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INSIDE p.3 p.4 HOW TO ORGANIZE A WALKOUT UNIONIZE AMAZON EVERYWHERE p.7 DEMS: NO MORE EXCUSES
WHAT WE STAND FOR Fight Gender Oppression and Attacks on Bodily Autonomy! • As the Supreme Court nears a decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which would overturn Roe v Wade, we need a new mass women’s movement on the scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. This includes marches, protests, occupations, and direct action to win full reproductive rights. No trust in the courts! • Fight for free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a broad program for reproductive health. • Stop the attacks on queer youth! We need a robust fightback against the brutal antitrans legislation in many states and all rightwing attacks on LGBTQ people, including noncompliance organized by the labor movement among workers tasked with enforcing these bigoted laws. • The women’s and LGBTQ movements need to unite on the basis of a broad struggle against gender oppression in all its forms. • Fighting gender oppression means fighting for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproductive justice including universal childcare and climate action to ensure a healthy planet for the next generation, high-quality public housing, fully-funded public education safe from discrimination, and Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.
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. • No more excuses! Biden and the Democrats are catastrophically failing to confront the attacks from the right. We need to mount our own independent movement against Republican attacks and to force the Democrats to act while they are in power. • Democrats and Republicans alike are unwilling to make any structural changes that threaten 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.
Rebuild a Fighting Labor Movement! • Building off the historic union victory at Amazon in New York and the ongoing Starbucks organizing drive, we need mass campaigns to unionize the millions of non-union workers in the U.S. • We need to build and rebuild radical fighting
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unions that are fully democratic and driven by the active participation of rank and file workers. Especially as prices for energy, food, housing and other necessities are skyrocketing, we need a united struggle across industries for wage increases that are above the rate of inflation. 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. As thousands of workers are winning union recognition for the first time, it is critical that unions fight to win strong contracts. This means using our power outside the bargaining room with walkouts, pickets, rallies, and strike action; and campaigning around clear demands that raise living standards and working conditions on the shop floor and inspire workers elsewhere to join the fight. 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.
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 national self-determination and 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 rhetoric is a cover for corporate interests. • De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating 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 lasting peace and stability for the working masses around the world.
Expand the Social Safety Net! • With inflation eating away at our paychecks, 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%! • Fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free. Raise the federal minimum
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WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Britt Bateman, Chapel Hill Like many juniors at my highschool did, I took AP U.S. History in 2019. The curriculum was far from radical, but it illuminated the deep-rooted issues within America enough that conservatives like Ben Carson tried to ban this class from being taught. Each day as I would read about topics ranging from the colonization of America to workers’ struggles during the late 1800s, I realized a common issue that connected these topics, which was the profit motive and our economic system, and how little the people in power represented the whole of working people. Since then I found my personal views shifted from apolitical, to vaguely anti-capitalist, to revolutionary socialist. In the summer of 2020, when I was 17, I heard about Socialist Alternative through TikTok and I decided to subscribe to the newspaper. Like the one you are reading now, it had insightful articles that really resonated with me and it pushed me to want to not only read about issues and socialist politics, but to get involved. When I saw there was a branch in the NC Triangle, I was ecstatic, and in November of 2020 I became a member of SA.
I see joining Socialist Alternative as one of the best decisions I have made in my relatively short life. Being a member has given me opportunities I wouldn’t have had before, like speaking at rallies, going to Bessemer, Alabama to campaign with other members in the Amazon union drive in 2021, traveling to Seattle to volunteer with the Kshama Solidarity Campaign, and many other great memories in between. Throughout this I have grown politically and gained knowledge that I would not have been able to get on my own, and I have also been a part of an amazing community of people that I greatly appreciate. J
wage to $15! forces of anyone with known ties to white • We need an immediate transition to Medisupremacist groups or any cop who has care for All. Take for-profit hospital chains committed violent or racist attacks. and Big Pharma into public ownership and • End the militarization of police. Ban police retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art use of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm healthcare to every American. police on patrol. • Fully fund public education! End school • Put policing under the control of democratiprivatization. We need a national hiring procally-elected civilian boards with power over gram to bring in hundreds of thousands of hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, new educators and support staff to accomand the power to subpoena. modate a permanent reduction in class size. • While alarming acts of violence have risen, the Democrats’ pivot to “law and order” End the COVID Chaos policing will only bear down on people of color and the poor. We keep us safe: build • As new variants continue to emerge across a movement for public safety based on the the globe, it’s abundantly clear that capitalgenuine needs of working people. ist world leaders have failed to contain this crisis. We need a People’s Plan to end the For a Socialist Green New Deal chaos! • Lift patent protections on all COVID vac- • We need a Green New Deal jobs procines. This would remove a key obstacle gram that provides well-paid union jobs to poor countries manufacturing them at for millions of workers expanding green home. It would also make publicly available infrastructure. the science and technology behind these • We need to build an international environlife-saving vaccines. mental struggle led by the global working • Advanced capitalist countries need to be class and youth fighting for an immediate pushed to urgently reallocate their surplus end to the use of fossil fuels and a 100% vaccines to poor countries and help estabtransition to green energy. lish the infrastructure for universal vaccina- • This can only be accomplished by taking tion worldwide. the top 100 polluting companies into • We need to take Big Pharma profiteers into democratic public ownership. We need a public ownership and turn existing vaccines democratically planned economy here and into the People’s Vaccines! around the world to carry out the transfor• We need an ongoing infrastructure to cope mation necessary to avoid climate disaster. with COVID in instances where it flares up. This includes free, easily accessible tests The Whole System is Guilty available in every community across the country. Workers exposed to COVID should • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and be given paid self-isolation days after expowar. We need an international struggle sure or after developing symptoms. against this failed system. • Bring the top 500 companies and banks A Safe and Just Society: End Racist Policing and Criminal (in) into democratic public ownership. • We need a democratic socialist plan for the Justice economy based on the interests of the over• Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police whelming 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
WHY I’M NEVER VOTING FOR A DEMOCRAT AGAIN Grace Fors, Dallas As a young woman in Texas in the wake of SB8 taking effect in September, and now seeing the wholesale destruction of Roe v Wade on the horizon, it has never been clearer that the Democratic Party is a dead end. This situation, and the Democrats’ inaction while they are in power, cries out for an all-out struggle to build a party of our own that actually fights for the interests of women. On May 2nd, a draft majority opinion leaked to Politico confirmed what many feared as the worst-case scenario: the Supreme Court has taken a preliminary vote to overturn Roe v Wade. This means that abortion would be banned in 22 states, essentially overnight. The anti-abortion extremists want to roll back the clock on women’s rights and deny bodily autonomy to literally millions living in states like mine with existing – not to mention many shocking and draconian – abortion bans. But the right won’t stop at banning abortion in Republican-dominated states. If the leaked decision stands, it will provide the legal justification for overturning Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage. Ultimately, the right is organizing to ban abortion nationwide and to broaden the onslaught of attacks on LGBTQ people.
I’m never voting for a Democrat again. “What? But this is coming from Republicans!” Exactly. I’ve seen the unhinged misogynistic psychopaths on the right like Alito and Kavanaugh who want women to be submissive incubators of the next generation of workers to exploit. But then I turn around and see the “good cop” blue politicians say that giving the psychopaths free rein is essential to our thriving democracy. When you show me Republicans and Democrats, I see criminals and their accomplices. Pinning hopes on the Democrats, after watching Biden campaign on codifying Roe and then sitting idly as this attack plays out, feels like a hostage situation. Since SB8 took effect, abortions in the Texas have dropped 60%, the average driving distance increased by 14 times (to say nothing of the price of travel made worse by record inflation), and then Oklahoma passed
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its own horrific bans, cutting off a primary haven for women seeking abortions out-ofstate. Here’s what Joe Biden – the second consecutive accused rapist in the White House, a Hyde Amendment champion, and seemingly allergic to saying the word “abortion” – did to address this acute crisis: “I directed my Gender Policy Council and White House Counsel’s Office to prepare for options for an Administration response to the continued attack on reproductive rights…We will be ready when any ruling is issued.” Roe v Wade is already null for one in ten U.S. women of reproductive age, but how comforting it is that Biden formed secret plans behind closed doors that he’ll hold off on revealing until abortion rights have been totally destroyed nationwide. We’re supposed to believe these people are on our side? Schumer and Pelosi were reluctant to call for next steps. They’re waiting to see if public outrage tides over, if they can c o n v in c e Emperor Manchin, or if they can cook up a diversion to look like they’re doing something. They need time to figure out what to do next – although they’re fine with pregnant people nationwide not having that privilege. But one thing we can be sure of is that come election time, if they don’t win, they’ll blame all of this on us. In his statement on the leaked Court draft, Biden says, “it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November.” They’ve harbored an anti-choice wing in their party for decades, and the DNC is bankrolling anti-abortion candidates this midterm cycle. Nancy Pelosi was just in Texas campaigning for antichoice Democrat Henry Cuellar who’s facing off against a progressive,
EDITORIAL pro-choice challenger. We didn’t screw this up – they did, while the rest of us were just trying to get by. Those “Grace, it’s urgent” fundraising emails asking me to line the pockets of the “party of Roe” are landing like a kick in the uterus. Mark as spam. When I was twelve and in sixth grade and I’d just learned the word “feminism” and about the fight for abortion rights – when it was just dawning on me what being a woman was going to mean for my future – Obama promised unequivocally that guaranteeing abortion rights through federal legislation was a day one objective of his administration. Even with a supermajority, he backed out of this promise, leading us right to the situation today. I’m sick of seeing women, queer and trans people, the poor, and the oppressed being punished for the Democrats’ mistakes while they serve as the primary obstacle suppressing a real fightback. This isn’t about historical precedent or the stability of our constitution, it’s about the lives of millions of people – women, their partners and families, trans and nonbinary people who can get pregnant, and the whole working class. It is up to working people to launch our own organized struggle in the name of healthcare, bodily autonomy, and liberation from capitalist oppression. We need to launch an offensive fight to take what is rightfully ours – our right to our bodies and our lives. Crucially, this means we have to hit the streets. We can and should take
inspiration from mass movements from around the world and from the U.S. in the 60s and 70s that have succeeded in forcing the hands of reactionary state institutions to enshrine the right to an abortion. We need to be organized. It’s not nearly enough to blow off steam in the streets without following up with mass public meetings to discuss strategy and to resist co-optation of the movement by Democrats or NGOs. Our movement won’t survive without democratic structures in place to sustain the momentum. In fact, our protests will need to take the Democrats head-on. They are the main obstacle to codifying Roe at the federal level, and they need to be relentlessly pressured to abolish the filibuster and immediately pass guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. We need the unions and the newly revitalized labor movement to throw everything they have behind this movement. They can open up union halls as meeting venues for activists to determine next steps, they can mobilize their members to the front lines. We will need a host of coordinated tactics to win, including strikes, campus walkouts, workplace actions, and mass courthouse occupations that don’t end until we have our demands met. Abortion clinics, themselves under threat of extinction from these attacks, must organize noncompliance backed up by grassroots community defense. The only rights we can count on are the ones we claim for ourselves and fight like hell to defend. J
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STUDENTS & YOUTH 500 students from over 10 schools across Philadelphia walked out for abortion rights on May 25.
How To Organize A School Walkout Why are walkouts important? Students have played a central role in social movements, from civil rights to antiwar efforts. Now, high school and even middle school students are walking out to defend abortion rights. High school students are too young to vote or strike, so walkouts are one of the best ways we can disrupt “business as usual.”
1. legitimize Pull together a team of students to help organize! If possible, connect with school principals to ensure that the walkout is treated like any other absence. Students should be able to excuse it with a note and make up for any missed work. A public school cannot legally punish a student for exercising their right to assemble or freedom of speech – it helps to include students’ rights when building for the event via social media.
2. build Share on as many social media platforms as possible, especially TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. Classmates will take the idea seriously when they see their friends spreading the details online. Social media draws a crowd and also allows people to get their questions answered. Also put up posters around school! Organizing a meeting with students from different schools can help to broaden the walkout and clarify the specific demands we are making.
3. walk out! Make sure the walk out leads to a visible location where you can hold a rally. Some may make the last-minute decision to join after seeing their friends out. Have signs and speeches ready to go to make sure your message lands! If there are multiple schools walking out on the same day, make sure to organize a meet up location for a big rally. A group chat can be helpful to coordinate across different schools.
If you’re a student wanting to build a walkout, reach out to Socialist Alternative!
STUDENTS WALK OUT TO DEFEND ROE Rachel Wilder, Philadelphia
On May 13, hundreds of high school students from five different middle and high schools in Philadelphia participated in a walkout for abortion rights. Some schools only had 20-30 students walk out, while others brought over a hundred. They all converged for a morning rally at LOVE Park. Students spoke energetically about the need to expand abortion rights, as well as comprehensive and inclusive sex education and full staffing of nurses and counselors in schools. Socialist Alternative played an important role in this walkout, talking to middle and high school students, and helping connect students from different schools. Students in Philadelphia were not alone in this walkout. They were joined by high school and college students across the country. Young people have historically played a vital role in movements for change and justice. In our short lifetimes, young people today have been born into myriad crises from a pandemic that shut down schools and interrupted our learning, to the imminent threat of climate change, in the presence of a decade long economic downturn with rising rates of inflation affecting the living standards of working families. The connecting thread between all these crises is the system of capitalism. Being a young person living under capitalism has meant always looking toward another crisis, or the worsening of one that’s already happening. While the walkouts on May 13 were amazing and inspiring, they weren’t the end of our movement. 500 students were back out on the streets on May 25 demanding action on abortion rights. The leak of the draft ruling has given us a short but crucial window of time to pose a fightback, and we must use this time to organize! We need to escalate future actions in order to go all out to defend Roe. We should organize more walkouts, but involve teachers, parents, and community members, encouraging them to walk out of work or have a lunchtime rally. We can look to the recent student climate strikes as an example of how we can coordinate future national days of action. We can also look to the workers at Tufts Medical Center in Boston who walked out of their workplace for abortion rights in early May as well. Our teachers and working parents have power in their workplaces, to shut them down and stop those profits; they must take inspiration from the walkouts at schools and link them to their own workplaces to broaden the struggle and build our movement.
Students Have Always Fought Back Historically, movements that begin with students have spread
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beyond schools and inspired workers to move into struggle as well. We saw this in France in May of 1968 when students occupied and protested at their schools around academic demands. This energy quickly spread to factories and workplaces across the country, in solidarity with the students but extending the demands to working conditions. In order to spread the fight for full reproductive rights today, we must make a conscious effort to expand and escalate the fight beyond student walkouts. This will mean having conversations with workers and teachers, just like the students did in 1968, about how their interests align with students’ demands and the importance of standing in solidarity. Students and young people, historically, have the most forward thinking and progressive ideas in movements. While we need to spread the struggle beyond just young people and students, we shouldn’t compromise these ideas, but rather push for them to be taken up by the broader movement. Many young people are, correctly, making the connection with attacks on abortion rights and attacks on queer and trans rights. The right wing has been on the offensive, stripping away working class people’s bodily autonomy, whether it’s attacks on abortion or preventing trans youth from safely transitioning. Access to abortion does not just affect women, but it affects trans and non-binary people as well. We must push for solidarity between women and queer people in the fight against all gender-based oppression.
We Need A Fighting Movement Across the country, thousands of people hit the streets with less than 24 hours notice at marches the day after the draft ruling was leaked, showing the energy and willingness of working and young people to fight. However, this energy inevitably dissipates without mass organizations willing to channel it. Major women’s organizations, like the Women’s March, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood have not even pretended to fight. Instead of putting energy into mobilizing millions of people into the streets, these organizations have continued a legalistic strategy of attacking antiabortion legislation with lawsuits, and lamented about a coming “postRoe” world. These organizations are unwilling and unable to actually show a way forward because of their ties to the Democratic Party and their corporate donors, leaving them more beholden to the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema than to working-class people. We need mass organizations willing to take up bold demands and put forward a class struggle, movement-based approach to fight for not just legal abortion, but free and accessible full reproductive care through Medicare for All, including gender-affirming care. We need comprehensive and inclusive sex education in schools to actually prevent unwanted pregnancies, as well as free STI testing and fully staffed nurses at all schools. Finally, working class people have been fighting protect abortion rights for over 50 years, but attacks on our rights are inevitable under the capitalist system that profits off of controlling and exploiting us. We need to fight to overturn this system and build a society run by and for the working class where we have actual control over our lives — a socialist society. Capitalism cannot exist without gender-based oppression and that is why our feminism must be socialist! J
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LGBTQ RIGHTS Greyson Van Arsdale, Philadelphia Attacks on the rights of transgender people have taken several forms over the past decade. In 2015-2017, legislatures considered dozens of “bathroom bills” that would ban trans people from using the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. This brought broad backlash and no state successfully passed a “bathroom bill.” But over the past year, the right wing’s hysteria around trans people participating in gender-divided competitive sports has been successful; Arizona, Florida, and Iowa have passed trans sports bans this year. Now, these attacks have taken on a particularly brutal and life-threatening form – banning transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming health care, including puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and transition surgery. So far, 15 states have legislation being actively discussed that would ban trans health care for minors. This could become the most significant anti-LGBTQ offensive in decades, and we urgently need to organize a fight back.
and health care providers in a process that takes months and often years. The effects of puberty blockers are completely reversible if a patient stops taking them, and most often they are used to delay irreversible unwanted effects of puberty while a patient considers hormone therapy. Furthermore, because these procedures are deemed “cosmetic,” they’re most often not covered by insurance – putting trans people and their families on the hook for potentially thousands of dollars just for the ability to feel comfortable in their bodies. Transitioning, especially at a young age, corresponds to lower rates of depression and suicidality in transgender people. When your gender doesn’t match your sex assigned at birth, going through puberty and gaining sex characteristics that are contrary to your selfperception is damaging and traumatic. There is also a real significance to discouraging early transition for trans people. It is much more difficult socially to transition as an adult, and those who do so are at much higher risk for discrimination in the workplace and in housing. While many adults still transition, even late in life, barring someone from
FIGHTING ATTACKS ON TRANS HEALTHCARE
So far, 15 states are discussing legislation that would ban trans health care for minors. This could become the most significant anti-LGBTQ offensive in decades.
The Significance of Healthcare These bans are a new phenomenon – no state considered a ban on trans healthcare for minors prior to 2020. And yet, this new right-wing offensive is incredibly fast-moving: a third of trans youth live in states where a ban is being considered. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott avoided legal challenges by issuing an order (instead of binding legislation) that families of transgender teenagers be investigated for felony child abuse for letting them transition. Tragically, healthcare providers have complied, pulling gender-affirming procedures for minors. Most of the bills in question take specific aim at puberty blockers, a treatment that will, in prepubescent children who show clear gender dysphoria and identify with a different gender than their sex assigned at birth, delay the onset of puberty. Minors who take puberty blockers have to do so in consultation with therapists JUNE 2022
transitioning as a young person amounts to discouraging them from transitioning at all. The reality is that for transgender minors, especially those who are prepubescent, transition most often looks like getting a new haircut and wardrobe. However, even that is a step too far for the Republican Party, which seemingly aims to legislate transgender people out of existence. Bills introduced in Alabama and Iowa go after the practice of encouraging trans children to dress as the gender they identify with. These attacks are a serious threat to the health and safety of trans and queer people, who already face severe marginalization in society including increased risk of housing insecurity, poverty, and gender-based violence.
Democrats Wait In the Wings The Republican Party is on the warpath against trans people, with plans to go further.
While debating one such healthcare ban directed at minors in April, Missouri lawmakers suggested that access to hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery be restricted for individuals until they turn 25. For the GOP, transgender people (especially youth who are the most vulnerable) make a convenient political scapegoat. Due to the comparatively small amount of transgender people in the U.S., we remain an easy demographic to fearmonger about. Most Americans don’t know any trans people personally, and education about us was limited even before Republicans began to ban it from schools – and the only knowledge people are given about trans identity and healthcare come from media attacks. During the primaries, Republicans spent $4.5 million on ads vilifying trans people. So, how much ad money has the Democratic Party – the supposed pro-LGBTQ party – spent this cycle on campaigning to defend the rights of transgender people? None. To say the Democrats’ approach has been limited to “nice words” would be generous; it would imply that Democratic Party politicians are even spending significant time talking publicly about the attacks. The most significant reference so far came from Biden’s speech on May 17 – International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia – in which he said, “hate is hate.” Despite over 320 antiLGBTQ bills being introduced in state legislatures this year, Biden said nothing about meaningful protections for queer people. It’s clear that defending crucial trans rights doesn’t rank anywhere on the list of priorities for the Democratic Party. They, like the Republicans, see us as a campaign issue – and not an advantageous one. This falls in a lineup with severe issues threatening marginalized and working people that Democrats patently refuse to play offense on: attacks on abortion rights, racist voter suppression, and climate change, just to name a few. Moreover, the Democrats have never been, and have no intention of becoming, advocates for truly universal healthcare – not just for trans people, but for all working people. In America, medical expenses account for the majority of all bankruptcies – and two years into a global health crisis, despite holding a majority in both houses of Congress and control over the White House, Democrats have not put single-payer healthcare back on the table in any way. We need an independent movement to secure trans rights, and we need a mass working-class party to represent the interests of transgender people as part of a workingclass program that will cut across the division
of the GOP. We should be clear: the Republican Party cynically uses the existence of trans and queer people to whip up their base to a program of austerity and poverty that does not benefit working-class people of any gender or sexual orientation. The most effective way to undermine rightwing bigotry and hysteria is with a program that addresses the needs of workingclass people. Bernie Sanders showed this when his 2016 campaign won over a serious number of traditionally Republican voters, with a program that included w i d e l y - p o p ula r working- clas s demands like Medicare for All. We need a party that will link economic demands for all working people to rights for the marginalized, like Medicare for All including gender-affirming and reproductive care.
The Struggle Ahead We especially need a united movement to defeat these attacks on trans rights alongside the effort to defend Roe v Wade and abortion rights. Tens of thousands of people nationally came out into the streets when the Supreme Court leaked a draft decision overturning Roe, and students and workers have organized walkouts against the potential rollback. We need to mirror and expand this fighting approach to defending trans rights. We need a genuine mass movement demanding a Medicare for All healthcare system that includes high quality reproductive and gender affirming care. These attacks show that we cannot rely on the slow “changing of attitudes” to clear the way for a safer existence for trans people – and importantly, the “changing of attitudes” has never happened in a vacuum, and can be wrenched backwards by powerful political forces. But in the same way, they can be led forward through the building of genuine solidarity between working people, on the basis that the interests of transgender people are also the interests of the working class. Autonomy over our bodies, safety in public spaces, free and accessible healthcare, highquality and affordable housing, safe workplaces and living wages – this is the reality that transgender people are desperately seeking, but it is also the world that the working class has long been denied. In the face of a political system that is determined to keep that world from us, we owe it to ourselves to build the movement necessary to win it. J
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FIRED FOR ORGANIZING Griffin R., Cincinnati
Starbucks has fired at least 21 workerorganizers since February as returning CEO Howard Schultz reclaimed his throne in April. This spate of firings is a coordinated attack against Starbucks workers in over 250 shops across 35 states who have won over 80 of the union elections held so far. The unexpected breakthrough of Starbucks organizing has galvanized service, retail, and logistics workers across the U.S. who are turning toward unions as a path forward in an unstable economy marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation, and supply-chain issues affecting the availability of basic consumer goods like baby formula. New organizing is taking hold at Target, Etsy, Apple stores, Dollar General, and Trader Joe’s among others following Amazon Labor Union’s longshot April victory at the JFK8 Fulfillment Center in Staten Island, New York. Schultz, once on a shortlist for U.S. Labor Secretary during Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has embraced his union busting roots, declaring war on the “outside force” of “so-called workers” organizing for a union. In a
leaked video of an April meeting with executives and regional managers, Schultz urged managers to take a more aggressive approach to undermine the wave of organizing across the company, declaring in a virtual town hall that the corporation is “being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization.” Schultz’s most recent move, attempting to offer expanded benefits exclusively to shops that are not engaged in union organizing, is both a clumsy attack on the movement and a recognition of some of the demands put forward by the union for a $15 minimum wage, a tip option for mobile orders, and faster sick time accrual. Starbucks’ branding as a champion of refugees and immigrants, LGBTQ+ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement has been increasingly discredited as hundreds of the company’s young, progressive-minded and often LGBTQ+ union leaders are attacked by the corporation for demanding higher pay, better benefits, and improved working conditions.
Profits On The Line Corporate executives and major shareholders smell blood in the water as the Dow Jones and S&P 500 face their biggest losses since the early months of the COVID-19
STARBUCKS RAMPS UP UNION BUSTING PRESSURE
pandemic. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and figures like Schultz and Jeff Bezos have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent rulings in favor of unions as the agency moves to outlaw mandatory antiunion ‘captive-audience’ meetings In a May 10th op-ed, Glenn Spencer, Senior VP of the Employment Policy Division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cried “regulatory overreach” as NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo weighs revisiting various precedents in U.S. labor law including a previous ruling that enables big tech corporations like Uber to classify gig workers as ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees. As runaway inflation and rising labor costs threaten profits, major corporations are looking toward the unionization push at Starbucks and Amazon for lessons to stomp out union organizing before it spreads across the retail, service, and logistics industries. It’s crucial that the new labor movement prepares for
the coming wave of aggressive union busting ahead of us and emphasizes the need for workplace actions like strikes and work stoppages to fight for the reinstatement of fired pro-union workers and leaders.
“Memphis 7” Starbucks Union Leaders Reinstated – Fight Back Against Anti-Union Retaliation! The NLRB ruled on May 10th that seven Starbucks workers in Memphis, Tennessee who were fired in February for supporting the union are to be reinstated immediately by the company with back-pay. “They’re not going to fire an employee directly for unionizing, because they are aware of how illegal it is. Instead, they will try to enforce something that was never enforced for whatever reason.” Memphis 7 worker Beto Sanchez explained in a recent interview.
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Unionizing Workers Should Fight Against Sexual Assault and Harassment in the Workplace
Emilia Morgan, Watertown Starbucks Barista “If I filed an incident report every single time something happened, I would be going to the back every hour,” a Starbucks worker in Boston said of the harassment they face in their store as a barista. Harassment is rampant at Starbucks: practically every barista has some story about a creepy customer, an inappropriate comment, or worse. The story is always accompanied by “my manager did nothing,” or “it took months for something to be done.” Harassment at work, especially in the service industry, is nothing new. As workers, we are subjected to inappropriate comments, unwanted touching, and more from our bosses, clients, and even sometimes other coworkers. This is true across workplaces, especially workplaces where we lack protections. In service and retail, the mentality of “the customer is always right” is forced upon us by managers and severely limits our power. Managers at our stores are not in a position to take our side in instances of harassment. As corporate’s foot soldiers on
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the ground, managers must protect the company from workers’ grievances while maximizing profits in whatever way they can or risk being fired or demoted. In the worst cases, managers themselves are the ones engaging in harassment and assault, or even doing so in retaliation for a worker filing a report. The #MeToo movement brought to light rampant sexual harassment and violence, but aside from major headlines and blowback for a few high-profile, famous, and wealthy men, working people did not see real improvements in our daily lives. However, the new wave of struggle in the labor movement has again brought into question how workingclass women and gender-nonconforming people can fight for our safety on the job. Just a few weeks ago in North Carolina, Wendy’s workers went on a week-long strike protesting the sexual harassment and abuse they have faced at the hands of their manager.
What a Union Can Provide Without a union, individual workers are forced to manage their experiences of harassment and assault on their own. If they file a claim, their name will be on it. This changes with a union. Union shop stewards are tasked with representing workers when they have a conflict with management. The shop steward cannot be fired for bringing forward grievances. Shop stewards are elected by their coworkers to hold the employer accountable to their contract and to represent workers in any conflict with management.
An active, engaged, and accountable shop steward is crucial for workers to receive the most out of being in a union. A strong shop steward could hold bi-monthly meetings for workers – with no managers – to talk about conditions in the workplace. They could hold democratic workers’ discussions around sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of unequal treatment experienced on the shop floor. When workers come together to openly deal with and fight oppression in the workplace, we are actively building solidarity among our coworkers, and building a united rank and file within the shop. In our contracts, we need to fight against retaliatory firings. Clauses against at-will employment prevent management from firing workers because of complaints around sexual assault and harassment and provide a safety net for workers trying to organize against for safety on the job. One step further would be granting democratic power to the workers on the shop floor. What if the contract stipulated that the workers have democratic decisionmaking power to ban customers who have engaged in harassment? Harassment, violence, and degradation should not be a condition of our jobs. Fighting unions can play the strongest role in protecting us from unwanted treatment. A union gives us the strongest basis to fight against harassment and assault, and our fight shouldn’t stop there. Trans-inclusive Medicare for All, abortion rights, and a living wage all play a role in protecting workers, and unionized workers should fight for these things too. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
HOW CAN WE UNIONIZE AMAZON EVERYWHERE? Chris Gray, Minneapolis
Of all the workers organized by all the unions in the last twelve months, 22% of them work at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island. Along with 69 successful union elections at Starbucks stores in the last six months, the victory at JFK8 is a strategic breakthrough for the labor movement in terms of organizing the unorganized, especially in sectors of the economy that have been long abandoned by conservative labor leaders. However, to keep up the momentum, it’s essential to escalate and expand the struggle as quickly as possible, and learn the key political lessons of the JFK8 victory.
Priority #1 – Defend the JFK8 Election & Win A Contract While Amazon Labor Union’s success in winning the first union at an Amazon facility in the country was historic, the battle is far from over. In many ways the hard work starts now as Amazon will do everything in their power to deny the newly unionized workers a decent contract. Already, Amazon has won a victory by having their appeal of the election results reviewed by a more business-friendly office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While the NLRB is more favorable under Biden than it was under Trump, as a whole, the institution is not a friend of working people. Amazon relies on a 150% average annual turnover rate at its facilities to help it bust unions, which is why the ALU needs to escalate the struggle for a contract as quickly as possible. Amazon is already retaliating against workers affiliated with ALU, and if this continues unchallenged, it will have a chilling effect on workers at JFK8. It’s likely that getting Amazon to the bargaining table will require strike action. ALU will need to begin preparation for this very soon. The wider labor movement, especially the 1.2 million member strong Teamsters, can’t sit on the sidelines and should urgently jump to the defense of the workers at JFK8. A first step in this would be organizing national days of action demanding the union be certified, that Amazon negotiate, and an end to retaliation against workers. Even though 30% of all union election victories don’t produce a first contract within three years, it would be a critical mistake to draw the conclusion that winning a union
JUNE 2022
contract at Amazon is impossible as some major unions are doing. Certain forces in the labor movement are casting doubt over the possibility of formally unionizing Amazon. For example, the Teamsters said what’s needed is “non-traditional campaigns” while also emphasizing that Amazon workers need a union. Other groups with a solid track record of rank-and-file organizing like a wing of Amazonians United have completely ignored the JFK8 victory, and pointed to the very existence of union contracts as a key reason for the political degeneration of most union leaderships today (rather than their adaptation to the bosses). Of course, there can be no “fair deal” between a billionaire like Jeff Bezos and the 1.2 million Amazon workers who toil everyday to make his billions. A “good” union contract is nothing more than an accurate snap-shot of the current state of power relations between workers and their boss, and contract victories are a key step forward for previously unorganized workers that all socialists should fight for.
The Entire Labor Movement Should Put Its Weight Behind Unionizing Amazon As an independent union, ALU developed as a response to the conservative approach of most labor leaders, who for decades adapted themselves to U.S. capitalism even as the structure of the working class changed beneath their feet. While there were important attempts to take on retail corporations with campaigns like Our Walmart, which cost UFCW $8 million annually, and Fight for $15, which cost SEIU around $70 million, these efforts failed to organize a single worker into a union. This is the context in which the independent Amazon Labor Union formed, which won a historic victory with less than $180,000 in the bank. Other ad hoc groups inspired by ALU have developed as well. Amazon workers in North Carolina are organizing on their own under a coalition called Carolina Amazonians United 4 Solidarity & Empowerment (CAUSE), which is loosely affiliated with United Electric. However, viewing independent unions as a silver bullet can lead to mistakes. For example, Target workers recently filed for a union election with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Despite its powerful legacy of struggle dating back over a century ago, this can
be an unnecessary barrier to Target workers who view agreement with the IWW’s explicitly anti-capitalist program as a precondition for affiliating with the union. Still, the fact that a section of workers are turning to IWW in a huge company that the mainstream unions have made no inroads into shows the thirst for new, more confrontational, methods of organizing. The emergence of these independent, unapologetically worker-led unions like ALU have removed a key barrier to winning: the ossified and conservative labor bureaucracy. The ALU has a strong starting point to launch a massive nationwide campaign to unionize Amazon with the workers at hundreds of facilities who reached out to them. However, they will not be able to do it alone and need to draw in the other unions who have declared intent to organize at Amazon like the Teamsters, and individual locals of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), United Electric (UE), and groups associated with SEIU. ALU should use their new authority to influence the approach these established unions take. Under the new leadership of Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters have written what amounts to an open declaration to unionize Amazon, which should have Amazon worried. But what’s critical is that ALU’s successful methods at JFK8 are the methods that underpin the Teamsters campaign. Their statement does not include any mention of ALU’s demands for a $30/hr starting wage, and replaces calling out Bezos’ wealth with the traditional language of the labor leadership like making Amazon a company where “shareholders do well because workers are doing well.” This is a mistake and ALU needs to make sure the fighting approach they used at JFK8 is not drowned out.
L ABOR
one facility. To succeed, the movement needs to expand rapidly. To avoid getting contained by Amazon’s union-busting efforts, the next step for ALU is to make concrete plans for their national organizing conference, providing a home for Amazon workers across the country looking to form a union. At this stage of the struggle, an organizing conference can play an essential political role in the movement, defending the invaluable role of clear demands, naming a boss like Jeff Bezos as the enemy, emphasizing the importance of rank-and-file leadership, and modeling how a healthy union should be built, like for example ALU’s constitutional clause that union officers earn no more than workers they represent. In ALU’s efforts to avoid replicating the mistakes of the existing labor leadership, it’s entirely understandable that there are hesitations about hiring staff and professionalizing their finances. However, without a strong organization, the key political lessons of ALU’s victory can be isolated as larger unions like the Teamsters enter the fight against Amazon with a more conventional and less militant approach. Finally, expanding ALU’s national organizing power can also lay the basis for wider mass days of action, solidarity strikes, and other organizing that will be essential to force Amazon to the table. The first step in unionizing Amazon everywhere, and the retail and service sectors in general, is to go all out to make sure Amazon can’t overturn the election results at JFK8, and that they win a strong contract that is an inspiration to all Amazon workers. To achieve this, ALU needs to call an organizing conference to clarify the political approach they used to win a JFK8 while not missing the forest for the trees on questions like which logo appears on the union card at other facilities. Finally, the most important thing is to recognize the immense historic opportunity that JFK8 workers laid at the feet of the working class to boldly rebuild the labor movement at a time when unions are more popular than ever before, inflation is rocketing past wage increases, and tens of millions of people are fundamentally reassessing their work lives. J
All Out For The ALU Organizing Conference There is a danger that, following ALU’s defeat at the neighboring warehouse at LDJ5, they lose momentum and turn inward at JFK8 rather than spreading their fight to other facilities. While it’s essential to defend the JFK8 election and prepare for the looming contract fight there, Amazon would like nothing more than to be able to isolate ALU’s victory and focus all its union-busting firepower at
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HOW DO WE DEFE ABORTION RIGHTS Keely Mullen, New York City
the vote for Democrats. With their authority as the primary abortion rights organization in the The majority of Americans do not want to country, what action is Planned Parenthood sugoverturn Roe. In fact, according to aggregate gesting we take? Sign an online petition, tell our data from four national surveys, somewhere stories, and donate. The day after the leak, tens of thousands of between 85-90% of Americans think abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. people came out into the streets in cities across How then is it possible that we are standing at the country looking for a way to fight back. the edge of this cliff? How is it that in a matter Socialist Alternative members reported that our of weeks, 58% of women of reproductive age tables at the protests were flooded with teenwill live in a state where they very likely can’t get agers and young adults looking for next steps for the struggle. While we were able to channel an abortion? The simple answer is that the right wing is the rage of hundreds into school and workplace prepared to mobilize their vocal minority to fight, walkouts, sit-ins, and action assemblies, there while the Democratic Party and liberal NGOs tell were hundreds of thousands that would’ve taken action if the major women’s organizations took their angry majority to stay home. In the wake of the leaked Alito draft in early the lead. So, why didn’t they? May, it was not the major women’s rights organiWhile their stated zations that urgently mission to defend called people onto rights the streets. In many The right wing is prepared to reproductive resonates with milplaces, it was Sociallions, their strategy ist Alternative. In mobilize their vocal minority to actually get it done cities where Planned to fight, while the Democratic is fundamentally Parenthood and Women’s March were Party and liberal NGOs tell their flawed. Roe v Wade was forced to act, they won because the did so by organizing angry majority to stay home. titanic women’s what felt more like a movement of the funeral than a rally. They mourned the not-yet-dead Roe v Wade and 1960s-70s was led by mass organizations of struggle that fought ferociously in the streets asked us to donate and vote in November. If it’s not yet obvious how treacherous an through marches, strikes, and direct action such approach this is, consider that the country’s top as the heroic Jane Collective who provided safe pro-life strategists were not celebrating in the but illegal abortions. Rather than replicating wake of the leak. In fact, they were trembling in these successful methods of struggle, Planned fear that public anger would force the Supreme Parenthood and NARAL have built themselves as multi-million dollar lobbying machines. Change, Court to reverse course. Brian Westbrook, Executive Director of Coali- as they see it, is won at the ballot box and not tion Life, told the New York Times: “No, I don’t on the streets. In the “What We Do” section of their website, see that the leak, at all, seals the deal. Not even in the slightest bit. Because we know that NARAL proudly admits that three of their four human beings, we change our minds. Human top strategies boil down to lobbying and electing politicians. Planned Parenthood spent a record beings, we have a sense of being influenced.” The pro-life movement’s top guns were not $45 million during the 2020 elections. This convinced they’d won the fight. Liberal politi- included a donation to, and rousing endorsecians and NGO leaders, however, were convinced ment for, Joe Biden. (The standards for their they’d already lost. They left the field before the support are depressingly low, as it wasn’t until 2019 that Joe Biden dropped his support for game even started. the Hyde Amendment which bars federal funding to any organization that provides abortions… Why Won’t They Fight? including Planned Parenthood.) The day after the Politico leak of the draft These organizations, far from being led by Supreme Court decision came down, NARAL activists, are led by a who’s who of Democratic Pro-Choice, a leading abortion rights organiza- Party operatives. NARAL’s new president Mini tion, saw a 1,400% surge in donations. Half of Timmaraju was a former advisor to Biden and the donations came from first-time donors. Act- senior advisor for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presiBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, raised dential campaign (alongside Planned Parent$12 million in one day. hood Vice Board Chair Karen Finney). With their millions in the bank, what is If you follow their logic to its conclusion, it’s NARAL telling their supporters to do? Get out not just that movements don’t work, they’re
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actually a liability. A mass movement takes on a life of its own. A more radical wing of the movement will undoubtedly emerge, and at that point, the liberal leadership loses their grip. The movement might even take aim at the willful inaction of the very politicians they support. If we want to defend and extend our rights, we can’t look to these organizations for direction.
What Type Of Movement Do We Need? If they were serious about preventing the death of Roe, the leadership of the women’s movement would have used the leak of the Alito draft to launch a genuine mass movement. They would have called for a mass nationwide march on D.C. leading to an encampment outside the Supreme Court. They would have called on high school students to lead walkouts across the country, providing them with the organizing tools to do it. They would have pulled together labor leaders from across the country and made the case for widespread strike action to defend reproductive rights. They, of course, did not do this. But young people and working people have taken action of our own in the run up to the ruling. Students have walked out of school in the thousands, tens of thousands marched in the wake of the leak, and dozens participated in direct action at the courts and politicians’ offices. We will need to do much more of this in the lead up to the ruling. To coordinate this work across the country we need the formation of new women’s organizations that are independent of the rotten Democratic Party and are prepared to fight unapologetically against all attacks on women and queer people. These organizations will need democratic structures, including regular membership meetings, to discuss and debate tactics. They will need leadership that is elected and fully accountable to the movement. When word comes down that Roe has been overturned, as is likely at this point, that should be a wakeup call to organizations on the left, like the Democratic Socialists of America, and progressive unions, like National Nurses United, to urgently fight for the formation of a new women’s organization prepared to use radical tactics. Socialist Alternative would enthusiastically participate in such an organization and fight to build it into a vehicle for working-class, socialist feminist victories like free abortion on demand, universal childcare, and paid parental leave. Until then, we will continue to organize with young women and queer people in every city and town where we have members, carrying out walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, and protests demanding our basic right to bodily autonomy. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
END S?
Tips Succ For a essf Sit-I ul n
CHOOSE YOUR TARGET
BE DISCREET
If you live in a state with an antichoice, right-wing Governor who’s about to pass an abortion ban, their office could be a good target. If you live in a city that’s home to an important political leader who’s refusing to do anything, they’d make a good target too. For a more general target, courts or government buildings can be a good place to stage a sit-in.
Organizing a sit-in has to be done discreetly. If word gets out that a demonstration is planned, it’s likely you’ll arrive to a sizeable police presence. Build for it by asking people to DM you on social media if they want to participate in a direct action. You can add them to an encrypted messaging group for more details. Make sure people know ahead of time what your demands are, the best way to get people out is to politically explain what’s at stake!
PICK KEY DEMANDS It should be clear to anyone watching or participating exactly what you’re calling for. Are you calling on the State Legislature not to pass that law? Are you demanding that your Senator fulfill their campaign promises? Don’t be afraid to think big. Those in power are capable of giving us so much more than they do, we need to demand it.
IDENTIFY HOW FAR YOU’RE WILLING TO GO Think strategically about what’s in the best interest of the movement. A non-arrestable action can be just as powerful as an arrestable one, so think strategically about how far you’re willing to go. Make sure to reach out to your local lawyer’s guild and request a legal observer, this will go a long way in protecting protestors!
PLAN SOCIAL MEDIA IN ADVANCE A sit-in, or any direct action, can be very fast paced. You won’t have time to work out a social media strategy on the fly, so it’s best to do it ahead of time. Identify who is going to live stream and on which platforms (TikTok’s algorithm pushes out live videos so that’s a safe bet). Have someone prepared to take pictures and videos and post them while the action is taking place.
HAVE NEXT STEPS Make sure you have something to point participants and viewers toward. It can be a town hall meeting, an action conference, another direct action, or even just an informal follow-up discussion. A direct action can get your adrenaline pumping and it’s important to keep up momentum in order to build a sustained struggle.
On May 13, roughly 90 staff members at Tuft’s Medical Center in Boston walked out of work to protest attacks on abortion. “This all came together pretty quickly,” said Dr. Yash Patel, the chief resident at the department of radiology at Tuft’s, who helped lead the walkout. “Thanks to Socialist Alternative, I was pointed to the school walkouts that were happening on Tuesday evening, and I reached out via Instagram and got in touch. We really started planning Wednesday or Thursday for this walkout to happen on Friday. “Sometimes it’s harder for us to kind of see the larger fight that we’re part of, just because we are spending so much time and emotion giving to our patients every day, but you know, when we have coordinated attacks against our profession and our patients in general, it’s time to take a coordinated response,” said Patel. “And that was part of what we were hoping to get at through this action.”
y I M d y n Wh ers a t k d Ou r o CowWalke JUNE 2022
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U. S. POLITICS
JUNETEENTH: COMMEMORATING THE HISTORY
Harrell, and Lori Lightfoot highlight the growing embrace of “law and order” politics by a Democratic Party. They have dropped the pretense around defunding/reforming police which they had signaled in 2020 under the scalding heat of the historic mass rebellion. It is clear that we cannot rely on the establishment and we need to build bold mass movements to make the promise of Juneteenth a reality, but it will not happen unless we learn the lessons of why despite that mass rebellion, not nearly enough has changed. While the energy, fury, and commitment were there, it was disoriented by the lack of accountability and democratic structures surrounding the many loose networks movement have dismissively rejected the of BLM organizations who operated on the Federal holiday, correctly arguing it makes NGO/nonprofit model – reliant on donations it easier for corporations and establishment from wealthy liberals, corporate patronage, or liberals to look like woke progressives without government subsidies acquired by close proxsubstantive change in policies and practices. imity to the Democratic Party (with all the But a more effective approach is to use strings that entails). the heightened attention on the holiday to We need a new bold multiracial, multigenreject such empty corporate woke-washing der mass movement on the basis of demoand make concrete demands for systemic cratic structures, clear demands that can change like disarming cops on patrol, cutting mobilize millions, and tactics that target the police funding to fund housing, education, capitalist system that feeds on and deepens and jobs and electsystemic racism. We ing community conneed not just pro“We need to make Juneteenth not just a day of rememtrol boards with full tests but mass direct powers over police brance and historical reflection, but also a reaffirmation action to disrupt such as hiring, firing of the need for collective struggle to smash racism.” business as usual and subpoena. We – with strikes, slowneed to make Juneteenth not just a day of remembrance and disproportionately harm working class Black downs and occupations. A firm link is neceshistorical reflection, but also a reaffirmation women, should be clear demonstration to us sary with the growing militancy in the labor of the need for collective struggle to smash that Democrats seek to fly the anti-racist flag movement, as well as the revolt to defend racism and for the full meaning of Juneteenth in words while upholding institutional racism. abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. They hope to rest on their laurels having sucJuneteenth is a remembrance of emanto be realized. cessfully appointed the first Black woman to cipation – but emancipation is still needed Just a cursory look at the objective conthe Supreme Court, but the severe limitations today. By carrying forward the lessons of this ditions of Black life in America, especially to representation politics has become clearer holiday, we show how just as liberation from among the working class and poor, makes it slavery was possible, so is a future beyond clear that it would be a mockery to say that to a much wider section of the population. Now Black mayors like Eric Adams, Bruce capitalism and racial oppression. J
OF ANTI-SLAVERY REVOLT WITH ANTI-RACIST STRUGGLE Teddy Shibabaw, Madison The Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, but it wasn’t until June 19th, 1865 that the chains of chattel slavery were broken in Texas, the most remote part of the Confederacy. It was marked by General Granger of the Union Army reading out General Order 3, declaring “all slaves are free.” That date has since been commemorated to varying degrees as the Juneteenth holiday. Early on, it was celebrated in Texas especially on that day, but other parts of the deep South celebrated different Emancipation Days. Up until the historic mass anti-racist rebellion of 2020 following George Floyd’s police murder, Juneteenth was kept alive by sections of Black communities across the country but was not widely known. Since the Floyd rebellion, the date has truly entered mass consciousness. The Federal government has finally recognized Juneteenth as a holiday. Even major corporations like Nike, Google, Lyft, New York Times, JCPenney, the NFL, Tumblr and Postmates have made Juneteenth company holidays. Some in the
we are genuinely free. As if law enforcement terror against Black Americans is not enough, there has been a shocking rise in hate crimes, and anti-Black racial violence in particular. This has been horrifically punctuated by the recent racist massacre in Buffalo – 10 killed, three injured with all but 2 of the victims being Black. Payton Gendron, who had long planned this fascistic act, was arrested with hardly any force by the police department, unlike the 75 year old protester whose skull was fractured by police during the George Floyd Rebellion. We can’t rely on the police, the capitalist government, or its political parties to defend us against racial terror, whether carried out by the state or by vigilantes. Biden, who has frequently talked about chummy relations with old segregationist politicians, has massively expanded police funding and refused to lift a finger to remove the filibuster obstacle – a convenient excuse not to pass the George Floyd Act or any anti-racist, progressive reforms. The empty response by the Biden administration to either the Buffalo shooting or to Roe being likely overturned, an event that will
MASS VIOLENCE HIGHLIGHTS BROKEN SYSTEM Grace Fors, Dallas
In ten days, two high-profile acts of mass slaughter have stunned millions and created unimaginable grief and fear. On May 14, an 18 year-old armed white supremacist targeted a grocery store in a predominantly Black community in Buffalo, New York. Ten were killed, three were injured, a majority of them Black. The circumstances of the attack and the shooter’s 180-page unhinged “manifesto” made clear the shocking threat of far-right radicalization and racist violence. Just ten days later, disaster struck again, this time across the country in the small town of Uvalde, Texas. A lone gunman, also just 18 years old, entered an elementary school and went on a senseless rampage. Nineteen students in fourth grade at Robb Elementary School were murdered along with two of their teachers. Parents waited hours to hear news of whether their child was dead or alive.
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It’s been painfully hard to keep the news on, but even harder to look away. Photos of smiling victims – the 65 year-old grandmother of six who was shopping with her sister, the Black father who had been buying a birthday cake for his 3 year-old son at Tops Family Market, the fourth graders playing sports or holding their honor roll certificates – are too much to bear. This is especially so when experience tells us that nothing will fundamentally change. It is clear to all that this shouldn’t be happening. The U.S. has seen more than 200 mass shootings in 2022. 27 have been school shootings. But the miles-long list of those killed, injured, or traumatized by Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub, Parkland, and countless others has proven time and again that politicians will not stand up for our safety.
Enough Begging Republicans – Do Something! If Republicans have blood on their
hands, the Democrats bloody theirs when they reach across the aisle. After the Buffalo massacre, Biden refused to take executive action on gun control. In his remarks following Uvalde, he asked “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” We can only imagine why he would address this question to millions of viewers instead of himself and his own party that is in power. Despite insisting “it’s time to act,” Biden’s calls to Congress didn’t even mention any concrete measures on guns, even those he has claimed to support, instead proposing the “modest” step of confirming his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. No matter how bad things get, Biden is not going to move a single inch in the direction of helping ordinary people. Although information is still coming to light, what has been revealed about Uvalde’s police’s response to the active shooter has exposed shocking, cruel disregard for students’ lives, and for many people nationwide this will further undermine trust in police to keep us safe. Nevertheless, Biden has refused to call an investigation of police conduct, saying he has “the utmost respect for the men and women of
law enforcement,” who in this case allegedly failed to stop the shooter from entering the school, lied about their response, tased and handcuffed parents, and directly caused the death of at least one child. Chuck Schumer said Americans should cast their vote in November based on how candidates stand on guns. Is that what he would tell the victims who had their futures violently stolen years before they’d be eligible to vote? Not to mention that the Democrats have just wrapped up an aggressive primary campaign for an antiabortion candidate with an A rating from the NRA against a progressive challenger. “Vote blue” has become the Democratic distortion of “thoughts and prayers.” Republicans are in hands of murderous gun lobby, gleefully spreading conspiracy theories about the shooter’s identity to stoke xenophobic and anti-trans fervor, and the Democrats refuse genuine confrontation. We need our own independent political force to beat the corporate gun lobby and to force Democrats to take action.
What We Stand For We don’t support state seizure of all arms
continued on p. 15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WORLD
Imperialist Conflict Sharpens in Ukraine
BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR MILITARISM Tom Crean, New York City It has been over three months since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine began. There is no doubt that Putin and his inner circle miscalculated enormously. They expected Russian troops to be welcomed as liberators in Russian speaking areas in Eastern Ukraine. They expected a weak and divided Western response. Instead they have met ferocious resistance from the Ukrainian population and a strikingly united NATO response including vicious sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy and an endless river of armaments pouring in from the West. After suffering massive casualties in the siege of Kyiv, the Russian military has refocused its military campaign in the East of the country and along the Black Sea coast where it has made some gains, though slowly. All signs now point to a long war of attrition. In Western countries, including the U.S., there has been massive sympathy for the plight of ordinary people in Ukraine facing endless bombardment with 14 million forced to flee their homes. This sympathy has been relentlessly manipulated by warmongers to gain support for greater intervention by NATO which points towards a dangerous escalation of the conflict. The Western powers are in no way concerned about the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Nor is this conflict – as some capitalist figures claim – a struggle between “autocracy and democracy” or between “open and closed societies.” In reality, it is part of a struggle for global domination between different imperialist blocs, with NATO, led by the U.S., along with some Asian countries on the one side, and Russia and China on the other. In all of the contending imperialist countries, the dominant interests are those of the capitalist ruling class which seeks to maximize its access to resources, share of global markets and generally create and reinforce their respective “spheres of influence.” As socialists, we stand against all the competing imperialist interests which threaten to pull the world into a spiraling conflict with disastrous consequences. Just this week during a trip to Asia, President Biden made clear that the U.S. would militarily intervene if China tried to invade Taiwan. Direct conflict between the U.S. and China would dwarf in scale what we are already seeing in Ukraine, which is already a catastrophe. We believe that working people across the world have a common interest in opposing the escalation of the war in Ukraine and the New Cold War generally.
Unchecked Militarism Joe Biden and his administration openly gloat at Russian losses and have declared JUNE 2022
that their goal now is to permanently “degrade” the Russian military and remove Putin. Last week, Congress, at Biden’s request, voted for $40 billion more in “aid” to Ukraine. The bulk of this is for more weapons and to restock the U.S. arsenal. The $40 billion, only part of what NATO has expended on the war, is equivalent to an incredible one fourth of Ukraine’s pre-war GDP. It is also a massive bonanza for weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. But what is most striking is that this sails through Congress with a high degree of bipartisan support while there is no longer even a pretense by the Democrats of addressing: climate change, the disaster that is our healthcare system, the student debt crisis, the $7.25 federal minimum wage,
reproductive rights, voting rights, or labor rights. Nor is that a complete list. As leftwing author Chris Hedges says, this is the “death spiral of unchecked militarism.” It is not surprising that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, leaders of a party that has advocated “reckless militarism” from Vietnam to their support for the Iraq war, would push this $40 billion. But it is shocking and shameful that not a single liberal Democrat in Congress, even those who
CLIMATE CHANGE-INDUCED HEATWAVE SCORCHES INDIAN SUBCONTINENT Rob Darakjian, Los Angeles
India and Pakistan have suffered through a scorching heatwave in March and April, with both countries experiencing temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit for days on end. In India, the maximum temperature in March was 91 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest maximum average temperature across the subcontinent in 122 years. Dozens of people across India have died of heatstroke, although we can be almost certain the real number is far higher. Workers, especially bricklayers, rickshaw drivers, and food vendors, regularly report fainting multiple days in a row. There have even been apocalyptic scenes like hundreds of birds dropping out of the sky due to heatstroke. As predicted by climate scientists, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, like this latest heatwave, have arrived for the over 1.5 billion people in India. A recent study by the UK’s national weather service predicts that these kinds of extreme heat waves, which used to occur once every 312 years, can now be expected once every 3 years. By the end of the century, if global warming isn’t reversed, it will become a yearly occurrence. The recent heatwave is adding to inflationary pressures on global food prices. Farmers in India estimate that as much as 20% of the yearly wheat crop was lost due
to the high temperatures. The electrical grid has come under enormous strain, as millions of people use fans and air conditioning to keep themselves cool enough to remain conscious, so they can continue to earn a living. This in turn has spiked demand for coalfired power plants which will only increase emissions.
Capitalist System Only Offers Inaction While countries in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America may experience the most extreme weather events sooner than the U.S., this is no cause for comfort. The root cause of this heatwave in India is the same as the massive fires which plow through California, the devastating hurricanes affecting coastal cities on the Gulf and Atlantic, and a slew of other extreme weather events: the capitalist system that puts the needs of profit above the continued habitability of the planet for billions of people. India’s PM Nahendra Modi of the rightwing, Hindu-nationalist BJP Party, has committed to increasing the country’s renewable energy 3.5 times by 2030…while simultaneously sending representatives to the last COP conference to water down commitments to reduce coal use which is necessary to meet internationally agreed upon emissions’ targets. The capitalist governments around the
call themselves “socialist” like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, or Bernie Sanders voted against this militarist bill and the dangerous escalation it represents. There were, however, 57 Republicans in the House and 11 in the Senate who voted against. The opposition of these reactionaries, , linked to Trump, is no sense “antiwar.” It reflects the position of nationalist isolationism,
continued on p. 15 world will continue their ritual of making big promises to cut greenhouse emissions at yearly summits which they then refuse to act on, while ordinary working people, particularly in the neocolonial world, will continue to be pushed to the breaking point.
Farmers’ Movement Shows the Way Forward The only solution is for the workers and farmers of India to rely on their own strength to force through the green energy transition that is needed. The recent movement of farmers and workers against proposed neoliberal reforms is a good example. Starting in 2019, farmers began to organize continual marches and demonstrations in the nation’s capital, New Delhi, to protest laws which would have removed the protections to minimum prices for their crops. Committees sprang up in villages and regions across the country to carry out the strike over years, despite all the challenges the Modi government put in their way: police terror, and attempts to whip up sectarian tensions on national and religious lines, as well as the political differences of the farmers themselves. The farmers linked up with several national unions to organize a series of strikes and protest actions – including a general strike in 2020 involving 250 million people. This enormous pressure eventually won, undermining one of Modi’s most cherished political goals in November of 2021. A similar movement which connects the need to transition to fossil fuels with the broader economic and social demands of the masses of the subcontinent can not only win, it could become a shining example for the environmental movement worldwide, pointing to the the methods of class struggle which will eventually resolve the climate crisis and the capitalist system which underlies it. J
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TO THE ESTABLISHMENT,
COVID-19
COVID-19 IS “NOT GONE BUT FORGOTTEN”
When it comes to the state of the COVID19 pandemic in the United States right now, where does one even start? The U.S. has surpassed one million COVID deaths, a milestone that many knew was coming but felt helpless to prevent. Millions are looking at the corrupt, unchanged healthcare system as well as the government and big business’ favoring of corporate profit over human life - and are unsure of what to do from here.
methods of tracking cases are becoming increasingly unavailable: lab programs are shutting down, dedicated testing sites are disappearing, and home test kits being chosen over lab and pharmacy tests make publiclyreported data hard to come by. This situation makes detecting future surges even more difficult. But in the world around us, we see people are getting sick and calling out of work, scrambling to find appointments for the morereliable PCR tests, and doing their best to do their own contact tracing. This, while trying to fill their tank with gas at $4.60 a gallon (on average), trying to pay for rising food prices, and trying to stay afloat as inflation rages around workers’ stagnant wages. The lack of travel safety measures and the U.S.’ failure to contain the pandemic has had global consequences, of course. An estimated 2.5 billion people across the world have not received a single vaccine dose. A combination of stalled production, export bans, and vaccine hoarding by wealthy countries has left the poorest out to dry.
Lack of Clarity on Data, Safety Measures
Priorities: War Spending, Not Pandemic Relief
Meaghan Murray, Minneapolis
Positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are still ticking up. The data around hospitalizations, however, is collected differently from state to state and even hospital to hospital: some people are being hospitalized for COVID while others are seeking treatment for a separate condition and happen to test positive. In some places, these may both be recorded as COVID hospitalizations, skewing numbers on hospitalizations among the fully vaccinated. But how do we tell the difference when new variants continue to present themselves in novel ways? Someone with the newest Omicron variant may not experience the same symptoms as with the Delta variant. That’s how subvariants work, anyway: as the virus keeps spreading and evolving among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, new strains pop up, and their changing symptoms and rates of transmission continue the cycle of pain and unpredictability. The efficacy of vaccines administered a year ago may protect people from a year-old variant, but what about the new ones? Most states have dropped all COVID public safety measures like mask-wearing, social distancing, and testing requirements. Even as cases surge, there are few public safety mandates stopping the spread. Additionally,
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Ordinary people are in crisis but the political establishment and Wall Street have been dragging us on a nationwide “the pandemic is over” tour. On a federal level, President Biden just sent an additional $40 billion to Ukraine, which he instructed Congress to approve before passing a new round of COVID relief funding. Somehow, the ruling class has an arsenal of cash for imperialist warmongering, but act broke when it comes to the question of public health. For all the valid criticisms of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, it’s now clear that the Biden administration has taken Trump’s “bare minimum” baton and ran with it. The only major difference between these two administrations’ response to the COVID crisis is that, now, some White House staffer is writing the president’s tweets for him. In a callous move, Biden has urged cities to spend their COVID relief on police budgets and “crime prevention” – two years into this ongoing pandemic and just weeks before the two-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar recently tweeted that over 500 police officers died in the line of duty last year. What she failed to mention: among these, COVID was the leading cause of death. The Democrats’
“For all the valid criticisms of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, it’s now clear that the Biden administration has taken Trump’s ‘bare minimum’ baton and run with it.”
priorities are clear: they have the money for militaristic aims like war and police, but can’t – won’t – spend another cent on the millions who are struggling to get out of this virus’ grip. Where does one start on the CDC, an institution which was regarded as the leading public health agency in the world, but made bumbling mistakes and sent mixed messaging throughout this crisis, and has since broken the public’s trust? Should we start there? The CDC’s rollout for a second booster is unclear, with their suggestion that people (especially the elderly and immunocompromised) examine their own medical history and make a decision about boosters after considering “how likely they are to get sick.” But even then, there’s hesitation to push for more boosters when the U.S. government may be rationing vaccine supplies.
Workers on Shaky Ground Let’s review what workers have lived through these past two years: a hellish merrygo-round of closings and reopenings, layoffs and lack of workplace protections, the economic whiplash of lockdowns, lulls in surges, mismanaged mandates, and the push and pull between federal, state, and employer expectations. It continues to be disorienting. Now factor in seeing a loved one among the one million lives that were lost. And for those that recover from the illness, “recovery” is a complicated concept. Long COVID is being diagnosed in more and more adults, where symptoms continue long after the initial infection – lasting weeks, months, and in some cases, years since they first got sick. It’s been challenging for healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat, but the symptoms can be debilitating: fatigue that affects daily life, heart palpitations, symptoms worsening after physical or mental
effort, shortness of breath, and the now wellknown “brain fog.” The question of a massive influx in need for disability benefits and job retraining (for those who were once able to do their jobs but, because of their condition, can no longer) remains unanswered. So does the question of what mental health support is available to those experiencing the loss of their professional career and physical and/or mental capabilities due to long COVID. Our economic and healthcare systems have set us up for failure.
Foundational Change Needed This is not to say that working people have failed here. It is a total failure of the system itself. One million have died, hospital staff worked to their breaking point, educators worked beyond theirs, too; parents continue to miss work, children continue to miss school, and still no improvement to our healthcare or education systems. Still no Medicare For All or cancellation of student loan debt, which would improve our societal conditions in ways a forprofit system never can. The capitalist class, the billionaires, and corporations are okay with the status quo: this capitalist system was built for them. But are ordinary people – who will get the short end of the stick every time – are we supposed to be okay with no change after all this illness, instability, and death? Without a movement from below, we will not see a difference in the way the political establishment operates. The health and safety of working-class and poor people will never be a legitimate concern to those that profit off our suffering. It will take a mass movement to rebuild on top of this broken system. So when it comes to how things are going with COVID, start where any ordinary person should: demanding system change. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
CHILDCARE
THE INFANT FORMULA SHORTAGE A NIGHTMARE CAUSED BY CORPORATE GREED Kailyn Nicholson, Seattle As the right wing assault on abortion rights ramps up, working parents of babies are facing an extreme crisis. General concern about supply chain disruption turned into an all-out emergency for families of infants across the country as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula in grocery stores hit 43% in the first week of May. The shortage extends to online stores, which many parents initially turned to after exhausting the stores in their hometown. In South Carolina at least four babies have already been admitted to the hospital due to malnutrition directly caused by lack of access to formula, and such cases are sure to increase over the coming weeks.
The Most Basic Necessity Modern infant formula is a scientific achievement which has had a dramatic impact on infant health worldwide, especially for poor and working class families. Today a majority of babies between the ages of 6 and 12 months in the U.S. rely on formula for all or part of their nutrition. There are countless reasons why formula is used, among them medical reasons, insufficient breastmilk supply or pain and difficulty breastfeeding, or needing to share the feeding burden with non-lactating partners. Crucially, in the only wealthy country without guaranteed paid family leave and maternity leave, being forced back to work often gives breastfeeding mothers no option but to supplement with formula or switch to it completely. Now parents across the country are paying hefty gas prices to drive for hours not just from store to store but to other towns or states to find the type of formula their baby needs. Specialty formulas for babies with specific dietary needs have been particularly impacted by the shortage, leaving many families who rely on these formulas desperate for options. Price gouging and hoarding have been reported, exacerbating the crisis and leading parents to water down formula in an effort to make it last as well as circulate homemade formula recipes from ingredients found in the kitchen. The anti-theft devices in many grocery stores’ baby formula aisles are a dark reminder of the inaccessibility of this basic and necessary staple even when the shelves are full. Just four corporations control over 90% of the JUNE 2022
$4 billion formula market in the U.S.: Abbott Nutrition (owners of the closed plant), Mead Johnson Nutrition, Nestle USA, and Perrigo. Roughly half of infant formula in the U.S. is purchased by WIC recipients, with heavy restrictions on what type, size, and brand they can buy. Some states have WIC contracts with a single supplier – setting up a situation where Abbott Nutrition was the exclusive provider to about half of the 1.2 million infants on WIC, and now it’s vanished from the shelves.
clinics which themselves are not adequately resourced to address the urgent needs created by this shortage. This crisis is highlighting the deep preexisting problems in the infant formula industry and in our economy as a whole that can’t be resolved by slapping on a consent decree or temporarily increasing imports. As long as formula production is governed by the laws of profit maximization, shortages, corner-cutting, and price gouging are all but guaranteed.
Crisis Rooted in Corporate Greed Capitalism is Failing Working In March, Abbott Nutrition’s plant in Stur- Class Families gis, Michigan – the single largest formula plant in the U.S. – was shut down by the FDA due to contamination which had killed two infants and gotten four sick with bacterial infections. The plant, which wasn’t investigated until three months after initial whistleblower complaints were filed, has already been cleared to reopen under a new federal consent decree. However, it emerged that since 2019, Abbott Nutrition has spent over $8 billion on stock buybacks for investors rather than improving their facilities and keeping up with health codes, despite receiving billions in tax breaks from the federal government ostensibly for that purpose. The FDA’s report exposed serious violations like not unclean surfaces, lack of proper protective equipment to workers, and unaddressed leaks in the plant. This facility had been producing the majority of specialized infant formula consumed in the U.S., and its closure immediately created a crisis of supply for these critical products – a crisis that could have been predicted and prevented. After weeks of resisting on the basis that the shortage would be short-lived and there wasn’t anything that could be done anyways, President Biden finally authorized the use of the Defense Production Act. But formula makers are warning that ingredient shortages caused by supply chain disruption could complicate efforts to increase the pace of production. On top of this, heavy import tariffs put in place by Trump and continued by Biden make importing formula prohibitively expensive. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki advised parents to go to their pediatrician if they were concerned about their ability to meet their child’s nutritional needs during the shortage – not taking into account that low-income parents on Medicaid often lack the time or ability to visit community
The formula crisis is the latest in a series of intense strains working families have been forced to bear since the start of the COVID19 pandemic. While corporate profits have soared, layoffs, loss of childcare, and school closures all contributed to a dramatic decline in maternal workforce participation and overall economic stability for middle and lower income families. Housing and food insecurity have skyrocketed, especially among families with young children. Now inflation is swallowing a bigger and bigger chunk of every paycheck. More and more young adults feel economically unable to have children – last month Business Insider called babies “a status symbol in today’s economy.” The irony of pro-life forces demanding that women have babies while actively refusing to address the urgent and worsening crises facing working-class parents is illustrated by the 192 Republican legislators who voted against increasing funding for more FDA safety inspections of formula plants after the
Abbott contamination scandal and resulting deaths. These elected officials are literally protecting the bottom-line of the formula industry at the expense of the most vulnerable members of society – babies. The right is set to score a major victory in the next several weeks with the likely overturn of Roe v. Wade. The baby formula shortage is just one example of the enormous challenges that working parents face, and if Roe is overturned, abortion may become illegal for more than half of women of reproductive age. The choice not to have a child due in these circumstances will be taken away. Seeing the dire crisis facing working parents, and those not yet ready to become parents, the Democrats and liberal NGOs like Planned Parenthood are sitting on their hands. This crisis was created by a combination of deregulation, monopolization, and protectionist policies put in place by pro-business politicians from both parties at the behest of corporate interests. The safety and availability of baby formula is too important to be left in the hands of corporate executives who only care about the bottom line and politicians who do their bidding. Protectionist tariffs that are designed to protect manufacturer profits and nothing else must be immediately dropped and funding allocated to import formula and ingredients in amounts sufficient to address immediate shortages. By nationalizing the top four formula manufacturers we could immediately make formula free for all parents, scale up production, improve safety standards, and start planning ahead to prevent future disasters. J
Bare shelves of infant formula at a Safeway store in Monroe, Washington. Photo: John Crowley
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I N T E R N AT I O N A L
PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST KILLED FOR EXPOSING OCCUPATION
REVOLUTIONARY UPRISING OUSTS SRI LANKAN PM Serge Jordan, ISA
Nothing short of a revolutionary crisis has developed in Sri Lanka, one that is likely to be a forerunner of similar upheavals in other countries. On the morning of May 8, hundreds of Rajapaksa-regime goons on the government payroll violently assaulted an anti-government encampment in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, armed with batons, sticks, and metal rods. Erected a month ago, this encampment had become a symbol of defiance to the regime’s authority, and a daily rallying point for all those supporting the mass movement. The mob of pro-regime thugs unleashed extreme violence on the protesters present, torching tents and banners and beating many people bloody. The police, present in large numbers, largely watched as the scene was taking place. Through this move, the Rajapaksa regime thought it could strike at the heart of the mass movement, intimidate peaceful protestors, scare them away from the site, and open the door to a wider counter-offensive to break the revolt of the masses. But this turned out to be a phenomenal miscalculation. After the initial shock of the attack, thousands of youth, assisted by supportive passers-by, drivers and workers from the area, and by people who had heard of what took place, started to chase the government-sponsored hooligans into the streets to teach them a lesson. Some were undressed, thrown into the nearby Beira lake or into garbage bins. Many of the buses which had been used to transport them to Colombo were set on fire, thrown into the lake, or both. The Beira lake now offers a surreal view, with dozens of burnt-out buses half-dunked into the water. His plan having totally backfired, Mahinda Rajapaska officially stepped down in the subsequent hours. Mahinda is the latest member of the Rajapaksa family to fall. He is particularly despised among the Tamil community for having overseen the massacre of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians during the civil war. Since his resignation though, the demands for his younger brother, the hated President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to
14
leave have only amplified exponentially throughout the country. At least eight people have died so far and hundreds more have been injured in the recent clashes. With their usual trope, most international media have evoked “riots” and “violence” between proand anti-government protesters in the streets of Colombo, and western governments and embassies have urged “restraint.” But no doubt can be had over who set this violence in motion, by savagely attacking entirely peaceful and defenseless protesters, which included families with young children.
The Struggle Goes On From dawn on the following Tuesday, as rumors spread of regime cronies and loyalists trying to flee the country – including the second son and Chief of Staff of the now ex-Prime Minister having escaped the day before to Australia – thousands of revolutionary protesters started assembling on the roads leading to the Bandaranaike International Airport. In the meantime however, the government also issued “shoot-on-sight” orders against anyone damaging public property, causing harm to life or violating the curfew. Tens of thousands of heavily armed troops have amassed in Colombo, and military barrages have been erected all around, giving the atmosphere of a city under military siege — akin to what the Tamil people still experience on a daily basis in the North and East of the country. The masses snatched an important victory against the reaction, and a mood of embittered determination to continue the struggle until Gota falls is deeply entrenched in everyone’s minds. Yet the threat of more counter-revolutionary violence or of a wider state crackdown has far from disappeared. The mass revolt has brought features of unity among the different sections of the population that would have been hardly thinkable up until recently. At the protest camp, a Sinhalese activist who had been a victim of the May 9 attack humbly explained, “now that we have seen what this regime can do to us, we can start to better understand what our Tamil brothers and sisters have experienced in the past.”
Ariel Gottlieb, ISA
All-Out Hartal to Bring the Regime Down!
The workers and trade union movement in all its diversity has a critical role to play in guaranteeing that the struggle keeps its mass, orderly, and united character. The solidarity and power displayed by every stratum of the working class has been a remarkable feature of this struggle: from construction workers pushing pro-government buses off the streets with their excavators, to airport immigration officials joining hands to pledge not to let any government MPs or ministers pass. The trade union alliance’s call for a “Hartal” (total strike) May 6, was solidly embraced by the entire working class of Sri Lanka, paralyzing the island’s economy, shaking the country’s entire establishment and capitalist class. The workers from the Export-Processing Zones generated losses of $22 million for the big industrial manufacturers in one single day of strike! However, in order to achieve real change, the masses will have to go further and broaden their demands beyond the popular slogan “Gota Go Home” and the overthrow of the current President. They will have to reject any negotiations with the IMF, which will subordinate Sri Lanka further to its international creditors, by carrying on the vicious debt trap that is taking precious resources away from the population’s vital needs, and will be used as blackmail to impose new austerity measures set to only worsen the situation for the majority. They will have to ensure that not only the huge wealth looted by the Rajapaksa clan is restored to the people, but that the country’s main resources and means of production and distribution are brought into public hands, under the democratic control of the working class, to reorganize and plan the economy according to the needs of all Sri Lankans. A genuine alternative needs to be forged organically, through the independent political organization of the workers, youth, poor farmers and revolutionary masses themselves — rather than by depending on the official political opposition parties, none of which articulates an economic agenda dramatically different from the one which has led millions of Sri Lankans into such a hell in the first place. International solidarity with the mass uprising in Sri Lanka! J
Ariel Gottlieb is a member of Executive Board of the Union of Journalists in Israel, writing in personal capacity, and a member of Socialist Struggle Movement (ISA in Israel/ Palestine). The attack by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on May 11, during which Abu Aqleh was shot in the head and killed, is one of too many cases where Palestinian journalists who have been documenting the reality of the occupation have been attacked. “It might not be easy to change reality, but at least I could bring their voice to the world,” Abu Aqleh was quoted from the archives. Her death, in the struggle to expose the horrors of the occupation, has angered many in the Middle East and throughout the world. Protests took place both in Israel and in the West Bank. The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) published a statement demanding “a transparent and independent investigation into the actions that led to Shereen’s death… The perpetrators have to be held accountable.” The emphasis on an investigation that is independent from the military and authorities is a basic and necessary demand. Meanwhile, the IDF has already declared, with the pending approval of the Military Attorney, that no official investigation will take place at all. As the Yesh Din (Volunteers for Human Rights) organization responded, “the IDF law enforcement is no longer even bothering to provide the appearance of an investigation. 80% of complaints are dismissed without any criminal investigation.” Eye witnesses, including the producer AlSamoudi, reported that the IDF was the force that shot the journalists and that, during the shooting, there were no armed Palestinian militants around Shereen. Hussein AlSheikh, Head of the General Authority of Civil Affairs of the Palestinian Authority, clarified that investigative findings by the Palestinian Authority will be reported to international authorities, and has argued that “all signs point to the special Israeli forces killing her.” Faced with the evidence, even the IDF spokesperson, who usually rushes to deny any IDF attack on civilians, was forced to restrain himself when asked if he can confirm with certainty that Abu Aqleh was shot by Palestinian fire: “I can’t say for certain.” He added that “it can definitely be that she was shot by Palestinian fire.” The IDF has meanwhile confirmed that from an action report it appears that the killing bullet was 5.56mm from an M16 rifle, which the IDF also uses. The shockwaves from Abu Aqleh’s death also rocked the shaky coalition government, a government of occupation and capitalism, with already existing general international tensions in the background. The
continued on p. 15 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
RETALIATORY FIRINGS Continued from p. 5
Instead of counting on the NLRB to act as an impartial referee, Starbucks workers across the U.S. rallied, organized, and walked off the job calling for the Memphis 7 and other fired union leaders to be reinstated. The reinstatements were only possible because prounion workers relentlessly exposed Starbucks’ union-busting and used what tools they had at their disposal to push back on the company’s attacks on workers. Sanchez and Memphis 7 worker LaKota McGlawn rallied on Starbucks’ home turf in Seattle on April 23rd with fired workers from New York, Kansas, Michigan, and Washington at the “Fight Starbucks’ Union Busting” rally
MASS VIOLENCE
and march organized by Seattle Starbucks Workers United, Socialist Alternative, and Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant. These reinstatements were not guaranteed by a presently labor-friendly NLRB. The NLRB can quickly shift in the opposite direction under increasing pressure from corporations and investors with profits on the line in an increasingly volatile economy. For example, Refresco pressured the NLRB to overturn United Electric’s victory at the company’s New Jersey plant last year simply because an appointed interpreter arrived five minutes late to the polling location.
Keep Up The Pressure The Memphis 7 victory is not an indication that corporations like Starbucks and Amazon
will back down from firing pro-union workers. Amazon has taken a more aggressive approach following ALU’s defeat in their second election at the LDJ5 Sortation Center in May, firing at least six pro-union workers including ALU organizers Mat Cusick and Tristan Lion. Amazon sent a clear message to management by firing six senior managers at JFK8 who failed to repress ALU’s organizing at the facility. To win a union and lasting gains for the working class, the new labor movement has to mobilize relentlessly to defend every victory and confront every instance of retaliation against pro-union workers or risk facing corporations on their terms in endless court proceedings and litigation over every step workers take to push the movement forward. J
shootings, restoring bans on large-capacity magazines and deadly weapon modifications, universal background checks with good cause and a democratic appeals process, waiting periods for all gun sales, and closing the gun show loophole. While these measures would undoubtedly save countless lives, they will not solve the crisis of gun violence. That must be addressed at its roots. Whenever this happens, politicians and media talking heads will often talk of mental health as an underlying cause. Alienation and polarization are indeed real factors in these events, as discontent boils over in individuals leading them to take drastic measures. But this is a much broader social crisis with collective implications that demands a collective
response. Social services, quality jobs and housing, economic relief would all be enormously helpful in addressing the root causes of violence in society. The capitalist political, economic, and social system is rotten to the core. Whether it be one million COVID deaths or the 233 killed so far this year in mass shootings (a number certain to climb by the time you read this article), no loss is too great to disrupt businessas-usual. Socialists fight for a world where working people have full freedom and safety to work, get quality education, acquire their basic needs, and live fulfilling lives without the constant fear of being robbed of their lives instantaneously. J
BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR MILITARISM
that “U.S. support for the war is not guaranteed” and that “inflation is a much bigger issue for American voters than Ukraine.”
Continued from p. 11
War Creates Global Disaster
which has a long history on the American right. But again it is shameful that it was left to the likes of the vile Jim Jordan to tweet, “More money for Ukraine while baby formula is out of stock for Americans? Voted No.” But this should ring alarm bells for Democrats as they pathetically try to deflect blame for inflation by calling it “Putin’s inflation” and sleepwalk towards disaster in the midterms. Even the Biden-loyal New York Times is sounding concerned, warning in an official editorial about the danger of “all out war with Russia,”
The war has massively exacerbated an already worsening global economic crisis. The supply chain problems are worse, inflation is at 40 year highs in Britain and the U.S. and there is a massive energy and food crisis underway. The loss of Ukraine’s wheat crop, of fertilizers from Russia and Ukraine compounded by devastating heat destroying crops in India and drought in China means that millions are facing starvation. Poor countries are also seeing their debt burdens worsen as the U.S. raises interest rates to control inflation,
thus making their dollar-denominated debts harder to repay. The world is facing a new economic downturn, only two years after the sharp downturn triggered by COVID lockdowns. As the head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, declared at the annual gathering of the billionaires in Davos, Switzerland, the global economy faces perhaps its “biggest test since the second world war.” It is clear that the capitalist system if allowed to continue will produce disaster and horror without end. The war and unchecked militarism is but the most concentrated expression of this and shows why we urgently need to build an international, working class centered, mass socialist movement. J
Continued from p. 10
by the state – the force that shoots unarmed Black people and bears down on peaceful protests with military-grade weapons. However, the current situation is unacceptable. Common-sense gun control measures are needed to alleviate the terror working people face in their everyday lives – at their jobs, in school, or in public. The crisis has reached a fever pitch that requires safety measures be taken in the urgent interest of public health. These include bans on semiautomatic weapons which have been behind recent years’ most notorious mass
PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST KILLED
Continued from p. 14
Israeli-Palestinian Raam Party responded by canceling the press conference where they planned to present their stance to remain in the coalition. Despite the delayed press conference, they eventually decided to remain. Additionally, for the first time, MP Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi from the Meretz Party announced she is leaving the coalition, pointing towards the attack on Abu Aqleh’s funeral march as one of the reasons. Thousands participated in the funeral march on Friday May 13. The Jerusalem police added insult to injury when they attacked the JUNE 2022
participants, including the pallbearers, and almost caused the casket to fall. The shocking images have reflected not only an extreme lack of sensitivity and a Jewish supremacist attitude, but also an attempt to prevent any type of Palestinian protest in the public sphere of East Jerusalem. The police attempted to force the Abu Aqleh family to sign an agreement according to which the funeral march will feature no Palestinian flags, national songs, or slogans. Ultimately, while it is correct to demand an independent investigation by journalist organizations, trade unions, and international experts, it is important to bear in mind that so much more is needed. Abu Aqleh was killed during an Israeli military invasion of a Palestinian refugee camp, in the context of an occupation forced upon millions of Palestinians
without any rights. Within the framework of this system, the Israeli regime in recent years has shut down Palestinian media, arrested reporters, attacked and even shot and killed journalists – two of them have reported on the heavy military oppression against the demonstrations near the fence surrounding the Gaza Strip in 2018. It is of special importance to defend against attacks on freedom of the press and on journalists, both within Israel proper and in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – a regime which is allowed to attack and silence journalists in one arena jeopardizes the work of journalists everywhere. This point emphasizes the need for The Union of Journalists in Israel to build a strong defense against the repeated attacks on Palestinian journalists. J
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SOCIALIST
ALTERNATIVE ISSUE #84 l JUNE 2022 SUGGESTED DONATION $2
Marie O’Toole, NYC Queer people across the country are on the defensive against an onslaught of hate crimes and legislative attacks. Florida Gov. Ron Desantis recently signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law which bans discussion around gender or sexual identity in schools, justifying the legislation by referring to our lives as “woke gender ideology. He has claimed that age-appropriate books for children explaining who we are as gay and trans people are “pornographic material.” More than a dozen states have put forward similar bills to “Don’t Say Gay.” Many more have considered or succeeded in restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors, passing bathroom bills, and banning trans students playing on sports teams that correspond to their gender identity. Attacks on the rights and safety of LGBTQ people are part of an even larger reactionary assault. The recent draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v Wade also opens up threats to gay marriage and previous victories over anti-sodomy laws. Pride is, for millions of queer people in the U.S. and internationally, a celebration of the diversity and culture of LGBTQ people. This year, it also needs to be the launching pad for a radical struggle rooted in mass movement against these injustices.
No Such Thing As A Gay-Friendly Corporation Pride’s origins lie in the Christopher Street Liberation Day march called by the Gay Liberation Front in 1970 to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion. The year before, the anger of New York City’s LGBTQ community had boiled over at the Greenwich Village gay bar, The Stonewall Inn. Police harassment and arrests were an all too common feature of life in the LGBTQ community at the time. But eventually came the last straw, which led to an uprising which saw six days of demonstrations, protests, and rioting against the police and gay oppression
more broadly. Those six days would lead to the forming of many activist groups, most prominently the Gay Liberation Front, who fought for queer liberation in the context of the mass civil rights and anti-war movements. Today’s Pride events usually look very little like the original. They are dominated by floats and contingents representing banks and corporations while working-class queer people stand on the sidelines, in some places not even able to freely march in what should be our events. Every June these companies see dollar signs where queer struggle should be and work tirelessly to make their brands look progressive. But companies like Starbucks will put together their own contingent while also investing in intense union-busting campaigns against their disproportionately queer workers. Disney puts out “celebrate Pride” TV spots but then financially backs the sponsors of the Don’t Say Gay bill. The only group these companies really work to protect is their investors. Case in point: as attacks on LGBTQ people, particularly trans youth, have gained steam, companies are beginning to abandon their rainbow-themed aesthetics. Days after announcing it, insurance company State Farm trashed a program to distribute LGBTQthemed books to community centers and libraries. The company’s chief diversity officer wrote in an email, “conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents. We don’t support required curriculum in schools on this topic.” There is some pushback from below against these “rainbow capitalist” pink-washing campaigns. For instance, this year will be the fourth annual Queer Liberation March in New York City. This is a counter-protest to the deeply corporatized Pride parade and has seen tens of thousands of marchers each year fighting for a Pride free of corporations and banks.
that supports LGBTQ people. But a year and a half into the Biden presidency, we are no safer than we were under Trump – and in many ways we are less so. Despite having the White House and a majority in both legislatures they have made no honest efforts towards actually protecting our rights. They could have enshrined gay marriage into law but are instead leaving it vulnerable to reactionary attacks. They could pass the Equality Act which would prohibit discrimination based on gender and sexual identity in schools, housing, and more. Instead that bill has been stalled in Congress for years while trans youth are being prohibited from joining appropriate sports teams, receiving lifesaving healthcare, or even discussing who they are. The leadership of the most prominent LGBTQ non-profits are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party and have not been able to provide real solutions. Rather than questioning the capitalist system at the root of our problems, they are completely beholden to it. All they can offer are piecemeal battles fought completely through the same court system that has led to the attacks on abortion. The courts have never been a fair playing ground for the oppressed – our power is and always has been in the workplace and the streets. We need to put together a bolder fight, independent from the Democrats, taking cues from the rich history of queer anti-capitalist struggle, if we are going to make real gains.
contingents in all cities. They are also only the start. If we are going to create the kind of fighting Pride that marches forward in the spirit of Stonewall towards real victories then we should be taking up even more concrete demands that point to our united power as working people. Pride in 2022 should be about the codification of Roe on a federal level. It should go beyond that and raise the call for Medicare for All which would need to include free abortion on demand and full access to gender affirming care. It should be firmly opposed to both the physical and legislative attacks on Black and POC queer people and trans youth. As a part of that, we should call for the immediate passage of the Equality Act to give us a starting point from which to fight discrimination. If we’re going to put together the kind of fightback needed to defend and advance our rights then we are going to have to connect it with broader battles of the working class. We should build labor contingents at Pride marches that include organizing Starbucks and Amazon workers. A mass movement for these demands would need to utilize escalating tactics like protests, occupations, walkouts, and strikes for which the labor movement would play an essential part. That kind of radical movement would need to be completely independent from the Democratic Party and their NGOs. Instead it should call into question the foundations of the capitalist system built on inequality and division, and fight for socialism and a world free of homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression. J
This Pride, We Demand More This year’s Queer Liberation March in NYC is titled “for Trans and BIPOC Freedom, Reproductive Justice, and Bodily Autonomy.” These are important slogans that should be taken up at radical Pride events and
Socialist Alternative at the Queer Liberation March in NYC, 2021.
Voting Blue Is Not It The idea that voting blue would defend the rights and safety of trans people became a “lesser-evil” talking point in the run up to the 2020 election. The Democrats leaned into this sentiment and campaigned as the party
Socialist Alternative at the 2021 Queer Liberation March in NYC.