Socialist Alternative 70 - February 2021

ALTERNATIVE

SOCIALIST ISSUE #70 l FEBRUARY 2021

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INSIDE p.3 THE AFTERMATH OF JAN. 6 CHICAGO TEACHERS REVOLT p.6 p.8-9 BIDEN’S BIG PROMISES

WHAT WE STAND FOR End the COVID Chaos Biden has now taken office with the overarching demand of his administration being to reign in COVID which has claimed nearly 425,000 American lives. We need immediate action to get this outbreak under control and ramp up the infrastructure to produce and distribute approved vaccines.

Control the spread!

• Most cities and states need to return to Phase 1 of lockdown. This must be accompanied by monthly stimulus payments to working people and loans to small businesses.

• Free, accessible COVID-19 testing with rapid results and contact tracing in every community.

• We need a rapid transition to a Medicarefor-All system to ensure high-quality, affordable, public health care to all! This must include a robust investment in and coverage for mental health services.

• Cancel rent, rental debt, student debt, and medical debt so families can shelter in place without worrying about how to pay the bills.

• Congress needs to pass Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus package in full. No “bipartisan compromise” on necessary aid!

Ramp up vaccine infrastructure!

Biden has put forward a vaccination strategy that includes using the Defense Production Act to produce the equipment necessary for administering the vaccine, money to states to build their infrastructure, and hiring thousands more healthcare workers. This is a good start but all of these promises need to be kept and implemented urgently.

• Beyond spending money, we need a comprehensive national plan to reach herd immunity. This means bringing the vast logistics networks of major corporations like Amazon and Walmart into temporary public ownership to develop vaccine transportation and tracking.

• Bring big pharma into public ownership to direct the manufacturing of the vaccine and speed up production.

• Keep big business out of public health!

Private, for-profit interests have no place in this public health crisis.

No Return to Normal “Normal” is what got us into this mess in the first place. Working people need real change.

• Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high quality public housing.

• Scrap the entire for-profit healthcare

system. We need an immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains into public ownership and retool them to provide free, high quality, state-of-the-art healthcare to every American.

• Fully fund public education! End school privatization. We need a national hiring program to bring on board tens of thousands of new educators to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

For a Socialist Green New Deal • Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord is not enough! We need an urgent plan to enact a socialist Green New Deal to address the growing threat of climate disaster.

• Tax the billionaires and big business to fund extreme weather services including fully funded firefighting and forest management, and weatherizing homes.

• For a GND jobs program to tackle climate change and provide good-paying union jobs for millions of workers. To be successful, this needs to be tied to public ownership of the massive energy companies and banks.

Fight the Right On January 6, we saw the scale to which the far right in the U.S. has been emboldened. Only a mass, multi-racial working class fightback can marginalize them.

• Even with Trump out of office, the threat of the far right will continue to grow and may actually get worse under a Biden presidency. The key to pushing back the far right is a determined response from the labor movement and all whose interests it threatens.

• Impeaching Trump is not enough! The Squad and Bernie Sanders need to put forward the call for mass protests against the far right wherever they try to rear their head.

• Organize against vigilante terror! Where our movements face attacks from the far right, we need elected self-defense committees.

• Mass protests against any attempts from the reactionary Supreme Court to attack healthcare, Roe v. Wade, LGBTQ, immigrant, civil, or trade union rights.

For a New Political Party for Working People Fighting the right means abandoning the center. We need a new working class political party not beholden to big business interests.

• The Democrats are entering the White House in the middle of another COVID surge and the worst economic crisis since

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Why I Joined Socialist Alternative As a child, I lived in a Black working class area in Ohio and commuted 45 minutes each way to a wealthy suburb for private school. The stark differences between the rich and poor, the white and Black, were clear to me far before I became involved in a fight against inequality and racism.

I’m a baker by trade, and for a long time, I believed wholeheartedly that loving the work I did and working hard would bring about “success” and wealth. I learned through a decade of work in the industry that it’s not that simple.

At the first bakery I worked at, I figured out my coworkers and I were victims of attempted wage theft. It was my first experience advocating for myself and gathering co-workers to discuss an action plan. It took months, but we won our backwages.

The next bakery I worked at had me sign a waiver to “skip” my 30 minute break as that was the “standard” there. I became a manager at a corporate bakery thinking I could make a difference. Realizing I had to fall in line in order to keep my position brought it full circle – the system can not be torn down solely from within.

On Super Tuesday, I passed by a train station where Socialist Alternative members were passing flyers out for a watch party for Bernie Sanders supporters. That night, Joe Biden won Massachusetts. I left brokenhearted. It was a breath full of fresh air and hope to talk with a Socialist Alternative member that week and try to think of what the 1930s. While they are being forced to “spend money,” to address the immediate crisis the party’s establishment is still diametrically opposed to progressive policies that would bring real, lasting change in the interest of working people like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

• Democrats and Republicans alike are unwilling to make any structural changes that threaten the dominance of big business. We need a new multiracial workers’ party that organizes and fights for workers’ interests and is committed to socialist policies to point a way out of the horrors of capitalism.

A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in)Justice • Immediately fire and prosecute all cops who participated in the far-right riot at the Capitol. Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks.

• Cities should defund police budgets by at least 50%, and reinvest those funds in needed public services.

• End the militarization of police. Ban police use of “crowd control” weapons.

Disarm police on patrol.

• Put policing under the control of democratically elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing policies, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena. All of this should be done openly and publicly.

• End minimum mandatory sentencing,

Robin Amara Boston, MA my next steps could be, beyond waiting another four years for a better candidate.

Once COVID-19 hit, the organization brought together myself and other grocery workers from a number of stores in the area to discuss how we could fight for better wages, hazard pay, and PPE. A number of stores won these demands, showing us the power of worker organizing.

As a member of Socialist Alternative, I’m not just waiting for things to change. I’m regularly discussing what program and strategy we need with other workers and youth in Boston and across the country, protesting, and getting ready to fight to improve the material needs of the working class and to finally end the exploitation of capitalism. immediately release any prisoner charged with non-violent crimes of poverty and expunge their record, no more cash bail, close all private prisons!

Labor Movement Needs to Step Up Trade unions are the only organizations workers have to directly defend their rights on the job. However, the leaderships of most major unions have not stepped up to defend their members or organize the unorganized during this pandemic.

• We need fighting unions that defend workers on the job and do not shy away from a fight with the bosses.

• Progressive union leaders need to decisively break from the Democratic Party.

No more funnelling union dues into Democratic Party politicians who have a proven record of abandoning working people. Unions have a decisive role to play in the fight for a new party!

• Join the movement! Unions can play a key role in the struggle against racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.

The Whole System is Guilty • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.

• Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership.

• We need a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

THE AFTERMATH OF JANUARY 6

F IG H T ING T HE FAR RIG H T

Build A Mass Movement Against The Far Right

Tom Crean, NYC

The January 6 assault on the Capitol led by far right and fascist elements with the goal of overturning the presidential election results was a massive shock to progressive working class people in the U.S. Particularly shocking was the drastic underestimation of the Capitol Police and the rest of the state apparatus of what they were dealing with, mixed with incompetence and clear elements of collusion.

As Socialist Alternative warned for months before November 3, Donald Trump was preparing to steal the election if he couldn’t win the vote legitimately. Indeed, as soon as it became clear that he had lost both the popular and Electoral College vote, Trump and his allies set out to persuade or intimidate Republican state legislators and election officials in key states into overturning state votes or refusing to certify them. Trump’s legal team filed 60 lawsuits most of which were unceremoniously dismissed including by the Supreme Court.

This whole coup effort was shambolic and never likely to work because of the opposition of key sections of the ruling class including big business, the corporate media, the legal establishment and the military brass.

Even Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, refused to help. However, Trump’s narrative of a stolen election resonated with his base. According to a mid-December poll by CBS/YouGov, 82% of Trump voters said they didn’t consider President-Elect Joe Biden the

FEBRUARY 2021

legitimate winner of the presidential election.

The same poll indicated that almost half of all Trump voters believed the president shouldn’t concede even after the Electoral College voted for Biden. Reflecting this, 147 Republican members of the House still voted to overturn the results after the assault on the Capitol had been stopped!

Ruling Class Turns on Trump But even if Trump’s coup was poorly organized and at points farcical, the intent was serious. If Trump could have found more powerful ruling class allies and if the far right shock troops were a more serious force he might have succeeded.

However, the American ruling class does not want or need a right-wing dictatorship at this point. America’s very undemocratic “democratic institutions” have been key to maintaining their grip on power domestically for the past 250 years and projecting that power globally. Corporate America was fine with Trump cutting their taxes and removing environmental regulation, but they see the attempt to storm the Capitol as a direct attack on their interests and the prestige of U.S. imperialism. They face a rising China and diminishing global credibility. January 6 reinforced the narrative of a superpower hobbled by the pandemic, economic crisis, and profound polarization. As Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign

Relations, a completely establishment institution, tweeted: “No one in the world is likely to see, respect, fear, or depend on us in the same way again. If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today.”

So for their own reasons, the ruling class and the political establishment which serves them has now gone on the offensive. Their main concerns are not democratic rights and certainly not the interests of working people and the oppressed who are in the target hairs of the far right. They organized a “shock and awe” inauguration for Joe Biden with 25,000 National Guard troops in the Capitol. The social media giants, including Facebook and Twitter, have de-platformed Trump and many on the far right. Many of the participants in the assault on the Capitol have been charged. But we should be under no illusions. This campaign against “extremism” may be directed at the far right today but it will be directed against the left tomorrow and against any section of society that dares to challenge the ruling class.

What Now? Trump lost on January 6 and was then forced to back down, concede Biden’s win and leave the White House. This is objectively a good thing but no one should be under the illusion that the problems that existed before January 6 have been solved. Capitalism is still facing its deepest crisis since the Depression and U.S. society is a powder keg. Tens of millions are

understandably relieved to have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the White House but we can’t have any confidence that the Democrats in power will deal a decisive blow to the populist right or the hard right/fascist elements. During the 2008-9 crisis, the Obama/ Biden administration bailed out Wall Street to the tune of trillions of dollars while millions lost their jobs and their homes. The complete failure of the left and the labor movement to stand up and resist the neoliberal attacks predictably carried out by Obama opened the door to the Tea Party and ultimately Trump.

Biden is talking a better game this time with bold proposals (by the Democrats’ recent standards) for stimulus and fighting the pandemic. But he is completely beholden to corporate interests who will work to water all this down. At a certain stage, as the capitalists always do, they will seek to make the working class pay for the crisis they have created.

If the left and the labor movement have not organized a mass movement independent of the Democratic establishment to defend our interests, the door will again be open to the populist right and the fascists to capitalize.

Right now, the Democrats are pursuing impeachment even after Trump left the White House with the goal of preventing him from running for office again. This will require a two thirds vote to convict in the Senate.

It is extremely unlikely that 16 Republican Senators will vote to convict. Even though the Republican establishment has now drawn a

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FIGHTING RACISM

Why We Need to Actively Fight Racism Under Biden

For the last four years, Trump has roused and built a mass base around his reactionary agenda and given encouragement to organized racist, xenophobic, and fascist groups.

As we saw through the events on January 6 (see page 3), the racist far right - while still small - is feeling emboldened.

With the Democrats now in control of the White House and both branches of Congress,

it’s not enough to hope they take steps to end racial violence or institutional racism. In fact, the measures that would do the most to erode the legacy of racism in the U.S. are things the Democrats will viciously oppose: ending mass incarceration, dismantling segregation, and a massive redistribution of wealth to working people - which would disproportionately benefit the Black and Latino

Justice for Casey Goodson, Jr. Fund Schools, Not Cops!

Sophia Zaynor, Columbus On December 4 in Columbus, Ohio, 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. was coming home from a dentist appointment. As he was turning the key to enter his home, Jason Meade, a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy, drew his weapon and shot Casey multiple times in the back.

Currently, the investigation into Casey’s murder is in the hands of the Columbus Police Department and federal investigators.

After the police murders of two Black men, 13-year-old Tyre King and 23-year-old Henry Green in 2016, none of the officers involved were indicted – leaving residents with little faith in the Columbus police department to carry out a fair investigation.

The stakes became even more apparent when just a few weeks later, another unarmed Black man, 47-year-old Andre Hill, was killed

by Columbus police officer Adam Coy within seconds of their encounter.

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Continued Mobilization Needed to Win Justice for Casey and Andre The Columbus community was quick to show their solidarity for Casey, Andre, and their grieving families. In the days following Casey’s murder, peaceful demonstrations took place in downtown Columbus. The Columbus Education Association (CEA) teachers’ union released a statement demanding a full and transparent investigation into Casey’s death, as well as structural changes for Columbus students and teachers of color to feel safe in their communities.

Mass mobilizations in Columbus are a good start to holding the ruling class accountable for the racist system that killed Casey and Andre. Ultimately, however, real change will require the involvement of the broadest section of working class people using every tool at their disposal, protests, direct action, and – crucially – walkouts and strikes.

working class. Now, more than ever, attacks on Black and brown workers are threats to all working people. We urgently need to build a mass, multi-racial movement of the working class to fight for these things.

housing. This hit Black and brown workingclass communities particularly hard, which suffered higher rates of unemployment, foreclosures and evictions, and a massive loss of wealth.

We Can’t Trust the Democrats

A Working-Class-Based Response

Biden’s record in Congress, including speeches you can watch on YouTube, make him seem downright racist by today’s standards. He championed the 1994 Crime Bill and other “tough on crime” policies in Congress that led to the rise of mass incarceration that has decimated Black and brown communities. During the George Floyd rebellion over the summer, Biden repeatedly suggested police should be trained to shoot people in the leg to avoid fatalities, while doubling down on his belief that we need more money for cops.

Then maybe other Democrats? Let’s go through the list of Democratic run cities with militarized police departments and where racist police murders went broadly without justice: Minneapolis, Columbus, NYC, Cleveland, Oakland, Tallahassee… need we go on?

Obama and Biden coordinated the suppression of the post-Ferguson BLM uprising throughout the country in 2014 and 2015, working alongside their Democratic counterparts in state and local government.

What gains came out of the movement were small, technical concessions from Democrats like body cameras, which now either further capture police violence or get turned off just before violence occurs.

Obama and Biden’s Wall Street bailout after the 2008 economic crash left millions of Americans unemployed and without stable

Socialist Alternative calls for: • Immediately arrest and indict Deputy Jason Meade and Officer Adam Coy. • Fund schools! Not cops! Tax the rich, and divert funds from the bloated sheriff and CPD budgets to invest in green jobs, social programs, affordable housing, and public education.

• Put policing under the control of democratically elected civilian boards.

• Labor Movement Needs to Step Up: More unions should follow the lead of the CEA and join the movement. Unions have a key role to play in the struggle against racism and all forms of oppression.

• You can’t have capitalism without racism: racism is used to justify the hyper-exploitation of Black workers, and to discourage a united, multi-racial workers’ movement. In order to rid the world of racism, we need to organize against the capitalist system.

This summer the American ruling class was shocked by the multi-racial Black Lives Matter rebellion that swept cities and towns across the country. It is the fear of exactly this type of mass movement that has Democrats making big promises today in an attempt to prevent this type of unrest.

We can’t afford to take them at their word.

The Black Lives Matter struggle will need to continue with even more determination under a Biden administration and Democratic control. It is only through this type of sustained, mass pressure that we can win far reaching demands for Black Americans and the multiracial working class.

Key to our success will be the involvement of the labor movement who, with some notable exceptions, largely sat out the rebellion this summer. Fighting racism is not a peripheral issue but a central priority for workers everywhere. We need a renewed labor movement prepared to fight tooth and nail to organize the unorganized, to fight against discrimination on the job, racist police violence, and to fight for a sweeping program that will benefit the entire ranks of the multiracial working class. As the old working class maxim goes: “an injury to one is an injury to all.” J

Marxism and the Fight for Black Freedom New 2018 Edition Purchase a copy for $5 from a Socialist Alternative branch near you.

This pamphlet by Socialist Alternative looks at the role of Marxist ideas and socialist organizations in the black freedom movement from a critical perspective. It outlines a materialist view of the origins and development of racist ideology and structural racism. Finally it explains the Marxist view of the tasks confronting the movement today.

Check out the pamphlet at www.socialistalternative.org S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

VACCINE ROLLOUT DISASTER We Need a Public Plan

C O R O N AV I R U S

Mass vaccination sites open up across the country.

Keely Mullen, NYC Trump made big promises at the end of his presidency, including that 20 million Americans would get their first vaccine dose by the start of January. In reality, as the new year rolled in, less than three million doses had been administered. Of course the pace has picked up, with more than 18 million doses administered, but this is still extremely sluggish. Supply shortages led to production hiccups, and already cash-strapped healthcare systems scrambled to pull together an administration plan. The end product of all this chaos was shelves full of spoiled vaccines and thousands more dead each day.

The news that Joe Biden would “move heaven and earth” to administer 150 million vaccines within his first 100 days in office was music to the ears of millions of Americans. The vaccine infrastructure as Joe Biden entered the White House was abysmal, sloppy, and unfunded. He has big plans to ramp it up and bring about an end to the nearly year long COVID nightmare. Will it be enough? Big promises beget big hopes.

Trump’s Vaccine Rollout Failure As we warned in an early December article “From the Lab to Your Upper Arm: Challenges Ahead for the COVID Vaccine”: “One tremendous challenge we now face is getting the vaccine from the lab’s loading dock to your upper arm. This is no easy feat, especially on the basis of capitalism where logical planning is thrown out the window in the pursuit of maximizing profits.”

And indeed logical planning was thrown out the window. When the gun went off and the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC had yet to release vaccine guidelines, no money had been sent to the states to build up vaccine infrastructure, and COVID cases continued to dramatically climb.

It’s impossible to understate the mammoth FEBRUARY 2021

pressures that have been put on healthcare workers in this crisis. COVID cases piled up while hospital workers made makeshift ICUs in ambulance bays with dangerous patientstaff ratios. And then the vaccine arrived.

With no additional staff, training, or funding, they were expected to administer thousands of vaccine doses to yet unidentified priority groups. This has contributed immensely to the expiration of many of the vaccine doses that get shipped out. Even in the states performing the absolute best at administering vaccines, around 30% are still going to waste.

Contributing to the chaos has been the complete lack of guidance from the federal government. The CDC released a tiered plan for prioritization on December 20. But before that, no two states had the same priority groups or timing estimates for distributing the vaccine. Because the CDC guidelines were just that, guidelines with no mandate, states generally stuck to their original plans and operated under a patchwork of different rules.

The coordination between federal and state governments has been a total joke.

Throughout the pandemic, governors have reported a “wild west” scenario where states compete against one another on the market for PPE and other needed supplies. This chaos has been replicated in many ways with the vaccine campaign.

Manufacturers have consistently shipped around 4.3 million doses per week, but the federal government only tells states their vaccine allotment for the week on Tuesdays. The states then have two days to place orders and develop plans to distribute those orders.

Some weeks, states will get more doses than expected and scramble to find more people to vaccinate and other weeks they’ll receive less than expected and are forced to cancel appointments.

In New York in mid-January, a rumor circulated on social media that there were extra vaccine doses available at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. What looked like thousands of New Yorkers flocked to the site, jumping over one

for Mass Vaccination

another to get the extra shot only to find out there were none.

Where some people jump at the mere whisper of an extra dose, others are refusing the vaccine altogether. While the levels of vaccine skepticism have dropped since October, there is still a significant number of Americans, even healthcare workers, who are refusing to get the shot.

It is not a surprise that such a high percentage of Americans are skeptical considering how criminally mishandled this pandemic has been. In the early days of this public health crisis, when the ins and outs of the virus were unknown, it was understandable that advice from healthcare professionals would change day to day. Where masks first seemed unnecessary to many experts, they are now acknowledged as crucial. But, we are now more than a year into the global outbreak and the chaos never resolved. In that context, some level of skepticism is understandable.

This is especially true for Black Americans who have a specific disdain for a healthcare system that has routinely neglected — or worse, abused — them. Harriet Washington, author of “Medical Apartheid” said of campaigns to encourage Black people to take the COVID vaccine: “it’s not a substitute for reforming the health care system. If we don’t reform the system, if we don’t make real, large steps toward addressing the inequities that cultivate distrust, then we’re going to have to do this every time we have a new health initiative. That’s a complete waste.”

We agree. Anything less than a top to bottom overhaul of our healthcare system is insufficient. We need an urgent transition to Medicare for All and the entire ecosystem of parasitic insurance companies, big pharma, and for-profit hospital chains need to be brought into democratic public ownership.

Enter Stage Left: Joe Biden Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20 and has declared a “wartime effort” to bring COVID under control. While some components of this plan are seriously lacking (see

back page), his vaccine plan is very ambitious compared to what we’ve come to expect. His goal is to get 150 million Americans their first dose by his 100th day in office. Even this ambitious promise puts off herd immunity until at least next year, demonstrating the scale of spending and intervention we need to dig ourselves out of this crisis.

So what is couched in Biden’s vaccination plan? Use the Defense Production Act to speed up manufacturing, give billions in direct aid to states to build up their infrastructure, launch a public health jobs program and hire hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers, expand vaccination sites, and launch a public education campaign about the benefits of the COVID vaccine.

All of the proposals housed in Biden’s “wartime effort” are completely within reach for the Democrats who now control both houses of Congress. They can abandon calls for “bipartisan unity” and drive through desperately needed aid using budget reconciliation or abolishing the undemocratic filibuster rules (see pages 8-9). However, it is Democrats themselves standing in the way. If just one Democratic senator refuses to support Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan, it’s dead in the water.

If they’re going to pass the scale of spending needed to get even the vaccination infrastructure off the ground - let alone the rest of the aid package - it will require a tremendous amount of pressure being brought to bear on the Democrats.

Big Business Intervention It’s important to be clear from the outset that the scale of Biden’s proposals has nothing to do with his benevolence. This scale of spending and intervention is in service of big business who are desperate to get people back to work and restart their profit making machines. It’s for this exact same reason big business is stepping into the vacuum to

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L ABOR MOVEMENT

Us Them

Defeat Lightfoot’s Reckless School Reopening!

Chicago Educators, Parents, & Students Should Decide Melissa Vozar, CTU member (personal capacity)

strike a blow against our unions and public education.

Chicago Public Schools have been thrown into chaos by an inflexible insistence on the part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot to return to inperson learning. Early childhood and some special needs students were ordered back mid January. On January 27, Lightfoot’s plan required the return of all K-8 elementary school educators and staff, with students to follow on February 1.

Parents and unionized educators with the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU 73 are fighting to stay remote until safe conditions can be achieved. CTU leadership responded to weeks of rank-and-file organizing by calling for a vote to remain remote, and to strike if necessary. SEIU 73’s leadership needs to follow this positive example and fight to protect their members.

There is enormous opposition to Lightfoot’s plan, but she has played hardball already, locking out teachers who have tried to remain remote. We have to be prepared for an all out fight that will require educators, parents, and students moving into decisive action together and appealing to social movements and the wider working class for support.

Lessons from Chicago’s 2019 Education Strike As we take on this new fight against Lightfoot, we can look at the 2019 Chicago education strike for lessons and warnings.

The 2019 strike stalled when the mayor refused to back down and the massive social support for the struggle went unorganized, without a clear escalation strategy from union leadership. CTU leadership called an end to the struggle with limited victories when many members rightly wanted to escalate and keep fighting.

At many schools, joint union meetings and parent-teacher collaboration have been happening for weeks. These efforts should be expanded into school based committees that can organize democratic discussion and mobilize to stop Lightfoot’s recklessness and fight back against retaliation.

CTU should fight to open negotiations to parents and include credible public health experts. It is critical that union leaders prepare the movement for extended, bold, and disruptive action that will directly hurt Lightfoot’s big business supporters.

CPS & Lightfoot Ignore the Facts The Stakes Are High - All Out To The lack of in-person learning is not any- Win! one’s ideal and is undoubtedly causing massive difficulties for working parents and students’ development. However, returning to in-person teaching is a danger at this time.

CPS safety preparations have been a disaster, with school officials admitting that, although vaccinations are on the way, it will be months before the teachers who are now being ordered back to work will get vaccinated.

Even before this plan, only 37% of Chicago parents signed up for the limited in-person learning. Only 16.5% of principals and assistant principals polled by the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association believe the district is prepared and ready to open schools.

Lightfoot’s plan is first and foremost about cementing her reputation with big business in the city. While Lightfoot and CPS administrators shed crocodile tears over “learning loss” and “equity,” her business supporters are gearing up to use reopening to try and

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The heroic actions of parents and rankand-file educators in the past weeks have built popular momentum against Lightfoot’s reopening and pressure on union leadership for strike action.

Over 98 local school councils have passed resolutions opposing the current reopening plan. Parents filled up comment sections of school board meetings, and parent organizations have issued strong statements. Educators have brought massive attention to this fight by conducting remote learning outside their schools in protest. Critically, hundreds of educators have stayed out of the buildings after being ordered in. On January 15, hundreds of educators conducted a sickout in solidarity with those forced back in.

Now is the time for union leaders to step up and use the full power of the organized labor movement to back up rank-and-file action. In addition, we need to bring health experts, parents, and students into the

versus

Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis

1. Very Important Patients I once tried to buy VIP meet and greet tickets for a Harry Styles concert. It didn’t happen; I realized I needed the $2,500 for rent. But the rich and powerful in California are trying to snag VIP meet and greets too - not for Harry Styles, but for the COVID-19 vaccine. Wealthy patients have overwhelmed clinics’ phone systems with requests to get on the guest list, despite not being in any of the priority vaccination groups. Some have offered as much as $25,000 in “hospital donations.” Imagine having 25 grand and instead of safely staying home (or saving for front row seats at Harry Styles’ next tour) you tried to bribe a doctor. The super rich want to pay their way to the front of the vaccine line, even if it means stealing doses from the most vulnerable. California had over 3,400 COVID deaths in the last week. Any doses diverted from essential workers could cost someone their life. The healthy wealthy can wait their turn, for damn sure.

2,600 miles away, wealthy donors in Florida actually pulled off this scheme!

They did receive the vaccine - ahead of nearly every other Floridian. The CEO of a luxury assisted-living facility, MorseLife Health System, sent vaccination invitations to - coincidentally - his own board

members and most-generous MorseLife donors. The vaccine was meant only for residents and staff, but several members of the Palm Beach Country Club received it as well. In a wild coincidence, the Palm Beach Country Club Foundation has donated over $75,000 to MorseLife since 2016. A managing partner of a New York law firm, whose own foundation has given over $45,000 to MorseLife since 2015, was vaccinated too. Is this serendipity, or is it rigging the system with your rich friends?

2. Best Solution for Health Care is to Be Immortal Wall Street’s favorite free market worshipper and anti-union man, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, knows something that universal health care proponents apparently do not know: “the best [health care] solution is to not need health care.” He’s brilliant, why hadn’t we thought of this?

Health care is a human right, but you don’t need it if you’re not human! The best solution to diabetes is to not have diabetes.

The best solution to accidental injury is to not have an accident. The best solution to a hospital delivery bill is to not get pregnant. The best solution to get access to birth control (to not get pregnant) is to simply establish a drug company and manufacture your own contraception. Voilà, problem solved. J

STAY UP TO DATE WITH SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE @Socialist Alternative /SocialistAlternativeUSA @SocialistAlt /c/SocialistAlternative struggle by engaging them in the planning process, and fighting for wider demands like immediate paid parental leave, cancelling rent, municipal broadband, and expanded unemployment benefits—paid for by taxing big business and the billionaire class.

What happens in Chicago will shape the outcome of struggles around safe reopening across the country. If Mayor Lightfoot doesn’t back down, we should push for national days of action against unsafe reopenings.

Already educators in Arizona organized a one day sickout earlier this month. Eight teachers unions in Ohio are fighting back against

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Governor Mike DeWine’s reckless reopening plans. Many more struggles are taking place in other parts of the country.

Winning a safe reopening against entrenched government officials and profit hungry corporations would also boost working class people’s confidence to fight for a safe reopening for the wider economy. A campaign for safe reopening would include demands for Medicare For All, on-demand free testing and PPE, and massively expanding vaccine production and distribution—under the control of health experts and essential workers, not corporations and corrupt politicians. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

D E B AT E S O N T H E L E F T

#FORCETHEVOTE AND A STRATEGY FOR THE LEFT Kshama Sawant, Seattle Unlike in past decades, there are now a handful of members of Congress from the Democratic Party who consider themselves socialists or left-wing: “the Squad.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the most prominent Squad member, has acted audaciously in important ways that Socialist Alternative has enthusiastically supported.

Early in January, sections of the left, including the Movement for a People’s Party, along with public figures like Briahna Joy Gray, Cornel West, and Jimmy Dore, unleashed a furious debate on the left when they led calls for AOC and the Squad to refuse to vote for corporate Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House unless she agreed to a debate and a floor vote on Medicare for All. AOC rejected this tactic, tweeting that “The Dem votes aren’t there yet,” and suggesting that #ForceTheVote would use up political capital over an empty threat without a strategy.

Socialist Alternative and I supported the #ForceTheVote tactic as part of a larger strategy of building a movement-based fightback.

In contrast, the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America joined AOC and the Squad in rejecting it, as did several other organizations and figures on the left.

Why Did Sections of the Socialist Left Reject #ForceTheVote?

The key question is why organizations like the DSA rejected #ForceTheVote, rather than endorse it as part of a movement-building strategy.

Unfortunately, I think the rejection of #ForceTheVote by the Squad, the DSA, and others reflects a disagreement not so much on individual tactics as on the fundamental need for head-on combat with – and bold challenge to – the Democratic establishment.

This conflict is completely unavoidable if we hope to win substantive reforms like Medicare for All, because the big corporations funding the Democratic Party are hellbent on defeating them.

AOC understands the need for conflict with Republicans even when votes may fail. She articulated exactly this when she explained the importance of the Trump impeachment vote by saying that “sometimes it’s to get [people] on the record, so they can’t make FEBRUARY 2021

excuses later. Sometimes these votes create real political pressure that forces developments.

Sometimes we vote for the historical record – to let future generations know we did everything we could.” The key missing aspect is the willingness to direct the same challenge to the Democratic establishment.

In the wake of the riot at the Capitol, rather than calling for mass, workingclass action, Squad members echoed calls from the Democratic establishment for new impeachment hearings. Needless to say, Socialist Alternative supports the impeachment of Trump. But it would be a dire mistake to think that this would be remotely sufficient to demoralize the far right and stem its growth. AOC and the Squad should have called for mass demonstrations and boldly put forward a pro-worker program (Medicare For All, $2,000 stimulus checks and comprehensive COVID relief funded by taxing Wall Street and the rich, and a Green jobs initiative).

A “Movement Building Strategy” The DSA’s statement in response to the #ForcetheVote debate says: “Speaker Pelosi alone can’t deliver us a floor vote. The Medicare for All bill in the House needs to pass through six Committees’ jurisdiction, and it currently lacks financing language (i.e. how to pay for it), so it’s not a bill that can be voted on yet. This is why getting the bill out of committee has been one of DSA’s priorities.”

This is a tragically misplaced understanding of how social change happens, not to mention the raising of illusions in entrenched representatives of the billionaire class such as Pelosi. The left is headed for a dead end as long as our leaders believe that mastering parliamentary arithmetic is the key to social change.

Over and over, history has shown that it is mass movements which clearly expose the betrayals of politicians and chart an independent course forward that can force the hand of the capitalist class and their representatives.

The Socialist Example in Seattle In Seattle, where Socialist Alternative and our movements have elected a revolutionary

socialist to City Council three times, we have demonstrated how the seemingly impossible becomes possible when the movement has its own elected, fighting office that fearlessly uses a class struggle approach. Since we first took office, Socialist Alternative and the movements we have helped build and lead have won victories like the $15/hour minimum wage, the Amazon Tax to fund housing and a Green New Deal, and a fleet of renters’ rights victories.

In her response to the call to #ForceTheVote, AOC also tweeted, “If you want a model on how we can *successfully* secure floor votes on progressive leg, examine how the grassroots JUST successfully forced (and passed!) a $15/hr min wage in the House even over Conservative Dem objections.”

I think that unfortunately, this statement misses the real story of $15/hour. In 2014, Seattle became the first major city to win a $15 minimum wage, leading to victories in dozens of other cities. This was only because we used our Council position to help launch the 15 Now campaign. The 15 Now campaign organized a series of mass conferences, launched “neighborhood action groups,” held a series of marches, and then democratically decided to file a grassroots ballot initiative so that we could take the issue to voters if Democratic City Councilmembers failed to act. All of this was crucial to forcing the hand of big business and the establishment.

Our experience in Seattle has demonstrated that working people cannot afford to let our representatives only take on a limited or symbolic conflict with the establishment.

Most critically, we have to use our elected positions to help build serious movements on the ground, which is the only counterweight

to the horrendous pressure of the Democratic establishment. It is only when establishment politicians are relentlessly exposed, and come to fear exposure, that they support things they otherwise wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

The Task Ahead for the Left Over the next two years, with a slim Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the Squad holding the numerical balance of power, they can withhold support for any pro-corporate measures Pelosi tries to advance. It means they can force issues like Medicare for All onto the table.

This presents a huge opening for the development of a fighting left in the U.S. The Squad should announce a comprehensive set of demands they intend to put on the agenda over the next two years and develop a movement strategy to win them. They need to build leverage within the halls of power by helping to call mass demonstrations and direct action to win these demands.

Ultimately, the events of the next two years will clarify for millions the incompatibility of genuine progressive politics with big business politicians like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. The Squad, Bernie Sanders, and organizations like the DSA need to draw this to its logical conclusion and begin building a new, working-class political party independent of the Democrats. If they do not take this step, it will hamstring our ability to fight for the reforms working people desperately need. This will leave millions of working people trapped in the thoroughly pro-corporate Democratic Party. J

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BIDEN’S BIG PROMISES WE CAN’T RELY ON DEMOCRATS TO FOLLOW THROUGH Rebecca Green, NYC

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his isn’t the first time that Joe Biden has entered the White House during an economic catastrophe. It’s not his first time being sworn in while millions of Americans faced unemployment, eviction, foreclosure, and hunger. But this time is worse. On top of the economic crisis is a terribly mishandled pandemic caused by environmental degradation that threatens our way of life. Biden’s first 100 days will be high stakes.

This time, his tune is sounding a little different though.

Biden says his number one priority is a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, which makes the 2009 Obama-Biden $800 billion Wall Street bailout look small in comparison. The stimulus plan carves out substantial sums of money to contain and vaccinate against COVID, reopen schools, and provides direct aid to the unemployed, families, and small businesses. The plan even includes raising the federal minimum wage to $15.

Biden says that more relief will come after that. His “Build Back Better” recovery plan promises a mass infrastructure jobs program focused on sustainability and funded by taxing the rich. On his first days in the Oval Office, he already passed a flurry of executive orders, undoing a number of Trump’s most egregiously reactionary measures.

He is also planning to submit a bill to Congress which would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

On the campaign trail in the spring, Biden relentlessly attacked Bernie Sanders with a “how will you pay for that?”

If he’d talked about any of this stimulus proposal during the fall election he probably would have beat Trump even more decisively.

So why are his promises so big all of a sudden? How much will he actually deliver on? And what will actually be necessary to get out of this crisis and make sure we never return to the “normal” that got us here in the first place?

What’s Behind Biden’s Promises?

2021 is not 2009. Unemployment in the U.S. rose higher in the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic than in two years of the Great Recession. And while experts applaud a recovery since the peak of unemployment in April, one recent study showed that a staggering 26.8 million are now unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work, far more than official figures indicate.

Since the Great Recession, average household debt has increased, homeownership rates have decreased, and average family wealth has decreased significantly. None of the underlying issues were solved which led to the current economic crisis triggered by COVID-19. Twelve million renters now owe an average of $5,850 in back rent and utilities. Fifty million people (and seventeen million children) face hunger. At the time of writing, over 414,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and 24.9 million have gotten sick.

The Chamber of Commerce, figures like the Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren, and many economists now support large elements of Biden’s plan. There is a consensus in key sections of the ruling class that stimulus was insufficient in 2009. Even the 2020 stimulus passed by Congress, which overwhelmingly went to big business, was on a far bigger scale to 2009. But it is recognized that the $1,200 stimulus checks and $600 unemployment top up played a key role in preventing

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an even more devastating economic collapse last spring. While Biden won’t say so, his stimulus proposal is an admission that the old neoliberal playbook isn’t going to get us out of this mess.

There is also an important push from the left. U.S. capitalism was rocked this past year by the uprising following the murder of George Floyd. His death sparked the biggest protest movement in U.S. history, drawing some involvement from the labor movement and taking up the demand to defund the police.

The ruling class and the political establishment know that there is massive combustible material in U.S. society with young people especially no longer willing to put up with the same old crap. As part of regaining control they need to be seen to be doing something.

But Will He Keep Good on His Promises?

chambers of Congress, there is no Republican boogeyman to blame. Already it has become clear that Republicans oppose Biden’s plan, and the Democrats won’t likely be able to win over the ten Republicans needed in the Senate to pass the bill as is (spending bills require 60 votes due to undemocratic filibuster rules, which the Democrats should abolish).

However, Democrats could use a process called budget reconciliation, which allows them to pass the bill, as is, with a simple majority in the House and Senate.

So it comes down to this: do Democrats bargain away $15, whittle down state funding and unemployment top ups in the name of the “bipartisanship” that the country so “desperately needs” as Biden has said? Bipartisanship with a party that includes over a hundred members of Congress who refused to certify the results of the election, even after the right-wing attack on the Capitol? Who relentlessly use every legislative means possible to attack unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and immigrants? Or are the Democrats united enough to get the bill through by abolishing the filibuster, using budget reconciliation, and standing up to the hesitant, conservative sections of their party? Negotiations have begun, and already Democratic Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia has said the bill is too big. Given the Democrats’ track record of bending the knee to billionaires and the right, we’re skeptical Biden’s full plan will pass without mass pressure from below.

Well it depends on which ones. Biden has already crossed some things off his list, including undoing a handful of Trump’s attacks on immigrants and transgender people, but frankly challenging the oppression of LGBTQ+ people and fixing our broken immigration system will take far more than undoing Trump’s damage. The urgent need to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, develop a testing and vaccination plan - which were nonexistent under Trump - mean the $400 billion in the proposed stimulus bill designated for this is likely to be implemented. The promise of $2,000 checks made during the Georgia Senate Do Biden’s Promises Go Far Enough? run-off will make it hard to back away from the $1,400 per person in his stimulus plan. But a $15 minimum wage? A jobs Even if the full $1.9 trillion going to COVID relief, state and program paid for by taxing the rich? These will meet far more local governments, as well as stimulus checks and unemployresistance from the Republicans and a certain section of Demo- ment passes, this can only temporarily stave off an even deeper cratic lawmakers. crisis.

And at the end of the day, Joe Biden is a corporate Democrat But ordinary people want to know: if trillions can be spent who has spent his career attacking Social Security, Medicare to prevent collapse on Wall Street and in the financial markets, and Medicaid, allying himself with the banking and credit card why can’t we start addressing the disastrous inequality, broken industries, supporting imperialist wars, and supporting policies public healthcare system, and underfunded education that that have decimated communities of color, attacked women, have been exposed and exacerbated by this crisis? Billionaires LGBTQ+ people, the working class and poor. The aid he is made over $1 trillion in 2020 while tens of millions went further promising to working people is big, but his in debt and struggled to pay rent and put food real allegiances are still solidly with corporate if trillions can be spent to on the table. interests, which he will refuse to break with prevent collapse on Wall As one example, renters owe an estimated when it comes to more substantial structural $70 billion in back rent and utilities, far more Street and in the financial change. than the $25 billion being promised in the The Democratic Party is the same. They markets, why can’t we start stimulus plan for rental assistance. This is not have a long history of making nice sounding addressing the disastrous going to be enough. promises to working people right before sell- inequality, broken public We need a cancellation of rental debt ing us out to big business. In March, they accrued under the pandemic, universal rent joined with Trump and the Republicans to healthcare system, and control, and a massive investment in the conpass the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which - underfunded education? struction of green, affordable housing. while topping up unemployment benefits by And what about healthcare? Propping up $600 a week and providing $1,200 checks - was mostly a big our healthcare system just enough to vaccinate the majority of business bailout. Money meant for small businesses in the Pay- the population against this one particular virus should only be check Protection Program largely went to multi-million dollar the beginning. Scientists are already finding that many people, chains like Shake Shack. More than half of the money went even healthy, young people with mild COVID cases, are experito corporations, many of which laid off workers while claiming encing long-term health impacts like damage to the heart, scar $651 billion in tax breaks. About 20% of the money went to tissue in the lungs, strokes, seizures, and even have a higher workers and families, and less than 20% to combatting the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. pandemic.

So yes let’s get vaccinated, but we can’t go back to a forDemocrats in Congress reassured us that more robust aid profit healthcare system after that. In 2019, 26.1 million was to come and blamed Republicans for failing to take up the people did not have health insurance at any point during the HEROES Act in the Senate, but then backed off all their “red year. Millions more lost employer-based health insurance in line” issues and accepted a profoundly inadequate $900 billion 2020. An estimated 18.2 million people with conditions that stimulus in December. significantly increase mortality from COVID (like asthma, heart Now that Democrats control the White House and both disease and diabetes) do not have health insurance, and this

S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

Joe Biden delivers his inauguration speech Climate activists demand a fossil fuel free future in NYC

includes disproportionate numbers of Black, Native American, and low-paid workers.

Short staffing, hospital closures, and profit-driven management have all threatened the lives of healthcare workers and killed countless COVID patients who deserved care that a forprofit system wouldn’t give them. Many of those who lived will be haunted by chronic health conditions and medical debt.

Add to that the mental health epidemic, where for example more high school students have died from suicide and overdose than deaths by COVID-19, and it is clear that even if we reach herd immunity, Americans are coming out of the pandemic with a massive ongoing mental and physical health crisis.

According to election exit polls in November, 72% of people said they wanted government run healthcare. So no, Joe, money for COVID relief is not enough - we need an immediate transition to a Medicare for All system, a mass investment of funds to reopen closed hospitals and community healthcare centers, robust investment in mental health services, a mass, permanent hiring of healthcare workers with full union rights and living wages, and democratic public ownership over the pharmaceutical industry.

Biden’s Climate Plan is a Death Sentence This is not the only pandemic we will see in our life times.

There are an estimated 1.7 million undiscovered viruses in mammals and birds, about half of which could infect humans.

Future pandemics will happen more often, spread faster, and kill more people.

The exploitation of the planet is what gave us COVID: deforestation and the disruption of wild habitats (always in the name of profit) increases contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people.

Biden has said we need a “wartime” footing to battle COVID - but why not to battle the environmental crisis that brought us the deadly virus in the first place? The Paris Climate Agreement, which Biden rejoined on his first day in office, is non binding, few countries have adhered to their promises, and even if every FEBRUARY 2021

country met theirs it wouldn’t keep us under two degrees Celsius warming. Yes it’s positive that Biden cancelled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, but what about the Dakota Access Pipeline? What about all the other pipelines that are up and running and the ones that are to come?

Symbolic promises and climate conferences with world leaders are not enough. We need democratic public ownership of all the fossil fuel companies and utilities; to transition them immediately to green energy with the goal of reaching 100% renewable energy in years not decades; democratic public ownership of Amtrak and a mass expansion of fully electric high-speed rail across the country; a mass Green New Deal jobs program that can put tens of millions of people back to work retrofitting and weatherizing buildings, reforesting the country, expanding and operating public transit systems, restructuring our agriculture system, and so much more. Falling far short of what’s needed, Biden’s plan is a death sentence.

Biden Will Stand in the Way of What We Really Need There is no return to pre-Trump, pre-COVID normal, but that’s where Biden wants to take us. If there has ever been a time to fight for seismic change, it is now. But that change will not happen if we sit back and wait for Biden to deliver it.

We need real leadership, and figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and all the other members of the Squad will need to be unwavering in their commitment to fight for what is needed, refusing to settle for what Biden and the Democratic establishment say is acceptable, and refusing to let them whittle away their promises in the name of bipartisanship. This will mean turning away from legislative maneuvering and instead bringing direct opposition to weak compromises into the streets, to their supporters, and to the movements that got them there in the first place.

What won the first $15 minimum wage in cities across the

Joe Manchin (D-WV) says $1.9 stimulus plan is too big Protesters call for Medicare for All outside the Democratic Debate in SC, Feb. 2020

country, rent control in NYC, police accountability measures and the defunding of some police departments were social movements. What won better wages for teachers and funding for schools, ended Trump’s government shutdown, secured appropriate PPE for healthcare workers fighting COVID was workers getting organized and getting ready to strike. What will win Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, a cancellation of rental and student debt, and a Green New Deal will be healthcare workers, low wage workers, students, renters, oil rig workers, bus drivers, and anyone who has a stake in an economy based on human need, not profit, jumping into the fight.

The battle for a better world has never played out in the Oval Office, it has always taken place in community center basements, union halls, campus centers, break rooms, and on the streets. It’s time to get organized like our lives depend on it, because they do. J

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SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

BIG BUSINESS RAMPS UP ATTACKS ON KSHAMA SAWANT: FIGHTBACK NEEDED Alycia Lewis, Seattle

No Faith in the Courts

It is no accident that big business, the Democratic establishment, and the right wing are targeting Councilmember Kshama Sawant. The historic victories won by grassroots movements in Seattle, spearheaded by Kshama’s socialist city council office, have served as an inspiration to working people around the U.S. and beyond. Furious about the impact of socialist politics and social movements in Seattle, the recall campaign — backed by corporate donors with limitless dollars — is now attempting an undemocratic do-over of Kshama’s 2019 re-election.

At a time of massive crisis, on the heels of the largest and most diverse protest movement in U.S. history, and with a new generation looking toward socialist ideas, the ruling class fears the impact that even one elected socialist who fights unambiguously for working people can have on a growing layer of society fed up with corporate politics and questioning capitalism itself.

Our crucial solidarity rally was organized as the Washington State Supreme Court continues to deliberate the final ruling on whether the recall attack against Councilmember Sawant is allowed to go forward. If approved, the right-wing can immediately begin collecting signatures to get the recall on the ballot.

Unfortunately, working people cannot have any faith in a fair ruling. Like the police, the courts belong to the state apparatus which, far from being a neutral arbiter, primarily serves the interests of the ruling class.

Castill Hightower, community activist for police accountability, powerfully outlined the double standard facing genuine movement leaders who dare to challenge systemic injustice when she said: “Kshama was the only one who didn’t break her promises to the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, Kshama has been singled out for punishment by the political establishment. Not Breonna Taylor’s killers, not Jacob Blake’s killers, and not my brother’s killer.”

On January 6, this hypocrisy was on display to millions of working people who witnessed the same police that had spent all summer terrorizing mass, peaceful Black Lives Matter protests with teargas and mass arrests allowing armed far-right protesters to walk unhindered into the U.S. Capitol building.

As Councilmember Sawant said, “We know that what our movements win has everything to do with our own organized strength, and we should have no illusions in the institutions of capitalism. We cannot rely on the courts for justice, just as we cannot rely on the police.” Defending against the unfounded recall against Councilmember Sawant, just like defending against the wider growth of the far right, will take organizing in our unions, workplaces, schools, and communities.

This has become particularly urgent as Kshama received a series of increasingly threatening right-wing emails from a Seattle Fire Department employee’s City email address to her official email, starting in December and with the most direct threat on January 18. Little response has come from Mayor Jenny Durkan or Interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz. As Kshama stated in an online post responding to the attacks, “While the threats are directly at me personally, I and others recognize that they are in fact directed against our entire movement.

They are attacking me as a means of threatening all who dare to fight for workers’ rights and against racism, sexism, and oppression which stem from the capitalist system.”

Big Business on the Attack Big business reaction is already on the offensive, working overtime with establishment politicians to roll back the hard-fought progressive gains of working people and oppressed communities and steer Seattle politics to the right. Less than a year after it was passed, Seattle City Council Democrats are now attempting to overturn the first-inthe-nation chemical weapons ban won at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests.

And Democrats in the Washington State Legislature have recently reintroduced a proposal to dismantle the Amazon Tax through a statewide ban on municipal big business taxes. At an online rally to reject the recall, Kshama Sawant announced a new Tax Amazon Action Conference on February 6 to launch the fightback.

By targeting leftist elected leaders like Councilmember Sawant, as Indian American Community Organizer Khan Hassan has explained, big business and the right wing are seeking to “clip the wings of the movement” and open up space to undermine its victories. And several elected socialists at the recent Kshama Sawant Solidarity Campaign online rally emphasized that if this attack on Kshama’s socialist office succeeds, it won’t be confined to Seattle.

As the pandemic-induced economic crisis deepens, with big business increasingly on the offensive, defending Kshama Sawant and the precedent-setting victories of social movements in Seattle is a crucial fight for all socialists and working people.

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A volunteer helps hang “Defend Kshama Sawant” posters in Seattle

Building a United Movement to Defeat the Right-Wing Recall In the crucial fight to defend Councilmember Sawant from big business and right-wing reaction, Chicago Alderman and DSA member Byron Singo-Lopez says that working people need to look to the successful example of movements in countries like Bolivia, which through mass mobilization succeeded in shutting down the right-wing coup against Movement for Socialism President Evo Morales.

Grassroots organizing power was on full display at the Rally to Reject the Recall when the Kshama Solidarity movement raised an astonishing $27,000 to defend Kshama’s seat! Over 50 new people signed up to volunteer — in addition to the over 200 working people who have already volunteered with the Solidarity Campaign — and hundreds more joined the Kshama Solidarity Facebook Action Group to continue getting organized.

But with the big business-backed recall campaign preparing to drop more than $220,000 they’ve amassed in dark money from corporate CEO’s and anonymous rightwing donors, our movement can’t afford to slow down. To win, it will be absolutely necessary to continue growing the movement by organizing working people around

a “Decline-to-Sign” campaign against the right-wing recall, by linking the fight to the defense of the historic Amazon Tax, and by broadening the fight by going on the offensive for working people in the midst of a historic economic and public health crisis.

As Councilmember Sawant stated, closing out her powerful speech, “The left has the responsibility to address the urgent needs of the working class - and that means, as a starting point, fighting tooth and nail for Medicare for All, comprehensive COVID relief, a socialist Green New Deal, and preparing the ground to launch a new party. This is a crucial juncture in history, and we cannot accept a false unity with the corrupt Democratic establishment. We instead need to build the powerful unity of millions of working people and the oppressed to fight for a different kind of society.”

Rejecting the recall is bound to be an allout fight with Seattle’s ruling class the outcome of which will have a big impact on the fight for independent left and socialist politics nationally and even internationally in the next period. The incredible solidarity that has been on display will be crucial in the defense of Kshama Sawant’s socialist office and for the larger fightback against economic devastation, racist oppression, and the system of capitalism itself. J

S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

WHO IS KSHAMA SAWANT?

Kshama Sawant was first elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013 with over 90,000 votes, running as a proud Socialist Alternative member back before “Bernie” and “AOC” were household names. She was the first elected socialist in Seattle in nearly a century. Kshama used her 2013 election campaign to fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage when no elected officials were campaigning for it, despite ongoing fast-food worker strikes. Kshama and Socialist Alternative spearheaded the successful fight, alongside a united movement of labor, workers, and socialists to make Seattle the first major city to win the $15 minimum wage.

The $15 movement spread like wildfire across the country after that. Kshama’s office became a center for working-class resistance, helping workers, tenants, people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants and indigenous people fight for better conditions in their workplaces and communities.

Kshama’s 2013 election was also the first

Kshama Sawant (center) joined activists to protest the detention of a DACA recipient in August 2017 big breakthrough for socialists at the ballot box, giving confidence to other left activists that they could defeat corporate power and the political establishment. Like Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns, which also refused corporate money, Kshama’s election was a demonstration of the huge potential for independent working class politics in the U.S.; this was reinforced through Sawant’s re-election in 2015.

To win gains for workers, young people and the oppressed, elections are not enough though. Political office must be used by socialists to build movements and increase working-class consciousness to change society, and Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative in Seattle have been a shining example of how this can be done. Kshama has explained again and again that what could

be won inside city hall largely depended on the strength of movements outside, while actively calling for and helping to build those struggles.

Countless victories many previously thought unwinnable have been won in Seattle over the past seven years using this approach. The Amazon Tax, landmark renters’ rights laws, the establishment of Indigenous People’s Day, blocking the building of a monumental police bunker – these are only a handful of examples.

In 2019, Kshama was re-elected again, despite corporations from Amazon to Puget Sound Energy dumping over $4 million into corporate PACs to elect pro-business candidates across the city. Her opponent, Egan Orion, was the second biggest recipient of corporate PAC money in Seattle City

ONLINE RALLY TO REJECT THE RECALL: THOUSANDS TUNE IN TO DEFEND KSHAMA’S SEAT On Saturday, January 9, 2,000 working people and progressive activists tuned in to an online rally to reject the right wing and big business backed recall attack against Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. There, an inspiring program of community activists, socialist elected officials, DSA members, and labor leaders from around the world spoke to the urgent need to build a fighting grassroots movement that can defend against this attack on all working people.

Castill Hightower, Community BLM Organizer “The right wing is testing the waters across the country, including backing this recall in Seattle against Kshama. The right is getting organized and they have powerful billionaire donors bankrolling their effort.

“Maybe you live outside Seattle, where the ripple of class struggle politics, that bases itself on bringing ordinary people into City Hall instead of making backroom deals with businesses and corporate politicians, caught your eye and made you pay attention to Kshama...and her socialist city council office, where there was a fight for $15 an hour minimum wage, the fight for Indigenous Peoples Day, or the fight to Tax

FEBRUARY 2021

Amazon... Working class people have always gotten their justice through organizing.”

Byron Sigcho-Lopez, Chicago City Councilor [Alderman] “I think it’s important that we protect Kshama; we know that the elites are not going to allow us to have leaders like Kshama, because [she] make[s] a ripple effect across the country they’re starting to see.

That’s why the attack on Kshama is important for the elites – because they want to send a message to all of us that we have to be afraid, that we have to be in fear.

“I think that it is very clear and very fresh in our minds Kshama’s fight and leadership, national leadership to Fight for Fifteen – a campaign that now we have here in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. We also have seen the efforts of the Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter solidarity, the fight for police accountability, and the Amazon tax that has inspired us here in Chicago, and these attacks that we’re fighting here – no matter how hard the oligarchs

and corporations try to fight back, we’ll continue to fight because of the inspiration and courage that we have seen in Seattle.”

Jean Swanson, Vancouver City Councilor “Up here in Vancouver, we’re inspired by all the victories that Kshama, Socialist Alternative, and the broader movement have won – like the Amazon Tax, the winter eviction moratorium, and tenant organizing that has rolled back rent increases.

“We are incredibly inspired that part of the Amazon Tax is being used to fund Green New Deal projects. This is the sort of concrete movement-building victory that inspires people beyond Seattle and beyond the U.S. When you win these movement victories, it’s a win for working people everywhere.

“By the same token, these same forces that are fighting all of us – the big

Council history. But with hundreds of volunteers, $575,000 raised from a record-breaking 7,900 donors (with a median donation of just $20!), and a bold working class program, Kshama secured her seat.

On the heels of this victory, she and Socialist Alternative in Seattle immediately got to work spearheading a movement to Tax Amazon, again. The initial Amazon Tax that was passed in 2018 was shamefully repealed just a month after being passed by Democrats on the City Council who succumbed to threats from Amazon. This time around, a democratically-organized movement of thousands of socialist, labor, climate, and racial justice activists won an estimated $210-240 million a year tax on big business, which will be used to create tens of thousands of green union jobs by building permanently affordable housing.

When the BLM movement exploded after the murder of George Floyd, Kshama led an effort to pass a first in the nation ban on the use of chemical weapons by the police, having herself been teargassed while participating in the protests.

Nobody in Seattle has caused more headaches for the political establishment over the past seven years than Kshama Sawant. “I wear the badge of socialist with honor,” she declared in her January 2014 inauguration speech. She promised at that time: “There will be no backroom deals with corporations or their political servants. There will be no rotten sell-out of the people I represent.” And she has surely delivered. J

developers, big oil, big banks, politicians who claim to support us but abandon us when it matters most – they know that if they can defeat Kshama in Seattle, they will come to my city, and other cities, and attack our movements. We can’t let that happen.

“Kshama came up here to help me before I got elected and she gave a speech.

It was Khama’s advice for progressive politicians if you get elected:

• Don’t negotiate backroom deals.

• Open up your office at City Hall to working class people.

• Use your position on the inside to build up the numbers and power of progressive activists on the outside.

• Understand that we’re in a class war initiated by the ultra-rich.

• View your battles through an international lens.

• Fight the logic of the capitalist system.

• Remember that even small victories are contagious.

• Don’t follow the polite rules of traditional civic politics.

• Identify who is with your cause and who is opposed to it.

• You need to have the political courage to make enemies in high places.

• And if you lose, go down fighting!”

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YOUTH & STUDENTS

Unsafe for Now: Fight for a Safe School Reopening Rob Rooke, Oakland

and children.

The COVID pandemic has shaken up society from head to toe. Nothing has been left untouched as nearly 25 million Americans have been infected and over 400,000 have died. Soaring cases should rule out school reopenings, but America’s 40 million students need a plan for getting back in the classroom.

Many schools are empty as teachers use all their talents and skills to try to teach our increasingly depressed, struggling children online. Others have been forced back and are teaching in unsafe conditions. Parents are overwhelmed. Women, and women of color in particular, are leaving the workforce at an unprecedented rate due to a lack of sufficient childcare.

Tens of millions of Americans are behind in their rents, their credit card bills, and medical bills. The number of Americans depending on food banks has doubled.

Teachers have always had to deal with child poverty, with kids learning on empty stomachs, or affected by shootings and all the other poverty-related social crises. However, the current situation is on a new scale.

Last year saw a 31% rise in mental health related ER visits for 12-17 years olds compared to 2019. Gun violence has exploded.

Children suffering sleeping problems, nightmares, aggression, and bedwetting have increased. Lockdowns and anxiety has seen a spike in domestic violence against women

A New Day The election of Biden-Harris has lifted hopes that the pandemic will now be contained. However, our children deserve better than the old normal.

For the past 100 years, the main defenders of children’s right to the education they deserve has been the teachers unions. Some two million unionized teachers, along with support staff, have held together schools that have been defunded for decades. Teachers went on strike for smaller class sizes and more funding for their kids. Parents overwhelmingly stood by their teachers when they struck, feeding them, marching with them.

And when teachers won, children benefitted.

Vaccine Rollout During the pandemic, big business wanted schools to immediately re-open, as this was necessary to bring parents back to work. Big business’ priorities have led Democratic and Republican administrators around by the nose, and essentially prolonged this pandemic way beyond what anyone ever expected. They do not care about the safety of our kids, parents or workers.

Many areas around the country need to go back on full lockdown, which must be accompanied by full pay for all locked down workers. Half measures or reopening schools in a

Teachers in Chicago teach remotely outside their school buildings in protest of unsafe reopenings. less than safe way will only drag on this fatal pandemic.

The kind of funding that is necessary to reopen schools when COVID numbers recede will require a complete re-thinking of education and a reboot of school infrastructure. Biden has promised $170 billion for school reopening. This is far more than we saw under Trump, but we need a real plan for how this money is to be spent. We need to make demands like class size being capped at twenty for genuine social distancing to be possible. Given that so many kids have fallen behind, this twenty student cap should be made permanent, which would be a massive step forward for the poorest public schools that crowd 30 to 40 students into classrooms. We need a plan to revamp HVAC systems in school buildings to ensure proper ventilation. We need far more teachers and support staff, new and more supplies in every classroom, and technology for students who may not have access to home.

Part of making school reopenings on a widespread scale possible means a mass vaccination campaign in the schools. The New York teachers union has taken a proactive approach, organizing lists of its members to be able to ensure that vaccination

We Need Student Debt Cancellation Drew Bevis, Boston With the Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, calls to cancel student debt have grown. Biden has signaled that he will look to cancel federal loans up to $10,000 per person, but has hedged on using the full extent of his executive powers.

However, with other Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and even establishment gatekeeper Chuck Schumer pushing for more, the student debt crisis is shaping up to be one of the first tests of a new Biden administration.

A Crisis With No End Forty-three million Americans hold over $1.6 trillion in student debt. That is the second largest bucket of debt in America behind mortgages. In response to the pandemic, Congress deferred payments for those with federally backed loans, but this is simply kicking the can down the road.

12

And that can is about to explode. More than 30% of borrowers are either in default, late on payments, or have stopped making them six years after their graduation.

Unlike getting out of an underwater mortgage, there is no possibility of relief from student debt. There is no foreclosure, no asset to leave the banks. If and when you default on student loans, you stare down a future of the government coming for your wages, your tax refunds, and even your disability payments and social security. This is the crisis of student debt.

A movement to cancel student debt would fundamentally be a movement for working class people of color and women.

Women carry nearly 2/3 of the total student debt and on average borrow more money than men. Similarly, 85% of Black bachelor’s degree recipients carry student debt compared to 69% of white recipients and their average debt is higher.

How Did We Get Here?

The rise of the student debt industry would not have been possible without the accompanying attacks on funding for public education.

Over the past ten years, while tuition has increased by over 25% at private institutions, public higher-ed has increased tuition by almost 30%. That’s eight times faster than wages. It is no surprise then that student debt has more than doubled to over $1.5 trillion compared to $671 billion in 2008.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Appealing to Joe Biden’s better angels is ignoring his record. Not only did Biden set the stage for the student loan industry in 1978, he was also a key player in passing a 2005 bill that stripped students of bankruptcy protections. With the Democrats now

of teachers goes swiftly as soon as teachers’ time comes for the jab.

School workers, parents and communities, together with health experts, should ultimately decide when and how schools reopen.

No Progress Without TeacherParent Unity The battle between parents fighting to get their kids back to school and teachers organized around the Refuse to Return campaign has been exploited by big business and its media in every town and city in America. Now that the vaccine has arrived alongside promises of more money from Biden, teachers and parents must work to rebuild the unity of the past.

A united movement of teachers, parents, and working class communities, can push forward demands for more spending now and build on the mood to tax the rich. Biden and the Democrats in Congress can pass sweeping tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. But if history is any teacher, we know they’ll resist that at every turn. America can afford the schools our children deserve. But we won’t get it until we unite and fight for it. J

set to take power in both the House and the Senate, Biden’s cover grows thinner.

To win true student debt cancellation will require a mass movement that includes more than just students. In order to build that movement, debt cancellation groups must link up with unions, affordable housing groups, and low-paid workers on and around campuses to take the fight to the underlying systemic issues in higher education. In order to ensure student debt does not return, the movement must take up the fight for free college for all, paid for by taxing the rich.

But we must be clear, at its core, the fight to cancel student debt is the fight against a system that places the bottom line over people. Student debt is a glaring and obvious symptom of a larger problem.

The chronic underfunding on all levels of our education system reveals the fundamental shortcomings of education under capitalism.

Truly equitable and quality education is only possible under a socialist system built by working people for working people. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

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

ANTI-PUTIN PROTESTS SWEEP RUSSIA Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa The report below was written on the first day of mass protests on January 23 by members of Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa, Socialist Alternative’s sister section in Russia.

Over 100 cities across nine time zones, including regions where the temperature was fifty degrees below zero, were shaken by protests today. Some involved hundreds of people, more often thousands. According to Reuters, there were forty thousand out in Moscow. This is likely the biggest day of protest in post-Soviet Russia.

Opposition Leader Poisoned, then Arrested The protest was called by Alexey Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s leading opponent, who had been poisoned by agents of the Kremlin in August. He had spent five months being treated in Germany before announcing he would return to Moscow.

Last Sunday, Navalny was arrested shortly after landing at passport control, taken to a local police station where a kangaroo court with no lawyer sent him to prison for thirty days. He faces a possible thirteen-year prison sentence. On the next day, Navalny released a long film about corruption in Putin’s family.

Within an hour the film had been seen by over a million people, by the end of the week, fifty million views had been recorded.

As the call to protest began to spread, university and school administrators issued warnings to students not to participate. The state TV stations carried warnings from the Moscow mayor and head of police about the consequences of taking part in an illegal protest. As calls circulated on TikTok and other channels, the Consumer Protection Agency threatened to close them down. One report showed a group of members of the right-wing reactionary Party “For Truth” being briefed by police to act as provocateurs and then escorted into the crowd.

Protesters Respond to Navalny’s Call Protesters chanted “Free Navalny,” “Free all political prisoners,” “Putin is a thief,” and “Down with the Tsar.”

Streets across the country were filled with “Cosmonauts” — police dressed in riot gear ready to lay into the protests. Police violence was widespread. At the time of writing over 3,000 arrests have been made. This includes, according to the Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers, over 50 journalists.

Challenges for the Movement The biggest weakness of the protests is FEBRUARY 2021

that there is no significant left force with a sufficiently strong organization capable of giving a lead. The protests were announced

by Navalny’s office, but there is no organized structure that can reflect the wishes of those who participate. Although many are consciously protesting to demand the release of Alexey Navalny and other political prisoners, and there is clearly a mood against the current regime and corruption, so far the protests demonstrate a strong mood for change without demonstrating an understanding of exactly what change is needed.

Navalny is a businessman who started his political trajectory as a right-wing liberal.

But he took an interesting turn in the last few years. Although he is mainly known as a campaigner against the corruption of Russia’s ruling elite, he reflects a leftward shift in the consciousness of Russian youth, who are fed up with high education costs, precarious wages, and the general stagnant and reactionary political position of the ruling elite and the so-called “systematic parties” including the Communist Party, which keeps Putin in power. When Navalny declared earlier last year that he supported Bernie Sanders, the remainder of the liberal opposition rounded on him in horror.

Even though Navalny has evolved “leftwards,” he remains a liberal, pro-capitalist politician and does not have a real program to offer to resolve the problems of Russian society. The Kremlin has made it clear more than once that it is prepared to use extreme measures to deal with opposition. The attempt to poison Navalny six months ago demonstrates that we need a movement that has a wide elected leadership, no longer dependent on one person.

The Way Forward Only a struggle against capitalism can offer a way ahead. So it is necessary for socialists to intervene energetically with a clear programme in this movement.

Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa (ISA in Russia) argues that first of all we need to establish a firm base for this movement by setting up action committees that can decide strategy and demands for the movement.

Although the main support for this movement currently comes from school students and youth in the universities and in precarious jobs, it is necessary to establish a firm link with the wider working class. Our demand for 300 rubles an hour minimum wage, and for free health care and education will be of critical importance here. We also argue for a constituent assembly in which all layers of the working class are represented so that we can ensure the complete dismantling of the Putin regime and its replacement by a genuinely free and democratic socialist society. J

Thousands of protesters gather in in St. Petersburg, Russia on January 23

INDIAN FARMERS’ PROTEST: SUPREME COURT SUSPENDS LAWS, STRUGGLE CONTINUES Geert Cool, ISA in Belgium India’s Supreme Court has decided to suspend the right-wing BJP government’s contested agriculture laws, a result of the enormous social pressure from historic protests over the past months. The farmers however are not fooled: suspension is not enough, the laws must go completely.

Farmers started their protest after the government passed several laws that removed price supports for agriculture, opening the sector up to corporate “agribusiness.” This in effect would drive millions of already poor farmers into destitution. Protests and occupations culminated in a general strike on November 26, in which 250 million workers participated, representing the largest strike in history.

The Supreme Court’s decision is temporary until a group of four experts finds a “solution” to the ongoing conflict through mediation. The farmers’ organizations continue their protest, refusing to rely on experts hand picked by a politically appointed court who previously spoke in favor of the agricultural laws.

Even outside agriculture, the consequences of market-oriented “liberalization” are being felt. Companies like Amazon are booming and now Tesla too

wants to establish itself in India. The BJP government is pursuing a policy of privatizing and deregulating the labor market.

A small top layer in India is reaping the benefits: by the end of 2020, the number of billionaires grew by ten to 90 people, with a combined wealth of $483 billion.

To stop the farmers’ protest, the government has given in to some minor demands. But to achieve victory, a front of farmers and workers is necessary. A repeal of the agricultural laws would put the workers’ movement in a much stronger position to resist the attacks on their conditions and living standards.

The four Supreme Court experts announced that they will submit a report within two months. Until then, the issue may be deadlocked. The farmers are showing that they are capable of sustaining their movement over a longer period of time. Continued calls for mass actions and new strikes of both workers and farmers can strengthen the movement. Joint action committees of workers and farmers can coordinate the struggle. Such coordination is also needed to develop a platform of demands and approach that stops not only the current attacks on farmers and workers, but the entire policy of the past decades. J

To read more international news check out International Socialist Alternative at internationalsocialist.net.

13

WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Massive Victory for Women’s Rights in Argentina

Andi Cuny, Boston Earlier this month, the government of Argentina enacted a law that massively expands abortion access. This is the culmination of an inspiring mass movement that provides clear lessons for the ongoing fight for abortion access in the United States. And, this win for abortion rights in deeply Catholic Argentina, the birthplace of Pope Francis, could have a seismic effect on the rest of Latin America, where only a small handful of

countries allow legal abortions.

Previously, abortion was only legal in Argentina in the case of rape or if continuing the pregnancy posed a risk to the pregnant person’s health. The new law, which Congress passed in December and which President Alberto Fernández signed on January 14, allows abortion without exception until the 14th week of pregnancy.

Those in power did not hand over this victory willingly. Women and other supporters of the pro-choice movement have

been advocating for the right to choose for decades, with the struggle reaching its peak in recent years. In 2015, widespread rage over the murder of a pregnant 14-year-old at the hands of her boyfriend boiled over into a dogged mass movement against femicide and sexual violence that then expanded to include a popularized demand for legalized abortion.

The pro-choice Green Wave movement, named for the green scarfs donned by many participants, saw mass mobilizations and street protests that forced a public conversation about the need for abortion access.

In 2018, the movement came incredibly close to forcing through a victory for abortion rights, with the Argentinian Congress failing to legalize the procedure by just a few votes.

Far from being dissuaded, the Green Wave continued to build. Similar to the successful campaign for abortion rights in Ireland, activists shifted the narrative by accurately exposing the dire effects an unwanted pregnancy can have on women, particularly working class women. Pro-choice organizers consistently explained that abortions will continue to happen at similar rates regardless of legality, and that lawmakers should support the right to choose to avoid more people dying from unsafe, illegal abortions on top of the thousands of Argentinians who have already met that fate. The bold organizing shifted public opinion and forced the government’s hand.

Failure of the Establishment The new law is not without blemishes.

There are exceptions for healthcare providers to refuse to perform abortions as “conscientious objectors.” And, those who receive an abortion after the 14th week of pregnancy can face up to a year in prison. Weak leftist lawmakers and movement leaders allowed

these concessions to be built into the new law by failing to mobilize for unlimited abortion access.

Still, for Argentina to move from functionally no legal abortion to legalized abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy is a massive triumph and shows the power of a strong mass movement.

Bringing the Fight to the U.S. Although Roe v. Wade is currently the law of the land, we in the U.S. cannot afford to be complacent with regard to our access to safe and legal abortions. The new conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court, as well as relentless attacks on the state level, mean that abortion rights in the U.S. are in serious jeopardy. We can apply lessons from Argentina to the U.S. as we look to build a fighting abortion rights movement that can protect the gains made since Roe v. Wade while expanding abortion access further.

Rather than wait for Democratic Party lawmakers to act, we should organize mass actions in response to attacks on abortion rights. The working class in the U.S. must link the fight for guaranteed abortion access with the fight for a living wage, affordable housing, and universal healthcare to guarantee all women are able to afford and support a child if they want to, or access abortion if they don’t. Women’s organizations should link up with labor unions and other progressive groups to organize for a living wage, guaranteed rent-controlled housing, and universal healthcare.

Luckily, we can look to the brave feminist fighters of Argentina as we build an unapologetic, working class movement to defend and expand abortion access and ensure these rights remain in place for decades to come. J

Trump’s Supreme Court Restricts Abortion Pill: Build a Movement for Reproductive Rights Carey Howard, Somerville On January 12, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that would require people seeking medical abortions to obtain the pill in person from a medical provider. In July, a U.S. District Judge in Maryland had waived this long standing FDA rule requiring in-person pickup in order to allow by-mail distribution of the abortion pill during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pill, mifepristone, is often the only access to abortion for people who live in remote areas far from healthcare facilities.

The Trump Administration explicitly asked the Supreme Court to reinstate this horribly restrictive FDA rule, which will now place substantial obstacles in the path of people attempting to access abortion.

14

Harsh Implications at the Height Threat Posed by Reactionary of COVID-19 Court On the same day that the Supreme Court imposed this heinous ruling, the U.S. reported its highest single-day number of COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic emerged.

This decision will have disproportionate consequences for people of color, particularly Black and Latina people who are already bearing the brunt of COVID-19 risks. A decision that requires them to go into a doctor’s office to pick up a medication that could easily be prescribed through a telemedicine visit, and mailed to their home, poses a direct threat to their lives.

This ruling was not made based on sound medical rationale, but is rather an example of the conservative Supreme Court placing patients and healthcare workers at risk during a global pandemic to serve their own ideological gains.

One of the sharpest concerns about Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh’s appointments to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump has been the danger of overturning Roe v. Wade. The 6-3 vote on this ruling signals the imminent threat the reactionary majority court is posed to have on reproductive rights moving forward.

Now, we are seeing abortion rights activists putting pressure on Biden and Harris to “right this wrong” upon entering into office.

It will be low hanging fruit for Biden to walk back the FDA’s requirements and it’s likely he’ll do so. But will he be prepared to do what it takes to make reproductive care genuinely accessible to working women by immediately moving toward a Medicare For All system?

We’re doubtful. It’s also worth mentioning that the Democrats put up virtually no opposition to Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination

beyond verbal declarations of disgust.

People who are angered by the Supreme Court’s latest attack should not forget that hard won victories like Roe v. Wade weren’t the result of progressive justices; the court at the time included four conservative, two centrist, and only three liberal justices. It was won through a determined women’s movement, which through hundreds of protests between 1969 and 1973 forced the Supreme Court to legalize abortion.

Reproductive freedom should not be fodder for the conservative courts. We deserve access to free, safe, and effective abortions. The Democrats who have a majority in Congress should make this the law of the land.

We deserve healthcare for all, that is not tied to employment and covers preventive care like contraceptives. We deserve a livable minimum wage and free universal public child care so that families have real choice in whether or not to have children. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

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

BIG VACCINE PROMISES drive vaccination efforts in states across the country.

In North Carolina, Honeywell International, Atrium Health, and Tepper Sports & Entertainment are combining their vast networks to launch a big business driven vaccination pilot program.

They are turning the Charlotte Motor Speedway into a privately run and operated drive-through vaccination site. In Washington State, Starbucks is stepping into the game. And at the national level, Amazon’s vice president

of world-wide operations sent a letter to Biden offering the corporation’s “operations, information technology, and communications capabilities” to the national vaccination effort.

Biden has already signaled enthusiasm about private sector intervention. This is the opposite of what we need. When big business supplements itself for public institutions, the end result is a race to the bottom. The logic of privatization is that profits have to be paid out to shareholders

continued from p.5 rather than invested in expanding and improving service. So not only does privatization diminish the quality of a service, it also undermines and erodes public institutions. We need to take the vast resources of these major corporations, like Amazon, into democratic public ownership and integrate them to build a high quality, transparent public healthcare system. The profits of billionaires like Jeff Bezos have no place in our COVID escape route.

THE AFTERMATH OF JANUARY 6 hard line against Trump, they know they can’t win national elections without his base.

And the evidence is that the base is still largely with him even in the wake of the January 6 debacle. Trump is now threatening to form a new “Patriot Party.” This is meant first and foremost to force the Republicans to oppose impeachment. But there is also a logic to talk of a new party. The Republican Party is deeply and probably irreparably divided but in the short term the focus of the populist right is likely going to be mostly on trying to remove party officials and elected officials who “betrayed” Trump.

who have been largely forced off the main social media platforms. Trump’s abandonment of them is also causing confusion in their ranks. In particular, QAnon followers who really believed until the very end that Trump had a secret plan to hold onto power, are in disarray.

But for white nationalist and fascist groups like the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and Proud Boys who harbored fewer illusions in Trump, January 6 was a proving ground. In retrospect it will likely be seen as a breakthrough moment for these groups that creates a real opportunity for them to recruit.

The hard right has a big potential pool to work with, as shown by the poll after JanuThe Fascist Threat ary 6 where a quarter of Republicans said The campaign against “domestic violent they supported the assault on the Capitol. extremism” is temporarily disrupting the We must not exaggerate the strength these activities of the hard right and fascist groups groups have. In reality their forces are still relatively small.

But we should not underestimate the threat they can pose in the next period if they are not met with a decisive response from the left and the labor movement.

The world is watching as This drive also represents They will up their 5,800 workers at an Amazon a momentous fusion of Black game. They now warehouse in Bessemer, Ala- Lives Matter and the labor have a far bigger bama get ready to vote on movement, with workers potential audience forming the first ever union at arguing for the union as an than at any time the corporate empire Amazon avenue for racial equality for since the 1930s, in the United States. But the warehouse’s mostly Black similarly a period of these courageous workers workforce. Unions have a crumassive social and are not going at this struggle cial role to play in giving the economic crisis and alone. anti-racist movement concrete political polarization.

Every morning at 4:30am power. Conversely, anti-racism Banning Trump already-unionized workers and solidarity must be front from Twitter and from nearby warehouses and and center if the American de-platforming the poultry plants gather to pass working class is to succeed hard right on social out flyers to Amazon workers in rebuilding a fighting labor media will not defeat outside the warehouse gates. movement in this country. either right populism The NFL Players Association A victory for labor in Besor the hard right/ has endorsed the union drive semer will send shockwaves fascists.

It will and unions everywhere should through Amazon warehouses actually lend credfollow their lead. Socialist across the country, and even ibility to their narAlternative, an organization the world. Jeff Bezos is tremrative that they are with experience logging victo- bling at the thought of Amazon fighting “Big Tech” ries against Amazon in Seattle workers rising up to claim what and an unholy elite and New York City, is ready to is rightfully theirs. J cabal. They will use help in whatever way we can. the credibility this

SPOTLIGHT: Amazon Warehouse Workers Organize in Besser, Alabama

FEBRUARY 2021

This crisis presents an opportunity to take dramatic steps in the direction of a fundamentally different healthcare system in this country. One where big pharma price gouging and fragile employer-based insurance are a thing of the past. One where logical planning takes precedence over the profit-driven vampirism of billionaires. This is a future the Democratic Party establishment is fundamentally opposed to, and fighting for it will require taking them on as well. J

continued from p.3 “anti-extremism” campaign creates and their fake concern for working people to divert anger at the effects of the crisis in sections of the white population towards nationalism, racism, and xenophobia.

This does not mean we are opposed to taking measures against these groups including prosecuting the ringleaders of the assault on the Capitol who sought to stage a violent coup and purging the police of people linked to these groups. It is striking but in no way surprising that there were a number of off duty police in the right wing mob that stormed the Capitol.

How Do We Fight this Threat?

At the end of the day, we cannot rely on the state, the Democratic Party, or corporate America to defeat the threat of the far right and fascism. Racism and fascism are inevitable toxic by-products of the crisis of a capitalist system in profound decay. And while corporate America rejects these forces now, they will turn to them when they face social upheaval and a more decisive challenge from the left.

Unfortunately, the left in Congress, especially the Squad, miserably failed the test posed by January 6. They simply echoed the “rally in defense of democracy” rhetoric and shouted for impeachment and for removing various Trump supporting politicians from office. They did not call for any mobilization of working people or put forward an independent position. This reflects a lack of confidence in the working class to overcome division and fight in their interests. In fact Bernie Sanders’ pro-working class program including Medicare for All, free college, and the Green New Deal is as popular as ever. In Florida, which Trump won easily, 60% voted in November for a referendum for a $15 minimum wage.

It is only the organized working class, mobilizing all of those whom the right and fascism targets including women, Black people, immigrants and LGBTQ people, that can decisively push these forces back. This means mobilizations in the streets, but also a program that speaks to the interests of the multiracial, multigender working class and can pull millions away from the siren songs of the right populists and isolate and smash the reactionary core. J

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ALTERNATIVE

PANDEMIC DISASTER CONTINUES

WE NEED DRASTIC ACTION TO CONTAIN COVID-19 Grace Fors, Dallas As Joe Biden takes office, the state-bystate heat map of COVID transmission is a sea of red. The sheer depth of the crisis is prompting him to propose bold measures on the issue of the pandemic. No less of a factor, big business and the ruling class are anxious to get the virus under control and resume profit making-as-usual.

Biden is pledging to administer 150 million doses of the vaccine in his first 100 days alongside ramping up testing. He’s proposing unemployment benefits be extended to people who quit their jobs because they feel unsafe. This is on top of the proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus package with needed emergency aid to states.

The stimulus, and Biden’s proposed measures, if passed, would be a step in the right direction, but there is a serious question over which components of this proposal the Democrats are willing to fight for and which are just disposable bargaining chips (see pages 8-9).

Circus of COVID Mismanagement With new COVID variants spreading throughout the country, nonessential businesses are mostly open in two-thirds of states. Malls are open in 13 states, offices in 16, casinos in 21, and bars in 34. Gyms are open in 48 states. Only seven states currently have stay-at-home advisories.

There are roughly 70,000 contact tracers in the U.S., while new cases regularly exceed 200,000 daily. Five states started promoting “DIY” contact tracing, asking those who test positive to do their own tracing. States

and localities have had to work out their own guidelines for COVID response and haphazardly tweak restrictions as they go, while the federal government has at best played catch up, at worst provided ever-changing, contradictory advice.

Biden promises increased emergency funding is on the way to state and local governments, a crucial measure to address deep budget crises. However, over the last year, problems have emerged around mismanagement of earlier “flexible” relief grants. Pennsylvania received $175 million from the federal government for rent and mortgage relief, but the majority was left unspent because the distribution programs were too hard for ordinary people to access. The remaining $105 million was handed over to the Department of Corrections.

Throwing money at the problem, without a clear plan alongside it, won’t solve the COVID crisis.

would recommend to the president.

What Ever Happened to Flattening the Curve?

What Would It Take to Stop the Spread?

Researchers from the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville studied the effects of lockdown policies between March 1 and April 27. They found that as many as 35 million cases were prevented by stay-at-home orders, closing bars and restaurants, bans on large gatherings, and school closures.

Biden’s COVID advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm argued in favor of a four-to-six week lockdown, with aid for business and individuals, as the best way to reduce infection rates, but then insisted this was not something he

Biden’s avoidance of the question of closing non-essential business exposes his key limitation: he is not willing to interrupt profits for the sake of public health.

Bernie Sanders and the Squad should not be afraid to call out the dangerous gaps in Biden’s plan and point to the measures we truly need. This could be the focal point of a true mass movement for public health centered around Medicare For All and taking Big Pharma into public ownership.

At the very least, we need a renewed “Phase I” lockdown in COVID hot spots to halt transmission. This means closing schools

Biden’s Pfizer Blinders Joe Biden was elected by voters who saw the pandemic as the most pressing issue facing the country, and who were more confident in Biden than Trump to adequately handle it. It is stunning that his robust pandemic plan includes few concrete measures to reduce the spread, including a painful absence of any discussion of lockdowns.

A study from Columbia University warns that without restrictions in place to stop the spread, even vaccinating millions of people will still not be enough to avoid millions of new infections and thousands of deaths.

While ensuring the vaccine is free and accessible to all should be a top priority, Biden’s singular focus on vaccination has the potential to be very damaging as other measures fall by the wayside (see page 5).

and nonessential business, with aid to keep small businesses afloat and 100% of lost wages paid out. We need a federal mask mandate for all Americans (not just on federal property and airlines as Biden has implemented). The duration of this lockdown must be used to revive contact tracing by hiring and training thousands of new workers, and to rapidly expand testing infrastructure so it is free and available to all.

Pandemic-fatigued Americans need to be paid to stay at home. This should be in the form of monthly stimulus payments directly into peoples’ bank accounts and mailboxes, not through opaque relief programs. Cancelling rent, rental debt, student debt, and medical debt would allow families to shelter in place without worrying about how to pay the bills. This ought to be paired with a reversal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and new taxes on corporations and the rich who have profited off the pandemic at the expense of workers.

This would be a path to fund a dramatic intervention to truly stamp out COVID. The pandemic is exponentially worse than it was in March. The stakes are higher as new strains threaten a new wave of deaths, which left to spread could weaken the efficacy of vaccines. The situation of working people is worse as we’ve borne the brunt of an economic downturn while continuing to be exposed against our will. U.S. life expectancy has seen its sharpest decline in 40 years. We must demand better than the old normal, and aggressively work to combat the inequality and exploitation created by capitalism which have been highlighted and worsened by the pandemic. J