ALTERNATIVE
SOCIALIST ISSUE #93 l MAY 2023
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INSIDE DESANTIS VS. TRUMP DEFEND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE CRISIS OF GUN VIOLENCE
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WHAT WE STAND FOR Mobilize Against Gender Oppression & Attacks On Bodily Autonomy
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.
• Fight back against the brutal anti-trans legislation in many states and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people. Noncompliance Their Profits, Our Lives: A Socialist with these bigoted laws should be orga- Program for Environmental nized by the labor movement among work- Disaster ers tasked with enforcing them. • The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door • The U.S. averages one chemical accident every two days. Extreme weather displaced for vicious attacks on bodily autonomy across 3.4 million Americans in 2022, people the country. We need a mass movement across the country are seeing their commuagainst the reactionary right on the scale of nities turned into disaster zones from corpothe 60s and 70s when Roe was first won. rations’ ecological warfare. • Free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a • In the wake of disasters, corporations should immediately be responsible for relocation broad program for reproductive health! costs, health costs, and home remediation. • Fighting gender oppression means fighting When many residents need to relocate, the for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproducbusinesses responsible for the disasters tive justice including universal childcare, should offer to buy people’s land at a rate and Medicare for All including free reprowell above pre-disaster market value. ductive and gender-affirming care. • Make the polluters pay for the million-dollar cleanups – not working people! There needs Fight Inflation & Rebuild A to be strict accountability and oversight to Fighting Labor Movement protect the interests of communities and the environment. • As thousands of workers are winning union • We need a union jobs program to rapidly recognition for the first time, it is critical expand green infrastructure including free that unions fight to win strong contracts. public transit. We need unions that are armed with clear • Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable demands like contractual cost of living future – take the top 100 polluting compaadjustments (COLA), and they have to be nies into democratic public ownership while prepared to go on strike to win them. implementing a democratically planned, • Union leaders across all unions should just transition to 100% green energy! accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class. Invest In Our Basic Needs • An injury to one is an injury to all! Unions • Pass strong rent control. End economic need to fight all manifestations of racism, evictions. Tax the rich and big business to sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of fund permanently affordable, high-quality oppression. social housing. • Unions should stop spending hundreds of • No pay cuts! We need a significant raise millions of dollars on electing Democratic in the minimum wage and to tie raises to Party politicians, and spend it instead on inflation. efforts to organize the unorganized. • Capitalism failed to stop COVID-19, with • Unions should form consumer protection the “post-pandemic” new normal consistcommittees to monitor price increases. ing of total indifference to public health. We They should have the power to review corurgently need permanently free and accesporate finances, especially when money sible testing, paid sick leave, and to take Big Pharma into public ownership – vaccines should be for public health, not profit! • Make the child tax credit permanent and fully fund high-quality, universal childcare. No cuts to food stamps! • An immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains and Big www.SocialistAlternative.org Pharma into public ownership and retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art info@SocialistAlternative.org healthcare to all. @Socialist Alternative • Fully fund public education! End school priva@SocialistAlt tization. Give educators an immediate 25% /SocialistAlternative.USA raise and increase staffing. Cancel all student debt and make public college tuition-free. /c/SocialistAlternative @socialistus
WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE RIANNA KUENZI, MADISON Growing up in Madison, WI in a liberal family, I was consistently involved in organizing with the Democratic Party from a young age. In February 2011, during the Battle of Wisconsin against Scott Walker and Act 10, I was a fourth grader, bundled up on the steps of the Capitol with my whole family, protesting and rallying for the recall campaign, and even speaking in the capitol rotunda in support of my teachers deserving a living wage. In 2016, I supported Bernie in the primaries, but dutifully fell in line behind Hillary aftewards, despite being unexcited by any of her platform besides the fact that she was a woman. When Trump won, I blamed people who didn’t vote, refusing to hear any criticisms of her from the left. That night was the first crack in my confidence in the liberal democratic system, laying the foundation for total disillusionment with the Democratic Party that unfortunately didn’t set in until nearly four years later in 2020. I maintained heavy involvement in the Democratic Party throughout Trump’s presidency, and had a false glimpse of hope in 2018 with the election of the Squad. Beginning to understand that the Democratic Party was not a monolith, I thought we could change it from the inside, leading me to campaign heavily for Bernie in the lead up to the 2020 election. That illusion was shattered on Super Tuesday in February 2020, when I heard that corporate
End Racist Policing And Criminal (in)Justice
Democrats had rigged the primary against Bernie, the front-runner, and found out that Obama had made calls to the other candidates to instruct them to fall in line behind Biden in exchange for Cabinet seats. When COVID hit less than a month later, it made me question the whole capitalist system, not understanding why we couldn’t simply shut down the entire economy for a few months in order to stop the spread. I wouldn’t realize until later that this was impossible under capitalism, because of the needs of the wealthy few to keep churning out profit. In 2021, I happened to find an SA table at the farmers market, and everything that I learned from my own research clicked into place. After so many false starts, I now feel equipped to fight for a better world alongside the whole working class. J
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.
• There is still a massive fight to be waged against police violence. 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 supremacist groups or any cop who has committed violent or racist attacks. • End the militarization of police. Ban the use A New Political Party For of “crowd control” weapons. Disarm police Working People on patrol. • Put policing under the control of democrati- • The capitalist Democratic Party offers no solution to right-wing attacks against cally-elected civilian boards with power over workers and marginalized people and has hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, repeatedly failed to use their majorities to and the power to subpoena. protect our rights. • Beyond fighting to end racist policing, we need a struggle against all forms of racism • We need a new, working-class, multiracial left party that organizes and fights for workin our society, including segregationist ers’ interests and is committed to socialhousing and education policies. ist policies to lead the fight against the right and point a way out of the horrors of No To Imperialist Wars capitalism. • Socialist Alternative completely opposes Russian imperialism’s brutal invasion of The Whole System Is Guilty Ukraine. Ordinary Ukrainians who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental and growing poverty conditions now face destruction, and war. We need an internathe horror of war and bloodshed. tional struggle against this failed system. • We oppose the aggressive imperialist agenda of NATO and the US for whom • Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership. Ukrainians are a pawn in the wider Cold War • We need a socialist world. This means a conflict with Chinese imperialism. democratic socialist plan for the economy • De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situbased on the interests of the overwhelming ation in Ukraine requires the return of Rusmajority of people and the planet. sian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from
EDITORIAL
DESANTIS VS. TRUMP
GEORGE MARTIN FELL BROWN, MADISON So far, working people have zero good options in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Biden’s pathetic whimper of a reelection announcement is completely unsurprising considering his approach to the last four years. The Democrats don’t even plan to host primary debates, demonstrating how little they care about providing working people with a serious option. On the Republican side, in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election and the chaos surrounding the January 6 insurrection, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis began positioning himself as a successor to Trump going into the 2024 race. DeSantis presented himself as a less buffoonish politician who could regain the trust of the Republican Party establishment while simultaneously being the most zealous implementer of Trump’s reactionary agenda. But, going into 2024, DeSantis is facing another contender for the title of Donald Trump’s successor: Donald Trump. So far, Trump and DeSantis are the two clear leads in the Republican primary, with all other candidates polling in the single digits. Between Trump and DeSantis, Trump is ahead by a big margin. A whole swath of Florida Republicans close to DeSantis, including representatives Greg Steube, Anna Paulina Luna, Matt Gaetz, Cory Mills, and Byron Donalds, have come out in support of Trump. Trump’s lead has been widening in recent weeks, with post-indictment polls showing Trump leading 57% to 31%. Trump’s resurgence has been boosted by the indictment against him, as well as his offensive against DeSantis. But this dynamic reflects deeper underlying issues in the DeSantis campaign and the Republican Party. For working people, the contest between Trump and DeSantis has no winners. Both of them have marked their political careers by consistently putting the interests of big corporations above the needs of workingclass people. From Trump’s major tax cuts for the rich to DeSantis’ multi-million dollar tax refunds to big corporations. Understanding the dynamics in the Republican Party is important to challenge the rotten agenda common to both candidates.
DeSantis’ Campaign While Ron DeSantis hasn’t yet declared his candidacy at the time of writing, he’s
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THERE ARE NO WINNERS been in campaign mode since Trump’s loss in 2020. He built his governorship as an aggressive, no-nonsense authoritarian who could ram through the agenda that Trump failed to achieve in 2020. He became known for a series of confrontational measures on various right-wing talking points. He signed an executive order banning mask mandates. He responded to the George Floyd uprising with an “anti-riot” law that viciously cracked down on the right to protest while allowing people to run over protesters with their cars. He put forward the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” which would allow parents to sue schools for teaching critical race theory. His “Don’t Say Gay” bill has served as a template for the right-wing assault on LGBTQ rights nationally. Despite this, DeSantis has appealed to the Republican establishment by distancing himself from Trump’s more embarrassing moments. He condemned the January 6 insurrection while also criticizing the “DC-New York media” for “milk[ing] this for anything they could to try to be able to smear anyone who ever supported Donald Trump.” DeSantis has been playing a balancing act, trying to unite Trump’s base and the Republican establishment. When DeSantis won his 2022 re-election in a landslide while a number of Trump-aligned candidates lost their midterm battles, DeSantis seemed like the new face of the party. But Trump hasn’t gone away.
Mr. Trump’s path back to the Republican nomination and thus to the White House.” It’s certainly true that DeSantis has made a number of errors. He’s untested as a national candidate. He hasn’t faced a real fight in a campaign previously, much less someone like Trump. But, just as the crisis of the Trump administration couldn’t be blamed entirely on Trump’s individual foibles, DeSantis stumbling isn’t simply a matter of personal mistakes. Desantis’ main problem is the fundamental contradiction in his campaign. He’s simultaneously trying to appeal to Trump’s MAGA base – many of whom are drawn to Trump because he claims to stand with working people against big corporations – but also convince big donors and Republican leaders that he will be a reliable, safe option for the ruling class. DeSantis’ failures reflect a deeper crisis of capitalism, which has seen the ruling class losing control of its monsters. For Trump’s MAGA base, DeSantis is increasingly seen as “controlled opposition.” Attempts to appeal to that base could have succeeded when Trump was reeling from the 2020 defeat, but are increasingly falling flat. Meanwhile, the big Republican donors are concerned about DeSantis being drawn into Trump’s more unreliable stuff. This is most stark in DeSantis’sflip-flopping on Ukraine: first calling the war a “territorial dispute” and then walking back his comments. It’s still very early in the primary and DeSantis will undoubtedly make adjustments. However, this fundamental contradiction will be hard for him to overcome.
DeSantis’ failures reflect a deeper crisis of capitalism, which has seen the ruling class lose control of its monsters.
Trump Returns, DeSantis Falters When it comes to explaining DeSantis faltering in the polls, corporate media puts emphasis on mistakes by DeSantis. New Republic staff writer Alex Shepard, argued that DeSantis “is making the same mistakes that doomed Trump’s rivals in the 2016 primary.” He specifically cites Trump’s attacks on DeSantis: which have run from tame nicknames like “Ron DeSanctimonious” to accusations that DeSantis is a pedophile and a groomer. Others point to mistakes by the Democrats, specifically around the indictment of Trump for the Stormy Daniels scandal. The Economist argued that with the indictment, district attorney Alvin Bragg “has smoothed
Trump’s Outsider Image Unlike most Republican leaders, Trump attempts to pose as a defender of workers, including publicly rejecting cuts to Social Security and Medicare. This is a cynical ploy on Trump’s part, but it gives him an advantage when someone like DeSantis flip-flops on the issue. Trump and DeSantis both pose serious dangers to working people. However, Trump’s right populism has given him a wider appeal to working-class Republicans looking for someone to stand up to the establishment.
The business establishment, Democrat and Republican, is divided on DeSantis, but it definitely doesn’t want another Trump term in the White House. DeSantis’ main appeals to the MAGA base are through his anti-“woke” culture war. While this of course gets an echo with the right-wing base, it’s not the same as claiming to stand for “the forgotten men and women” being crushed by the economic crisis, as Trump has cynically done. The establishment is, of course, perfectly fine with some of Trump’s more pro-business measures. They liked his corporate tax cuts, for example. But their opposition to Trump is due to his unreliability.
There Are No Winners For all these differences, neither Trump nor DeSantis have anything to offer working people. We certainly support Trump being locked up, but for his real crimes against working people and the oppressed. Virtually all US presidents in history could be charged on this basis. An even bigger problem is that, while DeSantis or Trump don’t in any way represent working-class people, neither do Biden and the Democrats. Four years of betrayals by Biden – from continuing Trump’s detention of immigrants, to his recent crushing of the railroad workers strike – has made this increasingly clear. Lining up behind Biden and the Democrats leaves space open for Trump and DeSantis to present their reactionary attacks as a fight against the establishment. Trump’s 2016 victory came in the same year that saw the rise of Bernie Sanders, who posed a very different and more genuine challenge to the establishment. But, when Sanders got behind Hillary Clinton, working people lost any viable alternative to corporate politics in the general election. The danger of a second Trump presidency or a first DeSantis presidency seems grim. But this grim situation is a consequence of forces like Bernie and the Squad working within the Democrats and lining up behind Biden. Had they operated outside of the Democratic Party, they could have laid the foundation for building a new party for working people. A viable independent left challenge in the 2024 election would be a step in the right direction. It could cut across the ability of Trump and DeSantis to appear antiestablishment, and provide the basis for a new party. J
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H E A LT H C A R E
I’M A TRANS WOMAN WITH UNION HEALTHCARE: TRANS RIGHTS ARE WORKERS’ RIGHTS THE U.S. AVERAGES ONE
TALIA PAONE
AFSCME LOCAL 2459 (personal capacity)
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I confronted one of the most important aspects of myself when I realized I was transgender. Undergoing gender transition is not an easy decision, and for some, the process takes months, even years to fully realize. As the world felt like it was crashing down around me, I made that leap. As a state worker for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, I am a member of AFSCME, a national union of state, county, and municipal employees. My union-negotiated healthcare plan allowed me to receive fast and affordable gender affirming healthcare, even in the middle of a pandemic. I didn’t need any signed psychiatrist letters. I didn’t have a mandated “waiting period.” I called a doctor in the local hospital network, said I wanted to transition, and within five minutes of providing my informed consent, we set up a virtual appointment. The day after this appointment (and some same-day blood tests), I was able to start hormone replacement
WHIRLWIND IN THE COURTS The Battle Over Abortion Pills
therapy (HRT). This is not the norm for the vast majority of transgender people in the United States. The standard wait time for most trans people can take several weeks to months, to even years. There are so many bureaucratic hoops to jump through, most of them designed to dissuade us from being true to ourselves. The process often requires many phone calls with insurance to make sure coverage includes hormones, surgeries, mental health services, and so on. These obstacles can cause untold damage to people’s mental health, too – it’s devastating to know who you are, but be unable to be who you are. But this isn’t just true for gender transition. For anyone in America, suddenly needing ongoing or intensive medical care – for a pre-existing condition, or for something as common as cancer or heart disease – means doing battle with a bureaucratic, and parasitic healthcare and insurance industry. It was my union healthcare that provided me affordable treatment and the
Last month, after a series of cases were heard in trial and appeals courts, the Supreme Court intervened to put a pause on the legal circus surrounding the status of Mifepristone, a firststep pill in medication abortions. This means that between now and when the Supreme Court hears the case next term, broad legal access to the pill will be restored. One thing is clear though: the religious right is on a determined campaign to wipe the pill off the market. However, their path to victory isn’t straightforward.
What Happens Next? BRIAN HARRISON, HOUSTON
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While it’s impossible to predict the outcome of Supreme Court proceedings next term, there’s
access I desperately needed, even amid a pandemic. This is one reason why the fight for unions in all of our workplaces is so crucial, and it points to why all working people have a stake in fighting for equal rights for transgender people. Workers in unions can wage an organized rank-and-file struggle for contracts that set all-encompassing healthcare in stone, guaranteeing care not just for transgender people, but for the needs of all workers. Although my union healthcare is a significant step up compared to other expensive plans at non-unionized workplaces, my contract is still limited. Workers with disabilities are unable to get the coverage they need. Even basic treatment for the most healthy among us can break the bank. That’s why union members must get active in contract negotiations and organize for the strongest possible care for all members. A strong contract means coverage for all surgeries and treatments, without having to empty your wallet. But having to claw for health coverage from our bosses is still far from a world where everyone has access to healthcare. Beyond struggling on the job, we need to fight for a Medicare for All system where
reason to believe they may decide to reject the lower court’s restrictions on abortion pill access. This would have nothing to do with their concern for the lives of women and pregnant people; their decision to overturn Roe v Wade is clear proof of that. But, this particular attack on abortion pills could fail because it’s in contradiction to the interests of big pharmaceutical companies that manufacture abortion pills. More than 600 pharmaceutical and biotech companies have signed onto a scathing letter condemning the attack on Mifepristone. For the Supreme Court to interfere with both a federal regulatory agency and with the profits of major pharmaceutical companies may be too big a pill for even
workers will not have to constantly fight with insurance companies to get their basic needs met. This would be a massive boon to the labor movement too: a common union-busting and strikebreaking tactic of bosses is to pull workers’ healthcare during a strike, and any raises won are often offset by the skyrocketing cost of for-profit healthcare. As these attacks on trans rights primarily take aim at schools and healthcare, nurses’ and teachers’ unions must take the lead in defending LGBTQ workers, patients, and students. Winning legal access for trans people is not enough, not if we can’t afford to see a doctor or go to a hospital. The fight against transphobia and bigotry must go hand in hand with the battle to make health care affordable – and more than that, free – for all. Hospital bosses and board of executives care more about profit than actually taking care of their patients, and this system needs to be challenged to create a world where anyone can have access to the benefits of the enormous advancements of medical science. Working class people have a genuine stake in fighting to win gender-affirming care for all, because the road to win it runs straight through building strong, fighting unions and winning free comprehensive Medicare For All. Achieving those things will mean building a mass working class movement capable of shutting down the industries that profit from keeping us sick and isolated. J
right-wing Justices to swallow. While the outcome of a clash between Big Pharma and a reactionary court could in this unique instance save us from disaster, this is far from guaranteed. The existing Supreme Court is highly reactionary and determined. Even if this attack fails, more will come. If this attack is upheld by the Supreme Court, Biden’s FDA can decide not to enforce the ban, allowing the manufacturers and distributors of Mifepristone to continue to sell it. Regardless of the exact legal outcome, we need to mount tremendous pressure on Biden to order the FDA to ignore these trumped-up rulings and keep Mifepristone available. Truly guaranteeing legal protections for abortion pills will require
pressure in the form of a movement. As young people are increasingly taking action to defend the rights of their trans peers against an onslaught of attacks, broader demands for bodily autonomy can become more and more popular. While for now there is very little in the way of an active movement to defend abortion rights in the US, it can develop in the context of the right’s overall war on the bodily autonomy of queer people and women. As we prepare to make this year’s Pride a month of struggle, we need to take up the fight for free, safe, legal, and widely accessible abortion care alongside the demand for gender-affirming Medicare for All. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
LGBTQ RIGHTS
In April 2022, the Alabama state legislature, like many across the country, passed a devastating anti-trans bill to ban gender affirming healthcare for minors. Specifically, AL SB. 184 made it a felony for medical professionals to provide trans health care to minors or for their parents to help them get it, under threat of up to ten years imprisonment or a fine of up to $15,000. Additionally, all school staff were required to disclose any information to families regarding how their child chooses to express their gender or sexuality at school. In May, however, a group of four Alabama parents brought a lawsuit, Eknes-Tucker v. Marshall which has resulted in a temporary hold on the new law while the trial plays out. This provides an opening to build a serious fight back against SB. 184. Socialist Alternative Alabama is a small but mighty force, and we are dedicated to building the fight to defend trans rights from these horrific right-wing reactionary attacks which endanger minors, their families, and their healthcare providers, and which only serve to continue the scapegoating and fearmongering around trans people. In November, when a state court of appeals was hearing arguments on whether to uphold the temporary injunction on the ban, we co-organized a caravan of cars alongside trans advocate group TAKE Birmingham to the state courthouse in Montgomery, where a crowd rallied and spoke out on how to build the movement needed to fight back against these right-wing attacks on women, LGBTQ people, and workers’ rights. While we should target courthouses and legislative offices with big demonstrations as they threaten to push through these high-profile
attacks, we must also look for any opportunity to build solidarity and a fightback against bigoted and transphobic ideas. That’s why on April 11, we held a counterprotest when Mike Pence came to speak at the University of Alabama as part of his tour titled “Saving America from the Woke Left.” Socialist Alternative members joined students and staff to speak out against Pence’s hateful rhetoric, discussing how best to build the movement needed to end the codification of transphobia into law. Going forward, we are working in a Trans Rights Coalition with student and activist groups across the state to hold escalating actions culminating in August when the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to reach a decision on Marshall. Until then, we will be protesting, rallying, and speaking out in different cities in Alabama each month including Huntsville, Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery, pointing the way forward for a movement which can fight transphobia, homophobia, and all forms of oppression. But what happens if the decision does not come down in favor of trans youth and working people? It’s no secret that the court system is not designed to serve working and oppressed people; we learned as much last spring when the Supreme Court overturned the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision federally legalizing abortion. Win or lose, we have to continue organizing to fight for the kind of systemic change trans youth and all LGBTQ people need, and demonstrate how it serves establishment politicians’ interests to keep the working class scared, precarious, and divided. High school and college students, teachers and professors, and school staff must stand together and fight to protect trans
rights. Around the country, high school students have been organizing walkouts in protest of copycats of Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and pointing to the need to unite with their teachers in this struggle as well. This is an absolutely crucial step, as is linking demands around repealing all such bills with demands for trans inclusive Medicare for all, fully funded schools and social services, and good union jobs for all with protection from discrimination, which would be necessary real improvements for LGBT people. As we know all too well in Alabama, the Democrats have no interest in putting up a meaningful fight against reactionary Republicans at any level. Working people and youth need a new, independent party which is run democratically and able to take action to win real gains, instead of dangling our rights and dignity in front of us during election season before leaving us in the lurch, offering no real opposition at all to the Republican establishment. As socialists, we know it will take a genuine mass movement to undo the damage being done by the culture war the right wing is currently waging, and the Democrats who enable them. We have to point the way toward a better world with strong demands around affordable gender affirming care and protections for trans youth and the adults in their life helping them transition safely and happily, and show how at every turn the capitalist ruling class and political establishment will crush these efforts and cut across the necessary solidarity we’re building. We’re fighting for socialism because we know a better world is possible, and we know solidarity across all sections of the working class is what it will take to win it! J
WE CAN’T BACK DOWN
MARGOT STEWART, SEATTLE
Young queer people in Port St. Lucia, Florida were disappointed to find out at the end of April that not only was the community’s annual Pride parade cancelled, but the Pridefest street fair was restricted to ages 21 and older. To add insult to injury, the event was surrounded by blackout perimeter fencing and hired security. These measures were taken out of fear that the event would violate Senate Bill 1438, a bill which would prosecute anyone who exposes children to “live adult performances,” particularly targeting drag shows. While the law has not yet been signed by Florida Governor DeSantis, event organizers cite the current political climate as their basis to back down. This likely won’t be the M AY 2 0 2 3
last Pride event to be scaled back this year in the face of a national onslaught of antiLGBTQ laws. While these laws are dangerous, enforcing them upon ourselves is highly misleading to the thousands of young and working class queer people looking to fight back. Pride events create an important public space not just for self expression but for discussion, organization, and struggle. Beating back these right-wing attacks will require us to tap into the militant history of how Pride began. If we instead surrender this tradition, the only outcome can be confusion, demoralization and the weakening of our movement.
A Strategy To Win Queer youth cannot rely on NGOs and
“Rally for Trans Rights and Privacy” in Birmingham organized by Socialist Alternative AL, TAKE Resource Center, DSA Birmingham, and Greater Birmingham Ministries
ALABAMA STUDENTS AND WORKERS UNITE TO DEFEND TRANS YOUTH by SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ALABAMA
corporate Pride organizations to stand up and defend us from homophobic and transphobic laws, and certainly not without a fight. These groups have long since sold out the fighting character of Pride, turning it instead into a festival of rainbow-colored corporate interests. A key component of this is the deep roots of these NGOs in the Democratic Party, which has completely stood aside while the right viciously attacks queer youth. Worse, the Biden administration actively propped up attacks on trans kids by providing the basis for schools to ban trans athletes. Community and anti-corporate pride events have started to pop up across the country in the past years, most notably in New York with the Queer Liberation March. These types of events will become even
more important as the organizers of mainstream Pride events fail to stand up to the right. Alternative Pride events should be democratically planned, with organizing coalitions brought together representing various groups and organizations looking to be involved. Having democratic structures will prevent organizers from making unaccountable decisions to cancel events like we’ve seen with corporate Pride. Schools have correctly been a focal point of struggle so far, with students leading walkouts and demonstrations. These actions can be linked up with teachers’ struggle against cuts and privatizations, which are just one example of how right-wing attacks on marginalized groups are part-and-parcel of broader attacks on the living standards of all working people. J
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C O R P O R AT E C R I S I S
LAYOFFS RAVAGE TECH
CASUALTIES OF CORPORATE MISMANAGEMENT WORKERS SPEAK OUT ON PAYING FOR THE BOSSES’ CRISES
THE BANKING COLLAPSE
FROM A WORKER’S POINT OF VIEW SEBASTIAN MONTES, NYC The recent collapse of Signature Bank and the better-known Silicon Valley Bank dominated the news for a couple of weeks. In the midst of the banking chaos, us workers have had to deal with the uncertainty of what the future holds. I have worked for Signature Bank for a few years before its collapse, but I have been a socialist and member of International Socialist Alternative (ISA) much longer. Like most workplaces under capitalism, workers are at the mercy of their bosses, who hold the fate of our livelihood in their hands. Former Signature Bank employees are now in the midst of a transition process that has no exact timeline, and we have no real assurance of our long-term employment stability. We continue to hear that it is all “business as usual,” and “just continue to do what you’ve been doing” in the midst of all this chaos is the assurance we get from new senior management. Many people have a negative opinion of banks – and believe me, rightly so! Frequently overlooked are workers like myself, who because of the decisions and risky ventures of a few greedy capitalists, now face the uncertainty of whether or not we can expect job security in the long term. Capitalism rewards risky business. It doesn’t care if it’s detrimental to the environment, exploits, or violently displaces poor people for luxury condos. Capitalism will reward this barbaric behavior because the end goal is always to maximize profits. Some will cry crocodile tears at the losses suffered by the bank’s founders. Working people will care that Signature Bank was invested in rentcontrolled housing in New York City. As of now, the impact on this is unclear, with the potential to put more pressure on landlords who are already searching for ways to profit from high rents. There are many factors that led to Signature Bank’s collapse. The volatility of cryptocurrency has played a major role in bank failures. Silicon Valley and Signature Bank both were advocates for crypto-currency and held deposits for many crypto platforms. Signature Bank ran a blockchain-based, real-time payment platform called Signet, a crucial system for large cryptocurrency exchanges. The recent downfall of FTX and the
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exposure of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried rang alarm bells for financial regulators and was a precursor to the run on the banks. Like dominoes falling, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate Bank, the only remaining crypto-friendly bank was Signature Bank. Signature Bank was overly exposed to cryptocurrency – meaning it had too much invested in different currencies – and its dealing and embracing of the crypto-world spooked regulators and investors, causing the run. The years after the financial collapse of ‘07-’08 saw a loosening in scrutiny of banks, due largely to lobbying for deregulation and relaxed oversight. The lobbying from the financial sector, including executives of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, allowed the asset threshold for midsize banks to rise, enabling them to operate freely with less oversight. It was during this period we saw small banks become mid-sized banks in no time. This was done with smart political moves. For example, Barney Frank, former US State Senator, made well over $2.4 million during his time as a Signature Bank board member, giving direct access to the political establishment to change policies in favor of Signature and other banks. In the midst of all this madness, many working people like myself are really forced to think about how things could be different, whether or not this could have been avoided, and what the future holds for us. Just last year, we witnessed unionizing attempts by workers at Wells Fargo, the third-largest bank in the US. A series of scandals including fake accounts, consumer protection violations, and mass overtime pay violations prompted this unionizing effort. It is in the face of this uncertainty and undemocratic nature of workplaces under capitalism that we need to build movements that call into question capitalism, the role of the Democrats and Republicans, and the laws that uphold this barbaric behavior. The scarier thing is that more uncertainty like what I currently face will be the reality for many more workers in the financial sector. These events only reinforce the urgent need to build a better world, where our workplaces are democratically controlled. It will be through mass movements and struggle that working people will make gains and could put an end to the capitalist nightmare we are living. J
DO TECH WORKERS NEED UNIONS?
JAMES BAKER, CHICAGO
“Are tech unions even a thing?” A coworker asked me this after I and thousands of others had been laid off. Rocked by the storm, dozens of us had landed in an online organizing space. Most tech workers aren’t knowledgeable about unions because the existing unions failed to organize tech decades ago. To best understand why unions in tech are necessary, it’s important to consider why this is all happening. The Federal Reserve has been trying to fight inflation by reducing employment for over a year. Inflation occurs when there’s more money in circulation than there are goods and services produced in the economy. Rather than invest massive profits into productivity, the Fed’s plan is to activate a Rube-Goldberg machine that slows investment, cuts employment, and forces workers to compete over fewer, lower-paying jobs. As the recent bank failures portend, these policies may trigger a recession, destroying the productivity of the economy instead of growing it. Layoffs, accordingly, were a choice to protect billionaire profits and wealth rather than to invest in our productivity, work, and livelihoods. Low interest rates hit tech stocks hard, hurting billionaire wealth. The first line of defense was stock buybacks, a way to put money straight in stockholders’ pockets and raise stock values by reducing supply. The money wasted on buybacks casts doubt on claims of “overhiring.” For example, Meta reported $6 billion in stock buybacks in Q4 2022 alone. Meta laid off a total of 21,000 workers between November of 2022 and March of this year – $285,714 wasted for each worker laid off. That’s years’ worth of salary that could have paid for productive workers, handed instead to billionaire stockholders. Far from being “our” leadership, executives are captains of pirate ships on the remote seas of high finance. Workers in every industry – including tech workers – need unions to defend their wages and jobs from these pirates. So, are tech unions even a thing? In short: yes. But it’s still early days. Tech workers have organized unions at a number of companies, including NPR, The New York Times, Kickstarter, Alphabet, and recently Bandcamp. There are also new union campaigns and union-curious organizing groups developing throughout the industry. Kickstarter union organizers produced a podcast which gives a great history of their union drive. Tech unions are evolving out of the workplace social justice protests prominent during the Trump years. In 2018, Google workers walked out against sexual harassment. The slogan “tech won’t build it” grew out of Google workers organizing against a deadly Pentagon project and Microsoft workers petition against the company’s relationship to ICE. Layoffs were in part retaliation for these movements and others. Tech billionaires, feeling like they had been losing a class war to “woke” workers for decades, wanted revenge and were jealous of Elon Musk’s brutality. Unions allow us to fight these fights more effectively. They also offer us a unique opportunity to build our own power in a world where the bosses’ power is essentially unilateral. From economic issues like pay, to political issues like ICE contracts, unions give workers the power to assert ourselves. Strong unions that are well prepared for workplace action can win real changes. Kickstarter workers won guaranteed raises, cost of living adjustments, an end to location-based pay, and more. Union victories are won in a contract that applies to all workers instead of the individual contracts we’re used to signing at new jobs. Ultimately, workers’ power is derived from our economic position: if we organize ourselves, we can determine whether or not the bosses make profit. If we bring together significant sectors of the workforce, we can organize powerful walkouts, slowdowns, or even strikes. Of course, work stoppages shouldn’t be rushed into. They require serious and democratic discussions among organized workers. Unions are new to the tech industry, and their potential is exciting and untested. Imagine how organized tech workers at Amazon could support a unionizing warehouse with targeted web and server outages.Our unions also needs to keep fighting around the political issues that kickstarted this movement. Laid-off H1B workers are threatened with deportation if they don’t secure jobs within an extremely tight timeline. Unions can fight to defend alongside our H1B colleagues and win protections. The labor movement has a long history of winning important legal reforms through class struggle. Tech unions have organized around a number of demands, and you are probably familiar with the issues at your workplace. Ambitious demands can help us build a mission statement for the union movement as it grows in our industry. We encourage workers entering into organizing spaces to discuss these demands and more with your fellow tech workers! J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WORKERS STRIKE BACK
D N N E F E F E DDE DTOO T T T H H G I G I R TTHHEE R RIIKKEE!! SSTTR NICK JONES, SEATTLE UPS Teamster, Local 174 (personal capacity) The Supreme Court is poised to rule later this year on a case that could result in the largest attack on workers’ fundamental rights in decades – potentially dwarfing even the horrendous 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision that forced all public sector jobs to become “right-to-work.” The case is Glacier Northwest v. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the issue at hand is whether corporations could be allowed to sue unions for company losses during a strike. In 2017, Teamsters Local 174 struck against concrete company Glacier Northwest/ CalPortland for eight days, as part of contract negotiations. Negotiations were stalling, and workers rightfully took action to force the company to the table. As part of the strike, Teamsters returned concrete trucks to company property that had already been loaded with cement, before walking off the job to take part in the strike. Glacier is now arguing that workers “intentionally destroyed” company property as part of the strike because the company was not able to deliver the concrete without drivers. If this is true it would mean grocery workers striking could be held liable for spoiled food, striking auto factory workers could be sued for missed deadlines, or striking delivery drivers forced to pay for missed deliveries. If the Court rules in the bosses’ favor, it will be an opening of Pandora’s box with bosses having free rein to put every strike through the wringer in court, potentially forcing unions to pay for all lost revenue, real or fictitious, lost during strike actions. In essence, this boils down to a direct attack on our most sacred right as workers – the right to strike. A ruling in the corporations’ favor could have a chilling effect across the whole labor movement, leaving strikes dead in the water before they’ve even begun.
The Strike Is Our Ultimate Weapon The strike is our most powerful tool to defend ourselves against the billionaires and the bosses who try to squeeze every penny from working people regardless of our basic needs for living wages or safety on the job. M AY 2 0 2 3
Strikes work because they can bring the profits of the bosses to a screeching halt. In every labor dispute, whether strike action is taken or not, the threat of our collective strike action is the only force that will make the bosses listen to our demands. It’s not a coincidence that this case will most likely be heard in July, just as national negotiations for the country’s largest private sector union contract between the United Parcel Service (UPS) and my union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, are underway. The contract covers over 340,000 workers at a company central to the American economy, moving over 6% of US GDP. A strike at UPS would touch nearly every corner of the national economy. The ruling class is looking to avoid a head-on battle with the Teamsters by taking a backroom approach to squash the strike before it even begins. Courts, though presented as impartial arbiters of the law, are anything but neutral. People everywhere have become more and more aware of this cold reality, not just through the forcing through of appointments of right-wing ideologues like Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, but even more recently through the damning revelations
about the bottomless depths of Clarence Thomas’ corruption and ties to the billionaire class. But this attack on our fundamental right is not just being driven by Republicans. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji BrownJackson said striking workers are like “the arsonist who says I’m going to walk away, but as I do, let me strike a match and burn down the factory.” Jackson was unfortunately cheerled by many labor leaders and self-described “progressives” when she was appointed by so-called “pro-labor President’’ Joe Biden in 2022. It’s crystal clear that this attack is a bipartisan one, and it will require mass action from workers and the union movement to defeat it.
We Need A Rank And File Fightback It is beyond unfortunate that so far, labor leaders nationally have not made fighting back against this massive attack a top priority for the labor movement. A ruling in favor of Glacier Northwest by the Court will have seismic ramifications for workers everywhere, yet most don’t even know this is happening. A “wait and see” approach to this case, with a hostile Supreme Court, will all but guarantee a decision that deals a major setback to the fight to rebuild a strong labor movement. The approach of business unionism (“what’s good for the employer is good for the workers”), that is currently favored by most union
leaderships points away from the direct class battle a strike represents, but in truth there is no replacement in workers’ toolbelt for the strike. As workers our ability to withhold labor is our one and only true weapon to fight back against the bosses whose only concern is profit accumulation. The labor movement, more than ever, needs more militant strike action not less. There is no way to “both win” for bosses and workers when the logic of profit making means the less well off workers are, the better shareholders do. With new unionization drives breaking out everywhere, from Starbucks to Amazon, and new questions of how to win strong contracts that actually reflect the pressing needs of workers looming, a fight against business unionism across the labor movement is an urgent necessity. Conservative labor leaders would surely use a ruling in the bosses’ favor in this case to throw as much cold water as possible on talks of strike actions, and could set the labor movement back years. Despite an alarming lack of urgency on the part of labor leaders, Workers Strike Back isn’t taking this threat laying down. Through tireless organizing here in Washington State, we passed a resolution calling for national action to defend the right to strike through the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, which represents more than 100,000 union members in King County, Washington with 97% support. Now we are building on that momentum to hold a protest on May 6th outside the Federal Courthouse in Seattle, demanding the right to strike be defended. This came about not by waiting for those at the top to take the initiative and do what’s right, but through insistent and determined rank-and-file action. It will take massive, organized resistance to beat back this attack. Workers Strike Back is organizing a national week of action the first week of May to shine a spotlight on this attack and do everything in our power as working people to fight this assault on our most vital right. You can find events happening around the country at WorkersStrikeBack.org. Get involved! J
THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS CORRUPT — CLARENCE THOMAS AND THE BILLIONAIRE MEGADONOR MANDY GEE, CHICAGO Private jet rides, luxury vacations, destination mega-yacht trips, and secretive real estate deals – these are just a few of the many gifts Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received from Republican megadonor and billionaire Harlan Crow over the course of 20 years. ProPublica broke the news on April 5, detailing the luxury trips Thomas accepted virtually every year from Crow without disclosing them. Crow, who is known to have a vast collection of Nazi memorabilia, has long supported efforts to move the judiciary to the right, and even maneuvered to introduce Thomas to Leonard Leo, a leader within the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian organization which champions “intentionalism” and states’ rights. While Thomas’ corruption will not surprise many people, there are those who have been misled to believe that the Supreme Court is a
non-partisan institution whose commitment is to the letter of the law. The truth is that, despite its anointed role as the “guardian of the Constitution,” the US Supreme Court is a supremely undemocratic and highly political institution. Under capitalism, the courts, the police, and the political establishment are designed to work hand-in-hand to defend the interests of the wealthy.
Impeach and Remove Clarence Thomas It should be obvious to anyone that somebody this reactionary and with this many conflicts of interest and special interests behind him has no business as a legal authority. But the majority of Democrats won’t dare call for his ousting. Why? The Supreme Court’s right-wing judicial activism is a problem for the Democrats because it’s contributing to a widespread decline in legitimacy of the Supreme Court
and US institutions – but it wouldn’t be safe for Biden and leading Democrats to get behind something like impeachment to hold Thomas accountable, because that would make US institutions even more vulnerable. If we purge corrupt politicians, who’s going to protect Democrats like Dianne Feinstein, John Hickenlooper, and Mark Kelly from being punished for insider trading? Or investigating the relationship between Nancy Pelosi and the Getty Oil dynasty? Working-class people must recognize that our real power comes from outside the halls of capitalist state institutions. We have the power to win genuine social change through action and organization in our workplaces, communities, and schools. The only way workers will overcome the bosses and their courts – and the capitalist system itself – is through building a mass movement of workers and youth organizing collectively, on an ongoing basis to conduct a struggle that wins. J
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WORSE OFF THAN BEFORE BY JESADA JITPRAPHAKHAN, LOS ANGELES Over three long years ago,
COVID-19 began its brutal rampage through human society. In that time, it killed 7 million people worldwide and hospitalized far more. People lost jobs and sorely-needed incomes, falling further behind on rent and struggling with other basic expenses. Others were kept working in hazardous conditions with inadequate protection, while students stayed home and effectively lost months of education. It didn’t take long for the pandemic to trigger a global recession, and the ensuing economic whiplash has been a hostile environment for working people to find their feet. To address this crisis, the US government rolled out a piecemeal social safety net, something most Americans have never experienced before: unemployment insurance and SNAP benefits were boosted, direct cash payments were distributed, Medicaid was expanded, evictions were paused, and more. None of this was done out of the goodness of any politician’s heart though: without taking some of these unprecedented stabilizing measures, capitalism was at risk of complete collapse. But despite the motivations of these politicians, for a short period of time, many of us had money in our pockets and got a glimmer into the type of basic social welfare enjoyed by most Europeans. Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone.
Closing The Book Three long years later, Biden and the Democrats are closing the book on COVID for good. On April 10, Biden terminated the “national emergency” that had been in effect since March 2020. And on May 11, Biden will allow the “public health emergency” declaration, which has until now been renewed every 90 days since January 2020, to expire. What does any of this mean in practice, for millions of working class people in the US? The “COVID social safety net” has already been disintegrating, piece by piece, over the last several years. The eviction moratorium expired in July 2021. The expansion of unemployment insurance ended two months later. The child tax credit expired in December 2021. Now, with prices skyrocketing, working people struggling to make rent can be evicted with ease, parents buckling under the enormous costs of childcare have long since lost their state support, and young people are now on the hook again for astronomical student debt payments. We’re now entering the final stage in the erosion of the COVID social safety net with
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the end of the federal emergency declarations. This means that the exceptional conditions that prompted the construction of the safety net will no longer be recognized to exist. The biggest impact will be in healthcare: Medicare and private insurance will no longer be required to cover at-home COVID19 tests, and without the federal government purchasing test kits in bulk, prices are sure to rise. Private insurance won’t need to cover PCR tests either, and antiviral treatments like Paxlovid would likely be subject to cost sharing when the government runs out of supply. To date, the government has purchased over 1.2 billion doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but will soon stop purchasing completely and start transitioning COVID-19 vaccines to the commercial market. When the vaccine companies were negotiating prices with the federal government as the single biggest buyer, the US was able to secure an average price of $20.69 per dose. In the market, now negotiating instead with purchasers and insurance companies, Pfizer and Moderna expect to quintuple the price to $110-$130 per dose. This is the moment they’ve been waiting for. While vaccines will continue to be free for the insured, we can expect insurance companies to pass the cost on by raising premiums. The uninsured and underinsured might not be so lucky, although both Moderna and Pfizer say they plan “patient assistance programs” to keep the vaccine free for the uninsured. This is, of course, a PR move they’ll hope to offset through their massive price hike, but there’s also no guarantee it will last. Meanwhile the Biden administration is planning a billion-dollar public-private partnership with pharmacies which they hope will facilitate the distribution of those vaccines. On top of all this, market anarchy means that supply may not match demand, and we could find ourselves in a new wave of the pandemic with vaccines in short supply and prices jacked up through the roof. The Biden administration is closing the book not because the pandemic is in any way over, but because they’ve decided that enough time has passed that the doors can be opened all the way for big business to swoop in and resume their game of maximizing profit, with the limited rules they’re used to. With our seatbelts now fully unbuckled, hurtling through a world still stricken by an ever-mutating pandemic and a few new layers of economic and political instability – on balance, we really are worse off than before.
“With our seatbelts now fully unbuckled, hurtling through a world still stricken by an ever-mutating pandemic and a few new layers of economic and political instability — on balance, we really are worse off than before.”
What Was The Capitalist Class Forced To Give? The coronavirus pandemic has been an absolute disaster for the world. But the measures taken by the US government, and many other governments globally, gave us a glimpse of what a genuine social safety net could look like. Stimulus checks: Between March 2020 and March 2021, three rounds of direct “economic impact payments” were made to a majority of adults in the US – over 160 million taxpayers who earned under a threshold amount of money. If eligible for all 3 payments, a person would have received a total of $3,200 deposited into their bank account and $2,500 per child. Child tax credit: The expanded child tax credit bumped up the amount families would receive from $2,000 to $3,000 per child aged 6-16, and to $3,600 per child under 6. Instead of having to wait for their tax returns, families were sent payments in monthly disbursements, helping them pay
for necessary expenses with quicker cash on hand. This expansion only lasted from July to December 2021, but combined with other safety net measures, 2.9 million kids were lifted out of poverty in 2021, and the child poverty rate dropped roughly in half. By January 2022, just a month later, the child poverty rate again rose from 12.1% to 17%. Expanded unemployment benefits: In the first several months of the pandemic, tens of millions of workers in the US lost hours, and nearly 10 million became unemployed because their employer closed or lost business. Unemployment benefits were expanded to include an extra $600 “topup” per week. This benefit disappeared midyear and returned temporarily in 2021 at a reduced $300 top-up. Unemployment benefits were extended to gig workers, freelancers, and other independent contractors not typically eligible. At its height, unemployed workers could extend their benefits for 53 additional weeks. All of this was an enormous financial lifeline for workers, but it also had an impact on consciousness.
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
Families in southwest Virginia load groceries from food banks into their carts and vehicles. Since expanded SNAP benefits ended in early March, an increased number of people now have to rely on food banks to feed themselves.
With the $300 top-up, a quarter of recipi- measures: suspending payments on federal ents actually earned more on unemployment student loans, dropping interest rates to 0%, than they did working, a damning demonstra- and stopping collection on defaulted loans. tion of how intolerable it is to be a wage worker This has actually been extended until Biden’s in the US. debt relief program is resolved in court, or late The pandemic provoked many working August, whichever comes first. By the end of class people to reconsider work, to evaluate 2021, 30 million borrowers saw increases to what they wanted to do, and to feel the free- their credit scores. dom – if for a limited time – to just say no to all the crappy jobs they might ordinarily need Lifelines On Slow Drip to take. A similar disgust and rejection of work has been behind the “Great Resignation.” – Or Sometimes Simply Quitting is not a long-term solution, but the Squandered yearning for something better can lead many The amount of federal money set aside for workers to the conclusion that we need to fight working people was far less than what was together for it. needed and what was possible, but it was Eviction moratorium: Housing is easily nonetheless unprecedented. Still, state and the largest expense for most people, and rentlocal administrations have done a criminally ers – often people who don’t make enough to bad job at getting those funds to the people purchase a home – comprise 36% of housewho need them the most. holds in the US. Over 6.5 million families were Of $190 billion in federal relief for elemenbehind on rent payments during the pandemic, tary and secondary schools, across the country and to hold off the destabilizing risk of mass $130 billion was still unspent by late 2022. evictions, renter protections were rolled out in As of this month, New Jersey has only spent patchwork fashion. $1.1 billion of the $6.24 billion they received. The first federal eviction moratorium took They’ve actually allocated hundreds of millions effect from March-July 2020, barring landof it for some extremely useful projects – water lords from initiating evictions against tenants infrastructure, Robert Wood Johnson Univerfor nonpayment of rent. But this only covered sity Hospital, and a universal preschool facilirental properties with federally backed mortties fund – but none have yet used any of the gages – about a quarter of all rental housing in funding. Meanwhile, the state spent over half a the US. 43 states declared state-level moramillion on SUVs for state officials. New Orleans toriums as well, but most had expired by the is flush with cash, but the city has major staffspring and summer months. ing shortages because it refuses to pay The CDC then ordered a moratoits workers a living wage. rium in September 2020, which The media is quick to blame was extended through July “bureaucracy,” which 2021. This moratorium isn’t entirely wrong, but covered more properties, “But despite the there’s a political explabut still required renters motivations of these polination for this logjam. to jump through hoops: Even when this money ticians, for a short period to first try to obtain is made available and of time, many of us had other government is sorely needed, polirental assistance, to money in our pockets... ticians in charge guard make whatever parThen, as quickly as it it like misers, dazed by tial payments they can the neoliberal hangover. came, it was gone.” afford, and to be at risk They’re so accustomed to of homelessness or overbudget shortfalls and auscrowded housing upon evicterity that they want to stretch tion. It also did not bar landlords these relief dollars as long as they from charging late fees. Despite their can. To be sure, the firehose of cash has long limitations, the moratoriums caused a sharp since been tightened shut and won’t be readdrop in evictions and helped keep people ily turned on again, but the political establishhoused. ment certainly isn’t making serious plans to tax Moratorium on debt collection: Nearly the rich and extend these lifelines long-term at 1 in 5 adults in the US have student loan a local level. debt, making monthly payments of about With the end of the emergency declara$400 on average. In March 2020, the CARES tions, House Republicans are even raising a Act instituted some basic student loan relief M AY 2 0 2 3
clawback of up to $70 billion in unspent pandemic money, with Kevin McCarthy asserting, “If the money was authorized to fight the pandemic, what was not spent during the pandemic should not be spent after the pandemic is over.” A more creative and frivolous approach was taken by the West Virginia Governor’s Office, whose “Gifts, Grants and Donations Fund”’ siphoned up $28 million in unused relief funds and promptly spent $10 million on a baseball stadium five days later. California will actually burn through all its rental assistance money, but farcically claims that the last $177 million are needed to pay a private contractor to issue denial notices to 140,000 households on the waitlist.
Winning A Genuine Social Safety Net Regardless of its shortcomings, for millions of working people, the COVID social safety net had a real impact in blunting the severity of the crisis. But perpetual crisis was already the status quo for many, even before the pandemic hit. If we’d had a genuine social safety net all along, imagine how many kids could grow up free from poverty, how many people wouldn’t have to decide between food and rent, or just purely how many lives could be saved? These concessions were significant, but we need to win them on a generalized basis: they must be permanent, not temporary. They must be a comprehensive and unified system, not a jumble of uncoordinated policies. But we’ll also need to go farther and take on the business interests that stand in our way. Big corporate landlords won’t stand for an indefinite eviction moratorium or a cancellation of back rent – we need to take millions of rental units out of their profit-driven hands and put them into public ownership. Lending companies like Sallie Mae effortlessly pushed Biden back from canceling the already inadequate $10,000 of student debt per borrower – these companies serve no useful function in a society that can afford free public college. The assortment of measures taken to safeguard our health, like expansion of Medicaid, free testing, vaccines, and antivirals, all need to be linked up and expanded as part of a single Medicare for All system that derives no profit from keeping us alive. We’ll need a mass working-class movement to win any one of these changes, and the path to victory will set us on an unavoidable headon collision with the interests of the billionaire class. The experience of the last several years has demonstrated that the money is all there to provide better living conditions for working
71%
used their first stimulus check to pay for food & groceries.
used their first stimulus check to pay for rent.
23%
used their first stimulus check to pay off debt.
say they’re now buying “only the essentials” at the grocery.
73%
30%
43%
say increased cost of groceries is putting a strain on their savings.
people, but big business and their servants in office will only make it available when crisis is brought to their doorstep and they see the collapse of their system as a real possibility. That’s exactly the threat our movement needs to pose. We need the full weight of organized labor thrown behind these demands, because the power of the working class to withhold our labor and stop business as usual can create a more significant crisis for the ruling class than even the pandemic did – that is, if we’re sufficiently organized and uncompromising in our struggle. The role of the Democrats has always been to disorganize working-class movements and compromise at every turn to limit our victories. We’ll need to cut ties with the Democrats and build our own party for working class people through which militant class struggle can be organized and channeled. But regardless of the strength of the movement we build, at the end of the day, capitalism is a system where the rich hold the reins of power. Under capitalism, any gain for working class people can be taken away, just like the COVID social safety net, and the best we can hope for is an endless tug of war where the billionaire class has the upper hand. Only by bringing an end, not just to for-profit industries but to this entire for-profit social system, can we escape this perpetual struggle to get what we need to stay alive: we need to build a socialist world. J
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WORKERS STRIKE BACK
TIPPED AND TRICKED IT’S TIME TO PAY SERVICE WORKERS A LIVING WAGE
LIAM EASTON-CALABRIA, BOSTON If you’ve recently been out to eat, grabbed a cup of coffee, taken a Lyft, or gotten a haircut, you’ve likely given someone a tip. Leaving a tip as a sign of appreciation is a regular practice in the US, and is more common here than in any other country in the world. Tipping has become increasingly prevalent across different service sector jobs, and as wages have stagnated and the cost of living has increased dramatically, tips make up an important part of the income for roughly five million workers in the US. While tipping is a lifeline for workers in today’s working conditions, the economic model of tipping as a whole is anti-worker and negatively impacts both the worker and the customer. Most tipped workers would say that they really need tips. A restaurant server, thought of as the “classic” tipped worker, usually earns a majority of their income through tips, while getting a subminimum wage from their employer. In many states, this subminimum wage is only the federal minimum of $2.13 an hour. Servers therefore rely on customers at restaurants to tip between 15-20% of sales in order to make ends meet. When customers tip below this, or not at all, it can put servers and their families in financially strenuous positions. The difference in tipped wages month to month can determine whether a family is able to pay their rent.
A Growing Problem Tipped work has changed over time, however, and tips now play a larger role in work outside of just the restaurant industry. There are more service jobs than ever before. This March, the leisure and hospitality sector saw the most growth with 72,000 new positions, while manufacturing, construction, and retail sectors all saw job losses. An economy dominated by service jobs means many more workers holding multiple jobs in precarious industries. The custom of tipping has expanded to include thousands of counter-service workers, including baristas and food service, and gig workers that work for companies like Uber or DoorDash. These workers make minimum wage and typically make far less in tips than servers. The pathetic state of the $7.25/hr federal minimum wage means tips are still vital to making rent, buying groceries, and generally scraping by. In the age of persistent inflation and stagnant wages, even $15/ hr is a poverty wage across the US. To many workers, tips make it possible to survive, and therefore tipping itself can feel like an act of solidarity between working people.
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However, at the heart of the matter, tipping allows bosses to shove the burden of providing a living wage onto other workers, i.e. customers, generating even more exorbitant profits off the cheap labor of their employees. While tipped work today has sanitized its image to distance itself from its racist rigins in the Reconstruction period, the power imbalance created by the tipping system remains the same, pitting service workers against working class customers. Customer-facing tipped workers endure far greater levels of harassment and exploitation than their nontipped counterparts. The reliance we have on our tips means we are much more vulnerable to mistreatment and are financially incentivized to withstand verbal and even physical abuse while on the job. Whether a customer has an angry outburst about their overcooked burger or makes a sexist comment to their barista, the tipped worker has to judge how their response will affect the tips from their customer and those around them. Smiling through these types of situations is often the choice that workers have to make. Far from being on the side of their employees, managers and supervisors are financially incentivized to downplay or ignore instances of mistreatment and penalize workers who speak up. Sexual harassment is one of the biggest abuses increased by the tipping system. All tipped workers report higher rates of sexual harassment, but women are by far the most affected. 71% of female restaurant workers report having been sexually harassed on the job, and not only from customers – 41% report facing harassment from a manager or supervisor! Our low wages make the financial exchange from customer to employee extremely important, and in our deeply sexist capitalist society, that power imbalance manifests in extreme objectification of women service workers. In a recent trend on TikTok, female servers report that wearing their hair in pigtails results in significantly greater tips. While these servers recognize that this is because men are sexually infantilizing them, many say they are going to keep wearing their hair up after testing the “pigtail theory.” As one server put it with a shrug, “single mom,” pointing to herself. This trend is just one of many examples of how women in the service industry are pressured to withstand abuse and even normalize their own objectification. Gig workers like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash drivers face a different side of the problem: consistent undertipping. While it has long been expected that customers leave a solid 20% tip for taxi drivers, the tradition hasn’t translated to app drivers in the same way. Multiple reports show that Uber
WORKERS’ CONTROL
WHAT IS IT AND HOW COULD IT CHANGE OUR LIVES? TONY WILSDON, SEATTLE Every day brings more evidence of corporate negligence and even deliberate criminality. Whether it is railroad companies cutting costs resulting in derailments – polluting towns, or companies engaging in wage theft by illegally withholding pay from its workers. Yet, the billionaires and millionaires who own these companies continue to enjoy undisturbed lives of luxury, protected by well-paid lawyers and corrupt politicians. For working people, the rules are completely different. Time and again, we are the ones desperately picking up the pieces after bank collapses, recessions, and housing slumps. Capitalism is a system for millionaires and billionaires. Yet without the labor of millions of workers, nothing would move. So how come the billionaires continue to control our society? In short, because we, the
vast majority – the working class – are not organized. To challenge the billionaire class we need to build workers power and workers control in our workplaces and society. The place we have most power is the workplace. By getting organized at work, previous generations stood up to and defeated mining barons, auto tycoons, and rail execs. These dynamic struggles won a whole series of essential reforms like Social Security, healthcare, and overtime pay. Not to mention the eight hour work week! This was only achieved through workers organizing labor unions, and building struggles from the ground up involving wider working-class communities. The vast majority of unions have since taken a different path, with a tiny clique creating bureaucratic structures that put their own interests first and shut out the workers from decision-making. Despite these obstacles, workers are
increasingly fighting back. Workers on the job, conscious of their power, are the only force that can truly defeat corporate giants. We find inspiration in the example of workers at General Motors who, exercising workers control, occupied the auto plants in the winter of 1936 for 44 days. This paralyzed the company, winning union recognition and huge improvements in their lives, inspiring millions of other workers to follow their example. In Seattle in 1919, workers all stopped work at the same time, and shut down all corporate activity for a week. These struggles should give us inspiration, demonstrating our potential power. Building democratic and fighting unions will be the first step in building real workers power in broader society. Ultimately, true and lasting workers control will require taking major industries out of the hands of the bosses and running them ourselves. J
drivers average under 10% in tips. This may be because of the depersonalization of the app experience or because these companies pile on junk fees that inflate prices. App drivers are subject to very inconsistent wages because of fluctuating demand, especially since the pandemic. This, compounded by the high price of gas, means tips are all the more important for drivers, sometimes to just break even for a food delivery. Black and Hispanic workers are much more likely to work these jobs than their white counterparts.
with this has come to be known as “guilttipping” because most people know service workers deserve more than what they’re getting, but rightly feel as though they shouldn’t be the one to pay for it. Service workers are right to be upset when someone tips less than expected: that money is sorely needed. However, this anger should be turned against the bosses, not other workers. For the time being, we absolutely shouldn’t stop tipping. Socialist Alternative stands with unionized and unionizMake the Bosses ing Starbucks Pay As of 2023, workers fighting for credit card 16 states still Ultimately, customers tipping, as it are paying the price for guarantee only a subminimum would dramatitipping culture. The Square wage of $2.13 per hour for cally improve app may give a suggested tipped workers. 13 more have workers’ lives tip amount of $1, $2, or $3 and especially when a worker takes 30 secminimums of less than $5. because it’s been onds to scoop your ice cream or used as a bargaining pour your black coffee, and even chip against the union suggests a tip for the server staff of drive. Making the bosses 20% when picking up food, not dining in. pay for our labor, not other workers, Our tips go to workers (usually), but allow the bosses to keep wages at the bare minimum will require mass unionization of the service while lining their pockets. The point-of-ser- industry built on campaigns for the best vice tipping model pressures the customer possible wage increases, so we can begin to tip on things that we may not have in the to phase out this anti-worker custom and past, and with companies using inflation as replace it with a stable and livable income for an excuse to blatantly price-gouge us, this all workers. J extra cost can sting. The anxiety that comes S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
WA R & I M P E R I A L I S M Daily headlines about mass shootings are a shocking indicator that American life is far from “back to normal” as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. At the time of writing, there have been 175 mass shootings (defined as incidents in which at least four people were shot, not including the perpetrator) so far this year. The most recent to hit the headlines: five family members in rural Texas were killed by a neighbor after they asked him to stop using his AR-15 for target practice at 11pm. The youngest victim of that attack was eight years old. In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death for US teens and children, accounting for 97% of all gun deaths of people under 20 in the world’s 12 richest countries – a horrific reflection of the fact that the US, by far the richest country in the world, sees many times as many violent deaths as its nearest rivals. As we said in 2021, the pandemic dramatically worsened all of the existing injustices we face in our society and was accompanied by the biggest economic slump since WWII. As in every social crisis under capitalism, the effects were dramatically different based on which class people belonged to and what racially segregated community they lived in. Analyses of the statistics from 2019-2021 have verified these observations. In 2020 the US murder rate rose by nearly 30%. More than 75% of murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, reaching a terrible new high point. As we go to press there have been 13,734 recorded gun deaths in the US so far this year, averaging 115 each day. Mass shootings, although they account for quite a small minority of the total of gun deaths, represent peaks of desperation in a society where millions feel hopeless. 60% of US gun deaths – 7,854 so far this year – are suicides.
A Crisis In Our Communities And Homes Gun violence affects the whole of US society, but its effects are distributed according to existing inequalities and oppressions and made infinitely worse by the uniquely widespread presence of guns, with more than twice as many guns per person than in any other country. The crisis is deepest in Black and Native communities. According to the CDC, Black males have by far the highest rate of gun deaths, nearly twice as high as the
second-highest which is American Indian/ Alaskan Native males. But the ever-present threat of gun violence affects every demographic. Having a gun in your home makes you more, not less, likely to be a victim of gun violence – doubling the owner’s risk of becoming a victim of homicide and tripling the risk of suicide. The vast majority of gun suicide victims are white men. Women are five times more likely to be murdered by an abusive partner when the abuser has access
long as brutal social conditions persist, but there is a crying need for gun control measures based on the desperate, immediate demands of working class people. Socialist Alternative supports the demands to ban high-capacity magazines, automatic and semi-automatic weapons; implement background checks and waiting periods for gun sales; and close the gun show loophole. However, when enforced by the capitalist state, these reforms can have their own consequences. We have already seen how back-
THE CRISIS OF
GUN VIOLENCE STEPHEN EDWARDS, CHICAGO
to a gun. People’s fear of being attacked in their homes, which is stoked by endless TV dramas and news reports that focus on crime and policing, have led to a horrific series of people shot for going to the wrong door, like Black teenager Ralph Yarl in Missouri, and 20 year-old Kaylin Gillis in upstate New York. Buying guns with the expectation that they will offer protection, despite the obvious danger presented by always having a gun within reach, is an expression of powerlessness in a society where vast numbers of people feel that no-one is listening. What is needed to reduce gun violence is a transformation in our society’s social and political priorities. The violence and alienation seen in working class communities is a reflection of tremendous instability in the foundations of society as well as the fact that powerful, left-wing political movements like Bernie Sanders’ campaigns, the March for Our Lives in 2018 and the Black Lives Matter rebellion in 2020 have not produced clear political gains. Gun control is far from a catch-all solution to many forms of gun violence, especially so
ground checks and police actions aimed at gun control can be used against the Black working class. A recent study shows how police in Chicago are carrying out increased traffic stops of Black men under the pretext of “getting guns off the street” – actively harassing Black motorists and finding reasons to charge them with gun crimes even when the victim of the traffic stop holds a concealed-carry permit. With an estimated 400 million guns already in circulation and a firearms industry that continues to push gun ownership as a solution, a serious anti-violence program needs to focus on fighting the poverty, segregation, and alienation that create the conditions in which guns are used. Our solution must extend far beyond gun control to include the demilitarization of the police and public schools; full funding for social service programs in schools including music, art, and libraries; a real livable minimum wage of at least $20 and other antipoverty measures; socialized health care; and a massive jobs program. We also need a growth of solidarity and social struggle to fight for a decent society. This is what will really begin to overcome alienation and what the endlessly violent ruling class of this country fears most.
Addressing The Roots Of Gun Violence
Students protest gun violence in schools at the Tennessee state Capitol Monday, April 3, 2023.
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radicalization leading to mass shootings like last year in Buffalo. While domestic violence has risen since the pandemic and as reproductive rights have suffered vicious blows, over four million women in the US have been threatened with a gun. Homophobic and transphobic acts of mass violence like the Pulse nightclub shooting and the Club Q shooting in Colorado have shaken the LGBTQ community. For any marginalized group, disproportionate exposure to hate crimes goes hand in hand with
We are in a period of right-wing reactionary backlash with the worst forms of oppression that plague society asserting themselves in politics and in our everyday social lives. In the US, more than any other comparable nation, these oppressions are held in place by the barrel of a gun. Racism is conserved with deadly force, ranging from police shootings of people of color to outright white-supremacist
disproportionate exposure to gun violence or threat thereof: nearly 8 in 10 homicides of Black trans women are by a gun. Much less reported than mass shootings – which are already too many for the media to keep track of – is the fact that the majority of gun deaths are at the victim’s own hand. Along with an overall fraying of the social fabric and an unprecedented mental health crisis, 2021 saw record numbers of suicides by firearm in addition to gun murders. The March for Our Lives movement after the 2018 Parkland school shooting showed what can be done in terms of mass mobilizations against gun violence, but the movement was sold out by Democratic Party politicians who purported to stand with the student activists only to later betray them. More aggressive tactics are needed. Recently, after a horrific school shooting in Nashville, TN, three relatively new Democratic state representatives were pushed into a fighting position by public outcry. They led a protest inside the state legislature calling for greater measures to restrict lethal firearms than what the Republican majority was willing to put forward (which started and ended with increased security in schools). Two of the three representatives (notably, the two Black men) were promptly expelled from the legislature in a shocking retaliation from the NRA-funded Republican right. However, they were later reinstated due to backlash. These are the kinds of tactics we need on a broad and persistent basis. Having politicians taking the lead in mobilizing is a huge bonus, but we know from prior experience that we can’t rely on their initiative. Occupations of legislative buildings, mass walkouts, protests, and strike action need to come from ordinary people facing the brutal effects of the crisis and know firsthand how deep it goes and what is needed to stop it. J
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GOVERNMENT
DEMYSTIFYING THE DEBT CEILING STEPHEN THOMPSON, CHICAGO
“The fight over the debt ceiling largely reflects tactical disagreements within the ruling class about how to implement a shared goal: making regular people live with less, while the rich continue to get richer.”
For the past three months, the business press has been sounding the alarm about the “debt ceiling,” which sets the legal limit on how much the US government can borrow. A recent article in the Financial Times, which discussed the possibility of “financial Armageddon” and featured a picture of a mushroom cloud, is indicative of the widespread concern. The debt ceiling was first created over a century ago and since then, Congress has repeatedly increased it to keep up with new government borrowing. Generally, these increases have been routine events. But this winter, echoing a similar incident in 2011, Republicans in Congress have been threatening to block further increases in the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that this could lead to “economic and financial collapse.” What’s going on?
stepped up, and corporations moved jobs to countries where workers could be paid far less. Rather than rallying the public to fight back and spearheading movements to defend workers’ standard of living, the leadership of most unions instead largely accepted defeat and rammed through round after round of concessionary union contracts. As a result, from 1980 to 2014, the income of the richest 0.01% of Americans grew by an astonishing 423% while average real incomes for the bottom half of adults remained stuck at about $16,000 per year. But this attempt to prop up capitalism also created a whole new set of problems. Among them is the fact that, because of the offshoring of jobs, many of the goods purchased in the US are now produced elsewhere. This has created a chronic deficit between domestic income and expenditures, which – as a matter of fundamental accounting logic – means rising debt.
many jobs will actually return. In fact, rather than heralding a new manufacturing boom in the US, the growing split between the world’s major capitalist powers has instead brought with it the Ukraine War, together with rising military spending, nationalism, and inflation. Instead of prosperity for working people, this new phase of capitalism only promises more instability and economic stagnation. Meanwhile, the past several decades of corporate globalization are far from being completely reversed, and as a consequence, the US economy continues to have a massive trade deficit. So, despite important changes within capitalism, US indebtedness has continued to grow.
A System In Decline
Skyrocketing Debt
Financial Armageddon?
The turmoil in US politics is a reflection of deeper problems. Since the 1970s, the US economy has seen productivity growth stagnate, and this has made it more difficult to generate the ever-increasing profits upon which capitalism is based. To help shore up their system and restore profitability, capitalists and their politicians – both Democrats and Republicans – worked to suppress wages and slash corporate tax rates. Attacks on the labor movement
Since the 2008 crash, some important shifts have taken place. In particular, after increasing for several decades, international trade has declined somewhat as a percentage of global GDP. This process, which is frequently referred to as “deglobalization” or “decoupling,” reflects the growing interimperialist rivalry between the US and China. Deglobalization is also sometimes touted as a way to return production to the United States, but it is far from clear that
As a consequence of all this, the federal government only collects enough tax revenue to finance about 80% of its spending, which means the remaining amount must be borrowed. As a result, in January, federal debt reached the current legal limit of $31.4 trillion. For now Republicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless they get trillions of dollars in spending cuts first. But they are themselves divided on what programs should get the axe. One proposal involves raising the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security to 70, while others have suggested deep cuts to Medicaid and other programs. In order to pay the government’s bills without breaching the debt ceiling, treasury officials have had to resort to “extraordinary measures” like suspending government investments in retirement plans. These maneuvers will buy time, but unless the debt ceiling increases, within a matter of months the government simply will not have enough money to keep up with interest payments, retirement benefits and other legal obligations. This would mean an unprecedented default by the US government. The effects of this could be disastrous. Historically, US federal debt has been widely viewed by investors and central banks as a “safe” way to store wealth, because of the assumption that it will yield guaranteed interest payments and maintain a relatively stable value. A default would show that this assumption no longer holds. This would upend the foundations of the global financial system, and could be hugely destabilizing.
PENTAGON LEAKS COULD BE DISASTROUS IN UKRAINE WAR GRACE FORS, CHICAGO Who would have thought the most extensive and consequential leaks of classified intelligence information since Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks on the NSA would come from a Minecraft Discord server? Hundreds of pages of detailed Pentagon briefs circulated online for months before being picked up by the mainstream media, much less the Pentagon itself. A rapid investigation led to a raid on the Dighton, MA home of a 21 year-old National Guardsman and a prompt arrest on April 13. US authorities will go to great lengths to make an example of this suspected leaker to cover up their embarrassment. These leaks constituted a major humiliation for US imperialism. They created a diplomatic crisis between the US and the Five Eyes alliance of espionage agencies. Documents revealed the extensive use of signals intelligence to spy on enemies and friends alike – including allied countries and even
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individuals like the UN general secretary and Zelensky. The most significant takeaway, however, was the consensus on the trajectory of the Ukraine War. Detailed assessments of strained Ukrainian and Russian military capabilities, with critical shortages and failures on both sides to make significant territorial gains, a trend which is likely to continue. Reports describe heavy involvement from the US and Western powers in arming and training the Ukrainian Armed Forces and in soliciting other countries to back Ukraine. Similarly, Russia’s attempts to secure foreign military aid from China, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey – a NATO member – are alleged. While the predictions themselves are far from shocking, it’s a clear confirmation of the grim reality of this war that International Socialist Alternative has put forward for months. This war has turned into a bloody stalemate with the potential for massive escalation. The leaks show why the left in Congress is so wrong to support the Western imperialist agenda in the name of “helping the Ukrainian people.” What is really needed is an independent working class force in Ukraine, Russia and around the world fighting for peace, real self-determination and an end to the capitalist system that breeds war. J
The Purpose Of The Debt Ceiling Of course, there is a simple way to avoid all this: get rid of the debt ceiling. So why
hasn’t that happened? The reason is that, at least for certain sections of the ruling class, the debt ceiling serves an important purpose. Opinion surveys have shown that, while most normal people do not attach significant importance to government debt, wealthy people view federal debt reduction as a top priority. They see the massive buildup of debt relative to GDP and are understandably concerned about what that means for the long-term viability of their system. So they want to reduce that debt by cutting spending on the social programs that benefit the rest of us. Although such spending cuts would likely generate massive public opposition, a debt crisis can make it possible to force them through anyway; just ask the people of Ecuador, or Greece, or Jordan, or Ireland. While a full-blown debt crisis in the US is not in the interests of the ruling class, the threat of such a crisis – which is precisely what the debt ceiling is being used to create – can serve the same purpose. Others in the ruling class have expressed opposition to this tactic, while still supporting the goal of cutting social spending. Joe Biden has demanded that Republicans raise the debt ceiling, but has long advocated cuts in Social Security. Thus the fight over the debt ceiling largely reflects tactical disagreements within the ruling class about how to implement a shared goal: making regular people live with less, while the rich continue to get richer.
We Won’t Pay For The Failures Of Their System! Capitalism is a dysfunctional, backward system in serious decline. In order to keep it alive, the ruling class must bend the rest of society to its twisted logic. For the overwhelming majority of society, there is no reason to continue propping up a failed system. Instead, we need a socialist economy based on public ownership and democratic planning, run for the benefit of all, not the enrichment of a tiny few. As long as capitalism does exist, the ruling class will seek to make the rest of us pay for the problems they create. That’s why, in order to conserve cash and stave off a government default, the Biden administration has already started to curtail government investment in federal workers’ retirement plans. As the drama over the debt ceiling drags on, we can expect more such maneuvers. We need to organize and fight back, being ready to defend key programs like Social Security with mass action in our workplaces and in the streets if necessary. J
S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
C L I M AT E
HANNAH FITZGERALD, PITTSBURGH Capitalism has brought to our doors the critical impacts of climate change: from worsening natural disasters claiming the lives and homes of millions around the globe, to depleting and contaminating humanity’s most vital resources. The Colorado River, one of the largest and most essential river systems in the country, is drying up as a result of global warming and crooked mismanagement of its limited fresh water supply. Rising temperatures have disrupted the existing water cycle by speeding up evaporation, which means lower low tides and prolonged droughts. More and more localities have been affected by droughts, particularly on the West Coast of the US. The Colorado River provides drinking water and hydropower for over 40 million people across eight US states and two Mexican states, and also serves Native American Tribal communities.
beef cattle, another bloated and mishandled appendage of the food industry. While some have hung the blame on individual farmers for leeching water with forever crops, many farms in the US are becoming amalgamated into large industrial operations worked by wage labor. The few small family farms left are under the thumb of these larger monopolies in terms of what they are able to produce and sell at the end of each season. Bill Gates’ massive investments in farmland (Gates owns approx. 270,000 acres!) is a testament to the growth of large monopoly agribusiness. It is widely viewed as a safe bet for venture capitalists, as according to Mother Jones the price of farmland increased sixfold between 1940 and 2015. And with climate change shrinking the amount of fertile land, Wall Street is ready to cash in on its increasing scarcity.
DRAINING US
FOR PROFIT
Climate Disaster Falls On Consequences Of Water Shortage Working People Drought conditions don’t just mean less water. Like many impacts of climate change, this can ripple through a chain reaction that exacerbates existing threats. Droughts can also lead to higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by killing off vegetation able to store it. Dying foliage also means a higher chance of wildfires and soil erosion, which further pushes carbion dioxide into the atmosphere, heating up the planet even more. It is clear to anyone the need for a reliable fresh water supply – as a matter of public health and wellbeing. But instead of taking measures to reverse these effects by cutting down on carbon emissions, Wall Street alongside the corporate establishment have taken to plundering the diminished reservoir. “Thirsty” crops like alfalfa, almonds, grapes, and pistachios are needlessly farmed year round, and make for fruitful investments. Alfalfa particularly is grown to feed
Ordinary people are being put in a life or death situation. While Wall Street lines its pockets, people are forced to line up at the store and shell out money for bottled water to drink. On top of that, electricity and water bills have the potential to skyrocket, forcing working people to yet again foot the bill for this crisis. The Bureau of Reclamation, a government agency which oversees water resource measurement, has put forward two proposals which both aim to ration the water supply. The first would be on a seniority basis, where areas accustomed to using it longer or of “higher priority” would get more usage. The second would cut down the percentage equally across all users. Both options fail to address the root of the problem: climate change and corporate greed. A seniority basis would in fact favor farms in California’s imperial valley, at the
The Colorado River in 2023. The sharp line on the riverbank shows the difference between the river’s normal height, and its current level.
expense of more populous metropolitan areas like Tuscan and Phoenix in Arizona. An even ration would have the largest impact inversely on farmland, but this naturally would cut down on necessary crops coming from that region (lettuce, kale, carrots, etc). These proposals would make working people and small farmers pay the price for major corporations’ greed. Relying on public servants from either side of the aisle won’t solve the many crises brought on by this system. The major agricultural corporations should open their books to the public, to see if their water use is going to be sustainable or not. If exposed for misusage, they should be immediately placed under democratic public ownership to be retooled on the basis
of human need. Water-intensive megacorporations should be heavily taxed to pay for agricultural efficiency devices, which can be implemented across the region, especially for farmers who cannot afford to make the switch. We need an immediate transformation to 100% renewable energy, which would require taking major polluting companies into public ownership as well. Thermoelectric power plants are some of the most water sucking energy sources: we need to transition to solar, wind, geothermal, and other susgainable energy sources. To win these things, we need a mass organized movement along socialist lines that can challenge this system driven by profit. J
HOW THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO Decisions?”, White House reporter Jim Tank- – the party which claims to take climate explains (with disturbing enthusiasm): change seriously. PUSH CLIMATE COSTS ONTO WORKING PEOPLE ersley “The report says, hey, if we keep fighting fires The Biden administration, after publicly
OLIVE KUHN, PHILADELPHIA
Spring has sprung, renters across America are stubbing their thumbs installing window AC units, and Utah and Missouri are partially underwater. Climate chaos poses the real question of how workingclass peoples’ lives, homes, and safety can be protected as we fight not just to adapt to a changing climate but try to roll back the damage. The Biden White House, however, is more concerned with how to avoid paying for the catastrophic do-nothing approach of capitalism at large. In March, the Biden administration published its annual Economic Report of the President. Lurking in one particular chapter was a proposed approach that is as cynical as it is potentially destructive – the suggestion that the government disincentivize “bad climate decisions” by refusing disaster funding for areas that are now at a higher risk of being damaged by climate-related catastrophes. One might think the federal government M AY 2 0 2 3
could respond to climate change by providing substantial aid to climate catastrophe victims, like free healthcare and subsidized relocation or home repair, while investing in public transit and rapidly transitioning our grid away from fossil fuels. Instead, the White House wants to know: how can the government spend less on helping people survive climate change? The report claims that, “for [climate] adaptation, communities, households, and businesses all have their own motivations for responding to and planning for climate risks.” This, the authors argue, makes climate adaptation a “private good,” meaning that the federal government can only try to incentivize “good” climate decisions – not step in directly. In plain English, this means withholding funds from cities and states that continue to build in possible disaster zones, including barring access to the National Flood Insurance Program. In an episode of The Daily, the podcast of the New York Times, titled “Should the Government Pay For Your Bad Climate
around say, gated subdivisions in parts of the West that are bone dry, that will continue to encourage people to live in those places when maybe they should not be taking the risks of living in.” The obvious problem with this policy is that people would die. The reality is that most “climate decisions” are not actually decisions at all. The people most threatened by climate catastrophe are not the people in the hypothetical gated subdivision in the dry West, but the people living in basement-level apartments who can’t afford to leave before the unexpected flood hits, or the people living in trailer parks where hurricanes and tornadoes have become far more frequent. Under capitalism, life for most working-class people is a race to the bottom. People make decisions based on their economic realities, and most often can’t afford to change their lifestyles based around the growing risk of disaster. On top of this is the reality that neither adaptation nor mitigation are being treated as a “public good” by the Democratic Party
committing to end new drilling on federal land, approved the Willow Oil project, an Alaskan drilling venture that would by the administration’s own estimates add 9.2 trillion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere per year. That’s roughly the equivalent of adding 2 million cars to the road. In addition to being morally repugnant, this policy would drive poor and working class people further into the arms of the right wing, especially in already-conservative states like Florida and Texas. We’re already seeing this with the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; the slow response of the Biden Administration and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in particular gave Trump the opportunity to swoop in and cynically pose as being on the side of the people of East Palestine. This particular disaster, while man-made, shows clearly how the federal government is abandoning people in unlivable conditions to the whims of big business. J Read the rest of this article and more at socialistalternative.org.
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I N T E R N AT I O N A L
BRUTAL FIGHTING RAGES IN SUDAN SERGE JORDAN, ISA
Since the early morning of April 15, the chiefs of the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia have been waging open warfare with each other. The people of Sudan are caught in the crossfire of a fratricidal battle for power between the two most violent wings of the counter-revolution. Terrified residents are trapped inside their houses in the capital Khartoum as urban warfare and air strikes have raged across the city for weeks. According to the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, at the time of writing at least 387 civilians have been killed and 1,928 wounded. This is surely a grave underestimate, as many bodies are lying uncollected on the streets. A series of ceasefires have been brokered internationally over the past weeks, only to immediately collapse. Ahmed, an ISA sympathizer living in Omdurman (Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile) reports: “The situation is very bad. It seems like the fighting will carry on for a long time. There are already two hospitals out of service in my area alone. Medical and food supplies are running out and there is no way to step out of our houses right now. The situation in the neighborhoods around the army positions and around the strategic places in Khartoum are worse. They have no electricity or water.” Reports of heavy looting, rape, and people fleeing their destroyed houses abound, as all the horrors of war have made their way into the heart of the capital. Although the first clashes broke out in Khartoum, they have rapidly spread across multiple parts of the country. Attacks on civilians and hospitals with heavy weaponry have erupted in the western region of Darfur, which is still reeling from two decades of genocidal violence that killed 300,000, under the direction of former dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Who Is Fighting? Not so long ago, the RSF’s leader, warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as “Hemedti”), and the commander of the Sudanese army, General Abdel Fattah alBurhan, were counter-revolutionary partners in crime. The latter became head of the Military Council and the former its deputy after longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir was removed from power by the generals following a mass revolutionary uprising in April 2019. The two men were the masterminds of the massacre of revolutionary protesters at a sit-in in front of the army headquarters in Khartoum in June of the same year. They orchestrated
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the military coup of October 2021, which brought an end to the “power-sharing” framework that had provided a civilian facade to the power of the military junta for two years. But the uneasy alliance between the RSF militia and the generals has since turned completely sour. In reality, the conflict between these forces had been brewing for many years. The RSF is a paramilitary offshoot from the infamous Janjaweed, made up of Arab tribes that were used and armed by al-Bashir’s regime in the early 2000s to wage a genocidal war against the people of the Western Darfur region. They were recycled into the RSF in 2013 as a sort of “second column” of the regime’s defense, in part to counterbalance the power of the army. The RSF was bolstered and funded by the European Union as ruthless “border guards” to stop the influx of migrants from Sudan, and by the Gulf States as mercenaries in the war against the Houthis in Yemen. Through this, Hemedti and his clique managed to build international influence, and to enrich themselves massively in the process. Their business interests expanded along with their ambitions. After the revolution and the toppling of al-Bashir, the RSF grew stronger, and so did the rivalry between the two armed forces and their respective spheres of influence – despite their united efforts to crush the revolutionary aspirations of the masses. Both Hemedti (now one of the richest men in the country) and the military top brass have their hands all over various sectors of the formal and informal economy, in particular the very lucrative export of gold. The military coup of October 2021, far from bringing a bloody end to the revolution as both had expected, revived instead an enduring process of widespread popular resistance, with mass strikes, demonstrations, and road blockades breaking out throughout the country. This accelerated the jostling for power between the RSF and the army leaderships. While stepping up repression, al-Burhan also stacked military officers, Islamists from al-Bashir’s National Congress Party and other old regime loyalists into various state positions, to play them off against the mounting influence of Hemedti’s RSF. From mid-2022, as the country sunk further into crisis, Hemedti started arguing that the coup (which he had previously praised as a “corrective action”) had made the country worse off, and that it had become a gateway for affiliates of the former regime to make a comeback. This mass murderer began rebranding himself as a supporter of democracy and civilian rule, and called for the military to “return to its barracks.” In recent weeks, tensions escalated over the application of a UN-backed “framework agreement” signed last December, which each side wanted to use to curb the other’s power, and over al-Burhan’s attempt to fold the RSF into the armed forces. Now, the daggers are out. Because of the firepower and numerical strength of both camps, and the complex web
of competing interests at stake (each faction is backed by a myriad of regional and international players), a protracted conflict could be in the cards, with potential to drag regional forces into the fighting.
Revolution Betrayed All the main world powers have been quick to condemn the ongoing violence. But these are the same powers who have continuously collaborated with the battling generals and warlords, appeasing them and giving them a seat at their supposedly “democratic” table while their forces were busy slaughtering the Sudanese people on the streets. Embodied in the slogan of their neighborhood-based Resistance Committees, “No Negotiations, No Partnership, No Legitimacy,” the majority of working and poor people in Sudan have rejected all along any deal with the military junta. The framework agreement signed between the army generals and the umbrella group of political forces called the ‘Forces of Freedom and Change’ (FFC), and supported by the EU and by the QUAD for Sudan (namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the US and the UK), was nothing but an umpteenth attempt to resurrect the masquerade of a “democratic transition” with the oppressive and corrupt counter-revolutionary butchers who hold economic, political, and military power in the country – despite them having killed at least 125 anticoup protesters and tortured so many more since their October 2021 coup. This deal triggered a renewed wave of protests across Sudan earlier this year for that very reason. Today, it is abundantly clear that no trust can be had in any of the major or regional capitalist powers to resolve this crisis. Indeed they are responsible in so many ways for having fueled it in the first place. Nor can the masses in Sudan trust any of the formal “opposition” parties, all of which have, at some point or another, to one degree or another, stabbed their demands for justice and their revolutionary aspirations in the back – channeling their years-long struggle into rotten deals with the counter-revolution. In contrast, the thousands of Resistance Committees that have sprung up across the country in recent years have refused to take part in any such arrangements with the military and paramilitary forces. Even as they are in the crossfire of bloody street battles, these committees have heroically been helping people access medical assistance and food supplies by coordinating with local stores and pharmacies. As vital as this is, an action plan should also be laid out to systematically organize the collective self-defense of the population in every neighborhood, as the specter of further killings and other atrocities looms large. Ultimately, the revival of the Sudanese revolution, based on the strengthening and coordination of its own bodies of struggle against all the reactionary and plundering armed factions,
READ MORE AT INTERNATIONALSOCIALIST.NET BRITAIN | NURSES’ UNION REJECTS PAY DEAL The historic vote by Royal College of Nurses (RCN) members to reject the government’s inadequate pay offer represents a tremendous victory for rank-and-file union members. It is a massive blow for the Tories — one that threatens to undermine their entire strategy for dealing with the strike wave. Sunak and Barclay thought that they could ram through a poor but slightly improved NHS deal, using it to divide workers and break up the action. They wanted to leave those still striking increasingly isolated. They have failed. Now step up the strike to fight and win!
BRAZIL | 100 DAYS IN POWER: LULA’S ECONOMIC POLICY One of the expectations with Lula’s victory was that he would reverse the reactionary and retrograde measures implemented by Bolsonaro’s misgovernment. Several important measures were taken which offer a sense of relief. But without a struggle to overcome the economic and political obstacles, such relief will be temporary and limited. This is evident in the new economic policy proposed by the Lula government, the new “fiscal framework,” which maintains the logic of a spending cap and austerity to guarantee the payment of the public debt to the sharks of the financial system.
Demonstrations at Place de la Concorde – translation: power is in the streets!
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REPORTS
SEATTLE RENTERS WIN A CAP ON LATE RENT FEES JUSTIN BARE, SEATTLE On April 18, Seattle renters won a huge victory against the big corporate landlords: a cap of $10 per month on fees for late rent, the lowest anywhere in the country. Prior to this victory, there were essentially no limits on the predatory fees landlords could charge for late rent. As one renter stated when signing the petition in support of the cap, "My landlord charges $250 for late rent. My rent is already half of my take home pay each month, and having to pay the late fee keeps me more in debt every single month.” This victory was spearheaded by Seattle City Councilmember, and member of Socialist Alternative, Kshama Sawant. But it never would have been won with her voice alone because of opposition from other councilmembers, who are all Democratic Party politicians who have repeatedly stood with wealthy landlords and big business owners. For example, last year a majority of them
voted to reduce the wages of grocery workers by $4 per hour by ending the hazard pay policy that was won during the pandemic. This time, Democratic councilmembers attempted to water down the late fee cap to $50, eager to please the landlord lobby. In the end, the full $10 fee cap was won by mobilizing the power of renters, workers (especially union members), socialists, and affordable housing activists together to demonstrate the political consequences these Democrats would face if they stood with the corporate landlords. Led by Councilmember Sawant’s office, this grassroots movement turned out to speak at every City Council meeting, got more than 1,200 emails sent to Democratic councilmembers, and hit the streets to gather over 1,000 petition signatures in favor of the $10 fee cap. Many people who spoke at the council meetings emphasized that these Democrats cannot call themselves "progressive" or "pro-labor" and sell renters out at the same time.
There is much more needed to address the Seattle housing crisis, including universal rent control with no landlord-friendly loopholes. We also need to spread the affordable housing struggle to grassroots movements in other cities. One of the primary lessons from the late fee cap victory is that we cannot rely on self-described "progressive" Democrats – we need our own working class representatives and we need to build independent organizations of regular workers and renters to wage the strongest fight. J
TYLER VASSEUR, NALC BRANCH 9 (PERSONAL CAPACITY) Letter carriers got a glimpse of what a fighting strategy to win a strong contract could look like when 150 workers and supporters rallied in downtown Minneapolis on April 2 under the banner “Staffing, Safety, and Service—Letter Carriers Need a Raise!” Members highlighted the root causes of the staffing crisis: mandatory overtime, pay that hasn’t kept up with inflation or with industry competitors like UPS, a toxic working environment at many stations created by bullying tactics from management, and overall poor working conditions that have led to huge attrition rates of new hires. National contract negotiations between the Letter Carriers (NALC) and the US Postal
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ISSN 2638-3349
EDITOR: Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Tom Crean, Grace Fors, Chris Gray, Joshua Koritz, Greyson Van Arsdale, Tony Wilsdon
Editors@SocialistAlternative.org
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Socialist Alternative is part of International Socialist Alternative (ISA), which has sections in over 30 countries. Learn more about the ISA at internationalsocialist.net.
IN YOUR AREA
Service began at the end of February. It’s a mistake that these national negotiations are usually done behind closed doors. In Minneapolis, we showed that rank-and-file members want to play an active role in the fight.
just have to channel that frustration into an organized expression in the fight for a strong contract.
Anger Into Action
At the next general membership meeting on April 24, Branch 9 members will be bringing forward a resolution calling on NALC national leadership to organize coordinated rallies across the country to highlight the staffing crisis, poor working conditions, and the need for a strong contract to address them. This is not only an opportunity for the union to engage tens of thousands of NALC members (many likely for the first time), but would also strengthen our position at the negotiating table. We can harness public opinion to build pressure on USPS to end mandatory overtime, raise pay, and overall improve working conditions to solve the staffing crisis. There will be a section of the union leadership that opposes a fighting strategy on the basis that it will hurt their back-room negotiations with management. They are wrong. This failed approach got us into this crisis in the first place. J
What Next?
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MINNEAPOLIS LETTER CARRIERS SHOW THE WAY FORWARD
It was not automatic that this rally happened in the first place. NALC Branch 9 stewards mobilized rank-and-file members to pack the room at the February 28 general membership meeting, where we proposed a resolution to organize a rally with clear demands around the staffing crisis and the need for a strong contract. We won the vote overwhelmingly. After that meeting, we had just over a month to organize the rally. As part of the resolution we passed, the Organizing Committee gave updates to the monthly stewards meeting and the March general membership meeting about the rally. We put forward the political arguments for the necessity of the rally to get more rankand-file members active in the union, and to build public support for a strong contract. Members are overworked, underpaid, and angry with working conditions at USPS – we
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ISSUE #92 l APRIL 2023 KEELY MULLEN
culture of innovation, risk taking, and “customer obsession.” But the reality is, it was accomplished the same way Amazon accomplishes any breakthrough: by cutting corners to cut costs and by throwing thousands of workers into the meat grinder of “maximizing productivity.” A former Amazon employee described the company’s rapid scale-up of Amazon Air: “We took off, and there was no landing gear.”
In a small office in Florence, Kentucky – tucked behind a dentist’s office and a podiatrist – the most important union drive in the country is underway. A five-minute drive from Amazon’s $1.5 billion Air Hub, the Amazon Labor Union KCVG office is a flurry of activity. Every day workers come in and out, attending union orientations and card collector trainings, doing data entry and talking about the most recent insult from management. Maximum Leverage One Monday morning in April, the union Amazon’s investment in the KCVG Air Hub hotline got a text: “Amazon is allowing is impossible for them to turn around. Over weights and other heavy unmarked packages [to] come down the shoots. They are gonna the past 12 months, takeoffs and landings kill someone. I have seen bloody noses on out of KCVG are up by 125%. The company just acquired 10 Airbus freighters through a nights due to this.” The next day a worker reported that there partnership with Hawaiian Airlines, dramatiwas another bed bug infestation in the vans cally increasing the amount of freight they they use to transport the planeside crews are able to move. This has two important implications for the around the facility. She reported: “We have workers who keep the Air Hub running. One, had this problem before, but Operations still the demands on their time and bodies is only seemed to be scramgoing to get more intense. bling for a plan. They They will be asked to do had me hold the bed “Looking at the more, faster, and with no bug during the long consideration for their wait to get ahold of our breakneck grind that safety. The other implisafety team.” The crew workers at this facilcation though, is that if was sent home with no they are able to overcome pay. ity face, you wouldn’t Amazon’s union busting Looking at the and form a union, they have a clue just how breakneck grind that will have genuinely enorworkers at this facility important they are mous bargaining power. face, you wouldn’t have By leveraging their ability for Amazon’s longa clue just how importo shut down Amazon’s tant they are for Amaterm plans.” entire air network, they zon’s long-term plans. can bring the billionaire executives to their knees. Amazon’s Golden Goose This leverage, if properly wielded, can transThe KCVG Air Hub was described by form the way Amazon treats its employees. Sarah Rhoads, VP of Amazon Global Air, as They can win a $30 an hour starting wage, “an operational symphony.” In her “Welcome real paid time off, an end to brutal mandatory to the Air Hub” post on Amazon’s corporate overtime, on-site early open childcare, fixed blog, she describes the C-Suite’s vision for schedules, and so much more. Not only would this dramatically improve this facility. It will be the “hub of operations” for Amazon’s air freight system, and the lives of workers at KCVG, but could affect the completion of phase one of construction Amazon workers across the company’s vast represented a “historic milestone” for the network of sort and fulfillment centers and delivery stations. company. The dark side of this story though, is that Cartoon villain himself Jeff Bezos made a Amazon knows just as well as we do what surprise appearance at the facility’s groundbreaking ceremony. In the most depress- a union at KCVG represents. They will pull ingly hilarious illustration of how little work out an unimaginable arsenal of dirty tricks he actually does to operate these essential to crush the workers’ campaign for a union. facilities, he kicked off construction by climbing In Bessemer they rerouted stoplights and into a frontloader, driving it about six feet into a installed a fake mailbox, in Staten Island they systematically assassinated the character ceremonial pile of dirt, and then hopping out. Before treating the press to that nauseat- of nearly every leading worker. Winning the ing bit of theater, he’d given a speech outlin- union at KCVG will require an all out war, and ing how essential this Air Hub is to realizing every worker has a role to play. Amazon’s plans for one-day delivery. The hub’s $1.5 billion price tag makes it among Fighting To Win the largest capital investments the corporate The campaign to unionize KCVG is off to giant has ever made. an electric start. It is a thoroughly worker-led In less than a decade, Amazon has built drive, with a strong Organizing Committee up an air freight network that is on pace to and a growing Shop Team (the wider group directly rival UPS and FedEx. The execs in Seattle will chalk that up to their corporate of workers who do regular activity with the
ALTERNATIVE HITTING AMAZON WHERE IT HURTS
union). In the union office there’s a huge white board with a calendar of activity for the week. Just a passing glance at this calendar gives you a sense of how serious this campaign is. Near-daily union orientations, tabling at the facility covering all shifts, card collection trainings, and meetings to discuss key workplace issues. This dynamism is an incredible launching pad for a vibrant summer card collection campaign. In the coming months, that nondescript union office will need to become a heartbeat for the thousands of workers at KCVG. Workers representing all shifts, schedules, and positions, speaking all languages and representing all faith groups and communities, will need to be in ongoing discussions with one another, prepared to counter every union busting lie from management while remaining laser focused on the working
conditions they’re fighting for. Socialist Alternative is proud to be involved in this campaign and is prepared to do whatever we can to help make KCVG the second unionized Amazon facility in the country. J
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