WHAT WE STAND FOR Their Profits, Our Lives: A Socialist Program for Disaster Relief
• 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. • Unions should form consumer protection committees to monitor price increases. They should have the power to review corporate finances, especially when money is squandered on CEO pay and stock buybacks. Profits off basic goods should be heavily taxed and price-gouging companies should be brought under democratic public ownership.
• The U.S. averages one chemical accident every two days. Extreme weather displaced 3.4 million Americans in 2022, people across the country are seeing their communities turned into disaster zones from corporations’ ecological warfare. • Make the polluters pay for the million-dollar cleanups – not working people! There needs to be strict accountability and oversight to protect the interests of communities and the environment. • In the wake of disasters, corporations should immediately be responsible for relocation costs, health costs, and home remediation. Invest In Our Basic Needs When many residents need to relocate, the • Pass strong rent control. End economic businesses responsible for the disasters evictions. Tax the rich and big business to should offer to buy people’s land at a rate fund permanently affordable, high-quality well above pre-disaster market value. social housing. • Take trucking and rail into democratic • No pay cuts! We need a significant raise public ownership, end the regime of corpoin the minimum wage and to tie raises to rate greed, deregulation, cut corners, and inflation. understaffing that cause these preventable • Capitalism failed to stop COVID-19, with catastrophes! the “post-pandemic” new normal consisting of total indifference to public health. We Fight Inflation & Rebuild A urgently need permanently free and accessible testing, paid sick leave, and to take Fighting Labor Movement Big Pharma into public ownership – vac• Inflation and the rising cost of living is cines should be for public health, not profit! eating into our paychecks, and capitalist • Make the child tax credit permanent and politicians have no solutions – we need a fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. class struggle to turn the tide on this race No cuts to food stamps! to the bottom! • An immediate transition to Medicare for • As thousands of workers are winning union All. Take for-profit hospital chains and Big recognition for the first time, it is critical Pharma into public ownership and retool that unions fight to win strong contracts. them to provide free, state-of-the-art We need unions that are armed with clear healthcare to all. demands like contractual cost of living • Fully fund public education! End school privaadjustments (COLA), and they have to be tization. Give educators an immediate 25% prepared to go on strike to win them. raise and increase staffing. Cancel all student • Union leaders across all unions should debt and make public college tuition-free. accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class. End Racist Policing And Criminal • An injury to one is an injury to all! Unions (in)Justice need to fight all manifestations of racism, • The death of Tyre Nichols in January showed sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of that there is still a fight to be waged against oppression. police violence, especially with Democratic city governments increasing police funding and promoting “law and order” policing. We need a new movement in the streets and mass organizations of struggle to fight for Black liberation! • Arrest and convict killer cops! Purge police forces of anyone with known ties to white www.SocialistAlternative.org supremacist groups or any cop who has info@SocialistAlternative.org committed violent or racist attacks. • End the militarization of police. Ban the use @Socialist Alternative of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm police @SocialistAlt on patrol. /SocialistAlternative.USA • Put policing under the control of democrati /c/SocialistAlternative cally-elected civilian boards with power over @socialistus hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.
WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE SHAYNA ANN HOWLETT, BAY AREA I grew up in a “Vote Blue No Matter Who” household. Growing up in a conservative district, my family was deemed too far left for wearing Obama campaign t-shirts in public. I understood us to be as far left as it got. In high school, I started learning about how colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy are sewn into the fabric of our institutions. I also learned that these pillars of subjugation uphold capitalism. From there, I began to question the validity of a system hinged on dehumanizing people. I supported Bernie in the 2016 election, but I was still too young to vote. When the nation elected Donald Trump, I blamed third party voters. I still believed democratic socialists in the Democratic Party could regulate capitalism and promote well-being. It wasn’t until I watched Joe Biden take the Democratic Party nomination that I understood the Democrats could not provide the progressive solutions I was seeking.
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 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.
I knew I needed to join the struggle for a better system. Since joining SA, I’ve joined in public meetings and protests in support of abortion rights, connected with community members in support of Amazon unionization efforts, and studied labor struggles in the United States and abroad. I’m eager to deepen my roots as a member of this international organization and build revolutionary politics. J
reproductive justice including universal childcare, and Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.
For A Socialist Green New Deal • We need a union jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure. • 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.!
A New Political Party For Working People
• The capitalist Democratic Party offers no solution to right-wing attacks against workers and marginalized people and has repeatedly failed to use their majorities to protect our rights. Mobilize Against Gender • We need a new, working-class, multiracial Oppression & Attacks On Bodily left party that organizes and fights for workAutonomy ers’ interests and is committed to socialist policies to lead the fight against the • The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door right and point a way out of the horrors of for vicious attacks on bodily autonomy across capitalism. the country. We need a mass movement against the reactionary right on the scale of The Whole System Is Guilty the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. • Free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception • Capitalism produces pandemics, povshould be provided at no cost as part of a erty, racism, transphobia, environmental broad program for reproductive health! destruction, and war. We need an interna• Fight back against the brutal anti-trans legtional struggle against this failed system. islation in many states and all right-wing • Bring the top 500 companies and banks attacks on LGBTQ people. Noncompliance into democratic public ownership. with these bigoted laws should be organized • We need a socialist world. This means a by the labor movement among workers democratic socialist plan for the economy tasked with enforcing them. based on the interests of the overwhelming • Fighting gender oppression means fightmajority of people and the planet. ing for our rights to bodily autonomy,
