Socialist Alternative Issue 76 - September 2021

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INSIDE DELTA WREAKS HAVOC “WOKE” CAPITALISM CRISIS IN AFGHANISTAN

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WHAT WE STAND FOR End the COVID Chaos The emergence of the Delta variant has thrown back the fight against COVID. We need a globally coordinated effort to get the virus under control which will require numerous public health measures.

• Lift patent protections on all COVID vaccines. This would remove a key obstacle to poor countries manufacturing them at home. It would also make publicly available the science and technology behind these life-saving vaccines.

• Take Big Pharma profiteers into public ownership and turn existing vaccines into the People’s Vaccines!

• Reaching vaccine holdouts in the U.S. will require going much further in ensuring the shot is accessible. This includes guaranteeing paid time off to recover from the vaccine’s side effects, free transit to and from vaccine appointments, and community-led education campaigns to ensure people know the vaccine is free.

• We support certain public health measures, like negotiated safety protocols in workplaces, to slow the spread. Workers should have the right to negotiate with their bosses what measures they deem reasonable.

• In the context of the spread of the Delta variant, we need to reintroduce and expand critical aid. Cancel rent and medical debt accrued during the pandemic, and protect renters from all COVID related evictions.

• With students returning to the classroom, school districts need to urgently invest stimulus money in hiring educators to lower class sizes and maintain social distancing. Educators, school staff, parents, and students should be empowered to democratically discuss and implement what they deem to be reasonable safety protocol.

We Need a Genuine Expansion of the Social Safety Net The Democrats are debating a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill which currently contains what would be the largest expansion of the social safety net since the New Society of the 1960s. We’ve seen the establishment cave on key demands like the $15/ hour minimum wage and we need a movement to demand the passage of the package in full with no concessions. We also need to demand the introduction of key measures like Medicare for All! • Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high-quality public housing. Raise the corporate tax rate to at least 35%!

• Make the child tax credit permanent

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and fully fund high-quality, universal childcare.

• Cancel all student debt! Make public college tuition-free.

• We need an immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains into public ownership and retool them to provide free, 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 and support staff to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

For Socialist Internationalism The devastating events unfolding in Afghanistan prove how needless 20 years of U.S. intervention in the Middle East has been. (see pg. 8) • What is needed now to liberate the Afghan masses is a mass movement that opposes all imperialist intervention, and seeks to create a democratic workers’ and peasants’ government that explicitly champions the liberation of women.

• Such a movement would need to unite with the working classes of neighboring countries, pointing toward a socialist federation in the region, based on respecting the right of different nationalities to self-determination.

For a Socialist Green New Deal This summer we are seeing record heat and the worst drought in 1,200 years on the West Coast. Biden has prioritized bipartisan deal making over delivering real climate legislation. The infrastructure bill that passed the Senate contains zero measures to actually address the driving force behind climate change. We need to organize a mass movement of youth climate strikers and the labor movement to demand the inclusion of all necessary climate measures in the upcoming infrastructure bill, not just those that are tolerable to big business!

• Fight for a genuine Green New Deal jobs program to tackle climate change and provide well-paid union jobs for millions of workers.

• Tax the billionaires and big business to fund extreme weather services, publicly run research into new climate technology, and retrofitting existing infrastructure for climate resilience.

• Take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership.

For a New Political Party for Working People Fighting the right means abandoning

info@SocialistAlternative.org @Socialist Alternative @SocialistAlt /SocialistAlternative.USA /c/SocialistAlternative @socialistus

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Elise Picard, Talladega I’m a 16-year-old highschooler from Talladega, Alabama. I go to school in Birmingham, which is where I heard about Socialist Alternative. My friend had her door knocked on by a member of the organization who was deployed to aid the union effort at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer. She texted me the flyer which directed us to a rally at the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union headquarters. From there, we met another SA member who invited us to a public meeting in Railroad Park. At that meeting, I experienced an atmosphere of pure passion and genuine solidarity. Leaders of the meeting spoke on racial oppression and climate change. They spoke beautifully.

Before my encounter with this organization, I had only had interactions with largely liberal or conservative worldviews, therefore my understanding of Marxism was biased and my idea of capitalism’s role in climate change and societal divisions was underdeveloped.

A pessimistic gloom began to shroud my liberal outlook as I watched Greta Thunberg’s “School Strikes for Climate” and the George Floyd Uprisings, two of the most formative movements in my life, result in small-scale changes that

the “center.” We need a new working class political party not beholden to big business interests.

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

• No attacks on democratic rights! We need to fight against all attempts at racist voter suppression being driven through by Republicans.

A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in) Justice • Arrest and convict killer cops!

• Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks.

• Cities should cut 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.

• End minimum mandatory sentencing, immediately release any prisoner charged with non-violent crimes of poverty and expunge their record, no more cash bail, close all private prisons!

• Put policing under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.

fell dramatically short of what was necessary. Greta continues to strike, yet in the U.S., the Green New Deal is still considered radical. The George Floyd Protests created the widest social awareness of the oppression of Black Americans ever seen, but racial oppression and rampant police brutality appear to be perpetual.

I was disillusioned, and looking for an organization that was organized and effective. I needed to believe that the oppressive structures that we endure could be dismantled. We have developed a thriving Alabama branch. Since the Amazon union drive, we have marched in solidarity with local movements in support of Palestine and LGBTQ+ pride. These are the communities that compose the working class, and we fight for them everyday. J

Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement • The Democratic establishment’s refusal to get rid of the undemocratic filibuster means Biden’s legislative agenda hangs in the balance. Major unions, socialist organizations, and community groups need to put huge pressure on the Democrats to do whatever is necessary to win the PRO Act, including abolishing the filibuster. This can include rallies in every major city as a step toward preparing to occupy the offices of any senator that stands in the way of its passage.

• Similarly, we need to fight for a $15 minimum wage and to get rid of the separate, tipped minimum wage.

• We need to build radical fighting unions with accountable leaders that help organize social struggles against evictions, poverty, racism, 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.

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DELTA VARIANT PROLONGS PANDEMIC CHAOS Kele Cable, Minneapolis Although much of the U.S. has enjoyed a summer dip in new COVID cases and hospitalizations due to the roll out of highly effective vaccines, the Delta variant’s rapid spread is once again bringing uncertainty and fear for billions of people worldwide. At the time of writing, Southeast Asia is seeing its worst wave of the pandemic to date, deaths surged by 80% in Africa in July, and Latin America is again becoming a global COVID hotspot. The U.S. is seeing a dreaded uptick in cases, particularly in states with lower vaccination rates. Alarmingly, many new cases are concentrated among young people, and as students come back into classrooms with varying degrees of COVID measures in place, cases among young kids are on the rise too.

Scientists are still working out the implications of the Delta variant, but what we know is that it’s more, perhaps twice, as transmissible as the original virus that hit the U.S. in 2020. It also matures and becomes contagious several days faster. It is not on average more deadly, but these two factors allow it to infect more people faster.

As we’ve pointed out since the beginning of the pandemic, equitable access to vaccines globally was going to be directly cut across by big pharma’s hunger for profit.

Despite the development of these vaccines being publicly funded, their manufacturing and distribution has taken place on the free market — meaning the rules are determined by billionaires rather than ordinary people.

Because of this, new and more dangerous COVID variants have emerged.

Vaccine Hesitancy The U.S. has enough vaccines to inoculate every American, yet full vaccination rates hover around 50% of the eligible population in most states. The new surge due to the Delta variant has convinced some holdouts to become vaccinated, with the country reaching 70% of the eligible population having gotten at least one shot on August 2.

Vaccine hesitancy, however, poses a major problem for ordinary people in the U.S. Many are understandably angry at vaccine holdouts still refusing to get the shot. The science is quite clear that universal vaccination remains our best protection against a constantly mutating and spreading virus. However, in order to identify any path out of this crisis we have to first understand why it is that “vaccine hesitancy” is so widespread in the U.S. and what the best means are to overcome it.

Those who remain unvaccinated in the U.S. can be divided into two rough groups: those who want the vaccine but have yet to SEPTEMBER 2021

get it, and those who refuse it.

For those who want the shot but have yet to get it, this could be for any number of reasons. Whether they can’t get time off work to recover from the side effects, can’t find childcare while they go in for an appointment, or live too far from a vaccination site and don’t have reliable transportation — there remains a question of access for many unvaccinated Americans.

Then there are those who have access but are refusing the shot. The high rates of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. exists against the backdrop of a completely mangled COVID response by the U.S. ruling class, where open feuding between politicians and health experts became a daily occurrence. More broadly, it exists in the context of deep distrust in our for-profit healthcare system.

For Black Americans, vaccine skepticism can come from a long history of lack of access to adequate healthcare, and mistreatment in the healthcare system itself. The most notable example of this is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, an abusive biomedical study where Black Americans were infected with syphilis, studied, and denied treatment. For others, it’s likely informed by decades of personal experience with misdiagnosis, shoddy treatment, and overpriced prescriptions.

The U.S. healthcare system is notoriously expensive and full of surprise charges that could easily lead to bankruptcy. Despite the vaccine being free, there are a significant number of “hesitant” people who either are not aware of this or are skeptical that it’s true. If we had a system like Medicare-for-All where high quality, free healthcare was guaranteed, people would not be afraid of being charged for a vaccine!

Despite being publicly funded, the entire COVID vaccine operation was privately driven.

That deadly pandemics are a money-making opportunity for big pharma is why Socialist Alternative calls for the public ownership of the pharmaceutical industry: vaccines and all other drugs should be researched, developed, manufactured, and distributed on the basis of need, not profits.

Within the broad category of vaccine skeptics, there are those who are without question driven by right-wing, conspiratorial ideas.

This thinking has emerged in a political and social environment wherein faith in major institutions was already decaying, which explains how these ideas have been able to grab hold of ordinary people.

Right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson have doubled down on the argument that vaccination is, above all else, a personal decision that should be made without concern for its impact on broader society. This right-wing individualism is at odds with the vast majority

COVID-19

of ordinary people who recognize that a certain degree of individual sacrifice is necessary in order to protect society at large.

Are Vaccine Mandates the Answer?

Most forms of vaccine skepticism could be overcome in the context of a public healthcare system that is run transparently with no hidden costs.

If, for example, Pfizer and Moderna were publicly owned and run purely in the interests of public health rather than profit, we would very likely see dramatically less skepticism.

Even in the immediate term, measures could be taken to alleviate the concerns of ordinary people about getting the shot: guaranteeing paid time off to allow people to recover from the side effects, free transportation to and from vaccination sites, community-driven information campaigns to ensure people know the vaccine is free, and a removal of all patent protections to transparently demonstrate the science and technology behind the vaccines.

While we do not support a blanket policy of mandatory vaccination, which could be used as a form of repression, we do support certain measures to protect public health. Most states already require healthcare workers to get certain vaccinations to protect their patients such as vaccines for influenza, measles, and rubella. The same is true for school students and military personnel. We support a similar policy for COVID vaccinations, though we believe that such a policy, in order to actually protect workers, would have to be negotiated

Vaccine requirements are becoming more common.

Right wing pundits and conspiracy theorists insist that vaccines are a form of social control.

New York City transit requires masks regardless of vaccination status.

Throughout the pandemic, there have been small “anti mask” protests.

with t h e w o r k ers themselves.

Rather than being implemented solely by bosses and managers, workers should have the right to negotiate and implement the safety procedures, including proof of vaccination, that they deem reasonable. This could include work-from-home options where applicable for

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S E AT T L E

WHY I SIGNED THE PETITION FOR MY OWN RECALL City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, Seattle A version of this article was originally published in Jacobin Magazine on 8/4/21.

Last year’s historic Black Lives Matter uprising left the ruling class and right wing terrified of the deepening leftward radicalization taking place in U.S. society. They’re responding with 81 bills criminalizing peaceful protest in front of 34 state legislatures and over 250 voter suppression laws in 43 states, both offensives initiated by the Republicans, but with no effective resistance from the Democrats. Now, both voter suppression and the attack on the right to protest have arrived squarely in liberal Seattle in the form of the right-wing Recall campaign against my socialist council office.

The Recall campaign is using massive voter suppression via a low-turnout winter special election, and the unelected State Supreme Court’s stamp of approval on the ballot itself, in an attempt to construct the most undemocratic election possible.

If the Recall succeeds, it will set a new and deeply dangerous precedent: when the ruling class fails to unseat left elected representatives through “normal” means like flooding races with corporate cash, or neutralizing them through cooptation, they can resort to extraordinary measures like this Recall. We have to fight back against these attacks with the full strength of our movement.

Why Big Business and the Right Wing Want Me Out Since I was first elected to city council as an open socialist and Marxist in 2013, we have used our seat as an indispensable tool for Seattle’s working class. In just eight years, our office has helped lead movements to win the first $15 minimum wage in a major U.S. city, the $250 million/year Amazon Tax to fund affordable housing and a Green New Deal, many crucial and first-in-the-country renters’ rights victories, the nation’s first ban on chemical weapons by the police (before the Democrats rolled back many of the

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strongest provisions), and more.

It is precisely because our socialist council office has been so effective at winning victories for ordinary people that we are now facing a right-wing recall effort based around trumped up charges against my role in the Black Lives Matter and Tax Amazon movements.

Over 130 Trump donors have donated to the Recall campaign, alongside over 500 Republican donors, more than 100 CEOs and corporate executives (locally and nationally), and three out of five billionaire dynasties in the state of Washington. Who is the Recall’s top lawyer? John McKay, former U.S. Attorney appointed by George W. Bush.

Voter Suppression in “Liberal Seattle” I won election in 2013, re-election in 2015, and yet again in 2019. These elections were all in November, and had extremely high turnouts in neighborhoods with the highest concentration of people of color, young people, and renters.

The same forces we’ve defeated three times in general elections have finally learned that just lying about my record and using coded racist and sexist attacks on my character isn’t enough. The Recall campaign has done the calculations and figured out that their only path to victory lies through suppressing voter turnout among these exact demographics.

To get the Recall on the ballot, they need to collect just 10,700 signatures. With a month left to go before the August 3 deadline to turn in their signatures for a November general election, the Recall campaign announced they had over 9,000 officially pre-verified signatures, and that they were aiming for November but just weren’t sure if they could get there.

Despite their pace up to that point being just under 1,000 per week, we predicted they were planning to intentionally slow down signature collection and, come August

3, cynically pretend they just didn’t have enough to submit, meaning the vote would happen in a lower turnout special election in the winter instead.

Why? Because in King County, where Seattle is located, special elections in recent years have had up to 40% and 50% lower turnout than general elections.

The only reason the Recall campaign was even in a position to bypass the general election was because the Washington State Supreme Court inexplicably delayed ruling on our case for nearly three months after their own ruling date which was set for early January. Had they ruled even ten days earlier, a special election may have been off the table altogether.

Signing the Petition for My Own Recall At a press conference on July 9, I became perhaps the first politician to ever sign a petition for their own recall, and the Kshama Solidarity Campaign announced it would begin collecting thousands of signatures for the Recall with the message of “put up or shut up.” We said at the press conference, “You say you want to turn in your signatures and get on the ballot in November? Then do it. The Solidarity Campaign will collect the rest.”

Our campaign caught fire. Volunteer turnout for canvassing increased eight-fold, with 764 two-hour canvassing shifts in the three weeks between July 9 and August 1. We held a Solidarity Campaign labor rally with over 100 union members in attendance followed by a canvassing shift, and Seattle DSA organized a rally and fundraiser with Jacobin writer Meagan Day and former Bernie 2020 press secretary Briahna Joy Gray.

We delivered our rapidly-growing stack of signatures to the Recall campaign every two days via a legal courier, just as they requested in the furious emails we received from their lawyer. At 2,000 signatures, we held a press conference outside the lawyer’s office, and at

3,200, the day before the August 3 deadline, we held a rally outside his office which we called “Put Up or Shut Up.” Despite clearly having enough signatures to submit for a November election, showing absolutely no shame, the Recall held on to their signatures and refused to turn them in.

Now, our plan is to build the strongest Get Out the Vote effort Seattle has ever seen.

Elections and the Socialist Movement As Marxists, we use the capitalist electoral system to win concrete victories for the working class, popularize and build the socialist movement, and expose in real time the limits of indeed the very electoral system we are tactically utilizing. Ultimately, we know we can’t win a socialist transformation of society through the capitalist electoral system because it’s not our system; in fact, it’s designed specifically to prevent true systemic change.

This approach stands in contrast to that of the Squad who have unfortunately been increasingly unwilling to stand up to the Democratic establishment and use their positions to build movements that can win victories.

This also applies to sections of the socialist left who think socialism can be achieved through the electoral arena without a need for revolutionary change.

When our movement becomes too much of a threat to the status quo, the ruling class has no qualms about taking extraordinary measures, as we have seen with this undemocratic Recall campaign and many more severe examples throughout history. This Recall campaign should be a warning to our entire movement.

Throughout the month of August, we are doing a donations drive to cancel out the Recall’s Trump and CEO dark money (k. Our movement must defend itself with everything we’ve got. We hope progressives and socialists across the country will join us. J

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FIGHTING RACISM

WE NEED SOCIALISM, NOT “WOKE CAPITALISM” Tamar Wilson, Philadelphia

Uber launched its ‘anti-racist’ ad campaign in August 2020, with billboards in 13 U.S. cities.

Nike’s 2018 ad campaign featuring activist athlete Colin Kaepernick increased the company’s market value by $6 billion.

As the first wave of COVID subsided in late May and June of 2020, what would become the largest protest movement in U.S. history erupted. Millions of people, particularly young people, poured into the streets of cities, suburbs, and even rural towns to express their anger at racist police murders, specifically that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This rebellion was enormously inspiring and transformed the consciousness of many ordinary people. However, the initial revolutionary spirit of the uprising hit a wall. Without structures or organization being developed within the Black Lives Matter movement, the door was left open to corporate co-optation of the movement and the dilution of its potential impact.

Corporations and the political establishment have swept in and cloaked themselves in a cynical form of identity politics as a way to undercut the genuine anger of millions of working and young people at endemic racism.

We can see this through their adoption of certain anti-racist slogans and phraseology and attempts to “diversify” their executive suite.

Corporations and the ruling class are trying to advance a “woke” version of capitalism in attempts to head off the most radical conclusions and revolutionary demands for system change.

The #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, renewed Free Palestine, and climate movements foretell increasing radicalization and willingness to fight back among the working class, notably the youth.

As a result, not only are corporations

attempting to appeal to youth markets by appropriating anti-racist slogans, but a whole section of the U.S. ruling elite is now using a form of identity politics to navigate an environment that is becoming more hostile to the rule of billionaires. Due to the changes in consciousness around racism (especially anti-Black racism), sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, the ruling class in the U.S. can’t rely on the same crude divide-and-rule strategies of the past. Instead, leaning on “woke signalling” and expensive diversity initiatives allows them to maintain a progressive veneer.

The Empire Strikes Back Corporations giving limited support to certain demands of oppressed groups isn’t entirely new. “Pinkwashing” revs up every year in June as rapacious corporations like Halliburton and Raytheon attempt to profit from inserting rainbows into their logos and serving as corporate Pride sponsors. Young people are increasingly disgusted with this corporate co-optation and have organized anti-corporate Pride marches in cities across the country. The more recent “woke washing” obfuscates capitalism’s role in creating and stoking oppression, racism, sexism, and war while at the same time trafficking the very dangerous idea that liberation can be achieved under capitalism.

We must be clear that the intent of the ruling class is not benevolent. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) intiatives, which have turned into a billion dollar industry, partnering with social justice organizations, and creating a more diverse management class,

many plucked from the ranks of social movements even, will continue the same exploitation unabated but with different faces. Antiracist social justice organizations reliant on corporate America for funding will forever be required to center their anti-racist efforts in a manner acceptable to the ruling capitalist class, lest they lose their patronage.

Woke branding stunts — like Frito Lay’s massive “Amplify Black Voices” mural in Brooklyn — help promote the dangerously mistaken idea that Black freedom can be won under capitalism. While Frito Lay paints the town in vague anti-racist slogans, their workers in Kansas were forced to strike in July for better working conditions and one guaranteed day off a week (see p. 10). These workers, many of whom are Black, watched an overworked coworker collapse and die on the production line. They were forced to drag the body away in order to keep the line going. For them, woke slogans and symbolic donations to social justice organizations don’t make a lick of difference. It won’t make a dent in their working conditions nor will it make a dent in the big systemic injustices they face in housing, jobs, healthcare, education, and policing.

The Church of Robin DiAngelo The theoretical justification for these corporate distortions come from mistaken and divisive ideas on antiracism in the academic and NGO spheres. The bible for corporate DEI initiatives is Robin DiAngelo’s book

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Revolutionary Marxism & Our Struggle to End Racial Oppression Eljeer Hawkins, New York City In the course of the long historic struggle against racial oppression and capitalist exploitation at home and abroad, Marxism’s ideas and revolutionary methods have been and continue to be a valuable tool.

At the heart of revolutionary Marxism is an analysis of the rise and development of capitalism. From the inception of global capitalism in the 16th and 17th centuries, the ideas of racism and racial oppression emerged to socially control and exploit the labor of indigenous people, Africans, and oppressed populations in Europe like the Irish. Racism continues to be a powerful tool in the arsenal of capitalism to divide and conquer the working class, poor, and oppressed.

Marxism highlights the revolutionary potential of the international working class, the importance of a program and demands that correspond to working people’s lived SEPTEMBER 2021

experience, and evolving consciousness based on their experience with capitalism and oppression. Revolutionary Marxism is a call to action, developing the methods of social struggle led by the working class and poor to end the tyranny of capitalist oppression.

Today, our struggle against racial oppression demands a revolutionary theory and action program to tear down the system that undergirds racism, racist ideas, and policies: capitalism. This action program must include a struggle to end mass incarceration, guarantee housing for all, fully fund public schools, implement a $15/hr min wage, and to cut bloated police budgets to fund social and public services.

Capitalism undermines the ability of the overwhelming majority of the Black working class and poor to live a dignified life. It divides the working class and poor, establishing a superiority/inferiority complex that affects the entire working class as the ruling

class maintains their power, property, prestige, and profits.

In the post-George Floyd rebellion, Socialist Alternative made the historic decision to launch the SA Black caucus as a way to introduce revolutionary Black Marxism and internationalism to a new generation of activists and organizers, par ticularly Black and brown radicalized workers and youth who oppose all forms of oppression, hate, violence and exploitation.

The actual application of revolutionary Marxism at home and abroad can unearth the potential power of the multi-racial, gender, and generational working class around solidarity, social struggle, and international socialism J

Tamar W., Socialist Alternative member and a member of SA’s Black Caucus, speaks at a BLM rally in Philadelphia.

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CLASS STRUGGL HOW IS CHANGE WON? Grace Fors, Dallas

Today’s generation is growing up surrounded by crises. As they come of age, deadend jobs, crushing debt, and climate destruction await them. After 18 months of isolation, the COVID-19 pandemic is rearing its head again with no clear end in sight. All of these combined disasters can create a perfect storm for demoralization, and millions of people are no doubt wondering if it’s possible to win a better future. The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes, but only if we fight for it.

How Did We Get Here?

Under capitalism, society is divided into two general classes: the capitalist ruling class and the working class. The former, consisting of the bosses, CEOs, executives, and the ultrarich, are solely concerned with maximizing profits. Their concerns are how to cut costs, where to drill for oil, what laws to lobby for that will be most favorable to their interests, and fundamentally, where to invest capital to get the greatest return?

On the other hand, the working class, who actually keep society running, are the legions of people who survive on our wages from work, and the questions we grapple with are quite

different. How do I budget my paycheck to make sure I can afford my bills this month?

What will I do if my rent goes up, or if I need to take my child to the doctor? Do I need to take a second job to put food on the table?

The relationship between the working class and the ruling class under capitalism is one of cynical mutual necessity. To produce goods and services, capitalists need to employ workers. However, if they want to turn a profit, they need to pay wages lower than the value the worker produces. Meanwhile, working-class people need to work for a wage to afford our needs like food and shelter, which only become further out of reach as the capitalists, big companies, banks, and landlords strive to raise the prices of the things we need to survive (all while paying us less).

This tension between worker and boss which colors daily life for ordinary people is then paired with the numerous consequences of capitalist rule in society: fossil fuel-driven climate catastrophe, oppression, and economic crises. In this way, not only is the relationship between worker and boss exploitative but between capitalism and all of broader society.

According to Marx and Engels’ theory of historical materialism, throughout history, class divisions denoting oppressors and oppressed have emerged from economic relations. Wherever there have been opposed

General Motors strike, 1976.

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classes, they have clashed, and these clashes Deal provisions like the National Labor Relaare the motor force of historical developments. tions Act and Social Security.

At certain points, the uninterrupted fights In 1934, Minneapolis truck drivers with between hostile classes reach their breaking Teamsters Local 574, led by socialists, waged points, and a fundamental reordering of social, a mass strike that evolved into a ferocious political, and economic relations is made pos- class battle. Truck drivers and socialist leaders sible only through revolution. mobilized all workers, and the entire commuClass struggle has been on the scene since nity, in the struggle. Following three months of the very beginning of capitalism. It is an ines- escalating tactics, they won the union’s right to capable reality. The ruling class carries out a represent all workers in the industry, defeated class struggle every day as they maintain their the “open shop” status quo in Minneapolis, control over the functioning of and sparked organization in society. However, the working the trucking industry through“If the workers class can also wage a strugout the country. Teamster are organized, all gle in its own interests. In membership nationwide quinthey have to do is fact, the working class fighttupled over the next 5 years. ing back as a united class is Furthermore, this 1934 strike put their hands in the only proven method to was among the monumental their pockets and win victories. breakthroughs in the 1930s From the 1830s onwards, that ushered in a new milithey have got the slave rebellions battled plantant workers movement postcapitalist class tation profiteers laying the Depression, simply by demonwhipped.” basis for the determined strating to the rest of the world fight against capitalism and what is possible through class racism that is still being struggle.

‘Big Bill’ Haywood, waged today, nearly two Industrial Workers of the centuries later. In the New We have even recent examWorld (IWW) leader England textile mills, teenage ples of what working class girls working tirelessly in the struggle can win. In February factories using dangerous equipment started 2018, thousands of West Virginia teachers and taking defiant strike action against unsafe con- school staff walked off the job. Against the ditions and wage cuts that resulted in the first advice of the law and even of their union leadpredecessors to modern labor unions. ership, the teachers were confident that they Throughout the devel- could shut down the school system statewide. opment of industrial Protests of thousands of teachers, parents, stucapitalism in the U.S., dents, and community members swarmed the struggles such as these state capitol every day and did not rest until reached titanic heights. their demands were met in full, and ultimately In the 1880s a mighty they were when the Republican legislature was labor movement spear- forced to grant a 5% pay increase for all public headed fights for the sector workers. The power of the working class 8-hour workday and week- is the power of determined collective action. ends, through daring strike Working class struggle gets results. It’s the action and mass revolts. In key to winning victories for the vast majority of some cases, they took over society, and as Marx points out, is the motor entire cities. In the 1930s force of historical progress. The organized the Communist Party led combative tactics of working people is the key Minneapolis truck drivers strike, 1934. v i c t o r i o u s to winning our basic needs, as well as social s t r u g g l e s liberation and environmental justice. for unemp l o y m e n t Is Class Struggle A Thing Of The benefits and against Past? evictions .

It can be hard to imagine the titanic class A tremen- struggles of the past - with mass meetings in dous wave the hundreds, militant picket lines, general of unioniza- strikes - taking place in today’s context. The tion, mass reason for this is intentional. strikes, and When the capitalist class began its turn to organizing neoliberalism at the end of the 1970s, this campaigns began a long and intense period of warfare forced the waged against working people and our orgapassage of nizations. This not only helped the ruling class March on Washington, 1963. key New restore profitability to its declining system but

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concealed the monumental hisStriking Los Angeles teachers, 2018. tory of working class struggle which, if revived, could spell their ruin.

This “class warfare from above” was successful and we are still dealing with its consequences today. However, the 2008-09 financial crisis shook the foundations of the neoliberal world order. Suddenly, the will of the working class asserted itself again. Wall Street bailouts ignited the Occupy Wall Street movement. Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker’s vicious public sector cuts sparked a month-long uprising and occupation of the state Capitol in the Battle of Wisconsin. And worldwide, rebellions and revolutions shook the ruling class. While these movements did Seattle WTO protests, 1999 not produce the revolutionary victories we need, they were precursors to breakthroughs like Kshama Sawant’s 2013 election, Bernie For example, the “antismoke crusades” of Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential runs, the early 20th century, many led by ordinary the #RedforEd teachers strikes, and the mothers who held anti-smog marches against growth of socialist organizations like the Dem- polluting factories. The United Steelworkers ocratic Socialists of America. Now, the experi- took on Carnegie Steel in the aftermath of the ence of the pandemic has, for many, decisively deadly Donora Smog of 1948 killing dozens. shattered the illusion that capitalism is a viable Organized labor was a key proponent of envisystem. ronmental protection laws in the 1960s and More and more, the profound underly- 70s. Labor movements at their most powerful ing crisis facing the political establishment have taken up struggles for the environment. is making itself known. Millions have been We need to organize ourselves, in unions to exposed to the naked scam underlying our fight in our workplaces, and in our own politieconomic system. After a long period of cal party to fight as working people against retreat, working people are poised to return the capitalist class as a whole. This is the only to the scene. However, the main obstacle to solution to the climate crisis, and the same the development of a real fightback is the his- applies for anything else we could ever hope torically low level of working class organization. to win.

Building a fightback on the scale necessary The capitalist class has no intention of will require the development of a reinvigorated, acting outside of its own interests. They’re not militant labor movement as well as the estab- inclined to let their bought-off politicians raise lishment of a working class political party free taxes on their profits. Cutting police budgets to from corporate control. fund community services would weaken their

Winning Anything Will Require Class Struggle The stakes are enormously high for humanity right now. The IPCC warns the earth has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.

Even the Democrats’ boldest proposals come nowhere near what is necessary to reverse the climate spiral. Limiting our ambitions to what the political establishment, with its two parties of big business, finds acceptable is a nonstarter.

There is no path to 100% renewable energy without workers and youth as the driving force.

This must include workers in polluting industries. So long as these workers are the source of fossil fuel profits, a strong labor movement with workers organized around a common strategy for renewable jobs and a just transition, joining forces with the tremendous youth climate movement, could be unstoppable against the menace of the fossil fuel industry.

There is strong historic precedent for the working class acting on behalf of the planet.

SEPTEMBER 2021

go-to institution they mobilize to protect their property, break strikes, and brutalize protest.

They will not tolerate guaranteed housing, healthcare, and living wages because working people’s financial struggles are the bosses’ primary way of coercing us into low-paid, exploitative jobs.

We only have two options: we can leave society in their hands, or we can harness the inherent power of our class to seize what is rightfully ours. History shows us the only rights we have as workers aren’t those granted by the state or the constitution, but the ones workers and mass movements take for ourselves and fight to defend. Organized mass movements holding protests, town halls, direct action, and leveraging strike action through escalating tactics.

This World Isn’t Ours, But It Could Be The level of wealth being hoarded by the rich is at historic levels, and the capitalist system is completely failing to provide an answer to the existential crises we’re facing today - whether

Capitol occupation in Madison, WI, 2011

McDonald’s workers in Detroit fighting for $15, 2013 it be economic crises, a deadly pandemic, or a worsening climate disaster caused by the fossil fuel industry.

There is an understandable lack of confidence among many today in what a mass movement could achieve, but this mood could not be further from reality.

We can look to the actions of the capitalists themselves to see just how great a threat working class organization is to their rule. Why do capitalists spend millions on crushing strikes? Why does Amazon invest in developing heat maps to track where Whole Foods workers might attempt to unionize?

Why do they sink millions in campaign donations to ensure business-friendly politicians are elected? Why are bourgeois commentators in the Financial Times and the Bezos-owned Washington Post suddenly arguing in favor of “equitable distribution”? Because when push comes to shove, short-term profit is not the only thing driving capitalists. They’re also invested in the survival of their system.

Working people can leverage our role in creating all the profits to force concessions from the bosses. Even without revolutionary change, there’s a lot that can be won. If healthcare workers went on strike for Medicare for All and were supported by mass demonstrations and direct action, we could force it onto the agenda. If youth climate strikers linked up with workers in polluting industries to demand green jobs, we could win certain meaningful climate protections. The main thing standing in the way of these forces cohering is the lack of militant working class leadership, something socialists need to fight ferociously to organize.

As long as capitalism exists, the balance of power will tilt in favor of the wealthy elite with working people and the poor in the crosshairs.

Our movements will come up against all sorts of obstacles put in place by the ruling elite.

They will continue to try and divide, repress, and co-opt our movements because of the

existential threat they pose to the rule of the billionaires. It’s for these reasons that socialist strategy and politics need to guide the broader class struggle in order to not just wrest gains from the bosses but to ultimately overthrow and replace their rigged system.

The working class of Seattle ran the city for 5 days in the 1919 General Strike, briefly seeing and feeling what it would mean for working people to truly run society. The inspiration for this came from the 1917 Russian Revolution, demonstrating how revolutionary ideas can elevate class struggle to unimaginable heights.

The role of socialists in the broader class struggle is to push it closer and closer to revolutionary conclusions. This means not just fighting for the most basic demands of the movement, but broadening them out and seeking to draw the widest sections of the working class into the struggle. It also means drawing out crystal clear lessons from past victories and defeats in the workers’ movement.

The struggles of the past, even where they were defeated or their victories reversed, were not for nothing. There are lessons that, if applied today, will be instrumental in clearing the path forward. One victory can reverberate and unleash a wellspring of latent potential.

Understanding this is the key to overcoming the very real fear that things simply cannot get better. J

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

AFGHAN PEOPLE FACE BITTER OUTCOME OF U.S. OCCUPATION

Tom Crean, New York City

Twenty years after invading Afghanistan in 2001, U.S. troops are leaving amid desperate scenes reminiscent of the last days of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam in 1975.

Thousands of U.S. and allied troops were killed in the endless war with the Taliban, tens of thousands were injured while hundreds of thousands of Afghan people lost their lives or were injured.

The capitalist media cites many unnamed diplomats and “Western officials,” saying that Biden has made a serious mistake in ordering this withdrawal. They point out that the deeply reactionary Taliban is stronger than at any point since the U.S. invasion. In a matter of days, the Taliban has swept across large swaths of the country. The government collapsed in the face of this advance, with the president fleeing the country as the Taliban entered the capital Kabul. A massive refugee crisis has begun as desperate people seek to flee the Taliban. One estimate is that 300,000 people have fled their homes since January 2021.

After 20 years, the U.S. effort at “nation building” has predictably ended in utter failure. There is no evidence that keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan for another 20 years would have changed the outcome. The Biden administration has been forced to accept the weakening of U.S. imperialism in the region and is abandoning Afghanistan in order to be able to pursue its interests more vigorously in East Asia.

The Taliban victory will have disastrous implications for

the rights of ordinary people in Afghanistan, especially women. The Taliban did not allow girls to attend school when they were in power in the 1990s and their ideology defends the complete subjugation of women.

Fears about the consequences of a return to Taliban rule have sparked protests in cities across the country. As of this writing, despite facing tremendous repression, the protests have continued for days.

The criticism of the U.S. withdrawal from most capitalist commentators based on concern for what will happen to ordinary Afghans is pure hypocrisy. The U.S. was not in Afghanistan to help women or the toiling masses in general.

The real reason for the hand-wringing is that the outcome of this war represents a humiliating defeat for American imperialism, possibly the most serious since the defeat in Vietnam in 1975.

Socialists do not care one bit for the prestige of the warmongers and war criminals, and we welcome the end of this pointless imperialist adventure. However, we must look closely at how this happened and what lies ahead for the Afghan people.

The Truth about 20 Years of U.S. Occupation The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 on the pretext that it was aiming to end the country’s role as

a “safe haven” for Al-Qaeda. At the time, Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban. Both they and Al-Qaeda were extensions of the CIA-sponsored Mujahideen who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1990s. In this sense, the CIA played a direct role in creating the force that came back to slaughter thousands in New York City on 9/11.

The real reason for the invasion of Afghanistan was that the ruling class saw the horror of 9/11 as an opportunity to reassert U.S. imperialism’s role in the Middle East.

The same logic applied to the even more disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the added inducement of control of that country’s enormous oil reserves.

While Al-Qaeda’s military capacity was reduced fairly rapidly after 2001, the U.S. did not leave, and its “mission” goals kept shifting to include building a stable Afghan state servile to Western capitalist interests.

Two trillion dollars were spent on this effort.

This was a bonanza for weapons manufacturers and military contractors, but did very little to benefit the Afghan people. The U.S.backed regime, supported in the past by various local warlords, has been incredibly corrupt and its military has been nearly as brutal as the Taliban. But again and again, it was proclaimed that the “tide was turning” and that the Taliban could be defeated if only more troops were sent in or more money spent on training local forces.

The “Afghanistan Papers,” a set of secret internal government documents brought to light nearly two years ago, exposed the massive campaign of deception of the American public over decades. As we summarized in an article at the time, it showed: “...decades of continual dysfunction, instability, and widespread violence across Afghanistan as a direct result of U.S. intervention. Interviewees describe a widespread tolerance of ‘warlordism,’ tens of billions spent in ‘development aid’ with little to show for it except massive corruption, and a total absence of any coherent long-term strategy.”

The Future of Afghanistan As stated earlier, even if the Taliban do not succeed in consolidating their victory in the short term, there is a real danger of civil

8

war fought along ethnic lines. This is because the central Afghan state, led by President Ashraf Ghani, has almost no authority. The real power behind the state was the semifeudal ethnic warlords, many of them nearly as brutal as the Taliban. Part of the Taliban’s appeal in the ’90s when it came to power after a vicious civil war was that it was less corrupt than these elements and many hoped it would bring order. Today there are far fewer illusions in the Taliban, although they still have support in sections of the population.

Regional and global imperialism have long contested for influence and control of Afghanistan. The Taliban have historically been backed by Pakistan, which seeks to use Afghanistan as a counterweight to its archrival India. But the Chinese regime is also intervening, recently hosting Taliban representatives, and extracting the promise to not intervene in Chinese affairs in exchange for de facto recognition. Russia has sent forces to Tajikistan as Afghan refugees flee across the Tajik border.

Socialist Solution Given Afghanistan’s recent history and the weakness of its labor movement, it can be hard to see any way forward for workers, peasants, and young people in the short term.

What is clear is that neither imperialist intervention nor rule by Islamic fundamentalists offers a way forward for the masses. None of the country’s problems, including massive poverty, corruption, lack of basic democratic rights, and oppression of national minorities, can be solved on the basis of capitalism.

What is needed is a mass movement that opposes all imperialist intervention, and seeks to create a democratic workers’ and peasants’ government that explicitly champions the liberation of women. This could win a large section of Afghanistan’s growing urban population. Such a movement would need to unite with the working class of Pakistan and other neighboring countries, pointing toward a socialist federation in the region, based on respecting the right of different nationalities to self-determination. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

THE LANDLORDS ARE COMING Keely Mullen, New York City

“I just feel like I’m drowning,” a New York City renter told us as the clock ran out on the federal eviction moratorium. “I owe my landlord thousands of dollars and if I don’t come up with it in the next two months, I have to pack up my entire apartment and find a friend who’ll let me sleep on their couch. It feels like blackmail or something.”

With 6.5 million American families behind on rent payments and 3.5 million individuals at immediate risk of eviction, Biden and the Democratic leadership allowed the federal eviction moratorium to expire on July 31.

Like when he blamed the “Senate Parliamentarian” for blocking the $15/hour minimum wage, Biden pointed the finger at the courts to explain his inaction in staving off an eviction crisis.

Biden lamented that his hands were tied and only Congress had the authority to act.

In a truly impressive display of solidarity, House Representative Cori Bush responded to this by sleeping on the steps of Congress until Democratic leaders took action to extend the eviction moratorium. Housing activists and other Squad members joined her for a three-day occupation that ended with Biden — through the CDC — issuing a 60-day extension of the moratorium in areas hard hit by the new wave of COVID. By calling Biden’s bluff, Cori Bush proved an essential lesson for working class activists:

Chicago is the third largest city by population in the U.S., and is home to over 400 major corporate facilities, including 36 companies from the Fortune 500. While Chicago produces a GDP larger than the entire nation of Sweden, much of the wealth being created goes completely untaxed.

Chicago’s schools, hospitals, and social services go chronically underfunded while large corporations like Amazon and Boeing pay nothing @t i n ax the @t ric hc ax the h ric icag @t o hc ax hic the ag ric o hc hi SEPTEMBER 2021

when we leverage the power of a movement, rather than relying on backroom negotiations with the establishment, we can win.

Kicking the Can Down the Road While the addition of 60 days to the eviction countdown clock was no doubt a relief to millions, it doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the crisis facing renters.

Millions were put under enormous financial strain during the pandemic. While stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits softened the blow, lost wages and new expenses left many working people without enough to cover rent.

Despite states receiving $46 billion for rental assistance, only $4.2 billion has reached renters. State governments have executed austerity budgets for decades and were completely unprepared for a windfall of cash. They had to set up an entirely new infrastructure to distribute the federal money and in many cases relied on private contractors to do so. The rollout of rental relief has been plagued by glitches, red tape, and an enormously high barrier to access.

Renters in many states have been asked to provide stacks of documentation in order to qualify for relief. Housing activists have reported coming across applications as long as 45 pages. All the while, landlords have resorted to mobster tactics to kick out struggling tenants. Eric Dunn, director of litigation

taxes.

Chicago’s two mercantile exchanges on LaSalle Street see hundreds of trillions of dollars flow through them each year, and not a cent of that money is taxed. A tax of even $1 on every LaSalle Street transaction would raise over $10 billion a year.

Chicago has a long history of radical labor organizing and mass movements, and this is an opportune time to take on big business in Chicago and tax Amazon and LaSalle Street!

The Tax the Rich Chicago

for the National H o u s ing Law Project, reports a dramatic spike in tactics from landlords to get people out including changing the locks, cutting off utility services, suspending trash pickup, and refusing to make repairs.

Even if a renter is able to secure a new lease, they may quickly be priced out as rents skyrocket. In the first half of 2021, rent prices soared 9.2%. This is triple the average pace.

Extending the eviction moratorium by 60 days is welcome, but, like most progressive offers from the establishment, it’s rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We need comprehensive housing reform, and ultimately an end to the for-profit housing system, to provide lasting relief to working people.

Private Housing Is To Blame

The housing crisis existed long before COVID exposed its deep rot. Renters make up more than one-third of U.S. households and they tend to be younger, poorer, and more racially diverse than homeowners. The median income of renters was half that of homeowners in 2019, meaning they are less likely to have savings and more likely to work precarious jobs.

The vast majority of rental housing in the U.S. is operated for profit. Even the “below-market” rental sector serving lowincome renters is overwhelmingly dominated by privately operated non-profits or private, for-profit landlords.

According to a Johns Hopkins study “Fewer Players, camFewer Homes,” the years since paign the Great Recession have seen is out talking to people in an increasing consolidation of neighborhoods across the the real estate industry, with city. If you want to join this very few large firms owning exciting campaign, follow an increasing share of rental us on social media. Let’s properties. In such a concentax big business and the trated housing market, these LaSalle Street speculators! firms can manipulate housing production to maximize their

HOUSING

profits. For example, they can opt to build new housing when demand growth is at its strongest and charge prices far above the cost of production.

This situation will only get worse in the wake of the pandemic as the already low number of small landlords shrinks. More and more, housing will be dominated by major financial institutions, leaving ordinary people scrambling to keep up with the cost.

We Need Publicly Owned Housing The only permanent solution to the ongoing housing crisis is for housing to be taken out of the hands of parasitic financial institutions and placed in the hands of the public.

Just 15 firms control nearly a million residential units in the U.S. The largest of these firms, MidAmerica Apartment Communities (MAA), made $1 billion in gross profit between June 2020 and 2021. Rather than being used to lower rents or make upgrades to their units, this profit becomes a play-thing for super-rich tycoons.

In the immediate term, we need a mighty tenants movement to fight for crucial renters rights laws, where tenants organize with others in their buildings, under the same landlords, and in the same cities, using militant tactics like rent strikes and eviction defense when needed while demanding things like universal rent control and the construction of public housing. We need a cancellation of all back rent accrued during the pandemic, protection from all COVID related evictions, universal rent control, and a massive investment in high quality public housing. Beyond this, as part of a broad socialist transformation of society, we need to take the real estate industry into democratic public ownership.

As with healthcare, transportation, and other key components of modern life, housing should be publicly owned and run by democratically accountable councils of working people, in the case of housing by tenants themselves. As part of our fight to protect tenants from a coming wave of evictions, we should be fighting for a broader vision of society where bloodsucking landlords are a thing of the past. J

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L ABOR

LONGEST NURSES’ STRIKE IN A DECADE Alishia Morales, Worcester Since the writing of this article, Tenet Healthcare and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) are re-entering

contract negotiations Monday, August 18.

Based on informal reports from nurses and MNA organizers, it appears they are getting closer to a winning contract. The nurses want to return to work, but they want to do so safely and without any concessions on their demands.

In light of a record number of labor contracts expiring across industries this year, the 700 striking nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA are enormously powerful. Their contract expired over a year ago and they have now hit over 160 days on the picket lines. Pickets still run from 6am to 12am every day at five entrance points of the hospital.

In early July, the St. Vincent’s nurses, organized with the MNA, took their fight to the headquarters of the healthcare company that owns their hospital, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare. They were met by the local

Us Them

versus

Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis

It’s difficult to say “Democratic establishment” and not think of Nancy Pelosi and her $12-a-pint ice cream sitting in her $24,000 freezer. She’s out here, pulling stunts in poor taste, once again. Pelosi made past statements in support of President Biden cancelling student debt. Any words of support were yanked out of her by the increased pressure from students and workers, but she did say them! However, Pelosi is changing her stance, now saying, “the president can’t do it, so that’s not even a discussion.”

Wonder what made her change her mind? What changes the minds of politicians that are in the pockets of the superrich? While millions have debts with the Department of Education or Sallie Mae, Nancy’s indebted to Steven and Mary Swig. They’re pals from way back. The Swigs are anti-student debt cancellation and are also billionaires.

Billionaires who have bankrolled her

past campaigns. Billionaires who have directly lobbied her with policy proposals. Billionaires who previously had a niece and nephew on Pelosi’s staff. Billionaires who did not know what student debt was until their daughter told them about it. Billionaires who sent Nancy Pelosi a memo urging her not to support debt cancellation.

So it’s absolute insanity to have billionaires, who didn’t know the concept of college loan debt until very recently, tell the Speaker of the House, a public servant who made more money in 2020 than in any other year in the last decade, that working people and students don’t “deserve” debt cancellation and it’s “unlawful” for Biden to cancel anyway.

But that part, “the president can’t do it,” isn’t even accurate. The Biden administration just announced they’re “automatically erasing student debt for borrowers with severe disabilities.”

That’s about 300,000 people and $5.2 billion in loans, just cancelled. Wonderful. Let’s do more. We’ve got 42.6 million people and $1,594,800,000,000 in loans left to go. J

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branches of Socialist Alternative, DSA, a multitude of union members, and, notably, other nurses who work at Tenet Healthcare-owned hospitals in California who have recently voted to authorize a strike.

Two contracts have been proposed by the hospital since the nurses’ rally in Dallas, both of which were swiftly denied. The mantra of the union is that however many days have passed, they will be out for that many more.

Escalate the Strike In order to win, MNA nurses will need to mobilize community members and other healthcare workers to wage a full offensive against Tenet’s corporate greed and exploitation.

Socialist Alternative members have attended rallies and have set up tables in Worcester to urge people not to cross the picket line, donate to the strike fund, and visit the picket line. The MNA along with

other unions within the hospital, UFCW and the Teamsters, should be organizing mass canvassing in every neighborhood so people in the community know not to cross the line until the nurses win a fair contract.

St. Vincent’s nurses have inspired other fights. Most recently, 39 VNA nurses across Boston and Worcester had a week-long strike over safe staffing and benefits in which the Saint Vincent’s nurses attended. The picket lines had strong energy, but unfortunately the weekend pickets were cancelled because too many nurses needed to work their second jobs.

For the St. Vincent’s nurses to win, we need secondary strikes at the Tenet-owned hospitals in California and we need local unions to withhold their labor from the hospital. Healthcare is not a commodity but a human right, and nurses all over are fighting corporate greed to make this a reality for all of us! J

Chris Wheeler, Topeka On July 5, hundreds of Frito-Lay factory workers at the company’s plant in Topeka, Kansas began a strike that ultimately lasted 19 days. Workers at this facility are unionized through the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International (BCTGM) Local 218. At the heart of this struggle is the callous and inhumane treatment of employees by the Frito-Lay Corporation (owned by PepsiCo, a multibillion-dollar monopoly), in the context of significantly increased pandemic production.

The strike began on July 5 after BCTGM and Frito-Lay failed to negotiate their regular two-year contract. Although union leadership initially recommended the contract, the majority of workers rejected what they viewed as insufficient wage increases.

Additionally, the contract did not do away with the mandatory overtime policy or guarantee workers any days off.

Inhumane Treatment of Essential Workers Forced overtime was the main issue that workers and union leadership cited as the impetus for the strike. Workers are coerced into “suicide shifts” where they work 12 or more hours in back-to-back shifts with only eight hours or less off in between. Workers could not spend time with their families, or even get sufficient rest between shifts that have physically damaged their bodies.

Moreover, workers described how the mandatory overtime policy has led to severe health problems, deaths, and multiple suicides among their coworkers over the years.

Plant safety is also a major concern. One worker described multiple ways in which the plant is unsafe, including the lack of AC in areas where temperatures reach well above 100 degrees.

One worker died while on the assembly line. In response, management forced other workers to move the body to make room for

another worker to replace the one that had died, and resume production.

Workers identified low and stagnating wages as another demand. Cherie Renfro noted that Frito-Lay has not given adequate cost of living raises for decades. Mark McCarter noted that he had not gotten any raise whatsoever in ten years.

The mood on the picket line was one of outrage toward corporations, CEOs, and billionaires profiting wildly off of workers during a time of pandemic and economic crisis. The sheer number of people who honked as they passed the plant’s intersection in their cars shows a clear shift in popular support for the U.S. labor movement in a state whose government is extremely hostile to organized labor. Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and multiple teachers’ unions picketing and raising money for the BCTGM workers in a crucial show of solidarity.

Fightback by U.S. Labor The strike ended on July 23 when a majority of union members voted “yes” to a revised contract that guaranteed all workers at least one day off per week. However, the vote was purportedly close, according to one union official. Two days prior to the end of the strike, multiple workers on the picket line were not satisfied with the revised contract being offered and were planning to vote “no.” The new contract does not put an end to forced overtime, and the proposed wage increases are still insufficient. Multiple workers expressed

continued on p. 11 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

DELTA SURGE

those who are, for whatever reason, not able to get the vaccine. It could also include rigorous testing requirements for unvaccinated workers in a given workplace.

Additionally, while we would thoroughly oppose any measures that prevent the unvaccinated from carrying out necessary tasks like grocery shopping, going to the pharmacy, riding public transit, etc., we would support vaccine requirements in order to attend high capacity indoor events.

We Need More than Vaccines: Fund Public Health!

We know more pandemics will be coming.

Yet, a year and a half into the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, the U.S. public health infrastructure is no better prepared to handle the ongoing surge, let alone whatever may come afterward when complacency has long since set in.

Hospitals remain understaffed. Contact tracing was never fully implemented. Sick pay standards, not just for becoming infected but also for recovery from vaccination side effects, were never standardized and are out of reach for the most precarious workers. Free housing for those needing quarantine and isolation was never provided in a widespread or accessible

continued from p.3 way. To top it all off, Biden has removed funding for critical pandemic preparedness from his proposed $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill.

Virologist Ian Mackay suggests thinking of pandemic defenses as layers of Swiss cheese: all measures have holes, but when layered on top of each other, those holes are plugged and can block the virus from spreading. Vaccines are only one such layer, yet capitalist governments have placed all bets on it alone.

Instead we need many more layers of protection than just vaccines, and they should be fully funded and implemented in addition to the vaccines.

An example of such a public health measure is the nationwide eviction moratorium.

Last year the CDC determined that preventing evictions was a key way to contain the spread of COVID. This has since been contested

by Republicans, voicing the concerns of the predatory real estate and housing lobby, as a breach of the Constitution. Knowing that an eviction crisis would undermine the effort to control the pandemic as well as damage the economy, and under pressure from the direct action of Rep. Cori Bush, Biden and the CDC were forced to extend it temporarily to October 3. However, October 3 will roll around and real estate tycoons and slumlords will come

WOKE CAPITALISM White Fragility which espouses the idea that white people are inherently racist and need to “own” their racism, which — according to DiAngelo — they’ll never be able to do. This thinking makes achieving solidarity among people of color and white people hopelessly doomed from the start. While it’s undeniable that certain sections of the working class face obstacles based on identities like their race, gender, or sexuality, the capitalist ruling class has used the discussion around privilege to obscure one glaring and crucial fact: the most dramatic privilege in our highly unequal society is class privilege. The super rich around the world have complete control over the lives of every single working person regardless of race, gender, nationality, or religion. Given this, it’s no surprise that the ruling class is waging a ferocious campaign to convince ordinary people that we have nothing in common with one another. They’ve sought to convince us that we all exist on a sliding scale of privilege and all you can do is acknowledge your

continued from p.5

position and atone for it. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Despite where they have certain advantages, a white, straight, cisgender man working at the Frito Lay factory in Kansas has more in common with his Black, trans coworker than either of them do with their CEO who makes $30 million a year.

Working Class Politics in the Age of “Woke Capitalism” Such alienating and isolating ideology offers no real way forward while at the same time being anathema to the impulse from below to wage common struggle as the multiracial working class. The best way to fight oppression is together in a multiracial, multigender struggle against capitalism built upon our mutual class interests. Alongside a united class struggle, we need a genuine Black liberation movement, free from corporate influence or patronage, that can challenge the cynical woke signaling of the corporate ruling

FRITO-LAY ON STRIKE a need to continue fighting to get what they need.

This particular struggle can be seen in the context of the shameful treatment of workers

by U.S. corporations during the pandemic. It can also be seen in the context of a growing fightback by workers. There have been several other large strikes during the summer, some of which are still ongoing, including the St. SEPTEMBER 2021

knocking on the White House doors demanding an end to these tenant protections. This will put millions at risk not just of eviction, but contracting COVID. We need to rapidly re-introduce layers of protection like eviction moratoriums, widespread testing, mask requirements, and contact tracing that have been abandoned by most politicians in the U.S. On top of that we need new layers of protection like reliable accommodations for people who need to be isolated from vulnerable people in their household.

Fully protecting society from disasters, whether it be diseases, wars, or climate emergencies, is impossible on the basis of a system that solely protects profit. Fossil fuel companies’ profits are made through unmitigated theft of the earth’s resources, big pharma profits are made by signing off on needless death. Truly protecting ordinary people from calamity means entirely free, high-quality public healthcare, truly affordable publicly owned housing, an end to profitdriven destruction of the planet, and genuine international solidarity rather than reckless competition. All of this demands that we fight for the socialist transformation of society as our only defense against needless disaster. J

class.

Multiracial struggle against capitalist oppression is the most successful way to fight racism. During the height of the BLM uprisings last year, our socialist city council office in Seattle, led by Kshama Sawant, won a yearly $240 million tax on Amazon and big business to fund affordable housing for all, a victory that will especially benefit Black and brown renters routinely being priced out of the city. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and 40s notably engaged in antiracist multiracial organizing integrating the labor movement, which critically laid the basis for the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968. We can and must look to the successes of the past which offer a way out of the dead end privilege discourse or the substanceless identity politics palatable to the corporate elite.J

continued from p.10

Vincent’s strike in Massachusetts and the coal miners at Warrior Met in Alabama.

The Frito-Lay strike caused a shortage of products throughout the entire Kansas City region. This shows the power of an organized workplace, where workers can win by hitting the boss where it hurts, their profits. While the gains made by this strike were very limited, their willingness to fight in their own

interests was no doubt part of the inspiration for the ongoing strike of Oreo and Chips Ahoy workers. Major unions should throw their weight behind supporting these strikes, as a victory in any workplace can have a tremendous ripple effect, giving confidence to workers across the country to fight back. J

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

EDITOR: Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Rebecca Green, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon

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11

SOCIALIST

Hazel Grinberg, New York City

The latest IPCC report paints a picture of five potential futures for humanity. In the worst one, if corporations keep calling the shots, we could see catastrophic warming of up to 5.7˚C. This would spell disaster for ordinary people the world over who would have to cope with extraordinary heat, droughts, storms, and fires. But this could still be avoided. In the best scenario, we limit emissions and warming to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, which would allow us to maintain a relatively stable climate.

These potential futures are radically different and contain a glimmer of hope. But winning a sustainable, habitable, and healthy planet will require revolutionary change. We didn’t cause the climate crisis, but we do hold the solution. An international movement can, and has to, fight for an end to capitalist exploitation of the planet and secure a safe future for ourselves and our children.

Capitalism Is To Blame Exploitation of people and the planet has been enormously profitable for big business.

While the super rich can, have, and will build bunkers and sea walls to protect themselves from the worst of wildfires and hurricanes, nothing can protect them from the growing rage of working people who are suffering from the consequences of these disasters.

The largest drivers of climate change are major industries like energy, agriculture, and fast fashion. They emit recklessly in order to guarantee mega-profits and then buy off politicians to ensure these profits are secure.

Exxon, one of the world’s largest companies by revenue, has lobbied against climate science since the 1970’s, proving they are (shockingly) capable of thinking long term, but just for their shareholders of course.

In 1982, a n

ALTERNATIVE

internal Exxon memo described “potentially catastrophic events” if fossil fuel use was not reduced. Decades went by and Exxon, BP, Chevron, Mobil, and Shell – all of whom also conducted internal research that predicted global warming and its catastrophic impacts, all while increasing their profits – fought tirelessly to discredit the science of global warming.

Now, rather than outright denying climate change, corporations like BP and Shell are rebranding as “integrated energy companies,” hoping that paltry investments in renewables will distract everyone from their mammoth fossil fuel operations. They continue to expand their existing oil and gas

attacks on the planet. But Biden completely removed all meaningful climate measures from the $1 trillion infrastructure plan and punted the spending to a future $3.5 trillion “budget reconciliation” bill, which we can be confident will be whittled down by moderate Democrats unless a movement is built.

Biden and establishment Democrats are making big promises to get the country to net-zero emissions by 2050. But getting there will mean taking on major polluting industries, something we know they’re unwilling to do. The establishment takes its cues from big business. We saw this clearly in July when Nancy Pelosi came out against student debt cancellation just days after receiving

CAPITALISM VS. THE PLANET

extraction projects while dedicating as little as 3% of their overall spending to low-emmisisions developments. They are fully aware of the deadly consequences of their actions, but because of how profitable dirty energy is, they are simply not incentivized to prioritize a single thing besides their bottom line. In just the first quarter of 2021, Exxon made $3 billion in profits, showing how despite mass support for moving to renewable energy, polluting industries are still king.

Can’t Rely On Corporate Politics The Democratic Party, which claims to be on the side of working people, has limited itself to at best quick fixes for the climate and at worst, total inaction. The science has been clear since the ‘80s about climate change; both parties have had ample timeand power to stop this train in its tracks, but their million ties to corporate interests have brought us to the crossroads we face today. Biden entered office paying lip service to youth climate activists, and many of us were frankly relieved after four years of Trump and his horrific

a letter from billionaire Democratic donors Steven and Mary Swig urging her to do so.

What happens when Exxon or BP or Chevron come knocking on their door?

The only guarantee we have that corporate-controlled Democrats follow through on their climate promises is if we make them by building a mass movement with concrete, sweeping demands and democratic structures. An important first step could be climate conferences across the country bringing together youth climate activists and working class people. Like they did with the struggle to extend the eviction moratorium, Cori Bush and the Squad should use their platforms to amplify the call for a mass movement to pass

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sweeping climate legislation.

In November, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) will convene in Glasgow, Scotland, and mobilizations across Europe are being planned to demand more than out of politicians who are all talk and no walk. International Socialist Alternative will be there in full force, with members from dozens of sections from around the world, including the U.S. This could be a crucial flashpoint in the struggle for the planet.

We Need a Movement The working class and youth who make up the vast majority of society are the only force that exists which can bring an end to the capitalist exploitation which allows climate change to continue and worsen completely unchecked. Admirably, the youth turned quickly toward student strikes in 2019 when the environmental movement was coming to the fore, pointing toward one of the most effective strategies the working class has for winning demands. Demonstrations in the streets, direct action, and – crucially – strikes: these are the tactics needed to win because they affect businesses where it hurts: their bottom line.

The system we have right now isn’t broken; it’s working exactly how it’s supposed to. The reckless drive for profits inherent in the capitalist system is fundamentally at odds with the health of the planet and ordinary people.

Given the timeline we have to turn things around, incremental sustainability measures are not enough. We need to take the top 500 companies into democratic public ownership, allowing for the democratic allocation and extraction of resources.

A socialist world is necessary, and possible, if working class and young people around the world unite to fight for it. To join the fight for a sustainable and genuinely democratic future, join Socialist Alternative today. J