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ISSUE #81 l MARCH 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2
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INSIDE TWIN CITIES EDUCATORS INFLATION WORSENS STARBUCKS UNIONIZATION
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WHAT WE STAND FOR No to Imperialist Wars! • Socialist Alternative sends our full solidarity to the working people of Ukraine who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, and growing poverty conditions, and now face the horror of war and bloodshed. • No to war in Ukraine! Ukrainians should have the right to decide their own future, including the right of self-determination for minority groups. • Workers in the U.S. can have no confidence in warmonger Biden who cares nothing for the Ukrainian people but whose democratic rhetoric is a cover for corporate interests. • De-escalating the rapidly intensifying situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from eastern Europe. • Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders. • Only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win long lasting peace and stability for the working-class masses around the world.
Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement • Building off the momentum of the Starbucks organizing drive, we need mass campaigns to unionize the millions of nonunion 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 living wages and 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 • While COVID has receded for now in the U.S., it continues to spread globally. It’s abundantly clear that capitalist world
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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! We need an ongoing infrastructure to cope with COVID in instances where it flares up. This includes free, easily accessible tests available in every community across the country. Workers exposed to COVID should be given paid self-isolation days after exposure or after developing symptoms. No mass firings of workers refusing the vaccine! These punitive measures should be replaced with democratic negotiation of reasonable health protocol in the workplace.
A New Political Party for Working People • 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.
Fight Gender Oppression and Attacks on Reproductive Rights! • 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 1960s and 70s when Roe was first won. This includes marches, protests, occupations, and direct action. • Fight for free, safe, legal abortion. All
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WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Varun Belur, Boston Like so many other students and workers, I was inspired by Bernie’s campaign in 2020 and the movement around it because it pointed in the direction of political independence from big business and the Democrats. My first experience with any kind of activism was canvassing for Bernie early that year. But over time, and especially as his electoral prospects declined, it seemed like Bernie was angling towards a compromise approach with the Democrats rather than the full break with corporate politics that I and so many other people who had recently become politically active were calling for. Nevertheless, I still supported Bernie while he remained in the race and I attended my first ever political rally organized by Boston Socialist Alternative in support of the movement behind his campaign. It became clear to me soon enough that SA is an organization that’s willing to continue the fight for Bernie’s ideas and beyond until capitalism itself is torn down and replaced with socialism, a society run by workers. As I’ve learned in the two years since I’ve joined, transforming society on this scale will require a Marxist revolutionary organization that has assimilated the lessons of
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.
Expand the Social Safety Net! • As the Democrats have sabotaged their own promises for a $3.5 trillion expansion of social spending, we need a movement from below to push back against the corporate interests that dominate establishment politics. • Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high-quality public housing. Raise the corporate tax rate to at least 35%! • Make the expanded 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
past revolutionary struggles and applies them flexibly to changing circumstances. I believe that the situation today, in the context of an epoch of capitalist crisis and decay, calls for such an approach. We need to fight tooth and nail for independent working class politics in social movements, elections, and in unions! Moreover, we need to rebuild the unions to what they once were and beyond so that we can win better working conditions and wages and fight back when, inevitably, our interests clash with those of the bosses, landlords, and corporate politicians. J
green infrastructure. • We need to build an international environmental struggle led by the global working class and youth fighting 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 • 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.
The Whole System is Guilty • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system. • Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. • We need a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet. S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
EDITORIAL
Unite Against Imperialist War in Ukraine International Socialist Alternative Statement Socialist Alternative is part of the International Socialist Alternative (ISA). ISA expresses its full solidarity with the people of Ukraine who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption and growing poverty conditions, and now face the horror of war and bloodshed. As Russian troops and tanks have crossed the border into Ukraine, the first people have already been killed. Missile attacks have hit military bases and airfields including in Kyiv. There are already reports of shooting in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the northeast of the country. Russian troops should be immediately withdrawn from Ukraine. Europe is staring down the barrel of a major armed conflict, which is tied up with the manifold geopolitical contradictions of the new age of disorder. Socialists internationally must step up our work, and prepare to take a stand against imperialist wars and for working class internationalism, in principled opposition to all forms of imperialism.
Imperialist Interests Russia has been claiming its security is under threat by the eastward expansion of NATO with weapons and troops along its borders. But now President Putin claims that the task of the Russian attack is to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. But his attacks will only make the Ukrainian people more angry. Many will take up arms to oppose his troops. Putin has justified his attack by claiming that Ukraine’s independence was just a result of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik’s policy of granting the right of self determination to oppressed nations, a policy that was opposed by Stalin and the bureaucratic regime from which Putin himself emerged. This is an important lesson. Independence can not be reached by appealing to NATO or the EU, but only in a common struggle against the new Tsar and his war. The population which will suffer most from a war, those who will risk their lives and limbs, the lives of their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, their homes and incomes — those ordinary working class people living in Ukraine — have been reduced to mere spectators whose fate is decided by forces outside of their control. Today’s Ukrainian leaders, the capitalist establishment, whose sole concern has always been the defense of the interests of the oligarchs and who have steered the country from crisis to crisis since its independence, sold themselves to the west during the MARCH 2022
previous decade. In this way they hoped to gain NATO protection, and gain economically by moving closer to Europe. They failed on all counts: average family income today is 20% below the level of 2013 and protection by NATO will not depend on the interest of the Ukrainian people but on U.S. and NATO allies’ economic and geopolitical interests. The economic shocks of the war too will be felt across the world — already stock markets are reacting — the Russian market fell by 40% before being suspended. Energy prices as well as food prices will escalate, adding to already strong inflationary pressures in the world economy. And future generations across Ukraine and Russia, who already live with low incomes, with poor health care will have to pay the cost of the war. This war has the fingerprints of the U.S.China conflict for world domination all over it. The Biden administration stated openly that China is its “main competitor” and Russia “the most dangerous.” Within NATO, the U.S. has been pushing its European allies for years to increase their war budgets. War is the continuation of politics by other means. Among the current motives of the U.S. is to strengthen the ties between U.S. and European imperialism in a pretext for future conflicts with China — all at the expense of the Ukrainian people. NATO has been stepping up its presence in Eastern Europe with bases in Poland, Romania, and the three Baltic states which all border the former Soviet Union. NATO countries have been arming Ukraine to the teeth. Having cried wolf for weeks now, predicting a “false flag” operation by the Russians, Biden and his warmongering allies have created a self fulfilling prophecy. Regardless of the degree of NATO’s direct involvement in the unfolding war, Western imperialism shares responsibility for stoking up a conflict, which will see working class families mourning their fallen relatives and paying the heaviest price for the war effort and its economic fall out.
Weak Russian Imperialism On The Offensive Russian imperialism has calculated that now is its moment to make a decisive move to further its interests. U.S. imperialism is weakened and the European Union struggles with internal division and China is becoming U.S.’s major concern in the reshaping of the world order. Putin violates the right of selfdetermination of the Ukrainians, he considers Ukraine an integral part of Russia, similarly to
Xi’s claims over Taiwan. The importance of what happens in Ukraine goes well beyond the borders of Ukraine. Economic crisis, waves of reactionary nationalism, and potentially millions of refugees will create more global crises, just when it seemed the pandemic was entering a new, more manageable phase. Despite being a brutal authoritarian regime, the Kremlin still has to take into account whether Russians will accept a major war over Ukraine. 2022 is not 2014, when a massive patriotic wave resulted from the take-over of Crimea. With no heart for a war against Ukraine, most Russians are already grappling with lower living standards, escalating inflation and, during the pandemic, over a million “excess deaths.” One opinion poll (02/23/2022) suggested that 40% of the Russian population, mainly the young and urban population, are against the recognition of the republics, which has been used as a pretext to launch the war. It is the working class and poor who pay. When the top 500 oligarchs in Russia have seen their wealth grow by 45% during the pandemic to reach $640 billion, losing a few billions from frozen bank accounts is not going to make a big difference. This war has little or nothing to do with protection of any of the populations concerned. NATO had and has no problems with dictators when it suits them, and Putin supports the most right wing parties in Europe — so much for “antifascism” or “defending democratic rights.” War will mean terrible human suffering, will be paid for in lives being squandered, economic hardship, more refugees, and won’t solve any of the existing problems and inter-imperialist tensions. Despite claims to the contrary it is not in the interest of working-class and ordinary populations in any of the nations involved. We cannot rely on any of the imperialist institutions or war machines involved to create peace, let alone prosperity. Indeed, for years Ukraine has been asking for real assistance from NATO and the West, yet has been denied. We should have no trust in these imperialist bodies. Any “diplomatic solution” agreed between them, while it would be welcomed initially by people worldwide, will ultimately be at the expense of ordinary people and only prepare the ground for further tensions and confrontations. These powers have proved incapable of tackling the health and climate crisis for which they are responsible,
are unwilling to combat the rising cost of living for ordinary people, and now their war will make things even worse. The only force capable of stopping war and destruction is the united working class. ISA calls on the workers’ movement worldwide to initiate a massive international anti-war and anti-imperialist mobilization, including refusal to handle the production and transport of weaponry as well as strikes, while also raising social demands capable of offering a real way out for the majority. This could include united action by workers in multinational companies operating in various countries directly involved. This will not be an easy undertaking. We will have to stand against massive propaganda machines on all sides, and it will take time and unfortunately suffering, before conditions will expose the propaganda and bring the real issues to the fore. War, however, is the midwife of revolution. It exposes contradictions in the most visible and tangible way possible. Timely and bold initiatives at the early stages of wars are crucial in determining the nature and programme adopted when a movement gains strength. This war is not in the interest of workers and youth, wherever they live. It’s about geopolitical and economic imperialist ambitions. ISA will oppose the war wherever we are present, in Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and elsewhere. In particular, we stand with youth and workers in Russia in their appeals to fight the war by building an anti-war movement in the workplaces and universities, for solidarity against the warmongers, and for a war against poverty, and not against other peoples. J
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No to war in Ukraine! For the right of Ukrainians to decide their own future, including the right of self-determination for minorities! For the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from eastern Europe. No confidence in any of the “peace keeping” imperialist forces involved. No illusions in diplomacy by the warmongers. Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth over borders. For an internationalist working class socialist alternative to capitalist conflict, war, and destruction.
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L ABOR MOVEMENT
TWIN CITIES EDUCATORS PREPARE TO STRIKE Chris Gray, Minneapolis
Last week, over 96% of the total membership of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) Local 59 voted to go on strike for the first time in over 50 years. The union represents over 4,000 workers, both licensed teachers and educational support staff, in 70 schools across the city. Union activists are reporting that morale is at an all time high, with unprecedented interest in the union among their co-workers. At the same time, members of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers (SPFE) were also taking a strike vote. While a strong majority still voted to go on strike, the “yes” vote was lower than in Minneapolis, with 75% total turnout and 75% support for going on strike. If need be, Minneapolis should take the initiative on their own while they have the momentum. This strong vote from workers in the Twin Cities is a real mandate to use the power of a strike to win concrete demands on wages, mental health supports, class size, and workplace equity for teachers of color. However, the joint statement issued by the executive boards of both unions emphasized “strike action as a last resort” and continued that they “still believe that tentative agreements can be reached in the coming scheduled mediation sessions.” There are two scenarios where an agreement could be reached without strike action. The least likely scenario includes the district administrators surrendering and giving into all the key demands of the educators. The other scenario would be where the union leadership backs away from its initial demands – either because they’re worried they can’t win or because they want to look “reasonable” in the negotiations. Proposing a watered-down deal early, before mobilizing educators who were overwhelmingly motivated to strike for clear demands, would sap the educators’ momentum and potentially pave the way for the most demoralizing type of defeat – the one in which educators aren’t even allowed to fight for what they need.
bipartisan cuts to COVID relief have been a disaster for working class parents, especially women. It’s essential that MFT does everything it can to win the strike as quickly as possible. Taking a “one day longer, one day stronger” strategy doesn’t work, and runs the risk of eroding the enthusiasm of educators in the middle of the Minnesota winter. Every building will need strong picket lines of educators, supplemented by a consistent mobilization of parents, students, and community supporters. Pickets should start early in the morning to prevent attempts to keep the schools open. It’s excellent that MFT has dramatically expanded its structures to allow for wider participation in the strike. Every school has a strike captain, a contract action team member, and shop steward, and they are all meeting together regularly to discuss next steps. From here, it’s essential that the bargaining process is open and transparent, so this wide base of educator activists can communicate with the wider membership in daily huddles at every school. It’s crucial that the membership be allowed to fully discuss any tentative agreement with the district before the picket lines and protests are called off, so that the momen-
tum is not lost at the most important moment of the struggle. Winning quickly means taking the fight directly to the superintendent, school board members, and Mayor Frey. The union is discussing an offensive strategy of daily protests which is excellent. This will require door knocking in working-class neighborhoods with invitations for families to participate in the actions, and covering the city in posters that explain the strike and have information about the mass actions. Socialist Alternative is ready to do everything we can to help with this effort, and we hope other organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America will join us.
Solidarity Needed To build solidarity in the leadup and during a strike, other unions could prepare serious mobilizations of their memberships under the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Already, Amalgamated Transit Workers Local 1005 and the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 9 have passed resolutions to mobilize their memberships in solidarity, and ATU 1005 has offered $5,000 to the MFT strike funds. These proposals were initiated by members of Socialist Alternative and should be taken up by other unions as quickly as possible. Students can also play an essential role in supporting their educators and fighting for better schools. A few weeks ago, thousands of students walked out of schools to protest the Minneapolis Police Department execution of Amir Locke. Coordinated student walkouts the day before the strike would be a powerful show of solidarity, and also take away the administrators’ ability to shed crocodile tears over the wellbeing of students as the strike goes on.
Who’s Responsible For The Strike? The corporate media will try to blame educators for the strike, but let’s be clear about who is responsible for educators walking out: it’s stingy politicians and greedy administrators who refuse to pay for the schools that the working class, immigrant, and Black communities need. Minnesota’s counselor-tostudent ratio of 1:659 is a structural failure,
especially in a state with a $7 billion budget surplus, massive corporations like Target, and Wall Street banks like US Bank. When adjusted for inflation, Minneapolis teachers have taken a 20% pay cut over the last few decades. Educational Service Professionals (ESPs), who are in the same union but have a separate contract and who are disproportionately educators of color, only make $24,000 per year – about a tenth of Superintendent Ed Graff’s annual salary. In this struggle, educators and students are taking on Democratic Party politicians, who have presided over school privatizations; criminal underfunding of public schools; cuts to school support staff; enrichment programs like art and music; and attacks against educators themselves. A strong strike mobilization, and ultimately a successful strike, could dramatically shift what working-class people see as possible in the fight to take on the political establishment. To win any of the educators’ demands, the structures built through a successful strike could become places to debate how to win a program for Medicare for All, rent control and affordable housing, end racist policing, and more.
Next Steps Even as the arbitration period continues, MFT Local 59 needs to set a clear date for the strike to begin, and put real resources into organizing a big rally on the first evening of the strike. There also needs to be daily communication and discussion to make sure members are engaged in the process, and motivated to maintain picket lines in the icy Minnesota winter. Fellow union members should pass resolutions along the lines of ATU 1005 and NALC, and donate to the strike fund. Student activists should explore organizing a walkout the day before the strike, which again points to the importance of setting a date. These things will leave little doubt about which side is “reasonable” in this situation, and lay the basis for the wider fightback that is necessary to win the schools working people need (and deserve). J
Strike Strong, Win Quickly The combination of school closures and
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S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WHY SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE IS LAUNCHING A CAUCUS IN DSA Erin Brightwell, Member UPTE-CWA 9119, East Bay DSA, Socialist Alternative Executive Committee Socialists face immense challenges and opportunities in 2022. This year will provide tests for the socialist left, and Socialist Alternative wants to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with DSA comrades in these looming battles as we debate the way forward to victory. Socialist Alternative has had members in the Democratic Socialists of America for several years. We increased our involvement in DSA a year ago, and have worked on shared campaigns and brought our ideas into DSA debates. Preserving the seat of Seattle socialist city councilmember Kshama Sawant, a member of SA and DSA, who has always run independent of the two parties of capitalism, was a crucial victory for the socialist movement last December, and DSA members worked side-by-side with SA to help achieve this victory. The successful battle against the recall, as well as Kshama Sawant’s and Socialist Alternative’s eight years on the council, highlight the power of a class struggle, movement building approach to electoral politics. Now we are launching a Socialist Alternative caucus within DSA. The goal of our caucus is to fight for the ideas that can best help build and strengthen the working class and socialist movement on all terrains of struggle, and for a more visible profile within DSA that clarifies our dual members’ affiliation with our politics. The caucus will consist of SA members who are also members of DSA, and who fight for our program of a revolutionary transformation of society along democratic socialist lines. We are taking the step of launching a caucus because revolutionary socialist ideas are becoming more and more essential to the working class, as polarization, the deep political crisis of the Democratic Party, and the absence of a strong independent left political force threatens to open the door to further growth of the far right.
Biden and the Squad That the Democrats are in deep trouble heading into the midterm elections is not debatable. Biden’s poll numbers are in freefall, most particularly among young people. The massive opening for the Republicans this November, whose ranks are dominated by right wingers loyal to the bigoted billionaire Trump, should be of grave concern to the socialist movement. We have commented before on the rightward drift of DSA’s leadership. To be blunt, since Biden’s election, many DSA leaders have provided left cover to Bernie Sanders MARCH 2022
and the Squad, as they have abandoned the program on which they were elected. From #ForceTheVote to the Bowman Affair, DSA leadership failed to confront their endorsed representatives who entered into a doomed compact with the longtime loyal servant of capitalism, Joe Biden. The Squad, operating with the thin Democratic margin in the House, could have used their leverage to force through progressive reforms. As we have argued, there was a huge opportunity for them to fight for pro-working class demands like Medicare For All in the halls of Congress while also helping to mobilize a movement for their program in the streets that DSA could have played a major role in building. Instead of using their power to win concrete victories and build the socialist movement, they limited their activity to being the loyal opposition of the Democratic party in power, and they abandoned their own program. Socialists have every motivation to make a decisive break from the Democrats, firstly because, at its essence, the Democratic Party is a party of and for capitalism that will sell out the working class at any opportunity, but also because it is opening the door to the right and far right to make major gains. We believe that as an immediate step toward a new left party, DSA candidates should run as independent socialist candidates, not Democrats, as Kshama Sawant has done successfully now to win three elections in Seattle.
Massive Opportunities in the Labor Movement The unionization of Starbucks represents a threat to the regime of precarious, low wage jobs on which corporate profits rest, if the drive succeeds through the use of class struggle strategies. There are many hard battles to be won before Starbucks workers have a union contract that wins gains in wages, benefits, and working conditions, but such a victory would send the bosses into panic mode. Unionizing efforts at logistics behemoth Amazon would be an even more serious threat to the capitalist class. After decades when most labor leaders adhered to a policy of concessionary bargaining and avoiding conflict with the bosses, there is a new mood brewing in union halls. In recent months, workers at Kellogg, Nabisco, John Deere, and the Western Washington Carpenters Union voted down tentative agreements pushed by their leadership and went on strike or extended strikes to fight for more. Workers defying concessionary union
BUILDING THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
leadership was an important feature of the “Red for Ed” teachers’ strike wave beginning in West Virginia in 2018. DSA members played a vital role in building and leading several of these teachers’ struggles – a contrast from DSA’s general approach of organizing strike support without taking a position on the questions facing striking workers. Going on strike means entering into an open battle with the employer, and questions of strategy and tactics are paramount. Socialists should not concede strike strategy and tactics to the existing union leadership, but should fight for those steps that are necessary to win and will further the confidence, organization, and political consciousness of workers who move into struggle. The socialist movement needs to have a working knowledge of labor history, and an analysis of the political character of the labor movement so that it can take a position on what tactics will lead to victory for workers in struggle. In an amendment to the main labor resolution that dual DSA/SA members raised at last year’s DSA convention we argued that, “The main barrier to [rebuilding a strong and fighting labor movement] is the majority of the existing labor leadership who run their unions in a top-down fashion with little involvement of the rank-and-file, accept far too many compromises and concessions, are unwilling to lead militant struggle, and give cover and support to the Democratic establishment.” From the ousting of the old guard in the Teamsters national elections, to the multiple rejected tentative agreements of “Striketober,” our analysis from last July proved highly accurate. The socialist movement should be enthusiastically and critically involving itself in labor struggles, providing not just material support and “bodies on the line,” but also arguing for a strategy necessary to win, for labor leaders to take the fight directly to the employers, and for rank-and-file workers to organize to replace their leaders if necessary.
Fighting Oppression In 2020, the biggest mass movement in history exploded onto the streets of America, with millions protesting racist police violence in cities, suburbs, and small towns across the country. Thousands of DSA members were undoubtedly out in the streets, but DSA as an organization offered no substantial socialist leadership in the BLM movement, which ultimately won very little in the way of tangible gains. This year, it is likely that the right-wing Supreme Court will strike a serious blow at the right to an abortion with the Dobbs case,
and it is possible that the Court will entirely dismantle Roe v. Wade. With the liberal women’s organizations doing little to nothing to organize a movement in the streets to defend abortion rights, DSA has an opening, and the responsibility, to play a leading role in building a movement and linking demands for abortion rights to the fight for Medicare For All and the broader struggle against capitalism. A robust intervention by an organized force like DSA could be the difference between a historically demoralizing defeat to women’s rights and an inspiring new fight against the right wing and the Demcoratic establishment with its long record of broken promises. Part of why we are launching our caucus is to promote the need for DSA to take up this historic fight at a crucial moment, and we want to help in this struggle, arguing for a movementbuilding class struggle approach. Young people and workers are no less angry today at income inequality, climate destruction, racist and sexist oppression, and hyper exploitation of workers than they were during Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. Demands like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal are now widely recognized and popular, the political establishment is even more severely discredited, and unions are more popular than ever. What’s missing is working class leadership that bases itself on a class struggle approach. Leadership from a sizable left force like DSA, clearly putting forward the need for a multi-racial, multi-gender working class movement to take on the billionaire class, including Biden and the corporate Democrats, could have a dramatic impact on politics in the U.S., and by extension, globally. The Socialist Alternative Caucus aims to put forward the case for a DSA in 2022 that runs its candidates independently of the Democratic Party, that takes the initiative to build a coordinated movement to defend abortion rights, and that intervenes in the labor movement with a class struggle approach that aims our fire squarely at the bosses and exposes union leaders who have a sellout approach. What is needed is a DSA that actively engages with movements as they develop in society, with a left, pro-working class program that connects workers’ and youth’s day-to-day demands to the need to transform society along democratic socialist lines. We look forward to continuing to discuss our perspective of the tasks and opportunities facing the socialist movement with our fellow DSA members. We encourage DSA members who agree with our ideas to join the Socialist Alternative Caucus. J
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ECONOMY
LURCHING TOWARDS NEW PHASE OF ECONOMIC CRISIS up altogether on dealing with COVID. But as much as ordinary people understandably want to move on with their lives, there is no “return to normal.” On top of this the war breaking out in the Ukraine will have massive economic consequences including higher energy prices globally. What is being revealed is a deeper crisis of the capitalist economic and social order for which there is no straightforward “fix.”
The Scourge of Inflation A high level of inflation erodes the value of wages and savings and puts enormous strain on working people, especially the poor. Inflation has now spread into a wider range of goods including energy, housing, and food. It is estimated that the average U.S. household is losing $250 a month due to inflation. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has had to admit that the current inflationary spike is more than a temporary phenomenon. It is clear that the immediate cause is supply chain problems. This takes a number of forms, such as the months-long back up of container ships at the ports of LA and Long Beach in Southern California, a shortage of truckers to get the goods from ports to their destination, and insufficient production of semiconductor chips for auto production. A “debate” has broken out in the establishment about whether the real cause of the current inflation is the supply chain issues or the stimulus measures taken to restart the economy in 2020 and early 2021. It is certainly true that part of the context for the current problems is the trillions pumped into the financial markets and the lesser sums spent on unemployment insurance and the checks people were sent. But the bulk of the money sent to ordinary people went to pay rent, bills, and groceries (i.e. to just survive). The child support tax credits, which have now been stopped, cut child poverty by one-third. What the right wants you to believe is that somehow putting a bit of money in people’s pockets in the middle of a catastrophe sent everything out of whack. Tom Crean, New York City A year ago, the U.S. and world economy were pulling out of the biggest slump since the 1930s, triggered by the pandemic. Nevertheless, capitalist commentators were quite optimistic about the near term. This was for three reasons: the rollout of vaccines promising a “return to normal”, the prospect of a strong economic rebound due to unprecedented stimulus contributing to pent up demand, and Biden taking office. When inflation began to rise, we were told this would be a temporary phenomenon due to snarled supply chains and would soon work itself out. A year later there is far less optimism. Inflation in the U.S. is running at 7.5%, a 40-year high. Supply chains are still not working properly. The danger of the economy tipping into recession is very real. And while mass vaccination did indeed save a lot of lives, the fact is more people died in the pandemic under Biden in 2021 than in 2020 under Trump. Now, the establishment is increasingly throwing up its hands and giving
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Bosses Fear the Class Struggle While the central bankers strive to maintain what they consider a normal, “healthy” level of inflation, they fear high inflation. This is partly because high inflation is very disruptive to the economy generally. But they almost always point to the alleged danger of rising wages leading to a “wage price spiral” where wage increases are “passed onto” consumers. But in the fine print, more serious analysts admit this is basically bogus. In fact, as Karl Marx pointed out long ago, rising wages generally cut into the level of profits and do not fundamentally affect the price of goods which is determined by the value they embody and market conditions. Indeed some unions have won wage increases in the past period and many employers are raising wages to keep or attract workers. But despite this, overall wages are not keeping pace with inflation and workers are therefore experiencing a pay cut. What the capitalists really fear is that inflation will push workers to get organized and demand not just
wage increases but a shift in the balance of power in the workplace. They fear that inflation, combined with the enormous discontent expressed in the “great resignation” will help spur the class struggle and social unrest as it did in the 1970s.
The Next Phase of Crisis In order to deal with the threat of inflation, the Fed is preparing to ramp up interest rates from the virtually zero level they are at now with four increases this year and possibly more. Raising interest rates will increase the cost of borrowing and slow down economic activity. It will make everyone’s debts more expensive to repay. In the current fragile economic situation, rapid rate increases could easily tip the economy into recession. A rapid rise in interest rates in the U.S. will have even more serious consequences in many poor countries where it will worsen a growing debt crisis, especially as a large portion of debt is denominated in dollars. The Fed is also winding down its asset purchasing program which pumped tens of billions per month into the financial markets. This, and higher interest rates, represent the beginning of the end of the “era of easy money.” The “easy money” policies began in the wake of the 2008 crash and never fully went away. What is striking is that the capitalists did not use all this capital to make productive investments. Rather they largely plowed it into the financial markets and reinforced their character as a global casino inflating a series of bubbles. These are now set to burst, including the massive debt crisis in the Chinese property sector and cryptocurrency. For forty years, neoliberal policies of privatization and attacking workers’ living standards helped to prop up profits. When that started not to work anymore, the policy makers turned to easy money. Now that has hit the wall as well.
No Way Out Under Capitalism The establishment is lurching from one approach to the other, but none will fix the underlying problems. When the next recession comes, it will be in the context of high inflation and rising interest rates. The scale of stimulus we saw in 2020 was predicated on near-zero interest rates and low inflation. This time around any meaningful help for working people will require serious social struggle. Socialist Alternative has been pointing out for the past two years that capitalism can no longer find a stable position for profit-making. It is a system in rapid decline, facing a series of crises of its own making including the ongoing global pandemic, the worsening climate crisis and now the beginning of war in the Ukraine. It is increasingly parasitic, unable to offer society any way forward towards a better future. Rather, for young people especially, it offers low wages, no real access to health care, and endless precarity. It continuously breeds racism and sexism. The profound loss of credibility of its institutions and the complete failure of the “liberal savior” Biden who sought to evoke FDR are opening the door wide to the right and far right. Capitalism has no answers, but we do: working people must take the helm and begin building a socialist future. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
HOW WORKERS FOUGHT BACK AGAINST INFLATION IN THE 1970S Tony Wilsdon, Seattle Prices keep going up and working class people and the poor, with few savings to protect them, are being hit the hardest. Lessons on how to fight back can be learned from the last big spike in inflation in the 1960s and 1970s which caused real pain for workers and resulted in an explosion in strikes. One of the important results of these struggles was the introduction of Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) in labor contracts which meant wages automatically increased when the cost of living increased. COLAs then spread into broader society. There was also a growth in size and breadth of the labor movement as new sectors of workers like teachers, other public sector workers, and nurses formed unions. The driving force behind this was an explosive growth of rank and file worker opposition to their union leaders who were content with their privileged positions and refused to fight. The first spike of inflation happened in the second half of the 1960s with prices rising by over 5%. This was the result of the U.S. government printing dollars to pay for the Vietnam War and social programs at home. Without any protections, this resulted in absolute cuts in their living standards.
Overcoming Bureaucratic Union Leadership Society was already being convulsed by the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war movement. Along with radicalized youth joining unionized workplaces, there was a determination to struggle against the brutal working conditions in U.S. factories which had become hell holes as a result of corporate-driven workplace speed-ups. This all caught the union leaders by surprise, who had totally failed to stand up to management on the shop floor. After World War II, labor leaders of the AFL-CIO union federation had made a pact with big business. In exchange for corporations accepting the right of unions to exist and to guarantee decent wages, they traded away the right to contest working conditions on the shop floor to factory owners. MARCH 2022
As part of this pact, union leaders promised to maintain a disciplined workplace free of strikes. This meant kicking communists and radicals out of unions. They also agreed to not assert their power and influence directly in the political realm as an independent force, as had happened in most industrial countries by building workers or socialist parties. Instead, they trusted the thoroughly corporate Democratic and Republican parties to defend the interests of workers. This was business unionism in its purest form. It came into collision with angry workers who fought back against a brutal regime in the workplace as wages were being eroded
service, effectively shutting down commerce across the country. The postal workers won the right to bargain with the government and within the next year a new united postal workers union, the APWU, was founded. It won a significant pay increase, faster step increases, a COLA, and ended the practice of postal workers being forced to sit in a ’swing room’ unpaid, while waiting for work. Another dramatic strike was the trucker wildcat strike in April 1970. Angry at the poor pay raise negotiated by their Teamster union leadership, Teamster drivers in 16 cities in the Midwest went on wildcat strike. The government and big business threw
HISTORY recession in 1973-74, inflation rose to new heights in the second half of the 1970s driven in part by war in the Middle East and the quadrupling of the price of oil. This set off a new wave of strikes affecting almost every sector of the economy. This strike wave should not be viewed separately from other social movements that crashed through the U.S. at this time. Most important was the radicalization of youth and wider society due to the civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and women’s movements. Women, Black workers, and young workers generally were on the frontlines not only in strikes, but in struggles by unorganized workers to win dignity and higher living standards in the workplace. The labor movement was energized and partially revitalized by this new generation of radicalized workers who refused to accept the timid response of union leaders. Black workers played a key role having been radicalized through experience on the front lines in Vietnam and fighting in the civil rights movement. Restricted to the most dangerous jobs in the auto and steel plants, they provided a backbone to the struggle of workers in these industries. The 1970s was also the height of the women’s movement. This experience spurred women to organize in the workplace. Women workers were predominant in new organized drives including teachers, other public sector employees, nurses, phone workers, and grocery store clerks. Confronted by the failure of the existing union leadership to lead struggles, workers moved to replace them with a more fighting leadership. In the Teamsters, UPSurge was formed in 1976 to fight for a decent contract for Teamster members. UPSurge merged with Teamster for Democratic Union (TDU) in 1980. A decade of campaigning work resulted in the voting out of the entrenched bureaucracy, with election to national president of reformer Ron Carey and a majority TDUbacked executive board in 1991.
Lessons for Today
by the swift rise in prices.
Postal Workers and Truckers Strikes of 1970 The year 1970 saw a massive 5,716 strikes, involving three million workers. The most dramatic expression of this was the postal workers’ strike. Incensed by Congress’s decision on March 12, 1970 to give itself a massive 41% pay raise, but only a 5.4% raise for postal workers, New York City letter carriers walked off the job, initiating the largest wildcat strike in U.S. history which lasted eight days. The strike spread like wildfire across the country, involving 200,000 postal workers. Even though it was illegal for postal workers to strike, the strike paralyzed the postal
everything at the strike to defeat it, including the courts and military. Acting Teamster President Fitzsimmons sent telegrams to 300 locals, urging members to return to work. But the strike held firm. After 12 weeks, employers in Chicago buckled, broke with the national agreement, and signed an agreement with a wage increase two-thirds higher than that agreed by Teamsters and management. Both these strikes demonstrated a return to the traditions of the 1930s, as workers demonstrated their real power – to stop production and force the employers to settle.
Mid-1970s Inflation fell in the early 1970s. However, after the ending of the global economic
There are important lessons for workers and activists from the events of the 1970s. By building fighting unions workers were able to defend their living standards with widespread introduction of COLAs. A central part of their successes was the influential work of socialists and other radical activists who were at the center of many of these struggles. There are many parallels for the movement today. We are also coming out of a surge of social movements, and the radicalizing effect of the Bernie campaigns. Already, we see the Great Resignation, increased support for labor unions and an uptick in strikes, including rejection by rank and file workers of poor contracts negotiated by union leaders. Today, as in the 70s, it will take radical action by rank and file workers and the development of a fighting, and socialist leadership to win real gains. J
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STARBUCKS HAS BUSTED UNIONS SINCE 1987. HOW CAN WE WIN THIS TIME? Matt Smith, Seattle
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he most important unionization campaign in recent memory is sweeping the country. Workers at more than 100 Starbucks stores in at least 26 states have formed rankand-file organizing committees and filed for union elections. Two stores in Buffalo, NY have already won recognition for their union, Starbucks Workers United. From Texas to Missouri to Washington, workers at dozens of stores are fighting to join them. If Starbucks workers succeed, it will be the most significant private-sector organizing victory for labor since auto giants like Ford and General Motors were unionized in the 1930s and 1940s. A victory at Starbucks would give confidence to workers at other megacorporations like Amazon and McDonalds who want to fight back against their own exploitative bosses.
Will Starbucks Bargain “In Good Faith”? Starbucks has now begun contract negotiations with unionized workers in Buffalo. The company claims it will approach these negotiations “in good faith” but in the same breath, it continues to escalate its national campaign against the union. Just this week, the company fired seven workers at a Memphis store in clear retaliation for their union support. Starbucks will not bargain in good
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faith; instead, it will fight tooth-and-nail to destroy the union. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the company’s extensive record of union-busting and bad faith negotiation with workers over the last 40 years. To beat Starbucks, we need to know what we’re up against.
Starbucks: Busting Unions Since 1987 The New Boss in Seattle When former CEO Howard Schultz bought Starbucks in 1987, it was with the clear intention of turning it into a national brand. But, in his view, he inherited a “problem” from the founders of the company: Starbucks workers in Seattle had organized a union with UFCW Local 1001 and already signed its first contract with the company two years earlier, winning gains that included healthcare for parttime workers. In his first act as CEO, Schultz set about destroying the union. Schultz immediately reopened negotiations and began undermining the union contract. During negotiations, he refused to offer any new benefits to workers. Instead he demanded poison pills: cuts to healthcare, removal of “just cause” protections, and the right to change working conditions unilaterally. Despite these outrageous demands from
the company, the union continued bargaining. They called for a customer boycott to put pressure on the company, but failed to organize a fightback among the workers themselves. Meanwhile, Starbucks management was busy stoking anti-union sentiment among store employees. The company quickly found a worker, Daryl Moore, who had opposed unionization from the start and became the face of the anti-union campaign. With the help of management and their anti-union lawyers, the employee organized a petition for “decertification” to officially disband the union. With workers divided, negotiations going nowhere, and anti-union propaganda everywhere, workers voted to decertify the union at Starbucks stores in late 1987. The warehouse and roasting plant followed a few years later, decertifying the union in 1992. In 1987, when Schultz bought the thenunionized Starbucks, the company had fewer than 20 stores. With the defeat of the union, the company prepared for expansion. In just three years from 1990 to 1992, Starbucks opened 115 new stores and debuted itself on the stock market in 1992. The path was cleared for the company to exploit workers on a national scale and for Starbucks shareholders to make billions. Early Gains in British Colubia End in Defeat In the mid-1990s, another union took hold in British Columbia, but Starbucks eventually broke it using many of the same tactics. At first, though, the union saw some success. During their first contract fight, the workers organized a “work-to-rule” action, which included a refusal of overtime. This action hit the company’s profits and, while stopping short of a full strike, ultimately won them concessions including a wage increase. This first contract covered only 12 of the company’s 50 stores in British Columbia, but Starbucks extended the contract benefits to all non-union workers in the province. This should have been a victory for the union, demonstrating the power of collective action to win gains for all workers, but the company used it as an opportunity to claim credit and convince unorganized workers that they didn’t need a union.
In a repeat of the events in Seattle, the company attacked the contract in subsequent negotiations and refused to offer further concessions. And again like in Seattle, the union did not sufficiently organize the rank and file. It limped along for 11 years, never made significant gains, and collapsed in 2007. Starbucks Goes to War in Manhattan Again in the mid-2000s, workers attempted to organize a union affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and centered in New York City. This time, the company showed the full lengths to which it will go to prevent unionization. Over the course of the campaign, Starbucks racked up 30 labor law violations. The company illegally packed stores with known anti-union employees, forbade workers from talking about the union at work, and, in a prelude of the company’s recent actions in Memphis, illegally fired at least three workers in retaliation for their role in organizing the union. The IWW challenged the retaliatory firings by filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), but the process took months. Sarah Bender, for example, was the first worker to face retaliation in May 2005. The NLRB eventually ruled in Bender’s favor, charging Starbucks with illegal retaliation, and the company was forced to rehire her. But this decision happened in March 2006, 10 months after Bender’s termination. By that time, the union campaign was already in its downswing and the damage had been done. Other labor law violations took years to go through the courts – the bulk of Starbucks’ illegal behavior was not ruled on by the NLRB until 2008, nearly 3 years after the fact. The union campaign ultimately failed without even coming to a vote.
Starbucks’ Union-Busting Today Starbucks has now reopened its anti-union playbook in response to the organizing efforts by Starbucks Workers United, and the company is applying many familiar tactics. In store after store, management bombards workers with anti-union text messages, uses “captive audience” meetings to make workers listen to anti-union propaganda, and mandates two-on-one or even three-on-one meetings with management to dissuade workers from voting “yes” on the union. In Buffalo, Starbucks sent more than 100 managers to intimidate workers. As one barista described it: “They really stopped just a sentence short of saying, ‘If you join this union, there’s a chance you could go to jail.’” This month, the company fired seven pro-union workers in Memphis and a leading worker in Buffalo, in a blatant act of retaliation. The company is clearly worried at the speed and success of the Starbucks Workers United campaign. But Starbucks has decades of experience in S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
stopping unions at its stores, and it has shown that it is willing to do what it takes, including illegal actions, to stop this union. Workers will need to wage a determined fightback to win.
Starbucks Workers United must organize independently based on their power as workers, knowing that Starbucks will only concede what they are forced to.
Fighting For The Union
2. Make strong demands.
So what lessons can we draw from the unionization efforts by Starbucks workers over the last 40 years that will help to win a union today? Three lessons stand out. 1. Starbucks is not a “partner.” Starbucks management will make every argument it can think of for why workers should oppose a union. The company will argue that the union is unnecessary or actively harmful to the workplace. Ultimately, all of these arguments are disingenuous. As a corporation, Starbucks is concerned about one thing: profit. Last year, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson got a 39% pay raise to over $20 million, and the company’s revenue increased by 24%. Workers have not seen anything close to a comparable wage increase. The company destroyed the union in 1987 to clear the way for mega-expansion and mega-profits. It has busted unions in every decade since, using illegal tactics, including retaliatory firing. It has lobbied against proworker policies from the $15 minimum wage to the Employee Free Choice Act. The company sees worker organization as a threat to profits, because it understands that when workers are organized, we have enormous power to demand better wages and working conditions.
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he following article was written by a Starbucks worker in New York City. I’ve worked as a barista at Starbucks for three years and have been inspired by the wave of stores fighting for unionization – this is something we need in all stores across the company. A union is the workers coming together in an organized way to fight for the things that we need the most. What exactly are the kinds of things that we can win with a union?
$20 Hourly Base Pay Tied To Inflation Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson saw his compensation shoot up to $20.4 million last year. When was the last time Kevin Johnson worked a short-staffed floor during happy hour? The truth is, he wouldn’t have made a dollar if we weren’t putting in the hours, and in return we deserve a living wage. There should be no reason for me to be putting in this kind of effort and still be worrying about where my rent money will come from. We have the proof that the money is there – two years ago we were given an extra $3 an hour in hazard pay to entice people back to work during a pandemic. Now the pandemic is still here, but that three dollars is nowhere to be seen. At the same time, the cost of living has been going up dramatically. Starbucks, like businesses everywhere, is planning more price increases this year in the face of inflation. A rise in the cost of living means that our paychecks are worth less than they were a year ago. How much we are paid should be tied to the rise in living costs. If Kevin Johnson can take home $20 million, MARCH 2022
unions has become ossified and conservative. Union leaders have avoided making specific demands on employers, and in many cases they have abandoned a fighting approach altogether. This has played right into the bosses’ hands, critically weakening the union movement and leading to a series of failures, including the past “We have to rememfailed efforts to organize ber that our power Starbucks. This is why it’s so important that Starbucks doesn’t come from unionization efforts are driven lawyers, negotiators, by rank-and-file leadership or clever arguments to who can chart a new course management. It comes for the labor movement. A key task for organizing from our power as committees will be determinworkers to disrupt the ing which demands are most profits of our bosses important to the workers at their store, and then chartand build solidarity ing a path to winning those with other working demands by first voting for people. Power at the the union.
The lack of fighting demands to improve workers’ living and working conditions was a key factor in the collapse of support for the unions in Seattle in 1987 and British Columbia in the 1990s. After Starbucks management stonewalled the union in contract negotiations, workers lost sight of what the union could do for them. Without strong public demands and a bargaining table comes willingness to fight for 3. Courts and negotiathem, workers saw no from power outside.” tors won’t save us; class reason to fight for the struggle gets the goods. union and ultimately voted to disband it. The experience of the failed IWW organizing We should not fall into the bosses’ trap campaign at Starbucks in 2005 shows exactly of seeing the union as a “third party”. It is why workers can’t rely on the NLRB and the not a service brought in from outside – the legal process alone to deliver justice. In that union is the workers acting collectively in campaign, it took over 10 months for the first their own interest. fired worker to receive a hearing. 10 months or The reason that this anti-union argument even 3 months from now will be too late. is effective is because, unfortunately, over the Starbucks has infinite resources to fight last 50 years, the elected leadership of many workers through the courts and the NLRB.
“WHAT CAN WE FIGHT FOR WITH A UNION?” then we can fight for and win a $20 an hour starting wage tied to inflation. This needs to be further scaled to seniority – our past raises shouldn’t be erased in the process – and pretip of course. (By the way, when are we getting tipped on card transactions? It’s 2022, Kevin.)
benefits to everyone working at Starbucks. High quality health care – including mental health care and gender-affirming health care – has to be understood to be an essential part of what we expect from the bosses for the fortunes we’ve made them.
An End To Benefits Audits – High Quality Health Care For All
Guaranteed Hours and Fully Staffed Stores
The most important thing about working at Starbucks to me and what has kept me there for years is the health benefits. Especially when it comes to gender affirming care, the plans on offer are already above industry standard. At this point we should expect nothing less, but why is it gatekept behind an audit? As it stands, we need to maintain an average of 20 hours a week to qualify, but especially during certain seasons hours are often cut with the excuse that it’s for the needs of the store. When I take a needed vacation I’m put in a position of having to do the math on my hours. Have things been tight at my store recently? Have I already only been getting 17 hours on the schedule some weeks? If I take a week off to enjoy my life, am I going to risk disqualifying for health benefits when the audit period ends? We work hard for this company and should never be put in a position to ask questions like these. We need to push for the extension of health
When it comes time for a cut in hours, the phrase I’ve heard now from multiple managers is that it’s “for the needs of the store.” Starbucks made $5 billion in profit last year and to keep increasing that they’ll squeeze every last dollar they can out of our pay. Slow business seasons should be the cost of doing business for the company, not for the workers. We should never be the ones paying the difference in income. We need to push for guaranteed hours that, paired with a $20 base hourly pay, equal a living wage. When a new employee is hired and they’re told they’ll be given 30 hours a week, they need to be given 30 hours a week, not 25, not 20, not 10. It’s time that the needs of the baristas are given the same importance as “the needs of the store.”
No More Retaliatory Firings
According to independent reporting, Starbucks is spending as much as $132,000 per day on union-busting lawyers from the anti-union law firm Littler Mendelsohn, and the company’s top legal counsel receives a salary of $5.3 million. Starbucks doesn’t care if they ultimately lose a case at the NLRB – the point is to embroil the workers in a legal battle that undermines organizing. If the company refuses to reinstate the workers in Memphis and Buffalo, or if the NLRB’s general council fails to secure an injunction in federal court, workers have to be prepared to escalate our struggle. We should discuss using walkouts or strikes to demand the rehiring of fired workers, calling on the labor movement to join us in solidarity. This is something that the unions in Seattle, British Columbia, and New York ultimately failed to do, and an important reason why they lost. At every step, we have to remember that our power doesn’t come from lawyers, negotiators, or clever arguments to management. It comes from our power as workers to disrupt the profits of our bosses and build solidarity with other working people. In other words, “power at the bargaining table comes from power outside.” If we are going to win (and keep) a historic union at Starbucks, it will take militant solidarity among unions, socialists, and all working people. Starbucks workers must lead the way with a fighting, class struggle approach. Socialist Alternative will continue to support the fight in whatever way we can, and we urge all working people to do the same. J
the idea that the company is seeking to “nurture the human spirit.” It needs to be clear that when it comes to the needs of their workers, the first thing they are going to look to nurture is their bottom line. We have already seen an instance of illegal retaliatory action taken against workers trying to assert themselves through a union drive by firing the entire seven-worker organizing committee in Memphis and a lead organizer in Buffalo. When workers organize across this company there should be no space for any of us to lose our jobs without going through the union. When this does happen, the attack on one of us will be met with a direct response from all of us. Let’s make the old labor saying a reality: an injury to one is an injury to all.
Winning Union Recognition and Beyond This should in no way be seen as a definitive list of what we need to improve our working conditions. We should be asking our coworkers that question, discussing out the best ideas, and making it clear that this is why we need a union, because the only way we are going to win what we need is by fighting together. The way we are going to fight together is going to be by winning a union across every store in this company and, beyond that, winning a strong first contract. To do that we need to be concrete about what this is all for. Starbucks is one of the most successful companies in the entire world and that is because of Starbucks workers. It’s time we demand more. J
Corporate messaging is constantly pushing
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VOTING RIGHTS
Gerrymandering Threatens Voting Rights: How Do We Fight Back? Rob Darakjian, Los Angeles As the 2022 midterm elections begin to loom on the political horizon, millions of voters in states across the country could find themselves in a newly-gerrymandered district. In February, the Supreme Court overruled a lower court decision in the state of Alabama, effectively maintaining an electoral map that would weaken the weight of Black voters by eliminating the one district in which they constitute a majority. It is unlikely the state of Alabama will be able to appeal this ruling before the elections, all but ensuring that the gerrymandered map will be the one that is used in the upcoming midterms. This is just the latest example of the broader trend of limiting the de facto right to vote for tens of millions of Americans that has been spearheaded primarily by the Republican Party in recent years. In the 2020 elections, only 61 out of 435 contested Congressional seats were deemed competitive. Less than two months into 2022, already the Republicans are expected to pick up five more seats, due to gerrymandered redistricting alone.
Voting Rights Under Attack Along with his Build Back Better Plan, the Biden administration took office championing two pieces of legislation to defend voting rights, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The first would have set up automatic voter registration, expanded early voting periods, ensured more transparency in political donations, and limited partisan drawing of congressional districts. The second would have restored a key provision from the 1965 Voting Rights Act that was annulled by the Supreme Court in 2013: requiring that the Federal Department of Justice approve changes to voter maps in states and municipalities with a documented history of suppressing the vote based on race. Both were defeated within months of each other last year, due to the united opposition of the Republican Senate, aided by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. It’s widely accepted among political analysts that voter suppression benefits Republicans over Democrats. This process of gerrymandering ahead of the 2022 midterms is only one part of a recent push to undermine voting rights. In the year 2021, over 440 bills with provisions restricting voting access were introduced in 49 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. At least 19 states passed 34 bills
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restricting access to voting last year. A great deal of the momentum from the right wing to pass these restrictive laws comes from the continued fear-mongering around voter fraud and perpetuation of the “Big Lie” – the idea that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump in favor of Biden. Besides undermining the crucial democratic right to vote, gerrymandering and voter suppression have dire political consequences. Where Republicans eradicate virtually any competition from Democrats, they only have to worry about winning a primary – which means catering to the farthest-right elements of their base. This month in Texas, one of the most deeply red states in the U.S., Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to investigate gender-affirming care for transgender children as “child abuse” in a clear appeal to this far-right base.
rely on the promises and alleged “goodwill” of the Biden administration. The roughly 20 million Americans who joined protests following George Floyd’s murder have seen what follows when the responsibility for reform is handed to Democratic politicians – nothing. Whether consciously or not, they have directed the energy and enthusiasm of millions down a dead-end road. Hopefully Bernie Sanders and the Squad can choose to become allies of a movement to overcome voter suppression, but at this stage they cannot be trusted to build it. While the task of fighting back against the combined weight of the establishments of both parties, the courts, and the administrative apparatuses of the state can seem overwhelming, there is plenty of precedent, both recent and historical, to give us confidence that it can be achieved.
Are Democrats Fighting Back?
Turning The Tide
The question arises: If it’s in the Democratic Party’s own interest to expand voter rights, why have they been so ineffective at fighting for it? The Democratic Party has totally failed to fight for anything that would benefit the lives of ordinary Americans since they took office. They’ve used every excuse in the book (the Senate parliamentarian, the filibuster, etc.) to avoid a struggle against Republicans and the conservative wing of their own party. If the Democrats fought for voting rights half as hard as they fought to get rid of Bernie in the 2020 presidential primaries, we’d have won by now. The Democrats are allergic to anything that smells of a real movement because they know full well any collective struggle of working people will ultimately threaten their rule. The other side of the equation is that the Democratic Party is not all that interested in winning over young people or people of color to their voter roll. They are increasingly seeking to court suburban and middle class voters away from the Republican Party. As Chuck Schumer put it back in the summer of 2016, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs…” This may give us a partial explanation for why they’re not really trying all that hard. To the disservice of the entire working class, the left in Congress has similarly not put up a fight. Bernie Sanders and the Squad could have used their positions and authority to create lasting, independent organizations to mobilize and fight for progressive change. Instead of this, they chose to play the parliamentary game, to trade favors and
The universal right to vote was not the product of the enlightened thinking of the Founding Fathers. Each step in the expansion of American democracy was won because ordinary people organized to struggle and win it. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was won, not bestowed, because thousands of students, community activists, union militants, and church leaders organized sit-ins, voter registration drives, demonstrations, and conferences which together constituted the Civil Rights Movement. The subjective willingness to stand up and fight back this most recent wave of voter suppression exists. What is needed is a genuine, mass struggle to defend and extend democratic rights. Beyond defensive struggles against racist voter suppression, we need to fight offensive battles to win voting rights for the millions who are disenfranchised. Winning and retaining the right to vote is a critical task for the workers movement, but it has to be combined with a struggle for a political alternative worth voting for. Neither the Democratic nor Republican Parties have the interests of the working class in mind as they toss back and forth control in Washington. We need a new, mass, working class political party that is fully independent of establishment politics and big business. A new, working class party should fight for universal voting rights alongside a program of demands that will improve the lives of ordinary working people on a class basis, and it should use the methods of mass action and class struggle which have been key to every progressive step taken in our history. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2022
WE NEED MASS ACTION TO DEFEND ABORTION RIGHTS Socialist Alternative Editorial
Women in Texas have been living under the shadow of Senate Bill 8 for six months now. This bill criminalizes virtually all abortions starting after five to six weeks of pregnancy. This is before many would even know that they’re pregnant. Rather than being enforced by the state, the ban works by allowing private citizens to sue providers, patients, or anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion for a fine of up to $10,000, putting enforcement directly in the hands of the sexist “prolife” right-wing. There are no exceptions for pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest, and it has been called the most brutally restrictive abortion law in U.S. history since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision ensured the right to abortion in 1973. Abortions have dropped by 60% in the state of Texas, as thousands have fled the state to access care elsewhere, which has been very costly for working class women. Others have been forced to continue a pregnancy against their will. While this shameful crackdown dealt an unprecedented blow to reproductive rights, it is just one of over 1,300 laws passed in states across the country since Roe that have chipped away at abortion access for working-class women in particular.
Abortion Rights Under Attack This spring, the majority-conservative U.S. Supreme Court will decide on a case that could deal an even deadlier blow to abortion rights in the U.S. This is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could result in allowing bans on abortions after just 15 weeks. If the court decides in favor of Dobbs, this would mean that Roe v. Wade, the defining victory of the radical mass women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s, could be virtually nullified by the time of its 50-year anniversary in 2023. This is, of course, unless MARCH 2022
there is a massive fightback to stop it. A nationwide day of action in protest of SB8 drew tens of thousands of people out on October 2 last year, but a widespread fightback to defend abortion rights has not yet materialized. Much of the responsibility for this lies with the traditional women’s organizations, overwhelmingly NGOs and nonprofits closely aligned with the Democratic Party’s approach. During Trump’s presidency, as he was handcrafting a reactionary Supreme Court with the distinct purpose of overturning Roe, they did virtually nothing to organize a fightback. They turned the second Women’s March, which could’ve been a launching pad for a more sustained struggle, into a “march to the polls” where all we were instructed to do was vote for the nearest Democrat. Every election cycle, the Democrats campaign on being the “pro choice” party who are going to defend Roe v. Wade. But now that the Democrats are in power at the federal level, they have done nothing whatsoever to fight the attacks from either Republican state legislatures or the Supreme Court.
It Took a Movement to Win Roe, It’ll Take a Movement to Defend It As the Dobbs decision draws closer, it is critical that we take inspiration from victorious women’s struggles internationally and from history to build a mass movement to defend and extend reproductive rights. Senate Bill 8 went into effect in September just as the struggle for abortion rights
reached a milestone in Mexico, when the criminalization of abortion was declared unconstitutional. This victory would not have been possible on the basis of relying on the courts themselves or the political establishment. It took years of building organizations, a cross-border Green Tide movement, and mass mobilizations to apply pressure from below. The same was true of the victorious
movement in Argentina that won abor tion rights at the beginning of 2020. This unrelenting, movement-driven approach will be necessary in the U.S. and everywhere there are ongoing attacks on women’s reproductive freedom. If there’s anything we’ve learned in recent years, it’s that movements in one country or region can spread like wildfire. This is especially the case when there is a victory that
shows the path forward to fight the various forms of sexist oppression that women face all over the world.
Where is the U.S. Women’s Movement? In the U.S, ever since the ground shaking developments of the Women’s March and the #MeToo movement in 2017 and 2018, the women’s movement has been on the defensive, even as the pandemic severely worsened the crisis facing women. And while girlboss feminists and traditional women’s organizations have done little to build a decisive fightback, the forces exist to protect abortion rights and fight harrassment and violence against women exist among. They are to be found in schools where, since returning in person, high school and college students organized a wave of demonstrations and walkouts fighting against sexual harrassment and assault. They are to be found in the labor movement where women have played an outsized role in the revival of the class struggle. We saw this from the Red for Ed teachers strikes, to a 9 month-long nurses strike in Worcester MA last year, which began on International Women’s Day 2021. Just months ago during the Washington Carpenters strike, even in the historically-conservative building trades, a rank-and-file group pushed for the union leadership to act on sexual harrassment and assault on construction sites. These forces are showing they are ready to fight, and it’s workers and youth that are going to be key in leading the new women’s struggles needed to push back on attacks from the right. As the right ramps up their attacks on women and queer people in particular, the rest of the working class should be on alert. If they are able to land a decisive blow against reproductive rights, they will not stop there. Their brutality will reach all corners of the multi-racial, multi-gender working class and because of this we will need a unified movement to beat them back. March 8 is International Women’s Day, a day that was born out of strikes, marches, and revolutionary struggle. It will take nothing less than these same tactics to fight attacks on bodily autonomy, and we must set our sights on fighting for a future where gender violence, control of womens bodies, and all forms of capitalist oppression are things of the past. J
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COVID-19
THE COVID CULTURE WAR DEADLY SIDE EFFECTS OF AN IRRATIONAL SYSTEM Grace Fors, Dallas While the trajectory of the pandemic itself has had schools, hospitals and workplaces swinging back and forth between cautious optimism and immediate disaster with the spread of new variants, one constant has been the unabated growth of political and social instability resulting from pandemicrelated polarization. Polarization was severe enough before, but the pandemic changed the way people see the world. For many people, the outrage has been directed at the bosses getting richer while working people bore the brunt of the pandemic’s cost. They have quit their jobs, organized in their workplace for COVID safety, or even formed new unions or gone on strike. For others, the toll of the volatility has driven them into the arms of a right wing movement that was all too prepared to capitalize on their anxiety and frustration. The impact of this phenomenon on the political landscape has become impossible to ignore. Vaccination status is now considered a better predictor of voting patterns than any other metric, including demographics and previous voting history.
Bungled Response Opens the Door Trust in government was already low at the beginning of 2020, but at first, perceptions about the pandemic were significantly less divided. Polarization actually fell in the early months of the COVID outbreak in the U.S. There was little controversy over maskwearing and social distancing. The majority of the blame for today’s crisis lies with Trump: as then-president, he first began stoking the flames of pandemic denial in February 2020 in a transparent attempt to deflect from his administration’s incompetent response. With his vast sway over his base and rapidly intensifying claims, demonstrations against COVID restrictions kicked off in April 2020 and haven’t stopped since. The depth and severity of the pandemic forced the Trump administration to make major concessions, like the federal eviction moratorium, expanded unemployment, and stimulus payments – but the political damage was done, the groundwork laid for worsening polarization and the unchecked growth of
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COVID conspiracy theories. By the time long-awaited vaccines rolled out, a contentious presidential election had placed the pandemic at the center of a partisan battle. Mask-wearing became a political statement. What’s worse, crucial pandemic relief was expiring. Uncertainty, distress, and anxiety proved the perfect recipe for an uncontrollable flood of misinformation. Plenty of ordinary people had genuine questions about the vaccine. But with the already depleted credibility of authorities like the CDC, there was no one to provide good answers. It wasn’t difficult for a curious online search to lead to a viral videos exposing “The REAL TRUTH,” sending countless susceptible people down a “plandemic”-5G-QAnon rabbit hole of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine home recipes. So who actually gained the ear of the vaccine hesitant? Tucker Carlson, Infowars, and the high-profile influencers who make up the “Disinformation Dozen,” who were prepared to capitalize on feeding their skepticism. Opposition to mask and vaccine mandates has been one of the most consistent factors driving protests since Biden took office. Hundreds of protests took place in the early months of Biden’s presidency around vaccines and mask mandates. Where the left failed to fight for democratically decided safety protocols in the workplace, the right was able to swoop in and make the issue about an assault on “freedom.” The Canadian truckers’ “Freedom Convoy” took the international spotlight for two weeks as it shut down central Ottawa, highlighting just how global of a phenomenon this has become. While liberals took an increasingly callous approach to the unvaccinated, at times suggesting they should be denied health insurance, the Proud Boys and other far right groups sent organized contingents to the majority of these protests.
save some for doctors and nurses. He played dumb on asymptomatic transmission, and then in 2021, the FDA and CDC pulled similar moves, dragging their feet on authorizing booster shots despite piles of evidence on their necessity months prior. These “noble lies” have only worsened the spread of misinformation, surrendered credibility, and dished out ammunition to the right wing to claim the whole thing is a government hoax. Biden took office in 2021 equipped with a 200-page strategy to defeat COVID, most of which was utterly abandoned in favor of a vaccines-only approach that, while an essential part of any strategy to tackle COVID, was insufficient and did nothing to reinstill confidence in our public health institutions or the government broadly. Biden and the Democrats could’ve taken meaningful steps to get control of the public health crisis and disrupt polarization. He could have pushed to lift vaccine patents to provide quality doses to the rest of the world, revamped contact tracing, guaranteed free tests to every household, and increased measures to protect working people by giving them resources to stay safe. The approach he took instead was deeply unconvincing: declaring war on the unvaccinated. “Your refusal has cost all of us. Show some respect.” Scapegoating one section of society to deflect from the failure of his COVID strategy and lapsing relief measures was more attractive to Biden, even if it meant fanning the flames of polarization by pushing the vaccine-hesitant further into the fringes. In this vein, Socialist Alternative always opposed firing people for being unvaccinated. While the ruling class has played a game of triangulation between partisan and profit interests, the virus remained set on its two main goals: increasing its transmissibility and overcoming immune response.
Talking Points Hand-Fed by the Establishment
The Only Mandate is Profit
American public health officials have been dishonest from the start. When hospitals faced critical shortages of PPE in February and March, instead of manufacturing and sending equipment to hospitals, Anthony Fauci was on the air downplaying the efficacy of masks, in what he later admitted was a dishonest maneuver to persuade people to
Pandemic misinformation is a lucrative business. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen alleges Facebook knowingly allowed disinformation to spread on its platform. Big business wants the virus under control to the extent it doesn’t interfere with profits – and that’s it. They will readily declare the end of the pandemic if it means resuming profits, even if it puts the rest of us in the crosshairs
of another deadly wave. While real wages are down 1.7 percent compared to a year ago, the profits of the top 500 companies have risen nearly 50 percent in the same time period. While working people lost or changed jobs, the billionaire class expanded substantially. Lost lives and lasting sickness are an opportunity cost for piling up wealth in the trillions. What would it have meant for the U.S. to avoid having the highest death toll of any country? Hospitals would need to have been fully stocked with PPE, adequately staffed, with expanded ICU capacity, and shuttered hospitals in rural areas in particular reopened. We also would need a serious contract tracing system from the start. There is, of course, no way to force private hospital CEOs to take these measures, meaning forprofit hospitals would need to be taken into democratic public ownership to ensure the safety of patients and workers. What would it take to vaccinate the entire population, including the tens of millions who still haven’t gotten a dose? First and foremost, pharma companies would need to be forced to make enough vaccines to distribute to the whole world, and prohibited from ripping off public health systems with predatory pricing. According to The Guardian, “some 15%20% of unvaccinated Americans say they are still interested in getting their shots… they simply haven’t been able to yet.” The lack of paid sick leave prevents many workers from being able to book an appointment, much less deal with potential side effects. This then places them in a double-bind of being more likely to get sick from exposure - and even then, “test hesitancy” has arisen from workers’ fear of having to miss a paycheck to isolate. Vaccine skeptics are more likely to trust the advice of their primary care doctor. For everybody in the U.S. to have access to primary care and a doctor with whom they can talk through their concerns, we would need universal healthcare. That for-profit social media platforms, Fox News, and money-hungry grifters have had far more impact on public health than any government institution speaks to the glaring lack of any credible public health authority in the U.S. Public health is not possible without reliable information, and to this day, it is exceedingly difficult to find guidelines on how
continued on p.15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
FIGHTING RACISM
MOVEMENT AT A CROSSROADS
WHAT COMES NEXT FOR BLM? Tamar Wilson, Philadelphia A recent viral piece in New York Magazine profiling the mysterious finances of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) has resurfaced long-standing tensions over the organization’s lack of democratic accountability and financial transparency. The piece revealed that BLMGNF took in more than $90 million in donations throughout the George Floyd uprising, during which millions of people were looking for ways to support the struggle against racist police violence. More than $20 million of that haul is alleged to have been distributed to 30 grassroots organizations, though this has been disputed by local chapters who claim to have received no resources. After Patrisse Cullors stepped down as the nonprofit’s executive director last spring following news of her home-buying spree going public, it’s now unknown who is currently serving in leadership of BLMGNF, or who exactly is in stewardship of its remaining $60 million endowment. These revelations come as Black America is in crisis and the movement is at a crossroads after failing to win lasting gains against systemic racism and the onset of reactionary backlash. The scandal around the BLMGNF ultimately lays bare the limitations of nonprofits and NGO leadership in our fight for liberation from capitalist oppression.
Movement Capture And A Squandered Revolution BLMGNF is the umbrella organization of the official and unofficial network of Black Lives Matter chapters across the country. Started in 2012 as a hashtag response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, BLMGNF emerged as a nonprofit following the highly public deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and then Tamir Rice in 2014. BLMGNF has always existed as a highly decentralized network of affiliated chapters and organizations, mainly powered by on-the-ground activists, centered around racial justice. Even so, the limitations of the leadership’s NGO approach and the danger of attempts by the Democratic Party and corporate entities to dilute the movement’s militancy were apparent from MARCH 2022
the beginning. During its 2015 convention, no national strategy, program, or demands were offered to organize around. The nonprofit or NGO organizational model within social movements under capitalism raises serious issues in terms of methodology. The most serious systemic criticism is that of “movement capture” – wherein which activists and their mission can become coopted by their funders and their particular priorities. This issue has historically plagued Blackled anti-racist organizations funded by wealthy donors. During the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP shifted its focus from antiBlack violence to desegregation of education due to its financial reliance on the Garland fund, despite the sentiments of Black organizers at the time. At the height of the George Floyd protests, Campaign Zero, a BLM affiliate, released a series of demands under the hashtag #8CantWait – including requiring officers to give a warning before shooting and that they report use of force. This agenda received widespread acclaim from corporations, billionaire celebrities, and politicians, but in reality, these paltry measures were incredibly out of step with the urgent needs of the movement against racist police violence like disarming cops on patrol; cutting police funding to fund housing, education, and jobs; and electing community control boards with the power to hire, fire, and subpoena. To avoid movement capture, more sophisticated conversations will need to be had about fundraising, program, and tactics. The BLMGNF’s leadership’s steadfast refusal to imbue the organization with the democratic apparatuses necessary to tackle these tough questions has resulted in the organization being captured, which, without an alternative leadership to take up the mantle of struggle, is a devastating blow to the movement. At the very same time one local BLM chapter was organizing protests against neoNazis, the parent organization was holding a dance-off sponsored by UGG boots. BLMGNF leaders even attempted to legally trademark the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ in 2018, proving that the capitalist, opportunist desire to monetize the struggle, aggrandize personal profiles and profit off of Black death and local organizers’ labor was evident early on. It is due to Black Lives Matter’s “leaderful”
decentralization, its organizational model reliant on corporate patronage and funding from capitalists, as well as its proximity to the Democratic Party that caused the BLMGNF to fail to point a way forward in the struggle for Black liberation during the height of the uprising. With the whole of the nation watching, there was no analysis offered to the masses on class society being the progenitor of oppression, how racism was created as an ideological justification to sanction economic exploitation, or how the police’s most fundamental role is to serve as the state’s oppressive force to abet that exploitation. Capitalism and systemic racism developed together. The BLMGNF, allied with corporations and the party of billionaires, was structurally incapable of pointing to capitalism as the offender, or offering the multiracial working class a program on how to fight back. The absence of visible, accountable, militant leadership allowed for unapproved stand-ins within the Democratic Party and corporate America to represent themselves on the movement’s behalf and ultimately muddy its message. This squandering of the Floyd uprisings’ revolutionary potential led to the BLM10 – local chapters who went public to voice their disagreements with the national leadership over the lack of internal democratic structures, financial transparency, or organizational and political coherence. This discrepancy between the BLMGNF’s shortcomings and the movement’s needs also led to Ferguson activists like Tory Russell and parents of victims of police violence like Michael Brown Sr., Samaria Rice, and Lisa Simpson openly denouncing the organization. To be sure, these criticisms are warranted: the global network’s murky web of donors, nepotistical top-dollar payments to consulting firms, and overpriced real estate purchases have drawn the ire and distrust of Black working class people and movement activists. What’s more, the negative attention has also fed into the right’s reactionary backlash – exactly at the same time as a revival of the uprisings in the streets and workplaces is desperately needed.
Reactionary Backlash Running Roughshod Even though the pandemic has confined many Americans to their homes, police killings have continued nearly unabated – virtually at the same rate prior to the 2020 summer of protest. In 2021 there were only 15 days where police did not kill someone. Federal police reform bills like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act have stalled in the Senate due to the Democrats’ adamant defiance of calls to abolish the filibuster. President Biden has led the Democratic Party in an unabashed undermining of the
movement, pledging hundreds of millions more funding to police departments than Trump, and all but abandoning his campaign promise to build a national police oversight commission. Black Democrat mayors like Eric Adams in NYC, Bruce Harrell in Seattle, London Breed in San Francisco, and Lori Lightfoot in Chicago have all dutifully followed along, championing pro-police rhetoric and policies that will target Black communities. The work to whittle away advancements in consciousness and supportive sentiment for Black liberation attained during the Floyd uprisings has become a bipartisan affair, as the GOP have engaged in a wanton culture war to lead the reactionary backlash to BLM. Over 16 GOP-led states have taken measures to ban books dealing with race or LGBTQ issues, while states like Florida have gone even further: introducing a bill that will allow parents to sue schools over critical race theory. In addition to the over 440 bills in more than 49 states seeking to restrict the right to vote in 2021, 34 states have proposed 81 bills looking to restrict the right to protest. The main goal of all this is to undermine Black and young people’s confidence in and historical knowledge of the working class’ capacity to affect societal change through the use of movements.
Teachable Movement: What Are The Lessons? For many young people the Floyd uprising, rallied under the cry of “Black Lives Matter,” has been the defining social movement of their generation. Unfortunately however, at this stage, the regrettable lack of material concessions from the uprisings means real lessons need to be drawn. To advance the movement for Black liberation, key lessons will have to be learned by movement activists and organizers: no faith can be placed in nonprofit leaderships reliant on capitalist funding, the Democratic Party, or the courts. Our social movements will have to be used to build, on a revolutionary political basis, solidarity among the multiracial working class around an agenda beneficial to the Black masses, rather than to gain proximity to the political establishment, elevate a misleadership class, or attempt to make capitalism more “woke.” A final and in some ways most important lesson is the value of fighting leadership in movements. Weak leadership that seeks exaltation by the mainstream media and corporate America or collaboration with do-nothing politicians and their parties can only end in disaster. Accountable, militant leadership that draws its strength from the movement will be necessary to point the way forward out of the crisis for the Black working class, poor, and oppressed with a fighting program of demands. J
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H E A LT H C A R E
The Nursing Shortage Worsens: A Crisis In Healthcare
California Democrats Kill Single-Payer, Again David Rhoades, Los Angeles
Progressive Democrats in California proposed a statewide single-payer healthcare system. Assembly Bill 1400, or “CalCare,” would have provided full healthcare benefits to California residents regardless of immigration status. With lower drug prices and no co-pays, deductibles, or out-of-pocket costs, CalCare would have single-handedly defanged the predatory health insurance industry in the fifth-largest economy in the world. But in the end, the principal author of the bill, Assemblymember Ash Kalra, failed to bring it to a vote. This move was correctly attacked by the California Nurses Association, which was leading the fight to win the bill. They released a statement saying that “Kalra chose to just give up on Patients across the state,” adding that Kalra was “providing cover for those who would have been forced to go on the record about where they stand on guaranteed health care for all people in California.”
Capitalist Healthcare: An Unmitigated Disaster More working people than ever have experienced the disastrous consequences of healthcare under capitalism. Americans are now dealing with the third major iteration of COVID because the world’s wealthiest nations hoarded the vaccine while regions like South Asia, South America, and Subsaharan Africa suffered brutal transmission rates. COVID containment has been sabotaged by competing national interests as every country’s ruling class tried to keep their economy open. US workers were laid off by the millions in 2020 in a country where medical insurance is tied to employment, meaning nearly a third of Americans lost their health coverage as hospitalizations spiked. In fact, there are numerous reasons why single-payer healthcare would be a massive victory for workers against the bosses. Research shows that employer health insurance keeps workers stuck at bad jobs, which keeps wages lower over time. Other research shows that workers may end up paying for employer health insurance with 10% of their wages. But most importantly, freeing workers from employersponsored healthcare would take massive leverage out of the bosses’ hands. Employers would no longer be able to control workers’
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access to healthcare (or use it as a bargaining chip during a contract negotiation or strike).
Are Democrats Capable of Fighting for Workers? Working people and their families need single-payer healthcare, but it would be a fatal mistake to trust the Democrats to lead the fight. In 2017, California Democrats blocked a single-payer bill similar to CalCare, just the same as they did last month. On January 11, Democrats on the Assembly Health Committee voted for CalCare out of ‘professional courtesy,’ with at least two Democrats openly stating that they’d vote against CalCare on the Assembly floor. And what of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who ran on single-payer healthcare in 2018? He voiced zero support for CalCare, instead introducing a modest proposal to make undocumented immigrants eligible for MediCal, a California health coverage program for people making poverty wages. Democrats run on single-payer healthcare because it’s popular with workers, but the California Democratic Party accepts millions of dollars in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare insurers, and medical industry executives, who refuse to give up billions in profits without a fight. Last November, Newsom handily defeated a right-wing recall in part thanks to large sums from wealthy corporate donors who oppose single-payer and the business taxes needed to fund it. It’s no wonder that he and the Democratic Party refuse to support CalCare.
How Single Payer Can Be Won However, the Democrats’ blatant opposition to single-payer health care does not make the fight a lost cause – it just means workers should rely on our own power to win it. Billions in healthcare profits are generated solely by workers’ labor. Nurses, doctors, technicians, janitors, food service workers, pharmacists, and countless others keep hospitals and medical offices running, while not a single shareholder provides so much as a band-aid. The leadership of the CNA and National Nurses United understand the connection between their work and the billions in profit generated by the healthcare industry, which is why they’ve led the fight for universal healthcare.
continued on p.15
Ranson Thomas, Gainesville
How Can Nurses Fight Back?
Nurses and hospitals across the U.S. have been pushed to the brink over the last few years. The stress and pressure of the job is high even under the best conditions, but add a pandemic into the mix and it’s no wonder the nursing profession is in crisis. While nursing school enrollment has increased over the course of the pandemic, nursing schools are still unable to accommodate more students due to limitations of faculty, clinical sites, and resources. While the number of new nurses remains inadequate, older nurses are leaving the profession. Due to these factors and others, it’s projected that California for example could face a shortage of nurses in 2030 as high as 44,500 positions going unfilled.
The struggle continues, and individual nurses have taken initiative by launching a Facebook group to begin planning to organize a national nurses march to be held on May 12th over the issue of nursing abuse, fair pay, and an end to racism in the workplace. This group has gained almost 200,000 members in a matter of weeks. This is a positive development which speaks to the growing discontent in nurses across the country, and if such a wide scale event can be pulled off it, would be a massive step forward for the movement. However, the direction of the nurses’ march remains both limited in its demands and methods. For example, the group states it does not support or facilitate the use of strikes and protests, the very tactics that will be necessary for nurses to win their demands. For nurses to win any real gains, fighting demands and a fighting approach will be necessary. This will mean of course demands to eliminate workplace abuse, for higher wages, and for better nurse-topatient ratios, but it will also need to include the right to a union, the right to strike, and most importantly an end to for-profit healthcare. The only way those demands can be realized is through mass protests and strikes aimed at eliminating the profits of greedy healthcare CEOs, which can move not just nurses and other healthcare workers into mass action, but the hundreds of millions of people who depend on safe, effective healthcare too.
What’s Behind The Shortage? It would be easy to attribute the nursing shortage and other problems in the healthcare industry solely to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stress it has placed on healthcare workers, but the reality is that the pandemic merely ripped open a wound that has been growing in healthcare professions for decades now. The 90s saw the shortage grow to new heights as healthcare corporations scrambled to find ways to cut costs during the popularization of the “managed care” model, which sought to lower and control the cost of healthcare and health insurance. Essentially, managed care rewards healthcare companies greater profits for keeping costs down, while exacting financial penalties when they spend more than is deemed necessary for treatments. In effect though, managed care has actually led to cuts in staff and services, and the cost of healthcare and health insurance still remain uncontrolled and unaffordable today for patients.
For-Profit Healthcare to Blame This cuts right to the heart of the real problem driving not just the nursing shortage, but the crisis of healthcare in the US at every level: the capitalist, for -profit healthcare model. Hospital corporations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare equipment manufacturers, and more all operate on the basis of making money above all else, including the needs of patients and staff. And they’re very good at it – in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, HCA Healthcare, one of the largest private hospital corporations in the U..S, gave it’s CEO Sam Hazen over $30 million in compensation! This while HCA has laid off nurses and support staff and engaged in vicious union busting. That $30 million ultimately represents money that patients and their families paid out to receive health treatments, not to line the pockets of greedy CEOs. But so long as healthcare in the U.S. operates under the for-profit model, that is exactly where the money we spend when we are at our most sick and vulnerable will go.
For Nurses and Patients, Capitalism is a Dead End Poll after poll over the last 10 years have shown that a huge majority of Americans, anywhere from 60-70%, support some form of public healthcare. At this point, the question of whether we should or should not have public healthcare is already answered: we should! However, even if 100% of voters supported the idea, health care corporations and politicians in both parties will never willingly give away the exorbitant salaries, campaign contributions, and stock options that they can depend on as spoils from the private healthcare system. Any path forward for public healthcare in the U.S. has to go through a mass movement that will require mass protests and even more importantly, strikes by healthcare workers. Nurses can play the decisive role in such a movement, and we owe it to ourselves, our profession, and our patients to do so. Unless we take bold action to eliminate the profit motive in our healthcare system, nurses will find ourselves increasingly brutalized and exploited on the job, our profession increasingly stretched to the breaking point, and our patients made to suffer and in the worst cases die because their care and survival hurt the bottom line of millionaire CEOs. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
C O N T I N U AT I O N S
COVID CULTURE WAR to stay safe. Scientific information and debates must be in the public domain – not patented or behind paywalls, not influenced by for-profit interests or partisan politics, but fully available and accessible to the public. This information would be the basis on which to form guidelines on social distancing, mask wearing, and restrictions. Public health communications in the form of ads and billboards have not worked, genuine engagement in our workplaces to negotiate health measures in the best interest of ending the pandemic. Fully funding public education is not only critical to give schools the resources to keep students and educators safe, but it is also crucial to raising a generation capable of evaluating scientific information. A genuine public health infrastructure would also be proactive. When a new variant begins to spread and hospitalizations increase, tests should immediately be sent to households. Open discussions in schools and workplaces should be held to formulate a rational collective response with the common goal of protecting public health and living conditions for working people. Not covered up by authorities dragging their feet or used as an opportunity for Senators to sell their stock. The burden has fallen overwhelmingly on individual working people to wade through this mess and find ways to protect themselves from the virus. Individuals have had to
CAL-CARE continued from p.14 Not just the CNA, but unions broadly would benefit from single-payer healthcare by taking control over workers’ health insurance out of the hands of the bosses. But the CNA’s mistaken strategy of lobbying and donating to Democrats has never won universal healthcare. Insurance and healthcare corporations will simply never give up their profits without a real fight, and the Democratic Party relies too much on their donations to bite the hand that funds them. The CNA and other unions can lead the way by channeling their organizational and financial power toward militant tactics, including strikes. As workers, stopping the flow of profit is our most powerful weapon, and we should not hesitate to use it to win universal healthcare.
Massive Profits, Not Wages, Should Pay for Healthcare The fight to block healthcare is class-based: the owners of the healthcare and insurance industries used their money and influence to make sure leading Democrats don’t support CalCare. Our mistake would be not fighting as a class in response. The CNA and other unions can strike back by demanding that any single-payer plan be 100% funded by taxes on corporate profits and the ultra-wealthy, with absolutely no income taxes. There are 189 billionaires residing in California, more than any other state, so our in-state capitalists can absolutely pay for universal healthcare. It’s a question of whether union leaders are willing to leverage their power to demand it, and fight to win it. J MARCH 2022
continued from p.12
decide for themselves how to social distance, wear masks, scramble to get tests, to manage work and life responsibilities when exposed to COVID or experiencing symptoms. A collective health infrastructure based on the needs of working-class people could provide worlds above what we currently have. It is tragic that this debate has revolved around pitting
working people against one another, and that the ruling class has leaned on this, because only a united movement of working people can create a better future. The left and labor movement use the lessons learned through COVID to prepare for inevitable future battles where we will need to fight ferociously for the things working people need. J
Us Them
versus
Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis The current reality for working people: life is one expensive hellscape. People are experiencing isolation, illness, and despair on a wide scale, with no financial means to escape any of it. The billionaire class, meanwhile, is raking in record profits. Let’s add “sinister Silicon Valley tech giants” to the list of daily demons feeding off our misery. The pandemic exacerbated mental health issues for millions across the board, especially younger people. Just 45% of Gen Z teens and young adults say they have “very good” or “excellent” mental health, faring worse than older generations. They cite mass shootings, COVID, student debt, social media, and the climate crisis as stressors in particular. At the same time, Democrats and Republicans are devoted as ever to the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies that profit off the suffering of working people and their families. If they had their way, we wouldn’t see Medicare for All for another millennium. Observing this alarming trend in people’s growing desperation, tech entrepreneurs saw an opportunity: to make money off our pain. Some came out with services that were, ostensibly, positive and innovative; direct-to-consumer services like BetterHelp, a web-based platform for counseling and therapy, Headspace, a web-based subscription service for counseling and mindfulness, and Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit known for their “free” texting service for “confidential” crisis intervention. All three of these options boast they are more accessible and cheaper than the alternative: copays and premiums add up for an in-network therapist. Out-of-network therapy costs even more. And the out-ofpocket costs for uninsured patients are even higher.
The accessibility and affordability comes with a price, though. Crisis Text Line, while technically not-for-profit, received millions of dollars from the tech industry. Why? Because they, like Better Help and Headspace, are selling users’ data. The time and location of sessions, metadata from conversations within the app, how often they go to therapy and when, sold to companies like Facebook – who totally operate in good faith when it comes to the data they collect. Or, in the case of Crisis Text Line, sold to Loris.ai, a for-profit company that uses machine learning to make chat service interactions with AI – like the one you’d have if you were, say, in severe emotional distress – “more human, empathetic, and scalable.” Selling users’ data when the users are people contemplating suicide, in literal crisis, is disgusting. Companies already make bank selling our data, sure, but this is a whole other level of dystopian. Imagine yourself in one of your lowest moments, reaching out for help. And then discovering a tech exec bragged about giving you that help, and mining the “data” that is your life, your hurt, and how profitable it is for them. Crisis Text Line workers staged a walkout against their own CEO in 2020, and in an attempt to manage the media firestorm around their data-selling scandal, CTL just announced they’ve ended their data-sharing relationship with Loris.ai. Still – we see how low the bosses will go. J
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ISSUE #81 l MARCH 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2 Keely Mullen, New York City It feels like a lifetime ago that Bernie Sanders said, “If there’s going to be class warfare in this country, it’s time the working class won that war.” Bernie’s presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 captured the basic class instincts of millions of working-class and poor Americans in a way few other politicians have. First time voters, first time in a long time voters, and even some usually-Republican voters flocked to Bernie’s camp. Why? Because his slogans spoke to their natural understanding that workers are at war with the super rich. “Billionaires should not exist.” “We need a political revolution against the billionaire class.” His campaigns allowed us to envision a future where we had high-quality, free healthcare. Where our wages provided us a decent life, where we could afford to retire, and where we could go to college without a life sentence of debt. And Bernie’s ideas weren’t just inspiring in the abstract, he told us that to win these things we’d have to fight in our own interests. He said he’d be the “organizer in chief.” He sent people to picket lines and organized mass rallies. Bernie’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns were the last good example of a high-profile left leader really speaking to the working class. Throughout 2020, a year when workingclass people were discovering our essential role in running society, the left and labor movement had very little to say to us. Rather than organizing strikes to demand COVID safety on the job and a permanent extension of hazard pay, the labor leadership broadly
echoed the bosses hollow applause for our “essential” work without putting up a fight. Rather than using a public health crisis to fight for Medicare for All, or holding up the halls of power until extremely popular COVID aid was made permanent, Bernie dropped out of the race for President and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a “Tax the Rich” dress to the Met Gala and then didn’t fight to tax the rich. The danger in all this isn’t just the simple fact that workers didn’t win much – it’s that if this trend continues, the left will start hemorrhaging working-class people to the right. The left and labor leadership need to drop their reliance on empty “woke” sloganeering and passive partnerships with the bosses and corporate politicians and instead adopt a militant, class-struggle approach. Only an approach like this can win the confidence and support of the multi-racial, multi-gender American working class.
What Are Class Politics? At its core, the class politics needed on the left and in the labor movement are based on an acknowledgement that the fundamental division in society is that which exists between the masses of working-class people who keep society running and the super rich elite who make billions off our work. It is based on a sober awareness that despite all of the things that make us different, working people have worlds more in common with one another than any of us do with the bosses. Working-class politics means being crystal clear on who is on our side, and who is not. There is an ocean that separates genuine
class politics from the “stand up for the little guy” sloganeering of Democrats like Joe Biden or the “we’re a family” language of the bosses. No matter how sincerely they boast about the hard-working American, all corporate politicians and big business executives will stand in the way of any reform that will meaningfully benefit working people. The leadership of the left and labor movement cannot afford to muddy this point. We have to urgently abandon the practice of writing blank checks to politicians who cosplay as working-class advocates on the campaign trail but relentlessly sabotage our interests the second they take office. We need to call bluff on any idea that the bosses are our friends. If workers are on strike, or fighting for a union, they will find nothing but brutality from the boss. If we’re serious about winning, we have to be clear on these points. Our real “allies” are to be found within the ranks of the broad working class and as such our politics must ferociously fight divisions that have been consciously maintained by the bosses. A working-class political program should fight for nothing less than living wages scaled to inflation, democratically determined safety protocols on the job, single payer healthcare, universal rent control and permanently affordable high-quality housing, and free child care. Beyond necessary economic demands, our program cannot leave untouched racist and sexist laws, structures, and attitudes. Winning the confidence of the entire working class means fighting for a unifying economic program alongside demands to end racist police brutality, segregationist housing and education policies, restrictions on reproductive rights, and reactionary anti-trans laws.
The Stakes The populist right is becoming increasingly clear about who the enemies are. In his campaign video, Adam Laxalt – Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Nevada – names them as: “the radical left, rich elites, woke corporations, academia, Hollywood, and the media.” His video ends, “we’re David, they’re Goliath.” Working-class people are buckling under the weight of low wages, rising prices, and mounting debt. To those people, right populists are saying, “we’ll end workplace mandates to protect your freedom, we’ll lower your taxes, we’ll get tough on immigration to save your job, we’ll fight for school choice so you have a say in the education your kids get.” And they will fight viciously for those things. By virtue of its captivity in the Democratic Party, the existing left and labor leadership has not fought nearly hard enough for the things working people need. They have blindly followed abstract rules about how to fight, and when to fight, without disrupting decorum. Building a meaningful, fighting counterweight to right populism, will mean the left and labor movement making a jailbreak from the thoroughly pro-corporate, lifeless Democratic Party. It will mean building a political home outside the two major parties where working-class people can democratically determine what we most need, and how we can leverage our collective power to win it. It is only on this basis, a left and labor movement built on working-class struggle, that we can undercut the growth in right wing ideas and win a life worth living. J