination of Soleimani went further in that it was directed against a key figure of a sovereign nation, while Obama’s assassinations were directed against members of al-Qaeda.

Less than a month before Soleimani’s assassination, the Democratic-controlled house voted for a $22 billion increase in “defense” spending while voting down an amendment that would have prohibited the Trump administration from using any funds to launch an unauthorized, offensive war against Iran.

We need to build a mass anti-war movement. High-profile individuals like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez should use their profile to mobilize mass anti-war demonstrations in response to further escalation by Trump.

The working classes in the U.S. and Iran have more in common with each other than with any imperialist or theocratic government.

Such a movement should stand in solidarity with the mass working-class movements in Iran and Iraq. Through mass working-class solidarity we can challenge U.S. imperialism as well as the authoritarian governments across the Middle East. More importantly we can end the capitalist system that lays the foundation for war, imperialism, and state repression. J

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S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N AT I V E I N A C T I O N

Tax Amazon:

Make Billionaires Pay! Eva Metz In an electrifying rally on January 13, 500 people rallied to celebrate Councilmember Sawant’s inauguration and launch the Tax Amazon campaign. A poll taken shortly after the Seattle election showed 75% support for taxing Seattle’s biggest business. The mandate to Tax Amazon could hardly be stronger.

We need to strike while the iron is hot, which is why we are preparing the ground for a powerful Tax Amazon struggle in 2020.

As we enter a new decade, millions of working people are looking to fight back against the wealthy elite who are destroying our lives and our world for their own megaprofits. Since the 2008 financial crash, a period of record-long economic growth has made those at the top richer than ever, while almost half of all Americans work low-wage jobs. Inequality is now at the highest level ever recorded in the United States.

This inequality is particularly stark in the corporate tax haven of Seattle, a city in a state with the most regressive tax structure in the entire country. The Seattle metro area is home to the two richest men in the world (Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos), as well as the nation’s highest homeless population per capita.

Seattle has been the construction crane capital of the U.S. for four years running, but of an estimated 31,000 new market-rate apartments built from 2008-2017, 92% were luxury units. As for-profit developers and big corporations like Amazon rake in record profits, working people are rapidly being priced out of our city.

On the heels of a city council election in which working people defeated Amazon’s attempts to steamroll in their corporate candidates, there is powerful momentum for a strong tax on Seattle’s biggest corporations to fund a major expansion of social housing — publicly-owned, high quality, affordable, green and energy-efficient homes for working people, built by union labor. Like rent control, social housing has played a key role in providing a lifeline of housing stability and affordability where it has been won.

Energy-efficient housing for workers near the city center is also a key part of a Green New Deal with the potential to dramatically reduce emissions caused by long commutes and outdated, inefficient home heating and energy systems.

Lessons from Past Struggles Some argue that we should not call it an “Amazon Tax,” saying that this will provoke a backlash from big business that could confuse ordinary people. But we must be absolutely clear: Seattle’s biggest businesses will fight tooth and nail against any form of

progressive taxation, as they always have – we won’t pull the wool over Jeff Bezos’ eyes simply by calling it by another name! Our job is to make it as clear as possible what we are calling for – not another regressive tax on working- class families, but one exclusively aimed at giant corporations like Amazon.

The recent election results in Seattle and the massive support for Bernie Sanders’ campaign prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that working people are inspired to fight by bold, audacious demands rather than a “playing nice” approach.

We should have no doubt that corporate politicians will aim to release the pressure valve of our movement’s momentum into a watered-down, weakened plan.

During the first round of our Tax Amazon struggle in 2018, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, elected on a record sum of corporate cash from Amazon, and other corporatefunded politicians whittled down the tax from the original demand of $150 million to an eventual $48 million on the grounds that the smaller tax would be more palatable to big business. And when big business launched a ballot initiative to repeal the tax, instead of fighting back, the City Council majority (with just the exceptions of Councilmembers Mosqueda and Sawant) rapidly caved. We cannot let these mistakes be repeated. We must always be clear that we are fighting for a tax on Seattle’s biggest businesses, NOT on working people.

We start out 2020 with Seattle’s corporate elites bruised, and Bezos’ aggressive bullying tactics blatantly exposed. Amazon’s attempts to buy Seattle’s elections this past year completely backfired, with their top target, socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant, surging to a decisive victory. After working people in New York defeated a $3 billion handout for Amazon’s HQ2, Amazon announced that they were moving to New York anyway (as they clearly had intended to do all along), highlighting the hollowness of their attempted extortion. The backlash has even spread globally, with recent protests in

Tax Amazon 2020 launch on January 13.

India against Bezos’ plans to take over the country’s e-commerce market.

Jeff Bezos won’t easily accept another loss. They recognize that a victory for a strong Amazon Tax would reverberate internationally, inspiring working people to demand more.

Some may wonder whether focusing our demand on Amazon will antagonize the over 50,000 Amazon workers in the Seattle region, or the millions of ordinary people – 75% of all online shoppers – who regularly shop on Amazon because it is cheap and convenient.

We should always be careful to be clear that we are on the same side as Amazon workers and shoppers. When Amazon dropped $1 million in the final weeks of the 2019 Seattle City Council race, it was tech workers – many of them Amazon workers – who led the surge in grassroots donations to Sawant.

We must base ourselves on the question: what will inspire thousands of working people to get active? How can our struggle win? Both in Seattle and nationwide, working people feel that it’s time to finally make billionaires pay. As we saw at the Tax Amazon 2020 launch, there is the potential to galvanize a powerful fightback against the domination of big business with a bold demand to tax Amazon and big business.

What Strategy for Our Movement?

Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s office and Socialist Alternative are bringing together Seattle’s most fighting unions, community, progressive, housing and environmental justice organizations around a fighting strategy to Tax Amazon. Councilmember

Sawant’s office is preparing legislation for an Amazon Tax in Seattle that the City Council could either pass as an ordinance or put on the ballot for a vote in November. But we absolutely cannot afford to put our faith in the political establishment. That’s why we are also immediately preparing to file a grassroots ballot initiative in February, which could be put to the November ballot if the City Council fails to pass a strong Amazon Tax. This strategy was successfully used to win the first $15 an hour minimum wage in a major U.S. city in Seattle in 2014.

Our movement also faces important questions about how much this tax can raise and what tax mechanism should be used.

These questions must be addressed not on the basis of what’s acceptable to the political establishment, but on the basis of what working people need, and what we can win.

In San Francisco, working people just won a $300 million annual tax on big business. With the powerful momentum for our Tax Amazon 2020 struggle, we should aim at something much larger than 2018’s $48 million tax, in the range of $200 million to $500 million. King County estimates that $480 million is needed to address the housing crisis, and we should fight for the largest tax which we think we could win at the ballot.

And while most working people are not concerned about the wonky particulars, the decision of which tax mechanism to use should be based on ensuring a tax only on Seattle’s biggest businesses, NOT small businesses.

Starting on January 25, we plan to organize a series of grassroots democratic conferences to discuss different proposals for our tax and organize the fighting strategy needed to win.J

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S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N AT I V E I N A C T I O N

Why Labor Should Support Bernie Ryan Timlin, President of ATU Local 1005 (personal capacity) Our unions are at a crossroads with attacks on our rights and living standards from the right-wing and anti-worker Trump administration. As more and more workers are prepared to get organized, take action and even strike, Bernie Sanders is the candidate that best speaks in favor of working people with his demands for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and tuition-free college.

These issues speak to the members in my union, ATU Local 1005, Minnesota public transit workers, because a workers’ Green New Deal could potentially provide millions of good union jobs that can build the sustainable economy we need. Increasing public transit service is critical to a Green New Deal. Having Medicare for All would guarantee quality health care to all union members while removing it from the bargaining table, increasing our negotiating capacity to demand other things like increased wages and better safety.

“Organizer-In-Chief” Bernie has said that if elected president he will be “Organizer-in-Chief” and that if there is going to be a class war in this country, it’s time that workers won that class war against the billionaires. He has backed up this strong rhetoric with proposals that include the right of public sector workers to

organize and bargain collectively, banning the permanent replacement of striking workers, and re-legalizing sympathy strikes. While anti-union laws are barriers to be overcome in Sanders’ project to “double union membership” nationally, the raised confidence of workers across all industries to take collective action, and relentlessly organize for their rights, will be the underpinning to fundamental shift of power from the corporate elite to the working class.

The main question for union endorsements should be; which candidate will help build the biggest fightback against the bosses? I know that the answer is clearly Bernie. However, the leaderships of many of the biggest unions and labor federations seem to only want to “sit out” the primary for the Democratic candidate and wait to endorse whoever gets the nomination for the general election against Trump.

This “wait and see” approach seems to be an attempt at a correction for the mistakes made in 2015. The mistake wasn’t endorsing too early, the mistake was endorsing the corporate candidate while limiting the decision to leadership only, instead of democratically opening up the endorsement process to the membership where after proper discussion and debate many unions would have voted to endorse Bernie.

Many union leaders will agree that Bernie is the best candidate for us, but will argue that we only need to defeat Trump and will want to save resources to fully back whoever gets the nomination. This argument forgets the experience from 2016. If the Democrats again nominate a corporate centrist candidate, working people will again not be motivated enough to come out and vote.

A Crossroads for the Labor Movement Unions need to take advantage of this opportunity. The candidate with the strongest labor program is also the candidate with the best chance of defeating Trump and big business. The situation is urgent and the labor movement can’t afford to sit anything out, or back another procorporate candidate who will alienate working people. The labor movement needs to throw its weight against the march to war and against the climate change denials.

It is critical that we take this opportunity to strengthen the labor movement after decades of corporate attacks that have undermined the power of unions and workers.

Bernie runs on a slogan of “Not me, Us” which points to the movement based approach that is necessary. Implementing Bernie’s progressive program will take a labor movement that goes beyond this election by bringing together all the unions with the best activists and organizers who want to fight for the whole working class.

Organize for Bernie Everywhere At ATU Local 1005’s last general membership meeting, a rank-and-file member introduced a resolution for a vote that our local endorse Bernie. We think it is important for our union members to take this opportunity to have a serious discussion and debate the proposal for the local to endorse Bernie.

His supporters in all unions can start Bernie caucuses and work to introduce similar resolutions, motivating appeals at general membership meetings for their union to endorse

Southern California Labor for Bernie.

Bernie.

Bernie’s campaign has launched Union Members for Bernie and union activists are continuing to organize independent networks like Labor for Bernie across the country. It is critical that unions throw their weight behind these initiatives and get organized now and not wait.

Bringing together unions and labor activists linked up across the country who support Bernie can lay the basis for future movements against the billionaire class. After the primary, win or lose, Bernie should call a conference of his supporters to found a membership organization of workers and young people, union and non-union, to fight against the billionaire class. I would argue that this should lay the basis for what is really needed; a new party for working people independent of corporate influence with a movement building character and democtractic structures. J

Socialist Alternative in Action: Sanders Campaign Following our tremendous election victory in Seattle in November - beating Amazon and the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos - Socialist Alternative is now focusing our national efforts on building the movement behind Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

In Boston, where our members are active in a number of unions, we are organizing Labor for Bernie events. In late January, we hosted an Educators for Bernie meeting where we invited many Somerville paraprofessionals who are currently in a pitched battle for a fair contract (see page 10).

In Pittsburgh, we recently hosted a public meeting with members of the United Electrical Workers, Roofers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, FEBRUARY 2020

American Federation of Teachers, United Steel Workers, and more. We are also organizing regular barnstorms to get Bernie on the ballot in Pennsylvania.

Bernie’s campaign has been waging a war to win California, and we are enthusiastically participating in that effort. In East Oakland we have organized weekly door knocks and have been met with extraordinary enthusiasm.

In Chicago, we have hosted a series of phone banking sessions that have brought dozens of people out. We’ve started out these sessions with a brief political introduction about why it’s critical for socialists to support Bernie and how we can build a working-class movement for his ideas.

In addition to the cities listed above, we’ve

organized and participated in canvasses and events for Bernie in New York City, Houston TX, Grand Rapids MI, Cincinnati and Columbus OH, Portland OR, Philadelphia PA, Madison WI, and more!

We are using our work in the Sanders campaign to talk to working-class and young people about the need for distinctly workingclass, socialist politics. We have highlighted the stark differences between him and the rest of the Democratic primary field which is made up mostly of a variety of status quo politics. Bernie’s class struggle approach represents the only serious antidote to Trump’s reactionary regime.

We have also highlighted when talking to people about Bernie the immense hostility he

faces from the Democratic Party’s corporate leadership. A campaign and approach like Bernie’s will never be acceptable to the Democratic establishment and the obstacles put in his path will only mount as his campaign gains momentum. We believe that in order for Bernie’s program to become reality, we need a political party based on working people and young people to fight for it outside the Democratic Party.

As early voting begins, our efforts to win the biggest working class support for Bernie’s campaign will ramp up. Follow us on Instagram (@socialist_alternative), Facebook (Socialist Alternative), and Twitter (@socialistalt) to stay up to date with our campaigning and get involved with Socialist Alternative! J

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Five Years Since Ferguson and Baltimore

Black Lives Matter and the F Eric Jenkins In 2014, a black teenager was shot by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri. His name was Michael Brown Jr., and law enforcement officer Darren Wilson fired six bullets into him – one through the right eye in a downwards direction. He was 18 years old and bound for college.

The death of Mike Brown sparked mass protests across the country. The city of Ferguson erupted into passionate rage. In spite of a wave of multiracial protests across the country, a grand jury decided to not indict Darren Willson for the murder of Mike Brown. Working people in Ferguson went into the streets. The Ferguson police responded with rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets.

Mike Brown’s death and the Ferguson rebellion was the spark of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The black working class of Ferguson sparked the rebellion that took aim not just at racist policing but at rampant inequality. In 2014, Ferguson’s median household income per capita was around only a wretched $21,000. In 2012, about one in every four residents lived below the poverty line. Ferguson was entrenched in poverty. This poverty is a cruel fact of life in every ghetto in the United States due to low wages, mass incarceration, and lack of affordable housing.

Segregation and poverty are not new realities in the U.S., but they have been massively reinforced in the neo-liberal era beginning in the 80s with the decimation of good union jobs for black workers and the enormous growth of inequality, which hits black and brown people hardest. Things got even worse in the aftermath of the 2008 crash and collapse of the subprime housing loan market, which led to a massive loss of wealth in black communities. Nor did the change in rhetoric under the first black president make any real change, although it encouraged young people to hope for and demand more.

The underlying reality was summarized in a 2018 Urban League study: “To put a number on it, African-Americans are at 72.5 percent – less than three-fourths – when it comes to achieving equality with white Americans, according to the study, which addressed economics, health, education, civic engagement and social justice” (U.S. News And World Report, 5/4/2018).

The American Nightmare Black Lives Matter began as President Obama declared a “post-racial” America.

The moment protests broke out in Ferguson, Obama began to condemn the “violence” of the protesters while mincing words when it came to law enforcement ripping young people away from their families.

Many positive things were won by the grassroots movement of young black community organizers. Body cameras, community policing, and other reforms spread across the country on the back of an increasingly militant rebellion against the racist status quo.

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However, many of these reforms have fallen short.

Killer cops in this country are still generally untouchable – indictments are rare and guilty verdicts are even more so. Nearly a thousand people were shot and killed by police in 2019 in the United States, virtually the same amount as in 2015.

David Jones, a black man in Philadelphia, was killed in 2017 by officer Ryan Pownall for nothing more than riding a dirtbike. Atatiana Jefferson, a 28 year old black woman living in Texas, was killed this year by police. Ferguson is still deep in poverty with the median income still around the same level as in 2014.

Another longer term trend reinforced by BLM is the decline of the number of people incarcerated, especially in federal prisons, partly due to sentencing reform. But this should not obscure the reality that the U.S. still has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, disproportionately black and brown.

The failure to achieve more decisive change on the core issues of policing and criminal justice generally was a serious setback for the Black Lives Matter movement. The election of Trump and his reactionary regime made it clear that any opposition toward law enforcement would be met with serious repression.

An example of this is the passing of the “Blue Lives Matter” bill by congress in 2018, which made assaulting police a federal hate crime. The bill reinforces the ability of cops to use the excuse of being threatened by black youth, such as Mike Brown, or feigning being assaulted, such as George Zimmerman had done with the killing of Trayvon Martin.

On top of all of this misery, over the past five years a number Ferguson activists have been mysteriously found dead with single bullet wounds through their heads. All of these factors contributed to a mood of hopelessness and despair.

A broader issue that faced the Black Lives Matter movement from the beginning was the need to more deeply root itself in the black working class and to take up and fight around all the issues facing people. This approach would have helped to spur the building of a wider multiracial workers movement against all the attacks of the ruling class.

During the height of Black Lives Matter, Socialist Alternative sought to connect the demand to end police repression to a wider program including a “guaranteed quality jobs with a $15 an hour minimum wage, as well as a massive investment in public education,

Protesters march in Ferguson on August 14, 2014 transit, health care, and other economic services paid for by taxes on the super-rich and corporations.” Some of these demands were taken up by the movement in Boston and elsewhere.

Building a Sustained Movement against Racism and Capitalism There is an urge today to re-ignite the fight for black liberation, this time with a sharper political edge. It’s shown with the protests in response to the acquittal of the cop killing of Anthony Smith in St. Louis as protesters chanted “No Justice, no profits.” It can also be seen with the huge amount of support for Bernie Sanders among young black people – black women in particular. A recent example was the Dream Defenders, a racial justice organization formed initially after the murder of Trayvon Martin, endorsing Bernie Sanders for President.

Young organizers of the once emerging BLM movement have learned lessons from Barack Obama’s administration which expressed sympathy for protestors but did very little to push for serious reform. In reality, in the big cities where a large section of the black population lives, it is generally the Democratic Party establishment, including its black representatives, who have overseen decades of police terror and entrenched segregation.

The corporate identity politics that have propelled the likes of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have also been shown to represent a dead end for working class people. Obama who consistently supports the neoliberal, anti-working class agenda of the Democratic

establishment now wags his finger at Sanders for going “too far left” and has threatened to weigh in to help block Bernie from winning the nomination.

What is needed is a fundamentally working class movement and a rejection of the neoliberal policies of the Democratic and Republican parties – one that is based around a program like Sanders’ and uses class struggle methods. Imagine the #Red4Ed, climate change, and black liberation movements combined with sections of the organized labor movement to jointly shut down points of production! It would cause a ripple effect across the world and mark a tremendous advancement of the class struggle in the United States.

Already we see the huge role played by black and brown workers in the recent wave of labor struggles, including in the #Red4Ed movement, as well as strikes by hotel workers, grocery workers and more recently the auto workers strike at GM. These strikes give visible expression to the reality that the labor movement and the working class itself is more racially diverse than ever.

The deaths of Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and many others are reminders of the task at hand. It’s not enough to jail killer cops. We need to bring an end to the capitalist system that has trapped us in a cycle of poverty and violence. A workers government, in which the economy is run by the multi-racial, multi-gender working class, would lay the basis for a socialist society free from racism, sexism and all forms of oppression. This is the real way to honor the legacy of all the victims of police violence and this racist system. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

Fight for Black Freedom Reprint

Where Do We Go From Here? After the Baltimore Rebellion We reprint below an article we wrote in the aftermath of the Baltimore Rebellion in April 2015, one of the key events in the Black Lives Matter uprising.

Eljeer Hawkins (June 2015) The announcement by Baltimore’s top prosecutor Marilyn Mosby that six Baltimore law enforcement officers will be charged in the death of Freddie Gray, followed by the announcement of the Department of Justice investigation of the city’s notorious police department, was greeted with celebration by the black community of Baltimore as a vindication of their claims of systemic abuse and racism. The decision by Mosby is a welcome and important short term victory for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, black working class, and youth of Baltimore. But this is a long way from securing a conviction.

A Revolt against Austerity “The U.S. is more segregated by race and income now than in 1960.”

- CUNY Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore The death of Freddie Gray was the final straw for the working class and poor of Baltimore. Baltimore is home to the Ravens football team, Orioles baseball team, and Johns Hopkins, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.

The downtown and Inner Harbor area of Baltimore has been transformed into a picturesque landscape for all to marvel.

But the black working class and poor of Baltimore have been force-fed a horrific cocktail of neoliberal capitalism, police surveillance, and prison state conditions. Conditions for the

black population in Baltimore, the twentieth largest city in the U.S., are comparable to southern Jim Crow conditions a century ago.

The statistics are shocking. Baltimore had the secondlargest foreclosure rate behind Florida during the bursting of the housing bubble and great recession in 2007-08; 40,000 housing units and 16,000 homes are vacant. This is coupled with a legacy of housing discrimination for black workers that dates back to the early 20th century. Fifty percent of Baltimore’s homes are burnt-out, dating back to the rebellion of 1968 following the assassination of Dr. King. Homelessness is a bitter reality for 30,000 people. The median income is $24,000 a year. Low wage jobs and 19% unemployment are the dominant features in this 63% black city.

For the next three years in Baltimore, water rates will be raised a total of 37%; thousands are threatened with having their water cut off if they can’t pay these outrageous increases. To compound the dire situation, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, diverted 68 million dollars from the Baltimore schools system to shore up the statewide pension system while state officials approved 30 million dollars for a new 60 bed youth jail.

These conditions are presided over by a democratic black Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and a black-led city council, black police commissioner and majority black police department. The root of this crisis is the complete failure of the Baltimore political establishment to address the desperate social conditions in poor communities while carrying out the gentrification and “development” agenda of big business.

The top 0.01% have been profiting hand over fist from this unspeakable misery. The seeds of the rebellion are embedded in this classic example of disaster capitalism.

What Strategies to Fight Racism and Poverty?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Watts Rebellion in LA. The explosions of Watts and in many other urban areas in the mid to late ‘60s were the culmination of the failure of the Civil Rights movement to liberate the Northern ghettos after defeating Jim Crow in the South. President Johnson’s “war on poverty” was a concession to the movement but it did not fundamentally change the underlying systemic problems faced by the generation of African Americans who migrated to the north in the ‘20s and ‘40s to escape rural poverty, white supremacy, violence, and Jim Crow.

Today, some would argue that the “riot” or rebellion is a much-needed action to confront this daily onslaught by big business. Clearly, the rebellion of the youth in Baltimore had an effect in winning the indictments. At the initial stage of the rebellion the ruling elite was on the defensive. However, the rebellion was quickly put down by the state sponsored curfew, violence, harassment, and illegal detention of the youth.

Then the corporate media and political establishment moved into action, demonizing the mainly black youth as “thugs” and “looters.” This rebellion was a visceral reaction to the denial of justice, endemic racism and lack of answers to the cause of Freddie Gray’s death. While understanding the anger, and the dire conditions that sparked the rebellion, are “riots” a way to defeat the endemic problems of police brutality, racism and poverty that dominate the inner cities like Baltimore?

While “riots” can have a shock effect, they fail to provide a way forward to address the underlying causes of racism and poverty and racism. Socialist Alternative advocates taking that raw energy and potential power of the black working class, poor, youth and channeling it in a sustaining mass movement. As Dr. King stated, “One day, we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

The crucial task is building a mighty force rooted in the working class that will challenge the ideas of capitalism and racism and mobilize people around clear and far-reaching demands. Powerful movements like the civil rights and the militant labor movement struggles of the 1930s and ’40s are what truly frightens the ruling elite. It wasn’t the “riots” or rebellions that brought an end to Jim Crow in the South, but uncompromising and organized social struggle at home and abroad that forced the hand of the U.S. political establishment.

Are the Ferguson and Baltimore rebellions the new normal for U.S. society? As long as the conditions remain the same, the working class and poor will rebel against the tyranny of the 0.01%. Baltimore’s State Attorney Marilyn Mosby represents a sector of the ruling elite that believes that police violence against people of color has gone too far. Another section of the ruling elite fears that victories will give the movement confidence and a point of reference for future struggles for housing, education, and jobs, and seeks to repress any emerging struggles. J

Protest in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray FEBRUARY 2020

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POLITICS

Escalate the Fight to Defend Reproductive Rights Alicia Salvadeo In March the U.S. Supreme Court will hear June Medical Services v. Gee, a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of their facility. This would effectively shut down nearly all of the state’s remaining abortion clinics.

The Supreme Court struck down a similar law in 2016 and could rule similarly this time, with Chief Justice John Roberts again voting with the liberal wing, as he did when the Court decided to temporarily stay June one year ago; but this is by no means certain.

After Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, rightwing forces have clearly felt the wind in their sails with a conservative majority, and anti-abortion groups have ramped up their offensive against reproductive rights.

Last year, nine states passed restrictive abortion bills throughout the south and midwest in the hopes of igniting a relitigation over Roe. Meanwhile, Trump’s pending “gag rule” aims to bar federal Title X funding to any clinics providing pro-choice reproductive and contraceptive care. This would jeopardize access to other critical health services, like cancer screenings and HIV tests, and would disproportionately impact low-income individuals, people of color, LGBTQ people, and rural patients.

Struggle From Below Needed To Win Despite these intensified attacks, this

year’s Women’s Marches were far smaller and fewer as Trump enters his fourth year as president. The Democratic Party has done everything to point movements exclusively toward the ballot box, perpetually deferring an urgently needed fightback that will never come from the party leadership. Mainstream women’s organizations have fallen in line, clinging to defensive legalistic strategies and relying solely on the courts rather than on the power of an organized, militant women’s movement to challenge the rightwing establishment. Such a mass movement first won abortion rights in the 1970s, despite a conservative Supreme Court majority under Republican President Nixon.

While we are not yet seeing the organized women’s movement we need, class struggle in the US is on the rise, offering methods of organized collective struggle that can empower the women’s movement against a universally exploitative system. Many of the recent strikes have been led by women, from #RedForEd to the hotel strikes; the latter featured men and women fighting side by side against sexual harassment on the job, as did #MeToo walkouts amongst tech workers.

Defend The Right to Choose: Fight for Medicare for All! Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation covers “comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care.” By repealing the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funding for abortions, it ensures abortion care is

Pro-choice activists counter-protest the anti-choice “March for Life” outside the Supreme Court, January 18. free and accessible to all working people.

This would be a massive step forward alongside a proposed Women’s Health Protection Act, which prohibits states from enacting restrictive abortion laws.

But the Democratic Party establishment has made it clear they have no intention of allowing Medicare for All to pass. Even Elizabeth Warren, under the pressure of the party’s moderate and corporate agenda, has begun to drop her calls for Medicare for All, not mentioning it once during the most recent presidential debate.

The National Nurses Union, which has endorsed Sanders and his program, as well as unions which have recently gone on strike

over the rising healthcare costs, are also instrumental to leading and organizing a formidable multi-gender movement with working class leadership. Days of mass action and democratic conferences to strategize the way forward can prepare the ground for escalating tactics that can win comprehensive Medicare for All, the Women’s Health Protection Act, and other massive reforms like the Green New Deal. Such decisive victories would further embolden the women’s and workers’ movements in the U.S. and worldwide to take on the billionaire class’s stranglehold on society, and fight for a socialist future. J

Lessons of the Afghanistan Papers Kailyn Nicholson Tens of thousands of Afghan civilian deaths. Over 2,000 American soldiers killed.

Over one trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars spent.

The staggering costs of US military engagement in Afghanistan since 2001 take on an even greater weight in light of the complete lack of coherent strategy and public deception spanning three presidential regimes revealed by the Afghanistan Papers, a trove of government documents obtained by the Washington Post in December 2019.

In their responses, U.S. politicians and media have focused on condemning the revelations of how officials under presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump intentionally misled the American public about the amount of progress being made in Afghanistan towards establishing a “stable, democratic state.”

Such deception exposes the sham of “government by the people” in capitalist America.

However, the larger indictment of the

U.S. government and military lies in what it is exactly they were trying to hide: decades of continual dysfunction, instability, and widespread violence across Afghanistan as a direct result of U.S. intervention. U.S. counterinsurgent strategy was described by one interviewee as “colonial” in its lack of concern for ordinary Afghans. Other interviewees describe a widespread tolerance of “warlordism”, tens of billions spent in “development aid” with little to show for it except massive corruption, and a total absence of any coherent long-term strategy.

One interviewee stated “If we think our exit strategy is to either beat the Taliban – which can’t be done given the local, regional, and cross border circumstances – or to establish an Afghan government that is capable of delivering good government to its citizens using American tools and methods, then we do not have an exit strategy because both of those are impossible.”

Putting the lives of thousands of

overwhelmingly young, working class American soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians on the line for a war with no clear objective and no functional on-the-ground strategy is an appalling abuse of power. And for what? Who are the beneficiaries of this scheme? The war in Afghanistan was about U.S. imperialism using the opportunity created by the terrorist attack of 9/11 to reassert its “right” to intervene militarily in the Middle East. The war in Afghanistan in turn paved the way for the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

The decades of bloodshed and chaos have massively enriched U.S. weapons manufacturers, military and DOD contractors, and helped two U.S. presidential administrations whip up patriotic support and deflect criticism from their domestic policy ahead of elections.

Today, as Donald Trump threatens to drag the U.S. into an escalating military engagement with Iran and boosts U.S. troop levels on the ground throughout the Middle East,

the lessons of the Afghanistan papers could not be more relevant. Trump himself once warned on Twitter that a “weak” president might provoke military conflict with Iran to “look tough” heading into reelection. Trump now seems determined to continue the precedent set by Presidents Bush and Obama of treated the Middle East like a giant game of “Risk” in order to seek domestic political advantage.

However, fully drawing out these lessons requires elected officials from either party to admit to catastrophic failures by a former president from their own party.

Avoiding a terrific escalation of the conflict in the Middle East will require a mighty anti-war movement here in the U.S. backed up by working class and young people, veterans, and the labor movement, and linked up with working class people in the Middle East in a joint struggle against their own national ruling class and the forces of imperialism. J

8 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Australian Bushfires Lead to AntiGovernment Protests Based on reports

by Socialist Action (CWI Australia) Demonstrations swept Australia in January as tens of thousands turned out against Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government in the wake of the bushfire crisis.

Since September, the bushfires in Australia have gripped the world’s attention.

Record-breaking heat waves and months of drought created the conditions for massive blazes across the country. The scale of the fires is unprecedented, affecting every state on the continent. At the time of writing, almost 25 million acres have burned – over six times the size of the 2019 fires in the Amazon rainforest.

As this disaster unfolds, the LiberalNational coalition government is asleep at the wheel. Like Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Prime Minister Scott Morrison holidayed in Hawaii during a state of emergency, prompting widespread public condemnation. To many people, Morrison’s holiday summed up the callous attitude of a government that refuses to do anything about global warming even as its effects become undeniable.

At the demonstrations, protesters chanted for Morrison to step down, for an increase in fire service funding, and for drastic action on climate change. National estimates say over 100,000 turned out, a significant attendance

relative to Australia’s small population of 25 million.

January 10, was designated a national day of action. In Sydney up to 50,000 took part, more than attended recent climate strikes.

Meanwhile in Melbourne somewhere around 30,000 participated despite hours of pouring rain.

Follow up protests of several thousand took place in major capital cities again in the week after. Demonstrators came out in Sydney on Wednesday evening, in Brisbane, Adelaide, and Canberra on Friday evening and in Melbourne and Perth on Saturday.

What We Call For These mass mobilizations are indicative of the simmering anger in society that must be harnessed to build a serious movement capable of transforming the situation.

In addition to more student strikes, trade unions need to spearhead this movement by stepping up to organize collective workplace action. Walk-outs by construction, maritime, and electrical workers in Sydney have already taken place on health and safety grounds in response to the toxic smoke.

These small-scale work stoppages should be escalated into a national strike of workers and students to demand immediate funding for fire services and action on climate change. A mass strike and protests to shut down the economy for even one day would put immense pressure on the government.

Bushfires ravage Australia

Capitalism is to Blame Ultimately, dealing with the climate crisis and its disastrous consequences requires a radical restructuring of the economy.

It is clear that as long as society’s wealth, resources, and industries are privately owned, corporations will put their own profit interests ahead of the interests of the community.

To even begin tackling this emergency we need public ownership and control of the key parts of the economy. For example, if we brought the big oil, gas, and mining companies into public hands we could begin

a planned transition to renewable energy.

Instead of cutting jobs, workers in those industries could be retrained and deployed to sustainable jobs elsewhere.

We cannot rely on the private sector to make important decisions about our environment and livelihoods. A democratic socialist plan of production, involving workers in all sectors, is urgently necessary. Climate change poses huge challenges – capitalism cannot meet them. J

French Workers Heroic Resistance to Pension “Reform” Dana White For 46 uninterrupted days, France was crippled by strikes in sectors from transit to lawyers as workers fought back against President Macron’s pension “reform” which aims to make people work longer and receive less in retirement. French workers see their pension system as a key historic gain which has ensured one of the lowest levels of poverty among the elderly in the world.

While some public transit is returning to normal schedules, they will be shut down again soon as workers prepare to go back out. In mid-January, the Macron government declared it would temporarily suspend one of the key contested measures in the plan, which would raise the pension eligibility age from 62 to 64, but workers are still angry.

Unions and workers plan to continue to protest until the entirety of the plan is withdrawn.

Beginning on December 5, 2019 with a protest of 1.5 million, hundreds of thousands of workers across France have been on strike or have joined protests to oppose the pension reform project. The strikes were originally

FEBRUARY 2020

initiated by railway and transit workers, but more workers, including teachers, nurses and health-care workers, and other publicsector workers have since joined. Each sector and union have been organizing their strikes separately, the next strikes will be stronger if planned together.

After over 50 days of strikes, this movement now represents the longest running strike action since the historic strikes of May 1968.

Pension reforms The reforms proposed by Macron’s government and the current Prime Minister Édouard Philippe would establish a point system for workers that reduces the current pension system to one category. The most egregious of these reforms, and the provision that Macron has said he would remove, is the attempt to “reward” workers who hold off an additional two years to retire at 64 years old instead of 62. Strikers in France fear that the implementation of this system will lead to a private pension system similar to the one in

the United States.

Like in many countries, the government has claimed the pension system is in a huge deficit and that the current reforms are only an attempt to balance the budget.

Meanwhile, productivity in French industry has risen, French profits are at a record high, and French dividends paid out last year were the highest in the world - $51 billion. While the current proposed reforms punish workers who have contributed their own wages to the pension system, big business has for years increased their own profits by taking advantage of loopholes that permit them to avoid paying pension fund contributions.

Since Macron’s inauguration, he has gained a reputation as a president of the rich. These pension protests have put a larger spotlight on the intimate ties between Macron’s government, big business, and finance capital. A large private investment firm managing €24.7 billion of French funds, BlackRock, has especially advocated for the pension changes.

Next steps The unions and student unions have rightly called for the movement to continue. They defend the holding of general assemblies in workplaces to continue and expand the mobilizations. This dynamic must be used to build a genuine and unified general strike that is democratically discussed and agreed in every workplace. In such a movement, the aim of withdrawing the pension reforms should be just the beginning. If a sufficiently strong movement can be built, the fall of the government of the rich would be on the agenda.

In addition to organizing the struggle, the general assemblies must become forums to develop a broader set of demands based on: an increase of salaries and social benefits, an end to precarious work, an end to unemployment by reducing the working week without loss of pay, massive investments in public services accessible to all throughout the country and the expropriation of those companies that resist the introduction of such a program to place them under the democratic control and management of the workers. J

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LABOR

Somerville, MA Paraprofessionals Escalate Fight for A Fair Contract Margaret Whittier-Ferguson is a pre-k paraprofessional in Somerville, Massachusetts. She is chair of the Somerville Teachers Association’s paraprofessional Contract Action Team as they fight for a fair contract with a livable wage and job security. Margaret is also a member of the Cambridge/Somerville branch of Socialist Alternative.

What’s This Movement About?

Paraprofessionals are vital to our public schools. We are education support staff that work with teachers to deliver curriculum, support students’ social-emotional skills, and ensure the basic needs of our students are met.

The current salary for our full-time jobs is between $20,680 and $25,502, even for paras who have worked in Somerville for decades. Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone has said we are in a “booming economy” but the cost of living for working people is skyrocketing. Many paras work second or third jobs to survive.

What We’re Calling For We’re calling for three main demands.

1. $25,000 starting salary 2. Job security after 4 years 3. A 2-year contract so next time we negotiate alongside teachers. We are stronger together!

It is going to take a widespread and powerful movement to win. From within the union, it can’t just be paras fighting this fight. If we’re going to build this movement further, we need every teacher behind us and showing not just passive support, but active support.

200 Pack the School Committee On January 11, 200 people rallied outside City Hall. We heard from Rami Bridge (the Somerville Teachers Association President), a Somerville para, a Somerville teacher, and two Socialist Alternative members in the Boston Teachers Union and the

Massachusetts Teachers Association about why educators in other districts and unions, and all unions, should support Somerville paras.

After all marching into City Hall together, with standing room only, 42 people spoke, over half being parents and 10 teachers. This was a reflection of how we built for the event, which was parent and community focused.

Now, we need more teachers to get involved in this struggle!

Many paras can’t afford to live in Somerville on our current salary. However, public comment at the school committee meeting was restricted to Somerville residents. This felt like a real slap in the face given that we spend our days working with and teaching the kids of Somerville families but aren’t even included in city politics. Recognizing how unfair this is, people began chanting “Let them speak” at several different points throughout the night. The last round of chants pushed the Mayor to tell School Committee President Carrie Normand to allow non-resident paras to speak, an important victory.

It’s good that Mayor Curtatone pushed for allowing all paras to speak, but will he come out in support of a starting salary of $25,000?

Anything less is simply not enough.

What’s It Going To Take To Win? Many people watching this struggle may be wondering where it’s headed, so we need to make it clear: We don’t want this to go to a strike. We want a starting salary of $25,000 and we want to win it as quickly as possible. This is why we need strong tactics now.

The School Committee meeting was a great first step and we should do it again, but only packing School Committee meetings won’t be a silver bullet for us to get a fair contract.

Clearly the School Committee is still not budging so further escalation is needed.

To get more teachers actively involved, we need to consider tactics like “walk-ins” where all staff at a school gather in the morning outside for a 5-minute rally then all walk in together, showing the School Committee

Rally before the School Committee meeting on January 13 that all educators and school staff are united in this fight and not backing down. We also need frequent general membership meetings to keep the whole union up to date and united in this struggle, and we need to continue flyering parents before school and canvassing in the community to continue to grow our community support. Parents should continue to organize themselves and continue to spread the pledge of support.

My organization, Socialist Alternative, has been playing an important role by garnering community support through flyering, reporting on the struggle through our website and newspaper, and putting forward what we see as a strategy to win. Being able to draw on the experience of Socialist Alternative in other union struggles has been invaluable.

Socialist Alternative members have also been turning out, turning others out, and helping mobilize active solidarity from other unions at events like the School Committee.

The Somerville Teachers Association is part of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the largest union in New England. Other

MTA locals and the Boston Teachers Union actively helping to build this movement would go such a long way. We have seen the importance of cross-union solidarity in the #RedForEd movement nationally and this fight is no exception.

Joining the National #RedForEd Movement Paras and other support staff are being left by the wayside in school districts across the country and we have reached a breaking point. Teachers have been fighting for better working and learning conditions across the country in the #RedForEd movement.

It is time to bring forward the struggle of support staff as part of the wider fight of courageous educators nationally, in fighting for a living wage and better learning conditions for our students. We hope our struggle in Somerville can act as an inspiration and encouragement for paras everywhere to fight for what we and our students rightfully deserve. J

NYC Housing Works Employees Push for a Union Brian Grady For more than a year, workers at Housing Works, a nonprofit organization of about 800 employees spread across New York City, have been working to build a union.

Our organizing effort started late in the summer of 2018 with a half dozen workers meeting now and again over pizza to talk about our workplace conditions. From the beginning, this group included workers of all stripes – medical receptionists, custodians,

case workers, and attorneys. Despite our differences, the fact was that we all worked together in the same buildings with the same clients, and our concerns were largely the same – things like our time-off policy, health care, pay, workloads, health and safety, and job security.

By the holidays, our group had grown and we connected with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to start getting advice on how to go about forming a union at our workplace. We found that many

of our concerns about the direction of the Housing Works overlapped.

Housing Works Squeezes Employees Housing Works was founded by members of ACT UP, the radical grassroots organization that used direct action to challenge the U.S. government’s deadly silence on the AIDS epidemic. It was a leading voice for the

“harm reduction” and “housing first” models of drug treatment. And it wears its progressivism on its sleeve, with staff members often at the epicenter of protests and arrestable actions in support of a whole host of issues including ending the HIV epidemic, LGBTQ rights, housing justice, criminal justice, and immigrant rights.

But when you look closer, this loud and

continued on p. 11

10 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

C O N T I N U AT I O N S

Establishment War on Bernie continued from p. 12 In the coming weeks and months, Bernie will be under enormous pressure to tone down his message and demobilize his supporters.

The best way to resist these pressures will be to activate his base even further, building the movement behind his campaign to back him up.

If he is able to build a movement strong enough to overcome the obstacles in the Democratic Party and win the nomination -the need for his supporters to get organized becomes more important by degrees of magnitude. Every obstacle imaginable will be placed in his path to the presidency and he will need the ability to call on his supporters to organize a grassroots ground war. If Sanders rapidly launched a mass organization of his supporters to carry out this fight, it would truly represent a political revolution.

We Need a New Party It is quite a disturbing component of American politics that we have to dedicate entire articles and speeches to warning against the attacks and sabotage from within the Democratic Party. A mass working class resistance is by its very nature a virus to the Democratic

Party -- a party tied so fundamentally to big business.

As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez articulated last month, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party.”

For Sanders and his supporters to reshape the political character of the Democratic Party would require a no-holds-barred war against corporate influence, kicking out the establishment gatekeepers and corporate elected representatives, implementing a coherent progressive political program, and building genuine democratic structures within the party. We have zero faith that the party’s establishment would allow such a thing to happen.

Working class people need our own political vehicle through which to wage our battles for Medicare for all, a green new deal, and a cancellation of student debt. Bernie is the best positioned figure in the U.S. to launch such an organization.

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349 CO-EDITORS: Tom Crean and Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Ty Moore, Kailyn Nicholson, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

NATIONAL 639 Union Street, B Brooklyn, NY 11215 info@SocialistAlternative.org facebook.com/SocialistAlternativeUSA Twitter: @SocialistAlt

As we have been arguing in this paper for months, we think that Bernie and AOC need to urgently begin organizing a conference of their supporters after the primaries - regardless of the outcome - to prepare to launch a new mass membership organization. A conference like this could be a first step in the process of forming a new political party in the U.S., one that can articulate, independent of big business, a political vision for working class people to overcome the dominance of the billionaire class over our lives. J

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NYC Housing Works Employees Push for a Union

FEBRUARY 2020

- on hiring one of New York’s most notorious “union avoidance” law firms to fight back against us.

On a drizzly day in October, with no neutrality agreement in sight, we went public with our campaign.

Around 100 workers from across the city walked off the job for three hours and held a rally demanding that management address our concerns and recognize the union.

The New York Times and other media outlets publicized our campaign and cast a harsh spotlight on an organization near and dear to the city’s progressive establishment.

Socialist Ideas, A Guide to Action Every step of this campaign has felt completely natural, and at times even predictable. Through discussion with other Socialist Alternative members, I wasn’t taken by surprise by management’s anti-union moves. Our

MIDWEST

CHICAGO, IL ������������������������ Chicago@SocialistAlternative.org CINCINNATI, OH ����������������Cincinnati@SocialistAlternative.org COLUMBUS, OH ������������������������������������������������������������������������ GRAND RAPIDS, MI ������������������������������������������������������������������� MADISON, WI �����������������������Madison@SocialistAlternative.org MINNEAPOLIS, MN �������������������������������������������� (443) 834-2870 Contact our national office for: CHAMPAIGN/URBANA, DETROIT, MI MILWUKEE, WI, and PEORIA, IL

continued from p. 10 proud progressivism only underscores the difficulty of using a nonprofit model to deliver real change under capitalism. Building a nonprofit like Housing Works means finding new revenue streams, cutting costs, and making friends in high places. For workers, this approach to social justice often comes at a personal cost, with low pay, broken benefits, and a lack of transparency driving an annual turnover rate of around 30 percent – a turnover rate that impacts many of the very clients Housing Works was founded to serve.

Workers at Housing Works have found ourselves faced with a choice: to stay in our jobs and burn ourselves out or to leave behind our clients and coworkers to find new jobs that either come with the same problems or offer less opportunity to make a difference. Faced with that grim choice, many of us have worked over the past year to carve out a better option: organizing a union.

By late July 2019, our organizing committee was strong enough that we instructed RWDSU to approach Housing Works management seeking a neutrality agreement to allow us to organize openly without interference from management. They didn’t sign a neutrality agreement. On the contrary, they likely spent good money - money that could have gone to client care, advocacy, or better wages

GAINESVILLE, FL ���������������������������������������������� (352) 538-6014 Contact our national office for: NASHVILLE, TN

SOUTHWEST

Socialist Alternative member Brian Grady speaks at Housing Works union drive public launch workplace has changed from being a place of demoralization and acquiescence to one of solidarity.

No matter where this campaign goes from here, hundreds of workers will have had the experience of standing up, fighting back, and taking power. Our campaign is happening in the context of a resurgence in strikes in the U.S. as working people begin to gain the confidence to fight for our demands. To win, we will need to be prepared with socialist strategies and tactics gleaned from years of workingclass experiences. With radical leadership and powerful working class institutions we have a world to win. J

HOUSTON, TX ��������������������������������������������������� (281) 635-5286 NW ARKANSAS ������������������������������������ ArkansasSA@gmail.com Contact our national office for: DALLAS, TX, DENVER, CO, FORT COLLINS, CO, OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, PHOENIX, AZ, and SALT LAKE CITY, UT

PACIFIC

BELLINGHAM, WA ���������������������������������������������� (360) 510-7797 LOS ANGELES, CA ���������������socialistalternative.la@gmail.com PORTLAND, OR �������������������������������������������������� (503) 284-6036 OAKLAND / SAN FRANCISCO, CA ���������������������� (510) 220-3047 SAN DIEGO, CA ������������������������������������������������������������������������� SEATTLE, WA ���������������������������������������������������� (612) 760-1980

INTERNATIONAL (CWI)

Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity with the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), a worldwide socialist organization in 47 countries, on every continent. Join us!

CANADA ����������������������������������������������������������� (604) 738-1653 contact@socialistalternative.ca www.SocialistAlternative.ca MEXICO �����������������������������������������������������������������Coming Soon QUÉBEC ������������������������������������ info@AlternativeSocialiste.org www.AlternativeSocialiste.org

11

ISSUE #60 l FEBRUARY 2020 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

Establishment Ramps Up Attacks on Bernie

Presidential Race Broaden the FightHeats Against Trump’s Up Agenda Keely Mullen

representatives in both parties despise him.

Climate catastrophe, the threat of war, and widening inequality are thrusting ordinary Americans into struggle. The last few years have seen the reemergence of the U.S. labor movement, with more workers going on strike in 2018 and 2019 than at any point in over 30 years. Young people have taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands against climate change and gun violence.

And this is all in the context of a world in turmoil, with millions protesting in India, Ecuador, Lebanon, Iran, France, and countless other countries.

As voting begins in the Democratic primary, the establishment faces a tremendous challenge. The political, social, environmental, and economic crisis facing U.S. society is driving millions of young and working class people into the orbit of Bernie Sanders and his political revolution. His slogan of “Not me, us” and his emphasis on the importance of mass movements stands in stark contrast to the rest of the Democratic field.

We support Bernie Sanders because his pro-working class program has inspired millions of Americans to fight back. His class struggle politics speak directly to the needs of working class people who have suffered tremendously under the business-as-usual politics of the past 40 years. His 2016 campaign can be cited among the main sources of inspiration for the teachers who launched the #RedForEd movement, and he has decisively brought socialist ideas back on the agenda.

For the same reasons we support Bernie Sanders, the billionaire class and its

Establishment War on Bernie Over recent months, the establishment has scrambled to find a way to diffuse the momentum behind Sanders’ campaign.

During the beginning of the race, the main strategy of the political establishment and corporate media was trying to ignore Bernie Sanders into oblivion. A report by In These Times found that MSNBC talked about Joe Biden three times as often as Bernie and when they did manage to talk about Bernie the coverage would generally be negative.

Between Bernie, Biden, and Warren, Bernie was the least likely to be talked about positively and most likely to be talked about negatively.

Much to the disappointment of the establishment, the “Bernie Blackout” wasn’t slowing his momentum. Support for Sanders has only grown and in recent weeks he has surged to the front in many polls in early primary states as well as nationally.

Demonstrating the flexibility of the establishment when it comes to silencing working class fighters, in recent weeks the media blackout around Sanders has been turned inside out. The “Bernie Blackout” has turned into an all out assault.

The most recent line of attack has been that Sanders is a sexist. For months, and in fact years, Bernie’s support among women and people of color has been consistently under reported. The “Bernie bro” myth was repeated ad nauseum in 2016 to paint a picture of Bernie’s base as being heavily white and male. This stands in stark contrast to

reality wherein Bernie leads the pack among women under 45 and finds more support among people of color than white people.

As a prelude of what’s to come, Hillary Clinton recently said of Bernie, “nobody likes him” and that she would not commit to supporting him if he were the Democratic nominee.

Biden vs. Bernie While the New York Times recent dual endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar reflects the establishment’s ongoing difficulty in finding a consensus candidate, Joe Biden is still the front runner and most immediate challenge for Sanders.

While Biden is himself a Democratic Party insider and reliable corporate insider, he does find support among people who could otherwise be convinced to vote for Sanders. A recent Politico poll found that among Biden supporters, 29% of them identified Sanders as their second choice - more than any other Democrat in the race.

Biden’s support rests on a certain nostalgia for Obama-era politics with his insistence that he will usher in a “return to normalcy.”

His most consistent argument throughout his campaign has been that he is the candidate best positioned to beat Trump. This understandably appeals to people’s desperation to see Trump knocked out of office.

However, genuinely grappling with the question of how to beat Trump requires looking beyond the political mathematics of corporate pundits. It requires understanding how Trump got elected in the first place.

For decades working-class Americans

have been subjected by both Democrats and Republicans to neoliberal policies that aimed to claw back the gains of working people in the interests of empowered multinational corporations. In 2016, the candidate hand picked by the Democrats to go up against Trump had long ties to Wall Street and viewed many Americans in the Rust Belt as fly-over “deplorables.” Millions of people who voted for Obama could not be moved to vote for Hillary Clinton and either abstained from voting altogether or - in some cases - voted for Trump.

Bernie’s campaign strategy is to turn out non-traditional voters by giving them something to vote for. This is something Biden simply cannot do.

Sanders Should Ramp Up the Fight February will be a decisive month for the Sanders campaign. If he manages to walk away with a win in Iowa and New Hampshire, we can expect attacks from the establishment and corporate media to hit new heights.

Elizabeth Warren’s failed strategy in recent weeks says a lot about her political approach.

She has worked very hard to make herself more palatable to the Democratic Party leadership by dropping any mention of Medicare for All in the last debate, by highlighting the importance of party unity above all else, and by ramping up attacks on Sanders. This has led her support to fall rather than grow. Her strategy of making concessions has backfired.

continued on p.11