Socialist Alternative Paper Issue 78 - November 2021

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INSIDE p.3 BIDEN’S BAD DEAL WHY IS EVERYONE QUITTING? p.4 p.5 U.N. CLIMATE TALKS

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

• For mass organizing drives to organize the millions of non-union workers in the U.S. • We need a united struggle across industries for wage increases that are above the rate of inflation, an end to forced overtime and speedup, and an end to two-tier wage structures.

• 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 tool at our disposal, including militant strikes, to win our demands.

• 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 a New Political Party for Working People • The complete failure of the Biden administration to do good on campaign promises to expand the social safety net and begin to address climate change (see page 3) exposes the dire need for 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.

Expand the Social Safety Net! • As the Democrats have sabotaged 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 establishment politics.

• 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

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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 hundreds of thousands of new educators and support staff to accommodate a permanent reduction in class size.

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

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. 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, fully funded public schools, Medicare for All, and drastic climate action to ensure a healthy planet for the next generation.

End the COVID Chaos • 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 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 education programs that address people’s concerns about the vaccine and democratic negotiation of reasonable health protocol in the workplace.

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

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Natalie Bailey, Seattle When I first got involved with Socialist Alternative it was in early 2020 just before the pandemic. I was feeling pretty hopeless about the future. Policies like Medicare for All held so much promise, but I knew that there was little hope of them passing without a movement behind them. I got involved first by door knocking for the Bernie campaign.

Through doing that I learned about both Socialist Alternative and the Tax Amazon movement to build affordable housing. I was excited to see that there was a group of people willing to fight for the things that working people need and had a strategy to win.

I joined in late March, then the pandemic hit America in earnest. I was horrified at this crisis that the ruling class was either unwilling or unable to contain.

Socialist Alternative provided a consistent source of hope for me during the early days of the pandemic as it stretched into months and now more than a year. Our strategy of putting forth bold demands and a movement building approach to win them was proven many times in that period. Not only did we keep fighting for the Tax on Amazon, we won! During the George Floyd protests, Councilmember Kshama Sawant, • 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.

• 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. 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 enact anything 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.

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

• This can only be accomplished by taking the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership. We need a democratically planned economy here and around the world to carry out the

working with the Black Lives Matter movement, won a first-in-the-nation chemical and riot control weapons ban.

During a period that millions of people are facing housing precarity, we are fighting for rent control and a bold set of renters’ rights. This principled approach of putting forward bold demands and then getting out and building movements of ordinary working people to win them is what first drew me to Socialist Alternative. It is why I am proud to be a member today. When we get organized and fight, we win! J

transformation necessary to avoid climate disaster.

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.

• 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

BIDEN’S BAD DEAL HOW “BUILD BACK BETTER” WAS BOTCHED AND WHY WE NEED A NEW PARTY Tamar Wilson, Philadelphia Less than a year into his administration, the shine on Biden’s honeymoon is gone, tarnished under the enormous scale of the multiple crises facing ordinary people. The public is becoming increasingly frustrated with his disinterest and inaction in advancing his own promised agenda. Driven by deep discontent, broad layers of working people have started to realize how unacceptable the working and living standards they’ve been conditioned to accept for so long are. So far, throughout Biden’s tenure the corporate and centrist elements within the Democratic Party have set the pace. But by not standing up to them in any serious way, Bernie Sanders and the Squad are opening the door to the rising threat of far right populism. As people become more disillusioned with the lack of urgent action due to internecine Democrat quarreling, they may seek easy answers to complex problems and the likelihood they’ll be funneled towards right populist ideas like Trumps’ greatly increases.

Despite deftly moving from “political revolution” to “push him left” Bernie Sanders, the Squad, and Justice Democrats set progressive expectations high through their initial anointing of Biden as a new Franklin D. Roosevelt. Democrats were awarded the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives by selling working people a bill of goods that if given control, they’d put an end to the terrible racism and xenophobia of Trump-era policies and that they’d also usher in transformative economic and environmental action.

Now, as Biden’s first year comes to a close and midterm battle lines are being drawn, Democrats are embroiled in yet another Congressional mess, wholly amongst themselves, with major campaign promises heavily shaved down or outright abandoned. Taken together these conditions are the reason why Biden’s approval ratings have fallen to as low as 38% in one recent poll.

Bare-Bones Bill The congressional skirmishes over topline numbers around Biden’s infrastructure and reconciliation bills are highly theatrical and, by design, incredibly difficult and confusing for working people to follow.

To summarize: the infrastructure bill — which already passed the Senate with significant Republican support — is strongly supported by Manchin, Sinema, and corporate House Democrats. This bipartisan infrastructure bill favors public investment in private, NOVEMBER 2021

for-profit outfits and includes barebones funding for roads, bridges, and broadband expansion.

The reconciliation bill, originally written

by Bernie Sanders and championed by the Squad, contains the entirety of the Biden “Build Back Better” agenda. It started off as a $6 trillion plan, then Manchin said he’d accept $4 trillion, it got cut to $3.5 trillion, and is now landing somewhere around $1.75 trillion.

Numbers aside, as originally proposed, this reconciliation bill would include the bulk of Biden’s climate program, free community college, an extension of the popular child tax credits, universal pre-K, 12 weeks of paid parental and family leave, and it would lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60 while expanding coverage to include dental, hearing, vision, and eldercare. It would pay for itself by reversing the Trump tax cuts, fining polluters, and through massive savings from finally allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices (a Democrat promise from 2006). While still deeply inadequate, and a far cry from Bernie’s own 2020 platform, the passage of such a bill would provide real gains for working people and represent a significant concession from the ruling class in recognition of the enormity of the compounding capitalist crises they find themselves in.

Yet, as of the time of writing, this bill is almost unrecognizable from its original form.

We have already seen free community college, Medicare eligibility age lowering, the reversal of Trump’s tax cuts, and the key to Biden’s climate plan, the Clean Energy Performance Plan, all cut from the reconciliation bill. The remaining contents have all been drastically slashed, heavily means tested, or set up as short-term pilot programs intended to only run for a year or so before needing reauthorization. In short, it’s now a dog of a bill and should be wholly rejected, along with the infrastructure bill, by Bernie Sanders and the Squad, who should campaign for a return to at least the original $3.5 trillion plan.

Progressives’ weak tea handling of the reconciliation bill negotiations is just the latest in a year-long trend of capitulations and heavy compromises. They have folded themselves into a completely pro-corporate Democratic Party which is on track for an absolute shellacking by the GOP in the 2022 midterms, with some of the most reactionary Republicans likely rising to prominence.

Demoralized, key constituency groups will stay home. Or, due to Biden and the Democrats’ failure to provide federal relief against the right wing’s unprecedented assault on

voting rights, they’ll be disenfranchised. This almost guarantees that if the GOP wins, barring a major social movement, nothing progressive will be won for at least another two years. There will be no one to blame for this outcome but the Democrats themselves.

Progressive Politicians Fail to Fight Bernie and the Squad, operating solely within the confines of the allowances of the Democratic Party, are relying on the bare bones approaches of backroom horse trading and leveraging their votes, not bringing to bear the full power of the organized working class. Genuine mass mobilization, the one thing that could actually “push Biden left”, is a strategy they’re strongly prohibited from using due to their affiliation with the Democratic Party. This would not be the case if they were in a true working class party.

The failed hostile takeover project of progressives in the Democratic Party has resulted in all involved essentially serving as loyal soldiers in the party’s left wing. Instead of calling for mass movements to defend a far reaching program beyond even what was in the $3.5 trillion plan, and using his office to organize working people, labor, and social movement leaders against big business and their cronies in Congress, Bernie has settled for writing op-eds. Instead of fighting to transform the party by using grassroots funds to hire full time organizers to mobilize labor, social justice, and climate movements, AOC and the Justice Democrats have been feeding millions to DNC consultants.

It’s clear that the Squad and Bernie’s “inside/outside” strategy is in fact cover for the truth that they are in a political alliance with the Democratic establishment. By its nature such alliances between the left and a section of the ruling class are on the terms set by the ruling class. Spanning from their failure to force a vote on Medicare for All to their support for a Capitol police militarization bill to funding Israel’s Iron Dome, their legislative approach has been broadly marred by cowardice. Add to this their compulsive need to heap effusive praise on Biden as a good faith partner, which AOC and Pramila Jayapal both did in recent interviews, and it is clear as day that these progressives are providing left cover for the thoroughly bankrupt Joe Biden.

As Kshama Sawant has said, “If you are a progressive, the road for your movement inside the Democratic Party leads to a graveyard.”

Building a New Working Class Party Cooptation or isolation to the point of impotence are the inevitable twin fates of progressives operating within the confines of the Democratic Party. This bitter dynamic AOC painfully examples best. Recently she was caught trying to lobby for juice in the party by sending grassroots funds to the reelection campaigns of several of the worst corporate Democrats and, when rejected by them, relegated to ineffectual displays like attending a billionaire gala draped in a muchpilloried “Tax the Rich” gown.

The Democratic Party is loyal to the politics of big business. Democrats subordinate the material concerns of everyday people to those of billionaires and corporations, substituting woke sloganeering and superficial overtures like kneeling in kente cloth instead. All this makes an inhospitable home for socialists looking to advance the working class movement.

What would it mean to have a truly democratic left party in Congress and state legislatures?

In today’s climate, a workers’ party would be able to earnestly engage in the upsurge of worker rebellions led by rank and file members of unions. A new workers party would depend on its ability to organize everyday working people for its political power, not alliances with the bosses.

The desire for a new party is clearly fomenting among the working class, with over 60% of Americans now supportive of a third party. Such a new party would include democratic structures to ensure concerns from working class people took the fore and that elected officials were held accountable to the expectations placed on them. These structures could include: an explicitly proworker platform, mandate that elected political and union officials only take home the average worker’s wage (with the rest donated to movement building), and the right to immediately recall these officials when they violate the pro-worker platform. This organization could call for a national mass conference to broker the initial platform that would serve as the basis for a new party.

With a clear understanding that democratic mass movements are how we change society, we need a party whose power rests in its ability to cultivate and guide movements, not its ability to deceive them. J

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ECONOMY

THE “GRE AT RESIGNATION”

WHY IS EVERYONE QUITTING THEIR JOB?

Keely Mullen, New York City

Rethinking Work

Are you thinking about quitting your job?

You can’t stand one more day working under the thumb of your manager, you’re not paid nearly enough to deal with the demands of unruly customers, and there’s no room for you to grow at the company anyway. If this sounds like you, you’re part of the 95% of Americans thinking about throwing in the towel at work and the four million a month actually doing it. Fall 2021 is seeing the highest quit rates ever recorded in the U.S. In the “reopened” world, there are new, unique pressures in our workplaces. New safety protocols (or no safety protocols), staffing shortages, increased need in the care sector. But this alone doesn’t explain today’s mass resignations.

The pandemic threw cold water on any remaining illusion that capitalism can deliver us a safe, democratic, or equitable world. It exposed the incompetence of government institutions, the deeply unequal distribution of resources within and between countries, and just how little control ordinary people have over our own lives and circumstances.

In this profoundly unstable context, and with many millions of Americans having experienced such a dramatic shift in their work and home life over the past year and a half, it’s no surprise 95% of workers are considering quitting their jobs. This is Marx’s theory of alienation playing out before our eyes.

Under capitalism, nearly every single workplace is a dictatorship of the boss. When you’re scheduled for a shift, what you’re paid, how long your break is, who you serve, what you serve, what you produce and how you produce it. Even in unionized workplaces where you have remarkably more say in your working conditions, you’re still ten degrees of separation away from any executive decision making.

Karl Marx wrote in 1847: “The worker, who

The 2020 Workplace Transformation The past 18 months of rolling lockdowns completely transformed our “work” landscape. For those traditionally essential and newly essential workers, pressures grew to unbearable heights. The great PPE scramble left nurses wearing garbage bags while treating an illness we didn’t yet understand. Grocery workers ran around at breakneck pace stocking and restocking shelves as customers panic purchased toilet paper and canned food. Amazon warehouse workers, ruthlessly surveilled by management, were forced to work until some of them quite literally buckled under the pressure. For essential workers with kids at home, securing childcare became a constant source of stress (or even an impossibility).

On the other side of things, millions of workers were thrown out of their workplaces either as a result of mass layoffs in low wage service and hospitality jobs, or through an overnight transition to remote work. What started as a “two week anomaly” turned into months and months stuck in the house. This came with its own unique pressures, especially for working parents who now had to juggle their kids’ at-home learning with the demands of their own work.

For those millions of low wage workers who were pink slipped in March or April of 2020, there were several months of enhanced unemployment benefits that softened the blow. But looming in the background was the nagging anticipation that they’d soon be forced back into unsafe restaurants, bars, and hotels as businesses were desperate to reopen their doors and jumpstart profit making.

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SUPPLY CHAIN CHAOS

Tom Crean, New York City Over 100 container ships unable to unload in the Port of Los Angeles. Auto plants cutting production or closed because of a global shortage of microprocessor chips. A possible toilet paper shortage (again) and many goods may not be delivered to stores in time for Christmas. This is just some of the evidence of supply chain chaos that is denting the economic recovery along with the summer surge in COVID cases.

This is not just happening in the U.S., Germany’s manufacturing-centered economy is facing a “bottleneck recession” because its factories are short of plywood, copper, aluminium, plastics as well as lithium, cobalt and nickel which are key to making the batteries in electric vehicles.

What are the underlying causes of this

for twelve hours weaves, spins, drills, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads etc. – does he hold these twelve hours... to be a manifestation of his life, as life? On the contrary, life begins for him where this activity ceases.”

Under capitalism, we are so disconnected from the fruits of what we produce that we become separated from our humanity. This is what millions of workers have subconsciously or consciously come to realize in the last year and why millions are throwing in the towel.

We are yearning for control over our lives, to work for wages we deserve, under conditions we’ve negotiated, and for hours that guarantee we have time to do the things we love with the people we care about.

Quit or Fight Back?

It is a product of the immense weakness of the organized labor movement that millions of workers see quitting as their only form of workplace “activism.” Screenshots of workers telling off their managers as they quit have gone viral, tapping into many of our fantasies to do the same.

But the tragic reality is that as long as we live under capitalism there is no “quitting” situation? One factor that is frequently cited is the shortage of labor. For example, there is a shortage of truckers to move goods and containers off the ports which contributes to the bottleneck. This is true both in the U.S. and in Europe. In Britain, there is such a shortage of truck drivers that the army was brought in to drive fuel tankers after gas stations ran out.

But this is not the only factor. The pandemic and climate disasters have demonstrated the vulnerability of the vast, global “just in time” supply chain. One break in the chain can cause havoc.

This year a number of Chinese ports have closed due to COVID outbreaks as have textile factories in Vietnam which are a major supplier of clothes for the U.S. market. Drought affected the supply of water to semiconductor chip plants in Taiwan, the world’s main producer. These problems in turn have led companies to seek to stockpile goods as demand surged due to government stimulus. This only placed more pressure on the supply chain.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell have claimed that most of the supply side problems are temporary. But it is obvious that the labor shortage is not going away.

Like a number of other issues in the world economy it began before the pandemic

exploitation. For every one of the four million workers quitting a month there aren’t four million fulfilling, well paid jobs waiting for them. We cannot “escape” our way out of long hours, low pay, bullying managers, and meager benefits.

But, as workers who create all the wealth in society and deliver mega-profits to the bosses, we have enormous potential power to fight in our own interests. We can look to the tens of thousands of workers on strike right now, fighting for a raise, for shorter working hours, for a real meal break, against brutal two-tier employee systems, and against staff shortages as an example of this.

Ten times out of ten the bosses would prefer we quit than fight back. They know that if we’re organized, and if we act together, we can shut down their profits. Instead of mass resignations, we need mass unionization campaigns across the country to organize the vast majority of American workers who aren’t in a union. We need a fighting labor movement with militant, rank and file leadership.

We are in a fight for our lives, and rather than concede to the bosses, we’d better start to arm ourselves with organization and determination rather than resignation. J

and has been greatly exacerbated by it.

Another underlying factor undermining the global supply chain is the sharpening U.S./China conflict which is leading to a growing “decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies.

The persistent supply chain problems in turn have contributed to the biggest spike in inflation in a decade. If inflation persists, the Fed will be forced to raise interest rates which could easily trigger a recession.

But as serious as the supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressure are, they are not the only threats to the economic recovery. There are massive looming corporate and sovereign debt crises as well as speculative bubbles whose bursting can have catastrophic consequences for the world financial system. Only the latest example is the possible collapse of the Chinese real estate giant Evergrande which accumulated a staggering $300 billion in debt. Only a few months ago we were promised a massive, sustained economic recovery. But as Socialist Alternative has explained, the pandemic has brought the underlying instability in contemporary capitalism to the surface and this will not go away. J

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

C L I M AT E Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis “The last best chance to get runaway climate change under control.”

That’s how the United Nations Climate Change Conference (also known as COP26) is being pitched in the lead up to the two-week summit.

The UN, who have twiddled their thumbs for decades while the science of climate change has been crystal clear, apparently now hold the key to our “last best chance?” The same organization that has continuously failed on meeting their emission-reducing benchmarks in treaties like the Kyoto Agreement and Paris Accord? Okay, cool.

Leaders like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Australia’s deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce won’t bother touching down in Glasgow for COP26, even for optics. Brazil, Russia, China, and Australia comprise some of the largest global polluters, and all have interests in coal, gas, oil, and the meat and dairy industries.

These are the major contributors to the rising CO2 levels in the earth’s atmosphere. The four nations have been described as “barely even trying” in the fight to lower emissions, either by refusing to make an effort, or greenwashing their progress. At one point, they were able to pretend that they were all in this together. But with economic and political tensions growing in the U.S.-China Cold War, national and capitalist interests are back on top. The consequence for putting these interests first? A complete disregard for the planet and every person living on it.

U.S. president Joe Biden and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will plan to attend the climate conference among others, not because they don’t have interests in coal, gas, and oil, but because pressure to be doing something about climate change is forcing them to save face.

Oil Companies Will any oil companies be at COP? Well, not literally, but they will certainly be there in spirit: big names like ExxonMobil and Chevron have been on a lobbying and disinformation spree for decades, and have now turned to Facebook ads and greenwashing their lobbying reports to shareholders. Their recent advertising vigor comes after the U.S.’s re-entry into the Paris Climate Agreement (which is bad for their business!) and President Biden’s proposed budget bill, which — as initially proposed — was supposed to support working-class families and fight climate change. The longer they can sell the idea of “clean,” “economy-boosting” fossil fuels on social media and to political decision-makers, the better off we’ll all be. Right?

These companies really don’t have much to worry about with their fossil fuel-friendly Biden administration. But Biden didn’t run on fossil-fuel friendliness on the campaign trail: his administration had the bold ambition of ending fossil fuel extractions on all public land. Sounded good! But it was too good to be true: according to the National Audobon Society, Biden is on track to pass out “more oil and gas drilling permits this year than any under President Trump and the most since George W. Bush.” He’s given the nod to continue offshore drilling in the Gulf — this news came just three months before an oil spill off the California coast. The restrictions the president imposed on the coal, gas, and oil industry during his first month in office were just temporary moves. Was he thinking no one would notice when he reversed on all of it? Good luck with presenting this update in Glasgow, Joe.

Big Banks But don’t worry, in this period of climate turmoil, the banks will help us out. They’ve pledged to fight climate change. You should totally trust them, despite this troubling statistic from The Guardian: “three out of every four board members at seven major U.S. banks have current or past ties to climate-conflicted

NOVEMBER 2021

companies or organizations – from oil and gas corporations to trade groups that lobby against reducing climate pollution.”

Ignore the fact that Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo made the Midwest’s Line 3 project possible “with billions in loans.” One hundred percent of JP Morgan Chase’s board of directors have “climate-conflict ties,” but they just signed on to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

What’s it called when you say you’ll do something when you know you won’t do it?

Political Establishment

ALL TALK NO ACTION We Can’t Rely on the Ruling Elite to Solve the Climate Crisis

The fossil fuel companies have a couple of guardian angels in Congress too — Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and actually, the majority of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. They are doing everything in their power to keep their power, which means staying in the fossil fuel industry’s pocket. Joe Manchin isn’t even just in the pocket of fossil fuel bigwigs; he is literally a coal baron himself. He owns millions of dollars in coal stocks. He founded a few coal companies himself. Then passed them on to his son. It’s no wonder that he and Kyrsten Sinema have held Congress hostage, forcing Democrats to strip all meaningful climate legislation. And that’s in addition to stripping out key Biden administration priorities like free community college and an extension of Medicare. Their highly-touted budget reconciliation bill is crumbling, and so are the hopes of getting anything done before COP. So sure thing, Biden, we’ll see you in Glasgow. But we know your empty words of care for the planet mean nothing when you and your party have failed to deliver on the crucial climate promises you’ve made over and over. We are keeping score, and the “last best chance” is not you. J

All Out For Protests at COP26 Sawyer Smith, New York City From October 31 to November 12, the United Nations will be hosting COP26 (Congress of the Parties) in Glasgow, with the goal of alleviating the most destructive effects of the climate crisis.

With a long list of corporate donors, many of whom bear direct responsibility for the crisis we are now facing, COP26 is looking to be a gathering of monied interests seeking to solve climate change without making too significant of a sacrifice to their wallets. Per the official COP26 website, one of the conference’s primary goals is to “mobilize finance” towards a solution to one of capitalism’s most devastating catastrophes.

To combat the limited imagination of a capitalist response to one of the greatest threats to humanity, International Socialist Alternative (ISA) will be mobilizing hundreds of members from many countries including the U.S. to Glasgow to participate in mass protests. ISA intends to point the conversation towards a socialist solution to climate change. It is evident that the situation we find ourselves in now is an example of capitalism in crisis, and as such, capitalism is not equipped to save itself.

In the ISA, we see the only permanent solution to the climate crisis as a rapid transition to a democratically planned, socialist society. This will require bringing energy companies and all polluting industries into public ownership and instituting democratic planning of resources by the working class itself for society as a whole. Without the combined effort of the socialist movements domestically and internationally to bring these solutions to working people, the goal of putting these plans into action will remain an uphill battle. This makes COP26 an excellent opportunity to draw the attention of workers towards a real, clearly stated alternative to the conference’s proposed solutions. As we approach the point of no return, it is crucial that we mobilize a mass movement to take the power away from those who have caused the climate crisis: the capitalist class. J

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What are the charges?

When the recall charges were first filed in August of 2020, it was obvious that they were a retaliation against Kshama for standing with the Justice for George Floyd movement. Though only three charges remain after the court process, one of the original six charges filed by the Recall Campaign called the Black Lives Matter protests a “war zone” and argued that Kshama “failed...to ensure our safety and our ability to live in peace.” Despite the fact that the most overtly racist charges were thrown out, the remainder carry out the same dishonest job of vilifying the Black Lives Matter movement and attempting to criminalize movement-building.

Protesting, whether it’s outside the mayor’s house or inside City Hall, is not against the law. Neither is using your office to organize and build community meetings of working people to tax big business. But the forces behind the recall clearly wish they were, and they want to remove one of the only elected representatives in the country prepared to put herself on the line for working people and the oppressed.

1.

“Kshama led a march to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s house, the address of which is protected.”

The Facts

As Durkan’s police department was rampantly tear-gassing Seattle neighborhoods and protesters, the families of victims of police violence organized a peaceful protest and asked Kshama to speak at it. Kshama spoke in solidarity with the families, but didn’t know Durkan’s address and had nothing to do with the march’s route.

2.

“Kshama threatened public safety by opening City Hall to BLM protesters for a rally.”

The Facts

Kshama opened City Hall to protesters for a masked, socially-distant public meeting that lasted less than an hour. Not only was the demonstration peaceful and extremely careful to be COVID-safe, it provided a crucial space for the movement to discuss next steps forward – which directly led to winning Seattle’s first-in-the-nation ban on police use of chemical weapons against protesters.

3.

“Kshama misused public funds to support a ballot initiative, Tax Amazon.”

The Facts

In January 2020, Kshama’s office bought materials and food for a Tax Amazon organizing meeting of community members. Tax Amazon was not a ballot initiative, and the movement did not vote to attempt taking the issue to ballot until months later. Regardless, when the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC) ruled that Kshama should pay a small fine for this, Kshama did so. Big business is not angry about the SEEC fine, they are angry Kshama led the historic victory on the Amazon Tax.

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Kshama Sawan Right-Wing Re Greyson Van Arsdale, Seattle This winter, Seattle will hold its first-ever December election in recorded history. The ballot question will be on the recall of Seattle’s only socialist councilmember, Kshama Sawant, as the culmination of a yearlong effort by big business and the right wing to unseat her. The timing is an act of blatant voter suppression, with the vote held in between the two major U.S. holidays when many working people could easily not know an election is taking place.

This recall effort is a racist, rightwing, undemocratic attack, aimed at removing one of the nation’s most effective fighters for working people. Specifically, she’s being targeted for participating in peaceful Black Lives Matter protests, and for using her office to build a successful movement to tax Amazon and other big corporations to fund affordable housing and Green New Deal programs.

For the socialist and Black Lives Matter movements, this is a crucial moment. Three years before Bernie Sanders’ historic presidential campaign in 2016, Kshama Sawant blazed a trail as Seattle’s first elected socialist in a hundred years.

Her office has spearheaded victories that have led the way for socialists and progressives nationally, including the first $15 minimum wage in a major U.S. city, the Amazon Tax, and landmark renters rights victories that have Seattle’s real estate lobby in an uproar.

Amazon and big business failed to buy Kshama’s city council seat in 2019, despite record corporate spending. So now, once again, socialists are going head-to-head with wealthy corporations in Seattle to defeat this recall and defend our movements’ victories. In this historic election, which is likely the highest-stakes local election in 2021, it will take an allout effort to win.

RepublicanLed Voter Suppression in “Liberal Seattle” Though Seattle boasts a progressive reputation, the Recall Campaign against Kshama has

brought the city’s Republicans out of regular special election (which take the woodwork in unparalleled fash- place in February), voter turnout can ion. Their campaign has taken dona- drop by up to 50 percent – and the tions from more than 500 wealthy electorate of special elections tends Republicans, including 130 Trump to be overwhelmingly wealthier and donors, and among them the top whiter. In not only a special election, Trump donor in Washington state, but an unprecedented holiday eleccorporate landlord George Petrie. tion, that dropoff has the potential to The Recall has also attracted the be even higher. support of more familiar enemies, In this context, our campaign will such as Amazon executives – who go all-out to drive up voter turnout. bankrolled Kshama’s opponent in The Kshama Solidarity Campaign 2019, only to lose to historic voter has announced a historic “Get-Outturnout from working people in The-Vote” effort to reach as many Kshama’s favor. So far, three top working people as possible. To win, Amazon executives (John Schoet- our movement will need to knock tler, Morgan Battrell, and Doug Her- hundreds of thousands of doors, rington) have donated to the recall. and even surpass the historic ground The recall campaign’s right- game that won Kshama re-election wing, undemocratic character is in 2019. on full display in their use of voter suppression to try to oust Kshama What the Recall from office. Aiming to undermine the historic voter turnouts of work- Represents ing people, renters, communities What is the recall really about? of color, and youth that have won The recall’s donor list gets to the Kshama three consecutive elections, heart of the matter – it’s a Who’s Who the recall sat on their ballot petition of major area real estate executives, signatures and refused to file them hedge fund managers, investors, with the county until it was too late landlords, union-busting business for the issue to appear on the normal owners, and the wealthy. In fact, General Election ballot. The timing the top three billionaire dynasties of their petitions gave the county no in Washington State have donated choice but to set an unprecedented money to the recall. Ultimately, this and undemocratic holiday election recall represents the fury of the date in between Thanksgiving and rich and powerful over the fact that Christmas, Kshama on Decemhas spent As the country’s only Marxist ber 7. eight long Seatelected representative, she is a y e a r s tle’s workbuilding genuine threat to business-asing people m o v e usual politics – and to the ruling ments of have long been overclass, that simply cannot stand. workingburdened c l a s s with skypeople to rocketing rents and living costs, win major victories. causing them to work long hours Even beyond winning Seattle’s and often several jobs. In the course $15 minimum wage and the Amazon of a busy day-to-day life, most are Tax, Kshama’s office has a prolific not plugged in to the goings-on of record of passing renters’ rights every single election, and will be legislation, has walked countless even less so between Thanksgiving picket lines in solidarity with striking and Christmas, just a few weeks workers, has successfully organized after the November election. The tenants and community members Recall Campaign chose this terrain against displacement, and has won intentionally, aiming for an election tens of millions of dollars in funding decided by the wealthiest, whit- for social services by organizing the est, most conservative sections of “People’s Budget” every year since Kshama’s district against the major- she was elected. As the country’s ity who re-elected her for the third only Marxist elected representative, time less than a year before the she is a genuine threat to businessrecall was filed. as-usual politics – and to the ruling The recall’s attempted voter sup- class, that simply cannot stand. pression is blatant. Between a typiSo desperate were they to be cal November general election and a S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

nt Faces Off Against ecall rid of Kshama that big business cumulatively spent $4 million trying to defeat her and other progressives in the 2019 Seattle elections, including $1.4 million from Amazon alone.

The bulk of that money went towards propping up Kshama’s corporate opponent – but working people fought back and organized historic voter turnout, re-electing Kshama to a third term. This stunning defeat of Amazon and big business spurred the momentum to win the Amazon Tax less than a year later.

As history has shown countless times, when big business loses a crucial battle even with the rules weighted in their favor, they try to overturn it by hook or by crook. Instead of allowing Kshama to serve the four years as Seattle’s working people elected her to do, they conjured up a recall to overturn the election they couldn’t buy, by manufacturing the least democratic vote they could muster.

This recall clearly mirrors the story of Seattle’s last independent elected socialist, Anna Louise Strong, an activist and journalist who won a seat on the School Board in 1916. As the ruling class whipped up nationalist sentiment with the U.S.’s entry into World War I, Strong faced off against a right-wing recall that took issue with her anti-war, pro-labor stance – and she lost. The wave of anti-socialist attacks that ousted Strong would return again in the 1950s, then named “McCarthyism” – and as socialists are elected to office in the modern day in increasing numbers, we can expect a resurgence of red-baiting and McCarthyist methods.

However, the recall is sending an important message by tying their attack on Kshama to the Black Lives Matter movement. The Justice

NOVEMBER 2021

for George Floyd uprising was the largest protest movement in United States history, and was a powerful demonstration of mass anger at racist police brutality. For the first time in recent history, major cities enacted cuts on their police department budgets rather than lavishing them with more funding for militarygrade weapons (though many of these cuts have since been reversed).

Protesting with the Black Lives Matter movement is not against the law – but if they successfully recall Kshama for doing so, they could further clamp down on protest movements and set a precedent against other socialist elected officials participating in them, and drive the right-wing narrative that Black Lives Matter protests are “riots.”

The System Upholding the Recall The recall’s rhetoric has painstakingly repeated that “no one is above the law,” though they have so far failed to name a single law that Kshama has broken. At the same time as they espouse adherence to this “rule of law” – the idea that laws should be applied evenly and to everyone – the recall itself has purposefully undermined the most basic democratic right of Seattle voters by flagrantly suppressing the vote.

This kind of hypocrisy is to be expected from the right wing. But at every turn, the supposedly impartial institutions of capitalist democracy have upheld and advanced this hypocrisy.

In fact, the only reason the Recall Campaign was in a position to secure this unprecedented December election was because the Washington State Supreme Court delayed their ruling on the recall until three full months after their originally planned decision date, and upheld charges against Kshama that were not only false but easily disprovable.

Only months earlier, that same court threw

out a recall effort against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, which aimed to remove her from office for signing off on widespread use of tear gas by police on peaceful protesters during the Justice for George Floyd uprising. Durkan’s oversight of use of chemical weapons on protesters during a respiratory pandemic was so publicly callous that it earned her the nickname “Teargas Jenny” – and yet the state Supreme Court summarily dismissed the charges. The courts also outrageously threw out the recall charges against Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza, who refused to uphold the COVID mask mandate with his officers.

These severe injustices join a long history of the court system under capitalism working against ordinary people. The courts have failed on a massive scale to produce justice for victims of police brutality, and routinely do not indict violent police officers who are caught on video. Just two months ago, the Supreme Court itself turned a blind eye to a law in Texas that bans abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy, before most people even know they are pregnant, refusing to uphold the precedent of Roe v. Wade.

This is why, historically, movements for justice have often found it necessary to break unjust laws and fight against the courts in order to win real change. During the Civil Rights era, defying segregation was illegal. The refusal of Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus was an illegal act that helped spark the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott which paved the way to win desegregation. Especially in the context of the recall clearly attacking and vilifying the Black Lives Matter movement, it bears repeating that the greatest gains have come from being relentless, and breaking unjust laws when needed. While Kshama did not break the law, she has always been willing to put herself on the line to stand up for working people, as all socialists should be.

But the recall demonstrates how the courts under capitalism will fight tooth and nail – and abandon all semblance of neutrality in the process – to defeat socialist fighters who threaten their system.

All Eyes on Seattle If the recall is successful, it will set a dangerous precedent for the future: when big business is unable to unseat socialist elected officials through regular methods (like flooding their elections with corporate cash), they’ll resort to extraordinary measures. In this sense, the recall against Kshama Sawant is a test case – if she’s ousted from the City Council on racist and flimsy charges by depressing voter turnout of working people, it will lay the basis for future attacks on other elected socialists, the potential rollback of our victories in Seattle, and broader attacks on Black Lives Matter and the left nationally.

While this unprecedented election poses serious challenges (and may in fact be the harshest terrain that our movement in Seattle has faced yet), our record shows that we can in no way be underestimated. If we can beat this recall and defend Kshama Sawant, a trailblazing socialist and genuine movement leader, not only can we once again demonstrate that Amazon and the real estate giants are not too big to beat, we can build serious momentum to win rent control for the first time in Seattle.

The stakes are high, and we are not just playing defense – we have a world to win. J

You can help defend Kshama Sawant, the $15 minimum wage, and the Amazon Tax by donating to the Kshama Solidarity Campaign at kshamasolidarity.org/donate.

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

Is Xi Jinping Turning Left?

CHINESE CAPITALISM IN CRISIS Report from “Solidarity Against Repression in China and Hong Kong” China’s dictator Xi Jinping has launched no fewer than 14 different crackdowns this year. There is a crackdown on LGBTQ people and a ban on “sissy boy” pop stars and celebrities in the media. LGBTQ online groups and websites are banned and some universities are compiling registers of gay students. Homosexuality is effectively criminalized again.

There is a crackdown on private education companies, on computer games, on learning English in schools. There is a crackdown on the big tech companies like Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok owner ByteDance. This has wiped out around three trillion dollars from Chinese stocks this year. Xi has also criticized “excessive income” and said that billionaires have to “give back” to society.

Xi’s new populist turn has alarmed some capitalist commentators. The Financial Times asks the question: is China becoming “uninvestable”? George Soros says Xi Jinping is turning to Maoism. Also, some pseudolefts are excited by Xi’s new policies. Those who defend the Chinese regime’s totalitarian policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong see the latest policies as vindication that Xi Jinping’s regime stands for “socialism.”

But this is not socialism or anti-capitalism. It is not left populism, but right-wing populism. Xi wants to save Chinese capitalism and his own dictatorship. Other capitalist governments — most clearly Biden in the U.S. — are imposing tighter regulation and higher taxes on big companies. They are abandoning rigid neoliberal policies because of the terrible crisis of the capitalist system.

In China, the CCP (so-called Communist Party) uses the method of crackdowns and stronger government control to achieve a similar outcome.

What Is “Common Prosperity”?

Xi’s slogan of “common prosperity” is not socialist or communist. This is actually a Confucian concept. “Common prosperity” was the program of Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang one hundred years ago. Socialists stress the need to overthrow the power of capital and to establish democratic working class control over the economy.

Xi Jinping stresses that his policies do not mean “killing the rich to help the poor.”

Xi’s loyal lieutenant Vice Premier Liu He has made reassuring statements that the CCP regime maintains an “unwavering commitment” to private companies and this “will not change.”

Xi’s regime is walking a fine line to defend its state-guided form of capitalism by taking measures against some sections of the capitalist class that have amassed too much

8

power — such as the tech moguls Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent — and at the same time using populist rhetoric to placate growing mass discontent over falling living standards, spiralling costs, and shocking inequality.

China has more billionaires (measured in U.S. dollars) than the U.S. by a country mile: 1,058 in China compared to 696 in the U.S. The richest one percent of Chinese (14 million people) own more than the poorest 50 percent of the population (700 million people). This is the result of the ultra-capitalist policies of the Communist Party.

Populism and Nationalism Xi’s campaign combines some populist attacks on big private companies, wealthy celebrities, and parasitic sectors like the private tutoring industry, with right-wing homophobic, anti-feminist, and ultra-nationalist propaganda. Homosexuality and “effeminate” men are Western ideas and trends that harm China, according to the government.

Anti-Western nationalism is a key ingredient in all government pronouncements to gear society up for a prolonged and withering struggle in the new imperialist Cold War, in which the U.S. and China are fighting for the number one spot.

Likewise, according to the regime, the democratic struggle in Hong Kong is a Western conspiracy. Beijing has vowed to crush the “unpatriotic elements” in Hong Kong with brutal repression. In Hong Kong, trade unions are effectively smashed and their leaders are in prison. As in mainland China, workers’ rights are being ruthlessly suppressed to realise capitalist “stability.”

Multiple crises Why is Xi Jinping doing this? The answer is that Chinese capitalism, like capitalism globally, faces a serious crisis — actually not one, but many. China is experiencing a population crisis, which is much worse than even the govern-

ment statistics show. The birth rate has fallen sharply. Last year, twice as many children were born in India (24m) than in China (12m) while these countries have roughly the same population.

There is a debt crisis, heavily connected to China’s property bubble. One of the country’s biggest property conglomerates Evergrande is now bankrupt with over $300 billion in debts. That’s more debt than most countries have built up. Whether the government will ultimately rescue Evergrande or allow it to fold is a question spooking financial markets. And Evergrande is not alone, there are more potentially big corporate failures in the queue.

Housing in China is unaffordable even for many middle-class people. The average cost of an apartment in mega-city Shenzhen is 44 times the city’s average yearly salary. The comparable ratio in Los Angeles is 9.6 times and in New York, 5.4 times.

The cost of housing and education are major reasons why Chinese people can’t afford to have children. This is caused by capitalism and its speculation in property prices. And the downsizing of public services. A government survey shows that a big majority of Chinese families spend one-third of their income on their children’s education.

Unpopular Policies To address the population crisis, Xi announced a three-child policy in May, allowing each family three children whereas five years ago the limit was one child. But the government miscalculated. The three-child policy was met with a very frosty public reception. For many it just confirmed the government is completely out of touch and doesn’t understand the terrible pressures on ordinary households.

But Xi’s regime is also now scapegoating “Western-inspired homosexuality” and the erosion of “traditional

family values” for the decline in the birth rate. A recent court case ruled in favour of a school textbook that designates homosexuality as a “mental disorder” which was the government’s official position until 2001.

The economy is also in crisis. China’s economy contracted in July, showing the post-pandemic recovery is already running out of gas. Now an energy crisis is leading to power outages for factories and ordinary people. A debt-and-population crunch could push China into scenario similar to Japan in the 1990s. Japan’s economy today is the same size as it was in 1995.

Imperialism Means Repression Another crisis for Xi’s regime is the U.S.China Cold War. Within China’s ruling class there is growing restlessness that they are losing. U.S. anti-China policies, especially the sales and supply bans against dozens of Chinese tech companies, are inflicting real pain.

The biggest crisis for Xi Jinping is the growing discontent of workers, young people, and increasingly also China’s middle-class.

These factors explain the new populist policies. Xi Jinping wants to secure his coronation as dictator-for-life at a key congress in November 2022. He is desperate to build up his regime’s support for this event.

This can mean even more repression and attacks on workers’ strikes, Hong Kong activists, Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, LGBTQ people and feminists in China.

This is why Chi- nese socialists are appealing for solidarity and support from worker activists inte rnationally. J

Young people participate in Shanghai Pride in 2020. This year, Pride was cancelled as Xi Jinping has effectively criminalized homosexuality in China.

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

WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

BIDEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN BAD ON ABORTION RIGHTS Erin Brightwell, Bay Area Roe v. Wade is hanging by a thread.

Despite the fact that the right to an abortion is a position held by the majority of Americans, abortion has effectively been banned in the state of Texas, cutting off nearly seven million women of reproductive age from an essential part of healthcare. Aside from a spirited, but relatively small day of protests on October 2, the mainstream women’s organizations like National Organization for Women (NOW), Women’s March, and Planned Parenthood, have refused to mount any serious resistance to the Texas abortion ban. This has undoubtedly emboldened the anti-abortion right to go for a bigger attack on Roe, and they will have their opportunity when the Dobbs case comes before the conservative-dominated Supreme Court in December.

For decades, one of the key lesser-evilist arguments that the Democratic establishment has used to get left and progressive voters’ support for their corporate-backed candidates has been the need to protect Roe. We are now approaching the endgame of the “Vote-blue-to-defend-Roe” strategy.

Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress and there has never been a better time to “make Roe the law of the land,” as Joe Biden said he would while he was on the campaign trail in 2020.

Where is the Fightback?

With a full-blown reproductive rights emergency on our hands, the Biden administration has done little other than instruct the Justice Department to file legal challenges to the Texas law. A legal strategy to challenge the Texas ban is important, but with a judiciary stacked with Trump appointees, it’s highly unlikely to be successful without the pressure of a mass movement. Even if Biden’s legal approach does succeed in stopping the Texas ban, the whole episode illustrates the vulnerability of abortion rights in Republican-dominated states, and the importance of codifying the right to abortion at the federal level.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would codify a legal right to an abortion in law, and it’s been passed in the House. There’s no doubt that passing it in the Senate will not be easy –it will require eliminating the filibuster and putting heavy pressure on anti-abortion Democratic Senator Bob Casey and potentially Joe Manchin, who has a mixed record NOVEMBER 2021

on abortion.

But the Biden administration didn’t even pretend to try.

NOW, Women’s March, and Planned Parenthood should be organizing mass pressure in the form of protests, marches, walkouts and direct action to force Biden to stick to his promise. Instead, these organizations, which are led by Democratic Party establishment loyalists, are silent on what Biden could and should do to defeat the Texas law and go on the offensive to secure abortion rights. If the women’s organizations that supported Biden took him at his word that he would move to codify Roe if the Supreme Court took aim at abortion rights, they were, to be charitable, naive.

Biden came by his feminist credentials very recently, and on an extremely dubious basis. He has long opposed abortion “personally.” So while he nominally supported abortion rights as a Senator and Vice President, he was a long time supporter of the Hyde amendment, which prohibits Medicaid covering abortions. Biden only dropped his support for the Hyde Amendment in 2019 as he was looking to consolidate support from Democratic establishment aligned women’s groups like NOW and Planned Parenthood for his presidential run. Establishment figures like former NOW president Toni Van Pelt lauded Biden’s role in passing the Violence Against Women Act while mostly ignoring the women who’ve come forward to accuse Biden of inappropriate touching, sniffing, and full blown sexual assault, as in the case of Tara Reade.

Not only has Biden retreated on his promise to protect Roe, he’s even retreating on his new-found opposition to the Hyde Amendment. In negotiating the “Build Back Better” plan with shadow president West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the corporate coal baron, Biden indicated that he was prepared to drop his resistance to the Hyde Amendment, saying that he’d sign the bill whether or not the amendment was included.

As the midterm elections approach, get ready to hear a chorus of threats that if progressives and young people don’t turn out and vote for Democratic politicians, no matter how compromised those politicians are to the billionaire class, abortion rights could be gone forever. This has already begun: Kamala Harris recently coined the

HOW CAPITALISM OPPRESSES WOMEN Grace Fors, Dallas

slogan, “Don’t Texas our Virginia” in her campaign stump speech for an establishment Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor’s race. The inaction on the Texas abortion ban on the part of the Democratic establishment, including its closely aligned women’s organizations tells voters everything they need to know about how effective voting blue in the midterms will be.

We Need Bold Working Class Leadership Abortion rights were originally won on the basis of an enormous mass movement with millions of women moving into the workplace, joining unions, and organizing in feminist organizations. It will take a similar level of mobilization and organization to re-win abortion rights and expand access.

The women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s was powerful and hugely impactful, but its leadership had serious limitations. Much more could have been won had the movement broken free of the Democratic Party and, along with the other mass movements of that period, established a party that was fully independent of the capitalist class.

That lesson is staring us in the face today. As a party beholden to the capitalist system, the Democrats have no interest in doing what it would take to win a full program for women’s liberation including reproductive rights.

Working people need a new party to effectively fight for abortion rights, as well as Medicare-for-All, paid parental leave, childcare, affordable housing, well funded schools, and more. In fact, having abortion rights remain legally vulnerable actually serves the Democratic establishment as a lever they can use to drive more leftwing voters to the polls.

As it stands now, the leadership of the reproductive rights movement is not up to the task, in stark contrast to the desire among ordinary people who want to fight but have no avenue to do so. We need a mass organization in the form of a new party to activate this mood, and socialists should be in the lead, because only a socialist society can deliver real women’s liberation. J

What does it mean to be a working class woman? It’s fighting to survive against pressure from all sides. Sexism follows you everywhere. Take orders from your boss all day in return for 83 cents to a man’s dollar — or even less if you’re Black or Latina — while tolerating gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. On your way home, remember to stay aware of your surroundings, don’t invite any unwanted attention or put your guard down, all while passing advertisements urging you to spend money to become as attractive of an object as possible. When you get home, the real work has just begun, because it’s more likely than not that the cooking, cleaning, laundry, driving, and most of the childcare is on your shoulders. Don’t want a child?

“Just don’t get pregnant!” In other words, be lucky enough to have access to contraceptive care, and try at all times to not be the one woman sexually assaulted every 75 seconds in the U.S. Maybe you can access an abortion if you need one, but then again, maybe you can’t.

Anyone who claims the capitalist system offers equality, choice, and safety for women is lying through their teeth.

COVID-19 has only made it worse. The ‘shadow pandemic’ of skyrocketed domestic violence shows just how brutally the consequences of economic and social crises fall on women, especially those trapped at home with their abusers. Millions of women have been shoved out of the workforce, from either lack of childcare or being concentrated in service jobs, resulting in a crippling and likely longterm loss of wages and a 25-year setback in maternal employment. The attacks on abortion rights already in effect in Texas and being threatened elsewhere, including the Supreme Court, could set us back 50 years in the fight for reproductive rights.

How is it possible that we’re going backward? To understand this, we have to look at the origins of gender oppression.

Back in 1884, Friedrich Engels put forward a pioneering Marxist analysis stating that the subjugation of women, so taken for granted in his time, was not a natural state of affairs but a result of class society. In Origin of the Family, Engels argued that in collectivist, kinship-based huntergatherer societies, women’s role was not devalued and women were not systematically oppressed. Over thousands of years, however, the advancements in agriculture and food production introduced a surplus, with clans no longer living hand-to-mouth but having grain and other means of subsistence left over. Ownership of this surplus became the earliest iteration of ownership of the means of production, and so ascended an economic and social ruling

continued on p. 11

9

S T R I K E WAV E

LABOR ROUNDUP

WHEN WE FIGHT, WE CAN WIN!

As we go to press, IATSE’s 60,000 members may vote down a deal agreed to by their union leaders which fails to resolve key problems including unsafe and excessive hours.

As IATSE members were preparing to go on strike, word spread that a TA was reached. Despite a temporary moment of

excitement that perhaps the workers’ demands had been met, IATSE members descended on union social media pages to express their outrage at the new contract. Comments poured in saying: “We can’t accept this. They just tried to give the bare minimum to keep things going,” and, “Is this winning? Vote no.”

In early October, IATSE members voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike action as anger grew at unlivable wages and inhumane working hours (including regularly being denied breaks). A member of editors’ Local 700 was once asked, after working a 24 hour shift, to bring a hard drive to a producer. Because of exhaustion he fell asleep on the highway and totaled his car. After

Emotions are high on the pickets as 10,100 John Deere workers go toe-to-toe with the farm equipment manufacturing giant. In a record setting year for the company, John Deere was on track to make $5.9 billion or a 69% increase over its previous record. After spending over $1.7 billion on stock buybacks, paying out $761 million in dividends and raising the CEO’s salary by a mind-boggling 160%, they are only offering a $1.15 average raise for workers. As one worker’s shirt put it “100% Essential in 2020; Only 5% in 2021.”

Unable to meet production demand due to supply chain breakdowns and a “worker shortage,” Deere’s dependence on their employees has never been more evident. Once considered a “premium” employer, their commitment to shareholders has undercut their ability to fully capitalize on this moment of unprecedented profits. Every day of this strike costs Deere millions of dollars.

The UAW rank and file is confident they can win a contract worth fighting for. This led to a revolt against UAW’s International leadership which has been dragging its feet into this strike after trying to push a concessionary contract onto membership following a 99% strike authorization vote. The delayed Tentative Agreement fell woefully short of demands and was seen as an insult to members. With a 90% turnout this resulted in a resounding 90.6% ‘No’ vote. UAW members were heard booing and chanting “strike” while they used Q&A time to tell UAW leadership they have failed to do what they demanded: fight for a contract that meets their needs and organize a strike that can win it.

What is needed now is a well organized, energetic strike that can stop shipments and halt production and UAW leadership has made it clear this is not their goal. It will come down to the rank and file to organize a victorious strike. Solidarity with UAW’s rank and file in their battle against the bil- lionaire class!

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1,400 Kellogg’s workers, all of the company’s U.S.based cereal plant workers, have been on strike since October 5. This comes on the heels of two other strikes by the same union, the BCTGM, against snack food companies Frito-Lay beginning July 5 and Nabisco whose strike began at their Portland, OR plant on August 10.

Kellogg’s workers are fighting a two-tier pay system that would slash pensions, paid time off, and healthcare coverage for “transitional” workers, and create a wage gap of over $10 per hour between tiers.

calling the producer to tell him what happened, the producer’s first question was “is the hard drive ok?” The producer drove to the site of the accident, picked up the hard drive, and left the worker there. Experiences like this are the norm across trades.

On October 21, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the set of Rust, when actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun. Hours before, crew members had walked off set, citing lack of pay, loss of housing, poor COVID safety and, perhaps most damning, lack of gun safety. If IATSE workers demands were met, Halyna would still be alive.

Among the demands of IATSE members are: guaranteed breaks, a limit on daily working hours, pay and benefits parity

Coming on the heels of the courageous strike by Western Washington Carpenters last month, socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant unveiled an ordinance to make construction bosses in Seattle pay 100 percent of parking costs for their workers. Fully-paid parking has been one of the central demands not only of the union carpenters, in addition to family-supporting wages, fully-funded benefits, and improved protections against workplace harassment.

Carpenters and other construction workers have had to shoulder the burden of outrageous parking fees just to go to work every day.

This forces them to spend thousands of dollars of their wages every year in parking, while contractors and other corporations amass unprecedented profits. Stunningly, “progressive” Democrats on the City Council have refused support for this ordinance, defying the pleas of rank and file carpenters.

This demand is a direct threat to the profits of the wealthy contractor bosses, who have long benefited from pushing the cost of parking onto the backs of their own employees.

The bosses and their representatives in City Hall will not concede this demand without a fight. Winning real victories like fully paid parking will require that workers get organized independently of the Democratic party and Business Unionist labor leaders, and instead elect leaderships that are accountable to the rank and file, and who base themselves on a militant, class-struggle approach to winning victories for workers—not back-room deals with the bosses.

• A thousand UMWA coal miners at Warrior Met in Alabama have been on strike for six months against safety violations, wage cuts, and slashed benefits.

• A nurses’ strike for safe staffing at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, MA is going into its eighth month with the owner, Tenet Healthcare, locking the 700 strikers out unless they agree to an unknown number of nurses being permanently replaced by strikebreakers.

• 2,000 healthcare workers are striking at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, NY over unsafe staffing levels.

• 450 steel workers at Special Metals in Huntington, West Virginia began an open-ended Unfair Labor

between streaming and traditional film and TV, and raises that outpace inflation. The new TA has been widely criticized by IATSE members for not doing nearly enough to address the brutal conditions that led them to authorize a strike in the first place. It only grants a 10-hour turnaround between shifts rather than the minimum of 12 demanded by workers. It does not guarantee breaks, only increases meal penalty rates. And it does not deliver equal wages for streaming productions.

Organizing a “vote no” campaign across the 13 locals (whose leaders are all recommending a “yes” vote) could be a starting point for the emergence of the rank and file leadership within the union that would be required to win a strike.

37,000 health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon, California, and Hawaii have voted to authorize strike action. This comes in the wake of an egregious two-tier contract proposed by the multibillion-dollar corporation. Bosses use two-tier systems to get away with massive pay and benefit cuts to one set of workers while undermining solidarity by dividing workers. They are rare in healthcare, and this would set a dangerous precedent for future contract fights across the sector.

Kaiser is justifying this proposal by claiming its workers (nurses and other essential workers) are overpaid and responsible for the high cost of healthcare. The real culprits are the corporate entities extracting billions in profits from provision of basic needs like healthcare.

In the aftermath of 2020, a strong fightback is needed now more than ever to beat back the bosses’ attacks and to overhaul our dysfunctional, for-profit healthcare system.

Practices (ULP) strike on October 1st.

• On October 5th, two thousand workers at the telecom provider Frontier in California engaged in a one day ULP strike due to repeated contract violations by the company.

• The Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW voted 92% to authorize what would be their second strike in two years. This follows six months of contract negotiations with workers demanding fair compensation and benefits and an end to forced arbitration for discrimination and sexual harassment complaints.

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

HOW CAPITALISM OPPRESSES WOMEN continued from p.9

class. With a new society taking shape around private property, the patriarchal family system became necessary for these owners to organize its transfer from one generation (of men) to the next. Violence against women became central to enforcing this new social order, where ruling elites were owners of not only the surplus and the wealth, but also of the means of inheritance — in other words, women.

Between then and now, much has changed and much has stayed the same. Women can work, can vote, and over a century of feminist activism revolutionized consciousness around women’s place in society. You’d find very few ordinary men who see women as their inferiors. So why are we still oppressed? Because the blame is much wider than individual men.

All of us, regardless of gender, are ruthlessly exploited by the same ruling class, now a capitalist one. From our bosses, regardless of gender, making our work lives miserable; to the corporations keeping our wages low and our costs of living high; and the politicians depriving us of bodily autonomy, we have much less of a say in our lives than they seem to.

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE

If you’re on Tiktok, you’ve probably seen the memes of young women poking fun at what they see as the toxic “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” brand of feminism. These are the Hillary Clintons and Ivanka Trumps of the world who equate their own success within the ruling class as real social progress. What good is it to see a female politician or CEO “break the glass ceiling” or “build her empire” while the rest of us, the vast majority, are stuck in the same place as before? Maybe they’re also the JK Rowlings who exploit a grotesque caricature of “radical feminism” to attack trans women and deny their womanhood. If women’s empowerment means successful women punching down in the name of feminism, today’s generation isn’t having it.

No wealthy ruling-class ‘girlboss’ will tell you about the women mill workers of the 1800s who organized against low wages, unsafe working conditions, and sexual harassment on the job. They won’t herald the women abolitionists and radical Black feminists who played a critical role in winning emancipation from slavery, fought Jim Crow, and marched for civil rights.

The mass strikes, protests, and occupations that won Roe v. Wade have received little mention from these self-appointed spokespeople.

And the last thing they’ll want you to know about is the women revolutionaries who, as part of a mass movement, overthrew capitalism in the Russian Revolution and launched a conscious campaign for full liberation. These socialist feminists ensured that legal abortion, free gender confirmation surgery, divorce rights, jobs for women, socialized domestic work with public nurseries, laundries, and cafeterias were guaranteed.

Capitalism needs gender oppression - but we don’t. Like racism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia, sexism is created and upheld by the ruling class to ‘divide and conquer’ the working class while they continue to carry out exploitation. If you’re fed up with the sexist status quo, join Socialist Alternative and help us take on the real culprits. J

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JUSTICE FOR AHMAUD ARBERY Quinn Angelou-Lysaker, Boston Jury selection began last week for the trial of the men who killed a 25-year-old Black man named Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. Arbery was out jogging and unarmed on February 23, 2020 when he was gunned down by three white men: Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan. The three are now on trial facing nine charges, including murder and aggravated assault.

McMichael is a former police officer and investigator for the Brunswick District Attorney, and he has already benefited tremendously from his connections within law enforcement, before even stepping foot in the courtroom.

How Are Murder Convictions Won? The conviction of Derek Chauvin, the man who killed George Floyd, was only possible in the context of a mass, international protest movement in the summer of 2020. It was this pressure from outside the court that made Chauvin the first white cop convicted of the murder of a Black civilian in Minnesota. Similarly, the cop who shot LaQuan NOVEMBER 2021

McDonald 16 times in the back became the first cop convicted of murder in Chicago in over 50 years after mass protests in 2015.

Still, he was only sentenced to just under seven years, and only required to serve 50% of that time. And Brett Hankison, Breonna Taylor’s killer, was only convicted of “wanton endangerment” of her neighbors, not for her murder. Each of these convictions, however limited, were victories that would not have happened without mass protests. But even still, the courts give police the weakest convictions and sentences possible. The masses of youth who took to the streets last summer are correct to see that the courts are not a reliable mechanism for justice, and it will take even more mobilization, and, crucially, organization, to win real and deep change to police brutality and racism.

What’s next for BLM With the high-profile nature of the case, and particularly egregious details, it is possible more convictions come down for Arbery’s murderers. But that outcome is far more likely if we demand it through a bold new iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement, with coordinated protests on the ground in Georgia and across the country. A new

Black Lives Matter movement should heed the words of the mothers of Tamir Rice and Richard Risher and reconsider the approach of the official Black Lives Matter organization. BLM’s strategy of mobilizing nonprofits and lobbying Democratic Party politicians has thus far not produced meaningful justice. We need a truly democratic movement with structures for decision making, regular mass meetings, and a willingness to use bold and militant tactics. J

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11

SOCIALIST ISSUE #78 l NOVEMBER 2021

ALTERNATIVE

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Stephen Edwards, Chicago

STRIKE WAVE WORKERS REDISCOVER THEIR POWER

After 18 months of working conditions more dangerous than any in living memory, and exhausted by the sped-up pace of work under the pandemic, workers are fighting back. Encouraged by the labor shortage that’s developed in the economic recovery, and despite a vacuum of leadership from organized labor, workers have picked up where the 2018-9 strike wave left off. There have been at least 178 strikes so far this year.

The nurses’ strike at St Vincent hospital in Worcester, MA is now going into its eighth month; coal miners at Warrior Met in Alabama, six months; plant workers with BCGTM have gone on three consecutive strikes against snack food giants, first at Frito-Lay, then Nabisco, and now Kellogg’s.

Since October 13, 10,000 John Deere workers have been on strike after a 90% vote to reject a concessionary, job-killing contract that was recommended by union leaders. As we go to press, IATSE’s 60,000 members may vote down a proposed contract which fails to resolve key issues like unsafe and excessive hours. At Kaiser healthcare, 37,000 workers in Oregon, California, and Hawaii have been taking strike votes against the employer’s attempt to impose a two-tier wage system.

Workers Rediscovering The Strike Most of these workers are striking for the first time in their lives. The common thread is that employers are pushing to maintain the breakneck pace that developed during the pandemic and even attacking existing rights like paying for all of that overtime. The bosses never let a crisis go to waste, and will point to supply chain disruptions and high demand to justify putting the cost on their workers.

But inflation has kicked in and is eating into workers’ pay. The labor shortage also means workers are more confident that they can’t be easily replaced.

The idea has become popular on social media that “Striketober” represents an inchoate general strike. While the current strike wave is a dramatic departure from the historic low levels of the past three decades, the number of strikes and of strikers is still low compared to the historic highs in the 1930’s and 40’s and again in the wake of the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 60’s and 70’s. And while the “great resignation” (see page 4) has forced some employers to raise pay in order to maintain staffing levels, these gains are a pittance compared to what could be won if more workers were organized, and without a union contract these gains can be taken back whenever the labor market eases.

Where Are The Union Leaders?

Union leaders, unable to see beyond the bosses’ profit-seeking logic, have been taken by surprise. Where they have fought back effectively has been in unions with a particularly active rank-and-file, for example in education and healthcare.

Elsewhere, powerful industrial unions have acted as though they have no leverage.

Instead of stepping up to stop production, their traditional, passive tactic of “one day longer” puts pressure on workers and their families to go back to work with only marginal relief from substandard contracts. Many of these bad contracts are lasting — five and six years — with raises that will not keep up with inflation, therefore essentially representing long-term pay cuts. For union leaders to allow this is a gross dereliction.

There would be a far bigger and more effective strike wave if more of the working class (especially in the private sector) were organized behind a fighting leadership.

This is the big question that faces the labor movement. With millions of workers ready to fight, this should be an ideal opportunity for

a major organizing drive. But the way strikes are playing out is showing us what we’re up against in making this happen. In the recent Seattle carpenters’ strike, the Frito-Lay and Nabisco strikes, and now with John Deere, militant tactics have been actively discouraged by union leaders who argue for “safe, legal and respectful” picket lines, minimal communication between worksites, and overall a conciliatory strategy that points away from class struggle and winning through disrupting production.

Many of these union leaders have lost touch with their membership through decades of defeat. There was a time when the United Auto Workers was a fighting vehicle for workers to win big victories against the bosses. Today, the Administration Caucus, the leadership clique which has run the UAW since WWII have repeatedly caved to corporate demands for concessions, like the twotier contracts which slashed living standards and divided workers generationally ever since the 1980s.

This happened because these leaders, despite whatever good intentions they may have had, rejected any alternative to accepting “market realities.” Years before the Reagan administration’s attacks on unions, the UAW was instrumental to the 1979 Chrysler bailout, in which — instead of fighting for that bankrupt corporation to be taken into public ownership under democratic and workers’ control — the union used its authority to argue that workers needed to forego raises and work “smarter” in order to beat the competition and save jobs.

This is the cancer that led to the UAW’s astonishing miscalculation in pushing a concessionary contract at John Deere, and it underlies the blindness of many union leaders to the potential for mass action to recover these past losses.

Much More Can Be Won!

What’s needed are unions organizing en masse and showing they’re prepared to fight. This is the opportunity to begin to turn the page on four decades of setbacks and retreat, and as reports from the John Deere and Kellogg’s picket lines show, striking workers understand this. The idea of recovering past losses is what drove the 2019 GM strike, and the current labor shortage strengthens workers’ resolve because of how badly the bosses need our labor.

Workers will fight and are prepared to make sacrifices to win demands that are worth fighting for. This means an end to concessionary bargaining and zero tolerance for union leaders’ lowering of expectations and hiding behind court injunctions as an excuse for ineffective picketing. We need: • Serious pay increases that raise living standards.

• No more 12 and 16 hour shifts, no more multi-tier pay and pension schemes that divide workers against each other.

• Strikes must be organized to stop production and win. This means breaking anti-picketing injunctions and a return to the mass action tactics that built the unions and the civil rights movement.

• Where union leaders refuse to do this, they have to be challenged in an organized way. This means building opposition caucuses that don’t wait on union elections but — as rank and file union members did in the 2018 Red for Ed strikes or in the recent carpenters’ strike in Seattle — taking the initiative to broaden strikes, strengthen picketing ,and insist that workers don’t cross the line.

• Rank and file members need to demand that union leaders launch a massive drive to organize the unorganized in key industries. There has never been a better time. J