ALTERNATIVE
SOCIALIST
ISSUE #90 l FEBRUARY 2023
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INSIDE p.3 p.4 FRED HAMPTON’S LEGACY AMAZON FIRES UNION ORGANIZER p.9 RIGHT POPULISM’S BIG LIE
WHAT WE STAND FOR Fight Inflation & Expand The Social Safety Net •
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democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena. Inflation and rising costs of living is eating into our paychecks, and capitalist politi- • While alarming acts of violence have risen, the Democrats support of “law and order” cians have no solutions – we need a class policing is reactionary and will only bear struggle to turn the tide on this race to the down on people of color and the poor. bottom! Pass strong rent control. End economic evictions. Tax the rich and big business to Mobilize Against Gender fund permanently affordable, high-quality Oppression & Attacks On Bodily social housing. Make the child tax credit permanent and Autonomy fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. • The overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Cancel all student debt and make public Court opened the door for vicious attacks college tuition-free. on bodily autonomy across the country. We No pay cuts! We need a significant raise need a mass movement against the reacin the minimum wage and to tie raises to tionary right on the scale of the 60s and inflation. 70s when Roe was first won. An immediate transition to Medicare for • Free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception All. Take for-profit hospital chains and Big should be provided at no cost as part of a Pharma into public ownership and retool broad program for reproductive health! them to provide free, state-of-the-art • Fight back against the brutal anti-trans leghealthcare to all. islation in many states and all right-wing Fully fund public education! End school attacks on LGBTQ people. Noncompliance privatization. Give educators an immediate should be organized by the labor movement 25% raise and increase staffing. among workers tasked with enforcing these Unions should form consumer protection bigoted laws. committees to monitor price increases. • Fighting gender oppression means fighting They should have the power to review corfor our rights to bodily autonomy, reproducporate finances, especially when money tive justice including universal childcare, is squandered on CEO pay and stock buyand Medicare for All including free reprobacks. Profits off basic goods should be ductive and gender-affirming care. heavily taxed and price-gouging companies should be brought under democratic public Rebuild A Fighting Labor ownership.
End Racist Policing And Criminal (in)Justice • Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks. • End the militarization of police. Ban the use of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm police on patrol. • Put policing under the control of
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Movement
• As thousands of workers are winning union recognition for the first time, it is critical that unions fight to win strong contracts. We need unions that are armed with clear demands and prepared to go on strike to win them. • Union leaders across all unions should accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class. • An injury to one is an injury to all! Unions need to fight evictions, poverty, racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of oppression. • Building off the historic union victory at Amazon in New York and the ongoing Starbucks organizing drive, unions should stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on electing Democratic Party politicians, and spend it instead on efforts to organize the unorganized.
A New Political Party For Working People • The capitalist Democratic Party offers
no solution to right-wing attacks against need a People’s Plan to stop the spread of workers and marginalized people and has COVID-19! repeatedly failed to use their majorities to • We need free, easily accessible tests availprotect our rights. able in every community across the country. • We need a new, working-class, multiracial Workers exposed to COVID should be given left party that organizes and fights for workpaid self-isolation days after exposure or ers’ interests and is committed to socialafter developing symptoms. ist policies to lead the fight against the • We need to take Big Pharma profiteers into right and point a way out of the horrors of public ownership, dramatically ramp up capitalism. vaccine research and production (especially for new variants), and distribute it freely to the rest of the world. No To Imperialist Wars • Socialist Alternative completely opposes Russian imperialism’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Ordinary Ukrainians who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, and growing poverty conditions now face the horror of war and bloodshed. • We also oppose the aggressive imperialist agenda of NATO and the U.S. for whom Ukrainians are a pawn in the wider Cold War conflict with Chinese imperialism. • De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from Eastern Europe. • Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders! Sending increasingly destructive weapons to the conflict only serves to escalate & poses a greater risk of all-out war – only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win lasting peace and stability for the working masses around the world.
For A Socialist Green New Deal • We need a union jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure. • Massively expand public transit and make it free. • While taking climate change head-on, we also need to expand infrastructure to keep people safe from natural disasters and extreme weather as these become more frequent. • Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable future – take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership while implementing a democratically planned, just transition to 100% green energy.
The Whole System Is Guilty
• Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system. • Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. • We need a socialist world. This means a Fight the Pandemic, Invest In democratic socialist plan for the economy Public Health based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet. • Capitalism failed to stop the pandemic – we
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
RIGHT POPULISM’S
BIG LIE KEELY MULLEN AND GRACE FORS
Working-class people, understanding on a cellular level the many ways in which they’re battered by the ruling elite, are hungry for rebellion. This raw hunger found expression in both Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns and in the election of Donald Trump. Both figures were perceived by a section of ordinary people as representing a rebellion against the elite. “Political revolution against the billionaire class” and “Drain the swamp.” But these two rebellions couldn’t be farther from one another. Bernie called for Medicare for All, taxing the rich, canceling student debt, expanding social security, and free, universal childcare. Trump, on the other hand, marked his Presidential term by carrying out vile attacks on immigrants, women, and working people, while forcing through the Trump Tax Cuts for big business and the rich and pouring money into the border wall. Right populism is an extremely serious threat to working people in its ability to ensnare those who are justifiably angry at the status quo with its impersonated opposition to the political elite. The pretense of fighting for ordinary people against Washington bigwigs can be used as a Trojan Horse to carry out damaging attacks on Social Security and Medicare and other vital programs. In the race to give form to working people’s thirst for rebellion, right populism is currently in the lead. There is perhaps no greater example of this reality than the recent rightwing insurgency in the House of Representatives which forced Kevin McCarthy to make endless concessions to the Freedom Caucus in exchange for the title of Speaker of the House.
Who Are The Freedom Caucus? The Freedom Caucus is the farthest-right bloc within the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. Formed in 2015 by Tea Party members, the group advances a reactionary ideology that combines libertarian cost-cutting fiscal priorities and ambitions of small government with an added element of right-populist social beliefs. Many Freedom Caucus members are rabidly anti-immigrant and campaigned for election on the promise that they’d defeat the “woke agenda” in D.C. Within the Freedom Caucus itself there’s a range of attitudes. In 2021, months after the January 6 insurrection, an informal faction called the “MAGA Squad” formed within the caucus – with Marjorie Taylor Greene and FEBRUARY 2023
Matt Gaetz at the head. The composition of this informal grouping has shifted over time, but its existence has continued into 2023. They represent an even farther right trend within the overall Freedom Caucus and, as the Speakership debacle showed, are far less inclined to play by D.C. rules than many of their peers. While 20 Freedom Caucus members voted against Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for Speaker in 11 consecutive votes, after winning significant concessions from him, on the 12th vote most of them voted for him. Six members of the MAGA Squad, still unsatisfied, held out for a further four votes until finally voting “present” on the 15th ballot, allowing McCarthy to take his post. When asked why he finally voted to end the stalemate, Matt Gaetz told CNN: “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.” These “ultraconservative rebels” as the New York Times has coined them, succeeded in winning a flurry of procedural changes in the House that will enhance their own authority within the overall Republican caucus – guaranteeing that over the next two years they will have the power to continue to pull similar stunts. McCarthy may be forced to rely on Democratic votes to get things through. All of this will only deepen the existing divisions in the Republican Party, potentially even leading in the future to the creation of a far-right party. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, the holdout Freedom Caucus Republicans who opposed McCarthy could not be brought to heel by big money interests and Republican Super PACs because they have the support of massive small donor networks. They are also not worried about losing in upcoming elections because they know that their constituents want them to shake up the complacent ivory tower of U.S. politics that is filled with politicians happy to bend to corporate lobbyists and the ruthless billionaire class.
Smoke and Mirrors In March of 2021, Indiana Rep. Jim Banks’ confidential memo to then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, marked “URGENT,”
EDITORIAL
pointed out the writing on the wall: “President Trump gave the Republican Party a political gift: we are now the party supported by most working-class voters. The question is whether Republicans reject that gift or unwrap it and permanently become the Party of the Working Class.” Since then, the gift has kept on giving. The failures of the Biden administration, and the cowardice of Democratic “progressives” in particular, has handed the right the ability to stake their claim as the primary voices calling out inflation and the rising cost of living, Fed policy, and U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Biden’s high-profile crackdown on rail workers’ fight for sick days gave Senators like Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz the go-ahead to tout their “No” votes on the strikebreaking bill in a disingenuous ploy to present on the side of workers. Without a genuine platform for working-class politics on the national stage, there’s nothing stopping Republicans from talking out of both sides of their mouth. The problem is that the con is working. The Democrats are hemorrhaging working-class voters across racial groups, and this trend isn’t going anywhere. To be clear, the Democrats losing votes is hardly a loss for working people – they’re just as much fakers in their “pro-worker progressivism” as anyone. But the answers Republicans have for these voters is vicious snake oil: attacks on immigrants, voting rights, movements like BLM, and queer and trans people in particular. This does absolutely nothing to improve the lives of working people of any race, gender, or
committees, compared to less than half of that for Democrats. Union Pacific gave a generous $90,889 to the Republicans, against the Democrats’ $66,160. Trucking, oil and gas, building materials, automotive and steel production, and waste management all rank in the top most heavily Republican-favoring industries for political donations. The very politicians pandering to blue-collar workers are their bosses’ righthand men and women in Congress. Furthermore, Republicans are the architects of the neoliberal destruction of the labor movement dating back to Reagan, of right-to-work laws in half the country, and of the vicious attacks on public sector unions post-2008. Marco Rubio’s criticism of “the union bosses” for betraying their members in the railroad struggle was hardly a jab at business unionism, but an arrow in his quiver for a push against unions altogether. Rubio followed up by introducing an “employee choice” bill that would allow a single worker representative on the corporate board of companies with over $1 billion in profits, instead of unions that could serve as actual organs of struggle. In the nascent fight over the debt ceiling, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the strategy is to combine Trump’s playbook of using broad strokes to give voice to economic discontents with the same old Tea Party politics. The MAGA wing’s “Fair Tax” legislation, which they brought to a floor vote in exchange for their vote for McCarthy, would have replaced income tax, payroll tax, and estate tax with a 30% national sales tax – a criminally regressive proposal that would overload the tax burden onto lowest-income households. They have no real plan to fight inflation or lower the cost of living, but they’ll gladly use it as an excuse to fire government workers and gut public spending. Right populism has nothing to offer working people. As the House Republicans threaten a government shutdown in the fall, we need to remember it was the Chaos in the House chambers as Matt Gaetz (second left), Lauren Boebert threat of mass action (third left), and others continue to withhold their votes for Kevin McCarthy from air traffic control(right) in the 14th round of voting for Speaker. Jan. 6, 2023. lers and flight attendants that rescued tens of thousands of govnationality and is a cover to smuggle through ernment workers furloughed under Trump’s their own agenda of tax cuts for the super shutdown in 2019. As Republicans continue rich and starving essential social services. their horrific attacks on the oppressed with virtually no pushback from the Democrats and NGOs, we should remember the eruption Reality Check of airport protests that forced Trump to walk Big business knows it can rely on both par- back his racist travel ban in 2017. Ordinary ties to carry out its interests. Most major cor- people can’t look to the Republicans or Demporations and PACs split their contributions ocrats to feed our hunger for a better world. between Democrats and Republicans, often What we need can only be found in our own giving the larger share to whoever they expect power in our workplaces, in the streets, and to win. But they still play favorites. Let’s look in the struggle for a new political party that at how the rail bosses spent their campaign doesn’t play games in its unwavering allecash in the 2022 election cycle: rail carrier giance to the core needs, and highest aspiraBNSF’s parent company, Berkshire Hatha- tions, of the working class. J way, donated $454,687 to GOP campaign
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FIGHTING RACISM Rainbow Coalition press conference in 1969 in Chicago.
SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP WOULD DEMAND: End racist policing • Immediately fire and prosecute all cops who have committed violent or racist attacks. End the militarization of police. Put policing under the control of democraticallyelected civilian boards. These should have real teeth, including power over hiring and firing policies, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.
A union in every workplace • Unions have historically been the best tool to decrease the pay gap between Black and white workers. The struggle to unionize Amazon, and all other non-union workplaces, demonstrates the potential for multiracial struggles against corporations.
Public investment in a massive green jobs program with a living wage • With this, we can employ millions while combating climate catastrophe, which disproportionately affects poor Black and brown people. We need permanently affordable, high-quality, socially owned housing built with union labor.
No to billionaire’s divide-and-rule tactics •
An anti-racist struggle has to actively take up the right-wing’s racist, sexist, and antiLGBTQ attacks; only the bosses and the ruling class stand to gain from divisions.
We need Medicare for All •
Black women are three to four times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women. Black children have a 500% higher death rate from asthma than white children. Beyond just Medicare for All, we need to take the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry into democratic, public ownership.
Build mass organizations of struggle •
Rebuild mass organizations of the Black working class, in conjunction with a multiracial working class struggle in the workplaces and streets. All of this requires that we build a new working-class party that doesn’t answer to the billionaire class.
MEET WITH THE SOCIALIST A LT E R N AT I V E B L A C K C A U C U S
The Legacy of Fred Hampton and Rebuilding the Black Liberation Movement
FEBRUARY 23 4PM PST/7PM EST.
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2023
WHY THE BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENT NEEDS SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP RYAN WATSON AND ERIC JENKINS, SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE BLACK CAUCUS The 1960s were an epoch of mass struggle by working class and oppressed communities around the world. The future of American capitalism was rattled by the massive social movements of the Black working class at the height of the Civil Rights movement and Black Power. Young Black people en masse were organizing against the Jim/Jane Crow social order in the heart of the South and in the ghettos of the North. This struggle clarified in the minds of many of these young Black militants, most of whom came from working-class backgrounds, how racism and capitalism are intertwined with one another. Many identified with the anti-colonial revolutions taking place around the world, and the heroic resistance against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam. This development in the consciousness of Black militants found expression in the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), created by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. A titanic force within this party, and one whose legacy we defend, was Fred Hampton, the Chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party.
Fred Hampton: The Revolutionary Socialist Fred Hampton was born on August 30, 1948. His family was one of the thousands of Black working-class and poor people who left the Jim/Jane Crow South in what was known as the “Great Migration.” Black workers and families traveled north to the
urban manufacturing and textile centers across the country to escape Jim Crow poverty, violence, and racial oppression. However, what awaited them was Jim Crow in its Northern, urban expression. Living in cramped neighborhoods – created through a process of de facto segregation called “redlining” – faced with police brutality, and being forced to work low-wage nonunion jobs drove many of these same Black working-class families to join in an open struggle against racism and exploitation. Fred Hampton grew up in a working class home in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago. He became a star athlete and student activist, leading marches and walk-outs against racism in high school, organizing for community centers in poor Black neighborhoods in and around Chicago, and feeding young people through food programs. After attending a MLK Jr. rally, Hampton joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He began to practice public speaking, and wanted to study law as a means to more effectively challenge the impunity of law enforcement’s power. This process of discovery, in the context of upheaval around the world, pushed Hampton towards more revolutionary conclusions. He joined the BPP for its revolutionary politics and program at 20 years old in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War and just after the assassination of MLK. The Chicago Police Department’s violent repression of the Democratic National Convention protests led Hampton and the Chicago BPP to initiate the Rainbow Coalition, a coalition of the multi-racial poor and oppressed united to challenge the racist one-party state machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley and the wider political and
economic system. The core of the Rainbow Coalition consisted of the BPP and the Puerto Rican street gang-turned-political organization the Young Lords. The BPP also began political work with the Young Patriots of Uptown, an organization made up of poor, white southerners. He pointed to their shared conditions of poverty and the need to unite in fighting an unfair economic and political system. His powerful approach succeeded in cutting across the white southerners’ racism, utilizing class struggle language to point to their shared interests. Fred Hampton’s approach of genuine revolutionary integration put a target on his back. And in one of the most devastating moments in the modern Black liberation movement, Fred Hampton was murdered during an FBI raid on his home on December 4, 1969. He was asleep in his bed with his pregnant girlfriend by his side. This was the price to be paid for daring to build a multiracial struggle against poverty, exploitation, and oppression.
What Made Fred Hampton Unique? Fred Hampton’s emphasis on multiracial, working-class struggle and creating mass organizations wasn’t shared completely in the Black Panther Party. With the constant white supremacist attacks on Black communities, the onslaught of the Vietnam War, and the crushing of mass Civil Rights and anti-war protests – there was immense pressure on the BPP. They understood that capitalism wasn’t the answer, but some of their leaders were
continued on p.15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
I M M I G R AT I O N DANTE FLORES, NEW YORK CITY The Biden Administration has spent the past 22 months painting itself as the stable, humane alternative to the chaos of the Trump years. All of its campaign promises were made to this effect; one such promise was that a Biden White House would respect, and protect, the rights of immigrants, and ease the burden of the state on their lives. But the Biden Administration, and the Democratic Party writ large, has done little these past two years to make good on that promise. And with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives taking office this month, the window to secure policies like the renewal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have all but closed. Biden’s vision for immigration – reform, on capitalist terms – is wholly insufficient to meet the turbulence of the moment, especially as the right gets bolder.
Biden Doubles Down on Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Attacks Biden’s 2020 campaign website read: “Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants. It’s wrong, and it stops when Joe Biden is elected president.” However, among the 6,700-word immigration platform, the term “Title 42” doesn’t appear once. Title 42 allows ICE officers to deport immigrants while they seek asylum, and it is more effective than any expansion of the border wall ever could be. It allows for family separation, and has created a humanitarian crisis on the Mexican side of the border. Biden did nothing to reverse Title 42 in his first nine months in office. When the ACLU finally challenged Title 42 in federal court September 2021, the Biden administration appealed the decision. In October 2021, immigrant rights activists declared “we’re done” with the Biden administration, and walked out of a virtual meeting. Over the next year, there was a 93% increase in arrests along the border, and one million people were deported, largely due to guidelines under Title 42. Tens of thousands of them were listed “unaccompanied minors”, and 26,000 people languished in squalid private prisons that Biden promised to close. On January 5, Biden announced that he was ramping up his deportation machine. His “improvements” to Trump’s Title 42 include capping asylum applications at 30,000 per month (200,000 people cross the border every month). Biden’s changes allow for immediately deporting anyone who did not seek asylum in a different country as well. Finally, it opens the door to the immediate deportation of 321,000 people currently awaiting their deportation hearings.
Florida Man Steals, Lies, Sends Migrant Families to Massachusetts In September of this year, 48 immigrants from Venezuela touched down in Massachusetts. They had been told they were going to Boston, where work and financial assistance were awaiting them. But soon after they stepped off the plane, only to find that they had landed not in Boston but the island town FEBRUARY 2023
of Martha’s Vineyard, it became clear that these people had been lied to. The immigrants had been transported from San Antonio, Texas, where they had initially sought asylum after crossing the U.S.’ southern border, but the planes had in fact been chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis, for his part, took full credit. He didn’t even hide from the allegation that he used public funds from the state of Florida to charter planes in Texas. DeSan-
“Title 42 allows ICE officers to deport immigrants while they seek asylum, and it is more effective than any expansion of the border wall ever could be. It allows for family separation, and has created a humanitarian crisis on the Mexican side of the border.” tis said that “states like Massachusetts, New York, and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration.” Several months later, on Christmas eve, several busloads of asylum seekers from Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, and Colombia were dropped off in freezing temperatures at the doorstep of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, D.C. Though barbaric, these are not innovative stunts. State and local governments frequently send groups of asylum seekers from one place to another, typically to “blue” areas like New York City and Chicago. The idea is that if Democrats care so much about immigrants, as they often claim, then they should have no problem accepting and integrating a group of them sent at the whim of a rightwing official like DeSantis or Texas Governor Greg Abbott. It’s a challenge issued in bad faith. However, it is worth noting that the community of Martha’s Vineyard stepped in to help, like ordinary people also did in D.C. just last month. Immediately after the immigrants arrived, they were provided with shelter, food, and translation services; and at the time of writing they have been given legal aid in a class-action lawsuit filed against the State of Florida. DeSantis had banked on the people of Martha’s Vineyard being exactly as cruel, racist, and xenophobic as he is – and he was clearly proven wrong.
recently, U.S.-imposed “trade deals,” the climate disaster created by imperialist countries like the U.S., and the so-called war on drugs, have caused economic and social devastation in Central America and the Caribbean. Joe Biden is no stranger to any of this. In fact, he’s played a role of his own. As a senator he supported the Reagan administration’s invasion of Grenada (1983), a deadly act committed on the pretext of containing communist and Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere. He also supported the invasion of Panama (1989), in which the U.S. military deposed its own asset in the form of General Manuel Noriega; the invasion killed hundreds of Panamanians (if not
A migrant waits outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington D.C. in September of 2022, sent there via bus by Texas Governor Greg Abbott as part of a political stunt.
BIDEN EXPANDS TRUMPERA DEPORTATION POLICY, AGAIN more), and left many of the survivors impoverished and even homeless. Living in the long shadow of empire means that nowhere is really “safe” for those seeking refuge. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, refugees traveled across Latin America looking for better living and working conditions. Many Haitians settled in South American countries like Brazil; but periods of local, economic downturn, and the election of rightwing governments (which often enjoy bipartisan U.S. support), force many of those same immigrants to make the long journey north, across multiple borders, to the United States – where they are arrested, detained, or sent back to Haiti and left stranded.
The U.S. And Latin America
Fight Racism, Xenophobia, and All Exploitation with Socialist Internationalism!
Of course, the United States government has never waited for anyone to reach the border before ratcheting up the hostility. The twentieth century has seen countless examples of U.S. imperialist interventions into Latin America, especially in Central America and the Caribbean – notorious among them are interventions into Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), El Salvador (1981), and Nicaragua (1985). By supporting coups d’etat, right wing propaganda efforts, and even death squads, the United States has wrought havoc any time its interests in the region – like American agribusiness profits or access to raw materials – are threatened. More
Under Trump, massive crowds showing up in the streets and at airports to protest the U.S state’s horrendous immigration policies; it is precisely this mass action that continues to be necessary. But where is the will to organize it? Where have all the NGOs gone? And where’s the media to show the cruelty and racism of the current administration, as they did during the Trump years? A lasting and humane solution isn’t going to come from either, because they’re captured by the Democratic Party which represents corporate interests. Fighting the immigration crisis means recognizing that immigrants are not the problem. Rather, the problem is a system
that forces them from their home country in search of work. It means recognizing that the working classes of the U.S. and all other nations have more in common with each other than they do with the ruling classes of their own country. It also means taking up the fight for dignified working and living conditions for migrant workers. To do this, the labor movement must stand firmly against any attempt by the capitalists to divide the working class, and take up demands like abolishing ICE, and ending all detentions and deportations. Labor must also wage militant fights against neoliberal trade policies, and to demand a full transition away from fossil fuels to stop the environmental catastrophe that is destroying Central American economies heavily dependent on agriculture. The labor movement must demand immediate and full citizenship for all foreignborn workers living in the United States. Immigrant workers have historically been a vibrant, militant sector of the labor movement in the United States. Labor must continue this tradition, and use the banner of “organizing the unorganized” as an opportunity to bring today’s migrant workers into the fold. Workers the world over create all the wealth for the bosses, and a common struggle of working class people of all nationalities is what is needed to fight back against this system of exploitation, crisis, and oppression. J
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L ABOR Academic workers on strike at UC Berkeley, Nov. 16, 2022.
WHEN STRIKING GETS THE GOODS
BIG RAISES FOR UC WORKERS DESPITE UAW LEADERSHIP FAILURES LEO CARSON, BAY AREA In the largest strike in the U.S. since before the pandemic, 48,000 workers, almost entirely first-time strikers, at the University of California won a significant wage hike in a colossal battle for higher wages and a cost of living adjustment (COLA). This historic strike was a huge step forward for thousands of workers involved, raising their confidence, their understanding of the power of the union movement, and with many hundreds of workers now seeing themselves as worker leaders at their jobs. As workers continue to move into struggle in 2023, drawing the lessons from this strike will be crucial.
Up To 46% Raises, But A Lot Left On The Table There were serious deficiencies in the UAW leadership’s approach to the strike. A strike must be disruptive and not just a spectacle, which is how many rank and file organizers described the leadership’s approach. The failure of leaders to fully utilize the potential impact of the strike was a primary reason Socialist Alternative advocated a “No” vote. Over a third of strikers voted “No.” UAW leadership squandered the opportunity to widen the strike. They chose instead to tie one hand behind the workers’ backs out of fear of disrupting their relationship with the employers. This was on clear display when the bargaining team quickly made the concession to drop the demand for COLA in exchange for nothing but “good will.” The misconception of good will conveys a relationship of equals, misrepresenting the reality that the UC is a huge public entity that sees itself as a corporation out to build its mountain of power and cash. However, despite the handicap of their leadership, UAW workers were able to win huge wage gains in their new contract. UAW 2865 representing grad student workers increased their base wages from $23,250 per year to $34,000 per year by October 2024, a whopping 46% increase over two years. In contrast, their last offer from UC before going on strike was a four year contract with a 7% raise the first year followed by 3% for each of the next three years! This type of insulting below-inflation offer is what many union leaders are settling for across the country.
Mistakes of the ‘Admin Caucus’ Leadership The UAW leadership’s unofficial conclusion of
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why the strike did not win more was that they underestimated the UC. The UC is one of the most rotten employers in the public sector and on par with many in the private sector. Its Executive Director of Labor Relations, Letitia Silas, came from one of the biggest union-busting law firms in the country, Jackson Lewis. This halfbillion dollar firm has been working closely with Jeff Bezos against attempts by Amazon workers to unionize. The UAW leadership refused to take up a serious approach to widening the strike and were willing to bargain away their avenues for doing so in the future. One of the most important battles of the strike was over the withholding of grades. Without grade submissions, UC cannot issue degrees and their enrollment process (and therefore the tuition collection process) is disrupted. The union needed to put forward a strong, unified strategy of not submitting grades, boldly centralizing it as a primary battle. Instead, the leadership largely left the decision to withhold grades up to individuals, merely offering advice on the best way to do so. This half-hearted approach meant that by the end of the strike likely fewer than 50% of grad students were still withholding grades, although only UC knows the true number.
UAW Rank and File More Confident And Militant! The new contract is the best contract in the union’s history with the UC. The strike has created incredible confidence among UC academic workers. They know they have power and they have flexed it, despite the caution of their leaders. This strike’s results are sending shockwaves nationwide through the ongoing campaigns for union recognition involving over 30,000 grad students. Academic workers in the UC are already seriously weighing up what happened during the strike: what works and what does not. But workers need to also decide what kind of union they are fighting for: a solidarity based, militant union or one that continuously seeks the approval and fake respect of management. UC UAW workers must draw the lesson that a fighting leadership that recognizes the reactionary direction of UC management is critical to winning the next strike. Whoever wins the next UAW officers elections will be in a key position to shape the next contract discussions and strike preparations. This is where the lessons of this critical strike will be applied. J A big thanks to all UAW activists across several UC campuses who helped contribute to this article.
NY NURSES 3-DAY STRIKE WINS PARTIAL VICTORY
SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE NYC In the early hours of Thursday, January 12, more than 7,000 New York City nurses at two key private hospitals, Mount Sinai and Montefiore, ended a three-day strike after their union, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) signed a Tentative Agreement (TA) which included a 19% raise over three years and stronger language that binds hospitals to a 4:1 patientto-nurse staff ratio. The lesson is clear – these nurses were prepared to fight and when they did, they won better conditions. The overall staffing crisis at hospitals cannot simply be solved by contract language which hospitals will continuously try to go around. We still need is an ongoing campaign for mass investment in health care, something that the profit-driven hospitals refuse to do in the long run. More could have been won if the union had taken all 16,000 nurses they represented at area hospitals out together instead of making separate deals and withdrawing strike notices at one hospital after another. This would have prevented a situation where nurses at some hospitals were isolated from those who went back to work, which weakened their position. The union could have then sought to play hospital managements against each other and, having won a concession in one hospital, then demanded it from the rest before ending the strike. Having said that, getting stronger language into the contract was a real victory, albeit a partial one.
New Era Of Struggle New York City was an early epicenter of COVID-19, with more than 44,000 deaths, an overworked health care workforce, and insufficient resources. Nurses were hailed as heroes by society but treated like robots by the hospitals. On the Mount Sinai picket line, nurses reported experiencing unbearable burnout, sometimes treating up to 20 patients at a time. With an absolutely overwhelming 98.8% strike authorization vote, the union declared
an open-ended strike at midnight on Monday, January 9. In a move aimed to stop the strike – shortly after the Democrats in Congress prevented railway workers from striking – New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) stepped in a day before the strike deadline to propose binding arbitration. NYSNA correctly rejected the proposal, which would have taken the power away from nurses, which would have put the fate of thousands of nurses in the hands of an outside figure appointed by the government.
We Shouldn’t Need To Fight For Basic Rights Forever The contract battle and the strike that followed exposed, yet again, the massive mismanagement and waste inherited in the health care system. Health care is held back by the capitalist system where nothing, including treating the sick, can function unless someone gets rich from it. Under new conditions, hospital bosses will try to increase their profits on the backs of the hospital workers. This is why even a battle over one workplace contract has to be tied into a battle for a society where health care is not an industry, but a right. We have enough wealth, workers, science, and technology, to provide high-quality, free health care to the whole world. Instead, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, private hospitals, lobbyists, and many others are lining their pockets while healthcare deteriorates. Society’s resources should be turned towards patient care and quality working conditions. As the nurses chanted repeatedly on the picket line: “patients over profit!” J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
L ABOR
IS IT TIME FOR WORKERS TO
the nature of work in the exchange for minimum wage” isn’t quite the wake of the neoliberal era. fair transaction it sounds like. First, you’re still Acting your wage par- making minimum wage. Second, it amounts ticularly resonates for to an adaptation to capitalist exploitation minimum wage positions, rather than a challenge to it. This is especially and service and retail the case if it’s done as an individual act withjobs where the prospects out connection to any wider demands. of developing into a wellAs a collective act, acting your wage can paying stable career are have an actual material impact on the bosses’ slim – and rarely enticing. profits. But if just one individual acts their This is not helped by wage on their own, the bosses can just dump the utter pointlessness of the extra work on their co-workers. When this so many of our jobs. Too happens, workplace resentment can be mismany people are work- directed at your fellow workers rather than ing jobs that don’t serve the bosses. This is why workplace actions any value to them (or to need to be organized. society). Real experience The notion of acting your wage is actually in the workplace, not to part of the traditions of the labor movement, mention multiple eco- but it goes by a different name: work to rule. nomic crises in the past Unlike quiet quitting or acting your wage, 15 years, has shattered work to rule is an organized, collective act. the illusion that a fulfilling As such it can make a more serious dent in life purpose career is wait- the bosses’ profits and more clearly demoning around the corner if we strate the workers’ power. Even then, “work just sacrifice more for our to rule” pales in comparison to other tools jobs. Work is the neces- to demand raises, like organizing a union or sary drudgery that we do to going on strike. earn money to survive. While there are millions of jobs in the U.S. In his 2013 essay and that are socially unnecessary or even harmful 2018 book Bullshit Jobs, (weapons development, advertisement, insurOccupy activist David ance, etc.) there are also millions of jobs that Graeber describes this are incredibly useful and can be extremely phenomenon. He argued that more than half rewarding. The very fact that many workers, of jobs in society, particularly the comfort- in the care sector, for example, find gratifiable well-paying jobs that workers are told cation through this work is cynically used by to aspire to, are pointless and unnecessary. the bosses as a means to squeeze more and Graeber draws attention to jobs like “corpo- more out of them. For these workers, acting rate law, academic and health administra- your wage feels like less of an option. Howtion, human resources, and public relations.” ever, many of them have heroically fought Graeber aptly depicts capitalism’s warped back using the traditional weapons of class system of values. This image is sharpened by struggle, like the New York nurses who just won the experience of the pandemic where the a 19% raise after a three-day strike (see p.6). term essential worker became an excuse to Resisting the alienating nature of work overwork people in dangerous working condi- needs to go beyond individual acts of resistions. However, he’s wrong to declare “The tance. Acting your wage comes as we see answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and exciting unionization efforts in unorganized political.” In fact, it’s both. And recogniz- workplaces like Amazon, Starbucks, and the ing the economic basis tech industry. Buildof capitalist alienation ing militant, demoReal experience in the and exploitation is key cratically-run unions, to fighting back against organized around clear workplace, not to mention it. This requires moving is a key step multiple economic crises in the demands, beyond small individual forward for the working past 15 years, has shattered class. In workplaces acts of resistance. that already are orgathe illusion that a fulfilling nized, the unions need Beyond Acting life purpose career is waiting to be revitalized by a Your Wage around the corner if we just fighting rank and file. In this process, the workThe popularity of sacrifice more for our jobs. ers should be unafraid acting your wage is a to wield their strongest positive development. While corporate apologists like Kelly may weapon: the strike. This would represent a describe it as a “toxic attitude,” Kelly is really qualitative leap from quiet quitting and acting just covering up the toxicity of the capitalist your wage. Even this qualitative leap pales before workplace. Rather than being a toxic attitude, it’s a sign that young people are becoming what is possible, and necessary, to transincreasingly aware of their exploitation in form the nature of work. Moving beyond the the workplace, and are refusing to play the drudgery of work and genuinely unlocking bosses’ game in a positive show of defiance. human potential is antithetical to capitalism. In a way, this is well-reasoned. Hustling for It requires workers’ control, meaningful jobs, a job that doesn’t love you back, in a system and good pay. For that we need socialism, a that’s rigged, makes no sense. It’s a posi- workers’ democracy with a plan of production tive sign that workers are experimenting with to meet the needs of people and the planet. This would allow work to be what it should be: ideas and strategies to navigate this reality. However, acting your wage has its limits. socially useful, shared out, and democratiUltimately, the idea of “minimum effort in cally determined. J
ACT OUR WAGE? GEORGE MARTIN FELL BROWN, MADISON
After over two years of pandemic and an ongoing economic slump, everybody is struggling. And it’s not just the workers. While workers may be struggling to get by, the bosses have been struggling to cope with the substantial changes in consciousness among young workers around their jobs. According to a Gallup poll, only 34% of those surveyed reported feeling engaged at work, while 16% said they were actively disengaged in their work and workplace. This poll, from 2021, is the first time in a decade that engagement dropped year-over-year. Won’t somebody think of the poor bosses? In response, we’ve seen new phrases like “the Great Resignation,” “anti-work,” and “quiet quitting” coined to describe these anxieties. The latest of these, and one being much more deliberately taken up by many young workers, is the practice of “acting your wage.” Sarai Soto, who popularized the concept in a series of TikTok videos, explained in an interview with Business Insider: “If a company is paying you, let’s say minimum wage, you’re gonna put in minimum effort… If you’re acting your wage, that means that the amount of labor that you’re putting in reflects the amount that you’re getting paid. So you’re not going to go above and beyond and do the job of two to three people and do all this extra work if you’re really not even making a livable wage.” The bosses have responded to acting your wage the same way they’ve responded to quiet quitting and the Great Resignation. They’ve donned Steve Buscemi’s backward baseball cap and “Music Band” T-shirt and declared, “How do you do fellow kids, you might have heard about these viral trends, but don’t try this at home!” For instance, senior Forbes contributor Jack Kelly wants the youth to know, “Instead FEBRUARY 2023
of getting caught up with this tit-for-tat mentality, break the mold… Think of what type of job or career would make you happy and can offer a more-than-fair compensation. Then, embark upon pursuing your dreams.” Further elaborating his lack of understanding of capitalist class relations, Kelly argues “The employer and employee can job-craft a solution to improve the situation.” Despite Kelly’s protestations, most workers can’t simply mbark upon their dreams. The popularity of acting your wage is a sign of growing consciousness of the realities of capitalism.
Work Sucks Soto’s TikTok videos give a clear idea of what acting your wage entails. No more showing up before it’s time to clock in. No more staying late, coming in on your days off, or taking on extra responsibility beyond the scope of the job description. These are all small acts of resistance against capitalism’s constant attempts to wring every last drop of labor out of us – and they’re a rejection of the alienation of a job that means nothing to you, but which you still need to survive. This alienation is a key feature of working class life under capitalism. As early as 1844, Karl Marx commented, “the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own.” The alienation fundamental to capitalism has been exacerbated by decades of neoliberal reaction wherein past gains made by the labor movement have been whittled away. The advent of the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, and acting your wage indicate a more serious questioning of capitalism and
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Why i’m launching
right-wing Freedom Caucus who demonstrated how to use leverage to force establishment concessions, rather than the “Squad.” With a continued failure of any real leadership on the left, the House Speakership fight revealed just how quickly and dangerously the right wing current can fill the void. It is a frightening flashback to how Trump won his election in the first place. Working people and the left cannot stand by and wait on so-called progressive elected officials. We cannot put our faith in the AOCs or the Pramila Jayapals, even though I understand there were many who had high expectations for them. AOC recently claimed that she could not fight against Democratic leaders on behalf of workers because it would cause “relational harm” with those party leaders. What about the vast and very real harm taking place in the absence of such a fight for our needs? Meanwhile, the organization that should be holding AOC and the Squad accountable, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), appears to be unwilling to do so. It gives me no pleasure to say this, because I am currently a member of DSA. But the DSA leadership has, for the most part, provided cover for the misleadership of the Squad. There is a vacuum of real left leadership, locally and nationally. We need a new party for the working class – one that holds elected officials accountable, that bases itself on social movements, that organizes alongside workers on the streets and in workplaces. Elections are not the only, much less the primary, path to political change, because the political system is rotten from top to bottom under capitalism. Now, as the global crisis worsens, the rot spreads deeper and deeper, and the threat of further corruption by the far right hangs over us all. In India, the country I was born in, the far right is in power and rapidly consolidating it. In the U.S., the midterms were but a temporary reprieve, unless we get organized. Capitalism needs to be overthrown. We need a socialist world. And that is only possible by mobilizing many millions of working people around genuine socialist ideas and fighting relentlessly for our interests as a class. But the task of rebuilding the class struggle in America will go nowhere if young people and the rank-and-file of the labor movement are not clear about the role of the Democratic Party and the need for a new party that serves us, not the rich. Working people need to recognize that we have to fight independently of the two big business parties and of the leaders who make excuses for them. Last year saw hundreds of thousands of workers fighting to unionize their workplaces or going on strike to win a good contract, whether at Amazon or at Starbucks, or at the University of California. We saw the historic victory of
WORKERS STRIKE BACK (instead of running for reelection)
KSHAMA SAWANT, SEATTLE CITY COUNCILMEMBER This is now the tenth year I’ve had the honor to serve as an elected representative of Seattle’s working people. Workers in Seattle, through getting organized alongside my socialist City Council office, and my organization, Socialist Alternative, have won historic victories, from the $15/ hour minimum wage to the Amazon Tax to landmark renters’ rights. These victories have set a powerful example that has had a national and even international impact. In our four election victories and in every struggle, we’ve had to overcome the combined might of big business, the corporate media, and the political establishment. Each time, working people refused to back down, and we have prevailed again and again. This is the most important lesson from our example of socialist politics in Seattle. That when workers and young people get organized and fight, we can win. That no meaningful progressive change can be won under capitalism without the vicious opposition of the rich and their political servants. And that instead of backing down, we need to build the unity of working-class people and fight back fiercely and proudly. A rapacious and parasitic capitalist class has amassed untold fortunes off the labor of billions of workers. But their system is in deep crisis, and it cannot sustain itself. Meanwhile, it eviscerates ordinary people’s living standards with historic levels of inflation, and over 800 million go to bed hungry each night. The right wing is on the attack against abortion rights and LGBTQ people. The future of human civilization rests on a
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knife’s edge with the existential threat of climate catastrophe. Working and young people cannot afford status quo corporate politics. At my inauguration in 2014, I said: “Let me make one thing absolutely clear: There will be no backroom deals with corporations or their political servants. There will be no rotten sellout of the people I represent.” Our socialist Council office has held true to that. It is extremely regrettable that exceedingly few other elected officials in this country can say the same. Since I was elected in 2013, more than two hundred self-identified “democratic socialist” candidates have been elected nationally. But unfortunately, with rare exceptions, the overwhelming majority of them have abandoned their campaign promises and have failed to stand up to the political establishment. Just last month, we saw the historic and shameful betrayal of railroad workers by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including caucus chair Pramila Jayapal and self-proclaimed democratic-socialist “Squad” members such as AOC. The breaking of the railroad workers’ strike by progressives in Congress does not just hurt railroad workers, it is a betrayal of the entire working class. Such sell-outs have even more sinister consequences. It gives an opening to the right wing, as we saw with five Republican Senators disingenuously voting against the strikebreaking bill, to pretend to be on the side of railroad workers. These Republicans, who in reality nakedly serve the interests of the wealthy, are being allowed to pretend their party is the party of the worker. How is this possible? Only because the Democratic Party is moving further and further right in their loyal support of the corporate elite. It is deeply unfortunate that it was the
Amazon workers at JFK8 in New York by the newly formed Amazon Labor Union. The year before, we saw Striketober, which included historic battles like the John Deere strike, and here in Seattle the strike of the Pacific Northwest Carpenters. And it was less than three years ago that the biggest street protest movement in United States history took place – the Black Lives Matter struggle in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police. Working people want to fight back, but we need to get better organized. We need a nationwide movement – an independent, rankand-file campaign organizing in workplaces and on the streets. It should be progressive labor unions using their resources to launch such a movement, as unions have in the UK with the Enough Is Enough campaign. But that has not happened. Unfortunately, much of the union leadership in this country is closely tied to the Democratic establishment, afraid to call out the Democrats, afraid to run independent candidates and build strong strike actions based on bold demands – afraid to rock the boat. That is why, along with Socialist Alternative and others, I am announcing the launch of such a national movement, Workers Strike Back, instead of myself running for re-election again in Seattle’s District 3. We have no illusions that a mass movement can be built overnight, but we urgently need to get started. Working people have set a powerful example in this city. It is time to build on that nationally, to widen and strengthen the class struggle. Workers Strike Back will be launched in early March in cities around the country. Alongside Workers Strike Back, we will be launching a video broadcast to bring socialist politics and strategy to working people nationally and internationally. This video broadcast, which I will help host, will be called On Strike, and it will begin airing this summer. More and more, media calling itself independent and left has looked the other way or actively provided cover to politicians as they betray working people. This comes at a real price – because it creates confusion and demoralization, effectively betraying working people a second time. One final thing – while I’m sure the corporate establishment in Seattle will be very happy with the news that I am not running again, they shouldn’t rush to mix their martinis just yet, because we are not done here. My Council office will continue fighting relentlessly for working people right up until the final days of my term. We will be bringing rent control for a vote, and alongside our new organization, Workers Strike Back, we will be building our movement for renters’ and workers’ rights. And when this term is over, we will continue to be disturbers of the political peace in Seattle, as well as nationally, whether inside or outside City Hall. I urge young people, working people, and union members to join Workers Strike Back! J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
What does Workers Strike Back stand for?
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WORKERS NEED A REAL RAISE Biden and corporate politicians in Congress keep giving themselves raises but can’t pass a bare $15 federal minimum wage for working people. We strongly support the fight for a $25 an hour starting wage by workers trying to unionize their workplaces – in major cities that’s just a basic living wage. As prices skyrocket on everything from food to housing, we need at least a 20% raise for all workers with automatic cost-of-living increases above inflation going forward. Instead of long hours and multiple jobs just to pay the bills, we need to shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits.
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GOOD UNION JOBS FOR ALL Organize the unorganized – unionize Amazon and every workplace! We need to rebuild a fighting labor movement that arms itself with clear, bold demands and is prepared to go on strike to win them. We need a massive green jobs program that can employ millions of workers in clean energy and prevent climate catastrophe. To succeed, we must take the big energy corporations into democratic public ownership, because we can’t control what we don’t own.
FIGHT RACISM, SEXISM, & ALL OPPRESSION Only the bosses profit from divisions among the working class. We need to build a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. Fight back against the brutal antitrans legislation in many states and against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people. We need to organize to win legal, safe, free abortions for all who need them. End racist policing – put police under the control of democratically-elected community boards with full power over department policy, hiring and firing. Movements are how change happens – we need to get organized to fight for our rights. An injury to one is an injury to all!
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QUALITY AFFORDABLE HOUSING & FREE HEALTHCARE FOR ALL We face an epidemic of unaffordable housing – the rent is too damn high! We need strong rent control with no rent increases above inflation. Fund a massive expansion of publicly owned, high-quality affordable housing by taxing the rich. The private housing market has failed us – take the big real estate corporations into democratic public ownership. We’re dying from unaffordable health care as the pharma bosses and for-profit health insurance industry make bank off our sickness. We need free, state-of-the-art, Medicare for All – owned and democratically run by working people.
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NO MORE SELLOUTS – WE NEED A NEW PARTY
The Democrats and Republicans both answer to the billionaires, that’s why working people keep getting screwed. We need a new, multiracial, working-class party that organizes movements and fights unambiguously for our needs. In such a party, all elected leaders would accept only the average workers’ wage, like Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. We would need elected leaders to be fully accountable to our membership and our demands, or else be removed. Under capitalism, the bosses call the shots and have a dictatorship over our workplaces. We need workers’ democracy and a different kind of society.
FEBRUARY 2023
Amazon: No More Retaliation Rehire Edward Clarke Now! ORGANIZING COMMITTEE, UNIONIZE AMAZON KCVG Last November, we launched a campaign at the Amazon KCVG Air Hub in the Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky region to win a $30/ hr starting wage, 180 hours paid time off, and a union. Since then, hundreds of our coworkers have taken the union pledge and become involved in the campaign. Amazon is fighting back. Edward Clarke, a Load Planner at the Amazon KCVG Air Hub was singled out by Senior Leadership and fired on January 18 for standing up against bullying and mismanagement of our workplace. Edward is always a reliable coworker. He makes sure Amazon’s flights depart on-time, safely, while always going out of his way to see that everyone in his work area gets their breaks and has what they need to do their job safely. Edward’s commitment to his coworkers often puts him at odds with management who fired him on an insignificant technicality that posed no harm to anyone. The real reason they fired him is because he dares to stand up for his coworkers and has committed his time to fighting for a union. He isn’t afraid to stand up to managers when they cut corners and treat us unfairly. He isn’t afraid to publicly support the union drive. He isn’t afraid to encourage his coworkers to do the same because he knows that we need a union to have real job security with “just cause” standards against discipline. Amazon’s bullying and selective enforcement of workplace rules and policies are what led many of us to get involved in this union drive in the first place. Of course, Edward is appealing his firing, filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board, and preparing a legal defense. However, these institutions are far from reliable allies to Amazon workers, and it’s on us to get organized and fight for a union that can win lasting gains. We’re fed up with the toxic work
environment at KCVG that management maintains by dividing us, bullying us, and intimidating us, which is why we’re calling for union representation at every disciplinary meeting. We were outraged when Amazon took away our holiday Peak Pay, which is why we’re calling for a $30/hr starting wage. We are working to live, not living to work, which is why we’re calling for a 180 hours PTO. What happened to Edward is part of Amazon’s overall strategy for busting any attempt by Amazon’s employees to form a union. They won’t play nice, and they won’t play fair. The only thing bullies understand is power, and Amazon workers have the power to hit Amazon where it hurts the most: their profits. Without us, the airplanes don’t get loaded, the boxes don’t get sorted and the packages don’t get delivered. Without us, Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s major shareholders don’t make a dime. This is why we are getting organized at the hub to demand Amazon rehire Edward Clarke immediately, and to fight for the lasting protections that only come with a union. To start, we are asking our coworkers to wear red for Ed this week to show management that we stand with our coworkers. We will also be distributing buttons at work and will announce meetings in the next few days to discuss other ways to increase the pressure on management to reinstate Edward. We will also immediately begin paying Edward his regular weekly income from his position at KCVG for the duration of his appeal. An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us. We’re forming a strong, democratic, fighting union, and we will take action now. We won’t stand by and let Amazon bully our coworkers. We know that if we don’t stand up to Amazon’s bullying tactics now, it will only get worse. They will keep looking for any opportunity to single out union supporters, and anyone who dares to stand up to management. This is why we’re demanding Amazon reverse its decision to unjustifiably fire Edward Clarke. J
“We have no illusions that a mass movement can be built overnight... but we urgently need to get started.” 9
QUEER STRUGGLE Howard Brown Health workers and community supporters, including members of Socialist Alternative, picket outside an HBH facility.
Madison High School Latest Target Of Transphobic Harassment RIANNA KUENZI, MADISON
LGBTQ HEALTH CARE WORKERS IN CHICAGO STRIKE OVER ILLEGAL LAYOFFS DIANE STOKES, CHICAGO On Tuesday January 2, workers at 11 Howard Brown Health Clinics and affiliated organizations across the Chicago area walked off the job in a three-day strike. Employees and supporters from other unions including CTU, AFSCME, AFT, SEIU as well as community and socialist organizations joined the lively picket lines in solidarity with the striking workers. Howard Brown Health Workers United (HBHWU) is the name of the union affiliated with the Illinois Nurses Association (INA). The union charges that Howard Brown Health illegally laid off 60 union employees and four non-union employees on December 30, after failing to bargain in good faith with the Illinois Nurses Association over the first contract. The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge against management. The union was formed in August 2022, when employees voted to join the Illinois Nurses Association to address understaffing, long hours, low wages, high turnover, and workplace retaliation by management. In 2019, INA organized the Howard Brown Nurses Union, but after the vote in August, the union expanded to represent all of the several hundred employees in the eleven clinics, the three Brown Elephant Resale Stores, and the Broadway Youth Center. The union is one of the largest healthcare unions organized in Chicago in the last decade. Members include retail workers, nurse practitioners and other practitioners, social workers, patient support staff, behavioral health teams, and some administrative workers.
Retaliatory Layoffs During negotiations in the fall, management claimed a $12 million operating deficit and proposed a “voluntary separation agreement” – in other words, a layoff – for 100 of the unionized employees. Management offered one week of severance pay and one month of health insurance coverage for each year of employment. INS responded to Howard Brown Health
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management by requesting the 2022 financial records to justify the proposed layoffs. Management refused and proceeded with the illegal layoffs. On December 30, 61 employees received notices of job terminations and were locked out of access to emails and other work software, and phone calls with patients were cut off. ProPublica reports Howard Brown Health CEO, David Ernesto Munar, received a salary of $300,000 in 2021. He gave himself a $100,000 raise during the COVID-19 pandemic, while employees providing services to the public received no additional compensation. CFO John McElwee got a salary of $247,835. Records also show Howard Brown Health took in $30 million more in revenue then it spent in 2021. Erik Roldan, Director of Marketing and Communications at Howard Brown Health, publicly stated the $12 million shortfall for the July 2022-July 2023 fiscal year is the result of changes in the federal Drug Pricing Program which allows pharmaceutical companies to keep a larger share of federal savings. Roldan also pointed to the end of federal funding for COVID-19 relief as a factor in reducing income. Howard Brown Health is a federally qualified health center, and receives federal funds to provide services to low-income patients. The clinics are nonprofit and also financed by grants, donations, and sales at their three Brown Elephant Resale Shops. Howard Brown Health Clinics are the largest provider of health care and support services in the Midwest for LGBTQ people and for people living with HIV and AIDS disease. It also is an internationally recognized center for Hepatitis B and AIDS/HIV research. In March 2022, Howard Brown Health began construction on a new $9.5 million, five-story Howard Brown Health Facility on Chicago’s north side. The clinic is expected to open in 2023. Howard Brown Health Workers United questions why management needs to layoff healthcare workers when it is expanding from serving 30,000 clients a year to 60,000 and opening a new facility. How can the organization afford to build a new clinic, but not
afford to staff the clinic?
Health Care In Jeopardy Striking union members on the picket line outside a Brown Elephant Resale Store reported to Socialist Alternative that they are concerned Howard Brown Health management is creating a for-profit health care system for the LGBTQ community in Chicago. Over a period of time, Howard Brown Health has evolved from a grassroots organization into a management-controlled financial enterprise. At a time when state legislatures and governors are limiting access to gender-affirming care in states across the country, clinics like Howard Brown are crucial providers to LGBTQ people. A number of states outside Illinois are banning gender-affirming healthcare and pursuing anti-LGBTQ legislation. In 2021, Arkansas was the first state to ban gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors. Arizona, Tennessee, and Alabama have also passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming healthcare. In 2022, 11 other states were considering similar laws. Howard Brown Health is the largest public health center for LGBTQ people in the Midwest, and it also serves patients who travel to Chicago from out of state. The three-day strike in Chicago by Howard Brown Health Workers United is a rallying cry for unions, community, and civil rights organizations to come together to build workingclass opposition to attacks on our standard of living from the bosses and pharmaceutical companies, and attacks against oppressed groups from the right wing. We need to unite behind economic demands like universal single-payer healthcare paid for by taxing the wealthiest corporations. Health care should be non-discriminatory, gender-affirming, and include access to reproductive healthcare and abortion, and the people providing that healthcare should not just be barely getting by. But the bosses and the political establishment won’t give us that world – we need to build a movement and fight for it ourselves. Solidarity with Howard Brown Health workers! J
On January 9, Madison East High School announced that it would postpone its student-led drag show amidst safety concerns. Advertised in the school newsletter as “East’s first annual, (familyfriendly) drag show intended to celebrate, affirm, and support EHS students and staff in our LGBTQIA+ as well as our larger school community,” it wasn’t long before the event garnered national media attention after screenshots of the newsletter began circulating on Twitter. Viciously reactionary Twitter hate account @LibsOfTiktok, which is run by Chaya Raichik and has been suspended multiple times for hate speech and targeted harassment, shared a screenshot of the newsletter promoting the event. The post received over a million views, thousands of retweets, and hundreds of homophobic and racist comments – even attracting the attention of former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Some commenters were implicitly calling for violence, with one writing that the “Twitter guidelines” prevented them from saying what they wanted to say. A few called explicitly for violence, and hundreds went to Madison East’s Twitter page to harass them. Drag shows and Drag queen story hours have been the target of the far-right for months now, with the @LibsOfTiktok Twitter account playing a central role in circulating information about schools, libraries, and small businesses who are supposedly “grooming” children by being inclusive of queer – especially trans – individuals. Drag shows across the country have been canceled citing safety concerns, with many citing verbally abusive protestors. In September, around 30 armed protestors showed up to a drag show in Memphis, TN. Given the implicit and explicit calls for protests and violence directed at East High School staff in early January, and the norm of intimidation and violent suppression by the right wing, it’s no wonder that the safety of students and performers became a real concern. Unfortunately there is little concrete support given to queer people from liberal or self-described progressive institutions. The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Atlantic have all published transphobic opinion pieces this year and cast doubt on the validity of gender transition care for minors. The Democratic Party establishment repeatedly shows us that they aren’t willing to do what it takes to protect trans youth. Hillary Clinton openly proclaimed last summer that transgender rights should not be a priority for Democrats. The Biden Administration has also done nothing to
continued on p.15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
BIG PHARMA’S PROFITEERING BRINGS MAJOR MEDICATION SHORTAGES
H E A LT H C A R E
occasional worker compensation and class action settlements costs less than investing in proper training and equipment – and it even costs less than recalls and production shutdowns.
Big Pharma’s M.O.
MANDY GEE, CHICAGO
Shortages of the antibiotic amoxicillin, generics of the influenza drug Tamiflu, and children’s Tylenol are dire as pediatric illnesses and respiratory infections surge in an RSV, COVID, and influenza “tripledemic.” Many pediatricians say they can’t remember seeing so many kids this sick at the same time. These are far from the only drugs currently in short supply. There are also worrying shortages of diabetes injectable Ozempic and labor-inducing drug Pitocin. Across the U.S., many people are struggling to function and suffering withdrawal under the weight of an ADHD medication shortage that was first announced by the FDA in October. There were 260 active drug shortages at the end of September 2022, with new shortages emerging in early 2023. Research in the past decade has shown that similar shortage crises have led to hundreds of excess deaths. This is nothing new for the pharmaceutical industry, but it presents a mounting threat for ordinary people as the broader crisis of public health escalates.
of whether ordinary people will suffer, and even die, as a result. Although less dire, the current ADHD shortage is a similar tale. Teva Pharmaceuticals – frequent violator of antitrust laws worldwide, also dubbed “the world’s largest medicine cabinet” for generics – is the biggest seller of Adderall in the U.S. Several doses of Teva’s brand and generic Adderall are expected to stay on backorder through March. Expecting parents also face trouble with the shortage of Pitocin, a drug used to induce labor and to control bleeding from postnatal hemorrhages. Only two major manufacturers supply this synthetic hormone, so when one of the top two suppliers reported “manufacturing delays,” the disastrous chain of events had already been set into place. This is because these manufacturers have no actual ability or intent to control their production of the drug, despite monopolizing it.
Big Pharma’s Cost-Cutting Crimes Pharmaceutical companies do not produce drugs in bulk, to be stored and saved for later. Instead they use just-in-time (JIT) pro-
n Active medication shortages by financial quarter, 2018-2022: The number of medications in active shortage grew by 34% between Q3 of 2021 and Q4 of 2022, reaching 295 – higher than the previous peak of 282 in 2019. (Data via the American Society of HealthSystems Pharmacists)
The Problem Is At The Source Leaving drug manufacturing decisions in the hands of pharmaceutical companies (instead of democratic control by healthcare providers who know what their patients need and will need) has proven time and time again to be a disaster. Here’s just one fatal example: Four years ago, Vincristine, a critical chemotherapy drug key to treating a variety of childhood cancers, became scarce due to “manufacturing delays.” A nightmare ensued for health care providers, patients, and their families. There is no alternative treatment. At the beginning of 2019, both brand manufacturer Pfizer and generics manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals had been producing Vincristine. In March 2019, Teva discontinued production of their generic, claiming it only made up 3% of the market share and they could make more money producing other drugs. When Pfizer – now the only manufacturer – encountered manufacturing delays, there wasn’t enough of the drug to go around, forcing pediatricians to choose which children they had to let die. How heinous is it that the corporations that make these cold, calculated business decisions are also in charge of producing lifeor-death treatment for sick children? This is because Big Pharma, and the U.S. health care industry as a whole, are solely driven by their hunger for profit. They are free to discontinue manufacturing a drug completely if it isn’t making them enough money, regardless FEBRUARY 2023
and more difficult as supply chains have expanded into complex world-wide networks. While just-in-time production worked to bulk up the profits of major manufacturers, recent years have highlighted more clearly than ever what a disaster it has been for society as a whole, not to mention workers in these industries who are worked to the bone. These corporations, with their main
duction, a production model where products are created to meet demand, not created in surplus or in advance of need. JIT, developed in the 1970s, was a key part of the process of neoliberalism and globalization, as part of the drive to maximize profits while shaving production costs down to the bare minimum. A core idea is that manufacturers do not hold supplies of parts and raw materials. Instead, these are delivered “just in time” for when they are to be used. But the ubiquity of just-in-time production makes the availability of products extremely vulnerable to disruptions. JIT requires that everything run perfectly; suppliers must be reliable so materials arrive on time. Where product is stored, there must be accurate monitoring of stock so no component runs out. It also requires that delivery routes be accessible, which can become more
orientation toward profit and not the welfare of human beings, are poorly equipped to adequately forecast demand. With no emergency stockpiles, if something disrupts the supply chain, the shortfall can’t be made up quickly – but as always, it’s ordinary people, not the CEOs, who suffer the most. Not only are corporations not equipped to predict, much less manage, disruptions to production – they create the disruptions. Unsanitary conditions and improper manufacturing methods have caused numerous drug recalls, but cutting corners isn’t limited to Big Pharma. It was unsanitary conditions and negligence that contributed to the stillongoing baby formula shortage that began in 2022. From the meatpacking industry, to baby formula production, to pharmaceuticals, keeping facilities safe and sanitary is not a priority for the big business. Forking out
Even without shortages and recalls, the pharmaceutical industry is perfectly capable of creating fatal chaos for ordinary people under normal circumstances. More than 100,000 Americans died from diabetes for the second straight year in 2021, partially due to soaring insulin prices. Under the “free market” of capitalism, drug manufacturers are the ones who set the price of a drug. It isn’t just the work of villainous caricatures like Martin Shkreli, who increased the price of a prescription medication used to treat parasites from $13.50 per pill to a whopping $750 per pill in 2015. EpiPens, which are needed by over three million Americans, cost $650-700 if you’re paying cash. Because of manufacturer Mylan’s monopoly on the market, they can do anything they want and suffer no consequences. If people need medicine to live, they will do whatever it takes to get treatment, including accruing mountains of debt. $88 billion of outstanding medical bills are currently in collections, according to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau; meanwhile the global revenue for pharmaceuticals was over $1.42 trillion in 2021. That revenue could wipe out America’s medical debt 16 times over.
We Need A Socialist Solution Health care in America is like any other industry under capitalism – run for profit. It is not run to provide services to meet basic human needs if those services can’t be sold at a rate of profit that satisfies shareholders. The insurance, pharmaceutical, and privatized healthcare industries are all sustained by the misery and sickness of the poor and working class. We cannot choose whether we get sick or whether we are born with a health condition. Life should not be a gamble that is taken before someone is even born, yet under the American health care system, under capitalism – the game, for the majority of people, is rigged from the start. Now more than ever, as pharmaceutical shortages bleed into 2023, healthcare workers and ordinary people must fight even harder for Medicare for All. Beyond that, we must fight for all the branches of the forprofit health care system to be taken into public ownership and run democratically in the interest of patients, health care workers, and the public at large. However, to ultimately provide a planned health care system that works for everyone – with cheap and accessible medication, decent working conditions for staff in both the pharmaceutical sector and the rest of the health care sector, and fully funded social services – requires doing away with the entire profit-driven capitalist system. A socialist world free of capitalist greed and unnecessary suffering and death is possible, and the working class can bring it to fruition. J
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CIT Y POLITICS
AMAZON TAX INSPIRED BY SEATTLE INTRODUCED IN CHICAGO STEPHEN THOMPSON, CHICAGO The luxury housing market in Chicago was red hot last year, with over 60 property sales valued at five million dollars or more. But in the up-is-down, black-is-white logic of capitalism, booming profits for the real estate industry have come alongside displacement and homelessness for thousands of Chicago residents, as rents and home prices become increasingly unaffordable. Businesses compound this problem by paying poverty wages and busting unions. Amazon, the largest private employer in the Chicago area, is particularly infamous for driving down wages in the logistics industry, making it that much harder for workers in the city to afford a place to live. But none of this is inevitable. Big businesses operating in Chicago could easily afford to pay for high-quality affordable housing and other vital public services. Socialists in Chicago have introduced an Amazon Tax in the city council which would tax Amazon and other businesses that have fifty or more employees. The legislation is inspired by the fighting, movement-based approach spearheaded by Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative that won a similar tax in Seattle in 2020. The legislation, introduced by 25th Ward Alderman and independent socialist Byron Sigcho Lopez, would provide at least half a billion dollars every year for affordable housing, education funding, mental health care, and communitybased violence prevention.
Lessons From Chicago’s History Chicago previously implemented a tax on big businesses, the so-called corporate head tax, in 1973, with revenue used partly to fund raises for city employees. This victory did not come from generosity on the part of
the city’s ruling elite. Instead it reflected the power of mass movements at the time, and especially the nationwide strike wave by government employees at all levels. But as labor and social movements weakened in the years that followed, the political establishment became emboldened to roll back the victories of the past. The big business tax was phased out by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his allies in 2014. In recent years, progressives in Chicago have proposed legislation for a new tax on big businesses. But in the absence of significant public pressure, the legislation has gone nowhere. Under capitalism, politics typically consists of backroom deals between establishment figures, but these methods cannot win meaningful victories for workers, because the political establishment itself is invested in an economic system that can only survive by exploiting the working class. To win, workers need to build movements independent of the corporate-backed Democratic and Republican parties.
How We Won The Amazon Tax In Seattle The 2020 victory in Seattle stands as an example of how residents in other cities can win a tax on big businesses today. Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative’s member on the Seattle City Council, spearheaded the movement that won the Amazon Tax by organizing the working class against the political establishment, and by never backing down. After the Seattle City Council repealed an initial attempt at a big business tax in 2018, Socialist Alternative organized a series of rallies and mass action conferences in which attendees debated and voted on next steps. The resulting campaign of mass political education and mobilization made it possible to successfully counter corporate misinformation about the Amazon Tax, and defeat a $4 million effort by big business (with
$1.5 million from Amazon alone) to remove Sawant and others from office. At the same time, Sawant used her position in elected office as a megaphone, exposing the role of the Democratic Party establishment in serving the interests of the wealthy. In the process, and in full view of the public, Sawant and Socialist Alternative forced the City Council to choose: would they side with working-class residents who need affordable housing, or with greedy billionaires like Jeff Bezos? By framing the issue this way and relying on the power of a mass movement, Socialist Alternative forced the Seattle City Council to pass the Amazon Tax, which now raises over $200 million every year to fund affordable housing.
NYC Mayor Plans To Commit More Homeless People To Mental Institutions
This winter, NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced a new plan to forcibly hospitalize people living on the streets. California and Oregon are also considering similar moves to hospitalize and institutionalize homeless people, under pressure to “deal with” an increasingly visible homeless population. While many people living on the streets have persistent mental health problems, approximately 30% of NYC’s homeless population, forced institutionalization is not likely to help. Independent Socialist Institutionalization often means being stripped of most of one’s rights to autonomy Introduces Amazon Tax In – loss of custody of any children or pets and Chicago forfeiting many of your legal rights. Additionally, those who don’t meet the Byron Sigcho Lopez, the independent bar for institutionalization will cycle in and socialist and alderman representing Chicago’s out of NYC emergency rooms at even higher 25th ward, who introduced the Amazon Tax rates, putting increased strain on health legislation in Chicago, has distinguished himcare workers. self as a fighter for the working class. In In the four years prior to contrast to many so-called proCOVID-19, homelessness gressives, he has stood up “Under had been growing 2% to the city’s Democratic capitalism, politics nationally per year, Party establishment, typically consists of backfueled by rising consistently voting rents. It’s unclear against the corporoom deals between establishwhat effect COVIDrate budgets put ment figures, but these methods 19 has had on forward by Mayor cannot win meaningful victories for homelessness Lori Lightfoot. rates nationwide, He has also used workers... To win, workers need to because the chaos his office to build build movements independent of of the pandemic dismovements, includthe corporate-backed Demorupted the processes ing leading a rally used to estimate homewith Starbucks workers cratic and Republican less populations. But the that helped push the City parties.” math doesn’t look good. Council to adopt a resolution Despite national and local condemning the coffee chain’s moratoriums lessening the blow, 1.7 milunion busting, and fighting to win 280 lion evictions have been filed since March new units of affordable housing last year. of 2020. Because of these victories, Socialist AlternaAt the same time, capacity at most sheltive is proud to support Sigcho Lopez’s camters was slashed in order to reduce transpaign for re-election. By doubling down on a mission of the disease, and climate change fighting, movement-based approach, Sigcho has continued to fuel extreme weather conLopez can help spearhead an even larger vicditions – leading to a situation where it is tory with the passing of the Amazon Tax in more and more deadly to be living outside. Chicago. J This crisis, and the faux solutions presented by the political establishment, is the byproduct of a system where housing only gets more and more expensive. While politicians point to a “housing fighting climate change. Transportation is shortage,” the reality is that there’s 22 the fastest growing source of greenhouse million vacant homes in the United States gas emissions and accounts for 27% of – even accounting for homes that are not global emissions. U.S. public transportain a fit state to live, that’s plenty to house tion saves 37 million metric tons of carbon everyone currently living on the streets or in dioxide annually, equivalent to the emissions shelters. resulting from the electricity generated for But there’s no profit to be made from the use of 4.9 million households or every reallocating this housing towards meethousehold in Washington DC, New York City, ing the needs of society – so instead city Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles combined. governments sweep homeless people from Public transportation saves the equivalent temporary shelter to temporary shelter. of 300,000 fewer automobile fill-ups every We need sensible allocation of existing day. To keep global warming to 1.5°C, the vacant housing, massive public investment proportion of journeys in cities by public in building high-quality permanently-affordtransport must double over the next decade. able social housing, and ultimately, an end We need to tax billionaires and corporations to the system of profit that commodifies to expand public transportation and make it basic necessities like housing. J free to use. J
TAX THE RICH – MAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION FREE! ADAM BURCH, AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION LOCAL 1005 (personal capacity) Public transit across the U.S. is in deep crisis, even worse than the already-dire situation before the pandemic. On average, fares provide a third of transit systems’ operating income. In the U.S. overall, there were 883 million fewer public-transit trips in the third quarter of 2022 compared with the same period in 2019, according to federal data gathered by the American Public Transportation Association. In typical fashion, this crisis is being used to justify service cuts and fare hikes. These will have a disproportionate impact on working class riders who don’t have alternative
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modes of transportation. This is to say nothing of increased traffic. A trip from home to work by car takes 90 times more urban space and infrastructure from residents than if taken by bus or tram. In 2019, Kansas City, MO implemented a tax funded zero-fare program which has been a major success. It cost an initial $6 million to kick off – the same $6 million cost would only build a parking garage for 233 cars. Similarly, Olympia, WA saw a 20% increase in ridership after implementing a fare-free program. There is an urgent need to overhaul the funding model for public transit, taxing the rich and corporations to make fully-funded, reliable, and high quality transportation available to all. This is also of critical importance for
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
THE CONCRETE TRUTH FIGHTING FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF A CLIMATE-SAFE FUTURE
CHRIS GRAY, MINNEAPOLIS 2023 might become the first year a tornado kills someone in California, ever. In the last 20 years, an average of 7.5 tornadoes have touched down in the state per year, four times higher than the average between 1950 and 1970. Tornadoes, hail, and 60 mph winds are all byproducts of the massive “atmospheric rivers” that have been battering the state since Christmas. Like hurricanes, these storms have been strengthened by warming waters in the Pacific Ocean. Sixteen inches of rain fell in two days. This rain strikes land that has been parched by historic drought and destabilized by massive wildfires, causing massive floods and mudslides. A rare, full “ground stop” was issued at LAX, the second largest airport in the country in a state whose economy is the fifth largest of any nation in the world. So far, 17 Californians have been killed and 220,000 people don’t have power. What’s happening in California is confirmed by a new report issued by a non-partisan research group highlighting that U.S. carbon emissions actually increased 1.3% in 2022. It highlighted a sobering reality that “we are essentially on the same trajectory that we’ve been on since the mid 2000s,” meaning for the last fifteen years, including two periods where Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, government policy has barely made a dent. In fact, capitalism is doubling down on its own insanity. Last year’s COP27 conference in Egypt featured oil and gas companies on the official agenda. This year’s COP28 conference will be led by the head of Abu Dhabi’s state oil company. The International Energy Agency reported the world will burn more oil in 2022 than ever before, and Goldman Sachs predicts a two percent increase in use this year. Saudi Arabia, which already produces 10% of the world’s oil, aims to double production by 2030. There is no time to waste to build a movement to fight for a real, socialist Green New Deal that can create millions of union jobs.
Still On Course For Disaster It’s true that over this time emissions have gradually decreased, but at a rate that charts a path towards irreversible environmental destruction. Furthermore, reports from institutions like the Rhodium Group highlight facts in a misleading way. For example, it’s true that the U.S. is now producing more energy from renewables than it is from coal, but this is mainly FEBRUARY 2023
Heavy storms have pummelled California in December and January, causing flooding and landslides.
because coal is being replaced by natural gas, which uses less CO2 but releases more ozonedestroying methane. After 50 years of talk about renewable energy, the U.S. has only managed to produce 22% of its energy from renewable sources. Waiting another 50 years to potentially hit 40% or 50% is a recipe for the worst-case scenario for climate change. Trade wars with China, which are an increasing feature of the new Era of Disorder, will make things worse. China produces 600 gigawatts worth of solar panels every year. The U.S. produces 9 gigawatts. U.S. solar panel installation actually fell 23% in 2022. Moving to 100% renewable energy production would immediately reduce 32% of CO2 emissions in the U.S., and there is no way to imagine a sustainable future without taking these steps. But what about the other 66% of CO2 emissions? The report outlined that nothing short of a top-to-bottom overhaul of the economy, especially in transportation and construction, can actually slow down (and reverse) global warming.
designed to last 50 years, building high-quality structures to last 120 years reduces overall building materials costs by another 44%. A similar pattern follows other building materials. For example, producing a pound of steel from iron ore requires the same amount of energy needed to power three to five homes. Producing steel from recycled steel is three times more efficient. Transitioning to fully renewable energy would reduce steel production emissions by an additional 40%. The task of designing higher quality housing and more efficient infrastructure not only addresses a massive chunk of carbon waste, but it also provides thousands of good, union engineering and construction jobs. Actually carrying out the task of building it could provide millions more. Furthermore, a genuine green infrastructure program could be aimed at goals like eradicating homelessness, building more schools, \libraries, transit, and more!
Rebuilding For People And The Planet
Another third of CO2 emissions come from transportation. The report outlined CO2 emissions from transportation also increased 1.3%
Thirty percent of total carbon emissions comes from industry, and the production of concrete is among the worst offenders. If the global cement industry was a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world, according to a study by Chatham House. It is responsible for 8% of the world’s CO2. Concrete is the single most widely used material in the world. It represents industrialization, and its use is only increasing. Since 2003, China has poured more cement every three years than the U.S. managed in the entire 20th century. By 2050, concrete use is predicted to reach four times the 1990 level. Making large amounts of concrete requires lots of electricity, and transitioning to a fully renewable power grid would reduce production related emissions by half. The rest of CO2 emissions come from the chemical process to make it. There is no “green concrete,” but it’s possible to use it much more efficiently. Building mass transit and expanding small parks could reduce concrete use by a third, while also reducing damage from flooding and storms. Designing buildings using principles inspired by the vaulted ceilings of Gothic cathedrals can reduce concrete usage by 70%. Finally, rather than building cheap buildings
Expand Buses And Rail – Make Them Free!
since 2021, mostly coming from increased demand for jet fuel. Air travel is notoriously inefficient. About 2% of all CO2 emissions come from airplanes. Freight trains by comparison account for 0.3% of CO2 emissions, even though they carry 28% of all freight in the US. In some cases, air travel is the only option. However, the top 20 busiest air routes in the world are all domestic flights. The busiest air corridor in the U.S. is not New York to Los Angeles, it’s Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Los Angeles to San Francisco is the sixth busiest air corridor in the country. Many of these short flights could easily be replaced with high speed rail. In fact, half of all flights globally are less than 500 miles, a two-hour trip on a state of the art high speed rail. Replacing busy, short-haul flights with highspeed rail would dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, and create millions of good jobs in the process. Transportation groups estimate every billion dollars invested into rail creates 24,000 jobs. Furthermore, it would dramatically reduce costs for consumers. A two-hour, 500-mile round trip ticket on China’s latest high speed rail line costs $89. Linking high speed rail to an expanded bus system reduces personal transportation CO2 emissions by an additional 45%. This reduction can be multiplied exponentially if the transit system is electrified by renewable energy. Numerous studies show the best way to increase ridership, which also makes transit much safer, is to expand routes and service and also make the bus free. Finally it wouldn’t cost that much. Elon Musk has enough money to personally triple federal funding for mass transit. Once-in-a-lifetime weather events happening year after year is a clear indication that climate change is real, and report after report confirms things are getting worse. However, corporate politicians on both sides of the aisle refuse to act, because a sustainable future is not good for their short term profits and their shareholders. The type of top-to-bottom overhaul that is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions to safe levels is only possible on a socialist basis, where working class people have power to reshape the economy around the needs of people and the planet. J
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE MEMBERS FIGHT EXPANSION OF GERMAN COAL MINE Last month, members of the International Socialist Alternative (ISA) in Germany joined 35,000 people in the village of Lützerath who were protesting to stop the government’s attempts to evict protestors who have occupied the village since 2017. Prominent climate activist Greta Thunburg was also in attendance, and was briefly detained by the police during the eviction. The village of Lützerath is located on top of a proposed expansion of the Garzweiler mine. It is one of three massive open-pit coal mines in the German state of North RhineWestphalia. The type of coal produced at the mines, lignite, is responsible for about 20% of Germany’s carbon emissions. The three mines have been expanding for decades. Over the years, about 50 villages in the region, many of them centuries old, have been evicted and bulldozed to make way for the mines. These violent evictions show how the capitalist state protects coal companies like RWE and Co.
rather than ordinary people or the planet. Corporations are able to buy politicians, who in return grant the “right” to destroy entire regions. The devastating costs to the planet and the people are never factored into the bottom line. The evictions happened because of a rotten deal made between the coal company and the Green Party. In return for agreeing to phase out coal by 2030, energy giant RWE was allowed to expand the mine (and demolish Lützerath). Climate activists correctly point out that this amounts to simply speeding up the company’s emissions. Unfortunately, the government successfully evicted the occupation. However the fight is far from over. A concrete next step is to prepare for an all out mobilization of workers and young people at the next protest. We need to link the fight against climate change with the fight for a green, socialist future! J
13
WORLD EVENTS
FROM ZERO TO MAX COVID Demonstrators raise white pieces of paper (a symbol protesting the censorship of the CCP regime) at a protest in November 2022. These protests, which spread internationally, are the main reason for the chaotic retreat from Xi’s hated Zero COVID policy.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE (ISA) China is again the epicenter of the global pandemic. Despite a total information blackout, it is clear the country is experiencing an explosive spread of the virus after suddenly abandoning its three-year Zero COVID policy of hardline controls. This has been replaced by a chaotic “laissez-faire” position of minimal state intervention and everyone fending for themselves. We are undoubtedly witnessing one of the most shocking and sickening episodes in the history of the pandemic, which has seen many shocking and sickening episodes. Dictator Xi Jinping, the architect of the current crisis, therefore enters the Year of the Rabbit as a much weaker ruler than he was one year ago. The so-called Communist Party dictatorship has completely lost control over its pandemic management policies. This has happened due to the pressure of a worsening long-term economic crisis and then – crucially – the most significant anti-government protests seen in China for three decades. With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime driven to panic by the protests, which erupted in late November across 39 cities and 160 university campuses (as far as we know at this stage), the Zero COVID strategy which Xi held up as the best in the world has collapsed into chaos. The cost of this fiasco in social, economic, and health terms, is being borne by the
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Chinese masses, especially the poor (more than 600 million people) and the elderly (200 million aged 65 and above) as COVID rips through the world’s most populous country. The political cost will be paid at some point by Xi Jinping himself. The crisis in his regime, of which we have spoken before, is now hugely magnified by the outbreak of protests and the shambolic nature of this U-turn. Splits at the top and new sharp outbreaks of intra-regime power struggle are to be expected. While the November protest wave subsided within a matter of days, checked by a predictable bout of repression, new and bigger waves are inevitable in the future. The working class – the force most feared by the CCP – will be thrown into new struggles, as we have already seen in the Chongqing protests involving thousands of sacked medical supply workers (more victims of Xi’s pandemic U-turn) in early January. As we said at the time of the November protests, they changed China. It is as if a dam has burst, even a psychological one inside the heads of 1.4 billion people. Chinese youth, women, and workers are now thinking more politically, coming to terms with a newfound awareness that the country is in a state of mass discontent, with a dictatorship that can be challenged. From this realization, there is no turning back.
“Put Life First” The CCP’s Zero COVID U-turn, or rather
implosion, has plunged the country into a major public health crisis and even more economic distress. This makes a mockery of Xi’s boast that his pandemic policies “put the people first and put life first”, a claim he repeated in his televised New Year speech. In the history of the pandemic to date we have not seen anything on such a scale. Globally, after more than three years of pandemic, the total number of infections is 670 million as of January 13. But cases in China have already in all likelihood exceeded this number. Under the dictatorship’s censorship we don’t have any data. In Henan province alone, the number of infected has reached 88.5 million, according to provincial health official Kan Quancheng at a press conference on January 10. It appears that thousands are dying every day despite the milder character of the Omicron variants. Airfinity, a UK-based health data company, which uses modeling based on data from Chinese provinces before the recent changes in how cases are reported, estimates that 100,000 Chinese died of COVID in December. In the South China Morning Post, George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, said the CCP had, “wasted its three years of zero COVID commitment for nothing, ending up with costs and scars that will linger for a long time”. Xi’s almost unfathomable COVID mess is rooted in the limitations of the authoritarian CCP-state, and its powerful internal contradictions. Many observers see the Chinese capitalist dictatorship as a technocratically effective, if brutal, state machine. But in reality the CCP does not exercise as much control as it pretends. CCP policies tend towards extremes in one direction and then the other following a zigzag pattern. Local and regional governments, which play an extremely important role in China’s political system and economy, operate by second-guessing what the center wants, not daring to openly question or to admit problems. This produces a governance model that cannot easily multitask. In moments of severe crisis and stress, these contradictions jam the system, with paralysis as the end result.
Ended Accidentally Zhuoran Li in The Diplomat believes Xi’s regime unintentionally ended its Zero COVID regime. After securing his goals at the CCP’s 20th Congress, which declared it would “continue dynamic zero COVID without hesitation” (20th Congress Report), it seems that Xi’s newly strengthened (superficially, as we explained) ruling team planned a gradual phase out of the policy, with a full reopening of China’s economy to be achieved some time in the second quarter of this year. This probable timeline is connected to the regime’s hopes for one or more Chinese-made mRNA vaccines to become available. At least six Chinese companies are reportedly developing mRNA vaccines, but none have so far been approved. This plan reflected the massive pressure on Xi’s regime from the economy, which despite the inflated official GDP data is
close to recession or no growth. This in turn impacts the U.S.-China geopolitical struggle, an existential struggle for the CCP, with China economically now no longer playing catch up with the U.S. Western decoupling from China, while still in its early stages, is a serious problem. A sign of the new political course came on November 11, when Beijing published a 20-point program on COVID control, the aim of which was to reduce excessive lockdown measures. But this contradicted the message of the 20th Congress, where Zero COVID was portrayed as a semi-permanent institution, and the CCP’s local administrations were thrown into a state of confusion. In November, with Omicron cases surging, the number of new lockdowns increased dramatically. The disconnect between Beijing’s intentions and how the regions interpreted them grew wider. Some city governments announced the end of lockdowns, but continued them in practice. As Zhuoran Li explained: “The rushed opening-up did not come from Beijing; it resulted from local governments interpreting central government signals and getting ahead of Beijing regarding policy implementation… Facing the sudden opening at the local level, Beijing realized that ‘the horse has already left the barn’; all it could do was accept the reality.” (The Diplomat – January 7, 2023) The main cause was mass pressure and the regime’s fear of more protests. The dynamic this produced was to open the cracks within the CCP-state, between the regions and the center.
Protecting Capital Xi’s regime has blocked the import of foreign mRNA vaccines, which are far more effective than China’s homegrown vaccines that use older technology. The ban is for political reasons, of injured nationalist pride, and means that even an offer from the EU in January, through its health commissioner Stella Kyriakides, to send free mRNA vaccines to China, was rejected by the foreign ministry, saying the vaccines were not needed and the situation in China is “under control” – a laughable statement. The ban on foreign mRNA vaccines is also driven by economic protectionism. The CCP, which represents the interests of the Chinese capitalists, fears that green lighting foreign vaccines will strengthen their position in China’s healthcare market at the expense of profits for the domestic capitalists. So much for “putting life first”; it is rather the CCP’s corporate interests that are being protected. Zero COVID has meant a three-year long boom for China’s pharmaceutical sector, with total profits of 700 billion yuan ($104 billion U.S.) in 2022. The low efficacy of China’s currently available vaccines (Sinovac and Sinopharm) has become a major impediment to fighting the pandemic. They were developed to protect against the older variants of the virus and are today, even with booster shots, much less effective against the highly contagious Omicron variants. Ninety million people over the age of 60 are not fully vaccinated. 23.8 million of these have yet to receive their first jab. The refusal
continued on p.15 S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
C O N T I N U AT I O N S
WHY BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE NEEDS SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP continued from p.4 skeptical that the working class as a whole could unite in a struggle for a new system. This skepticism about the possibility of multiracial class struggle fed into the view that was common in the “New Left” that the more oppressed a person is, the more revolutionary that person becomes. Huey Newton focused on the most marginalized sections of the working class, the poor, unemployed and those forced to commit crime to survive. It’s undeniable that these layers of society produce heroic fighters of the working class and poor. But the united working class is the force that can actually
shut down capitalism, and more importantly, lead in the construction of a socialist society. The fact is without us, nothing would get built, made, served, cared for, cleaned, or moved. Fred Hampton never missed an opportunity to point out these basic facts. The Struggle for Socialist Leadership Today In the absence of an ongoing mass movement following the George Floyd rebellion rooted in the working class, the informal leadership of the struggle for Black freedom has been left to the NGOs and nonprofits. The notion of class struggle tactics is broadly antithetical to these types of organizations, often led by well-meaning middle-class
people. NGOs like Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) like Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) are in a rat race for constant donations from millionaires and billionaires looking for tax write-offs, making them fundamentally unreliable allies to ordinary working-class Black people. These organizations are tied by a thousand threads to the Democratic Party which has repeatedly refused to take up the demands that would make a meaningful difference to Black working class people (Medicare for All, cancellation of student and medical debt, free universal childcare, etc.). Despite using “woke” slogans
TRANSPHOBIC ATTACK ON MADISON DRAG SHOW fight a federal appeals court’s decision to allow discrimination against queer people by healthcare providers on religious grounds. The threat of far-right violence is a very pressing concern for queer people and their families. Without a mass movement to force these reactionary groups off the street, the burden is put on individuals to make difficult decisions to protect themselves. One of the most tragic examples is the ongoing exodus of families of trans kids from Texas after Governor Greg Abbott changed state guidelines to equate gender-affirming care to child abuse. But a majority of working class people don’t have the means to uproot their entire lives to protect their kids, leaving parents having to decide between supporting their children
and paying their bills. These threats cannot be met with silence. When the community gets organized, in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands, to shut down the far-right, we can win. Just last month, right-wing protestors bailed on their planned disruption of a drag show in Aurora, IL after community members showed up in force to support the event and the queer community. Broad-scale mobilization is the key to undermining attacks from the right wing. After the event at Madison East was canceled, @LibsOfTiktok declared victory on Twitter. The celebratory reaction from Raichik’s supporters in response to another canceled event shows that backing down to right-wing intimidation only emboldens the
FROM ZERO TO MAX COVID to get vaccinated among many older Chinese is entrenched, and the regime has so far not dared to impose mandatory vaccination fearing this would trigger protests. This has reinforced the widespread vaccine reticence among the key demographic – the elderly – who even with the much lower mortality rates of Omicron are still at risk of serious illness or death. Because the CCP’s vaccine rollout in 2021 took the opposite approach to most other countries,
putting the main focus on vaccinating the working age population, China’s vaccines are widely seen as unsafe for those aged over 65 years. The nationalist hypocrisy over Western vaccines is exposed by the rampant price gouging with Paxlovid, an antiviral medicine made by Pfizer, which is available in China. A single packet of Paxlovid, containing three tablets, is now selling for as much as 50,000 yuan ($7,313 U.S.)
proponents of this approach. If we hope to defend ourselves against escalating right-wing violence, we have to prove that queer people can’t be bullied underground. Since schools are one of the key battlegrounds the right has chosen, workers and students can provide a model for what a real fight back can look like. Where schools and districts are targeted by attacks on LGBTQ people, student organizations, educators’ unions, and community organizations must organize mass protests and walkouts demonstrating broad, working-class solidarity. Critically, defending queer rights in schools and elsewhere requires the full participation of organized labor. Teachers’ unions in Madison could put out statements of support and urgently call for
online, according to local media reports, against the original price of around 2,000 yuan. The wealthy are hoarding the drug which is a literal lifesaver in the current crisis. The likely horrors that await the Chinese people as waves of the pandemic sweep the country will intensify the mass anger against Xi’s regime. This anger now has a point of reference that was missing before the November protests, a starting point for working out
and pulling performative stunts like kneeling in Kente cloth, leading figures in the Democratic Party (including notorious Black misleader Jim Clyburn) are heavily supported by multi-billionaire corporations and the political establishment. We need leaders of the Black freedom struggle prepared to name capitalism as the root of racist oppression, and leaders who understand – as Fred Hampton did – that working people can organize to end the system. We need to rebuild mass organizations rooted in the Black working class that are armed with a program that can mobilize people into collective action and chart a path towards a socialist society. J
continued from p.10 protests and walkouts in solidarity with student organizations at Madison High Schools, UW Madison, and Madison College. Just one demonstration will not be enough to kick the right-wing off the offensive. A demonstration in Madison could, however, show what is necessary and provide a much-needed morale boost to the movement. Local actions should be linked with a nation-wide struggle for queer rights against right-wing populist violence. A coordinated national day of protests in solidarity with queer and trans people could have a decisive effect in undermining the confidence of the reactionary right, and would illustrate that anti-trans rhetoric is not as popular as voices like Tucker Carlson and Chaya Raichik might imply. J
continued from p.14 ideas of how to organize against dictatorship. Socialists need to seize these new possibilities to point to the crucial need for independent working class organizations, fighting labor unions and a workers’ party, with the aim of linking the widespread opposition to oppression and inequality to the need to end capitalism and dictatorship. J
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SOCIALIST ISSUE #90 l FEBRUARY 2023
ALTERNATIVE Ukrainian service members in Kyiv unpack Javelin anti-tank missiles sent by the U.S.
WHO’S PROFITING OFF THE UKRAINE WAR? ROB ROOKE, BAY AREA
The Pentagon’s budget is a massive drain on the country’s resources.
As we approach one year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the devastation to families and individuals is hard to comprehend. More than eight million people who have been forced to leave their homes in Ukraine are now refugees. Close to 50,000 soldiers, mostly young men, are dead. Thousands of civilians have been killed, hundreds THAT $858 of them children. billion could: On New Year’s Day, Ukraine claimed to have killed 400 newly drafted young Russian soldiers were killed in a missile strike – Russia said the build 3 million number killed was “only” 89. This provoked anger decent, publiclyand a small political crisis for the Putin regime. owned homes, Russia then retaliated with missile strikes to two creating millions schools housing Ukrainian soldiers, claiming a of construction similar number of casualties. jobs Socialist Alternative opposed Russia’s brutal invasion and we continue to oppose it. The war feed the for ordinary Ukrainians is about fighting to defend 35 million their homes and towns. However, for U.S. and Americans who European imperialism it is being used as a proxy are hungry war against Russia and more widely as a warning against its ally China. The struggle of the UkraiCOVER the nian people against occupation has essentially healthcare been hijacked by Western imperialism for whom costs of the the interests and rights of ordinary Ukrainians are 30 million not a serious consideration. Americans who Eastern Ukraine has not only become one have no health of the deadliest places in the world, but it has insurance increasingly become a hot spot for the big military contractors to try out their new weaponry. RusPROVIDE $44,000 sian imperialism’s weaponry, often outdated, is up TO all students against the state of the art armaments of the U.S. currently and the EU who between them have allocated enrolled $100 billion in total “aid” of all sorts for Ukraine. in private U.S. strategists believe this is worth every penny and public as the war has strengthened NATO and the posicolleges, tion of U.S. imperialism without having to put U.S. easily enough soldiers into combat. to make college education free
double K-12 education FUNDING or halve class sizes for every student
War Profits And The Big Money Drop The scientists and CEOs at the U.S.’ big five military contractors (Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin) are busy developing lethal missiles that can do more strategic damage at longer ranges than their imperialist counterparts in Russian and China. Over a third
of the Pentagon’s budget goes to these big five companies, and they are billions of dollars richer as a result of this relationship. In the 20 year war and occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. government spent $14 trillion. (That’s 14 thousand billion dollars...) In 1949 the U.S. retitled its War Department as the Department of Defense. This pretense of “defense” today includes 750 U.S. military bases in 80 countries around the globe. This compares to the U.S.’ main economic rival, China, who have five military bases outside of its national borders although they have massively expanded their armed forces and particularly their navy in recent years.
Republicans And Democrats United Making the world friendly for U.S. business interests through the use of its military is generally a bipartisan affair. The latest $858 billion military budget passed the Senate in December by a margin of 83-11. Nothing unites both parties like military spending. Despite the trend towards polarization in Congress, no National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposed by a President has been rejected by Congress since 1981. Big business and its two parties have their eyes on Ukraine and Taiwan as hot spots in the New Cold War with China. Wars and potential wars elsewhere are getting less attention and money. Both parties play up anti-Chinese fear and ramp up the New Cold War and, while some hard right Republicans have expressed opposition to funding Ukraine based on a different view of U.S. “national interests,” the vast majority in Congress are for funding the proxy war to the hilt. They don’t make a big fuss about this unity because both parties want to appear like existential enemies to their base, but fundamentally they are united around the idea that military spending is good for business. And America is all about business. President Biden’s broken promises are numerous, from codifying Roe to returning the corporate tax rate to 28% or to widening Medicare, but when it comes to war expenditure he gets the job done. For all the many crises facing working class families there is literally no political willpower in Congress to get things done. Because, in reality, America is run for the benefit of the billionaires and business, not for you and me. And certainly not for peace.
Ending The Status Quo In early January the hard right Freedom Caucus demanded McCarthy cut military spending as they voted 14 times against him becoming Speaker of the House. While they won many of their other demands, they were unsurprisingly unsuccessful on this one. In contrast, the Congressional “left” – the Squad – not only voted for $40 billion for arms to Ukraine last May but also for the $858 billion NDAA. The Squad has spent their years in DC attempting to balance maintaining their credibility without actually challenging the supremacy of capitalist America. However, as the Squad becomes indistinguishable from other Democrats their credibility as agents of change is totally collapsing. In the opening week of the Ukraine war, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez tweeted that “any military action must take place with Congressional approval.” This confirms the general approach of the Squad and DSA supporters in Congress. They see the U.S. as a slightly flawed democracy that can be reformed, instead of recognizing that we live under a regime where corporate America utterly dominates the economy and politics through their vast wealth. And the politics of capitalism includes waging war to maintain imperialist domination. U.S. capitalism has a long history of calling for freedom and democracy abroad while often denying working people those rights at home, or backing dictatorial regimes around the world when it suits them. Congress and the billionaires have no interest in defending the national, language, or cultural rights of the people of Ukraine. Or protecting them from violence. They can’t even do that here. This New “Cold” War is another dead end that will only turn millions of working people into refugees or cannon fodder for the bigger imperialist and capitalist regimes involved. For working people in Ukraine to win real national freedom and not be just a pawn in this inter-imperialist conflict requires building an independent working class force and making a class appeal to Russian soldiers who overwhelmingly don’t want to in Ukraine. Our task here in the U.S. is to build an independent working class force that fights all imperialism, especially “our own.” J