Socialist Alternative #86 – September 2022

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ISSUE #86 l SEPTEMBER 2022

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INSIDE p.3 p.7 HOW TO DEFEAT BILLIONAIRES SEATTLE ABORTION RIGHTS WIN p.10 FIGHTING “LESSER-EVILISM”

WHAT WE STAND FOR Mobilize Against Attacks On Bodily Autonomy

the door again to the right and the far right, and exposes the dire need for a new working-class political party not beholden to big business interests.

• The overturn of Roe v Wade by the Supreme • Democrats and Republicans alike are Court opened the door to a series of vicious unwilling to make any structural changes attacks on bodily autonomy in states across that threaten the status quo. We need a the country. new, working-class, multiracial left party • We can’t allow attacks on women and queer that organizes and fights for workers’ interpeople’s bodily autonomy to stand. We need ests and is committed to socialist policies a mass movement against the reactionary to lead the fight against the right and point right on the scale of the 60s and 70s when a way out of the horrors of capitalism.

Roe was first won. This includes marches, protests, occupations, and direct action.

• Fight for free, safe, legal abortion. All con- Rebuild a Fighting Labor traception should be provided at no cost as Movement! part of a broad program for women’s repro• Building off the historic union victory at ductive health!

Amazon in New York and the ongoing Star• We need a robust fightback against the bucks organizing drive, we need mass cambrutal anti-trans legislation in many states paigns to unionize the millions of non-union and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people, workers in the U.S. including noncompliance organized by the labor movement among workers tasked • We need to build and rebuild radical fighting unions that are fully democratic and with enforcing these bigoted laws. driven by the active participation of rank • The women’s and LGBTQ movements need and file workers. to unite on the basis of a broad struggle against gender oppression in all its forms. • Especially as prices for energy, food, housing, and other necessities are skyrocketing, • Fighting gender oppression means fighting we need a united struggle across industries for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproducfor wage increases that are above the rate of tive justice including universal childcare, inflation. Unions across the country should and climate action to ensure a healthy take up campaigns to fight for Cost of Living planet for the next generation, high-quality Adjustments (COLAs) in new union contracts. public housing, fully-funded public education safe from discrimination, and Medicare • We need accountable leadership in the labor movement. Union leaders across all unions for All including free reproductive and genshould accept the average wage of a worker der-affirming care. in their industry and should answer first foremost to their membership and the A New Political Party for Working and broader working class. This means being willPeople ing to use every tool at our disposal, including militant strikes, to win our demands.

• No more excuses! Biden and the Democrats are catastrophically failing to address • As thousands of workers are winning union recognition for the first time, it is critical that the urgent crises facing working people or unions fight to win strong contracts. This to oppose the vicious attacks on oppressed means using our power outside the bargainpeople from the right. We need to mount ing room with walkouts, pickets, rallies, and our own independent movement against strike action; and campaigning around clear Republican attacks and to force the Demodemands that raise living standards and crats to act while they are in power. working conditions on the shop floor and • The complete failure of the Biden adminisinspire workers elsewhere to join the fight. tration to make good on campaign promises • Unions should take up the broader issues to expand the social safety net and meanfacing the working class and mount a ingfully address climate change is opening struggle against evictions, poverty, racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.

No to Imperialist Wars! www.SocialistAlternative.org info@SocialistAlternative.org @Socialist Alternative @SocialistAlt /SocialistAlternative.USA

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• 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 democratic public ownership and turn existing vacrhetoric is a cover for corporate interests. cines into the People’s Vaccines! As capi• De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situtalism has totally failed to eradicate this ation in Ukraine requires the return of Ruspandemic, we will need a dedicated effort sian troops to the barracks in Russia and to create yearly COVID vaccines adapted to the withdrawal of all NATO troops from new variants.

Eastern Europe.

• Build a massive anti-war and anti-impe- For a Socialist Green New Deal rialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders! Sending increasingly • We need a Green New Deal jobs program that provides well-paid union jobs for millions destructive weapons to the conflict only of workers expanding green infrastructure, serves to escalate & poses a greater risk of including massively expanding public transit. all-out war – only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win lasting • While taking climate change head-on, we also need to expand infrastructure to keep people peace and stability for the working masses safe from natural disasters and extreme around the world. weather as these become more frequent.

• Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable Fight Rising Prices & Expand the future – we need to build an international Social Safety Net! environmental struggle led by the global working class and youth fighting for an • With inflation eating away at our paychecks, immediate end to the use of fossil fuels and we need a movement from below to push a 100% transition to green energy. back against the corporate interests that • This can only be accomplished by taking dominate establishment politics. the top 100 polluting companies into • Tax the rich and big business to fund perdemocratic public ownership. We need a manently affordable, high-quality public democratically planned economy here and housing. Raise the corporate tax rate to at around the world to carry out the transforleast 35%! mation necessary to avoid climate disaster.

• Make the child tax credit permanent and fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. Cancel all student debt and make A Safe and Just Society: End public college tuition-free. Raise the fed- Racist Policing and Criminal (in) eral minimum wage!

• We need an immediate transition to Medi- Justice care for All. Take for-profit hospital chains • Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police and Big Pharma into public ownership and forces of anyone with known ties to white retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art supremacist groups or any cop who has healthcare to every American. committed violent or racist attacks.

• Fully fund public education! End school • End the militarization of police. Ban police privatization. We need a national hiring prouse of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm gram to bring in hundreds of thousands of police on patrol. new educators and support staff to accom- • Put policing under the control of democratimodate a permanent reduction in class size. cally-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.

End the COVID Chaos • While alarming acts of violence have risen, • As new variants continue to emerge across the Democrats’ pivot to “law and order” the globe, it’s abundantly clear that capitalpolicing will only bear down on people of ist world leaders have failed to contain this color and the poor. We keep us safe: build crisis. We need a People’s Plan to end the a movement for public safety based on the COVID chaos! genuine needs of working people.

• We need an ongoing infrastructure to cope 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 • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, country. Workers exposed to COVID should 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.

• Advanced capitalist countries need to be • Bring the top 500 companies and banks pushed to urgently reallocate their surplus into democratic public ownership. vaccines to poor countries and help estab- • We need a democratic socialist plan for the lish the infrastructure for universal vaccinaeconomy based on the interests of the overtion worldwide. whelming majority of people and the planet.

• We need to take Big Pharma profiteers into

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We Don’t Have To Be “Political Hostages” To The Democrats

EDITORIAL

A response to the New York Times editorial by Charles M. Blow, “We Are Political Hostages”

GEORGE MARTIN FELL BROWN, MADISON As we head into the midterms, the pressure is going to ramp up for workers, youth, and the oppressed to get in line and “vote blue no matter who.” The push for “lesser evilism” – the argument to vote for the Democrats as the lesser of two evils – is a standard feature of big elections, but this particular election sees the Democratic Party in a particularly bad place. Inflation is rampant and the majority of Biden’s agenda has been dead on arrival. Biden’s approval ratings have reached a record low of 36% and only 20% think he should run for re-election in 2024.

It’s in this context that the New York Times provides us with the most dour and uninspiring case for lesser evilism yet. This comes courtesy of pundit Charles M. Blow in his editorial, titled “We Are Political Hostages.” Rather than even attempt a defense of the Democrats, Blow proclaims that “‘freedom of choice’ in elections is an illusion” and declares that teaching children otherwise was “one of our greatest errors as a country”.

According to Blow, we are stuck as political hostages to the two-party system, leaving us only with the choice of “the benevolent captors (Democrats) or the cruel captors (Republicans).”

To his credit, Blow’s doomerism is a refreshing contrast with the Democratic party’s other election strategy of gaslighting us into thinking everything’s fine. But, as with most lesser-evil arguments, Blow presents a wrong understanding of the nature of the two-party system, the reasons for the rightwing resurgence, and the way forward. His strategy of lining up behind “the benevolent captors” entails doubling down on the political approach that got us into this mess in the first place.

What’s more, Blow weaponizes identity politics to argue that while the privileged may vote however they like, it is marginalized people who don’t have an option. This argument is a cudgel in itself – handcuffing LGBTQ people, women, and racial minorities to a party that doesn’t fight for them.

The Democratic Party aren’t “benevolent captors” as Blow portrays them. Whatever differences there are between the Democrats and Republicans, they are both thoroughly corporate parties, run and funded by big

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business. Neither represents the interests of working people. To “break out of captivity” we need to build our own party.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Blow’s lesser evilism isn’t new. It’s been a major ideological device in American politics for decades. Below are just a few examples that show how in the long run, it is precisely Blow’s lesser-evil approach that has been a key force in entrenching the power of the greater evil and empowering the “cruel captors.”

At the height of the Iraq War under President Bush, the big anti-war organizations like MoveOn.org and United for Peace and Justice backed out of their anti-war organizing to line

In contrast, Blow explains Trump’s rise as being a product of “some waffling about Hillary Clinton in 2016.” He blames Jill Stein voters and non-voters, but this short sighted logic ignores that it was so-called “Obamato-Trump” voters in the rust belt that played a decisive role in Trump’s victory.

The blame for Clinton’s defeat lies with the Democratic Party who completely failed to improve life for working people under Obama, and who then put up a Wall Street darling as their candidate in his wake. Were the Democrats committed to really defeating the “cruel captors” they would have thrown their support behind the candidate that could have beat Trump: Bernie Sanders. Instead they sabotaged his campaign every step of the way, directly contributing to Trump’s win.

Under Blow’s approach, being “political hostages” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The refusal to fight our “captors,” be they “cruel” or “benevolent” only assures that we remain “captured.” up behind the pro-war Democrat John Kerry.

The anti-war movement gradually fizzled as the war continued into multiple administrations of both parties.

When attempts were made to defy bans on same-sex marriage, Democrats, including the first openly gay congressman Barney Frank, condemned the actions. This deflated some of the biggest challenges to the Bush administration. Anti-LGBTQ activists were emboldened, setting the movement back for years.

Obama came to power on the promise of “hope and change” against the failures of the Bush administration during the financial crisis of 2007-8. But despite having a supermajority in Congress, giving the Democrats free rein to pass a litany of long-held priorities, they delivered no major gains to working people.

In response to these failings, the rightpopulist Tea Party grew as the primary challenge to Obama. According to the logic of lesser evilism, Democrats and Democrataligned unions were not allowed to criticize Obama lest they give ground to the right. So for millions of working people dissatisfied with Obama’s broken promises, the Tea Party was seen as the main voice against the establishment. This directly paved the way for Trump.

The recent Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade is a continuation of this rightwing resurgence. For decades the threat of reversing Roe has been the big trump card of lesser evilism, a looming threat that meant people had no choice but to line up behind the Democrats. But, during those decades, even when Democrats held the presidency or congress, they made virtually no efforts to codify Roe into law. Nor did they move to stop the right-wing’s gradual whittling away of abortion rights leading up to Dobbs. Not only did a decade of lesser evilism not prevent the victory of a greater evil, in the process, it discouraged people from launching any other effective fight back.

Under Blow’s approach, being “political hostages” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The refusal to fight our “captors,” be they “cruel” or “benevolent” only assures that we remain “captured.” This is why Socialist Alternative argues that working people, LGBTQ people, youth, and pro-choice supporters need a new party of our own.

Resistance Is Not Futile Blow doesn’t blame this situation on the capitalist class who actually controls society. Instead he blames those who fight back.

He goes further than demanding a vote for Democrats. He sees any attempt at holding the Democrats accountable as irresponsible: “Over the past year, progressives have demanded action from Democrats, demanded that promises be kept, demanded that more of a fight be waged. But, in the end, this is futile. What’s worse, it often provides ammunition to cruel captors who are waiting for a change to replace benevolent ones.”

Blow’s pessimism stems from a narrow view of how change is achieved. He can only see change as being the product of getting people into elected office. “Holding seats is the first order of business,” he declares.

“If they lose, nothing gets done.” But this ignores the role played by mass protests, occupations, walkouts, and strike action as the fundamental forces for change.

In Seattle, Socialist Alternative’s Councilmember Kshama Sawant forms a minority of one on the city council. But by using her position as a platform to mobilize workingclass struggle, Sawant and Socialist Alternative have been able to win major victories, such as the $15 an hour minimum wage, the Amazon tax, and recently making Seattle the first abortion sanctuary city in the country.

This approach is based on working-class history and generalizes to a national scale.

Roe was overturned under a Democratic president with a Democrat-controlled House and Senate. But Roe was won under the Nixon administration by a majority Republican-appointed Supreme Court. This wasn’t because Nixon was a nice guy (he wasn’t), but because the pressure of the mass upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s was able to bring change that can’t be won by lining up behind the “benevolent captors.”

We don’t need to accept the status of “political hostages.” The fight for political liberation from slavery, captivity, and oppression requires breaking free from Blow’s logic.

To fight against the political subjugation of working people to corporate parties points directly to building our own party, run and funded by working-class people. This means running independent candidates without corporate money, on a socialist program. It’s on the basis of an organized, working-class movement, and political independence from the “captors” in the Democratic and Republican parties, that we can bring about meaningful change. J

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C L I M AT E C H A N G E

are worth the money. Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, said this year that he predicted that no new oil refineries would ever be built in the United States.

“You’re looking at committing capital ten years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders,” Wirth said.

This climate bill extends a lifeline to fossil fuel companies that have no place in a sustainable future.

Incentives For Those That Can Afford Them

C H A N GE

OIL-SLICK PROGRESS CLIMATE BILL CO-WRITTEN BY COAL BARON MAKES HISTORY

MEAGHAN MURRAY, MINNEAPOLIS The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is being touted as the largest climate bill in U.S. history – but what does that actually mean, when the bar was so low to begin with?

President Biden’s original climate legislation for the IRA crumbled in mid-July, when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin rejected parts of the bill amid negotiations. There was immediate backlash to the deal’s breakdown; even The New York Times published a scathing hit piece on Manchin and his ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Manchin has spent the last 30 years making millions off of coal, and has used his political office for little else other than to protect his family’s coal company. So this same senator co-wrote “the most significant U.S. climate legislation to date?” What’s the catch?

A Lifeline For Fossil Fuels The new energy, healthcare, and tax bill proposed $369 billion in spending, with much of that going toward subsidies for green energy initiatives and electric vehicle production, with the goal of making green energy cheaper for consumers to choose and for businesses to switch to.

After years of scientists, environmental

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activists, and young people pleading for substantial action to combat climate change, we get a small morsel of progress – a notable example of this being the provision that will allow Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices.

But with the Democrats and Republicans, it’s one baby step forward, five giant steps back: the act is littered with provisions that throw a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry.

Their effects will endure for at least the next decade: new drilling leases on lands in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. Speeding up permitting for energy projects, fossil fuel projects included. Fee and penalty exemptions for oil and gas companies that “behave” by doing the absolute bare minimum, like cleaning up their own leaks. And finally, obligatory support from the Biden administration on a new natural gas pipeline – a pipeline that Manchin and his fossil fuel friends would profit from.

This provision may have been a no-brainer for Biden, seeing as he signed off on 34% more drilling permits than Trump in his first year. So while the bill will result in a net loss of carbon emissions, which is very positive, it comes at the cost of enshrining more projects for the fossil fuel industry.

Why is that such a big deal? It comes at a time where fossil fuel executives are genuinely weighing whether new investments

Even with funding for green energy and a 15% corporate minimum tax, which would affect about 150 of the world’s largest corporations, the climate bill is simply a “green capitalism” bill: it provides opportunities for corporations to do the right thing – but only if they want to.

Sure, going green can eventually be profitable for companies that aren’t predicated on pollution, but a full transition would take the time and money that big business would often rather just keep to itself.

The bill expands green energy, and would potentially minimize air pollution in poor communities, but those communities are facing more threats than low air quality. What happens when every season is wildfire season?

How are regular people supposed to retrofit their cars and homes when they’re paid less

While this is a win for green energy expansion, it’s hardly a win in the climate crisis fight. The political establishment does not want to take the measures that are needed in avoiding massive climate casualties. It can’t even pass a single climate bill without making major concessions to fossil fuel interests. These tradeoffs severely stunt our headway overall.

Is it good climate legislation if it fails to meet the needs of poor and working class people? In news articles covering the bill, the same words keep coming up: breaks, credits, incentives, loopholes, exemptions, exceptions – things that aid in dodging system change, upholding the status quo, and keeping business as usual. None of those things will pull us out of this crisis.

When it comes to tackling climate change, capitalism is a system that will never be able to rise to the occasion. Carbon emissions, waste, and destruction on a massive scale is something only capitalism could produce, and what got us to this point in the first place.

Proponents of capitalism count on the idea that if the markets are driven by the opportunity for profit, they’ll align with and be able to fill the needs of regular people. But this isn’t the case. Capitalism is disorderly; it drags its feet. Data says public transportation is a low-emissions solution, but capitalist parties introduce climate bills that are almost entirely focused on cars. Thousands die in a summer heat wave in Europe, but as long as

“Proponents of capitalism count on the idea that if the markets are driven by the opportunity for profit, they’ll align with and be able to fill the needs of regular people. But this isn’t the case.” than a living wage? A tax credit isn’t a selling point if working-class families are living paycheck to paycheck.

The tax breaks and incentives for individuals are aimed at those that can afford a Tesla or a solar panel system, which still costs thousands after those federal tax incentives.

In the 755-page piece of legislation, is there any mention of what the 600,000 people who are homeless in the U.S. are supposed to do? What should they do on a 110-degree day, or a below-freezing night? While public transportation agencies can get clean energy tax credits, is there anything in there about building free public transit? Improving existing public transit systems? Getting anything at all for riding a train or bus? (Answer: no.)

Capitalism: Incapable of Addressing the Climate Crisis The bill passed in the Senate by the skin of its teeth, with a 51-50 vote. Because it was introduced as a budget reconciliation bill, it was able to pass with a simple majority – versus the bill needing two-thirds majority and facing a potential filibuster. All Republicans voted against it. It was then passed in the House in a 220-207 party-line vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against, sending it to Biden’s desk for final approval.

there’s oil to be sold, Exxon and BP will put their profits over the planet every time.

Large-Scale Crisis Calls For Large-Scale Action We cannot sit and watch the political establishment inch along when leaps and bounds are what’s needed. To take down capitalism, we need socialism. Socialism is a system that works on the planned economy, which allocates resources according to need, not profit. And it is needed now more than ever.

We cannot wait for green capitalism to save us, because it won’t. This crisis calls for a socialist movement to demand actions like bringing the fossil fuel industry into public ownership, reassembling it for green energy, implementing a Green New Deal with jobs programs paid for by taxing the rich, retraining workers in polluting industries to transition into the renewables industry and with well-paid union jobs, creating infrastructure projects that keep our communities safe during climate emergencies and natural disasters, building more public housing, and passing Medicare for All. This is bigger than solar panels and electric cars. It’s going to take working people on an international scale to successfully dismantle capitalism. Our planet depends on it. J

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

C L I M AT E C H A N G E

MATE ANGE UNBEARABLE HEAT ENTERING THE NEW AGE OF CLIMATE LETHALITY

GREYSON VAN ARSDALE, CHICAGO

Flooding in Kentucky killed at least 37 people at the end of July. Four people have been killed by California’s largest wildfire this year, the McKinney Fire, which has burned down over 100 homes, sheds, and other buildings as it ravages the area.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe has faced record-setting heatwaves that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people. Over 1,000 people died of heat-related causes in Spain and Portugal during the July heatwave, which reached over 116 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas. One postal worker in Madrid collapsed on the job – by the time emergency services reached him, his body temperature was over 107 degrees.

These individual events, newsworthy on their own but almost numbing in aggregate, have only increased in size and frequency over the last several years. Research published last year indicates that between the years of 2000 and 2019, climate-fueled disasters were responsible for an excess of five million deaths per year, worldwide.

To say “the climate crisis is already here” to some degree obscures how rapidly the climate is changing and the severity of the events to come – but we have decidedly entered the era where working people are reaping the consequences of the political elite’s inaction. To change course, we need to be clear-eyed about the ways climate change is already putting us at risk, and build a movement and program that meets the scale of the crisis to defeat it.

Infrastructure Meltdown

A deadly heatwave in the Pacific Northwest last year, which reached over 110 degrees in an area unaccustomed to high temperatures, showed how shockingly unprepared our infrastructure is to deal with the crisis. Across the normally-temperate PNW, roads buckled and cracked as asphalt softened under the heat, and cable-car public transit was forced to close in Portland, Oregon as their power cords literally melted.

As the climate crisis batters our homes and communities, working people are being asked to shoulder the burden on our own. In Texas, authorities are responding to the problem of their broken and easily-overloaded electrical grid by asking residents to curb A/C use even during dangerous heatwaves. In Oklahoma, residents are being forced to boil

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their water for use as the state’s water lines break under pressure.

This is the state of play in the richest country in the world – to say nothing of the toll in the neocolonial world, where despite residents often being accustomed to warmer temperatures, millions lack secure housing and even more lack the resources to cool themselves in severe temperatures.

Every day that the climate crisis is not attacked by massively expanding green infrastructure as well as nationalizing and retooling fossil fuel companies, the price tag on repairing and expanding infrastructure gets higher. Still, the political establishment kicks the can down the road.

the inside of their trucks are regularly over 110 degrees.

Skin In The Game

Climate change isn’t just a threat to the lives of working people, it also threatens our homes. In 2021, it’s estimated that natural disasters affected 1 in 10 – or over 15 million – homes across America, which alone cost $56.92 billion in property damages.

Climate change is causing insurance premiums in threatened areas to skyrocket.

Reports show that the combined insurance premiums in the state of California from 2017 to 2020 increased more than 27%, from $8.7 billion to $11.1 billion.

Of course, this is not incidental. Insurance companies have made a sport of selling policies in areas that face the greatest risk, making working people pay an arm and a leg for expensive coverage, and then refusing to pay out when disasters do strike. Insurance companies, fossil fuel companies, and the political elite are determined to see who can squeeze the most money out of this race to the bottom, while working people just try to survive it.

The climate crisis is increasingly taking the character of a massive public health and economic emergency – and if recent years are any indication, we can’t trust the political establishment to deal with either.

need to build carbon-neutral homes designed to stay cool without massive energy expenditure. Expanding mass transit, both within major metropolitan areas and connecting to lower-density and rural areas, would also allow for cities to tear up millions of square feet of parking lots, which would reduce devastating floods.

Neither of the two major parties have any interest in doing what’s necessary to stop climate change and avoid massive human casualties. While Republicans delusionally act like the climate crisis is a made-up problem, Democrats achieve the same result by pretending that the mere existence of the fossil fuel industry isn’t a threat to human society.

The political establishment, ultimately, has the same approach to climate change as it is currently taking to the COVID pandemic – allowing for hundreds of unnecessary deaths per week so long as they don’t have to make any radical change.

If we are to avoid a scenario with serious ongoing human climate casualties, it will have to be on the basis of a working-class and socialist movement, driven by the power of organized labor, on a truly independent basis from both parties of big business. Building that movement, which is the only force capable of wresting a safe future from a capitalist class hellbent on profiting from disaster, is the historic challenge of our time. J

The Heat Threshold

As we stand in the dawn of a new era, where headlines about climate change fatalities become nearly as commonplace as those of workplace and school shootings or hearing that a friend got COVID, there is a looming reality that climate change is accelerating, not simply integrating itself into our lives.

With that comes a certain “point of no return” – not on our ability to fight climate change, which is only hindered by fossil fuel companies’ unquenchable thirst for profit, but in our bodies’ ability to withstand the heat.

Humans sweat to cool ourselves down, which allows us to withstand dry heat to a shocking level. Given enough water and shade, humans can endure hours in heat that is over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Given a humid heat, however, the story becomes very different. In these conditions, our sweat cannot evaporate, and humans can succumb in under six hours at just 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This is called “wet-bulb” heat.

Wet-bulb conditions don’t occur often under normal climate circumstances, because excess water and heat in the air over a certain threshold will result in a storm. But warming temperatures globally allows the air to hold more water than it would normally – setting us up for increases in wet-bulb conditions that could prove fatal on a mass scale, akin to the situation in Spain and Portugal in July, or worse.

This will be the most fatal to people who can’t take shelter from the heat, people living on the streets or people living in shoddy housing situations with no air conditioning or cooling. It’s also highly dangerous to people who work outside or in non-air conditioned warehouses and trucks. UPS drivers, after one driver in LA collapsed and died from heatstroke while on the job, have shared that

A Program That Meets The Moment

Temperature reader in an Amazon delivery trailer.

Climate change will have increasingly deep effects on all aspects of life, far beyond direct fatalities from extreme weather and natural disasters. We need a far-reaching political program that fights climate change at its root, including bringing polluting industries into public ownership, re-training and guaranteeing high-quality union jobs to workers in these industries, large scale reforestation programs, historic expansion of mass transit, and investment in publicly-funded research and development into new sustainable technologies.

However, while the planet heats up, we will also need to build adaptive measures as we work to reverse climate change. Workers who work outside need a shortened work day, with no work during the hottest part of the day, for absolutely no loss in pay. We also

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YOUTH & STUDENTS

GUN VIOLENCE CASTS DARK CLOUD OVER NEW SCHOOL YEAR KEELY MULLEN, CHICAGO

Mechanical pencils, color-coded binders, highlighters, calculators, and an $80 classroom lockdown kit. Students across the country are being welcomed back to school this month by a dizzying loop of pep rallies and active shooter drills.

In Gainesville, Florida, 5,000 students as young as four years old were given a backpack full of free school supplies in exchange for participating in a “Stop the Violence” rally. In New Orleans, faith groups organized a community event they describe as “a gun buy-back and back to school bash!” There’s obstacle courses, face painting, and a gun buy-back booth – a startling illustration of how much gun violence has become a part of childhood in America.

As the world becomes increasingly unstable, schools have become a battlefield for a system in decline. From COVID lockdowns, which led to years’ worth of missed learning, to a mental health crisis that saw a fivefold increase in suicide attempts among kids 10-12 years old over the past decade, to the right-wing war on queer students, the fact that young people risk being shot to death in school is almost unbearable.

Gun Violence Plagues Teens While gun violence in schools reached an all-time high in 2021 with a record 42 school shootings, gun deaths among kids are by no means limited to just high profile mass shootings.

Many teens, especially Black and Latino teens, live under the constant threat of community gun violence. Black children and teens are 14 times more likely to die of gun homicide than their white peers.

The right wing has seized on these statistics for years to paint a picture of Black teens as inherently more violent. This is a sickening line of argument covering up for a much more vicious reality.

An increase in gun violence is directly correlated to higher poverty rates, poorly funded schools, and a lack of essential resources like public parks and fully stocked grocery stores.

In other words, gun violence is a symptom of streets demanding common sense gun conattacks on the working class. trol under the banner March For Our Lives.

The response of the political establish- It was one of the largest protests in U.S. hisment of both parties has not been to reverse tory, and came a week after mass student austerity and beef up public services, it’s walkouts swept the country. been to militarize schools and implement The movement was led by high school stucurfews for teens – tactics that are at best dents who had been victimized by their peer, untested and at worst actually increase and then revictimized by the inaction of the crime. This has correctly provoked a backlash political establishment. Their fury at bipartiin cities like Chicago where teenagers spoke san hand-wringing struck a chord across the out against Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s new 10:00 country and March for Our Lives became one PM curfew. of the biggest youth-led protests since the While the increase in gun violence in Vietnam War. general is clearly linked to the starving out There are a lot of important lessons that of public schools, and public services more can be learned from this movement, both broadly, this alone what it did well and In the process of building a cannot explain the what needs to be increase in particu- youth movement for common done differently in the larly brutal, premedi- sense gun control, fully-funded future. tated mass shootings schools, social services, jobs The massacre in targeting children. To Parkland was perpeprograms, and safe communities, trated by a child who understand that, we have to analyze capi- we can build the type of solidarity embodied the worst and common struggle that can talism’s social decay. elements of the sociYoung people are overcome social isolation. etal crises we see more isolated now today: militarism, farthan they ever have been before. Even before right fanaticism, violence, social alienation, COVID, teens were staring down an extremely and a lack of quality mental health care. unpredictable future: climate disaster, politiThe majority of gun homicides that affect cal instability, crippling student debt, very young people don’t take on these extreme few job prospects. It would be shocking if the characteristics. But the student survivors inheritance of a world in turmoil didn’t pro- from Parkland recognized that a youth moveduce an increase in violence and antisocial ment for common sense gun control needed behavior. to speak to the experiences of all young The lucky part of this otherwise bleak story people living under the threat of gun violence. is that there actually is a way out of it, and it’s They linked up with youth groups in cities a two-fold solution. In the process of build- like Chicago and L.A., where gun violence ing a youth movement for common sense looks very different than in their Florida gun control, fully-funded schools, social ser- suburb, but where conditions are actually vices, jobs programs, and safe communities, more dangerous. During the mass student not only can we potentially win those things, walkouts, many Black and Latino students but we can also build the type of solidarity in inner-city schools took action in solidarand common struggle that can overcome ity with their peers in Parkland. That the social isolation. movement consciously fought to overcome divisions and unite students of all races was extremely important and points toward the What Type of Movement? type of youth movement we need now.

After the devastating school shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018 which claimed the Lessons From Parkland lives of 14 students and three staff members, nearly two million Americans took to the However, there were two things that

ultimately held back the movement. The first was its ties to the Democratic Party and the second was its limited demands.

The main slogan of the movement was “Vote them out” – which is understandable when you’re face to face with NRA-backed Republicans who are opposed to even the most basic gun control measures. But the movement stopped short of pointing toward who we’d need to vote in.

The Democrats have done nothing to earn the votes of young people. Despite being in power, they refuse to cancel student debt, refuse to take the necessary steps to minimize global warming, and refuse to take any comprehensive action on gun violence.

The student movement today cannot look to the Democratic Party as a reliable ally. As we wrote at the time, we need to fight for a political alternative that “draws [its] strength from social movements” and is “unapologetically independent from big business and corporate money.”

The other thing that hamstrung the movement was its lack of a fighting set of demands. They called for common sense gun control measures, which we support, but fell short of spelling out the type of fundamental program we need to end violence.

Uprooting all forms of antisocial violence in our society will require a top to bottom overhaul of our social and political priorities.

We need fully-funded public schools that have well-resourced social service programs including music, art, and libraries. We need socialized health care that includes highquality and easy-to-access mental health services. We need to demilitarize the police and public schools. We need a massive jobs program, a cancellation of all student debt, and fully-funded public services.

Fighting for all this and more will require the creation of new youth organizations where students from different schools, cities, and states can come together to discuss demands and next steps.

Building this type of student movement, one based on solidarity and a vision for a better world, is the best possible antidote to the social isolation and despair that fuels violence. J

Socialist Alternative Alabama tables at Pride in Birmingham.

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

L ABOR JAMES GRAHAM, PITTSBURGH A recent Bloomberg article title tells us just about everything we need to know about the skyrocketing economic inequality: “World’s Super Rich Drive 77% Surge in Superyacht Sales Last Year.” After noting that sales have also doubled from the 2019 levels, the article continues: Low interest rates and bumper markets fueled $1 trillion in gains last year for the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg index. That wealth creation and heightened demand for solitary recreation due to COVID-19 were among the primary drivers of the spike in sales.

In the course of time that it took you to read the above sentence, probably around 10 seconds, Jeff Bezos made roughly $25,000 according to most estimates of how much his net worth has increased over the two years since the start of the pandemic. In case you were wondering, Jeff Bezos’ latest 417-foot yacht, the longest in history, is worth nearly half a billion dollars.

Amidst skyrocketing inflation, workingclass people have pulled back on spending, depleted what meager savings some of us had, and are finding it hard to keep up

with rent, utilities, and food. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich are continuing a spending spree on travel, cars, hospitality, and real estate which in turn is further fueling inflation for everyone.

Where We’ve Been If you look at a graph of union membership and economic inequality, there’s a perfect correlation: as the number of Americans

in a union has decreased over the past few decades, the level of inequality has gone up in nearly exact proportion. This is no coincidence because unions are the most important tool that we as workers have to fight back in a system where the bosses’ interest is always for us to work more, for less money, and in worse conditions.

Everything that we as workers gain comes at their expense, and vice versa. Workers understood this in the 1930s and 40s, which

is why tens of millions joined unions and went on strike in hugely profitable industries like steel, automobiles, mining, and more.

Employers today fear this happening again, which is why they spend so much time and money trying to stop workers from forming them, as anyone who’s ever gone to work for a major retail chain store knows when they play you an anti-union video in your new hire orientation.

Workers On The March After a period of a few decades of decline and defeat under the blows of a full-scale offensive by the billionaire class, the labor movement is once again beginning to stir and workers are on the march.

Starting in 2018, there’s been a significant increase in the number of union elections being held as well as strikes, the most powerful tool that workers have. Workers at

Starbucks and Amazon in particular are pointing the way forward by taking on two of the most recognizable giant billionaire-led corporations that dot the American landscape, but they are not alone and workers at jobs both big and small are organizing in the workplace.

Workplace struggles are critical because it’s where workers have the most leverage – if we don’t work, they don’t profit, and their system grinds to a halt unless they give in to our demands for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

These labor struggles on the shopfloor need to be linked to a struggle in wider society to curb the billionaire’s control over the political system by ending PACs and capping campaign contributions, and by taxing them to pay for Medicare for all, free higher education, and a Green New Deal.

Through rebuilding powerful unions and strong mass movements, we can win major gains that blunt the power of the superyacht-owners in the workplace and in broader society. As part of this mighty challenge to the billionaires, we should set our sights on ending their reign once and for all – bringing major industries into democratic public ownership under workers management.

Billionaires should not exist – unionize every job, tax the rich, and fight for socialism! J

Socialist Alternative Hosts National Call Of Unionizing Amazon Workers

Boston Starbucks Workers Go On Strike Against Union Busting

Trader Joe’s Wins Its First Union: Grocery Workers Enter the Union Wave

Socialist Alternative members across the country spent the last few weeks tabling outside Amazon warehouses to build a national organizing call with the the Amazon Labor Union (Staten Island) and [North] Carolina Amazonians United 4 Solidarity & Empowerment (CAUSE).

Almost 100 workers attended the call, representing 25 different warehouses across the country. The meeting was kicked off by a discussion on the key lessons from winning the union election at Amazon’s JFK8 Fulfillment Center in New York City.

Liam EastonCalabria, Striking Starbucks Worker

Chicago Trader Joe’s Worker

These lessons include: J The importance of having clear strong demands, like a $30/hr base pay, volunteer overtime instead of MET, ending Time off Task, and more.

J The need to have a strong, democratic Organizing Committee of workers that represents every shift, department, and ethnic and linguistic groups.

J The need to be unapologetic about the difference between workers and the boss, highlighting the obscene wealth of mega-billionaires like Jeff Bezos and confronting management in the anti-union meetings.

With inflation draining workers’ paychecks, out of control gas and food prices, and the threat of a new economic downturn, there is a historic opportunity to rebuild a fighting labor movement in the U.S. and around the world. J

SEPTEMBER 2022

Starbucks is ramping up its unionbusting campaign in earnest. These escalatory tactics include a slew of store closures, an ever-increasing number of fired workers and a benefits package for non-union stores only.

Baristas are not taking this lying down. A large number of individual strikes have taken place nationally in response to Starbucks’ efforts to crush our union.

One store in Boston has been on strike for over three weeks demanding the firing of their union-busting, transphobic, and racist manager, consistent hours, and increased staffing. On August 1, four other stores in the greater Boston area, including my own, went on a week-long strike demanding the benefits package rolled out to non-union stores that same day.

Workers led chants and passed out informative flyers on the picket line, and were joined in solidarity by workers from a number of other unions. In a demonstration of cross-industry solidarity, Teamsters delivery drivers have refused to cross the picket line, making it much more difficult for Starbucks to open the store.

So far, Starbucks has not given in, but this weeklong strike was an important step in demonstrating our strength as united workers, and cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, more coordinated action, on a national scale, will be necessary to force Starbucks’ hand. Our SBWU leadership should urgently develop plans for national strikes on Labor Day. J

Trader Joe’s workers in Hadley, Massachusetts and Minneapolis, Minnesota have voted to join a newly formed, independent union called Trader Joe’s United.

A potential third victory in Colorado would open the door to many more campaigns at the company’s over 500 locations.

The momentum in the labor movement comes after the COVID chaos of the last several years which brought defeats, safety concerns, and mistreatment. Once the vaccine was released, the company immediately denied workers one of their yearly pay raises.

Trader Joe’s, which is reported to have made $13.3 billion in revenue last year, isn’t going to hand over more of its profits to the workforce without a fight. The week before the Hadley vote, the company announced a sweeping increase in pay and benefits... for every store EXCEPT the ones that had filed for union elections.

This is an outrageous attack on these workers and a threat against any other store thinking of joining them.

To win real gains, they need to revitalize the fighting labor strategies that built the unions in the first place. These new unions need democratic structures that put forward clear demands, and a strategy to win them. They should be ready to escalate and use tried and true class struggle tactics like walkouts, sit-ins, and strikes. J

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THIS SUMMER, THE SRI LANKAN MASSES TOPPLED THEIR GOVERNMENT

KAILYN NICHOLSON, SEATTLE The climate crisis, global pandemics, war, inflation, the rise of the far right – for young people today, the idea that we’ve reached the pinnacle of human civilization probably sounds more sarcastic than serious. Yet this now absurd assertion was broadly accepted and taught in economics and political science classrooms across the U.S. a mere decade ago.

Today, young people are more likely to draw the opposite conclusion, that the problems facing humanity and our planet are too profound to be resolved. Popularly referred to as “doomerism,” this sense that there is nothing we can do to reverse the tide of worsening social, economic, and environmental problems can easily seem like the only realistic interpretation of the current state of the world.

Things are objectively getting worse for the vast majority of ordinary people around the world: inflation is out of control, climate change is already creating food and refugee crises, and in many countries the far right is again on the offensive against women, LGBTQ people, and racial and national minorities. Falling living standards and increased repression contribute to a profound and devastating lack of stability for individuals and families, which in turn contributes to increased rates of untreated mental illness, violence, and abuse. On top of that, we have the constant threat of ongoing global pandemics and now also a war that is rapidly polarizing the entire world between two nuclear superpowers: the U.S. and China.

Looking at the world today as a snapshot, it’s hard to see how one could draw anything

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other than deeply pessimistic conclusions. But doing that is a bit like pausing a movie on a single frame and trying to predict the ending – it doesn’t show the underlying dynamics that led to the present situation, the unresolved tensions, the story arcs in progress.

The more we dig into the underlying processes that brought us to the present moment, the less the future looks like a straight line towards certain doom. In fact, the same force that has succeeded in ending imperialist wars, advancing human rights, and raising living standards in the past – the working class – is only just beginning to put its mark on the events of today. Far from being relegated to passive viewers of the decline of human civilization, we ordinary people have the power to influence the course of events today and shape the future.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way “At those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime...”

Leon Trotsky, Preface, “The History of the Russian Revolution” In school, the history textbooks attribute most of the major events and changes that have shaped human history to decisions by

powerful individuals – kings and queens, presidents and parliaments, tycoons and tyrants.

The outbreak or resolution of war, the development of industry and technology, and the advance or retreat of progressive laws and values all tend to be credited to the wisdom (or lack thereof) and personal qualities of leading figures in society – the “great men of history” theory. In reality, major developments in society are a product of millions of ordinary people working together to improve their lives.

Since our early days as hunter-gatherers, humans have constantly been striving to develop new and better ways to survive, to get our basic material needs met. To this end we developed first agriculture and simple machines, then steam and combustion engines, then computers and microchips.

Each new advance grows the total wealth of society and, ever since social classes began, increases the power of those who control the wealth versus those who create it. Throughout history we’ve called this group of people different things: rulers, emperors, kings, the elite, the 1%, and today “the billionaire class.”

They’ve used different means to control workers throughout history. They can use force and violence, but this is costly because it inevitably reduces the productivity of the workers.

Far more beneficial to the billionaires is to convince the workers that they have no choice, that the exploitation and oppression they experience is natural and unchangeable. This is the basis for the historical idea that Kings and Queens are chosen by God, and that only the meek will get into heaven. It’s also the basis of racist and sexist ideas that certain groups of people are inherently smarter, harder working, or more moral than others.

Inevitably the ruling class always has to use a combination of ideology and force to maintain their privileged position over the rest of society. This becomes harder and harder the bigger and more obvious the gap between the quality of life of ordinary people and the ruling class becomes. You may see that some people are much richer than you, but so long as you

feel your own position is rising this isn’t necessarily a source of anger or resentment. We’re all just future billionaires, right? However, if you’ve just lost your job, had your rent raised with no pay increase, or realized you won’t be able to send your kids to college, watching the rich get richer just “hits different.”

Capitalism, and the capitalist class, have passed the tipping point from being a driver of growth of the productive capacity of human society to being a net brake on it. This is obvious just from looking at the energy industry: despite sharply diminishing returns and a climate crisis now threatening global food production, capitalists continue to invest in exploring, extracting, and running the world on fossil fuels rather than developing already existing technologies for renewables, which we already know have the potential to be a far more efficient and plentiful source of energy for humanity than fossil fuels ever could be.

This system’s addiction to fossil fuels has massively held back the development of transportation infrastructure – high speed rail is far more efficient at transporting people and goods than cars, airplanes, or trucks will ever be, yet our entire infrastructure continues to be built around the former.

We’ve long since passed the point of being able to produce enough food to feed the world – all hunger that exists today is the result of market failures, not natural or technological ones. This historic milestone of humanity was achieved under capitalism, but is on track to be lost again as climate change erodes the quantity and quality of arable worldwide.

Inevitably throughout human history, when a system begins to break down, workers reach a point where they reject the existing system and take matters into their own hands, replacing the old order with a new and more progressive one that allows the productive capacity of society to grow again. This has never happened via the old rulers being convinced to peacefully abdicate power, but by an all-out struggle by the masses of ordinary people who use their collective power as the majority to seize state S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

“ t a h s e co rp g n i y l re d n u t ne s rp eh t o s u t h guo rb e ru t f eh t s e l h t , nemo en i l t hgi a rt s a e k i l s ko l . mo d n i a t re c s d ra w o t

e h t o n i g d e w ro m e h T

power from the minority exploiters.

The material conditions exist for the masses to once again use the strength of our majority to rise up and replace the current outdated, destructive mode of production with a new one that will allow us to further develop the efficiency and productive capacity of human society as a whole. But while attempts to overthrow the current system are guaranteed to happen and are in fact already happening in various parts of the world, the success of these efforts is far from guaranteed.

Tasks For Today While the idea of a popular revolution to overthrow the system might seem far-fetched in the United States, many such revolutions have already happened in our lifetime and the rate at which they are happening is increasing globally. The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 marked the start of a new wave of revolutions against unlivable economic conditions and dictatorial repression in the developing world.

The ousting of a genocidal war-criminal president by Sri Lankan masses just last month is the latest example that proves that ordinary people still have the power to change the course of history when acting together with a clear common goal.

We can’t fully predict when a revolution might happen, but we do know they’re most successful when the working class is already well organized. This is sorely lacking today after decades of neoliberal attacks on unions and workers parties across the globe.

But the trend of workers getting organized and taking action is accelerating worldwide.

In the U.S., public support for unions is the highest it’s been in generations and the vast unorganized service and logistics sectors have taken the first crucial steps toward unionizing, despite all-out union busting by some of the biggest corporations in the world.

The size and frequency of strikes, the most effective weapon the working class has in the battle against the bosses, have begun to increase not just in the U.S. but globally.

It’s urgent that the union movement continue to grow in size and militancy to build up the power of the working class to the point of being able to contest power with the capitalists not just in one country at a time, but globally.

SEPTEMBER 2022

SADIE (she/they) – MADISON, WI

While I have long been a passionate advocate for social reform, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I started taking action in and around my community to push for much-needed systemic change. I began organizing locally, which gradually morphed into working alongside other left-wing organizers around the community. I was initially active with the Sunrise Movement, which served as an introduction to my work organizing local efforts.

My political activity in my community led me to campaign for Biden in the 2020 election, which drove me to draw broader conclusions about how change is made.

Though this “victory” had felt substantial at the time, I came to recognize that Biden’s presidency would not yield the change that he had promised and that I had hoped for. This experience sobered me to the failings of the Democratic Party to In addition to getting organized to take on take the initiative that the the bosses at work, we urgently need inde- dire situation of the capipendent political organizations of and for the talist crisis demanded. I working class to fight for our interests in the saw their frustrating compromise and inaction with political arena.

In the U.S., the two parties of big business their corporate donors, have managed to successfully stave off the and their abandonment creation of a workers’ party using lesser-evil- of social movements like ism, blaming the other party for all the failures Black Lives Matter and of capitalism and promising that things will get the abortion rights strugworse unless workers vote for them. This year’s gle, and I was effectively midterms are no exception, with Democrats insisting that we need to elect more of them to defend abortion despite doing absoutely nothing to prevent the repeal of Roe while controlling Congress and the White House.

Starting to build a political party for the working class linked to the union movement and social movements but completely independent from big business is the most urgent task facing the workers movement in the U.S. today.

Political leadership that is independent of big business money and political parties is essential for the development of the workers movement at every stage, but it’s most important at the stage where a revolutionary struggle for power breaks out. Most revolutions in the last century have failed to decisively seize power when it became possible to do so because of the political ideas of movement leaders.

The leadership of recent revolutions has lacked a clear understanding of the role of capitalism in holding back economic and social progress and the potential in a revolution to transform society. Instead of these revolutions fully overthrowing the capitalist system, they have ultimately handed power back to the capitalists in exchange for immediate reforms and promises. Socialists aim to change that.

Socialist Alternative urges all young people and workers struggling with demoralization in this age of disorder to develop your power as a worker by joining or working to start a union at your workplace and by reaching out to us to continue learning about the revolutionary potential of the working class. Individually we may be weak but when we get organized and act together we are the strongest force on this planet. It doesn’t have to be like this – the world we deserve is possible, and it’s up to us to fight for it. J

turned off.

While I had initially strongly aligned with the Sunrise Movement, the past several months demonstrated that we are in need of a greater effort toward social reform.

In my search for those who shared the same ideology, I discovered Madison Socialist Alternative- a group fighting for the same goals I have previously fought for, but with an uncompromising approach based on Marxism and an accountable, working-class program. I’ve come to recognize the necessity of a fighting socialist approach to confronting the problems facing our world.

With the current state of society, we desperately need to foster political unity and independence if we hope to create the change our world needs to see. In order to ensure living wages, healthy working conditions, healthcare, and an end to all forms of oppression, we will need our politics to be driven by the working class, rather than corporate politicians and the one percent.

Since becoming involved with Madison Socialist Alternative, I have participated in a sit-in at Ron Johnson’s office, a rally at the city-county meeting, and our weekly branch meetings within a period of roughly a month. Even with more work on the horizon, I’ve already learned that real change cannot be disconnected from revolutionary change. I am an active and invested member of Socialist Alternative, and intend to continue to help build a socialist future!

FIGHT FOR A BETTER WORLD, JOIN SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE

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WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

SEATTLE BECOMES THE FIRST ABORTION SANCTUARY CITY

How Working People and Socialists Won BIA LACOMBE, COMMUNITY ORGANIZER IN THE OFFICE OF KSHAMA SAWANT Last month, thousands of local activists and young people in Seattle won a landmark victory in the abortion rights struggle. Led by the office of socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, we succeeded in our fight to make Seattle the first abortion sanctuary city in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Seattle police will now be prohibited from arresting people based on outstanding warrants related to anti-abortion laws around the country, and will also be prevented from otherwise aiding in investigations of those cases. People with abortion-related warrants will be able to live in Seattle without being extradited to whichever state is attempting to prosecute them.

“Laws violating basic bodily autonomy and criminalizing reproductive healthcare are fundamentally unjust, and our movement will not allow Seattle to be complicit,” Sawant wrote in a press release celebrating this pushback against the shameful, right-wing court ruling.

“Let anyone threatened by draconian antiabortion laws come to Seattle without fear of prosecution!”

The entire working class has suffered a serious defeat with the overturning of Roe. Thousands of women and LGBTQ people, as well as abortion providers and other healthcare workers, could be forced to flee their home states.

By winning this legislation, Seattle’s workers, young people, and socialists have demonstrated what it means to be in solidarity with the working class across city and state borders.

But even more importantly, such legislation could have profound impacts if it were to spread widely: if half the states in the U.S. pass similar legislation refusing to extradite people for breaking anti-abortion laws in the other half of states, anti-abortion laws everywhere will become harder to enforce.

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Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Minneapolis City Councilmember Robin Wonsley, Sawant’s fellow members of Democratic Socialists of America, are planning to push for abortion sanctuary legislation in their cities. Our office has also been working closely with Supervisor Heidi M. Wegleitner of Dane County, Wisconsin, who stood in solidarity with our fight by writing to the Seattle City Council in strong support of our legislation.

How Seattle’s Working People and Socialist Alternative Won The broad support and excitement for our abortion sanctuary legislation in Seattle was as overwhelming as one might expect from the many nationwide polls that indicate widespread support for abortion rights.

More than 5,500 people signed our petition in support of the legislation. On the day of the City Council vote, 60 people testified in public comment demanding that Council Democrats vote “yes” without watering the bill down.

Many of the abortion sanctuary petition signatures were gathered by Socialist Alternative members during Pride events in Seattle at the end of June, where we talked to thousands of working-class LGBTQ people about the need for a unified mass movement to defeat the right-wing attacks on abortion, which are fundamentally connected to the vicious attacks on trans youth and queer people we’re seeing across the country.

Socialist Alternative members continued tabling almost daily throughout the month of July to talk to as many working people as possible and bring them into the fight.

On the online version of our petition, 850 people left comments with personal stories and words of solidarity, including hundreds of union members. Many wrote that abortion rights are women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and workers’ rights, and that an attack on abortion is an attack on all of us.

Thanks to rank-and-file union members,

A Big Win For Abortion Rights in Kansas SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE STATEMENT In kicking abortion rights back to the states, the right hoped that they’d see a clear path to near-total abortion bans across the country. Well, the results in Kansas in early August should serve as a kick in the teeth.

In a landslide victory, and with record voter turnout, Kansans overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have removed abortion rights from the state constitution. Despite appearing on a traditionally low-turnout primary ballot, the thunderous rejection of this measure is impossible to dispute.

The measure was defeated by 18% in a state that voted for Trump in 2020 by a margin of just under 15%. This shows clear as day that working people in the U.S. do not support taking away access to safe, legal abortions even in “Trump country.”

Knowing that they have nothing to offer working class people to overcome skyrocketing prices and chronically low wages, a section of the Republican Party has pinned its hopes on culture war issues as a way to win elections.

As the vote in Kansas shows, this is not a straightforward strategy. Some prominent Republican figures have warned that these attacks could backfire, but many others don’t see another way forward and are doubling down.

While there are several other states with abortion related referenda coming up this fall, namely Kentucky and Michigan, in many states the question of abortion rights the abortion sanctuary legislation was endorsed by unions representing thousands of Seattle workers. We were also endorsed by local community organizations like Real Change, Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA), and the Puget Sound Mobilization for Reproductive Justice.

Our abortion sanctuary legislation will be a lifeline for women and pregnant people who can make it to Seattle from anti-abortion states, but it won’t make unjust warrants go away — doing that and more will require building a powerful womens’ and LGBTQ rights movement on a national scale.

But our victory in Seattle shows what could be won on a far larger scale by a mass movement, if we had the leadership and organization necessary to mobilize millions of

is not being put directly to voters.

Most Republican legislatures would prefer to legislate their way to near-total bans. But regardless of the exact mechanism they use, the results in Kansas should give confidence to abortion rights activists in all states that bans and restrictions are not a done deal.

We need aggressive, offensive movements in states across the country prepared to put every obstacle in the path of antichoice reactionaries.

We need mass protests, walkouts, sitins, and even strikes to stop the right in their tracks. In order to coordinate this vital work across the country we need new mass women’s organizations with democratic structures where ordinary people can discuss and debate the strategy for our movement.

In order to build the type of fightback we’ll ultimately need to overcome the right’s attacks on women and queer people, we will need political independence from the Democratic Party. The abortion rights movement cannot have any illusions that the Democrats or liberal NGOs will fight for us.

If we are going to wrest any victories from their hands, we’ll have to do it using political force.

As the threat of the right is undoubtedly growing, the victory in Kansas shows that their most vicious attacks remain extremely unpopular among ordinary people. In order to defeat these attacks in an ongoing way we will need more than just our anger, we have to get organized. To learn more about the type of socialist feminist movement Socialist Alternative is fighting to build, check out our articles on www.socialistalternative.org. J working people in their workplaces and in the streets.

A Breathtakingly Awful Response From the Democrats Socialist Kshama Sawant announced the abortion sanctuary legislation from her office on the same day the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion, which was something that we all knew was coming thanks to the Politico leak of the draft ruling.

So, what did the President of the entire United States, Democrat Joe Biden, have to announce? Four days after the ruling, Biden’s Health Secretary had no immediate policy

continued on p15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

FIGHTING INFLATION

Minnesota Transit Workers Pass Resolution Demanding COLA + 1% ADAM BURCH, MINNEAPOLIS This “Summer of Inflation” – the latest in a long line of capitalist crises – is grinding working people down under the burden of rising prices, on top of crushing heat waves and a pandemic that just won’t go away.

Capitalism and the economists who proclaim how great the system is are downplaying the effects of inflation on working people. But we have to see through their propaganda. Minnesota bus drivers are fighting for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to keep our wages at pace with rising prices. We think workers everywhere can and should take up this demand.

Economists Downplay Threat Of Inflation At the outset of this most recent period of inflation, capitalist economists assured us that inflation was only going to be temporary, that the global supply chain will work itself out eventually, and prices will go back to normal. Contrary to those predictions, inflation and rising prices is the new normal, hitting working people hardest while corporations make record profits.

These economists have now had to admit their ignorance. Mark Bergen, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies inflation said, “There is hope on the horizon that this isn’t going to keep on getting worse and worse, but exactly when and how, I’m not sure anybody exactly knows.”

Many economic forecasters (if we are to believe them) anticipate that it will take a few years for inflation to drop back to their goal of 2%.

We are now experiencing the worst inflation in 40 years. In Minnesota, an average gallon of regular gas hit a record high of $4.76 on June 15. As of June 2022, the CPI-U (Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers) in the Midwest Region specifically, increased by 9.5% since June

of 2021. Energy prices rose 44.5% and food prices were up 11.9% over the year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Some capitalist economists downplay the impacts of inflation and describe this kind of economy as “hot.” These capitalist apologists will point to a low unemployment rate to try to convince the rest of us that the economy is actually just fine. They also want us to think that rising prices must mean a growing economy if there is this much demand for consumer goods, incentivizing more capitalist production at increased profits.

When capitalist economists talk about the economy, they’re referring to incentivizing business and profits. But for working people, for an economy to be “working properly,” at a minimum, workers will need their wages to keep pace with rising prices. And according to any Econ101 textbook, low unemployment, or a “tight labor market” under capitalism should – in theory – increase the competitive advantage for workers to be in a better position to demand increased wages from employers. Despite some evidence of wages, on average, rising, most working people are seeing their earnings slip.

In Minnesota, the average nonfarm private sector job posted earnings increases of only 2.16% from April 2021 to April 2022! It is unfortunately a very similar story all across the country; workers’ wages have not kept up with rising consumer prices. What this means is a pay cut for workers in real dollars.

In Minnesota, average hourly earnings declined 3.6% in the last year, after taking inflation into account.

We should not have to accept it. This capitalist economy is failing working people yet again. If that wasn’t enough, to add insult to injury, the capitalists themselves are better than ever while we suffer. The U.S.’ biggest oil companies made record profits in these last months. In July, ExxonMobil reported an unprecedented $17.85 billion in the

L ABOR MOVEMENT second quarter, nearly four times as much as the same period a year ago. Chevron made a record $11.62 billion as the UK’s Shell broke its own profit records. This is in addition to the combined $100 billion they made in profits in the first quarter!

Despite workers’ wages very clearly not keeping pace with rising inflation, and corporate profits soaring well above the rate of inflation, that doesn’t stop the capitalist economists demanding that workers must continue to bear the brunt of their crises, like always.

Matt Schoeppner, senior economist at Minneapolis based U.S. Bank, said that it’s actually a good thing that workers’ wages don’t keep up with inflation.

He said, “That’s the one thing I would argue needs to happen [workers continuing to make less] in order to reduce all of this excess demand that’s been built up through the past couple of years.”

These capitalist economists are so conditioned to blame wages for inflation that even the idea of increased wages is enough for them to obsess over, despite wages actually not keeping up, therefore obviously not being the reason for the inflation.

In fact, the only “solution” that these economists can come up with is to make things worse. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explained that Fed policy is aiming to “get wages down” - and Biden has backed him! This is a large part of why the Fed is raising interest rates, it wants working people to bear the brunt of inflation while protecting the profits of big business.

Minnesota Bus Drivers For COLA+1 Thankfully, workers organized in unions haven’t always bought into this irrational capitalist logic. The last time inflation was as bad as it is now was during the early 1980s. At that time unions were relatively stronger than we are now. Organized workers demanded to have “COLA” instituted

into our contracts. COLA stands for “Cost of Living Adjustment.” That means whatever inflation is at the time, workers automatically get that percent increase, then any negotiated raises would be on top of that. Therefore, guaranteeing that workers actually get a raise in real dollars.

The last time my union - ATU Local 1005 - had that in our contract was 1984.

It was a mistake to negotiate COLA away then, but now we are determined to win it back in our contract in 2023!

During July’s ATU 1005 General Membership Meeting, Socialist Alternative member, and ATU 1005 President, Ryan Timlin, introduced a resolution to our membership that committed ATU 1005 to fight for COLA +1 during our next contract campaign. The “+1” means whatever inflation is plus 1%, guaranteeing an actual raise. Workers using this formula as a demand will mean actual real gains for working people everywhere! The resolution passed unanimously!

Not only does ATU Local 1005 want to win this demand for our next upcoming contract, but we want to encourage all ATU Locals to fight for this same COLA +1 demand! When workers everywhere can organize around a similar set of demands, that strengthens workers everywhere in their specific struggles. We want all workers – organized and unorganized – to feel confident that they too can fight and struggle for this demand alongside Minnesota transit workers and members of ATU Local 1005.

Like the eight-hour day and “15 Now,” we want to make COLA +1 the sharpest demand in our upcoming labor struggles.

The resolution also committed the ATU 1005 delegation to pass a similar COLA +1 resolution at the upcoming ATU International Convention in September. We want ATU and all workers everywhere to fight with us for COLA +1, union or nonunion. And we at ATU 1005 will assist in any way we can to broaden the struggle to win COLA +1, not only for us, but for all the workers we can! Solidarity! J

Adam Burch, Socialist Alternative member in Minneapolis, is a bus driver and member of ATU Local 1005 (written in a personal capacity) SEPTEMBER 2022

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S O C I A L I S T A LT E R N AT I V E I N A C T I O N

I’M CONFIDENT WE CAN BUILD A BETTER WORLD RYAN BORGESON, MINNEAPOLIS

For millions of people, just reading a few daily news headlines is enough to put you in a bad mood, or worse yet, a feeling of existential dread and sense of helplessness.

I’ve definitely felt this despondency scrolling through my news feed.

But I’ve also been able to combat it, replacing helplessness and isolation with a sense of direction and solidarity.

Last month, I was one of 250 Marxists who gathered in Leuven, Belgium for the first International Socialist Alternative Cadre School.

We had hundreds of discussions about the crises facing the world working class, and through these discussions I felt more and more confident that we’re up to the task of fighting for a better world. This is primarily thanks to the fact we are bound together by an international organization whose strength is greater than the sum of its parts.

The necessity of the school stemmed from the perspective that the new era of capitalism we are entering will feature compounding crises, presenting both opportunities and dangers for revolutionary socialists, and requiring training of a new layer of committed activists capable of navigating the twists and turns in the class struggle. ISA also takes into account that although specific conditions and features may vary by region or country, they are interconnected by capitalism’s global nature.

As a response, socialists must organize and discuss across borders to form accurate analyses on how best to fight back against the system.

Socialists from over two dozen countries on every continent made the journey to Belgium, including many from the U.S.. Activists from some countries were blocked from attending by sanctions, COVID, and various other restrictions, a reminder that capitalism will oppose movements of working people every step

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of the way, as many socialists before have encountered.

The week kicked off with a plenary discussion on the world situation, looking at the overarching processes in society – including the underlying economic instability, climate crises, inter-imperialist rivalries, the growth of the right, and war – alongside the interplay between them. This kicked the school off on a strong political foundation. Delegates then made contributions to the discussion relating key features in their home region to these processes, how phenomena such as deglobalization and political polarization manifest there.

A major takeaway from the discussion was that the distance between national and global processes is short, and that events in specific countries often show clear trends and connections to overarching global crises. This flowed into the following day of the school, where smaller discussions focused on these global trends and their features – the struggle for women’s and LGBTQ rights, the coming recession and stagflation,the growing threat of the far-right, and the climate movement among others.

The second day finished with all delegates again gathering for a plenary, this time delving in to how the myriad of crises compound together driving toward a new cold war revolving around the rival imperialism between the U.S. and China, most visibly expressed by the hot war in Ukraine and flowing from the wider transition to deglobalization and nationalist protectionism.

If the first two days were forming perspectives and sharing reports on current processes, the following day was dedicated to learning the lessons of revolutions in the past and around the world today all aimed at answering the overarching question put to socialists: “what to do next?”

Part of the response to that question was posed in the following day’s commissions – geared toward discussing perspectives for long-term work in our workplaces and classrooms. Delegates were

Latin American delegation to the ISA school. encouraged to orient to commissions aligned with their workplace or school discussing strategy and identifying trends.

Finally, the last days of the cadre school took up a focus on building the revolutionary organization, with the understanding that building our sections, with a concrete orientation toward international cohesion, will be crucial to our ability to shape events in battles ahead against capitalism. In Mexico, from having only one member in 2019, we today have a young, vibrant and growing section, with a total of three regularly meeting branches in different cities.

These workshops focused on developing skills to build the organization – producing a regular paper and publications, best practices in consolidation of new members, sharing perspectives for intervening successfully in the women’s movement, developing consistent youth work, and refining revolutionary finance – to name a few.

The cadre school was an intense and immersive week full of discussion. For me, attending was like returning to the classroom for the first time in many years. But that adjustment and the flurry of travel before and after were well worth the price for the perspectives shared, rich lessons learned, and connections made.

In a world where the ruling class wants working people to stay home and atomized, believing that nothing can change, it was a powerful to engage in energetic discussion, both formal and informal, with working class fighters who together reject the pessimism of the ruling-class and instead replace it with a revolutionary optimism that a better world is possible. J

A S I E D I PR ROTEST P

Around the world, sections of the International Socialist Alternative organized anti-corporate Pride events. In country after country, young people are enraged by big business’ attempts to co-opt the struggle for queer rights.

This year, in Mexico, Belgium, Ireland, Austria, the U.S.,

and more, we organized Pride events and march contingents calling for a fighting, workingclass led movement for queer liberation.

Visit internationalsocialist.net to learn more about the work of the ISA which has sections in 30 countries on all inhabitable continents.

We need socialism, not rainbow capitalism!

Mexico

U.S.

Belgium Austria

Ireland

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

WA R & I M P E R I A L I S M

THE NEW COLD WAR BRINGS A NEW NUCLEAR DYSTOPIA CHRIS GRAY, MINNEAPOLIS

Right now, as the Ukrainian army, according to president Zelensky, has launched an offensive in the south, one of the biggest challenges they will face is recapturing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has six nuclear reactors that require careful monitoring, and six highly radioactive pools alongside a reservoir that eventually empties into the Black Sea. While neither side has an interest in triggering an all out nuclear disaster, the danger is inherent in the situation.

In March, the world held its breath as videos emerged showing a pitched battle being fought in the courtyard of the plant, causing damage to the building. It has since been occupied by Russian forces, who have set up artillery on the site. Ukrainian forces tried to attack the guns, causing damage to the wall of the reactor in the process. The head of the UN’s nuclear agency labeled the situation “completely out of control.”

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is essentially a nuclear bomb, whose energy is released slowly through a careful balancing act that is easily disrupted. The dangers of disrupting this balance are clear in the hundreds of square miles of wastelands that still surround Chernobyl and Fukushima following the nuclear catastrophes in 1986 and 2011. Zaporizhzhia is an example of how the threat of nuclear catastrophe, even in SEPTEMBER 2022

unconventional ways, is heightened by the new Cold War emerging in capitalism’s age of disorder.

New Cold War; Old Nuclear Threat

As the U.S./China cold war reshapes the global economy, supply chains, and geopolitics, bringing an increased risk of armed incidents and regional wars, the ruling class is whipping up support for nuclear rearmament. At the height of Trump’s nuclear threats against North Korea, polls showed a third of American voters were open to a preemptive nuclear strike. For decades, the U.S. has cultivated militarism and nationalism in South Korea, resulting in a stunning poll showing 71% support for nuclear armament.

With tacit support from the U.S. government, right-wing politicians in Japan are pushing to revise their 1971 constitution that explicitly bars nuclear weapons from being deployed on Japanese soil.

“All of the nucleararmed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies,” said Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme. “This is a very worrying trend.”

One of Putin’s regional allies is Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus whose country shares hundreds of miles of borders with Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, stretching to within 50 miles of the Russian enclavefortress of Kaliningrad. In June, Putin promised to allow Belarussian fighter jets to be upgraded in Russia to carry tactical nuclear weapons, and the deployment of nuclearcapable cruise missiles. India and Pakistan are conducting nuclear-capable missile tests against each other at a rate of two per month.

The U.S. government claims China is constructing 200 new missile silos, expanding its mobile-launch capability, and upgrading its submarine fleet.

Have Nuclear Weapons Kept The World Safer?

Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons, costing five times more than the amount needed to house every homeless person over the same period. The

Soviet Union produced similar numbers.

At the height of the old Cold War, 84,000 nuclear weapons were in service. Today, the U.S. and Russia still account for the vast majority of the roughly three thousand nuclear weapons that remain on high alert.

Despite the fact that capitalism and Stalinism both recognized that nuclear war would be a total global disaster including for their systems and power, nuclear war almost happened. Almost a dozen high ranking agents of U.S. imperialism publicly attribute “luck” as the main reason nuclear arms have not been used since 1945. Furthermore, the existence of these weapons has not made war unthinkable. Egypt and Syria attacked nuclear-armed Israel in 1973, Argentina seized the Falkland islands from nuclear-armed Britain in 1982, and in 1999, nuclear-armed Pakistan mounted an incursion into a region Kashmir occupied by nuclear-armed India.

Imperialism’s Dangerous Quest To Use The Bomb Obama was the first to update formal policy to leave open the possibility of a U.S. nuclear first strike. Trump pushed the needle further, making the “first use” language more vague and expanding potential scenarios to include non-nuclear armed countries, cyber attacks, and “biological attacks” - a dubious concept given Trump’s scapegoating of China for COVID. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to return to the pre-Obama policy of deterrence, but has refused to actually do it in office.

Putin has followed suit. In June 2020, Putin revised Soviet-era nuclear doctrine to be more vague and conditional, while also making overt threats to use them during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, against Danish missile defense warships in 2015, and in the event of Ukrainian attacks on Crimean ports during the 2022 Russian invasion. China is actually the only nuclear-armed country that still formally maintains a “no first use” policy, though many of its newer weapons systems are designed for a first strike scenario.

In 2021, American military analysts were shocked when China tested its Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, which

3.3 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

These efforts are designed to make nuclear weapons usable, and rest on the dangerous assumption that one side would break the chain of escalation before an all-out conflict.

The Danger Of Mistakes During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, military leaders in the U.S. argued for a preemptive strike against Cuba based on the false assumption that the bombs were not assembled. In fact, 100 weapons were already operational. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, a stunned Soviet air defense technician watched what appeared to be a massive incoming attack. He disobeyed orders, and waited to confirm the attack. It turned out his equipment was seeing solar flares, not nuclear missiles. A month later, the Soviet Union launched nuclear bombers believing it was facing an imminent attack when Ronald Reagan used the term “nuclear strikes” to describe a massive, unannounced NATO military exercise.

Even if both imperialist camps have nothing to gain from nuclear attacks, since it’s too risky, the twisted logic of nuclear weapons can point towards war. In June, Putin put Russian nuclear forces on high alert.

Western imperialism can only guess if this means Putin is preparing to attack, or if Putin believes he’s about to be attacked.

If you believe you’re about to be attacked, why not attack first while your weapons are intact? Similarly, the new nuclear weapons further destabilize the situation. If you believe your opponent can launch an effective “first strike” that wipes out your nuclear weapons, why not use your nuclear weapons first? If someone tests the doctrine of “limited nuclear war” and it actually works, wouldn’t more nations try it?

It’s not likely that there will be a nuclear attack in Ukraine tomorrow, next week, or next month. The threat is increased as the world is divided into two rival imperialist camps, orbiting the U.S. and China, sparking old regional tensions and proxy wars, potentially in regions with massive nuclear power plants or even nuclear weapons. In addition, imperialism is developing a new generation of

“Capitalism has made the world a much more dangerous place.” includes a nuclear-capable, hypersonic reentry vehicle. While these weapons are not new, they offer the possibility to launch an attack from a trajectory that is not covered by American early warning detection systems.

The U.S.’ eighteen active-duty, $2 billion dollar, nuclear missile submarines function similarly. Given that there is no way to stop a conventional nuclear attack, there is no use for these weapons systems except to attempt a “first strike” attack that knocks out your opponent’s ability to shoot back.

In addition, both the U.S. and Russia are exploring the possibility of a “limited nuclear strike.” This would include detonating nuclear weapons over armies rather than cities, remote military installations, etc. The U.S. is spending hundreds of millions modernizing 2,000 B61 nuclear bombs to include a dial that allows the user to set the blast radius from a few city blocks up to

weapons designed to make nuclear war more palatable to their ruling classes. Capitalism has made the world a much more dangerous place.

Self described socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC need to stop voting in favor of increased military spending and weapons packages and campaign against them. We need to build an anti-war movement opposed to all forms of imperialism. In the 1960s, a massive anti-war movement forced the United States and Soviet Union into discussions about an out of control nuclear arms race. In the 1980’s, anti-nuclear proliferation protests made it less viable for U.S. imperialism to freely deploy warheads in Europe.

The arms race in the emerging New Cold War offers nothing but destruction and despair – we need an international, working class centered, mass socialist movement against all forms of imperialism! J

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WORLD

UK RAIL STRIKE ENTERS THIRD NOW COORDINATE AND MONTH ESCALATE TO WIN! Adapted from a statement by Socialist Alernative England, Wales, and Scotland In June and July, rail workers organized with the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) went on strike against several employers. These actions were a huge step forward, not just for rail workers, but workers everywhere. After so many years of stagnant wages, while profits and prices fly through the roof, millions showed their support with the workers taking action.

The record heat wave throughout Europe in July wreaked havoc on the railways. Yet the Tories (the Conservative Party) want to cut staffing numbers even further! It shows how all the talk of “modernization” is a fraud – big business wants to push conditions decades back through privatization and profiteering.

We cannot let them get away with that.

The Tory government is in crisis. After the scandals that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign, the Tories are still looking for a replacement. Working people need to go on the offensive while the Tories are weak and divided.

In Scotland, the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) offers no alternative to the Tories’ cuts, and is using the English Parliament’s cuts as an excuse to pass attacks on workers’ living standards.

This is the first time since the pandemic began that rotten pay caps limiting public sector raises – being imposed on workers by both the English and Scottish Parliaments – will be put to the test.

If the rail workers are defeated, employers and the government will feel emboldened to attack pay, jobs, and conditions even further to keep their profits up. But if workers win, this could unleash an even bigger wave of struggle.

We will have to prove that the workers movement has the power and determination to smash the pay cap and fight for raises that keep up with inflation for all!

Coordination The question on many people’s minds will be, how can we coordinate all the strikes?

Actions are already planned for this year by postal workers, teachers, lecturers, bus

Members of Socialist Alternative England, Wales, and Scotland campaigning to support striking rail workers. drivers, and many more. It is absolutely essential that there is a plan to coordinate these disputes on a national and local level to maximize impact. A bold, fighting, and campaigning approach is going to be needed to avoid losing momentum between strike dates.

This could mean well-advertised joint pickets which would then be able to appeal to other workers to refuse to be used as strike breakers. Large town and city-center demonstrations in particular should target the scab agency companies, alongside demanding nationalization of rail, mail, and energy – all demands that would win big support.

All of these things are not only possible in spite of anti-trade union legislation, but will be urgently needed to win our demands!

Escalation Many will rightly be wondering what the dispute will look like after this round of action.

Will it be enough to push the employers back to the table, or could they ride it out?

Union locals should consider raising the

need for a joined up approach with other locals to escalate the action. This would mean a strategy to arrange action on a more frequent basis, in order to avoid losing momentum. This would then give time for RMT activists to raise support among the workforce, as the only way to show the employers and government that we won’t back down in our demands.

This would then allow the union to turn outward toward the public. The recent discussions within the RMT about organizing informational booths in town centers is a big step forward. If an appeal is sent out to the whole trade union movement to take part in these actions, it would send a signal to unorganized workers to join unions and consider fighting back.

This struggle is a real turning point. A victory would be a step toward a more generalized mass workers’ movement that can fight for price control, decent pay tied to inflation, workers’ control over our workplaces, and nationalization and democratic planning to meet our needs! J

Brazil: Stop Bolsonaro’s Coup in the Streets!

Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolução (LSR) - Statement from International Socialist Alternative Brazil

Brazil is sinking into a historic crisis. We have 33 million Brazilians going hungry in addition to another 90 million in a situation of food insecurity. In our country, eight out of ten families are in debt. This is President Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

Deeply unpopular and facing a likely defeat in this election, Bolsonaro and the far right are preparing for a show of force in the streets on Brazilian Independence day on September 7.

Even though most of the ruling class and imperialism do not support a coup d’état

14

today, Bolsonaro intends to create political conditions for his far-right movement to remain alive in the coming period.

The answer to this threat given by most of the left is that the working class should trust the institutions of bourgeois democracy, like congress and the courts. This logic includes building an electoral coalition with the former president Lula, whose program includes numerous concessions to capitalism and imperialism.

We say the way to stop the coup and defeat Bolsonaro is not by adopting more moderation and lowering our program – it is quite the opposite. It is necessary to mobilize the working class with an alternative

program to address the crisis, one that makes the super-rich pay and meets the needs of the working people.

It is necessary to defend employment, wages, public services, price control of basic food items, agrarian reform, the right to land for indigenous people and quilombolas.

We defend the right to abortion, the end of all discrimination against women and LGBT+ people, and the end of police violence and structural racism against Black people.

We need to fight against climate change and the interests of agribusiness, mining, logging and large companies that profit

from climate destruction!

Mass protests against Bolsonaro are the first step – now it’s time to fight for a plan to defend the popular vote during the elections!

We need to build grassroots assemblies in our unions, schools, and communities that can coordinate national days of action, prepare for strikes, and build defense committees.

A successful mobilization against Bolsonaro’s coup plans also sets up the basis for ongoing struggle for our demands under the pro-capitalist government of Lula.

Join the revolutionary socialists in the fight against Bolsonaro, the extreme right, and capitalism. J

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

C O N T I N U AT I O N S

SEATTLE ABORTION RIGHTS VICTORY to present, and gave his “apologies” that the administration could not do more. On August 3, Biden made a long-awaited announcement as part of what his administration has called a “bold plan” to respond to the most severe attack on reproductive rights in half a century: an executive order that directs federal officials to… do more research.

Despite many indications of the potential for a mass fightback to defend reproductive rights, from rural Kansas to Seattle, we haven’t seen any leadership from the Democrats or their NGO affiliates like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice. Even members of The Squad have declined to take up a real fight based on mobilizing the millions of working people who support them — yet another capitulation to the Democratic leadership they promised to oppose.

The Republicans and the right wing have spent 50 years organizing and building for this all-out assault on women and queer people.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has spent 50 years promising to protect us by codifying abortion rights, and then completely refusing to fight despite every opportunity. Tragically, this can now be added to the long and growing list of the Democrats’ broken promises.

At the same moment that they expressed words of outrage over the Supreme Court

ruling, Democratic City Councilmembers in Seattle were attempting to undermine our legislation in the backrooms, but refusing to publicly reveal their intentions. They attempted to greatly weaken the clause that now mandates Seattle police not arrest people with outof-state abortion-related warrants. The only reason the Democrats backed off from this was the spotlight put on them by the hundreds of working people who spoke up and by Sawant’s office, proving the effectiveness once again of a working-class mobilization.

The Only Way Forward It’s now up to social movements led by working people to defend the basic right to abortion, and also to recognize the most important lesson from this defeat: we need a new party for working people that isn’t tied to the corporations and the billionaires. We need a party that is democratically organized and whose elected representatives will, like Kshama Sawant, take home only the average worker’s wage and are accountable to working people and the oppressed.

Even when we force the Democrats to stand with us, we still cannot afford to draw the wrong conclusions. The Council Democrats did not suddenly become genuine progressives when they voted for our abortion sanctuary

continued from p.10 legislation — this could hardly be evidenced more clearly than by what happened at that very same Council meeting where we won the abortion sanctuary bill. In that meeting, the Democrats secretly brought forward a vote to end Seattle’s $4/hour pandemic hazard pay for grocery workers.

Tax Amazon To Fund Free Abortions Our abortion sanctuary petition includes the hugely popular demand to increase our movement’s Amazon Tax to fund free abortions for all Seattle residents and visitors. We’ll be bringing that legislation forward this fall, as part of our 2023 People’s Budget demands.

A healthcare worker who signed the petition underscored the urgency and importance of this next stage of the fight, writing, “Our country is facing a crisis and we need to act now.

If we don’t increase funds and resources for abortions, we won’t be prepared when overflow patients fleeing from Idaho and other red states come flooding in. Abortion clinics in Eastern Washington are already at capacity, and things are only going to get worse. We need to prepare to meet this crisis immediately by raising the Amazon Tax.” The fight is only beginning. Join us! J

Reformist vs. Revolutionary Politics:

A Debate Between Kshama Sawant, Bryan Koulouris, and Eric Blanc On July 28, Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation, facilitated a debate between Eric Blanc, author of recently released book Revolutionary Social Democracy, and Socialist Alternative members Kshama Sawant, socialist Seattle city councilmember, and Bryan Koulouris, Socialist Alternative’s national organizer. The debate was an engaging encapsulation of the broad debate on the left between reformists and revolutionaries.

In it, Blanc defends the central conclusions of his book, which is that the lessons of the Bolshevik victory in the Russian “Today’s world situation cries out for genuine Marxist analysis and action based on the revolutionary potential of the working class, as the Bolsheviks had in carrying out the Russian Revolution, the most progressive event in the twentieth century.

Marxism means not dogma or eclectic dabbling, but applying an implacable scientific lens to events, and drawing up strategy based on evidence and the logic of class antagonisms.

Eric says the underlying mistake by Lenin and the Bolsheviks was believing that the revolutionary approach would work in modern capitalist democracies.

He chooses [Karl] Kautsky’s

SEPTEMBER 2022

Revolution have little to do with the situation today. He insists that a “Leninist revolution” is not possible in contemporary capitalist democracies and that instead we should pursue a parliamentary road to socialism, seeking to win a socialist majority of elected officials who would facilitate a transition to socialism.

Kshama Sawant and Bryan Koulouris draw on the lessons of France in 1968 and Chile in 1973 to dispute Blanc’s central conclusions. They describe how in the age of capitalist disorder we’re now living through,

there is no stable base for mass social democratic parties. A slow, steady parliamentary road to worker power is simply utopian.

The order of the day around the world is revolution and counterrevolution. It’s critical that socialists fight to achieve clarity on forms of working-class self organization that are needed to overthrow this rotten system.

For that reason we’re glad Eric Blanc and Bhaskar Sunkara hosted this debate.

Scan the QR code to watch the full debate and check out an excerpt from Kshama Sawant’s opening statement below.

parliamentary road to socialism, police, the courts, and the prison requiring the election of a social- system, but also parliaments, ist majority to parliament. In this, and the U.S. Congress.

Eric holds up the Finnish RevoluAs Lenin said in his briltion of 1917-18 as liant work, “State The most profound and Revolution,” a model.

The most pro- and fundamental a “democratic found and fundarepublic is the errors in this analysis best possible politmental errors in this analysis are is failing to understand ical shell for capimissing the les- the capitalist state. talism.” And this is sons of both the true even though Russian and Finnish revolutions, Marxists have correctly fought for and failing to understand the democratic rights. capitalist state.

As Marx and Engels explained, Contrary to Eric’s faith in par- and as Lenin reiterated, the role liament and congress as a means of even the most “democratic” for good, the brutal nature of the parliament under capitalism is state under capitalism comprises to maintain class rule. The capiall its institutions: not only the talists will fight tooth and nail

against any attempt to use it to uplift the masses. If [democracy] stops working for them, they will undermine or dissolve it.

We cannot build socialism, which requires taking the levers of the economy into the hands of the working class, without confronting the brutal resistance of the capitalists and their state. J

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349

EDITOR: Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Chris Gray, Joshua Koritz, Greyson Van Arsdale, Tony Wilsdon

Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

NATIONAL (347) 457-6069 info@SocialistAlternative.org facebook.com/SocialistAlternativeUSA Instagram: @Socialist_Alternative Twitter: @SocialistAlt Tik Tok: @socialistus

INTERNATIONAL Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative (ISA), which has sections in over 30 countries. Learn more about the ISA at internationalsocialist.net.

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15

SOCIALIST ISSUE #86 l SEPTEMBER 2022

ERIN BRIGHTWELL, OAKLAND The unelected right-wingers on the Supreme Court have dealt a major blow to women’s and LGBTQ people’s rights with the Dobbs decision.

Abortion is now banned in multiple states, likely with more to come, which is a horrific state of affairs for the millions of women, girls, and LGBTQ people who can become pregnant in those states. The financial burden of traveling out of state to obtain abortion services means that working class and poor people will be most severely impacted by abortion bans and may be forced take illegal measures to access abortion, carry unwanted pregnancies to term, or potentially take desperate measures that can threaten their health and lives.

Researchers at the University of California

have shown that more women will be driven out of the workplace by a lack of access to abortion, impacting their financial security for, in many cases, the rest of their lives.

The basic social programs like free healthcare, affordable high-quality childcare, and paid parental leave that are needed to start or grow a family with stability aren’t the norm in the U.S. Under current conditions, the Dobbs decision will play a significant role in pushing more women into poverty. More women will die because of Dobbs. Despite the U.S. being the richest country in the history of humanity, the rate of maternal mortality is two to five times that of other high-income countries, and the rate of Black women dying is nearly three times that of white women.

Positively, marches and actions took place in cities across the country to oppose the

ALTERNATIVE

Dobbs ruling, despite the shameful abdication of the liberal feminist women’s organizations in not leading an organized mass response.

The Dobbs decision represents a massive failure of liberal feminism. While ruling class figures like Kamala Harris are celebrated for achieving “firsts,” liberal feminist organizations and the Democratic Party establishment with whom they are tightly linked, have stood by with virtually no response to the ending of federal protection for abortion rights.

For years, the central task of liberal feminist organizations like National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood Action Fund has been to safeguard abortion rights.

These organizations’ key political strategy was to support Democratic party candidates who were pro-choice, even if those candidates were anti-worker in a whole host of other ways. Now the vote-blue-no-matterwho strategy has been exposed as a disaster.

LGBTQ people have shown that they are prepared to move into struggle against discrimination, injustice and oppression.

The needs of working-class women and LGBTQ people demands an entirely different kind of feminism.

J Free universal healthcare including gender affirming care and abortion services, J Paid parental leave, J Universal childcare, J Permanently affordable housing, J An end to racist policing and mass incarceration.

As if the right-wing attack on the material conditions of women’s lives were not enough, an ugly backlash against #MeToo is playing out in online popular culture. Misogynists like Johnny Depp and Andrew Tate are enjoying mass popularity, as evidenced by millions of social media views for Tate’s videos aimed at young men on how to control and abuse your girlfriend, and the outpouring of support for Depp in his legal assault on Amber Heard.

At the same time, today’s youth have shown that they are ready to fight back against gender-based violence in a wave of high school and college student protests against campus sexual harassment and sexual assault. But it will take a much larger movement that wins clear victories to decisively push back on the disgustingly reactionary and divisive misogynistic ideas that are being mass marketed to a generation of young people.

Women are being attacked on multiple fronts at the same time that women and

The stage is set for a new feminist movement to come onto the scene.

But what kind of movement do we need to not only reverse the right-wing attack on abortion rights, but go further and win a broader program of demands around gender violence and true reproductive justice?

The bankruptcy of liberal feminism, with its narrow appeal for equal opportunities for upper class women, and its abysmal record of failure at safeguarding abortion is now laid bare.

We need a socialist feminist movement that fights for a program of demands that is focused on the needs of working-class women:

In contrast to the failed liberal feminist strategy of backing corporate Democrats, a socialist feminist movement will need to take up working class methods of struggle: street protests, walkouts, direct action and strikes, as well as electoral strategies that are independent of the Democratic party establishment.

Unlike liberal feminism, which has no real objection to capitalist exploitation and oppression – other than the lack of opportunities for women at the highest levels of society – socialist feminism has at its heart a transformative vision of a socialist society democratically run by working people for the benefit of everyone. It is on this basis that sexism and other forms of oppression will become relics of the past. J