ALTERNATIVE
SOCIALIST
ISSUE #80 l FEBRUARY 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2
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INSIDE p.7 p.8-9 ONE YEAR SINCE JAN. 6 WINNING ABORTION RIGHTS p.11 FIGHT FOR SAFE SCHOOLS
WHAT WE STAND FOR Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement •
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Building off the momentum of the Starbucks organizing drive, we need mass campaigns to unionize the millions of non-union workers in the U.S. We need to build and rebuild radical fighting unions that are fully democratic and driven by the active participation of rank and file workers. Especially as prices for energy, food, housing and new cars are skyrocketing, we need a united struggle across industries for wage increases that are above the rate of inflation, an end to forced overtime, 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, sexism, and all forms of oppression.
End the COVID Chaos •
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As the Omicron continues to spread globally and we pass the two-year anniversary of COVID reaching the United States, it’s abundantly clear that capitalist world leaders have failed to contain this crisis. We need a People’s Plan to end the COVID chaos! 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. We urgently need to take Big Pharma profiteers into public ownership and turn existing vaccines into the People’s Vaccines! Reaching vaccine holdouts in the U.S. and ensuring widespread allocation of boosters will require going much further in ensuring the shot is accessible. This includes guaranteeing paid time off to recover from side effects, free transit to and from vaccine appointments, and community-led education campaigns to ensure people know the vaccine is free. We need free, easily accessible tests available in every community across the country. Workers exposed to COVID should be given paid self-isolation days
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after exposure or after developing symptoms of COVID. 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.
For a New Political Party for Working People •
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The complete failure of the Biden administration to make good on campaign promises to expand the social safety net and begin to address climate change is opening the door again to the right and the far right and 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 lead the fight against the right and 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.
www.SocialistAlternative.org
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As the Supreme Court nears a decision on 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.
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Expand the Social Safety Net! •
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Fight Gender Oppression and Attacks on Reproductive Rights! •
info@SocialistAlternative.org @Socialist Alternative @SocialistAlt /SocialistAlternative.USA /c/SocialistAlternative @socialistus
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 childcare. Cancel all student debt! Make public college tuition-free. Enact a $15 federal minimum wage. 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.
For a Socialist Green New Deal •
We need a genuine Green New Deal jobs program that provides well-paid union jobs for millions of workers expanding
green infrastructure. 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 transformation necessary to avoid climate disaster.
A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in)Justice •
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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. 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.
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Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system. Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. We need a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
EDITORIAL
ONE YEAR IN, WORKING PEOPLE NO BETTER OFF UNDER BIDEN Grace Fors, Dallas
In a press conference marking Biden’s first year in office, a reporter asked, “inflation is up, your signature domestic legislation is stalled in Congress, and a few hours from now an effort in the Senate to deal with voting reform legislation is going to fail. COVID-19 is still taking the lives of 1,500 Americans every day and the nation’s divisions are just as raw as they were a year ago. Did you overpromise the American public?” Biden responded, “I didn’t overpromise.” This is a far cry from the mindset of most people in the U.S. Half of Americans report feeling “frustrated” and “disappointed” at Biden’s presidency. If the 2024 election were held today, 60% of Americans say they wouldn’t vote for Biden. Over a year after casting their ballots in the hopes of steering the country away from the right, we’re staring down the looming threat of a GOP sweep in the midterms. Biden was elected by voters who had more confidence in him than Trump to adequately handle the pandemic. Yet 2021 saw more COVID cases, more deaths, and less pandemic relief than in 2020. Now, according to Gallup, worry about the pandemic is as high as it’s been since before vaccines rolled out: fifty-eight percent believe it is getting worse. In year three of the pandemic, federal relief is wearing out, which compounded with the pressure of 40-year-high inflation is creating untenable economic stress for working people. In fact, inflation has overtaken COVID-19 as the highest concern for Americans. The rising costs of food and gas are burning a hole in people’s wallets while Biden has refused to take the issue seriously. One Nevada woman interviewed by CNN summed up the sentiments of many: “I don’t want to say this, but when Donald Trump was here, it was nothing like this.”
Short-Lived Honeymoon Even more maddening than Biden’s failures is his incredulousness at it all. New variants, obstruction in Congress, and inflation – Biden says, who could have seen it coming? Just about everyone paying attention. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021 provided crucial relief for working people and families. Millions were able to get vaccinated in early 2021. But by the time of the White House’s “independence from COVID” July 4 barbecue, Biden’s vaccination target came up 7.4 million short. By then, Delta was already on the move, and it didn’t take long for the ‘Biden honeymoon’ to come to a screeching halt. At the same time, the U.S. refused to seriously take up distribution of quality vaccines globally which, left unaddressed, would only result FEBRUARY 202 2
in more variants. Instead of using the Defense Production Act as he promised to mass-produce tests, Biden declared a war on the unvaccinated. As people vaccinated and unvaccinated alike waited in testing lines for hours and scoured empty shelves for testing kits, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki ridiculed the idea of sending tests directly to households. Unemployment, sick leave programs, and the enhanced child tax credit have all run dry, and Biden has backed off from promises to cancel some student debt, instead declaring resuming debt payments a top priority of his administration. Biden’s signature “Build Back Better” agenda put forward enormously popular social programs to be funded by taxing the rich. Yet in October, only 10 percent of people said they knew the specifics of the plan, which could have included paid parental leave, universal pre-K, free community college, expanded Medicare eligibility, and climate measures. This set Biden up for a hellish reconciliation process in the fall up against Sinema and Manchin, and by November, the vast majority of programs that would have helped working people had been slashed. Now both Biden and the party leadership are talking about shrinking the package even further, and scrapping the name. The new goal is to create new legislation that caters to all of the coal baron’s demands: first and foremost, “no handouts.”
The Democrats’ Abysmal Strategy In the midst of an Omicron surge and record low approval ratings, Vice President Kamala Harris told an interviewer, ”It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.” She’s right – in the sense that every day, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot. It’s not hard to see where things might go from here. Twenty-six Democrats are retiring from the House. As Dems stumble toward midterm disaster with virtually nothing to show for their big promises, they’ll likely campaign on alarmist proclamations about “existential threats to our democracy.” While it’s absolutely true that democratic rights are under attack in Republican run states, if that’s all they’ve got, it’s going to be a pretty tough sell. The Trump era showed just how much damage the GOP can do with even an inch of power – they’ll readily use the 51-vote budget threshold to ram through tax cuts for the rich, issue right-wing executive orders, pack the Supreme Court with ultra-conservative nutjobs, and benefit from significantly greater buy-in from across the aisle than the other way around. “We could certainly support legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits
and ice cream,” said Psaki. There’s the winning message: good things aren’t possible.
Why Won’t They Declare War on Sinema and Manchin? We’re meant to believe that conservative Democratic senators Sinema and Manchin’s unstoppable, god-like invincibility is the sole reason we can’t expect any legislative gains from this administration. Most recently, the failure to make headway for crucial voting rights reform set a dismal tone on MLK Day. Because of the 60-vote majority needed to filibuster-proof any non-budget legislation, if the Democrats don’t suspend or change the filibuster – and soon – they’re dead in the water. We’ve seen the Democrats use iron tight party discipline to crack down on the left. Whatever threats House leadership threw at AOC to cause her to tearfully change her “no” vote to “present” on funding Israel’s Iron Dome could be applied to Sinema and Manchin on the filibuster. The public smearing that boxed the Squad into heaping praise on the Biden administration and aligning themselves with the party leadership could be replicated. They could also use the authority of the party structures. All those annoying texts and emails from the DNC asking for money could instead be calling for public pressure on Manchin and Sinema to pass the Democrats’ agenda. The multimillion-dollar budgets of the DSCC and the Senate Majority PAC could be doing the same. They have countless tools at their disposal, but they won’t use them. Why? They don’t want to. Progressives like Bernie Sanders have begun to talk about primary challenges to Sinema and Manchin. But even with those two out of the way, what’s to stop any other member of the caucus from becoming the new “rotating villain”? All it takes is the corporate lobby wooing them, and the Democratic leadership turning the other cheek. Regardless, neither is up for election until 2024, when for all we know we could be under a Republican majority and it would make little difference.
A Bold Left Alternative is the Only Way Out To say that the Democrats’ track record “opens the door” for right populism to take hold is an understatement – the failures of the Biden administration are a giant, flashing marquee to the right populists and the far right that working people are desperate for change. For the left, it’s either go down with the Democrats’ sinking ship, or step up to provide an alternative. If we aren’t honest about the stark reality of what Democratic leadership has meant for working people,
and the futility of “harm reduction” voting, the frustration and disappointment will only inflame the right-wing threat, not fuel the movement for what we truly need. It could not be any clearer that to reform the Democratic Party would require transforming it at a fundamental level via a
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What Biden Promised... J IMMEDIATE & DECISIVE ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE J INCREASED PATH TO CITIZENSHIP FOR IMMIGRANTS & REFUGEES J POLICE OVERSIGHT COMMISSION TO ENACT POLICE REFORM J $2000 PANDEMIC AID CHECKS J $15 MINIMUM WAGE J STUDENT DEBT FORGIVENESS
...And What Workers Got.. J 3,557 NEW PERMITS FOR OIL AND GAS DRILLING APPROVED IN FIRST YEAR – MORE THAN TRUMP J CONTINUED USE OF TRUMPERA TITLE 42 TO EXPEL 690,000 ASYLUM-SEEKERS J PROPOSAL TO INCREASE LAW ENFORCEMENT FUNDING BY $350 BILLION J EXPIRATION OF EXPANDED UNEMPLOYMENT, CHILD TAX CREDITS, AND FEDERAL EVICTION MORATORIUM J NAMED RESTARTING STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS A “HIGH PRIORITY” FOR ADMINISTRATION J NO $15 MINIMUM WAGE J ONE-TIME CHECK OF $1200
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GLOBAL CRISIS
COVID RAGES INTO THIRD YEAR: WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO END THE PANDEMIC?
Rob Darakjian, Los Angeles
A few weeks ago, during a conference with the nation’s governors, Joe Biden stated that there was “no federal solution” to the resolution of the pandemic. While his administration was quick to back-pedal the apparent “misunderstanding”, Biden’s Freudian slip only confirmed what millions of people were already seeing as a deficient, half-hearted approach to beating COVID. The country enters the second year of the Biden administration overwhelmed by yet another COVID spike, with no end to the pandemic on the horizon. The message from Democrats’ inaction is loud and clear: working people should be grateful that the “new normal” isn’t worse. Instead of preparing in advance for new waves of COVID, the Biden administration is only belatedly scaling up production of at-home tests. The Biden administration seems to be headed towards waving a white flag and accepting hundreds of thousands of further COVID deaths as the “cost of doing business.”
Why Couldn’t Biden End It? The failures of the Biden Administration are rooted in capitalism’s overall approach to COVID. They have relied on giving incentives to U.S. corporations to end the pandemic, but viruses like COVID do not respect national borders, and there aren’t mega profits to be made in vaccinating poor countries. Instead of the U.S. spearheading an international program of vaccination, which would have pushed aside vaccine patent rights and involved putting ordinary people above profits, the Biden administration has consistently failed to put forward a coherent strategy. Biden had committed to getting serious about contact-tracing and setting up a nationwide CDC-led effort, only to buckle to Republican pressure and dismantle it. Buying testing kits for every American was deemed “too expensive” in the summer – now several months later, 500 million tests
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have been purchased, but won’t be actually available until after the latest peak in cases is expected to have declined. Administration officials have publicly contradicted themselves, and each other, several times on the necessity of mask wearing. At this point, large swaths of the world, especially in Africa remain essentially unvaccinated. This is reprehensible in itself, but also in what it means for the pandemic at large; as long as the virus is able to continue to spread it will continue to create new variants, which have the potential to undermine the progress made thus far in combating COVID. As the Omicron surge continues, it is working people who will continue to suffer the consequences of Biden’s failure. While less deadly than previous variants, Omicron has quickly overwhelmed the healthcare system. Hospitals nationwide have reported having to cut their bed-capacity by 3-10% because of staffing shortages due to COVID. A “new normal” where tens of thousands of Americans die every year due to new developing variants and overwhelmed hospitals is simply unacceptable – but this appears to be the future that the capitalist class is determined to create, and that the Biden administration is dutifully carrying out. Biden and the Democratic Party are, and have always been, loyal stewards of capitalism. Attending to the interests of the billionaire class, their demand to get the economy “back on track,” is clearly much more important to them than taking the necessary measures to get the pandemic under control.
A System Designed to Fail The failures of the Biden administration are not unique to him, or his party. Like every other capitalist government, the
US political establishment has attempted to combat the pandemic within the limits acceptable to the pharmaceutical companies, with vaccine nationalism as the result. Early in the pandemic, Pfizer openly declared that they intended to fight any attempt by the U.S. or any other government to share their patents with other countries so they could also produce the vaccine. The company has since made record breaking profits; in announcing their quarterly earnings back in November of 2021, they projected revenues of $36 billion dollars in 2022. In the same public earnings report, they brazenly declared that they intend to realize a 20% margin of profit on every dose! Meanwhile, Pfizer has delivered less than 2% of the vaccine it produced to COVAX, the UN’s initiative of supplying vaccines to low income countries. This, combined with the failure of the Biden administration to utilize the powers codified in the Defense Authorization Act to take over whatever pharmaceutical production necessary to produce enough doses to vaccinate the world, has led us to this phase of the pandemic.
What’s the Alternative? Director of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned recently that it was “dangerous” to assume that omicron will be the final COVID variant, or that we are in the pandemic’s “endgame.” This underscores the urgency of an approach that will put people over profit, and prioritize getting vaccines into billions more people rather than sacrifice them to the property rights of corporations. But clearly, working people cannot trust the Biden administration (or a Democratic Congress) to do what is necessary to get the pandemic under control. The year 2022 has already been marked by workers taking their safety into their own hands – teachers in Chicago took action to keep buildings closed as Omicron threatened their school communities and caused massive staffing shortages, and Starbucks workers in Buffalo staged a five-day strike to win paid isolation days after contact with COVID. Not only does this show that workers are more than capable of making decisions about their safety and organizing democratically to effect those changes, it shows what is possible beyond the pandemic – that workers themselves are capable of running society more safely, more effectively, and more humanely than capitalism ever could. J
BIDEN AND PUTIN RAMP UP WARMONGERING OVER UKRAINE Tom Crean, New York City As we go to press, the U.S., the European Union, and the U.S.-led western military alliance NATO are continuing to ramp up their threats of devastating sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine. At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin demands that NATO withdraw from Eastern Europe altogether. Over 100,000 Russian troops are stationed on the Ukraine border while NATO countries pour ammunition and anti-tank missiles into Ukraine, along with other forms of military support. The American media has pumped out relentless war propaganda for weeks saying that a Russian invasion is imminent. This is a truly dangerous situation with two imperialist powers with massive nuclear arsenals facing off against each other. While a full scale conflict may not be the most likely outcome, everything is on a hair trigger and miscalculation could lead to rapid escalation. We have to be clear that American imperialism is not going to such lengths out of concern for the Ukrainian people but because of its conflict with Russian imperialism and its ally Chinese imperialism. We oppose the agendas of all the imperialist powers whose conflicting interests are increasingly leading to dangerous confrontations in many parts of the world including Ukraine but also over Taiwan. We stand for the right of the people of the Ukraine to democratically determine their own fate and for the withdrawal of the threat of invasion by Russia. Putin’s regime essentially sees Ukraine as part of its “sphere of influence” which it believes it has the right to control while claiming it is only acting to protect Russian speakers in the country. Russia has again and again backed brutal regimes in the region, most recently sending troops to Kazakhstan, and further afield as part of seeking to expand its influence at the expense of the U.S. But it is also true that NATO’s relentless eastward march points towards the encircling of Russia and this agenda must be opposed. Russia recently said that they would consider sending troops to Cuba and Venezuela as a countermeasure to NATO encroachment. As International Socialist Alternative which Socialist Alternative in the U.S. is part of recently stated: “Although both sides claim they do not want a conflict, U.S. and Russian imperialism have been facing each other down, whipping up war hysteria to such a level that the law of unintended consequences could step in to trigger a hot war, the potential scale of which will not have been seen in Europe since World War II. In the middle of this the Ukrainian people are being treated as pawns. “International Socialist Alternative stands in complete opposition to the plans of the imperialist vultures, and calls for a mass anti-war movement based on solidarity between the workers of Ukraine, the United States and Russia.” J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WORKERS’ VOICE
Ian Riv, Orlando I was one of the 1.5 million hotel workers in Florida when the pandemic hit. By March 2020 I received my furlough notice from Marriott International, now I was one of the over 1,178,100 laid off Floridians surviving without a job. Half a year later, Orange County, FL implemented a mask mandate on December 15 2020. As of this time over 2,159,413 Floridians had been surviving on unemployment. After the mask mandate was lifted in February 2021, I received a call from Marriott to return. Now we were each doing the work of five people. Sometimes working two weeks straight with no days off, and no breaks. Every day I was told, “no one wants to work.” Every day I was begged not to quit, “just hold out one more week, we’re getting more people.” Eventually they did hire people. More salaried workers. The entire staff of the hotel, overwhelmingly immigrant workers were passed up for a chance of promotion, in exchange for outsiders who were already pals with management. This was the final straw. Tired of empty promises and with no union to challenge these abhorrent conditions, employees began quitting en masse, taking their chances elsewhere. J
Griffin Ritze, Cincinnati I wake up to a text from management every morning: “Confirmed COVID-19 case at your work site. Employee(s) at X facility have tested positive for COVID-19. They were last onsite on X.” No indication of how many workers tested positive, what department they work in or how many of us have been exposed. From the beginning, Amazon has refused to report the number of COVID-19 cases at their facilities. Coworkers disappear for days or weeks at a time; we’re left with workplace rumors and group chats for information. With 1.5 million cases reported daily in the U.S. it’s almost impossible to quickly find a test. At-home tests are not accepted by management and it takes as many as 3-5 days to receive the results of a PCR lab test. If positive, we are paid for the days we were scheduled for a week. If negative, we are given excused time without pay for days missed. Many decide against reporting symptoms because they can’t afford to miss a week of pay and the company is consciously exploiting that bind to keep profits flowing. Even worse, Amazon has the infrastructure to regularly test their entire workforce but has shuttered employee testing, deferring to new business-friendly CDC guidelines and the scrapped Biden employer testing mandate. Even Amazon lab technicians responsible for 50,000 employee tests a week in 2021 were denied testing after management benevolently explained its “no longer a business need.” Logistics workers at Amazon, UPS, DHL and others have risked our lives through the pandemic to generate super profits for billionaires like Jeff Bezos. We urgently need to demand free on-site testing, full reporting of cases/outbreaks, and paid COVID leave for anyone reporting symptoms regardless of their test result. J
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Testimonials from workers across the country expose just how much Omicron, evaporating protections, and the ruthless profit drive of the bosses has exacerbated dysfunction in the workplace. It’s time to organize and fight back! Richard Jackson, New York City As a surgical technician at NYP Cornell Hospital, I have been a frontline worker throughout COVID including the Delta and Omicron variants. A significant number of my co-workers and staff have contracted Omicron, with many being rushed back to work because of staffing issues. It has taken a tremendous toll on my co-workers and the overall functioning of the hospital. As Omicron surged in December and January, the hospital began to limit elective surgeries and extensive stays of patients on the mend in the hospital. We have not endured the levels of patients in the ICU units and on ventilators like the beginning of the pandemic, like in the spring of 2020. The supply chain crisis has hit our hospital beginning in the fall of 2019, with most of our surgical packs coming from China. The hospital has had to ration supplies and borrow from nearby hospitals. NYP Cornell is one of the most prestigious healthcare institutions in the city and throughout the country. It is not immune from the dire realities of our sick for-profit healthcare system that puts profits and prestige over the lives of its workers. We need Medicare For All! J
Chris Rice, Chicago Working at Trader Joe’s over the course of the pandemic has been full of sharp twists and turns. In 2020, management fought us over wearing masks in the store. Every morning shift started with an anti-union meeting, and every night shift ended with one. Eventually Trader Joe’s was forced to follow the larger chains and gave in to some workers’ demands. They provided us with cloth masks, some sick pay if we got COVID, and hazard pay dressed up as the polite “thank you” pay. But all of these extra benefits were tossed aside as Joe Biden and the Democratic Party rushed to end COVID restrictions when the vaccine came out in the spring/summer of 2021. Once these benefits were ended, the company put their foot down and refused to bend back. When mask mandates came back my store’s policy was to not enforce the rule with customers. As a result, when the Omicron surge started, our store was the most vulnerable it had been in the last two years. Being informed that a coworker had a positive COVID diagnosis became a weekly affair. The company has also been cutting benefits and pay, denying everyone a pay raise in 2021 and recently cutting the contribution they make to workers’ 401k in half. This has accelerated resignations, putting even more stress on the workers holding up the understaffed store. Infuriated by these conditions and inspired by the actions of other workers who are fighting for better safety at their jobs, many of us have begun talking outside of work about what we can do to improve our working conditions. J
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CL ASS STRUGGLE
IN CAFE UNIONS, A CLASS STRUGGLE APPROACH WILL GET THE GOODS Sam White is on their Contract Action Team at newly unionized Darwin’s Coffee in Boston. As we go to print, in Greater Boston alone hundreds of workers at 15 cafés across three local businesses have won voluntary recognition with the UNITE HERE New England Joint Board. Workers at six local Starbucks locations have joined the wave of “partners” filing for NLRB elections. The wave represents a sea change and a sign of things to come. In an industry notorious for unpredictable hours, subminimum wages, tip theft, high turnover, and little recourse for abuse from customers and management alike, standard practice has long been for workers to simply quit (or be fired) when disputes come to a head. Today, though, “now hiring” signs line the windows of cafés that survived the pandemic on the backs of workers denied healthcare, paid sick time, or safe working conditions. Those remaining in the industry have the wind at their sails as they chart a new course: to get organized, and fight back.
Bargaining Power Comes From Class Struggle Methods Behind coffee shop counters, there are important takeaways for workers to discuss. Chief among them is that real union power comes not from union higher-ups or from wordsmithing at the bargaining table, but from the power of an organized rank-and-file.
The fact that café workers both at smaller companies and at a behemoth like Starbucks have begun winning union recognition is a huge step. Winning a union, though, is just one step toward winning a first contract. Café unions’ success or failure in winning the a first contract — a hurdle that only 14% of union drives clear within the first year — will be the decisive factor in determining the lessons that baristas and cooks take forward. Major contract victories could spur on the movement further, while ineffective unions and never-ending negotiations could lead to decertification votes or push disenchanted workers (and anti-union views) into other industries. In this formative period for a new generation of workplace activists, it’s critical that the emerging unions learn from the best traditions of class struggle unionism (and from the failures of business unionism) and apply them to their own contract battles. Café workers already active in their union drives must urgently take up the task of involving more of their coworkers; the union is all of us. On-shift or after-work conversations about demands and on-the-job issues can reveal what workers are prepared to fight for,
while showing those workers what’s at stake. Group chats and email lists, while important, are no substitutes for full, in-person membership meetings for building activist-driven unions into powerful democratic bodies of workers.
N e w emerging leaders should take up roles like joining — or forming — a contract action team to map out a fighting rank-and-file-driven strategy for winning a democratically-decided
program of demands. They should consider what tactics and escalating actions might draw more workers into activity and boost morale while showing management the union’s power outside the bargaining room. Coordinated walk-ins, all workers wearing red on bargaining days, rallies, or customer teach-ins could all lay the basis for workers to feel ready for bolder actions down the road, including strikes — workers’ ultimate weapon over the bosses. Local coffee shop workers must see their contract victories and bold tactics, from stickers to strikes, as beacons that can inspire confidence and ignite union drives elsewhere. And workers both in and outside the industry must recognize their common stake in the urgent task of rebuilding a fighting movement of the working class. In every café and in every city, Socialist Alternative is determined to do all it takes to help workers lead this struggle forward. Standing before a new generation of unionizing workers is a remarkable opening to bring lasting change to not just the food service industry, but society as a whole. J Read the full article at www.socialistalternative.org
Three nurses and four radiology technicians at a ThedaCare hospital in Appleton, WI quit their jobs to accept better paid positions at a competing hospital nearby – but they weren’t allowed to leave. ThedaCare’s millionaire CEO Imran Andrabi asked a county court to block the seven at-will employees from starting their new jobs for at least 90 days while the hospital “looked for replacements.” Judge Mark McGinnis temporarily granted Andrabi’s request and for nearly a week the healthcare workers didn’t know if they’d be starting a new job the following Monday. Eventually, after determined public outcry, the judge reversed his decision. Over 40 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021. The majority of these “quitters” worked in low-wage service and hospitality jobs and left in search of higher pay and better working conditions. While most bosses aren’t cartoonishly filing injunctions to prevent their workers from quitting like at ThedaCare, they’re still resisting tooth and nail any permanent changes in the workplace that would entice workers to stay. Many businesses are offering temporary sign-on
bonuses but not substantial raises, or “wellness” benefits but no change to healthcare policies. Bosses will do the bare minimum required to stop the bleeding, but won’t give an inch more without a fight.
collectively celebrated when news dropped that the judge had ruled against the hospital.
“Anti-work”
One thing this forum is far too unspecific about is how we fight back against brutality in the workplace. The page’s “about” section mentions the importance of “organizing” and gives some useful do’s and don’ts, but this exists alongside advice to “slack off, cheat, and steal from work.” This leaves the page’s many eager participants hungry for a way forward. There is no “quitting” exploitation under capitalism. The only way to defeat the bosses is by getting organized to take them on. Starbucks workers across the country are a shining example of this. Before even winning their first contract, newly unionized Starbucks workers in Buffalo, NY won paid self-isolation for workers exposed to COVID. How did they win this? By refusing to work. Read the article on the back page for a first-hand report from Starbucks workers in Buffalo on how they won their union, how they plan to fight for a first contract, and why the struggle to organize the unorganized needs to urgently spread! J
What started off as a 70,000-person subreddit (Reddit forum) in January 2020 has now exploded into one of the fastest growing subreddits on the site at 1.7 million members. While Reddit is by no means a universally reliable window into our society, this particular forum – r/antiwork – should be studied under a microscope. It is the only real gathering point that exists for the “quitters” driving the Great Resignation. It’s 1.7 million members are overwhelmingly under 35 and the vast majority of them identify as “anti-capitalist,” “socialist,” or “progressive”. The working class solidarity this forum hosts spilled out into the real world last week when tens of thousands of users voiced their support for the “ThedaCare Seven”. They set up a GoFundMe totalling nearly $60,000 to cover legal fees, sent mass emails to Thedacare’s C-suite demanding the workers be allowed to quit, and
Don’t Quit, Organize!
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Keely Mullen, New York City
R E S I G N AT I O N / / T H E G R E AT R E S I G N AT I
T H E G R E AT R E S I G N AT I O N / / T H E G R E AT
R E S I G N AT I O N / / W E N E E D A M A S S U N I O N I Z AT I O N C A M PA I G N A C R O S S T H E U . S . / / T H E G R E AT
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
E D U C AT I O N
OAKLAND STRIKES WIN 200,000 KN95 MASKS FOR STUDENTS Leo Carson, High School Art Teacher, OEA Member Oakland public schools, at the epicenter of school privatization for over a decade, have been continuously battered by cuts and closures. And while the current crisis may be a new low, the willingness of teachers, students, and parents to fight continues. It is true that everyone is exhausted. The Omicron variant’s intense transmissibility has rendered inadequate the safety measures adopted in the fall. Since the holidays, attendance has been debilitatingly low, both from teachers and students. Roughly one in five Oakland teachers has stayed home, while 30-40% of students are out. Some of my classes have less than half of students regularly attending, and one of my classes had four students at the beginning of class. This marks the third straight year of chaotic and inconsistent instruction. Considering the scale of the COVID crisis, students feel the urgency for serious measures to be taken to improve school safety. At elementary schools, once per week pooled testing was being offered to every student. This had been a very effective strategy in the fall, but now, during Omicron, once a week testing is far too slow to meaningfully impede the virus. High schools lag behind even this inadequate standard of testing, where no systematic testing is in place. Instead, ad hoc testing booths are set up inconsistently on campus and it is the individual responsibility of highschool students to request tests for themselves –when they are available.
Budget Cuts? Now? School funding is based on student attendance. Chronic absenteeism has risen from 10% pre-pandemic to 34% this year. These absences are a direct result of the psychological and health effects COVID and distance learning have had on students and families. Cruelly, these absences are being used by the County to justify cuts to the school budget which not only will reduce the district’s ability to implement needed safety measures, but will also threaten teacher and staff jobs and class size maximums which the Oakland Educators Association (OEA) has fought tooth and nail to secure. At the last school board meeting, one board member made the offhand comment that class sizes may need to increase by five. This is the same effect as No Child Left Behind’s merit funding for schools, where the schools which are suffering the worst effects of COVID are being punished with further reduced resources. The union must take up a serious fight against these budget cuts which FEBRUARY 202 2
are likely to be voted on January 26.
A Flurry of Wildcat Actions Almost immediately on return to class after the winter holiday, teachers began to organize. On January 7, over 500 teachers from 12 schools, including my site, participated in a sick-out strike for COVID safety. This was organized independently from official union channels and participation from my site was nearly unanimous, with reportedly only eight students attending the supposedly “open” school. A car caravan traveled through East Oakland where most of our students live, and circled the district headquarters with signs demanding safe schools and N95s for students. As part of a national expression of the untenable situation, numerous other schools have and are taking actions for school safety, including sickouts and working to rule. A lack of centralized direction from the official union leadership has meant these actions have been happening on a “rolling sickout” basis, with some schools participating on some days, and other schools on other days. Over 1,200 Oakland students signed a petition demanding a return to distance learning unless the district provides KN95/ N95 masks in schools for every student and 2x a week PCR and rapid tests for everyone on campus. On January 13, students from schools across the district stayed home in protest, kicking off a student strike. Teachers at eight schools staged a sickout in support of their demands. The district has responded more to these actions than the last six months of safety bargaining. The district has now ordered 200,000 N95s for students, which is a huge step, working out to about 5 masks per student, but this supply could disappear quickly and more masks will need to be ordered.
What Next? The situation remains at a crisis level and it is unclear how long the Omicron spike will threaten and disrupt our schools. One thing which made the 2019 Oakland Teachers strike so powerful was the high level of unity between teachers, parents, students, and the wider community. The only way we will be able to achieve safe, equitable, well functioning schools is through similar powerful and united action. The union should be organizing community meetings where teachers, students, and families can build a cohesive strategy to fight for safer schools. While the privatizers are probably feeling a level of confidence given the huge complications facing Oakland public schools these days, this fight is far from over. J
CHICAGO TEACHERS FIGHT FOR SAFE SCHOOLS INTERVIEW WITH MELISSA VOZAR, CHICAGO EDUCATOR AND CTU MEMBER, ONE WEEK AFTER UNSAFE RETURN SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE: In the first week of January, the Chicago Teachers’ Union was leading walkouts to fight against schools reopening during the COVID surge and in the context of massive staffing shortages. Less than a week later, their action ended and everyone was back in school. What happened? What did the CTU do to prepare its members, given the Mayor’s history of taking harsh action against protesters? MELISSA VOZAR: We weren’t well prepared from the start; we should’ve been discussing plans well before winter break. Instead, the leadership called a meeting on the Sunday night before school was supposed to start. They presented this confusing plan for us to go to school for two days before starting any actions for a safe reopening. This was a mistake. It was confusing to parents, and contradicted the idea that this was about safety.
SA: Once actions started, Mayor Lori Lightfoot locked you out of the system to prevent remote teaching. After three days, the CTU leadership made concessions to Lightfoot to try to bring her team back to the table. Did they consult with members before making these concessions?
MV: They brought it to the House of Delegates [the voting body within the CTU], but the broader membership did not get to vote. What most of us, including the delegates I’ve spoken to, didn’t realize is that they had dropped our main demand! The demand was for 100% of returning students whose parents don’t opt out, to be tested before they returned to school. The union leadership replaced that demand with a proposal for testing a random sample of 10% of students whose parents opt in. This was another big mistake.
SA: Several days later, on January 10, the House of Delegates was presented with another even more watered-down proposal which would send them back to work with little protection.
Were rank and file teachers consulted before they were told to go back to work?
MV: No. There was only that meeting of the House of Delegates. They completely dropped the demand for opt-out testing, which meant every child would have been tested unless their parents asked us not to. There was only one speaker from the floor in favor of this proposal, every other speaker was against! Then someone in the chat called for a vote, and they voted to send it to the membership… but only to be voted on after we were back in school. They gave us until Wednesday at 4pm to vote. This was very strategic on their part because by Wednesday morning all of the students had returned to school. The wording on the ballot was designed to push people towards a “Yes” vote. It was framed as either “Yes I vote for the safety proposal” or “No, I vote against the safety proposal and I want to reconvene the House of Delegates to restart a work action.” But with the kids already back in school, what would it have looked like if we had the students back for one day and then gone out again? Despite all this pressure to pass the proposal, more than 44% of the votes that were cast, were “No” votes. To have that high of a “No” vote was very significant. This new Safety Agreement is a defeat. Students who were signed up for testing before the action, will still get tested, but if they signed up after the action they go into a 10% random pool so loads of them may never get tested. The Safety Committees are overwhelmed, overworked, they’re mostly run by administrators and their decisions can be overruled at any time. At my school meeting when we were going over the proposal, even the newest teachers wanted to know how do we get a new leadership, when do we elect new ones? J
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THE CRISIS FACING C APITALIST DEMOCR AC Y IN THE U. S.
2Rebueilb2R dl2 baiRFilubg Andy Moxley While the November 2020 presidential elections represented a defeat for Donald Trump in the short-term, he didn’t see it that way. In the wake of the official results, the Trump camp opened up a full-on campaign to try and nullify its results. On election day itself, the Trump campaign filed 63 separate lawsuits challenging the election process across a myriad of different states. He approached scores of Republican elected officials urging them to overturn the results in their home states. Several members of Congress, encouraged by lame duck Vice President Mike Pence, indicated that they intended to open a debate in Congress about whether to accept the election results - a process that does not even exist. As we said at the time, while these moves were most likely all to come to naught, they and the popularity of the “election fraud” narrative represented something much, much more significant. Enter the January 6 insurrection.
January 6 Aftermath One Year On If January 6 represented an earthquake in the history of bourgeois democracy in the U.S., over a year later it could be said we are still feeling the aftershocks. But not in the way many would have predicted. Despite the wall-to-wall
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howling of the media leading up to the coup attempt’s first anniversary earlier this month and his ban from many social media platforms, Trump has not only escaped any sort of major legal action in response to January 6 but in fact has seen a growth in his level of support. The on-going crisis of world capitalism continues and political and class polarization in the U.S. has if anything deepened. Many questions hang over the head of the most historically stable capitalist democracy. With today’s lenses, it can be hard to remember what the atmosphere was like in the wake of the coup attempt. Outrage and disgust. Horror and confusion. After months of statements and wonky legal challenges trying to overturn the results of the November 2020 election loss, many said it was finally the death knell for Donald Trump and his brand of politics. Even within the Republican Party, more “moderate” and formerly establishment elements thought this was their chance to wrench back control from the Trumpist takeover. A newly-elected President Biden entered his honeymoon period promising a “return to normal” versus the chaos of the Trump era. However, as Socialist Alternative warned at the time, “there is the potential for fascists and other extreme right wing elements to grow under a Biden administration overseeing deep problems of capitalism. The Tea Party grew
under Obama after the bailout of the banks. We can’t effectively undermine the far right by uniting with a corporate-controlled Democratic establishment that creates the opening for these ideas and enables them by attacking the interests of working people again and again.” This analysis has been completely confirmed by subsequent events. What the former Republican establishment found was that their party was more than just temporarily captured. Even without Trump, it had been completely transformed in his political image. Barely a month after the coup attempt, 75% of registered Republican voters wanted Trump to continue to “play a prominent role” in the party. The biggest anti-Trump voice in the party, Representative Liz Cheney (daughter of Bush era VP Dick Cheney), was removed from her post for being disloyal to Trump. Recent polls indicate that, despite everything, even today 56% of Republicans believe those that stormed the Capitol were “defending freedom.” As for the Democrats, the last year has seen their post-coup hopes of a great revival under the Biden regime dashed. Biden’s early declaration of victory over COVID was undermined by Delta and then Omicron. The economy has been plagued by supply chain issues and the highest inflation rate since 1982. The Democrats have failed to enact any measures
to address climate change, to roll back antiunion measures, enact sick leave, defend voting rights, enact abortion rights into law, or a number of other things that were promised. By August, Biden faced a majority disapproval rate and as of now that rate stands at a new high of 60%.
Capitalist Democracy in Crisis The two-party system has historically been a huge asset for U.S. imperialism. It has provided a large degree of stability even during periods of heightened industrial and social struggle. They can exchange one party for another when they lose favor or want a different policy angle emphasis. Just as importantly, it has enabled them to prevent the development of significant political challenges e.g. the creation of a workers’ party. The unique stability of capitalist democracy in the U.S. is based on its economic might and dominant global position which allowed it to make some concessions. And though bourgeois democracy has traditionally served the ruling class in the U.S. very well, it is not an immutable principle. Under pressure of rising labor and socialist militancy during the Great Depression, there were sections of the ruling class discussing whether to overthrow FDR in the early 1930s in favor of establishing a dictatorship – the so-called “Business S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
Plot” for instance. However, bourgeois democracy is still their preference. This can be seen in the response to January 6, where as of writing 753 insurrectionists have been slapped with criminal charges though the real leaders and instigators have not been touched. The leader of the far-right militia, the Oath Keepers, and 10 of his associates have been charged with “seditious conspiracy,” a Civil War-era law that carries a 20 year sentence. The declining position of U.S. capitalism, the near historically low levels of trust in civic institutions, and the precarity of life for the majority of the population has now turned its historic advantage on its head. It has allowed rogue right populism – Trumpism – to capture the Republicans and created complete dysfunction in the Democrats. Between the Democratic Party dysfunction and Republican obstructionism, it has created a conundrum for the American ruling class
Republican-controlled legislatures or governors have shifted power away from election boards or elected Secretaries of State towards their own partisan bodies’ control. Moreover, 163 different “stolen election” supporters are now running for state offices that would give them authority over the administration of future elections. 57 January 6 participants are now running for some form of general elected office. On top of all of this, Republicans have used the results of the 2020 Census to pursue a ruthless campaign of racial and partisan gerrymandering in Congressional and state legislature districts.
Within the Republican Party base, Trump is still immensely popular. His ban from social media, which was never a solution to fighting his politics, has only increased his popular-
It’s reasonable given all this and the incredible failure of the Democrats to provide any sort of alternative that among many there’s a sense of anxiety about what may develop. Those truly responsible for January 6, people like Trump himself, have not been held accountable at all. And while 700+ insurrectionists have been arrested, history has shown repeatedly that prison will not prevent the growth of right-wing ideas. Sometimes it can help to drive their popularity as these figures come to be seen as martyrs of the cause. The corporate media establishment has
reflecting its weakened ability to take action in its own longer term interests. The Democrats, the preferred party of the ruling class through most of the past century, have not been able to pass any significant legislation, besides the infrastructure bill, to deal with the overall crisis of U.S. capitalism since the very beginning of the Biden presidency. As a result, Biden has been unable to show that “government can work” for ordinary people despite his attempts to style himself in FDR New Deal-era type clothes. At the same time, the Republicans have been mounting a concerted campaign against democratic rights. The Brennan Center for Justice reported that in 2021, 425 separate bills were introduced at state level that in some way sought to restrict voting access. Thirty four of the voting restriction bills have already passed across 19 states. But beyond the more visible attacks, there has been a more clandestine campaign by the Trumpists of packing the state apparatus with loyalists. While not all of the QAnon conspiracy movement’s theories have been adopted wholesale by the Republican ranks, the one that has been clearly mainstreamed is the belief that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. In fact 71% of Republicans still believe this. In what they see as preparations for the future, eight different states with
ity. His favorability to unfavorability ratio has closed from 20 points a year ago to now just single digits. Meanwhile Biden’s numbers have steadily declined. Trump and his politics’ grip on the Republican Party remain unassailable as some polls indicate that over three-fourths of GOP voters want him to be the party’s candidate in 2024. But what exists outside of the right populist milieu now in vogue in the mainstream of the GOP? The year since January 6 has not seen a disappearance of the far right. In fact, its lack of a more significant organized expression is in large part only due to the GOP itself now reflecting some of its politics. Jason Blazakis, a former U.S. Department of State counterterrorism official, estimates that “hundreds of thousands” of people now subscribe to a “far-right” ideology. Though it’s not clear what this number is based on, the extreme polarization in U.S. society makes such a figure not impossible. More organized far-right groups have not faded away, though increased attention from the state in the form of things like prosecutions of leading figures of the more well known groups that participated in January 6 like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have likely had a temporary destabilizing effect. But instead of big national mobilizations, many of these groups have chosen to try and build a base and keep a lower profile by orienting
been taking advantage of popular anxiety about the level of polarization to push the question of whether a “civil war” is about to develop. This narrative is not connected with any plan for how to actually reduce the support for reactionary ideas or even to rebuild trust in their own institutions. Instead the liberal media recognize the objective weakness of the “vote blue no matter who” approach in a situation where millions are seeing the ineptitude and unwillingness of Democrats to deliver for working people. In advance of the 2022 and 2024 elections it is an attempt to use genuine horror in wide sections of the population at the growth of the right to silence criticism and use fear to drive us back into the arms of the Democratic Party. But in the short-term, civil war is not in the cards. Despite the low levels of trust, the government is still seen as having ultimate authority. Elections have continued to proceed. Polarization on issues stemming from it aside, nearly three-fourths of Americans view January 6 as having constituted a “threat to democracy.” And most significantly, despite the incredible growth in lone wolf far-right terrorist events over the last several years, politically-motivated violence constitutes barely 1% of violent hate crimes. This reflects that the majority of people do not want major civil conflict or a drift towards dictatorship. However, even a small minority can foment significant
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The Far Right
towards state or local issues where they may recruit. There is also the possibility of the development of a new but small far-right developing more fully within the Republican Party perhaps around Marjorie Taylor-Greene.
Will There Be a New Civil War?
civil conflict. But an organized force that could do this does not exist, yet. This does not mean there is any room for complacency. The right is attacking democratic rights in state after state. They seek to whip up their base around a populist, nativist and racist message. The next phase of the economic crisis could be even more devastating and really open the door to the far right if a mass workers movement is not built in time. But the steady growth of the right is certainly not an inevitability. Many workers and middle class people who can be pulled to the right can also be pulled to the left with a clear working class alternative. The continued failure of Biden, the Squad, and the leadership of the Democratic Party to actually deliver anything for working people will certainly give opportunity for the right to grow. All that the left in Congress has succeeded in doing through joining the establish-
ment in pushing for “Biden’s agenda” is to weaken themselves. But progressive policies and socialist ideas are still very popular and the decisive factor will be the class struggle. Big labor struggles and social explosions are on the horizon. As well, reactionary attacks can be the “whip of reaction” provoking new mass movements as the policies of the right are seen having a bigger impact on our day-today lives. Scoring significant victories in these fields could be big blows against the development of the right despite the Democratic Party’s best efforts to screw it up. Within these movements the necessity of self organization on a platform that takes up the key issues facing the working class and young people in direct confrontation with the elites and their two parties will be central questions. This points directly to the necessity of a new party representing the interests of working people and completely free from corporate control. If a fighting labor movement uniting all the oppressed is built on the economic and the political plane, the right-wing can be put on the back foot in a more long-term sense. But ultimately it will take socialist revolution to defeat this threat for good because it is the inevitable by-product of a senile and decaying capitalist order. J
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FIGHTING RACISM
The History of Critical Race Theory and the Debate Surrounding It Quinn Angelou-Lysaker, Boston This article is part one of a two-part series on Critical Race Theory. Debates have broken out in workplaces and school board meetings across the country as the Republican Party fights to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) from the classroom. While CRT’s analysis of racism is superior on many points to liberal “colorblindness,” it still also avoids the sharpest points of debate within the anti-racist movement. To further the struggle for Black lives, it will be necessary to defend workers, especially educators, from the anti-CRT legislation currently sweeping the U.S. That said, we will also need to reckon with the political limitations of CRT. It does not point the way toward the combative, multiracial working class struggle that is needed to win major antiracist demands like an end to racist police murders, gentrification, and systemic poverty.
The Right-Wing Uses CRT to Galvanize Their Base Republican politicians have passed bills restricting the use of CRT in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and they have proposed similar bills in over 10 additional states. The purpose of this campaign is two-fold: to undermine the gains from the Black Lives Matter movement and to rally the Republican party base as in the recent elections in Virginia and elsewhere. Anti-CRT bills are a part of the right wing’s reaction to last summer’s rebellion. In addition to the anti-CRT bills, 81 anti-protest bills have been proposed in 34 states during the 2021 legislative session. Most recently, GOP legislators in Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Maine, and North Carolina have taken up campaigns to ban certain books that deal with race or LGBTQ issues from school libraries, including
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Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This legislative campaign also serves to create a frenzy of paranoia among conservative parents – energy that gets funneled into votes and support for GOP politicians. Of course, not all anti-racist curriculum is CRT, and this perspective exaggerates the extent to which CRT is really taught. In fact Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, asserts that CRT is not widely used in schools. The right wing is deliberately and inaccurately using the term CRT as a catch-all for any discussion of racism that challenges their conservative ideology. The language of these bills is incredibly subjective and vague, beginning with Trump’s executive order which banned government agencies from using “divisive concepts” or “race and sex scapegoating” in their job trainings. Idaho’s legislation prohibits teachings that “exacerbate or inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, etc.”
The Anti-Racist Struggle in Education A situation where teachers are “walking on eggshells” trying to discuss systemic racism in the classroom is unacceptable. Teacher unions and communities should rally for any teacher who is fired or suspended on the basis of these heinous bills. Still, there is a bigger question: what is an anti-racist education? A good anti-racist education teaches students of their capacity to effect change by emphasizing the role of movements in history, rather than just highlighting the accomplishments of a “few great men.” Teachers have an opportunity to not only teach about the problem but to foster a sense of political agency in their students so that they may be a part of the solution. But we must also be clear that education
under capitalism will always be dictated by the need of the ruling class to transmit its ideology and train a new generation of workers. Capitalism places inherent limits on progressive educational reform. In a socialist society, public education would be run democratically by and for teachers and families.
The Origins of CRT What is CRT exactly? It started to emerge in academia in the 1970s among sociology and legal studies scholars. Scholar Kimberle Crenshaw organized the first formal CRT workshop in 1989. One of the strengths of CRT is that it is critical of liberal non-racism, or colorblindness. It calls for a proactive anti-racist struggle and stresses the need for a true transformation of society, not just incremental change. CRT correctly notes that equal rights alone will not eliminate racism and that policy can have racist implications without having explicitly racist language. That said, when it comes to the most troubling questions facing activists today, CRT gives at best a noncommittal shrug. For example – is racism maintained by the prejudice of individuals or by the structures of capitalism? And given that, should the movement aim to change hearts and minds primarily or to mobilize the whole working class and oppressed to win broad economic demands? CRT does not take a position. Through the lens of CRT, diversity and inclusion seminars have the same impact as direct action, strikes, and protest. The ambiguity of CRT flows from its warped understanding of the relationship between racism and capitalism. Two CRT thinkers, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic comment, “because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class people (p s ychic ally), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it.” Here, the writers draw a false equivalency between benefitting materially and benefiting psychically. Is a white millionaire raking in profits from a private prison really the same as a conservative white bus driver who feels superior to his Black neighbors? Do those two people play an equal role in perpetuating systemic racism? Through the lens of CRT, they do. Delgado and Stefancic’s perspective also dismisses the history of multiracial working class solidarity. If the white working class truly has no vested interest in eradicating racism, then it can only join the movement from a place of either pity or moral outrage. Even a cursory look at the historical record refutes that perspective. There have been points
when white workers have fought fiercely for the Black freedom cause on the basis of class solidarity – from the white textile worker women who fought tirelessly for abolition of slavery, to the left-led CIO unions which took on racism in the 30s and 40s, to the BLM protesters in rural areas last summer. CRT calls for mass social struggle, but its perspectives on bringing the entire working class into the movement are pessimistic, demobilizing, and ahistorical.
Fighting Back While of course free speech rights should be defended, overturning anti-CRT bills one by one will not address the issues underlying the attacks on CRT. Namely, these attacks are a manifestation of the radicalization of the right wing, evident in the January 6 coup attempt on the Capitol, the anti-trans “Bathroom Bills,” and the slashing of reproductive rights. The right wing has learned the lessons of the Trump era, and these bold campaigns have been key to mobilizing their hardcore base. As months of the Biden administration go by without meaningful progress on issues like Medicare for All, climate change, and labor rights, and as inflation and the pandemic continue unabated, the Republican Party grows in appeal. The Democratic Party’s failure to materially improve the lives of working people leaves an opening for the GOP to advance. The CRT debate shows that although folks may not be engaged in mass mobilizations at the moment, the thousands of people who took to the streets last summer are still searching for ways to continue the struggle against racism. CRT as a theory lacks the political clarity needed to take the movement forward. It is time for a socialist approach. Racism is a tool to superexploit certain sections of the working class and to prevent workers from uniting with one another against the bosses. The fight to eradicate racism must begin with an organized, protracted movement of strikes, walkouts, and direct action with the working class on the front lines. Sections of society are already showing the way, like the majority Black Amazon warehouse workers who led a historic union drive in Alabama last year and the bus drivers of Minneapolis who refused to transport the BLM protestors who were arrested. Policy change is critical, but capitalism will always require divisive ideologies like racism. To have lasting solidarity, equality, and peace, we need a socialist transformation of society. J
“Is a white millionaire raking in profits from a private prison really the same as a conservative white bus driver who feels superior to his Black neighbors? Do those two people play an equal role in perpetuating systemic racism? Through the lens of CRT, they do.”
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WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
Why 2022 Could Be A Historic Year For Women’s Struggle Erin Brightwell, Oakland In many countries around the world, winning or defending the right to abortion access has been a key feature of women’s movements in recent years. From the historic repeal of the constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland in 2018 to the Green Wave movement which won legal abortion last year in Argentina, millions across the world have mobilized to fight for new reproductive rights gains, and to defend abortion rights from right-wing attacks. But these are part of a longer trend: since 2000, 31 countries have expanded access to abortion-
Campaigns to win abortion rights are part of a broader global women’s revolt which has exploded on every continent in recent years. Women have stepped forward to lead movements fighting for feminist demands, and to play outsize roles in struggles where the primary demands are not around women’s rights, such as in the revolutionary movements in Sudan and Myanmar. In the years just prior to the pandemic, International Women’s Day was revived as a major event with mass rallies and walkouts in many countries. #MeToo has been a truly international phenomenon, and the fight against sexual violence has fueled movements in the streets in countries all across the world, and is currently spurring a wave of high school walkouts in the U.S. Attacks by the right wing on abortion have also been a growing feature internationally, including the United States. In some countries, right-wing parties and governments, often linked to conservative religious forces, are using abortion to mobilize their bases. The 2016 Polish “Black Monday” protest, in which over 100,000 mainly women workers walked off the job to defeat the right-wing Law and Justice party’s attempt to push through a total abortion ban. This protest was a watershed event, inspiring activists and movements around the world to fight for women’s rights in general and the right to abortion in particular. With abortion access now under dire threat in the U.S., and with political polarization increasing generally in many countries, the stage is set for fierce battles against reactionary forces around reproductive rights in the coming year.
“If the right succeeds in dismantling protection for abortion rights on the national level without an all-out fight and making the political establishment pay a significant price in terms of its credibility, other hard-won social gains such as marriage equality could be the next target of the right-wing agenda.” FEBRUARY 202 2
If the right succeeds in dismantling protection for abortion rights on the national level without an all-out fight and making the political establishment pay a significant price in terms of its credibility, other hard-won social gains such as marriage equality could be the next target of the right-wing agenda.
Why Capitalism Controls Reproduction Women’s oppression has its roots in the origins of class society, when, in order to maintain control of wealth, the male-dominated ruling class needed to ensure that heirs were blood related. Control of women’s reproduction by the ruling class also has an ideological component. A tiny handful of people cannot expect to maintain control over a brutally exploitative economy if the working class who represent a majority of society are united and organized. The ruling capitalist class has always used sexism to divide the working class. Working-class men may have no control over their lives while they’re at work, but they are offered instead the domination of their female partner and children in the ideology of capitalism. Male domination of the family is now rejected by large sections of working-class people in many countries. However, even in countries where women’s mass movements had a transformative impact on women’s roles in societies, the idea that men have the right to control women’s sexuality and reproduction persists in different ways and plays an important role in maintaining divisions in the working class. The need for the ruling class to control women’s reproductive capacity continues to be a feature of capitalist society. A number of capitalist regimes today are concerned with the reproduction of the working class and maintaining population at a level where there will be enough workers to avoid economic stagnation and crisis.
Feminist Movement Growing Internationally A significant feature of movements for abortion rights in a number of countries, especially in Latin America, in the past period has been women revolting against the social power of the Catholic Church, and its highly sexist, even misogynistic policies and practices. The power of the church in many countries has been a form of social control utilized by the ruling class to shore up the capitalist state, and the political elite historically has been tightly linked with the church hierarchy. The legalization of abortion in Ireland and Argentina represents a major defeat
to the social control of the church. Liberalization of abortion laws is occuring around the globe. The longstanding abortions ban was removed by the Supreme Court in South Korea in 2019, where a campaign by activists pushed the regime to act. Abortion has been both widely practiced and deeply taboo in South Korea. Despite being formally illegal since 1953, abortion was relatively easily accessible as the government was interested in reducing population growth particularly during the 1960s. The situation changed around the turn of the 21st century when the Korean government became concerned about too little population growth and some medical practitioners who performed abortions were prosecuted for it. While the general trend internationally is toward women’s movements winning increased abortion rights, there are important exceptions, such as China and Iran. The attacks of the Chinese and Iranian regimes on reproductive rights are more focused on increasing the birth rate in the face of rapidly aging populations, and both regimes also trade in promoting sexist gender roles that emphasize male domination in the family. In November, the Iranian government approved a broad set of new regulations which restrict women’s access to contraception and strengthen penalties for performing abortions, including potentially the death penalty.
2022’s Reproductive Rights Battlefield This could be Roe v. Wade’s last year as the final word on reproductive rights in America, as the Supreme Court deliberates the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which has the potential to overrule Roe explicitly. If this happens, millions of Americans will be deprived of reproductive healthcare as state “trigger laws” go into effect banning abortion. It will be a real test of the feminist movement in the United States to fight back against this, especially given that up until now, the defense of Roe has mostly taken place in the courtroom. It will take far more than lawsuits to win back reproductive rights once they have been rolled back – in fact, Roe was first won in the context of massive social struggle in the 1970s, under the reactionary Nixon administration. Working people in the United States will need to take lessons from international women’s movements that have won advancements in reproductive rights in recent years, like Ireland, Argentina, and Mexico. 2022 has the potential to be explosive for reproductive rights, and the time to prepare to fight back is now. J
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I N T E R N AT I O N A L
YES, CORBYN SHOULD LAUNCH A NEW LEFT PARTY. BUT WHAT KIND? Hugh Caffrey, ISA in England/Wales Socialist Alternative welcomes the news that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may be considering establishing a new left party, on behalf of which he would stand at the next general election as Labour will stand against him. There is no shortage of support for leftwing ideas. Up to half a million people joined the Labour party under his leadership, around half of which have left since Starmer took his place. Labour gained 2 million votes in 2017 and would have won the election if the campaign had continued longer, or started sooner.
Why Wait? Socialist Alternative believes that founding a new party should have been done already. Some people fear ‘splitting the anti-Tory vote’, but while a new party should definitely be about defending Corbyn’s seat and could be an important starting point for developing an electoral alternative to the mainstream capitalist parties, it should not be only, or even primarily, about standing candidates. It should be a means to organise, discuss, mobilise, and bring together the hundreds of thousands who see themselves as socialists with the numerous recent movements against the effects of capitalism on
CHILEAN ELECTIONS
working-class and young people. The next general election is scheduled for May 2024 but could come sooner if the Tories implode. No time can be lost in preparing to defend Corbyn’s seat, which means no time should be wasted in founding the political vehicle to do that. What matters is what kind of party it is, and on this there has to be a total break with the worst aspects of Labour old and new. A genuine socialist party is a vehicle for mass struggle. That means it has to be open and democratic, based on mass meetings, elected organisers and leaders, a democratic voice for trade unions, and clear socialist principles. What’s more, such an organisation would need to be present on every demonstration and picket line, active in every struggle of working-class, young and oppressed people. A new alternative can cut through the confusion and appeal to young and working-class people. Clear policies are needed, such as a £15 minimum wage, secure tenancies and affordable rents, secure contracts at work, an end to misogyny and racism, rebuilding the NHS with funds and a reversal of all cutbacks and sell-offs, rebuilding social care by taking it into public ownership and increasing funding and wages for workers, full public ownership of all privatised services starting with the energy sector, and a socialist Green New Deal to safeguard the climate.
Gabriel Boric, of the “Apruebo Dignidad” (Approve Dignity) coalition has defeated the farright candidate Jose Antonio Kast in the second round of the Chilean elections. This reversed the situation of the first round, where Kast had won first place. At that time, an important part of young and working class voters, disappointed with the political system and unenthusiastic about Boric’s moderate approach, preferred not to go to the polls.
DEFEAT OF THE FAR RIGHT OPENS THE ROAD FOR Workers and Youth Turn Out to NEW MASS Defeat Far-Right with the threat of a “Pinochetista” vicSTRUGGLES toryFaced in the second round, turnout and participa-
tion were greater and led to Kast’s defeat. Boric’s victory represents a setback for the plans of the most truculent wings of the ruling class that had Chile’s presidential election in December received plans to forcibly impose a decisive defeat of the popular revolt that broke out in Chile in October widespread international coverage as a victory for the 2019. A government of the far-right, with significant “radical left.” Andre Ferrari electoral support, would be better placed to step of the Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolução (LSR) in up the repression and attacks already being carBrazil, part of International ried out by current president Sebastian Piñera — which are being confronted with powerful resisSocialist Alternative (ISA) tance and lack any popular legitimacy. Now, the analyzes this important ruling class is counting on Boric being reigned development. in and that his government convinces workers,
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Defend Corbyn’s Seat Corbyn should call an online rally in a matter of weeks to declare that he will be launching a new party, appeal to movements and unions for support and involvement, and appeal to individuals to register as active supporters. Follow-up organising meetings of those who want to get more involved can bring movements on board, organise locally, and so on. In Islington, the strongest possible ‘ground game’ will be needed to counter the media and Labour machine which will go all out to defeat Corbyn. Starting now, organisation needs to be built in every corner of the constituency, holding public meetings at the level of council wards, housing estates, and large workplaces, about building campaigns to win victories on the immediate issues and connecting that with holding Corbyn’s seat. Drawing this together with a mass meeting in the constituency in a few months would be the springboard for launching regular mass campaigning activities through which huge support can be built and mass canvassing developed well before the general election. Founding a new party now would enable Corbyn to harness colossal support outside of his constituency, which could be mobilised for regular canvassing drives in Islington as the election approaches. After winning the seat, Corbyn could call a national conference to cohere his support into a large and
young people, women and indigenous people to not continue and deepen their struggles. At the same time, the ruling class, betting on the future demise of Boric, will also prepare the ground to unleash their rabid dogs of the far-right.
Boric’s Political Moderation Offers No Way Forward The well-deserved popular celebrations of Boric’s victory must not allow us to forget that the decisive defeat of the Chilean far-right can only be achieved with the resumption of mass struggle and rank and file organization in different regions, workplaces, schools and universities. All of this, in defense of a radical transformation of Chilean society that buries once and for all neoliberalism, authoritarianism, inequality and the system that lays at their root. The conciliatory position of Boric and a large part of the Chilean left puts almost everything at risk in a context of political and social polarization and the desire for real change. The massive uprising of October 2019 could have brought down Piñera and created the conditions for a legitimate and sovereign Constituent Assembly. But, the signing of the “Pacto por la Paz” (The Peace Pact) and the acceptance of a Constituent Convention with limited powers allowed Piñera to survive and opened the space for the far-right to rear its ugly head.
potentially powerful new left party.
Seize the Potential But there is scope to build a new left party that goes well beyond Corbyn’s own constituency. Hundreds of thousands were prepared to actively support Corbyn against the right in Labour when he faced a coup attempt. The forces exist in society for building a new mass left party of struggle, and Corbyn retains the authority to be a central catalyst in cohering one. Were a new party to be established around Corbyn, it would make sense for the few genuine left MPs who remain in Starmer’s Labour to join it. Nonetheless, it could be the case that, at the next election, some will want to stand candidates against the worst Blairites and Tories. Some will want to support left Labour candidates in other seats. A friendly approach to genuine Labour lefts and supporters is important but the left needs to be outward-looking, concerned mainly with struggle rather than the minutiae of Labour’s internal structures which are dominated nationally by the right-wing. A crucial task of a new party is to secure Corbyn’s re-election. The strategic task is to build a new mass party rooted in struggle and organising to fight for change. J
No Time To Wait: Deepen WorkingClass Struggle Boric’s victory represents an opportunity for the Chilean masses to restart the dynamic of struggle and build a genuine alternative for the working class and oppressed. We cannot accept any notion of a truce or national reconciliation. We cannot adopt a wait-and-see attitude as to what measures will be adopted by the new government. We must raise the demands of public health and education, the right to retire, the nationalization and workers control of natural resources and key sectors of the economy, defense of women’s rights, and the guaranteed rights of the Mapuche and all other indigenous peoples. We need to strengthen the organization of struggle from below, unify movements and build for a general strike even more powerful than that of November 2019. We need to aim at the perspective of a government of the workers and oppressed with an anti-capitalist and socialist program. Only in this way will the Chilean masses consolidate their victory against the far-right and win a dignified life. Once again, Chile is a reference for the struggles of the workers, youth and oppressed in Latin America and across the world. Let us learn from their experience, link our struggles and win a socialist Latin America and socialist world. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
HOUSING
RAINIER COURT TENANTS FIGHT UNSAFE CONDITIONS & RENT INCREASES Greyson Van Arsdale, Seattle
On a characteristically cloudy, winter Seattle morning, three organizers from Socialist Alternative’s City Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s office stood under a canopy on the sidewalk, clipboards and pens held tight. They were gathered outside the Rainier Court Apartments, nonprofitowned affordable housing for workingclass seniors. Their struggle alongside tenants had just won a huge victory in the fall of 2021, forcing the landlord to rescind rent increases. They were there to continue the fight, and to speak to tenants about long standing maintenance issues and safety hazards. It took no time at all for them to hear common refrains: mold in the walls and carpets, cockroaches, broken appliances, faulty wiring. One tenant who stopped at the table said that her heat hadn’t been working for at least the last three weeks – a period in which Seattle experienced recordlong freezing temperatures. “We’ve seen it – they’re horrific, dilapidated conditions,” said Adam Ziemkowski, a socialist and community organizer in Sawant’s office. “The last few weeks of rain and snow, especially, have brought to the fore just how bad the buildings are, and how poorly they
can withstand basic wind and weather. We’re talking about tenants who are low-income seniors, a lot of them are on Section 8, and it’s majority Black and brown tenants – a lot of them with disabilities.”
Abysmal Conditions Jay Gollyhorn, a tenant at Rainier Court, has lived there for nearly ten years. As a low-income senior living on just $1040 per month, he can’t afford to move, and there’s nowhere else he could afford in a housing market like Seattle’s. Because the door to his building’s parking garage was broken and couldn’t be closed, Gollyhorn’s car was stolen out of the garage last week. “I was going to give my kid a ride to work,” Gollyhorn said. “You know, that’s my freedom, my independence. And the door’s still broken.” So far, Sawant’s council office has helped tenants file at least 39 complaints with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), which determines whether or not units are in compliance with housing codes. In Seattle, a law won by Sawant’s office prevents rent increases on units with such code violations. Ziemkowski said that the complaints from tenants run a wide gamut – but some are more hazardous than
DEADLY FIRES REVEAL YEARS OF LANDLORD NEGLECT
Philadelphia
On January 5, a fire tore through a Philadelphia rowhouse and killed 12 people, including eight children. At least 26 people were living in the two-unit rowhouse, which was owned by the federally-funded Philadelphia Housing Authority. Fire department officials said that at least four fire alarms were non-operational during the fire. A 2016 report from the City of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Housing Authority reported that 42% of all households were facing “substandard FEBRUARY 202 2
housing, overcrowding, or cost burdens.” While local authorities are investigating what sparked the blaze, the kindling for this deadly fire came in the form of the failures of the for-profit housing system – a severe lack of affordable housing, poor maintenance of existing public housing, and a dearth of renters’ rights laws and renter assistance. Housing is not a luxury; it is a necessity. With a militant housing movement, we can win more than reforms – we can build a better world where every person has not just a roof over their heads, but working fire alarms to protect them from disaster, in buildings that are up to
others. Gollyhorn pointed out two doors in his building that connected hallways to stairwells – the hinges on the doors were broken, so they don’t automatically close and are left open. The fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people in January, officials reported, was so deadly because the door to the originating apartment didn’t automatically close as the law required it to. “You look at that [door] and tell me that if there was a fire, we wouldn’t all go up,” Gollyhorn said.
Systemic Exploitation The Rainier Court apartments are four senior housing buildings owned by nonprofit South East Effective Development (SEED) and managed by forprofit Coast Property Management. SEED, which receives public funding from the City of Seattle, proudly displays its motto on its website: “Everyone deserves a safe, affordable, dignified place to live.” However, in 2021, tenants received rent increases of between $100-$240 per unit, on units that were in deplorable condition. Sawant’s office, Socialist Alternative, union members, and the tenants held public rallies and press conferences and marched on SEED’s
code. Such a thing is only the bare minimum of what working people deserve. The Bronx, NYC On January 9, a building fire in the Bronx killed 17 people including eight children. The blaze, reportedly started by a faulty space heater, quickly spread and poured smoke into adjacent apartments in the 19-floor building. The cause for the rapid spread of smoke appears to be faulty, open doors in stairs and corridors – a violation of a 2018 law requiring landlords install self-closing doors. The building, Twin Parks North West, was affordable housing constructed in the early 1970s, and had no external fire escapes or sprinklers. According to the New York Post, the building
continued on p.15
had more than two dozen code violations and complaints, despite receiving more than $25 million in state funding for repairs years earlier. Developer sharks like Camber, who bought the building in 2020, should at the very least pay immediate damages for all Twin Parks North West tenants. But even that won’t prevent them from cutting corners to cut costs because the price tag on emergency relief is nothing compared to the cost of providing a safe, permanently high quality, standard of living. These parasitic corporations should be brought into public ownership and tenants should have democratic oversight over their buildings and the costs associated with maintaining it. J
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REVIEWS
THE NIHILIST’S FUTURE
A SOCIALIST REVIEW OF DON’T LOOK UP Greyson Van Arsdale, Seattle Don’t Look Up, written by director Adam McKay and journalist David Sirota, senior advisor to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, offers a parodical storyline in which two astronomers discover that a massive comet is on a collision course with Earth and will cause an extinction-level event unless the course of the comet is altered. Don’t Look Up is most clearly a satire of the response to climate change, but audiences will also find deep and intentional parallels to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while people frustrated by the failure to mitigate these pressing emergencies may find some catharsis in watching, it will be a cold comfort, as the movie’s main message seems to be that “if the government won’t listen, and the media won’t listen, and the public won’t listen, then we might as well just pray.” The first half of Don’t Look Up follows the two astronomers as they attempt to convince various people with power to do something to avert the comet. First, they get an audience with President Orlean and her son, the Chief of Staff. The White House doesn’t take them seriously, and Dr. Mindy and Kate then leak HBO’s Succession centers on Waystar Royco, a fictional multimedia conglomerate. Logan Roy is a towering, vicious figure and CEO, but he is nonetheless facing the reality of declining health. His children – the righthand man and heir apparent Kendall, cynical girlboss Shiv, sadistic wild child Roman, and superficial dabbler Connor – compete to inherit his position as the head of the company. Many viewers complain there are “no likable characters” among this mob of wealthy elites, and they’re not wrong. However, from a Marxist perspective, this is one of the show’s key insights. We see Logan Roy hit his children and grandchildren, spew sexist and homophobic rhetoric, cover up manslaughter, and urinate in his son’s office out of spite. Everyone around him walks on eggshells in fear of being the target of one of his profane, angry outbursts. But everything Logan does is enabled by capitalist society. Private ownership of the means of production means the boss dictates the workplace. The patriarchal family system preserved and reinforced by capitalism keeps his children, whose inheritance is in Waystar stock, trapped within this dictatorship. Even political figures as powerful as the fictional President must stay in his good graces or risk being smeared on Waystar’s news channels, just one example
14
the story to the press, attempting to alert the world through the media, but that doesn’t work either. Later, Orlean calls the protagonists back and agrees to a mission to divert the comet – to rebuild her public image and win the midterms. However, just when this mission is about to succeed, enter CEO Peter Isherwell, who has discovered valuable materials on the comet and wants his own company to mine the comet for profit. Orlean wastes not a moment in bending to Isherwell, and the White House’s plan is called off in favor of the billionaire’s profit-driven scheme. The movie is quick to point out the links between all these groups – politicians, billionaires, and the media, grouping them together as an economic elite. President Orlean is at Isherwell’s beck and call through the film, because Isherwell was a “platinum eagle” level donor to her campaign. The film’s core thesis on the powerful people in society is a common refrain: “it’s all one big club, and you’re not in it.” However, to only acknowledge the inherent divide between the economic elite and the rest of us isn’t enough. For this movie to provoke useful debate, it should posit how this conflict can be overcome.
What, then, is the movie’s attitude towards non-elites? The two astronomers represent the scientific community – in essential agreement about the threats of climate change and COVID-19, and frustrated with the nonsensical and suicidal response of the people who have the power to do something about it. The film’s language actually takes a flagrantly derisive tone towards its real “regular people,” represented by social media and the interstitial cuts of public response to the film’s events. The filmmakers, like Isherwell and the rest of the elites they lambast, view regular people as mob-mentality animals acting on instinct – instead of the singular group of people with the actual power to change society. There’s one major problem with the film’s pessimistic central message: we are far from out of solutions to climate change. Technology is ready and waiting to convert the entire world to efficient green energy. The obstacle standing in the way is the servants of profit – billionaires and the politicians of both parties who make their living off coal and oil. History has shown over and over that the way to make gains for working people is not to beg for action from these elites, or even
DEADLY CAPITALISM IN SUCCESSION’S WORLD AND OURS Grace Fors, Dallas
of how establishment politicians are structurally beholden to keeping the capitalists happy. In the day-to-day life of a billionaire, CEO, and patriarch like Logan, there’s no necessity for the basic social skills that are second nature to working-class people – traits like cooperation, compromise, and empathy. Working people need these skills in order to survive. But with complete dictatorial authority in every area of life, it seems only natural that a person’s character would become distorted into one like Logan Roy’s. Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg may not subject their subordinates to such demeaning games as Boar on the Floor – as far as we know – but they could if they wanted to, and who would stand up to them? The only people with any semblance of power over Logan are
Waystar’s shareholders. In his eighth thesis on Feuerbach, Marx argues, “All social life is essentially practical.” For all his wickedness, Logan fundamentally behaves in the interest of his profits. Pitting people against one another, blackmailing them into submission, and using carrot-and-stick strategies to get them to do what he wants are all tools that help maintain his iron grip on the company. And while Logan is the worst, no one is immune. Characters like Tom and Greg, who weren’t born into this status, nevertheless must learn to become manipulative and ruthlessly self-interested in order to get by in the upper management ecosystem. We get indications that these characters can feel guilt and shame, but it makes little difference in what’s required of them to get ahead. As
to petition international powers to do that job, but to mount a decisive struggle with action in the streets and workplaces. The “regular people” that the movie is so derisive towards actually hold the lever of economic power that is capable of forcing the government’s hand, and capable even of transforming society to one that does not run on profit but one that is formed around human need and progress. It’s on this basis that Don’t Look Up falls flat. In expressing the real fear, frustration, and anger that many people are feeling, it falls victim to its own fatalism. What could have been a movie about where the real power in society lies instead becomes a dismal film about the end of the world. Time is running out. But what is missing is not more fatalism. We need a unified movement on strong demands like taxing the rich for immediate disaster relief and a wholesale restructuring of the economy around renewable energy and green jobs. For a climate movement that is currently much weaker than it needs to be to win, that is a serious undertaking. But in the words of Don’t Look Up’s Dr. Mindy, “everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” J Logan says, “you have to be a killer.” For all the power they hold over politics, mass media, and the likely thousands of workers they employ, nobody in this show contributes anything to the world. No value is created in executive boardroom meetings, at fancy dinners, or while boar hunting in Hungary. The show is driven by a dynamic struggle over who should run Waystar Royco, but the fact is that none of them should. Logan, as formidable as he seems in the show, would be nothing and nobody without the thousands of workers who actually create the profits he worships. A revolt of unionized Waystar workers, paired with a political movement for democratic public ownership of the top corporations, would be the only way to take down a figure like Logan Roy without replacing him with another Roylike monster. In Succession and in real life, corporations and the rich are responsible for widespread abuse and exploitation, the rise of reactionary right-wing ideas, climate crisis, spiraling inequality, and societal dysfunction on a global scale. The capitalist ruling class can wear many faces and struggle for power amongst themselves within the walls of the boardrooms, but the future will be decided not by them – it will be decided by the millions of people outside. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
ONE YEAR OF BIDEN bottom-up revolt. Candidates who refuse corporate cash and commit themselves to a fighting approach for working-class demands would need to challenge corporate Democrats at every level, alongside a full overhaul of the undemocratic party structures. If “party reform” would require such a cutthroat battle, why even do this within the Democratic Party, who have
continued from p.3
inbuilt tools to sabotage left campaigns like Bernie’s and punish their left flank? Building a left party of our own is the only rational way forward. While Biden’s approval ratings have declined across the board, the frustrations of younger people and independents have been the most pronounced. These are who the left can speak
to in putting forward a political alternative. The formation of a broad left party to rescue working people from the failed Democratic strategy and the right wing alike has never been more urgent. J
continued from p.13
After Repairs – What’s Next? The petition that the Rainier Court tenants are using to organize themselves highlights two main demands for their landlord: for
SEED to publicly promise no rent increase in 2022, and for SEED to urgently fix all housing code violations. It also includes two demands for the Seattle City Council: to increase the Amazon Tax won in 2020 to expand funding for affordable social housing, and to vote ‘Yes’ on Sawant’s legislation for citywide rent control with no corporate loopholes. “What’s happening at Rainier Court should ring alarm bells. If a nonprofit landlord can gouge tenants with unaffordable rents and blatantly ignore horrendous building conditions, imagine the scale of attacks Seattle renters are enduring from corporate landlords,” said Sawant. “Seattle Rainier Court tenants defeating the 2021 rent increases shows it’s possible to fight and win, and I hope it encourages other renters to fight their exploitative landlords. But we’re not going to solve the crisis building-bybuilding. Renters, workers, and socialists need to come together to fight for rent control, with no corporate loopholes, to increase the Amazon Tax to massively expand social housing, and
win decent living conditions. This means taking on big landlords and developers in a citywide struggle, and calling out the city’s Democratic establishment, who have completely failed to put working people’s need for high-quality, affordable housing over profits for the wealthy.” Rent control, long a goal of Socialist Alternative and Sawant’s office in Seattle, would change the game for renters and homeowners alike. Residential rent control has been banned in Washington since the 1980s due to real estate lobbying, and the legislation proposed by Sawant’s office would institute commercial rent control immediately, and residential rent control as soon as the state ban is ended. Seattle’s situation – a severe lack of truly affordable housing, a high (and rising) general cost of living, and a growing number of rentburdened people and families – is not unique. Winning rent control in Seattle would have the potential to ignite similar fights in cities with similarly dire housing conditions. J
Feb. 2022
Across 2. Workers organized into this union almost went on strike this past fall. 5. This acronym refers to a law that allows the federal government to delay a strike in a certain key industry. 6. In what two cities are teachers talking strike. 8. What you walk when you’re on strike. 9. Grocery workers in this state just ended a 10-day strike.
Down 1. This mayor has declared open season on teachers in a major U.S. city. 3. This fast food chain has been swept by a nationwide unionization effort. 4. In just the third quarter of this year, this company made $24.1 billion in profit. 7. Many strikes of the past six months took aim at this unequal wage system.
FEBRUARY 202 2
SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349
EDITOR: Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD:
RAINIER TENANTS FIGHT UNSAFE CONDITIONS offices, and succeeded in getting 2021 rent increases rescinded. This is a significant victory, as forcing any landlord to back down on rent increases, much less in a building complex with over 500 low-income families, can come only from a real, organized fightback. The tenants and Sawant’s office quickly followed up with the demand that SEED publicly promise not to raise rents in 2022. It’s not lost on the tenants that SEED is forcing them to pay in other ways. In one of the buildings, the tenants had to re-sign leases forcing them to pay for their own utilities, which were previously included. In 2019, SEED received over $400,000 in government grants, and had over $1.4 million in end-of-year net assets. That year, all three of SEED’s top officers made six-figure salaries.
SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
WORD TO WIN Socialist Crossword
l
February 2022
George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Rebecca Green, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Greyson Van Arsdale, Tony Wilsdon
Editors@SocialistAlternative.org
NATIONAL (347) 457-6069 info@SocialistAlternative.org facebook.com/SocialistAlternativeUSA Instagram: @Socialist_Alternative Twitter: @SocialistAlt Tik Tok: @socialistus
INTERNATIONAL Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative (ISA), which has sections in over 30 countries. Learn more about the ISA at internationalsocialist.net.
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SOCIALIST
ALTERNATIVE
ISSUE #80 l FEBRUARY 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2 Jesse Shussett, Pittsburgh Less than a month after winning their union, Starbucks workers in Buffalo, NY walked out demanding safe working conditions amid the Omicron surge. They were on strike for five days with the core demand that the store be closed while their coworkers recovered from COVID and proper COVID safety protocols be put in place. During their five day strike it was announced that workers at stores in Ohio, Arizona, and Illinois have officially filed for union elections. Shortly after, they won a first, huge victory: paid selfisolation for any worker who comes into contact with COVID.
Union Busting Fails While the Buffalo vote only represents about 100 employees between three stores, the notoriously anti-union executives at Starbucks are deeply afraid of the courageous example of the Buffalo workers spreading elsewhere. That’s why they flooded the city with top executives, including Schultz himself, to try to convince them not to vote “Yes.” The fact that big corporations like Starbucks fight back against unionization efforts they way they do because they are so aware of the power that these workers have as the source of all profits. Starbucks likes to brand themselves as a progressive company with “woke policies” but fighting vehemently to prevent worker organizing has begun to crack that facade. But we should be clear, their union busting attacks will only become more
rabid as the movement spreads and we need strong leadership in each store that can provide a constant counterweight.
an absolutely key task and these Starbucks workers are pointing the way forward for workers everywhere.
Wins With Limitations
The Task Ahead
Starbucks workers won the power to vote as individual stores rather than as a district, which assisted them in reaching the majority vote needed to succeed in the unionization drive. This unto itself is a small victory, one that the NLRB has not previously granted. However, this segmented approach creates limitations to organizing, as it isolates locations from each other even when they’re in the same city, and in some cases mere blocks from each other. It allows the workers to get the votes needed for unionization efforts, but also makes communicating between the stores more difficult. Overcoming this will require the union to actively work to connect different stores. Taking on a corporate behemoth like Starbucks requires that all workers across Buffalo and ultimately the country are organized into one union that’s able to exert the maximum pressure needed to win a strong contract with higher wages and safe working conditions. As of now, workers in many more locations around the country including in Massachusetts, Washington, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, and Tennessee are campaigning to unionize. This is incredibly significant as the low-wage service sector has long proven difficult to organize. Only six percent of American workers in the private sector are currently in a union, so organizing the unorganized is
Workers often don’t stay in jobs for more than 6-8 months before becoming fed up with the poor working conditions and the exploitation they face. With no outlet to fight back and no path forward, workers quit and move to the next job. While it may provide a short-term morale boost for them and other workers, it ultimately serves as a barrier for true organizing and harnessing the power of workers. It is critical that workers see poor working conditions as something to fight and improve upon rather than run away from. It will require a massive mobilization to accomplish unionizing even a majority of the 15,251 locations of Starbucks, with very pointed efforts of workers both within Starbucks and beyond. The ruling class is hyperaware of the ripple effect that a successful effort across Starbucks would have in fast food, the entire service sector, and beyond, and will try to quash it by any means. We will need militant strategies and the collaboration of stores across cities and regions to win concessions, as well as mobilization from others in the industry in solidarity. The fightback against the union-busting efforts of Starbucks needs to be broad and have a strong set of demands in order to develop into a force to win real gains for the workers. Socialist Alternative stands unequivocally
with Starbucks workers who are at the forefront of what can become a breakthrough in the labor movement. Winning will require solidarity between store locations and amongst other sections of the service sector - just as an injury to one is an injury to all, a win for one can lead to a win for all! Members of the Starbucks union will need to continue to fight beyond gaining unionization. In many ways, winning a first contract is even more challenging and will require putting up a determined fight. There has never been a better or more exciting time for service workers to be fighting these battles. With the ongoing Great Resignation and labor shortage, workers are in a strong position to use their collective power to win gains not only for themselves, but ultimately setting the groundwork for others and creating blueprints to follow. Solidarity to Starbucks Workers United! Solidarity to all service workers! J