Socialist Alternative Issue 77 - October 2021

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INSIDE p.3 BIDEN AGENDA IN TROUBLE p.5 CARPENTERS ON STRIKE TRUTH ABOUT DIRTY ENERGY p.8

WHAT WE STAND FOR Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement • We need to build and rebuild radical fighting unions that are fully democratic and driven by the active participation of rank and file workers.

• Unions should take up the broader issues facing the working class and mount a struggle against evictions, poverty, racism, and all forms of oppression.

• For mass organizing drives to organize the millions of non-union workers in the U.S. • We need accountable leadership in the labor movement. Union leaders should accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should answer first and foremost to their membership and the broader working class. This means being willing to use every possible tool, including militant strikes, to win our demands.

Fight Gender Oppression and Attacks on Reproductive Rights!

• We need a mass movement against the brutal Texas abortion ban and similar bans being advanced in states across the country. This should be part of a broader escalation as the Supreme Court gears up to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which would overturn Roe v. Wade. We need a new, mass women’s movement on the scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. This includes marches, protests, occupations, and direct action.

• Fight for free, safe, legal abortion for all.

All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a broad program for women’s reproductive health.

• Full reproductive rights means universal childcare, high quality public housing, and fully funded public schools.

Expand the Social Safety Net! • As the Democrats sabotage their own promises for a $3.5 trillion expansion of social spending, we need a movement from below to push back against the corporate interests that dominate the party.

• 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 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

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to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

End the COVID Chaos • Take Big Pharma profiteers into public ownership! This would go a long way in overcoming vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. given people’s widespread skepticism of Big Pharma.

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

• We agree with reasonable measures to ensure public health including mask mandates in schools and that health and education workers should either be vaccinated or regularly tested. No mass firings of workers’ refusing the vaccine! These punitive measures should be replaced with democratic negotiation of reasonable health protocol in the workplace.

• Cancel rent and medical debt accrued during the pandemic and protect renters from all COVID related evictions.

• Lift patent protections on all COVID vaccines, making publicly available the science and technology behind them.

Advanced capitalist countries need to be pushed to urgently reallocate their surplus vaccines to poor countries and help establish the infrastructure for universal vaccination worldwide.

For a Socialist Green New Deal • The Democrats are failing to provide even close to the scale of climate measures necessary to tackle the crisis. We need a genuine Green New Deal jobs program that provides well-paid union jobs for millions of workers expanding green infrastructure.

• 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.

• As COP26 approaches, we need to build a global environmental struggle led by the working class and youth for an immediate end to the use of fossil fuels and a 100% transition to green energy.

• Take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership. We need a democratically planned economy to carry out the transformation necessary to avoid climate disaster.

We Need a New Party!

• We need a new working class political party not beholden to big business interests.

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

Rest in Power: Jeremy Prickett The labor and socialist movements have lost a fighter who dedicated his life to the struggles of working class people. Jeremy died in the last week of August in his hometown of San Diego, California, aged 50.

Jeremy Prickett was a proud former member of the Teamsters at UPS, and then an International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers member at Solar Turbines and Boeing. He was a former leader of the Campaign for Renters Rights in Oakland, and a leader of the California Coalition Against Poverty in San Diego. He fought housing foreclosure battles as far afield as Indiana and New Orleans. If there was a fight against the landlords or the bosses Jeremy was there.

Jeremy was an all-round Marxist who was at home organizing workers in a factory or talking to tenants organizing against their landlord.

As a union steward at Caterpillar in San Diego, a coworker approached Jeremy when one of the workers in the company canteen was crying. “Management told her she was not allowed to talk Spanish to the workers in the plant.” Many of the workers were Latino and were more relaxed speaking in their native language.

Jeremy immediately toured the plant and talked to all the other shopfloor union activists. As a socialist, Jeremy recognized the power of the working class was constantly being undermined by the bosses promoting divisions. The workers: white, Black, Latino, Asian, united to boycott the canteen until management allowed workers to talk in any language they wished. A few days later the bosses relented. As Jeremy often explained, a worker armed with Marxism does not accept the ownership of the plant by the factory bosses.

In 2004, Jeremy helped organize dozens of Section 8 families into a huge battle to save their vouchers in the city of Alameda, California. The tenants marched on the Housing Authority leaders’ home, they occupied the Mayor’s office and they threatened to disrupt the city’s Fourth of July parade. Finally the city flew a representative to DC and he came back with • 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.

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. Disarm

the funding to stop the evictions. Jeremy was critical in helping keep 238 families in their homes, overwhelmingly Black single moms and their kids. And the tenants loved Jeremy like family.

Within weeks of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, Jeremy was in his truck driving to Louisiana to help fight the inevitable land grab from Black people

by Big Property. Jeremy’s three-month trip was funded by donations from the Carpenters Union and socialist activists.

New Orleans was like hell. Road signs had blown away, cars were in trees. 30,000 people were evacuated and landlords were busy literally using forklifts to empty 2nd floor apartments of people’s belongings.

Jeremy was there in the thick of it, organizing tenants, calling out the landlords, the police, the national guard, and putting his life at risk.

Journalists from New York’s Village Voice and the UK’s Independent newspapers rode shotgun with him as he and other activists drove across the apocalyptic scene. The Voice described Jeremy as a “machinist and Marxist from Alameda.”

Politics develops by people and through people. We are all lucky to have lived and worked alongside this great revolutionary working class leader. His early death is a tragedy for him and his family, for members of Socialist Alternative, and for the thousands of lives he helped improve. We love you Jeremy.

Rob Rooke and Erin Brightwell police on patrol.

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

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.

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

EDITORIAL

DEMOCRATIC FAULT LINES THREATEN THE “BIDEN AGENDA” Grace Fors, Dallas The walls are caving in around the Biden agenda. He’s fumbled on his promises for a $15/hr minimum wage, voting rights, and police reform; fell devastatingly short of his vaccination targets as Delta overwhelmed the country; and weathered bitter humiliation in Afghanistan. The administration’s approval ratings are tanking to a new low, with a 53% majority of Americans now disapproving of Biden’s performance - including 62% of Iowans, surely setting off the DNC’s alarms for 2022.

Biden and the Democrats need to push through the $1.5 billion bipartisan infrastructure plan, and the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill or lose their last best chance to pull out a win before DC descends into the midterm carnival.

Actually, the timeline is even shorter than that. If Congress doesn’t fund the federal government and extend the federal debt deadline, they’ll have a government shutdown or a default on their hands, either of which could devastate millions of working people.

It’s a four-track race to the finish. At the time of writing, the entire Biden agenda is on the docket for Congress this week.

Democrats vs. Democrats Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan consists of two key elements: infrastructure spending, and “human infrastructure” expansion of the safety net paid for by taxing the rich and corporations. The former, a bare minimum “roads and bridges” band-aid cobbled together with Republicans, passed the Senate and awaits a vote in the House.

Meanwhile, the latter package in its original form contains a number of enormously popular measures, from universal pre-K, tuitionfree community college, lower drug prices, and expanded Medicare eligibility with coverage for dental, hearing, and vision. With housing, home care, and significant although still inadequate climate spending included, the plan would be a real starting point in addressing key crises that have hit working people hardest over the last year, with a certain degree of credit for its contents being due to Bernie Sanders as chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Because Biden aims to pack these reforms into the budget reconciliation process, it can be passed in full with a simple majority in the Senate.

Yet despite this clear path forward, we are still seeing the package crumbling, and this time there’s no Republican majority to place the blame on. The Democrats themselves are tangled in a mess of standoffs and political maneuverings. To their credit, progressives in the House have so far held firm on their OCTOBER 202 1

pledge not to support a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless it is brought to the floor alongside the broader reconciliation bill that will deliver concrete wins to working people.

However, the critical flaw in their approach is the limited nature of their tactics. Rather than mobilizing ordinary people and making it politically unviable for any Democrat not to support this entire bill, they have limited themselves to only leveraging their votes.

This is a recipe for a bare-bones final product that does little to improve the lives of everyday Americans.

With Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer in the same camp as the political drivers of the reconciliation process, they are more than capable of getting the party in line behind both bills. They could lambast Manchin and the moderates in the media with the vitriol they usually reserve for the Squad. It’s literally Chuck Schumer’s job to get the Senate Democratic caucus in line.

What have we seen instead? The entire Democratic leadership has allowed moderates in the party to call the shots. This is not solely because they are weak and value parliamentary process over meeting the needs of ordinary people, but also because the leadership itself is bound to its twin tasks: appease big business, but still win reelection. The former requires backing down on promises to tax the rich and corporations, scaling back threats to the fossil fuel industry, and protecting big pharma from regulation. The latter, however, requires pretending to care about working people. In many ways, Manchin is a godsend to the establishment and that’s why Chuck Schumer considers him such a valued ally.

Democratic Agenda Gets Carved Up Characteristic of American “demo cr acy,” the process of passing these bills is designed to be as confusing as possible to ordinary people. Capitalist democracy is fundamentally designed to obstruct, and not facilitate, fundamental change. Over the next several

weeks, the news is to be full of arcane mentary rules, codes, and w h o

sure parliapolitical reports of met with who behind closed doors in last-minute attempts to work out a deal. Although much will be blamed on the process, the crucial feature of the situation is the full-court press from corporate America pouring in millions to strip the bill down to scraps. The Kochbacked Americans for Prosperity, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and corporations like ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Disney, Apple, and Walmart are banding together to funnel millions into lobbying moderate Democrats to ditch key provisions in the Democratic agenda — and it’s working.

Centrist Democrats in the House, and key recipients of pharma money, have already succeeded in ditching the Biden promise to lower the costs of prescription drugs. Plans to tax the rich have been shrunken down so far that even the New York Times slammed the Democrats for aiming so low out of the gate, leaving generational wealth and nonincome assets —where the richest of the rich get most of their wealth —relatively untouched. Democrats are even considering adding taxes on cigarettes and vaping products in blatant violation of Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on ordinary people.

Ultra-corporate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are digging in their heels against the $3.5 trillion plan.

Manchin has taken every opportunity to appear on air and in op-eds vowing to stand in the way

of its passage. He’s suggested it would need to be cut more than half to a mere $1.5 trillion to get his vote, and has even called for a “strategic pause” in negotiations until 2022.

From the standpoint of big business, this would be strategic - the longer the process drags on, the weaker the bill.

Squad Goals?

With the party leadership slowly but surely bending to the moderate holdouts, the ball is in progressives’ court to take the lead in pushing for the full package. Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Squad have, by their own accounts, spent the Biden presidency banking their political capital, holding back from opportunities to impact critical issues in Congress in the interest of “picking their battles.”

The $3.5 trillion budget would represent the largest increase in the social safety net since the 1960s, and would deliver meaningful relief to millions of working people. But the groundwork is being laid for a massive betrayal by the Democrats. Clearly, now is the time to put up a fight.

The main tactic of the House Progressive Caucus has been to withhold their votes on the bipartisan infrastructure bill as leverage until moderates agree to support the reconciliation bill. This is more than the caucus has done before, and in that sense it’s positive.

However, pressure from the party leadership is already bearing down on them to back away from this limited tactic. If progressives don’t take a real stand against the party establishment, and mobilize ordinary people to fight, we could end up with all this effort wasted on a status quo bill, with lowered drug prices, community college, housing, or climate measures left behind. With the massive stakes involved, and the bulk of public opinion on their side, progressives should hold town halls of their supporters to discuss the importance of passing this legislation. These could be a jumping off point to organize their supporters in targeting conservative Democratic holdouts with marches and occupations. The goal should be to make it political suicide not to support the bill.

How Do We Win? The situation reeks of deja vu. The last time the Democrats held the presidency and Congressional majority under Obama, resulted in the deeply flawed Affordable Care Act. In the end, Obamacare was marked by unnecessary concessions to Republicans and “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats, overwhelmingly favored corporate interests, and took years

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

2Reebuilbd abailFaggbhutgbnLb 2Rebu2Ril orgrbMvmatMuFMgv This is a shortened version of an article available on socialistalternative.org Tom Crean, New York City The attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001 was an atrocity that stunned hundreds of millions in the U.S. and across the world. It was also a pivotal moment in the long term decline of the American empire.

Al Qaeda aimed its attack at a visible symbol of American imperialism but as Socialist Alternative pointed out at the time, “The main victims were workers: secretaries, firefighters, waiters, and janitors, etc. of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions.”

It was completely predictable that the reactionary Bush administration would respond with a policy of maximum revenge seeking to use the carnage as an opportunity to reassert U.S. imperialism’s role in the Middle East and globally. Bush, with the eager support of the Democrats, used the victims of 9/11 to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which ended in disaster for the U.S. Rather than “crushing terrorism,” both wars strengthened deeply reactionary forces including the Taliban and ISIS. The human consequences for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East and Africa affected by the endless “war on terror” – including Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Libya – have been nothing short of catastrophic. But the wars also had a profound impact on mass consciousness, weakening illusions in imperialism around the world and in the U.S. itself, a process which continues to this day.

Why Did the U.S. Stay So Long?

While the U.S. managed to overthrow Saddam Hussein, kill Osama bin Laden,

and at least temporarily degrade Al Qaeda, this did not lead to withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. New reasons were invented to justify ongoing occupation including building stable pro-Western regimes, a project which was an utter failure. Meanwhile Iran, another U.S. enemy, gained influence in Iraq, and the Taliban proved very resilient.

It is worth asking why the U.S. stayed so long, especially in Afghanistan, given the apparent pointlessness of it in relation to any wider coherent strategy as well as the ferocious costs. One estimate from the Costs of War Project at Brown University is that the cost of waging war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria will be $5.8 trillion by the end of 2022 including the interest on debt.

These are incredible sums, but all that money was going somewhere and it wasn’t going to ordinary people in the occupied countries! There were American corporations making massive profits including defense contractors and weapons manufacturers.

These firms in turn are closely linked to key politicians in Congressional “defense” committees who then are rewarded with lucrative jobs when they leave Congress by these purveyors of death. This nexus shows the increasingly parasitic nature of contemporary capitalism and U.S. imperialism in particular.

In Afghanistan, it is incredible that the outcome 20 years later is the return of the Taliban who are only supported by a minority of the population. The U.S. spent vast sums supplying and training a military which was as brutal as the Taliban and a series of corrupt regimes with even less support than the Taliban. The outcome is already a disaster for Afghan working people, especially women.

The Humiliating Exit There is little doubt that the chaotic exit from the Kabul Airport has been the biggest humiliation of U.S. imperialism since

the scramble to leave Saigon in 1975, but there have been other defeats in between – in Iran, Iraq and Somalia to name a few.

The U.S. is now at its weakest point in the Middle East in a very long time and it has lost influence in Central Asia which is also of strategic importance. But the idea that the menace of U.S. imperialism has decisively collapsed and that the U.S. is now “just another country” is a gross exaggeration. The U.S. still has the largest economy in the world with the most powerful military. But while it continues to be the case that neither the EU nor Japan can replace its global role, American imperialism today faces a very real challenge to its dominant position from rising Chinese imperialism.

Leaving Afghanistan is very much part of the U.S. “pivot to China,” which began under Obama and has continued under Trump and Biden. While Biden presented his decision solely in terms of the pointlessness of

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HAITIAN REFUGEES BRUTALIZED AT THE BORDER Dante Flores, Dallas Social media was rocked recently by horrific images of Customs and Border Patrol agents on horseback attacking Haitian refugees in Del Rio, Texas. The Department of Homeland Security, in the hours following the spread of the images, announced that it will launch an investigation into the conduct of CBP agents, as well as enact a “ban on their use of horses.” Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki was quick to claim that “this is not who the Biden-Harris administration is.”

But isn’t it? Biden’s made big promises of immigration reform, but the facts speak for themselves. The administration has begun its mass deportation flights back to Haiti.

Refugees endure squalid conditions when they arrive, they are forced to camp in the open air, without adequate shelter, plumbing, or access to food and clean water.

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This is to say nothing of the fact that other groups at the border are still being held in cramped, inhospitable cages, as families are separated with little hope of reunion.

Citing COVID, Biden has eagerly invoked Title 42, a Trumpera policy which has allowed the current administration to turn away hundreds of thousands of immigrants for “public health reasons” before they reach U.S. soil.

Haitians are fleeing to the U.S. after a series of catastrophic events back home. High-magnitude earthquakes have destroyed local infrastructure. And gang violence has intensified in the wake of former president Jovenel Moïse’s recent assassination. Haiti is also wracked with economic inequality, with 7 million people living below the poverty line of $2.14 per day. And, as an island nation reliant on agriculture, Haiti is on the frontlines of an accelerating climate crisis.

These conditions are caused and/or worsened by global

capitalism’s relentless pursuit of profits; this is the very same system that daily pulverizes workers and the oppressed in the United States, in many of the same ways.

Refugees are human beings, not “public health risks.”

The U.S. working class must reject these racist ideas and instead take up refugees’ struggle! We need to follow the example of those who protested Trump’s Muslim ban by gathering at major airports en masse. Or the example of workers at furniture company Wayfair, who, upon learning that Wayfair was providing furniture to the border camps, staged a walkout in Boston’s Copley Square in the summer of 2019. A movement like this, involving both native born and immigrant workers, could demand immediate, full citizenship for all foreign-born workers living in the U.S., an immediate end to all deportations and detention of migrants, and demands around healthcare, housing, and wages that would benefit the entire American working class. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

SEATTLE CARPENTERS ALL OUT FOR THE CONTRACT WE NEED!

L ABOR

Rob Rooke, Carpenters Local 713 and Logan Swan, Ironworkers Local 86 Seattle carpenters are on strike. Four inadequate Tentative Agreements have been rejected. Contracts that would’ve meant stagnant pay, uncertain health benefits and no parking reimbursements.

Seattle is booming. It’s been booming for years. Construction workers have been working longer and harder. They are also working for less. If the landlord or mortgage bank doesn’t take most of your pay, then rising grocery and gas prices are there to take the rest. Seattle rents alone have already gone up over 25% this year. And the contractors are rolling in profits.

On Strike Socialist Alternative stands unequivocally with carpenters in their fight against the contractor bosses for a fair contract including fully-paid parking, fully-funded benefits, family-supporting wages, improved protections against harassment, and a three-year contract along with all building and construction trades.

Striking carpenters have expressed a very real frustration with their union leadership for using ineffective tactics in the strike.

Some have even described these tactics as “designed to fail.” The leadership of the Carpenters Union are accepting the contractors’ arguments about keeping wages down. That’s like the generals in the army asking us to surrender before the battle has even begun.

After the rank and file rejected four contracts the union leaders announced a strike, but, with a nod and a wink to the big contractors, they have put no effort into fighting an effective one and instead are making efforts to undermine the rank-and-file leadership.

Some 83% of carpenters are being told by the bosses and union leadership to keep working, and that they are exceptions to the strike. Unfortunately, the real exception in this case is the mere 17% of workers who were allowed by the union leadership to strike. Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) were signed by the leaders with language that removed the right to strike for the majority of carpenters. Not a single carpenter voted to give up this critical right.

Carpenters’ union leaders play golf with the bosses and wrongly identify with corporate heads rather than with working carpenters. The union’s Executive Secretary-Treasurer pays herself $234,000/year. That’s almost a quarter-million reasons to see yourself as a boss.

For the minority of workers “officially” on strike, the union organized picket lines. However, these pickets, organized completely out of sight of the bosses and other workers, were a joke. To paint a picture of how tightly controlled the strike is by union leaders, rank and file carpenters chanted “15 over 3,” the slogan of carpenters opposing the extension of the contract to four years and instead OCTOBER 202 1

demanding a $15 hike over 3 years. Business Agents descended on them, telling them that their labor lawyers needed time to assess the content of the chant.

Solidarity in Action Demonstrating what it means to be a principled, working class representative, Socialist Alternative member and Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has stood arm in arm with striking carpenters. Kshama Sawant only accepts an average worker’s wage, $40,000 out of the $140,000 that Seattle pays its city council members. The rest of that money after taxes goes into a solidarity fund to support workers’ struggles.

Out of that fund, she has pledged $10,000 for the carpenters strike fund once the union sets one up.

In a letter to Kshama Sawant’s office, striking carpenters thanked her for being the only elected representative to stand by them in their fight against the bosses. Meanwhile, the union leadership has spent time and resources attacking Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative for daring to stand with rank and file workers: time and resources which should be used to lead the strike.

The Way Forward What is the way forward for carpenters seeking to win the wages, benefits, and parking costs they need in this contract round?

The leaders need to stop standing in the way of an effective strike and listen to the members. They need to let the employers know that when carpenters strike, carpenters shut everything down. There is no other way forward. They need to cancel their lunch dates with the bosses and say “no” to their hired labor lawyers. The right to strike is a basic civil right which must never be signed away.

Rather than cowering in fear of legal threats from the bosses, we need to be prepared to use every tool at our disposal to win.

No one wants to see the union sued. But if the bosses have the audacity to sue, then we shut down production! There are 12,000 of us, and we have the ability to bring the booming mega-billion dollar Seattle construction industry to a halt. And if a real fight is on for economic justice, hundreds of thousands of union and non-union workers will have our backs. Under such circumstances, the bosses are sure to fold.

How Do We Win? If carpenter leaders refuse to lead, then they must be replaced. However, we don’t have time to wait years for the next union election. We have the bosses attention now, and if the generals are off playing cards, then the soldiers have to get organized.

We need to expand the strike. Job sites that are still working should be shut down - not for a day, but until the bosses sign a contract that the members want. Our slogan should be “All Out, Stay Out!” Carpenters need to shut down all job sites, unite all workers and stop all work. This is not just a pipedream. This is how the unions got organized and is a basic ingredient for a successful strike.

The union has dozens of full time staff, offices, and resources to lead a strike.

Rank and file carpenters have Facebook groups and co-workers’ cell phone numbers. However the rank and file have the most to win and the most to lose with this strike.

Workers need to stand up against the efforts of the bosses and labor leadership to divide them. Those efforts have been ramped up in recent days with legal threats and baiting of the rank-and-file leadership. Genuine solidarity around the demands of the workers and the broader working class that supports them needs to be built to defend the strike against these attacks.

Carpenters must become selfled.Mass meetings of the members should elect a strike committee to coordinate action and such a committee must put at the top of its banner: “15 over 3! No benefit cuts! Parking reimbursement!”

Around these reasonable demands thousands of carpenters would be willing to fight. The bosses can afford it, we just have to be willing to demand it and prepared to build an effective fight for it.

When union workers use their collective organization to fight and win, it lights a beacon to workers everywhere wondering how to improve their conditions, showing that the path forward is into the ranks of organized labor.

As the fighting Teamsters in 1934 said, “All workers to the unions — All unions to the struggle!” J

9/25: Kshama Sawant joins carpenters as they successfully shut down construction at Jeff Bezos’ billiondollar Climate Pledge arena.

“Down your tools, join the line!” rolling pickets of carpenters shut down 6 construction sites as workers walked off the job in solidarity.

Strikers’ hand-made picket signs.

One carpenter said to the line,“Can you afford to live here? I sure cant!”

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AMERICAN CAPITALISM IN CRISIS Keely Mullen, New York City

The 2020s opened up with compounding crises of a monumental scale. A global pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 100 years, an economic and social shutdown, mass unemployment, the George Floyd rebellion which became the largest protest movement in U.S. history, worsening environmental disasters, and an extraordinarily polarized presidential election that led to Trump’s attempted coup, culminating in the far-right led assault on the Capitol on January 6.

As a Marxist organization, we take enormously seriously the task of establishing “perspectives.” The purpose of perspectives is to evaluate and characterize social and economic processes as they are developing, and estimate their most likely direction of travel. They are a working hypothesis that help Marxists to prepare to intervene in the wider class struggle.

Our tasks in these enormously unstable times are to identify the key next steps for the working class in our many ongoing battles against bosses and billionaires, and to point working people toward revolutionary conclusions. This cannot just be a product of sheer force of will or clever slogans, but has to be rooted in a sober assessment of both the opportunities and challenges at this moment in time.

Economic Instability 2020 saw the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Overnight the entire economy ground to a halt. Job loss in April 2020 single handedly erased the gains from 10 years of job growth. That month, 43% of U.S. adults reported that they or someone in their household lost a job or took a pay cut.

The only thing that prevented the bottom from completely falling out — and held off a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression — was the historic levels of money the federal government spent. All told, lawmakers approved $5.3 trillion on COVID-related aid. Included in this spending was substantial direct aid to households. This aid was intended to kick start a broader recovery, which it temporarily has.

But because of the enormously weak position of American capitalism, it will not be enough to

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prop that recovery up long term.

In a matter of several months the U.S. went from delusionally sunny predictions about longterm economic health to the situation we are in now with the rapid spread of the Delta variant, stalling job growth, continued supply chain issues, on top of elapsed economic supports for ordinary people.

What does this look like for working class people right now? In New York City, 800,000 people, fully 10% of the population, just lost federal unemployment assistance. For many, this will mean immediate hardship. On top of this, rents for single family homes are up 13% nationally since January — giving landlords an extra incentive to evict delinquent tenants and re-lease apartments at market rate. The price of used cars is up 42% from last year. Inflation is being felt by working class people in a big way right now as we see the cost of everyday goods creeping up.

In many ways, the objective conditions right now are ripe for workplace struggles around wages, conditions, and benefits. Inflation and the labor shortage (which is in reality a shortage of workers willing to work for laughably low pay) give a boon to workers demands for higher pay and reasonable work hours, both demands that were featured in the Frito-Lay and Nabisco strikes this summer. On top of this, the “Great Resignation” has reflected how the pandemic affected people’s attitudes toward work. Many are rethinking how they want to spend their time and earn money after experiencing the rare opportunity to be home with their loved ones during the COVID lockdowns.

The emergence of the Delta variant has undermined the summer’s economic recovery. However impossible it is to predict exactly when the next crisis will hit, that it will is inevitable. The capitalist economy is functioning like a dying car engine. Episodic stalls, sporadic revivals, nasty smoke. And while you can tinker around to keep it on the road a bit longer, any good mechanic will tell you you’ve just got to replace the whole thing.

All of this is very worrying for the capitalist class who are looking for ways to prevent another sharp downturn like that in 2008-9 or last year.

This is because of fundamental vulnerabilities in the American and global economies,

like the ongoing profitability crisis, widespread speculative bubbles which could burst at any moment, and unsustainable levels of personal and corporate indebtedness. But also because of the new, mammoth threats posed by climate change.

Nearly one-in-three Americans experienced a climate disaster this summer.

As hurricane season continues even into November, the winter will almost certainly bring extreme snow storms, flash floods, and we’ll likely see widespread power outages like we did last winter in Texas. Extreme weather events, and climate-related emergencies, will become the norm. It is extremely hard to overstate the dangers this poses not just for the health and happiness of people, but for capitalism itself.

This is raising all sorts of new questions for the ruling classes in advanced capitalist countries who are now confronted with the need to take drastic action, but are tied in knots because of the clout of polluting industries. The current negotiations in Congress around infrastructure spending are a perfect encapsulation of this conundrum (see page 3).

Biden Administration in Crisis Several months ago, the impact of Biden’s major stimulus spending and his mass vaccination strategy was greatly influencing how ordinary people saw his administration.

It appeared to many that a return to normal was being delivered. An “adult” was back in the driver’s seat. While we, and others, correctly paid attention to the places he was failing to act (for example the question of the $15/ minimum wage), ordinary people were— more than anything else—relieved that they were getting another stimulus check, that they were getting new child tax credits, and that unemployment benefits were extended.

After the widespread popularity of the S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

Biden stimulus measures, his approval rating hovered in the mid-50s. Yet his administration has suffered a series of blows over the last several months that have tanked his approval and potentially doomed the Democrats in 2022.

The main contributors to Biden’s falling numbers are: the chaotic withdrawal of Americans and their Afghan allies Afghanistan, the fact that his agenda remains stalled in Congress, and crucially the dire COVID situation. The “summer of liberation” that he promised materialized for about a month in some areas, but was quickly cut across by the arrival of the Delta variant. The U.S. is now averaging 134,000 new infections and more than 2,000 deaths a day.

This disastrous situation has led the Biden administration to take further measures including vaccine “mandates.” While we agree that vaccination is a key part of controlling the pandemic and would agree with certain measures to protect public health, we completely reject the liberal demonization of sections of the population because they are hesitant to get vaccinated. In reality, this is an attempt to deflect from the complete failure of the ruling class to deal with this pandemic, made much worse by the massive cuts to healthcare over the past 20 years. It is also a gift to the right which seeks to weaponize this issue. We think it is reasonable to require that workers in certain sectors either be vaccinated or regularly tested as long as they are given paid time off after vaccination. But any workplace mandate must be negotiated with the workers affected.

Growth of The Right The GOP is decisively on course to be a right-populist party with a mass base that cannot be used by the bourgeois at this time as part of the “normal” functioning of the American “two party system.”

Republican politicians at all levels have seized on the COVID crisis to stake out their position in the rapidly rightward moving party. Republican governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis have championed the most reactionary and dangerous demands. They’ve argued against lockdowns, against mask mandates, against vaccines, and against any social distancing requirements. They’ve echoed the frantic musings of the most conspiratorial, far right thinkers on the internet. Wisconsin Gov. Ron Johnson has been at the leading edge of pushing ivermectin as an effective treatment for the virus. The Republican National Committee has threatened to sue the Biden administration over the new vaccine requirements. Republican figures have jumped in to call the new mandates unconstitutional, and several Republican governors are threatening to defy them.

COVID politics are just one way the Republicans have tried to whip up their base in the Biden era. They’re drawing attention to themselves and mobilizing support by doubling down on a host of social issues including voting rights, abortion rights, “culture war” issues, and general hardlined obstructionism. If the Republicans take over either the Senate or the House in 2022, this will guarantee OCTOBER 202 1

that — barring a mass movement — nothing progressive is won between 2022-2024 and we already know the real prize for the GOP will be 2024. Of course it’s very important to keep in mind that the further development of the right, and their threats becoming a reality, could also spur important developments on the left.

The context for the growth of conspiratorial, hardline right-wing consciousness is the cumulative devastation caused by neoliberal capitalism which the Democratic Party relentlessly championed. This has given the right populists like Tucker Carlson their opening.

Working class people have no reason to trust major institutions. Why would they trust Congress? The Democrats? Big Pharma? The mass media? The blame for the very dangerous rightward radicalization we’re currently seeing in the U.S. lays squarely at the feet of the political and economic establishment. And it also lays at the feet of major leftwing figures like Bernie Sanders and AOC who have absolutely failed to coherently point the way forward.

Where is The Left?

In many ways the ground has never been so objectively fertile for the left to lead the working class to win genuine victories. The slim Democratic majorities in Congress give progressives imbalanced weight to leverage their votes, the COVID and economic crisis forced the establishment to spend big — demonstrating to working people what’s possible — and there’s broad working class support for progressive measures like Medicare for All, bold climate action, and a $15 federal minimum wage.

Yet, the left in office, the labor leadership, and the leadership of major progressive organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, have utterly failed to seize this objectively ripe situation to fight for much of anything. Instead, the Squad who once held in their hands the hopes of millions of radicalizing youth, are holding their fire while they pursue their alliance with Nancy Pelosi against “centrist” Democrats.

On top of not launching any sort of determined mobilization of ordinary people, they’ve miseducated a whole section of radicalizing working people and youth on the key question of tactics and strategy. Their overarching strategy of trying to curry favor with the establishment in exchange for crumbs is obviously a disaster, but their smaller, more “grassroots” tactics are just as dreadful in many ways.

Beyond her favorite tactic, the sassy tweet, AOC puts enormous emphasis on a type of “activist proxy consciousness” that is directly demobilizing to ordinary people. Her calls to action are to donate to this relief fund, call your reps, support this or that non-profit. The conclusion of this approach is: someone else will fight for you, stay home.

Some on the left justify this approach by saying working people are simply not willing to fight right now. This is baseless. Just last year we saw the biggest protest movement in U.S. history, the George Floyd rebellion. Not to mention the one million people just under two years ago who signed up to participate in Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

This abdication of leadership from the Squad and Bernie Sanders is in direct contrast to the objective openings for independent politics and the hunger for a political alternative among millions of working class people.

On top of the failures of the Squad, Bernie, and the leadership of Democratic Socialists of

America at this moment — we are also seeing the dire consequences of an absence of leadership in social movements, notably in the Black Lives Matter rebellion and the women’s movement. The fact that a coherent, fighting leadership did not emerge from the George Floyd rebellion to point the way forward has left open the space for corporations and the elite to advance the idea of “woke capitalism.”

At the grassroots level, this vacuum has also meant that a particularly toxic brand of identity politics has prevailed.

The fact that all of these trends are what’s on offer for radicalizing working people and youth is a tragedy, and it’s in contrast to the dormant hunger millions have for a way forward. It is the key reason that we have not seen social struggle erupt onto the scene, despite people’s anger about climate disaster, the assault on women’s rights, a looming eviction crisis, and an ascendant right wing. It’s important to note here, that it remains absolutely true that even despite a lack of leadership, we will see struggle of a spontaneous character. We saw this exact spontaneous combustion last summer with the George Floyd rebellion. But translating these combustions into sustained struggle requires overcoming the lack of leadership and organization.

Preparing for Turbulence This lack of leadership, combined with what feels like society’s very gloomy forecast, is contributing to a certain development in consciousness — especially youth consciousness — that can be categorized as “doomerism.”

Young people have seen nothing but capitalism in freefall. The left and working class has asserted itself many times in the last ten years, but despite some critical victories, many of these battles have ended in defeat.

In just the last 18 months we saw the defeat, or demobilization, of the “three B’s”: Bernie, BLM, and Bessemer (the historic union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama).

Add onto this that the major propaganda of the ruling elite was that at least we could still get Trump out of office, elect a Democrat, and things would improve. Well, that path is increasingly being exposed as a dead end. It’s no surprise there’s a section of young people who are doubtful that things can change for the better.

However, this consciousness can rapidly turn into its opposite in the context of a new movement being born. Faced with all these compounding crises, it is inevitable that working people and youth will fight back. In this context, “doomerism” can become transformed into determination, and it’s the responsibility of socialists to prepare for that. For example, as the threat of Roe v. Wade being overturned looms large, we could see serious struggle emerge to protect women’s reproductive rights. Both in the realm of consciousness and objective conditions, things change rapidly.

The stakes are enormously high right now.

The price for defeat is steep. But many of the ingredients for victory are sitting on the table, waiting to be used. That’s where the need for clear revolutionary leadership becomes so historically significant. We take seriously the project of determining what is possible, we then identify what of the possible outcomes is best for the working class, and we fight to make that a reality. Given a choice between fighting and giving into the hopes of our oppressors that we go limp, I urge you to choose the team that fights and join Socialist Alternative. J

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C L I M AT E

THE TRUTH ABOUT

DIRTY ENERGY Rebecca Green, New York City

Nearly every component of our day to day lives, from flipping on the lights to flipping through our phone, is powered by dirty energy. The biggest chunk of greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity and heat production. 100% of that energy needs to instead come from renewable sources, and it needed to happen yesterday.

We didn’t always use energy like this.

Before the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, our great-great-great-great grandparents went to bed when the sun set and somehow got around without Google Maps.

But they also lived through hard, cold winters with just a wood fire for heat, faced constant food scarcity, and had difficulty communicating across distances and travelling.

Things were rough, and across the world innovations were emerging to more effectively produce energy, from new water wheel techniques to, eventually, coal and the steam engine in the late 1800s. All of a sudden, not only could we heat homes better, but coal could be used to make mechanical energy far more effectively and efficiently.

Planes, trains, and automobiles followed, as did nitrogen fertilizers which exponentially grew our food supply. The standard of living improved, more humans could survive, and every aspect of our modern, energysaturated lives became possible, because of fossil fuels.

But the story doesn’t end there. The issue we have now, and that we’ve had basically since we started using fossil fuels, is that we actually can’t rely on them for the energy needs of human civilization without completely destabilizing our climate.

The good news is, through modern Imagine it’s 90 degrees outside, your wall-to-wall carpet is fully soaked in floodwater and it’s starting to mold. Your power is out so you have no air conditioning, not even a fan, and your phone has been dead for days. Everything in your fridge is rotten.

You’re without a car, so your options are to keep your family inside the house breathing in spores, or stay outside in flooded streets and unlivable heat. This was the reality for many thousands in Louisiana after Hurricane Ida tore through the Gulf Coast.

Then, 1,300 miles away, the same storm pummeled New York and New Jersey. On the night the storm hit, a woman named Choi Sledge got a call from her basement neighbor, Mingma Sherpa. Sherpa told Sledge that water was pouring in through the windows and she had no way out. Then the line went dead. The next day, Sherpa, her husband, and their two-year-old son were found drowned in their apartment.

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science, we have discovered and will continue to discover green alternative ways to power modern society. The bad news is, the fossil fuel companies won’t get out of the damn way.

The Great Fossil Fuel Industry Cover Up The truth is that when fossil fuels became our main energy source, the industry was controlled by a few wealthy individuals with a ton of power who made a lot of money.

Nothing has really changed.

Emerging capitalists at the end of the 1800s needed this exciting new energy source to expand the railroads and build factories and cities, meaning that those who got in on coal got rich, fast. But while they and their oil and gas counterparts were raking in money over the following century and a half, the science about the threat of fossil fuels was already emerging. Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish physicist and chemist, said in the late 1800s that burning fossil fuels would raise the global temperature. And then came others, and others after that, all saying the same thing with what now amounts to boatloads of evidence that burning fossil fuels is completely and utterly unsustainable.

The fossil fuel companies knew about, and literally funded some of this research, finding as early as the 1950s that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, a rise in sea levels, and “dramatic environmental effects.” In the words of environmentalist Bill McKibben, the fossil fuel industry has pulled off “the most consequential cover-up in U.S. history.”

Now, if society operated in a rational manner, this research would have triggered

Unstable Future Carbon monoxide poisoning, flooded roads, and use of power equipment have historically led to a vast number of deaths in the aftermaths of hurricanes like Ida. Viral and bacterial infections are spiking as a result of exposure to flood water. In regions affected by wildfires, respiratory disease is growing more rampant. There is no infrastructure in place to provide safe shelter to people fleeing the path of natural disasters or to mitigate the deadly aftereffects.

Extreme hurricanes and tropical storms, as well as extreme heat and droughts, are consequences of warming global temperatures and rising sea levels.

Climate Action NOW Storms like Ida are rapidly becoming the norm, causing damages that will only

an immediate pivot to exploring and developing renewable energy sources, and a full transition to them immediately. But it doesn’t. Under capitalism, as long as something remains the most profitable option on the block, getting rid of it is enormously difficult.

So instead, the fossil fuel companies actively organized and funded efforts to undermine the science of climate change, exaggerated uncertainties and cherry picked facts, used fake experts, and promoted conspiracy theories.

All this while spending ridiculous amounts of money lobbying the politicians who also either knew about climate change but were winning campaigns with dirty money, or were too busy schmoozing with Shell’s CEO to care to learn the facts. In 1990, oil and gas interests spent over $12 million in campaign contributions, which doesn’t even seem like much compared to the $140.7 million they spent in 2020.

In 2021, where mega-wildfires, flash floods, and hurricanes are a typical Tuesday, the science is so undeniable that politicians’ rhetoric is catching up and big oil is saying they want to invest in renewables too!

But Biden’s administration is approving 78 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for offshore drilling, and fossil fuel production is expected to increase in 2022.

Money Isn’t Everything Nothing truly good for ordinary people and the planet has ever happened due to the whims of politicians or billionaires, so that’s not where we should look. We should look to the steps of city halls, public parks, community center basements, school buildings, and college campuses. In all of these places, working class people and youth are organizing and have organized for a better future.

In 1970, 20 million people participated in 12,000 events across the U.S. on the first Earth Day. By the end of that year, the Environmental Protection Agency was born and the Clean Air Act passed.

The first legislation to protect rivers and lakes, environmental studies programs in universities, and environment sections of increase as the climate crisis heightens.

The Washington Post recently reported that one in three Americans have been affected by a weather disaster in their county in the last three months. What we are seeing is a direct result of the careless way in which big businesses treat the planet.

We need immediate action on the climate. The Democrats are negotiating their $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill this month which includes certain climate measures, but they’re already paring down their early promises.

Youth climate activists, trade unions, workers’ and grassroots organizations need to join in a mighty struggle for a democratically planned economy where polluting sectors are brought into public ownership and retooled on a green basis. Fighting for a socialist future is the only way to prevent a future full of devastating climate disasters.J

newspapers all came in the wake of a massive, grassroots organizing effort that politicized tens of thousands who continued fighting for climate protections after the teach-ins ended.

A 2021 report showed that indigenous resistance to new pipeline projects, from Keystone XL to Standing Rock, has delayed the equivalent of 25% of current annual U.S. and Canadian emissions from entering the atmosphere through direct action and community mobilization tactics that have disrupted various fossil fuel projects.

In an epic showdown in County Mayo, Ireland, local residents including farmers, fishermen, and school teachers, waged a 13-year battle against Shell. The company tried, and failed, to build a natural gas pipeline that would have displaced residents, but ongoing protest, occupation, and organizing forced Shell to eventually throw in the towel.

The examples go on, and this is why we should have hope. All the fossil fuel companies and billionaires have is money, but that doesn’t mean anything if we refuse to run their factories or let them build new pipelines or control our political system.

In November, world leaders are gathering for another climate talk at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP26. International Socialist Alternative are mobilizing our members from across the world to be on the ground, demanding what we urgently need: • An immediate end to any new fossil fuel projects, and a transition to 100% renewable energy in the next decade.

• Public ownership of the fossil fuel and utility companies - we can’t trust the billionaires who got us into this mess!

• A Green New Deal jobs program to hire millions to weatherize infrastructure, build the renewable energy grid, overhaul agriculture, reforest the planet, expand public transport, and implement other green measures.

• A mass movement of young and working class people on every school campus and in every workplace around the globe, which is the only force that can win a sustainable, socialist planet based on human need not corporate greed. J

HURRICANE IDA HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHERE WE GO NEXT Jesse Shussett, Pittsburgh S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

HOUSING

FIGHT FOR RENT CONTROL HEATS UP IN SEATTLE Alvin Muragori, Seattle

Seattle renters are facing an untenable and dire situation. The economic impact of COVID has greatly exacerbated the broader housing and affordability crisis. Over a year since the beginning of the pandemic, and despite rosy claims by establishment politicians of a “return to normal,” many working people are worse off than before the pandemic. After a slight dip in rents last year, especially in major cities,

@t ax t @t heric hc ax the h ric icag @t o hc ax hic the ag ric o hc hi OCTOBER 202 1

landlords across the country are raising rents to astronomical levels to recoup last year’s lost profits. In Seattle, rents have gone up a staggering 25% just since January, costing the typical renter an additional $4,524 a year.

Increasingly working class people cannot afford to live in the city, many paying more than half of their income in rent. Workers cannot come up with the thousands owed in back rent and we are now faced with a tsunami of evictions as states and municipalities across the country weaken or outright end their eviction moratoriums. In the Seattle area, 60,000 renters have accumulated COVID debt and nearly two thirds of all renters fear they are likely or somewhat likely to be evicted in the next two months, undoubtedly thousands more by the time the eviction moratorium expires on Jan 15, 2022. Seattle desperately needs strong rent control to end corporate landlord greed and keep people housed!

O u r City Council office, held by Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant, has placed rent control front and center since we first campaigned and won in 2013 along with the demand to raise the minimum wage and tax the rich. After our first election victory, we launched the movement to raise the minimum wage to $15, and with Socialist Alternative playing a key role, we made Seattle the first major city to adopt $15.

Last year our socialist council office won the historic Amazon Tax which taxes the largest companies in Seattle to the tune of $200 million a year to fund permanently affordable housing and green

union jobs. This will particularly affect the Central District, a historically Black area that has been ground zero for racist gentrification by corporate developers and landlords.

Democratic Party’s Hollow Rhetoric This year alone we have won a record number of important renter protections.

We guaranteed everyone facing an eviction the right to a publicly funded lawyer, closed loopholes that allow landlords to evict tenants with no cause at the end of a fixed-term lease (commonly used to jack up rents), and banned school year evictions of schoolchildren, their families, and public school workers. Using our socialist council office as a platform for social movements, we mobilized dozens of renters, educators, and union members to pack public comment and testify in support of our legislation. We organized community meetings to get everyone up to date with the legislation and how to sign up for public comment. Our movement building, fighting approach has been the only way we’ve been able to win so many renter protections despite the majority of City Councilmembers being establishment Democrats who are hostile to our movement.

In Seattle, the Republican Party is almost entirely non-existent. It’s the Democratic Party machine that constantly works to undermine and co-opt working people’s struggles. The real estate lobby has immense power in Seattle, as they do in most major cities, and the Democrats are all too willing to do their bidding allowing landlords and developers to gentrify whole areas and displace entire neighborhoods which has especially destroyed Seattle’s black working class communities. Our experience has shown that we cannot rely on Democratic Party politicians, many of whom use progressive rhetoric but give excuses for why it’s not the right time for working people to fight for basic protections.

When we fought alongside the Seattle Educators Association to ban school-year evictions, Democratic Councilmembers at the eleventh hour introduced amendments aimed at weakening our bill. Instead of protecting all public school workers, the amendment only protected those with professional degrees, effectively pitting sections of the working class against each other and excluding those with the highest risk of eviction - lower paid support staff who are also vital to children’s learning.

This is a common tactic used by establishment politicians who want ordinary people to be in the dark so they can push through probig business policies and not be accountable for their actions. As an unapologetic voice for

workers and the movement inside City Hall, Kshama exposed these backhanded tactics in real time: bringing this information directly to the movement and having members of the public testify against it. By calling out the Councilmember by name and exposing the amendment for what it was — a divisive tool to serve the real estate lobby — we created grassroots pressure to defeat the amendment. We ultimately forced the City Council to pass the second, and by far strongest, school-year eviction ban in the country. This is just a small example of what the establishment will do to stifle regular people’s struggle for meaningful protections and how it can be overcome with a fighting movement.

Fighting For Rent Control It’s going to be an uphill battle to win rent control in Seattle. If passed in the city, it can only take effect once Washington State Democrats overturn the undemocratic state ban, which has been in effect more than 40 years. The need for rent control has only gotten more acute since the ban was first put in place, and pressure is growing on Democrats to finally overturn it. An entire generation of young people are growing up with homeownership out of reach and stagnant wages. Meanwhile, billionaires and the real estate industry rake in record profits.

Throughout the summer our socialist City Council office has been talking to renters about the need for rent control. We launched a community petition to demand Seattle pass strong tenant protections like residential and commercial rent control, six month written notice for any rent increase, and economic eviction assistance. The response has been overwhelming. Over 15,000 people have signed up to join the movement.

We hear from constituents facing rent increases of 30, 40 and some well over 100 percent with only two months notice. For families who can’t come up with the extra cash, this is an eviction notice.

On September 18, over 200 people joined us for a “Rent Control Now!” rally. It was a powerful show of force from our movement that we are united and resolute.

Our Council office stands in such contrast to the political approach of even well meaning progressives across the country because we are independent of the Democratic Party. We are not beholden to a political force that time and again stands on the side of big business.

Working people need to have our own party that fights for universal health care, a Green New Deal, rent control locally and nationally, and whose elected officials use their office as a platform for social movements. J

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WORKERS’ VOICES

EDUCATOR SPEAKS OUT

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- t c i . s r n oA d t c e p s y a n f i y e l D d i t I w r n V e s O C a kc i r h t n o c s g n i d e s al c n i h r d tu e b o p i r k e w o t , k e w t u b e l t i l s i g n i eb . e n o d s n o i l t ha r c s S i e nv a h m d d a h a r a e y , e r u t c r sa f n i g n i d l i u b e t a dp u o t f l a h a d n a t n g e m i , l s np a m e o c i t r p h e r o m , f a t s d n a e c u d r s a l c es z i r o f D I V O C g n i r u t e r a s u f o y n a m d a e t s n i t u b , t y e f as p gu n i o eg r sa c n o i t d n o ec f a s n ou t . r yt n u o c e h t s o r c a d n o y e B t s u j D I , sV n O C r t e c o d u t s l a e rs o g i n v l h e b a c e r a e s r o w n a h t n i l a c i s y n k h c p i t g n a u i d l c n , s tr i a e p y e c n l . g o i n e mv r a d s l u ’ t o i I y h c o n r e d n o w h e s t d i e k v a h t o l n a i cos d e z i h t i w r i e h t sr e p r o f s h t n o g m i r u d . n w o d k c l e r h T s i a e l b a c i t o n ga l n i c i m e d a c g n i d n a t sr e d n u d n a e v i h c a g n e h i t d u l , c s n i e t o v d r a c g lm r s t a d n . e a s c i r t u e g n m c r iS a l b u o d s a es r u n . deh c tefr as ol ci gdnem suaceb e l t a S c i l b u P s l o h cS s m i a l c o t eb r o n f i t a c u de l b a t i u qn es a d r w o g t n i v r ts e r a w s d r a n ts e l b a n os e r y n a y b t u , l a n e m u r t s n f i u5 o t 1 b . A e s o l n c v t e o r ya t n e m l 3 7 l a r e v o c s h a e t c i s u m l a t s l o h c s n i , SP h c i h w y b f l e s t i n o m e d o e v t a . srh W c a e kf ot l s a r t e s u a r ey t o l m e t s y o t e s o h t c n e d u t s o h w l i w e b l b e a t op i n c u r t a s p n i s t e n r u a d yc , t s i m l u a n e m t u y o b l a , n y l a n o i t d . m A a r ge o h p t f 0 5 f o e h t 3 r ya 7 t n e s m l o h c s r a e h t y i cn e v l a r i e h s n u l g m c , ) . c t e , st n e m u r ts n i t e l a m , g n i c n a d , g n i s ( hs n c a t e i l m y o h w s c I . c i s u m h t i w e c n i r e p x y l n o ’ st n e d u ts e r a e s d n a , k e w a c n o l h cs ae t h c ae t . es t u n i m 5 2 y l n o r f s t n e d u t s y m D I V OC s a h y l n o r e h t u f d e t a b r c x e g n , es i h d t u l e h c q n t i es c r u o

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Us Them

CBS and Global Citizen came together early last month to announce a new show, “The Activist.” The premise is something out of a socialist’s nightmare: activists are in a competition to get their message and mission out onto the world stage. Their success is measured by online engagement, social metrics, and input from the show’s hosts:

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multimillionaire singer Usher, multimillionaire actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and multimillionaire blackface offender Julianne Hough. Their net worth amounts to $240 million. Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky are rolling in their graves.

The ultimate goal is to advance to the G20 Summit in Rome, to “talk to world leaders” and potentially get funding for their cause. That’s not even a guarantee. Everyone knows that G20 is an activist’s dream — who doesn’t want to rub shoulders with the likes of Bolsonaro and Putin?

Yes, this is real. Multiple people greenlit this idea. Usher, Priyanka, and Julianne all thought, “yeah, this is good and makes

versus

Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis

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. m e A so r l h a t b f i e a v sr h c a e t y m ” n ws om r a l , c o g “ n i e n o l o h cs I d e r t a s h r a e y n i a e l n b i r ot p d ( a e d nf i t o s l h u a m r l b a n c o i t . e s t d u g )a n I hc r b i e j l d i u b s e t v n a o dh e b t a s r e h l p f t , l g n e ft i a o s k h d u t w ts u m e b d e v o m r m o r f s m o r a l c d n a d e c a l p e r h t i w e l g n ti s e d u t . s k e d e h T t c i r s d s i t u o “ f o ” , e g a r o ts d n a os e h t e s l o ’h w h c r s o t w f o s k e d e r a g n i e b d e v o m t . e h l b ar I o t p s i t o n r e a y l c f i I e m v o a r s lh t n i a c t s r e h n o t s p y , i da m h w o t n n o h c ae t I . l e w s a t h c ae t I s l o h cs e t f o l a i cos t e u d n a , l o h cs d r i h t a n i e g ts a , s d o i r e p a i r e t f a c d es r c n i d a g n i c n a ts i d l a t n e m u r t s f n o e ud i w a h m t c t s u i . c e h Tr o m s t a f c l i u m d n m a r g o e p h m t r s f n e d u t s r no m e v . es z i s a l c r e g a l d e t a r c y l s u o e n a t l u m i s n g i lm d a u A f , e s o c g a n y l m i o c , s r o t a il o h c s , f a t s d n a , s r e h c a t e r a g n i k ro w , e m i r t v o , m r a-n i m r a o t e k a m y l h t o m s a n u r ae y l o h cs i h t a e r u s , e y w l t a m . y i e d l t n u a sb B f i o p s m d g l e n a ro k i u b t d p v i s da n i s n t o a . e ’i h v u l w r d s - c f i t t n ed s y l u h b r o a t c i u t e s i h T a c u d e i l b u p f o g n i d n u f e d n a k c t es l fo esruoc eht orp evfo teman eht n i noi t u t e i s , h a I t l . sa r A e i y c o i u q e n iy l t n e r h n ie ty bd s u a ce r n o i t a . m s i l a t i p c f o m e ts y e v i t a o l p x e d n a e l b a t n o i l i m 09 $ s a h y l d e s o p u t c i r s d e h T m o r f e h St E R A C t c a h t y e r a s u f e r g n i o t , d n e p s a i h t s i tn o m c n u s o r. c a e y h t n ’ W u o a s c y h i e t n m s o r c a n o i ud n a, o i n ur O? t n e p sg i e b e h t , r y n d ul o c h d s n a m e d t a h l o h c s g n i d n r e tp a s k o hb n e p d r a o b t a h y e n o m n o es c r u o t a h e w d i c e d . e s y d h T l n t a r e s p n d r u t ao s

e d u s c l r a o e n g w i s m r f oi h , s r o t a c u d e , s r u n d n a r ot p u s f a t s o t - d n a i h eb y l ac i m e d ac e r a o h w s d i k p l e h d e m o z r f i a t d e m ny f u a l r t e o h - . c i me d n ap

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t u B e t h g ’ n i d l n p u o f ht s . e r h t e l t a S s i e m o h o t , n o z a m A , ft os r c i M e l p o t s h c i er h ft o m ds n ,a k c u b r a t S n o e. h t n a l o pN d h l c s u e o v a h o t e s r co a m p t l n e c t w s o b h e g a , es c a p n e t w b c i s u m es a l c r o E .P. esa l c es ruo Rd l uohs ton evah o t e b d t s i n p a h g . , c ed r t s h n o I l a s l o h c s d l u o h s e v a h m i t - l uh f c a e t l d a n c y s i , p t e m jg nf l b a t i s u l a c i g o l h c , f a ts r e ft a - d n e r o f b l o h cs Ad,Pelr lEaciHfDus,-bIeVtOCh c y l h a e t m , r u h t c r s a f d e n t i, s g p u , s m a r g o p d n a h c u m . e r o m g n i xa T e h t t es g i b n o i t a r o p c d n a e h t r e p u s h c i r es c r u o e h t f o l a r o f e d i v o r p y l i s a e d l u o c re o c f n i r e t y p x l a d u i q v o e r d t p n l a , s t n e d u , sr t h c a e t d n a l o h c s , f a t s , e w l n t a S i c. f I D g V n O C i r u e d v h t i w s i h t o d t m s i n a h c e m h t e v a h y d ae r l e y h , n l d x a o c t z i u s m A h e f w Tr c t e s a i n h . v g c E i e s lu o b h a d g r n f i a xa t l a r e d f a , es r i a n o i l i b e h t o t e m o h t ’ n e r a n u o c r u o d n u f y l i s ae d l u o c s n o i t a r o p c n o . s l o h c s i l b u p s r’ y t s r e h c a T d n a s t n e r a ’p n d l u o h s e v a h o t e s o h c n e t w D b I ” V e O C f ta s o “ m e r e d p l n o ab j t i u l q e b n t g a i h w n r a e l t n e r a p / e h c da g n t i r t a e n l d u z t s i d r a - n i , l a n o i t c n u f s y d ” , s u o r e g n a d “ r o , t y i n as . t n e g mo s r p i h T n r v a e y l n o m e s d c n r a u o e hd t i v a o r p e f s e l d b n a o s r e ic p - n t u s r e p x o f l f so u a .ti J

sense.” But this is woke capitalism in a can: a reality show featuring celebrities, with organizers pitting social issues - often interconnected, the link being capitalism - against one another, competing to speak to corrupt leaders of the ruling class, for a chance to be crowned “The Activist.”

We’ve reached a new level of dystopic performative art. Some CBS exec said, “give me Tone Deaf and Co-optation, baby!”

What’s next, a show where Bezos, Musk, and Gates judge a competition on solving world hunger? And the prize is a chance

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— eovdtsnagu ghwj trohf

to wear your solution at the Met Gala?

The backlash was so fierce — there’s that online engagement and social metrics CBS was looking for — that they’ve scrapped the whole competition show format and it will now be released as a “documentary-style special.”

That backlash is a hopeful sign, though.

People may not know what works to win real change, but they certainly know what does not work: taking it one foolish reality show at a time. J

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BIDEN AGENDA to roll out. This solidified the belief among significant sections of voters that the Democrats will talk a big game promising change to working people, then turn around and stab them in the back.

This historic failure all but directly resulted in the Tea Party seizing on public frustration to build support for carrying out ruthless attacks on social spending and public sector workers. If the Democrats once again put on a show of pretending to care then fumbling the ball on an even bigger set of promises, they’ll be handing the 2022 and likely the 2024 elections over to the increasingly radical-right GOP. Working people are more dissatisfied than ever at staggering inequality. Bernie Sanders’ slogan that “billionaires should not exist” resonated with millions. The pandemic

continued from p.3

was even more eye-opening, where corporations raked in record profits and billionaires got 62% richer while millions lost jobs and nearly 700 thousand and counting have died of the virus. The people most desperate for change don’t want band-aids: they want to go after the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks of the world, and to defeat the pharmaceutical and fossil fuel industries. They support Congress acting on abortion rights, voting rights, trans rights, citizenship for millions of immigrants, and bold climate action.

The lifeline COVID relief including pauses on debt payments, unemployment top-ups, and stimulus checks was a taste of economic security many had never experienced before and showed what the government was and is more than capable of providing to help keep people afloat.

Now is not the time to maintain the status quo, but when it comes to winning victories for the working class, we will have to wage the fight ourselves from below.

Ultimately this entire crisis shows just how desperately working class people need to have our own political party that fights unapologetically and consistently for the things we need. Burrowing ourselves in a thoroughly corporate party is proving to be a completely failed strategy for the left who are soon to have nothing to show for their time in office. The left needs to take immediate steps to plan a jailbreak from the Democratic Party and launch an independent working class political force that could win an improvement in the quality of life of ordinary people and truly undercut the ascendance of an increasingly confident right wing. J

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

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9/11 AND IMPERIALIST WAR the U.S. remaining, it is extremely clear that it relates to the overall priorities of the U.S. ruling class.

Political Ramifications in the Middle East The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq undoubtedly strengthened reactionary forces in the Middle East that it was allegedly meant to destroy. At a certain level though, presenting the Taliban and ISIS as the key “enemies” of the U.S. helped to cover the real agenda of imperialism, maintaining control of resources and markets vital to the corporate interests and increasing the repressive apparatus at home.

For forces like ISIS, on the other hand, the occupations were a massive recruitment opportunity. Meanwhile regional imperialist actors like Iran and Saudi Arabia were able to whip up ethnic and religious sectarian divisions – especially between Sunni and Shiite Muslims – as part of pursuing their own ambitions. In this way a “carnival of reaction” developed with a somewhat symbiotic relationship between all these different forces.

But in the longer run the endless “war on terror” had other and more complex effects.

It destabilized a number of right-wing U.S. backed dictatorships and thereby contributed to the “Arab Spring” uprising in 2011 across North Africa and the Middle East. Tired of poverty and corrupt elites backed by Western imperialism, young people rose up in the millions from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria. While these upheavals ultimately failed to transform society and provide a future for young people, an important marker was laid down.

In 2019-2020, a new wave of revolt, swept the region, including Sudan, Algeria, Iran, OCTOBER 202 1

Iraq and Lebanon against corruption, inequality and repressive, reactionary regimes. The revolts were again driven by young people, with a clear anti-sectarian, internationalist character in a number of cases. These events show that the reactionaries belong to the past and that movements of working people and youth across ethnic and sectarian lines have massive potential to transform society.

Political Ramifications in the U.S. 9/11 also produced a carnival of reaction within the U.S. The ruling class hoped that 9/11 would help them break through the “Vietnam syndrome,” the reluctance of the American population to support military adventures involving ground troops after the defeat in Vietnam. There was initially massive support for invading Afghanistan in 2001.

But within a year after the attack on the Twin Towers, the drive to war in Iraq led to massive opposition as people saw through the pathetic lies being used to justify it. On February 15, 2003, 500,000 marched on the streets of New York, as part of a global day of action aimed at stopping the invasion. Between January and April 2003, 36 million people across the planet took part in nearly 3,000 anti war protests.

The subsequent course of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan only reinforced the “Vietnam syndrome.” Both Obama and Trump ran for office promising to end the “forever wars.” This was a massively popular position but the military industrial complex worked overtime to prevent it.

It was ultimately broader geopolitical considerations that pushed Biden to actually end the occupation of Afghanistan. Polling shows that there was overwhelming support

IN YOUR AREA continued from p.4 for reducing or completely withdrawing U.S. forces. According to a recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll 71% think the U.S.’ role in Afghanistan was a failure.

However, the chaotic nature of the exit clearly damaged Biden politically. Republicans have seized on this as evidence of Biden’s “weakness.” But ordinary people were also affected by the desperation of so many who worked for the U.S. trying to leave and the well-founded fears of urban women about Taliban rule.

Even more striking is the comparison of attitudes about the threat of terrorism compared to twenty years ago. In 2002, 56% said international terrorism was the biggest threat to Americans compared to 50% who said domestic terrorism. Today the response has flipped with 49% saying domestic terrorism is the bigger threat compared to 41% who say international terrorism.

The main terrorist threat in the world is imperialism itself, not just U.S. but Chinese and European imperialism as well. Imperialism means the massive destruction and squandering of resources and literal mass murder in order to maintain the power of corporations when we have been told that there’s not enough for a decent healthcare or education system here in the U.S. Compared to the trillions expended on endless wars what would it cost to vaccinate the whole world? Or to transition to renewable energy? The fight for a decent, socialist future means opposing all imperialism, but certainly in the U.S. the top of the list is American imperialism itself which used the carnage of 9/11 and the utterly reactionary Al Qaeda they helped to create to justify crimes against humanity. J

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SOCIALIST ISSUE #77 l OCTOBER 2021

ALTERNATIVE

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Dawn Hailey, Houston In 1973, Roe v. Wade, which was originally filed in the state of Texas, ruled the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion, and that this right could not be subject to excessive government interference. This was the result of a titanic women’s movement, with radical politics that spent years organizing from the ground up to win reproductive rights. That was 48 years ago and the right wing counter-movement has been fighting to have it overturned ever since. And because of their fight we’re right back to where the state was before 1973 with the passage of Texas Senate Bill 8 this year.

The U.S. Supreme Court barely commented on the bill and refused to block it from going into effect on the first of September. This paints a worrying picture for another major threat on the horizon: the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case which would overturn Roe, and will be heard by the Court starting on December 1.

The barbaric and unprecedented Texas law bans abortion as early as 5 to 6 weeks into a pregnancy, on the basis of when a fetal “heartbeat” can be detected. This covers 85-90 percent of abortions. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The ban will slip through the courts on the basis of its unique method of civil enforcement: rather than the government, the bill allows anti-abortion ‘vigilantes’ to sue a patient, a doctor and/or clinic, or anyone who aids and abets an abortion procedure for a bounty of up to $10,000. It is now official that any

person who wants or needs an abortion cannot get one in the state of Texas.

The State of the Movement Now the first month of the ban is almost over and not much else has happened.

Between the Democrats and reproductive rights nonprofits like Planned Parenthood, NOW, and NARAL, who issued public statements but no calls to action, millions of angry young women have been left wondering why more isn’t happening.

Senate Bill 8 places any doctor who performs an abortion in the path of potentially crippling civil lawsuits. And, in a stand against this barbaric law, one Texas doctor, Dr. Alan Braid of San Antonio, has put himself in the crosshairs of a suit in order to challenge the law. He provided a medically necessary abortion after the ban went into effect and wrote an op-ed to declare what he had done and why. At this point, two lawsuits have been filed against him. This open defiance of the law is what we need - and even more importantly, we need to rally the public in solidarity with providers and patients who defy the ban, as part of a resistant movement to wholesale overturn the savage ban.

An International Struggle Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a law that would codify Roe v. Wade and establish abortion rights at the federal level. But without abolishing the filibuster, the bill will not make it through the

Senate and it will amount to little more than a performance. Biden’s Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to challenge the ban, but it is based on shaky legal arguments and will take time to wind its way through the courts — time that working class people and families cannot afford to waste.

The Texas ban is being imposed at a time when reproductive rights are being won and expanded in other countries. From Ireland to Argentina and most recently in Mexico, womens movements are either winning or expanding abortion rights. These movements have taken up the tactics of protests, student walkouts, strikes, and other militant actions to fight against the far right. At the same time, countries like Poland and China have issued restrictions on abortion rights, and it is critical that we organize an international working-class movement, acting in solidarity and sharing lessons, that fights for abortion rights worldwide.

The Way Forward In the U.S. the effort to defend abortion exclusively through legalistic means has not been enough to prevent the gradual reduction in abortion rights and access, and now finally the almost total elimination of reproductive choice in Texas. We need to revive the traditions that won Roe in the first place by getting organized in our schools, workplaces, and communities, carrying out bold tactics of escalation, and relying on working class solidarity, not the Democrats, to win guaranteed free access to abortion for all.

With the Dobbs case looming on the horizon, it is crucial that the October 2 days of action nationwide are continued. The next several months will be a critical time for organizing, building power in our workplaces, schools, and communities to fight the attacks and win.

Our struggle for women’s liberation needs to go beyond the question of access to free, safe, and legal abortion. This ban and others like it will impact poor and working-class people the most, imposing desperation on top of an already desperate housing crisis and childcare crisis. We need a mass struggle for free, excellent reproductive care including universal childcare, rent control and high quality, publicly owned housing. We need an end to health care profiteering and an immediate transition to Medicare for All. A socialist struggle has to take up the struggle against racism, transphobia, and terror against immigrants as all forms of oppression serve only to divide the working class from one another.

Today’s generation of young women are not sold on “girlboss” glass-ceiling liberal feminism, and there is a deep hunger for fundamental change that puts a decisive end to the crises and exploitation we see all around us. Under capitalism, every gain painstakingly won by our movement, such as Roe v.

Wade, can be rolled back by the ruling class.

Winning genuine liberation from gender oppression will require channeling the anger at this rotten system into a mighty struggle for a socialist future. J