Socialist Alternative #95 - July/August 2023

ALTERNATIVE

SOCIALIST

ISSUE #95 l JULY-AUGUST 2023

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INSIDE UPS CONTRact battle DEMOCRATS FAIL LGBTQ PEOPLE TRUTH BEHIND TEEN CURFEWS

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WHAT WE STAND FOR

Fight Inflation & Rebuild A Fighting Labor Movement

• As thousands of workers are winning unions for the first time, it is critical that they fight to win strong contracts. We need unions that are armed with clear demands like bold wage increases and contractual cost of living adjustments (COLA), and they have to be prepared to go on strike to win them.

• Union leaders across all unions should accept the average wage of a worker in their industry and should be accountable to their membership and the broader working class.

• An injury to one is an injury to all! Unions need to fight all manifestations of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of oppression.

• Unions should stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on electing Democratic Party politicians, and spend it instead on efforts to organize the unorganized.

• Unions should form consumer protection committees to monitor price increases.

They should have the power to review corporate finances, especially when money is squandered on CEO pay and stock buybacks. Profits off basic goods should be heavily taxed and price-gouging companies should be brought under democratic public ownership.

scale of the 60s and 70s when Roe was first won.

• Free, safe, legal abortion. All contraception should be provided at no cost as part of a broad program for reproductive health!

• Fighting gender oppression means fighting for our rights to bodily autonomy, reproductive justice including universal childcare, and Medicare for All including free reproductive and gender-affirming care.

Invest In Our Basic Needs

• Pass strong rent control. End economic evictions. Tax the rich and big business to fund permanently affordable, high-quality social housing.

• No pay cuts! We need a significant raise in the minimum wage and to tie raises to inflation.

• An immediate transition to Medicare for All. Take for-profit hospital chains into public ownership and retool them to provide free, state-of-the-art healthcare to all.

• Capitalism failed to stop COVID-19, with the “post-pandemic” new normal consisting of total indifference to public health. We urgently need permanently free and accessible testing, paid sick leave, and to take Big Pharma into public ownership – vaccines should be for public health, not profit!

• Bring back the COVID-era child tax credit and make it permanent. Fully fund highMobilize Against Gender quality, universal childcare. No cuts to food stamps!

Oppression & Attacks On Bodily • Fully fund public education! End school Autonomy privatization. Give educators an immediate 25% raise and increase staffing. Cancel • Fight back against brutal anti-trans legislaall student debt and make public college tion and all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ tuition-free. people. Noncompliance with these bigoted laws should be organized by the labor movement among workers tasked with enforcing A Socialist Program For them.

• Full legal rights and equality for trans and Environmental Disaster queer people, including the right to self- • People across the country are seeing their identification! We completely oppose the communities turned into disaster zones attempts of the right wing to spread antifrom corporations’ ecological warfare and trans bigotry and isolate LGBTQ people from the devastating impact of climate from society. change.

• The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the • We need fully-funded emergency systems door for vicious attacks on bodily autonomy to protect and evacuate people from everacross the country. We need a mass moveincreasing storms, floods, and fires, and ment against the reactionary right on the we need to tax the rich to reimburse working people for their destroyed homes and livelihoods.

• In the wake of ecological disasters like chemical spills, corporations should immediately be responsible for relocation costs, health costs, and home remediation. When many residents need to relocate, the businesses responsible for the disasters should www.SocialistAlternative.org offer to buy people’s land at a rate well info@SocialistAlternative.org above pre-disaster market value. @Socialist Alternative • Make the polluters pay for the million-dollar cleanups – not working people! We need @SocialistAlt strict accountability and oversight to pro/SocialistAlternative.USA tect the interests of communities and the

/c/SocialistAlternative environment. @socialistus • We need a union jobs program to rapidly expand green infrastructure including free

WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE IAN COOPER-SMITH, LOS ANGELES My family came from a long line of proud activists – my grandfather hosted local CORE meetings in his house during the Civil Rights Movement. When Barack Obama ran in 2008 and 2012, my family unanimously and enthusiastically voted for him. While I later became disillusioned with the corporate-led Democratic establishment following Obama’s escalation of US imperialism, Wall Street bailout, and Bernie Sanders’ run for president, it wasn’t until I joined Socialist Alternative that I truly understood the necessity for an independent working-class party and revolutionary organization.

I first heard about SA through its Black Caucus. I attended a Zoom event about the Legacy of Fred Hampton. After an incredible discussion, it became clear to me that the liberation of the Black working class was inseparably tied to that of the broader working class, and any meaningful working-class movement had to reject respectability politics, maintain militant self-determination and independence, and implement multiracial workingclass party building. A Marxist understands that the emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the workers united.

Having lived through recent social crises, violent right-wing attacks against the Black and trans communities, labor struggles, and the increased exploitation of the working class I knew I had to do something, and I public transit.

• Fossil fuels can’t coexist with a sustainable future – ban new oil and gas drilling and take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership, while implementing a democratically planned, just transition to 100% green energy!

End Racist Policing And Criminal (in)Justice • 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 of “crowd control” weapons and disarm police on patrol.

• Put policing under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.

• Beyond fighting to end racist policing, we need a struggle against all forms of racism in our society, including segregationist housing and education policies.

No To Imperialist Wars • Socialist Alternative completely opposes Russian imperialism’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Ordinary Ukrainians who already suffer exploitation, oppression, corruption, and growing poverty conditions now face the horror of war and bloodshed.

• We oppose the aggressive imperialist agenda of NATO and the US for whom Ukrainians are a pawn in the wider Cold

decided that I wanted to do my part to help build a militant and independent workingclass political movement.

What immediately stood out to me most about SA was that it was made up of working people with electeds willing to make the wage of an average worker, all willing to make sacrifices to build working-class power. That is the organization I am proud to be a part of – one that doesn’t adhere to opportunism or empty ideals, but a party that takes an active role in presenting and implementing a revolutionary program that addresses the material conditions of the working class.

From untenable rising costs of living to skyrocketing inflation, the failures of capitalism are on full display. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I have full confidence that through struggle and solidarity, the path towards a socialist world will present itself. J War conflict with Chinese imperialism.

• De-escalating the rapidly deteriorating situation in Ukraine requires the return of Russian troops to the barracks in Russia and the withdrawal of all NATO troops from Eastern Europe.

• Build a massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement linking up workers and youth across borders! Sending increasingly destructive weapons to the conflict only serves to escalate & poses a greater risk of all-out war – only socialist internationalism can end war and destruction and win lasting peace and stability for the working masses around the world.

A New Political Party For Working People • The capitalist Democratic Party offers no solution to right-wing attacks against workers and marginalized people and has repeatedly failed to use their majorities to protect our rights.

• We need a new, working-class, multiracial left party that organizes and fights for workers’ interests and is committed to socialist policies to lead the fight against the right and point a way out of the horrors of capitalism.

The Whole System Is Guilty • Capitalism produces pandemics, poverty, racism, transphobia, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.

• Bring the top 500 companies and banks into democratic public ownership.

• We need a socialist world. This means a democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the planet.

EDITORIAL

ENORMOUS POTENTIAL

OF CORNEL WEST’S

INDEPENDENT

RUN FOR PRESIDENT

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE On June 5, activist and professor Cornel West declared an independent left challenge for the US presidency in 2024.

In a presidential race that up until recently appeared to be headed toward a one-on-one rematch of the deeply unpopular President Biden against the dangerous right-wing Donald Trump, West’s candidacy has the potential to offer a sorely needed left alternative for working people and the oppressed.

It comes in the midst of simmering anger of workers and young people at the political establishment of both major parties in an era of social crisis, war, and deep malaise of global capitalism. The efforts of the Democratic establishment to ram corporate neoliberal Biden down the throats of working people without so much as a primary debate only add further fuel to the fire.

With runaway inflation continuing, people being kicked off government programs, toxic air from wildfires, and right-wing attacks on trans people and abortion rights, the working class needs to get organized. The corporate-controlled Democratic Party won’t save us from any of these threats. Under Biden’s watch, immigrants continue to be brutalized at the Southern border, dangerous gas pipelines continue to be built, and police budgets continue to balloon. The right wing grows because the Democrats are not a genuine alternative option for working class people.

They are a billionaire-backed party that will never fight for us. We need to break the cycle of “lesser evilism” that’s left us with climate catastrophe, perpetual wars, and deep inequalities.

The billionaires have two parties, and working people need one of our own! In Presidential election years, more people pay attention to politics, and it’s crucial to have an independent left candidate. In this context, socialists can use elections to argue for mass movements that can change society and connect this to the need for independent electoral action as a step towards a mass working class party.

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Sanders And West Like Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020, Cornel West is campaigning on key issues facing working people – calling for Medicare for All, cancellation of all student debt, and guaranteed quality education and housing. A strong independent campaign on working class issues like these, led by a compelling and genuine left candidate like West, could galvanize millions of working people and youth.

But to succeed, the campaign will need to rise to the serious challenges facing it, to consciously build mass grassroots participation, and to stand firm against the brutal attacks it will face from the Democratic establishment and corporate media. The campaign will need to throw itself into the most important struggles of today, including the ongoing labor battles across the country and the fightback of young people against attacks on trans rights. This is something Sanders’ campaigns unfortunately did only in a very limited way.

Like Sanders, West identifies as a “democratic socialist.” Unlike Sanders, West has correctly chosen to make a break with the Democratic Party through this independent candidacy, and is pledging to run all the way through to the general election.

The loyalty of Sanders and the “Squad” to the Democratic Party has been used in service of vicious attacks on workers, including the blocking of the railroad workers’ strike, and it has profoundly undercut the ability to organize movements of working people, squandering the momentum Bernie generated with his campaign’s “political revolution against the billionaire class.” West’s decision to run independent is crucial, and has the potential to be a more serious threat to the billionaire class than Sanders was. The Democratic establishment is well aware of this fact, and they are already mobilizing attacks against Cornel West’s campaign.

Fighting The Right Cornel West takes a broadly principled position on the Ukraine War, sharply criticizing Putin and Russian imperialism for the invasion while clearly rejecting the idea that US imperialism is acting to “defend democracy”

or that its strategic and profit-driven aims can be supported. In his platform, West correctly calls for an end to the war and for NATO to be disbanded.

Notably, prior to West’s entry, Donald Trump was posing as the “antiwar” candidate in the race, which is both disingenuous and deeply dangerous because it could lead to many working people voting for a right-wing candidate out of the desire to reject the war.

One reason West’s challenge to this is so important is because he does what Trump never would, which is call for the military budget to be cut and reallocated to fund essential social services.

West has also declared his intention to campaign strongly for those who have voted for Trump in the past: “I’m going to Trump country,” he has noted in several interviews.

This is important, because to defeat the right wing it is essential to reach out on a clear working class platform to those millions of independents and Republicans who are angry at the political establishment and might otherwise be taken in by con men like Trump.

West originally launched his candidacy with the People’s Party, a formation established in the wake of Sanders’ 2016 campaign that has been plagued by deep internal dysfunction, including credible sexual assault charges against founder Nick Brana.

Fortunately, West has since changed course and announced he will be seeking the Green Party nomination instead. While the Greens have their own real weaknesses, and have never sufficiently based themselves on building social movements or working class struggle, they have the major advantage of ballot access in a large majority of states. We fully agree with West’s decision and think it removes a key obstacle from this campaign, though it does not itself resolve the need for a new mass left party for working people in the US. The West campaign’s mistake with the People’s Party shows the need to build a strong grassroots campaign and a campaign team that can take on the many complex issues that will face this serious challenge to the US ruling class. Among them will be ferocious pressures to capitulate to Biden and the Democrats, including for West to bow out in the final months of the election. This must

be firmly rejected.

The Way Forward West should more consistently emphasize the key points of his platform that affect the day-to-day lives of working class people. This kind of consistency was perhaps the single greatest strength of Sanders’ campaigns.

Anyone who attended a rally or followed Sanders’ campaign in any way could not escape his demands for Medicare for All, a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, and free college education. There is the danger, especially in the context of brutal attacks by the corporate media, that if West’s working class demands are not kept front-and-center, his campaign will not be as effective in mobilizing millions of people to get active in the way that’s needed.

This has been a central part of the success of Socialist Alternative City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. Kshama was first elected in 2013 on the basis of building a grassroots campaign around the demands of a $15 minimum wage, taxing the rich and big business, and rent control. These demands were relentlessly reinforced in our messaging. Since then, Kshama won the historic $15 minimum wage in Seattle, the Amazon Tax on Seattle’s wealthiest businesses, and three more elections despite the fierce opposition of Amazon and the Democratic establishment.

Another key to our success in Seattle is that, like Sanders, we have built energetic grassroots campaigns with armies of volunteers who have been mobilized by our fighting, working class program. To succeed, West will need to do the same.

There is a huge hunger and need for such an example nationally, and Cornel West’s campaign has the potential to tap into that on a far broader scale.

Around the nation and globally, working class and young people are searching for a way to fight back. Unfortunately at present the huge vacuum of leadership and lull in social struggle have left many ordinary people demobilized. A strong independent Cornel West campaign has the potential to help kick off a new wave of mass struggle and be a political earthquake in US politics. J

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L ABOR MOVEMENT

UPS Teamsters Need To Strike For A Strong Contract

5 STRIKE KEY INGREDIENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL

at

Strike-Ready Now – UPS has 1. Get shown time and time again it

TY NOLAN, BOSTON The contract at UPS is set to expire July 31, meaning roughly 350,000 UPS workers could go on strike as early as August 1.

Working people across the US and globally are seeing rising inflation eat away at their wages while corporations rake in billions in profits. UPS itself reported record revenues of over $100 billion last year. A strike at UPS would capture the support of tens of millions of working people who would see their same struggles in those of UPS workers.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has staked his reputation on delivering a strong contract. He is being hailed as the union leader bringing the fight to companies like UPS and Amazon. However, O’Brien is only as powerful as he is willing to lead a genuinely militant strike. UPS workers are the ones who move 6% of US GDP and make the company their profits. It is UPS workers who ultimately have the power to deliver a strong contract for themselves and O’Brien’s legacy will depend on whether he’s willing to harness that power.

O’Brien said recently in a speech in California that he is having frequent meetings in the White House with President Biden. The last thing Biden wants is for a UPS strike to disrupt the US economy going into an election year. Unfortunately, the last time Biden put his thumb on the scale in a labor dispute, railroad workers were denied the opportunity to strike. Rank-and-file Teamsters will have to make clear that they won’t back down – not to UPS or to either party.

97% Vote To Authorize Strike On June 16, the Teamsters announced that UPS workers voted to authorize a strike with 97% of the vote. This does not mean that there will definitely be a strike, but it is an important part of building towards one.

The 97% vote is higher than the 90% strike authorization vote in 2018 and indicates more of a fighting mood than in previous contract struggles.

The strike threat has already given workers increased leverage at the negotiating table.

While strike votes were happening, reports came that a tentative deal was made to bring air conditioning into new delivery vans starting in 2024.

But the details of the deal reveal some

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UPS workers on a “practice picket” in advance of a potential strike.

serious shortcomings. The majority of UPS drivers still won’t have air conditioning by the end of the five-year contract, with no promises they will ever receive it. The fact that the Teamsters leadership has advertised this as such a massive victory while negotiations are still ongoing is a concerning sign that they may try to sell workers on a concessionary Tentative Agreement (TA) rather than organizing a powerful strike to win all their demands.

UPS Counter Proposal Leaked In late June, the counter proposal offered

by UPS around economic issues was leaked online. UPS is offering part-timers $17/hour starting pay, along with major cuts to parttimer health insurance, and no new full-time jobs! UPS is also proposing that they should be able to reverse cost-of-living adjustments (COLA). This means that during an economic downturn, UPS would be permitted to cut workers’ wages. This is a dangerous prospect heading into what may be a deep recession.

COLA has heightened importance at times like these where inflation is rising, driving the cost-of-living through the roof. UPS Teamsters need to reject any cuts to COLA while also fighting to expand it by demanding COLA +1% to ensure that wages are always outpacing inflation.

Less than a week after the leak, UPS resubmitted the exact same proposal and Teamsters leadership walked out for the second time in less than a week. They declared in a statement titled “Teamsters: Nationwide UPS Strike Is Imminent,” that UPS had until the end of the week to submit their last, best, and final offer. Teamster leadership is correct to reject an offer as insulting as this one and the increased threat of a strike is encouraging. However, O’Brien has already shown he’s willing to accept a concessionary deal and present it to rank-and-filers as a major victory around the agreement on AC.

Getting Strike-Ready Some steps have been taken by the

UPS

union’s leadership to get membership strikeready. There have been more negotiations updates, a positive change from the information “brownouts” of previous contract campaigns. Teamster leadership just announced a second round of rallies as well as “practice pickets” as an escalation following the initial rallies held in some locals. This all points in the right direction but unfortunately is not enough to get 350,000 Teamsters ready to carry out a strike capable of winning a strong contract.

If O’Brien comes back with a concessionary contract, it will be up to rank-and-file Teamsters to vote “NO” and force a strike.

Organizations like the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a rank-and-file organization that has spearheaded reforms within the union for decades, have an especially important role to play in holding O’Brien’s feet to the fire to prepare for a powerful strike that can win. Over 1,000 UPS Teamsters have been attending TDU’s Zoom organizing calls.

TDU’s leadership has unfortunately taken a completely uncritical approach to O’Brien, even his role forcing Teamster rail workers to accept a bad deal, and characterized workers who were frustrated by the weaknesses of the air conditioning deal as cynical.

O’Brien and the rest of the Teamsters’ current leadership have staked their reputations on winning a strong contract at UPS. While they will absolutely face pressures from the Biden administration to capitulate, they are also susceptible to pressure from below. If they return with a TA that does not meet UPS Teamsters demands for substantial raises for full and part-timers, no 7-day workweek, alongside the elimination of 22.4, they should vote “NO” on the contract and flock to the picket lines. If a strike does happen and leadership tries to call off the strike before a TA is voted on, workers need to hold firm, stay on the pickets, and discuss ways to escalate the strike and force UPS to back down. To do otherwise would be to give up their greatest leverage in securing a strong contract – the ability to disrupt UPS’s profits. J

will relentlessly attack us. They are preparing to break a strike.

Every Teamster local needs to set up strike committees to convince coworkers to stay strong, identify picket captains, and discuss a strategy to win.

Pickets with Regular 2. Strong Updates – Well-organized pick-

ets need to be set up hours before UPS tries to scab the strike with managers and temp workers. Picket captains should be democratically elected. There should be regular updates and discussions about negotiations on the picket lines. Keep picketing until members vote “Yes” on a TA.

UPS Profits – The police 3. Stop and the courts will protect

UPS’s “right” to keep making profits. Workers will need to escalate to shut down production. Tactics like non-violent civil disobedience, sit-ins, and picketing at a snail’s pace at the warehouse gates can stop production and force UPS to accept workers’ demands.

Community Support – 4. Mobilize Polls show 71% support for

unions. Every worker knows the pain of inflation, unaffordable healthcare, rising rents, and long hours. This support needs to be mobilized onto the picket line, into idling car-caravans on the streets outside the warehouse, and onto the streets.

Solidarity Needed – The 5. Labor labor movement was built on

the principle that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” UPS workers should appeal to the rest of the labor movement to support their cause. If real links are built between UPS workers and other workers, we can cut off UPS’ ability to try to outflank the strike.

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

L ABOR MOVEMENT

Amazon Workers In Northern KY Fight For Translation At Work Workers at KCVG regularly set up union tables in the parking lot of the facility.

Here they are, gearing up to talk to their coworkers.

ELAN AXELBANK, BOSTON

Workers at Amazon’s largest Air Hub in the world, called KCVG but known in the upper echelons of Amazon management as the “Death Star,” have now been organizing for nine months. What started as a small handful of workers collecting signatures on a petition to reinstate their $2/hr “Peak Pay” during the busy holiday season last year quickly turned into a wider campaign to form a union after Amazon refused to meet their demand. Now, three and a half months after Amazon Labor Union KCVG’s official launch rally in the ramp employee parking lot on March 18, workers are going all-out to collect union authorization cards to get an election at KCVG. While the union’s three core demands are for a $30/hr starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off, and union representation at disciplinary meetings, they’re fighting for much more. Both their website and new monthly newsletter, “Voice of Our Union: From Your Coworkers, Not A Third Party,” contain a longer list of demands ranging from minimum staffing levels to better retirement benefits, paid parental leave and free, on-site childcare.

Starting in mid-June the union took up a new issue that most directly affects immigrant workers not fluent in English, but which by extension affects all workers at KCVG: translation.

Many of those who make Amazon’s largest Air Hub in the world run every day and every night are not from the US. Many of these workers are not confident English speakers.

Despite this, and the fact that working with airplanes weighing half a million pounds (without cargo) requires clearly understood safety policies, nearly all work-related communication takes place in English only. Amazon looks the other way because they know they can pressure immigrant workers to do more dangerous jobs, and create divisions among workers, by not offering translation.

As the union is saying, this is disrespectful and discriminatory toward workers not fluent in English, and a major safety hazard for everybody. Seeing the urgent need to unite all workers behind the union – no matter what language they speak – and to make work safer for everybody, the Organizing Committee launched a petition (translated, of course, into several languages) calling for three demands: J Easily accessible translation for ALL work-related communication, written and verbal.

J Guaranteed interpretation at all disciplinary meetings with HR/ management, alongside union representation.

J Free, widely-advertised, on-site English language classes during paid work hours available to all workers who want to further their English proficiency.

Collecting signatures on the petition, titled “Translation For All Languages: Don’t Let Language Be A Safety Hazard,” is not separate from the union’s efforts to collect

PRIME TIME TO UNIONIZE AMAZON

Workers Strike Back Calls Solidarity Actions Nationwide EMILY MCARTHUR, SEATTLE Amazon sales on Prime Day in 2022 hit nearly $12 billion.

To keep up with this annual profit bonanza, Amazon workers are pushed into mandatory overtime with grueling 11-hour days and 55 hour weeks. This pushes Amazon’s already disproportionately high warehouse injury rate into hyperdrive.

The high-profile Amazon Prime Day captures the attention of the 200 million Prime subscribers worldwide. If Prime subscribers made up the population of a country, it would be the 8th largest in the world. In this context, it’s a huge opportunity to speak to the 75% of Americans who agree that Amazon workers need a union.

That’s why Workers Strike Back activists are organizing rallies, tables, and speak-outs nationwide to build support for the fight to unionize Amazon during our Prime Week of Action July 11-18. We’ve especially highlighted the campaign at the largest Amazon Air Hub in the country, KCVG in Northern J U LY - A U G U S T 2 0 2 3

Kentucky, pledging to raise $10,000 to support their work!

Workers Strike Back, which was launched earlier this year

by Socialist Alternative and Socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, has in a couple key areas become a place to discuss through what strategies and tactics are necessary to bring the labor movement forward – something that’s sorely needed all over the country! The key task of the labor movement, when unionization is in a long decline, is to organize the unorganized. The bosses won’t make it easy, so it’s essential to overcome vicious union busting from massive corporations like Amazon and Starbucks.

The workers at KCVG have been fighting back against a slew of attacks from management. Amazon executives, while refusing to meet the KCVG workers’ reasonable demand of $30 an hour starting wage, are spending millions on unionbusting law firms to intimidate workers.

It’s not enough to depend on the NLRB, which can’t be reliably counted on to stand with workers, to resolve attacks

union cards but intimately connected to it.

The petition is being circulated in English, French, Spanish, Somali, Amharic, and Arabic, and so far it’s a big success.

In recent weeks, union organizers have met many workers who hadn’t yet signed a union card, but after seeing the translation petition were convinced to sign and attend a union orientation. Even more starkly, Organizing Committee members report that at recent card collection activities in the KCVG parking lot, some English-speaking workers who’d previously not been interested in the union are now stopping to talk, sign the petition, and are walking away with union literature in hand, because these workers know it’s their body on the line if their coworkers are being improperly trained.

A petition like this stands in stark contrast to the “business unionist” strategy of many union leaders today that prioritizes vague talking points like “respect and dignity” and “democracy at work” over concrete demands like those of Amazon Labor Union KCVG, around translation and many other issues. It provides a bridge to link English and non-English speaking workers by connecting the fight for immigrants’ rights to the question of safety, and it shows the union can improve conditions at Amazon before it is formally won.

Just like every other corporation, Amazon relies on immigrant labor to churn out their unfathomably high profits. Companies think they can take advantage of immigrant workers and keep them subservient by abusing the language barrier, workers’ fear of losing their jobs, and outright racism. The lack of translation at KCVG, the way it affects all workers, and the strategy employed by ALU KCVG to fight it gives modern-day life to the century-old union slogan: an injury to one is an injury to all. The labor movement nationally can take inspiration from this initiative by Amazon workers in Northern Kentucky. J

FIND AN EVENT NEAR YOU!

against unionizing workers. It’s necessary, as workers at KCVG have been doing, to take an organized stand against attacks from the bosses. Shop floor actions, like coordinated confrontations demanding pro-union workers not face retaliation for protected organizing need to also be paired with community support. Through a community call-in campaign organized by Workers Strike Back, in just 48 hours hundreds of calls were made to a union-busing manager at KCVG and $1,500 were raised for the unionization campaign.

Instinctually, working class people understand that a union for Amazon workers is in their interest too. Workers Strike Back organizers are rallying outside the opulent “Spheres” headquarters of Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives in Seattle to show them the groundswell of public support behind the fight to unionize. We’ll also set up tables in communities that have been impacted by Amazon’s low wages to spread the word. Join the fight! J

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LGBTQ RIGHTS

FOR LGBTQ PEOPLE, DEMOCRATS’ BID FOR THE CENTER IS A RACE TO THE BOTTOM

ELIN MILLER, NYC

With anti-LGBTQ panic at the center of Republicans’ culture wars and bigots like Ron DeSantis in the mix, it will be no surprise for issues of LGBTQ rights to have a high profile in the 2024 elections. As in previous election cycles, we can expect Democrats to leverage on fear of what another Trump term would mean to get otherwise unenthusiastic voters to the polls. This type of “lesser evilism” will gain a certain popularity given the dire situation that transgender people are facing. But are Democrats actually an alternative to Republicans when it comes to queer rights?

The Biden administration has boasted about its proLGBTQ policies which, in brief, fall far short of addressing the most urgent crises LGBTQ people face. The bulk of them charge various state agencies with vague directives like “reviewing existing policies” and “proposing new rules” that are shallow by design. For example, the federal Department of Health and Human Services is now tasked with addressing disparities for LGBTQ people’s access to healthcare. But as a staunch opponent of Medicare for All, Biden has in reality already ensured that healthcare will remain inaccessible for the vast majority of LGBTQ people alongside the whole working class.

When it comes to fighting for LGBTQ rights against the Republican onslaught, Democrats are playing a weak defense at best. In this context, it’s necessary to lay out what a party that genuinely stands for working and oppressed people would do in this situation. At a bare minimum, such a party would put forward and fight for a national Right to Self-Identify law, to protect transgender people’s right to change their gender on legal documents, and enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in law rather than leaving it in the hands of the court system. Such a party would also go all-out to build a movement alongside the labor movement and youth to win Medicare for All, including free gender-affirming care, so not just queer people but all people can have the healthcare they need at no cost, cutting across the divisive claims of the right wing that trans rights “infringe” on those of others.

A working-class party would wage a determined campaign for a whole host of reforms that would improve the lives of all working people, and especially those most marginalized under capitalism. Things like universal rent control, high-quality permanently affordable housing, fully funded schools, universal childcare, and more.

Democratic Strategy – Avoid & Evade Top Democrats like Hillary Clinton have urged the party to “stay away” from social issues, including trans rights, to avoid losing right-wing voters. Biden’s approach has been roughly similar: this spring, his administration released a sports ban proposal which takes a “moderate” line – an empty attempt to appease trans people without inflaming the right. In doing so, Biden is legitimizing rightwing disinformation intended to demonize and scapegoat trans people, and leaving the door open for the right wing to

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legally discriminate against transgender athletes.

With the immediacy of the attacks, particularly at a statewide level, “staying away” from social issues is inviting the right wing to do its worst. In these moments we’ve seen them flounder: siding with Republicans to attack trans rights, and funding far-right candidates in a short-sighted bid to get votes in the immediate election cycle, while actually strengthening the right and anti-trans attacks.

Some Democrats have taken a stand against these attacks, like the Nebraska and Missouri lawmakers who filibustered their legislatures to attempt to stop anti-trans bills, but without a movement, these attempts have at best only slowed attacks, and have faced a lack of support from within the Democratic establishment – resulting in one Nebraska Senator, Megan Hunt, leaving the Democratic Party in disgust at the party’s inaction. A working-class party would have pressed the issue nationwide, calling demonstrations and calling out Republicans in every city, state, and in Congress against bathroom bills, Don’t Say Gay, etc.

The Democrats’ attempts at a “moderate” approach have sometimes made them as much an enemy of LGBTQ rights as the right wing, such as when Bill Clinton signed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy into law in 1994, describing it as a “necessary compromise.” Clinton also put forward and signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which Biden voted for in the Senate. To this day, Biden still poses himself as a “reach across the aisle” candidate, making him no ally to the fight for LGBTQ rights.

The so-called “centrist appeal” that Democrats’ use to defend their dismal record on LGBTQ rights is a clear-asday indication that we can’t have any faith in the party’s most powerful and dominant wing to lift a finger for us in any substantial way when they think it’s not “strategic.”

But even when LGBTQ voters are “strategic” for the Democrats, we get half-measures at best and completely symbolic pandering at worst, including the current policy “victories” of the Biden administration. Why? This compromising strategy is based on the idea that they have no way of reaching rightwing voters and instead seek to hide or minimize trans and LGBTQ issues as to not increase right wing voter turnout. At the end of the day, they’re also scared that putting up a real fight for LGBTQ rights could embolden movements and call into question a much broader range of working-class policies like Medicare for All. The Democrats’ primary objective is to block any struggle for these things to shield their corporate donors and the whole capitalist class.

History has shown time and time again that a mass struggle from below is necessary to defend and win real gains for marginalized and working-class people, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans in office. This type of fight would be enormously aided by an independent political party that could both organize to fight the attacks from the right head-on, while also exposing the Democrats’ real role. Unlike the Democrats, a genuine left party would have a real program for LGBTQ rights, which its politicians and leaders would be held accountable to fight for by the party’s membership. This and more is what we deserve – not the Democrats’ race to the bottom! J

Pittsburgh, PA credit: Eric Huber

Chicago, IL

New York, NY

SOCIALIST

PRIDE A L T E R N AT I V E Birmingham, AL

Houston, TX

Indianapolis, IN

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

WORKING LIFE

THE 4-DAY WORK PIPE DREAM OR WEEK FIGHTING DEMAND? MEAGHAN MURRAY, MINNEAPOLIS

During the pandemic, millions of people found themselves working from home, making their own schedules, and even scheduling in time for leisure. Millions of others were laid off and were, for a brief time, able to live comfortably off of increased unemployment benefits.

For many people, for the first time ever, there was time for baking bread, TikTok dancing, gardening, and bird watching. While trying to avoid spreading a deadly airborne virus, “doing our part” meant, for millions, spending time with the people they loved. It was the first time millions of workers in the US had had significant time off.

And despite working from home and taking more time off – productivity stayed even. We all saw that productivity during COVID-19 did not go down, despite so many people working from home. This has contributed to the buzz around a four-day work week getting louder in the last few years.

Some bosses are beginning to champion this, though of course – like Ford in the ‘20s – they will only be motivated to carry out such a move on their terms. Now, workers are excited about working fewer days without a loss in pay and some are also questioning the

“need” to go into the office every day. The call for a shorter work week is currently focused on office-based workers, but should be widened out to include all workers.

On average, US workers work longer hours and get less time off – for vacationing or even being sick – than our counterparts in other advanced capitalist countries. And what does working more and resting less mean for us?

American workers face high stress levels, less sleep, and an increased risk of early death. The bosses want to work us ‘til we’re dead. And that’s been the case for a while.

Like The Weekend? Thank The Labor Movement Before unions and government regulation, workers literally worked until they died and were paid so poorly that a work week was often 70 hours a week. The labor movement fought for and won a transformation in the work day. They won eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for ourselves. That was back in 1866.

In 1926, union-hater Henry Ford introduced a five-day work week for his factory workers. While shrouded in pretty language about working people deserving more than one

GHOST JOBS THE NEW TREND HURTING WORKERS

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day off p e r week, Ford implemented this change in order to enforce even more intense productivity requirements on workers during their five working days. He also admitted to taking this step so that his workers would spend more money on their days off.

But Ford’s cynical maneuver became a certain inspiration for an increasingly militant labor movement to demand the five-day workweek be institutionalized. By the ‘30s, there were massive union battles over pay and hours, culminating into the regulation of a 40-hour work week. It’s unions that have long argued for shorter work weeks and for employers to pay the price in steep overtime rates if they want us to work beyond 40 hours.

Taking The Next Step That brings us to now. Even before the pandemic, the “startup ethos” in tech which put all workers on salary, and in sectors like education and nonprofits, the expectation of 40 hours a week was long gone. The gig

EMILIA MORGAN, BOSTON Applying to job after job, forwarding resumes, responding to questions – a dreary process too many of us are familiar with. If we are lucky, we will get a few responses, maybe an email saying the position was filled by someone else, but more often than not, there is no response. Now, people are finding deafening silence from job listings on the market, where they never hear back.

Companies are more and more frequently keeping job listings open with no intention of actually filling the position while taking applications. These have been coined “ghost job listings.” The employer either never replies to applicants or might take a few interviews before ghosting completely. With a tight labor market, and the US Department of Labor claiming that there are over 10 million job openings, why is this happening?

We are in an era of economic uncertainty, with economists forecasting that we are on the brink of a recession. Companies can project security to banks and shareholders by posting job listings, giving the false impression that the company is doing better than it is in reality. One poll from Forbes found 43% of hiring managers do this. A lot of economic data is driven by job listings, and companies don’t want to appear like they are struggling, especially with the increase in filed bankruptcies and corporate defaults rising.

Employers are also desperate to keep the “tap” open, in case someone leaves and they need to fill a position quickly. The same poll found that 43% of hiring managers also consciously keep job postings open for this

economy, a global pandemic, and increased inflation without increases in the minimum wage has blurred those lines the labor movement drew in the sand decades ago.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, some bosses are increasingly intrigued by the idea of a four-day work week, particularly for office workers, because it means they can squeeze more out of their employees during working hours while reducing overhead expenses of office space, electricity, and maintenance services. According to US News & World Report, “By shifting to a fourday workweek, employers could save up to 20% on those expenditure items and use the funds in other business areas.”

Socialists believe the bosses are more than capable of accommodating a four-day work week with no loss in pay for workers and no increase in hours worked per day. This is very different from the bosses conception of a four-day work week. Winning this transformative change in our working lives would free us up to spend time with the people we love, learn new skills, and generally would lift the spirits of millions of working Americans currently being crushed by the expectations of the bosses.

Winning a four-day work week on this basis, one that will benefit workers, will require that we fight for it ourselves rather than waiting for the bosses to hand it down with strings attached. The labor movement needs to launch an independent fight for a four-day work week with no loss in pay and no lengthening of the work day. This cannot be done through hand-holding with bosses who will always prioritize squeezing the absolute most out of workers. J

reason. One in five hiring managers have no intention of filling the posted position.

Ghost job listings are making it difficult to get a job, forcing workers to apply over and over again to new employers. Inflation-burdened workers are worried and anxious, with one survey finding that a massive 96% of employees have looked for new jobs in 2023. Even with low unemployment, layoffs in industries like tech have left people scrambling to find new jobs. Ghost job listings have made the job hunt even more complicated, with some people even getting through multiple interviews before being ghosted by the employer.

Workers are desperately chasing after job openings that don’t exist.

Even under the guise of a “pro-worker” labor market, with low unemployment and lots of job openings, workers are still getting screwed over. More workers than ever work two full-time jobs with many struggling to afford groceries and gas, on top of extortionary housing costs. The pandemic brought into perspective just how many working people are fed up with the short end of the stick, low-paying jobs with poor benefits, bad hours, and more.

Ghost job listings are yet another way in which the bosses manipulate the system to their advantage, sending workers on a wild goose chase after jobs they have no intention of filling. Under capitalism, workers are always at a disadvantage relative to the bosses, even when the market conditions are “favorable.” Only a socialist world can provide permanent and meaningful stability for workers where we have democratic control over industries and the economy. J

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EL NIÑO & CLIMATE CHANGE:

A DEADLY COMBINATION

ELLA RAPP, NYC In 2022, humanity set all sorts of records. But not the good kind. As our global reliance on fossil fuels continues unabated, the effects of climate change are getting more and more severe. Last summer was one of the planet’s hottest on record, marked by historic heat waves as well as droughts and flooding, depending on the region. To pull a few examples, the temperature in London reached an all-time high of 104° Fahrenheit, Japan saw its hottest June since 1875, and warm temperatures caused 33,000 individual wildfires in Brazil during August alone, the most the country has seen in over a decade.

This summer could be even worse, not just because the global billionaire class and the politicians who do their bidding continue to fail to take any real action on climate change. As of June 8, we are officially in an El Niño weather pattern, which means higher temperatures, extreme weather, and overall bad news for working people.

That said, we are not in a climate apocalypse movie or on the brink of human extinction. There is a way out, through organized struggle of the workers, youth, and oppressed people living through the worst effects of climate change. To move forward and save ourselves from climate catastrophe, we need to thoroughly understand what’s happening to our planet and why, and we need to mobilize around our most urgent demands.

WHAT IS EL NIÑO? An El Niño is one phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a natural climate phenomenon characterized by the periodic warming and cooling of waters in the Eastern Pacific, near the Galápagos Islands. According to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “ENSO is one of the most important climate phenomena on Earth due to its ability to change the global atmospheric circulation, which in turn, influences temperature and precipitation across the globe.” Specifically, the El Niño phase of the ENSO cycle is the “warming” phase, with higher surface water temperatures in the Pacific, which usually has global weather impacts like higher temperatures, higher rainfall, and flooding.

The last El Niño in 2016 resulted in the planet’s hottest year on record. Since then, global warming caused by capitalist greed has only increased, and 2020 even tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record. Given this, it’s likely that this summer’s El Niño – which could persist into the winter – will

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have significant impacts in the short and long term, as its natural effects combine with the consequences of climate change. Based on current conditions, scientists say there is a 56% chance of this El Niño developing into a “strong” event, like the kind we saw in 2016, and an 84% chance of it becoming a “moderate” event.

During El Niño phases we can generally expect to see higher temperatures overall, including severe heat waves. Higher temperatures also result in higher rainfall in some regions, because the heat causes more water to be evaporated into the air, creating flood risks. In other areas, the hotter weather leads to drought and heightened risk of forest fires. The phenomenon also tends to produce dangerous tropical cyclones in the Pacific, affecting countries like Ecuador, Peru, and others on the Western coast of South America, and can heighten the risk of severe thunderstorms worldwide.

Additionally, in the same way that the ongoing effects of climate change can exacerbate the effects of an El Niño, the reverse can be true as well, with the effects of this summer’s El Niño threatening to push us above crucial temperature thresholds, which would have a destructive domino effect. Because El Niño events generally raise global temperatures, scientists expect us to, at least temporarily, cross the threshold of 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial global temperatures in 2024.

Even if temperatures come back down in the following year or two, scientists still predict that, without urgent action, we are set to surpass that threshold for good within the next five years, after which we can expect serious, irreversible consequences. Hotter temperatures from El Niño could accelerate some of the most dire impacts of climate change that we’re already seeing, a significant example being the melting of ice sheets and glaciers in the Antarctic region. These ice formations melting completely would have devastating impacts worldwide. Another such example is the endangerment or extinction of certain fish and coral species as a result of warming sea temperatures.

HUMAN & ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES – ALL BURDENS FALL ON THE WORKING CLASS While we can’t predict the exact extent of the damage of the 2023/24 El Niño, we can look at the disasters we’ve faced in recent years to get an idea.

One lesson is abundantly clear: whatever happens, it will be the global working class forced out of our

homes, suffering from health consequences, and paying the high costs for damages and relocation, while the rich sit back and get richer from their system that is destroying our planet.

The extreme weather we will almost certainly experience as a result of this summer’s El Niño will have devastating health impacts for working families around the world. Heat waves can be very dangerous and even lethal, especially for children, the elderly, and those with preexisting health issues, as well as in regions that are unaccustomed to high temperatures and don’t have widespread access to things like air conditioning. This was illustrated by the 2022 heat waves striking areas of Northern Europe which are used to cooler temperatures, where it is estimated over 20,000 died of heatrelated illnesses. During heat waves, workers in many industries like construction and delivery have to fight for basic safety measures to avoid being at extreme risk of health consequences.

El Niño events also come with an increased risk of wildfires, as some regions experience drier conditions and droughts, as usually occurs in the Amazon rainforest and in Australia. Wildfires pose enormous risks for people, wildlife, and plants in their path, and for those farther away; we saw just last month how wildfires in Canada resulted in over 30 million people in the US being put under air quality alerts. Other regions of the world will be afflicted with higher rainfall patterns and/or rising sea levels due to melting ice near the poles, and will thus be at heightened risk for floods, like those which killed at least 1,700 people in Pakistan in 2022. In fact, the CDC already lists heat waves and flooding, respectively, as the top two deadliest weather phenomena affecting Americans.

These risks to our health and our lives are of course also accompanied by economic risks.

Extreme weather events can result in damages to our homes and schools, higher energy costs as we become more reliant on air conditioning or heating amid extreme temperatures, and even the need to relocate to a new area entirely because our homes and/or livelihoods have been destroyed.

In response to this, capitalism is providing a perfect example of what happens when the things that working people need to survive are treated as private commodities. As the effects of climate change have heightened, the ruling class finds every way possible to place these economic burdens on the working class, increasingly withdrawing things like disaster relief funds and home insurance, for the stated purpose of “disincentivizing environmentally irresponsible construction.”

Of course, in reality, working people aren’t the S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

ones deciding to build homes in environmentally risky areas; we decide where to live based on what we can afford, where our community is, and where we can find work. The landlords and developers are the ones knowingly cramming us into unsafe living conditions, and are now, thanks to their puppets in the halls of power, completely off the hook for picking up the pieces when our homes are destroyed.

Considering the economic risks on the largest scale, through its potential effects on aspects of the economy like agricultural production and shipping, a strong El Niño this year could result in about $3 trillion in damages worldwide.

We’ve seen clearly how global crises, like the pandemic and the Ukraine War, result in losses for the working class everywhere while the billionaires profit.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? Again, an El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon that the Earth experienced prior to industrial capitalism and modern climate change. But without climate change, this El Niño and its associated tiny increase in global temperatures would not find us hovering on the precipice of irreversible environmental damage.

It is now abundantly clear to many working people that the ruling class has completely and utterly failed to take meaningful action on climate change, which results from their profitseeking system in the first place, and that we are, sometimes literally, being hung out to dry. This is especially true of working people in neocolonial countries who are facing some of the most severe environmental impacts despite contributing the least to global warming.

Corporate politicians from anywhere in the world only

serve to do the bidding of the domestic or foreign billionaire classes they are beholden to, who of course profit from the continued exploitation of our environment. This is why we see these representatives parading around every once in a while, making promises about action on climate for the cameras and reporters, only to turn around and either do nothing, or actively set us on the path for continued reliance on fossil fuels, as Biden has done by approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. These politicians, including liberals and many “progressives,” offer no way out from climate disaster.

HOW DO WE SAVE OURSELVES? Events like El Niño are frightening and threaten real consequences for the global working class and our planet, and each year that the ruling class refuses to take real action does make things more difficult for us. But it would be a mistake to think that, even if we surpass thresholds like 1.5° C, or even 2° C or 2.5° C above pre-industrial temperatures, there is nothing we can do.

Working people, including those employed in polluting industries, families looking to protect our children and aging parents, young people facing the threat of a limited future, and oppressed people bearing the brutal impacts of climate change combined with the marginalization resulting from capitalism’s social divisions, must unite in independent struggle for the relief we most urgently need, as well as the true, once-and-for-all solutions to the climate crisis. These can only be won with a class struggle approach based on our leverage as workers, and would be enormously aided by independent, working-class representation in our governments. J

“WHATEVER HAPPENS, IT WILL BE THE GLOBAL WORKING CLASS PAYING THE HIGH COSTS, WHILE THE RICH GET RICHER FROM THEIR SYSTEM THAT IS DESTROYING THE PLANET.”

WHAT WE NEED TO FIGHT THE CLIMATE CRISIS

REAL DISASTER RELIEF FOR WORKING PEOPLE

Working families need immediate relief from the disasters caused by the climate crisis, paid for by taxing the rich. This includes immediate relocation assistance for those whose homes are destroyed by extreme weather, Medicare for All to ensure those injured in disasters aren’t bankrupted by medical bills, and building new green affordable housing.

WORKERS TAKE THE REINS

We’ve seen enough of what happens when the bosses and board rooms make all the decisions.

They will never relinquish their profits willingly, and corporate politicians will never force them to. If we want to see any significant action, polluting industries must be taken into democratic public ownership of the people who work for them and who are living the reality of the climate crisis.

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REFORESTATION, A GREEN NEW DEAL, & A BAN ON NEW OIL AND GAS DRILLING The climate crisis cannot go any further.

We need to take real steps toward avoiding the most significant, irreversible damage potentially before us, including the ultimate full transition away from fossil fuels and the building up of a renewable energy industry powered by good union jobs.

SYSTEM CHANGE TO END CLIMAGE CHANGE To rescue ourselves from the most catastrophic consequences of climate change FOR GOOD, we need a socialist revolution, led by the working class, which replaces capitalism with a democratic system that meets our needs by working in harmony with our environment, rather than cashing in on it for profit.

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S TAT E O F T H E R I G H T

TRUMP FACES NEW INDICTMENTS

Trump sits with his legal defense team in a courtroom in Manhattan.

as ruling class frustration with ex-president boils over

STEPHEN THOMPSON, CHICAGO In March, Donald Trump became the first former US president to ever be charged with a crime. In the months since then, his legal problems have multiplied. He now faces several court cases over a variety of alleged misdeeds and the possibility of decades in prison if convicted.

The accusations against Trump range from the bizarre, like sharing military secrets with Kid Rock, to more serious matters like pressuring local officials to manipulate Georgia’s election results in 2020. He also faces a civil suit brought by New York attorney general Letitia James over alleged financial fraud from 2011 to 2021, an ongoing federal investigation into his involvement in the January 6 coup attempt, and federal charges stemming from alleged “hush money” payments to cover up an affair.

Socialists have no interest in defending Trump, who certainly deserves to face trial for his real crimes against working people. But what explains this sudden barrage of legal cases against a man who, by all accounts, has been getting away with wrongdoing for his entire life?

The Political Establishment Doesn’t Care About The “Rule Of Law” Although some Republicans have predictably rushed to Trump’s defense, much of the political establishment has sought to cast the prosecutions as a defense of lofty ideals like the “rule of law.” For example, former president Obama pointed to Trump’s legal woes as proof that “nobody’s above the law.”

In fact, however, when the perpetrators are wealthy and powerful, the political establishment generally takes a very lax approach to law enforcement. For instance, the IRS says that, because it doesn’t have the resources to match the high-priced law firms retained by wealthy people and corporations,

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it loses about a trillion dollars per year from tax evasion; rather than dealing with this, both the Democratic and Republican parties just voted to decrease funding for IRS tax enforcement. And Obama himself, despite his supposed fidelity to the law, steadfastly refused to prosecute those who oversaw the Bush administration’s torture program and

is possible to defeat the billionaires by organizing the public against them.

As the rot within capitalism continues and quality of life continues to deteriorate for ordinary people, we can expect more challenges to the status quo. This will be particularly true during periods of crisis and social upheaval.

For the ruling class, this makes Trump extremely dangerous, because although he has benefitted from the existing system as much as anyone, he has nevertheless shown a willingness to destabilize it in the service of his own narrow political ambitions. This is intolerable for much of the political establishment, and so they are pulling out all the stops to keep him from retaking the White House.

“As things currently stand, it is not hard to imagine Trump returning to office.

In the final analysis, the Democratic Party is impotent How To Defeat Trumpism against Trump because it Whether these efforts will actually succeed is anyone’s guess. But no matter what haponly offers a different version pens in court, Trumpism is likely to remain of the same billionairea force in society. So far, the legal cases against him seem to have only strengthened dominated politics.” the resolve of his followers. destroyed evidence to cover it up. Finally, although ordinary people face harsh punishments for mishandling classified information, presidents and members of Congress have been getting away with it for years. So why has a significant section of the political establishment decided to go after Trump?

What’s Really Going On To understand this, it is necessary to zoom out a bit. Although formally democratic, the US political system is, in practice, dominated by the wealthy. Tax rates for rich people and corporations have been falling for decades, even as a consistent majority of Americans have said they should pay more.

But even as the ruling class enjoys these enormous advantages, their position is never completely secure. In fact, examples like the Amazon Tax campaign in Seattle show that it

As things currently stand, it is not hard to imagine Trump returning to office. Despite the unpopularity of Biden, and the fact that a majority of Democratic voters have said they do not want him to run again, the party leadership has ruled out the possibility of even holding debates to choose a different nominee. And some polls already show Trump beating Biden in the next election.

In the final analysis, the Democratic Party is impotent against Trump because it only offers a different version of the same billionaire-dominated politics. To defeat Trumpism, we need a real alternative that points a way out of the multiplying crises working people face. Among other things, that means building a party that – unlike the Democratic and Republican parties – is internally democratic, is funded by membership dues instead of corporate donations, and can serve as a launching point for mass working-class action against billionaires of all stripes. J

A Tale Of Three Rulings KEELY MULLEN, CHICAGO Within the span of two days at the end of June, the Supreme Court dealt three consecutive blows to working people, decisions that will particularly affect those already most marginalized in our society. The fact that these decisions came almost exactly one year to the day since the overturn of Roe v. Wade demonstrates just how far this court is prepared to go in their attacks on Black Americans, women, and all oppressed people in this country.

Their first decision was to end affirmative action as we know it. Their decision, which involved separate cases at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University, effectively ended the systematic consideration of race as a factor in college admissions. Affirmative action programs were a victory that came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and though the policies tend to most directly benefit students who have aspirations of attending elite universities, therefore not directly benefiting the majority of poor Black students, its overturn is still a real blow. This is part of the right wing’s much bigger project of undermining the anti-racist policies and school curriculum that have been implemented in the wake of the first Black Lives Matter uprising in 2014.

Their second decision gave legal protection to an Evangelical, Colorado-based graphic designer who did not want to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, despite the state’s anti-discrimination law. After the nationwide legalization of gay marriage in 2015, a slew of Supreme Court cases have emerged seeking to undermine this historic win.

This decision, while shrouded in language around allowing people to be “freethinkers,” is part of a vicious agenda aimed at rolling back the clock of LGBTQ rights. The fact that the legal powerhouse behind this case is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) – the same group behind the slew of anti-trans lawsuits across the country, and the same group behind the repeal of Roe – is a dangerous warning sign about what’s to come.

The final decision was to block Joe Biden’s proposal to cancel student loan debt of up to $20,000 per borrower. This decision is a heavy blow to the 45 million Americans who have student loan debt and will be particularly devastating to Black graduates who owe on average $25,000 more than their white peers.

The position of the Supreme Court is clear: it’s not the responsibility of capitalism, or the US Constitution, to relieve any of the enormous burdens this system places on working-class and marginalized people. The system is only concerned with maintaining the rights of capitalists to do business however they please to make the most profit possible – everyone else is on their own. J 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 CHRIS GRAY, MINNEAPOLIS As inter-imperialist tensions continue to heighten, capitalist governments around the world plan to spend over $6 trillion on their militaries in the next three years. That’s enough to fully fund a global, complete transition away from a fossil fuel based economy.

Capitalist countries around the world spend twice as much on arms today as they did in 1980.

A key feature of the new geopolitical era we’ve entered is the decline of US capitalism as the predominant world power. When mass anti-colonial movements forced out the British in the 1940s, the Indian economy was only 1% of global GDP. Today it’s 10%. In 1960, China made up 2.5% of the world’s GDP. Today it’s 23%.

In this new period, world politics is increasingly defined by the inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and China who are both vying to become, or remain, the primary world super power. This overarching dynamic in the world situation can be seen in almost every facet of world relations.

US sanctions on microchips have all but destroyed the global ambitions of Chinese tech corporations like Huawei. In turn, the Chinese government sanctioned Micron, a US microchips producer, terrifying the CEOs of corporations like Apple because their production process is so intertwined with China.

One of the most important manifestations of this inter-imperialist rivalry is the ongoing war in Ukraine. The people of Ukraine have been absolutely brutalized, their homes destroyed, in a war whose dominant feature is a proxy battle between the US and China. The US, and other NATO forces, have armed the Ukrainian military to the teeth not because they’re concerned with the well being of the Ukrainian people, but because they hope a defeat for Russia, and the destabilizing of Putin’s reactionary regime, will harm China, Russia’s key ally. On the other side, the prospect of a pro-western regime in Russia – which shares a land border with China longer than the distance between New York and Seattle – is a terrifying prospect for Chinese capitalism.

It is this overarching, unimaginably tense dynamic between the two world superpowers, alongside the long term decline in global capitalism, that is propelling countries the world over toward increased militarization.

Every Capitalist Government Is Preparing For War To maintain its economic advantages, US capitalism leans on its military power. Other imperialist countries do the same thing, but US imperialism still makes up 40% of all arms spending around the world. Politicians on both sides of the aisle agree maintaining US imperialism is a top priority, as we saw with the debt ceiling debate where the question of cutting military spending didn’t even enter the conversation. However, other governments are also spending far more on weapons of war.

US imperialism has sent $75 billion to Zelensky’s regime in Ukraine. This is more than France’s entire military budget for a year. Only 5% of this is used for humanitarian

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CAPITALISM IS PREPARING FOR MORE WAR: we need a socialist alternative

purposes. For a devastating contrast, it would cost $58 billion a year to make public college free in the US. NATO is a military alliance that protects capitalism in Europe, and by extension the US. To be a member a country is expected to spend 2% of its GDP on military spending. In 2014, only two NATO countries hit this target. Today seven countries do. NATO is encouraging countries to go further. Poland is spending 4% of its GDP on military spending. This spring, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a shift to a “war economy.”

Germany is investing €100 billion into its military, a significant shift from Germany’s postWWII low levels of military investment, and permanently deploying a brigade in Estonia.

Japan is raising its military budget 60% over the next five years. South Korea is raising its budget 40% over the same period.

The US and the Philippines conducted the biggest joint military exercise to date this year. Biden became the first US president to sell a nuclear submarine to a foreign country in 63 years, selling three to Australia earlier this year. India and Pakistan have doubled their military budget over the last ten years.

A key goal of Modi’s red-carpet visit to Washington was to secure defense deals from the US, even as the average Indian worker still earns $330 per month.

China has increased its military budget 75% over the last 10 years. The US government claims China is constructing 200 new missile silos, expanding its mobile-launch capability, and upgrading its submarine fleet. It is claimed Chinese President Xi Jinping has set the target of being capable of invading Taiwan by 2027, though there are doubts about the timeline of this goal. Invading Taiwan would require a war on a scale far bigger than Ukraine and almost certainly mean a direct confrontation with US imperialism.

Killing Is Cheaper In May, The Economist coldly explained that military spending today gets “more bang for your buck”, highlighting the real value

capitalism puts on human life. Robotics have made modern, imperialist armies cheaper to deploy. Brazil spends 78% of its military budget on soldiers compared with less than 50% in NATO armies. Official US government data shows the price of a missile has fallen 30% since the 1970’s.

Weapons are also more destructive. For example, the price of a fighter jet has remained flat, though venture capitalist James Geurts pointed out “These days you can hit dozens of targets with a single bomber, rather than vice versa, which used to be the case.”

The Threat Of Nuclear War Obama, Trump and Biden all changed US nuclear policy to open the door to a “first strike”, ie launching nuclear weapons first, not just when you are attacked. Putin has revised Soviet-era nuclear doctrine to make it more vague and conditional, and has threatened to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine.

Both the US and Russia are spending hundreds of millions on smaller tactical nuclear weapons – “first strike” weapons designed to destroy military installations without provoking an all out catastrophic counterattack.

China is the only nuclear-armed country that formally adheres to a no-first-strike doctrine. However, they recently tested their Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, a weapon system that is only useful as a first strike weapon. Hypersonic cruise missiles, which are being researched by every major imperialist country, are designed to evade missile defense systems.

These weapons are inherently dangerous because of the logic of nuclear war: if you believe your opponent can knock out your weapons, why not use your weapons first?

The Reemergence Of Conventional Weapons Despite what imperialist countries claim, modern warfare is no less deadly and dehumanizing than before. There have been tens of thousands of casualties in the months-long

“meatgrinder” battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut including in human wave attacks.

This evokes the battles of the world wars in the 20th century.

The US is increasing production of 155mm artillery shells, a weapon design that has changed little over the last hundred years, to 24,000/month – a sixfold increase since last year. The US is researching new and more deadly landmines. Land mines were “outlawed” in 1997 because they have indiscriminately killed hundreds of thousands of people, often decades after wars end.

We Need A Socialist Alternative For now, US imperialism is still the main driving force of warfare across the world, and this has been made possible by nearly unanimous consent among both corporate parties.

Even self-described “socialists” like Bernie Sanders and The Squad have backed imperialism outright, or failed to mount an effective resistance to imperialist militarism by using their position to call for anti-war protests.

This capitulation has opened the door for right-wing populists to pose as anti-war candidates on a nationalist basis, even though the nationalism of a capitalist super power like the United States always points back towards more imperialism. What is needed is a genuinely socialist, internationalist resistance to imperialism, which fights for the interests of the working class in every country to end war once and for all. J

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YOUTH & STUDENTS As of June, several restrictions and curfews have been placed on young people in Philadelphia. This includes banning 14-18 year olds from public businesses without an adult after 10pm and, even more extremely, banning kids from the Fashion District after 2pm, before school lets out. Curfews, which are a growing phenomenon in cities, have been posed as a way to curb violence and property damage to businesses – at the cost of drastically diminishing the places where youth are allowed to be in public at a time when being a young person is more difficult than ever.

These curfews blame youth for our reaction to the growing social crises that we are facing under capitalism. While rates of suicide, crime, and gun violence among youth have been increasing over the past years, the crisis we are facing as young people under the capitalist system is hardly new.

Our education system acts as a tool for capitalism rather than as a tool for learning. Because our schools are structured to create more obedient workers, students are alienated from our education and school experience while our futures still rest upon it. Public education is not allotted the proper funding for basic environmental safety, educational standards, or mental health support, leaving many students untethered.

Outside of school, we can clearly see the deteriorating conditions of the world into which we were born. In the US, students are surrounded by gun violence every day – at the time of writing there have been 23 school shootings resulting in injury or death this year.

Many students also face violence outside of school. In the aftermath of the pandemic, mental health issues amongst youth have skyrocketed. After this time of social isolation, 80% of schools have reported increased behavioral issues among their students and many cities have seen an increase in gun violence. Needless to say, the crises of the capitalist system are especially difficult on young

CURFEW CRACKDOWN CRIMINALIZATION DOESN'T KEEP YOUNG PEOPLE SAFE

by NOX TAN PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT people, who don’t yet have all the mental and emotional tools to deal with them.

Who Are Curfews For? The roots of these spikes in violence are directly tied to the decay in the capitalist system, young people’s lives are so unstable and their future is hard to imagine considering all the debt they will likely take on, not to mention the threat of climate change. The ruling class cannot address these roots without threatening their own profits or the capitalist system. Rather than give kids more freedom and resources with which to fight the mental health crisis we are facing, they instead demonize young people, imposing strict regulations on where young people can be at what time.

Several other cities have imposed these curfews including Chicago, where the new regulations put in place by Lori Lightfoot primarily impact Black and brown working-class kids. Now, youth are not allowed to be in the famous Millennium Park after 6pm Thursday through Sunday. The next mayor of Philadelphia, Charelle Parker, has not only given her

NOTHING TO DO SAWYER SMITH, NYC

It’s a Saturday afternoon and you’re tight on cash. You’ve got the day off from work and nothing else occupying your schedule.

What can you do with your limited free time?

Truthfully, not much. The fact of the matter is that leisure activities of all sorts cost far too much. Restaurants and cafes generally require you to buy something if you want to stay, movie theater ticket and snack prices have become prohibitively expensive (a consequence of the industry’s decline), and even museums often charge you for a donation at minimum.

Access to “third places,” defined as places other than your home and your work

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staunch support of stop-and-frisk policing but has also said that she would make school year-round to limit violence. While violence does spike during the summer, this fails to recognize that our underfunded schools both aid in the rise of violence and do not have the resources to run all year. This policy is highly unlikely to be implemented, but it still shows the inadequacy of the solutions put forward by the ruling class.

These supposed solutions are not for the protection or wellbeing of teenagers, but rather to protect the profits of the capitalist class at the expense of youth. The curfews limit where teenagers are allowed to spend time without providing other spaces. It’s true that gun violence tends to increase in the summer, partially because schools aren’t in session. However, teenagers are not provided with affordable summer camps or programs where we can spend time, which is especially difficult if our parents work full-time.

At the same time that these restrictions are being put into place, many cities are shutting down recreational facilities and limiting library hours, further limiting the spaces in

which teenagers can be. The curfews set up in many cities are in place solely to protect the profits of large companies, not to protect teenagers from violence. At heart, this is a concern about the viability of downtown businesses – they want to be insulated from potential vandalism and theft, and the “rowdiness” that crowds of teenagers sometimes bring. But this greatly limits the times and places in which teens can interact with their peers or simply just exist.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way The ruling class chooses to demonize young people because they have no real solutions for the violence inherent to the capitalist system. However, this social alienation of youth does not need to exist. The policing of youth is a response to problems caused by a lack of opportunities and resources provided to young people. Rather than sending money into policing, funding should be put towards providing teens with affordable after school and summer programs to attend and well funded libraries and parks, paid for by taxing the rich. Additionally, cities should provide better funding to schools and recreation centers so that children are given more opportunities and resources. Our cities are spending money to police children under the guise of combating violence and poor behavior when this money could go to resources that would prevent, not punish, violence. J

This graphic outlining youth curfew policies is from the Vernon Hills, IL police department website.

WHY DOES ALL OUR LEISURE COME AT A COST?

or school where you can socialize or otherwise pass time without the pressure of needing to buy something, has dwindled in the US, particularly in more suburban and rural areas across the country. One of the few free activities some Americans have access to is natural resources like parks and gardens, although even then, gas prices and the cost of transportation can make these activities difficult. Any and all formalized recreational activities have been so thoroughly consumed by corporations that spending time with friends and family has been totally compromised by the language of transaction.

This is enough of a problem during the school year, but when summer rolls around these issues are greatly magnified. Educators who have spent the fall, winter, and spring months tirelessly working to provide children with a stable learning environment now find themselves with some time to recuperate, assuming they aren’t forced by high rents and low wages to find another job for themselves between semesters. Working parents who are unable to afford expensive

summer camps and vacations must now spend their whole day being both caretakers and employees. Summers are only getting hotter, and kids need a place to blow off steam outside the house. Workers should be able to make the most of their free time, but with inflation on the rise along with the price of recreational activities, that time can often only be spent at home. Besides, most workers barely even have much time to spare. Paid time off is pathetically restrictive in the US compared to other countries, not to mention the increasingly common phenomenon of second and third jobs, and side hustles nurtured by a predatory gig economy.

Public institutions and amenities which create spaces for people to meet casually and let go of work concerns are few and far between, but it doesn’t have to be like this. There is plenty of money circulating throughout the economy, whether in the form of tax cuts for the supremely wealthy and military or police spending, that could be diverted towards the construction of public spaces. The state could be building

community centers which provide programs for children and serve as a space for neighbors to support one another. It could be constructing public pools as the years get hotter, public libraries for the people’s intellectual enrichment, publicly available venues for free concerts and plays. It could be preserving national parks and making public transportation freely available to all, granting access to people from across the country.

Not only could a socialist society take resources out of the hands of the capitalist class and allocate them towards such programs, but the life of a worker in a socialist society would allow for the free time required to enjoy them. Under capitalism, workers are sacrificing more and more free time to the bosses, who squeeze every last drop out of their employees and leave them with barely enough time to sleep and eat.

While programs for the enrichment of public spaces can begin development at any time, a better, more fulfilling life for the working people of the US and of the world demands a full socialist transformation of society. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

SPORTS TONYA ROGERS, MINNEAPOLIS FIFA greed, ACL injuries, and elite players fighting for a greater professional environment free from sexism. Even more than who could win at each stage, these are the main discussions swirling around the Women’s World Cup beginning this July in Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a lie that women’s sports aren’t popular. More than 29 million women and girls are playing soccer across the globe, women’s soccer is drawing larger and larger crowds and viewership, and victories against sexual harassment and the struggle for equal pay have taken an international stage, highlighting the fight against the massive disparity of resources into the men’s programs.

Collective action has been crucial in these victories: after threats to cancel games and chants for “equal pay” at international tournaments, the US Women's National Team (USWNT) won a landmark equal pay agreement in 2022, including $24 million in backpay. As a result, the women received a share of the pot from the men’s 2022 qualifying stages that was more than the USWNT players had been paid for winning two previous World Cup championships. Canada Soccer won an equal pay collective bargaining agreement after threatening to strike. England, Ireland, Norway, and Spain have reached similar deals with the leverage of increasingly popular programs and exploding viewership which has competed with or exceeded the men’s programs.

In the fight for equal pay, the USWNT collaborated with other athletes in negotiations, including women’s hockey, WNBA players, the Canadian, Irish, and other international football teams. However, equal pay is still not guaranteed at every level, so the fight continues.

Despite advances in professionalism and a greater intolerance to sexual misconduct, players resoundingly say FIFA and their club level leagues have a long way to go to address player safety, on and off the pitch.

Women’s Soccer & The Fight For Well-Researched Women’s Healthcare The player’s push to professionalize has given rise to more leagues and more opportunities to play – but decades of underfunding have resulted in a troubling escalation of injuries. In an attempt to build pressure for more research, players have volunteered to jumpstart studies to find injury-preventative training methods specific to women.

Women soccer players are six times more likely than men to experience an ACL injury – a serious injury needing six months to a year to recover. A shockingly high number of top players are unable to participate in this year’s tournament, waylaid by such injuries, including England captain Leah Williamson, Vivianne Miedema of the Netherlands and Arsenal, Ballon d'Or winner Alexia Putellas, with many more coming back after a long road of recovery, like US player Christen Press.

To be clear, demands for greater investigation into injuries suffered in women’s sports J U LY - A U G U S T 2 0 2 3

should not give any oxygen to the current culture war being waged by the right wing in the United States against trans youth in athletic programs. Youth players should be able to play within the leagues corresponding to their gender identity, which does not take away from the need for deeper investigation into how to train women players on injury prevention from youth to elite clubs. It’s now widely accepted that menstrual cycles make players more vulnerable to certain injuries, but the how and why are still unclear. Finding such answers should be a no-brainer aspect to a genuine investment into women’s healthcare.

The Yates Report: Exposing Sexism For years, player’s reported cases of sexual harassment led to no changes within the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in the United States. That was until the USWNT threatened to boycott a tournament resulting in the Yates Report on abusive behavior and sexual misconduct. The 173-page investigation led to the firing of several US coaching staff, including Paul Riley from the heavily accoladed Portland Thorns, North Carolina youth and NC Courage programs.

For one striking example of what players have withstood, look at Christen Press.

While she was gaining international popularity during the 2019 World Cup, she and teammates Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbraun were negotiating for equal pay with their USWNTPA bargaining committee. At the same time, Press was still forcing an escalation of her own allegations of repeated abuse. Chicago Red Stars coach Rory Dames was exposed by the Yates report that found Dames fostered a "sexualized team environment” from the youth to professional level.

Press’ first complaint was in 2014. Dames wasn’t even fired in 2021, he was “forced to resign”!

If elite athletes struggle to achieve justice against sexual misconduct in highprofile sports, what does that say about the chances of ordinary women receiving justice in the workplace or against street harassment? Wider and deeper victories during the MeToo phenomena were limited, some individual abusers lost their position or were “canceled,” pyrrhic achievements when the culture of abusers remains in place. Systemic change in women’s sports will come only with ongoing, consistent organizing, and players democratically deciding on the restructuring of league governing bodies.

FIFA Is A Comically Corrupt Cartoon Villain Women's soccer is popular but we can make no mistake about the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and its president, Georgio Infantino: they plan only to cash in, not to protect, defend, or improve the women’s (or men’s) game.

After years of denigrating, devaluing, and under-promoting women’s soccer, FIFA succumbed to pressure and finally announced that the prize fund for the women’s competition will match the men’s by 2027.

Does this mean the institution’s culture toward women’s sports has changed? Infantino’s predecessor encouraged players to “wear tighter shorts” because women soccer players are "pretty." FIFA has named former supermodel Adriana Lima as official fan ambassador for the World Cup, to a general public and player response of “why do we need a supermodel?”

Mean-

2023 WOMEN'S WORLD CUP

PLAYER SAFETY, FIFA, AND THE FIGHT AGAINST SEXISM

while in reality, England and New Zealand have used their unions to change their uniforms, no longer wearing white shorts to give players greater confidence while menstruating.

Women’s Sports Under Socialism?

In the fight for a better world, dismantling capitalism means taking away the economic motive to exploit the majority of people on earth. Shorter work weeks would mean more people could be employed to spread the work, resulting in more leisure time outside of work to participate in society and activities. Recognizing the familial and household work, the majority of which is performed by women and goes unpaid under capitalism, would also be a major step toward providing an equality in free time for women who want to be athletes. In the fight for this better world, we could all be more engaged in building the democratic structure of our neighborhoods and workplaces – and sports programs.

While this is a struggle into the future, we could today immediately take the private, forprofit teams and clubs into public ownership.

Some NWSL players have even suggested this. A legacy of public ownership in the Premier League in Britain was a motivation behind massive fan protest against FIFA’s attempt to create a further privatized, billionaire-venture “Super League” in 2021. Thousands of vocally disgusted fans and players sank the project.

Men’s sports are not immune to emotional and psychological abuse. FIFA, the NFL, the NCAA, and sports federations across the globe will encourage or ignore a toxic psychological environment, from youth programs upward, unless players stand in the way of these federation’s ability to profit from the network of massive brand and advertising deals.

Equal funding for sports from birth to the professional leagues, with programs shaped by the needs of women athletes, would go far to quickly transform the professionalization of the women’s game.

Players’ unions at all club to professional levels are a crucial tool in the fight against toxic environments and abusers.

Public ownership, elected and directly re c allable governing boards made up of players and former players, not billionaires. These are steps that can be taken today as we fight for greater expansion of equality in women’s sports, inspiring struggle in the broader battle against sexism under capitalism, in the fight for a socialist restructuring of society. J

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I N T E R N AT I O N A L Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to Biden during his visit to the White House in June.

DEMOCRATS EMBRACE MODI

class has moved increasingly towards a military alliance with the US, joining the “Quad” Alliance, also known as the “eastern NATO,” and steadily increasing the share of arms it buys from the US. During Modi’s visit, Biden and Modi struck a deal for much closer military cooperation, with a planned $3 billion purchase of American Reaper drones by India and a transfer of General Electric jet engine technology – considered one of the crown jewels of the US defense industry – to enable India to launch a domestic fighter jet manufacturing industry.

One thing is certain: neither American nor Indian working people will benefit from any strategic alliance between the two capitalist regimes. Only the ruling elite of both countries, who will continue to carry out brutal attacks on the working class to further their agendas, stand to gain from these agreements. The guest list to Biden’s lavish state dinner in honor of Modi is telling: several Indian and American corporate figures, including Asia’s richest person Mukesh Ambani, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. It’s the billionaire class that ultimately pulls the strings and enriches itself while working-class people from Boston to Bengaluru suffer.

IN NEW COLD WAR AGAINST CHINA Rise of Hindutva Forces In The VARUN BELUR, SEATTLE

after the US and China.

United States

In June, the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and Congress rolled out the red carpet for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After a grand ceremonial reception at the White House followed by an elaborate state dinner, he was welcomed by members of Congress with an embarrassing “Modi” chant. This pomp decisively demonstrates the agenda of US imperialism today: enlisting the Indian regime as a counterweight to China in the New Cold War. India is now the fifth-largest economy in the world and the world’s most populous country. It is also home to the world’s largest working class, with over 523 million workers. For all these reasons, it is seen as a “linchpin” by the US ruling class in their strategy to challenge China.

Modi, a very young recruit of Hindu fundamentalists, first made his political mark as Chief Minister of the Western Indian state of Gujarat, overseeing the slaughter of 2,000 Muslims by the Hindu right wing in 2002. Since 2014, Modi and his deeply reactionary Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have headed India’s central government, presiding over surging violence, especially targeting Muslims and casteoppressed communities, and carrying out egregious attacks against activists and dissenters.

Modi’s regime has presided over what is estimated to be the worst unemployment crisis in nearly half a century, with over 450 million working people having given up hope looking for jobs. The number of extremely poor people has shot up just since 2018, and Indians made up 80% of those who became poor globally in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. The masses in India currently face a searing cost of living crisis. Meanwhile, India ranked third in the number of billionaires,

Modi, Biden, And The New Cold War

As the Hindu far right has consolidated power in India, Hindu fundamentalists have found a real base in the US. Groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a dangerous right-wing organization with direct ties to Modi and the BJP, are active in the US. The VHP is infamous for its role in the 2002 Gujarat massacre of Muslims, and also was one of the loudest opponents of the historic ordinance banning caste discrimination won

by Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and a working-class movement.

In June, just two weeks before Modi’s visit, the first Hindu American Summit was held in Washington DC, organized by right-wing supporters of Modi and the BJP, and attended by organizations and individuals associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary wing of the BJP. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, fresh from the debt ceiling negotiations, was the keynote speaker at the event. Much like right-wing authoritarian Turkish President Recep Erdogan in Europe, Modi has made campaigning in immigrant communities abroad a key component of electoral campaigns at home.

The growth of the Hindu far right in the US has been aided by both capitalist parties and has been accelerated by the development of the New Cold War.

Biden and the Democrats outdid Trump’s 2019 “Howdy Modi” welcome, and it reveals the bipartisan nature of US imperialism, as it openly embraces the Modi regime to build a bloc against Chinese imperialism in the New Cold War. As the US and Chinese economies decouple, both imperialist powers are rushing to carve out their own economic and political blocs in a race for raw materials, markets and

“Modi’s regime has presided over what is estimated to be the worst unemployment crisis in nearly half a century, with over 450 million working people having given up hope looking for jobs... The masses in India currently face a searing cost of living crisis. Meanwhile, India ranked third in the number of billionaires, after the US and China.”

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military allies. India is a crucial piece of this puzzle, as US manufacturers look to move supply chains out of China. In 2022, the US displaced China as India’s largest trading power, with a record $191 billion in trade.

Indian officials want to raise that figure to $500 billion by 2030.

The Indian ruling class is also in its own regional imperialist contest against China, and there have been no fewer than four deadly Sino-Indian military conflicts in the last decade. As a result, the Indian ruling

Progressive Caucus, Representative Ro Khanna, in fact requested Kevin McCarthy invite Modi to speak to Congress! In his letter, Khanna nakedly justifies this by declaring India “the most critical partner to countering China.”

This comes on the heels of the failure of the Squad and other progressive Democrats like Congressmember Pramila Jayapal to oppose Biden’s funding of NATO’s brutal proxy war in Ukraine.

In the US, the ruling class today is carrying out attacks on women, LGBTQ people, and the labor movement. Millions of working people face a serious cost-of-living crisis.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this. Similarly, though the BJP has been the party in power, the Congress Party and other Indian parties have not mounted a serious fightback or offered any solution to the crisis. Moreover, they have their own track record of having sold out hundreds of millions of working and oppressed people, while helping to enrich a few.

In India and in the US, we need to build mass movements of working and young people, led by the rank and file of the labor movement, to fight on demands such as living wages and taxes on the rich to fund public services instead of pouring billions into the weapons industry. And this battle needs to be linked to the fight against all forms of oppression. We saw how the courageous movement of Indian farmers, joined by union members, handed Modi a historic defeat by forcing him to withdraw exploitative, pro-agribusiness policies. And ultimately, this needs to become a struggle against the system that permits such outrageous inequality: the corrupt and broken system of capitalism. J

READ MORE SOCIALIST ANALYSIS & UPDATES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

POLAND | HALF A MILLION PROTESTERS TAKE TO THE STREETS OF WARSAW Half a million protesters took to the streets on June 4 against the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government, in what is claimed to be the biggest demonstration in Poland since the collapse of Stalinism in 1989.

What kind of movement is necessary to win?

From The US To India, We Need A Working-Class Movement To Defeat The Right Wing The Squad, who boycotted Modi’s Congressional address, failed to issue a call to action to working people, union members, and activists to expose Modi’s agenda and the dangerous rise of Islamophobia in India.

Prominent member of the Congressional

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WORKERS & YOUTH FIGHT TO STOP ATLANTA’S PROPOSED ‘COP CITY’

ERIC JENKINS, PHILADELPHIA

For months, Atlanta’s political establishment has been trying to sell to the public its plan to establish a massive $90 million dollar training facility for police officers, known as “Cop City”. Building Cop City will cut down some of the last native forests in Atlanta, and bulldoze a predominately Black working class neighborhood. This heinous plan has inspired a persistent struggle from working people and youth against the building of the facility.

For several months, protesters continually occupied the Cop City location. That went on until police swarmed the area in January, killing an unarmed activist and arresting dozens.

Atlanta prosecutors are now attempting to charge these protestors with domestic terrorism. If prosecuted, these activists could face upwards to 35 years in prison!

Who wants to build this massive installation, and why?

Atlanta’s political establishment, which is predominately the Democratic Party, wants a stronger police force to prevent or respond to another massive uprising like during the George Floyd movement. In 2020, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms sent militarized police after protests and decried the protests as “chaos” and “not in the spirit of MLK.” She was rewarded for having protected racist policing and private property with a job in the current Biden administration.

Now, the new mayor and city council of Atlanta are continuing the course of increasing repression of workers as Democrats

across the country reinforce law-and-order policing, like we’ve seen from Eric Adams in NYC and Lori Lightfoot in Chicago.

Corporations such as Amazon, UPS, and Wells Fargo support the establishment of Cop City by being wealthy backers of the Atlanta Police Foundation. They too see the need for a stronger police department to intimidate workers from building a militant and broad movement challenging racist policing as well as more money for social spending. It’s endeavors like Cop City that make crystal clear that Democrats and corporations only pay lip service to racial justice, while using their money and power to ensure the continuation of police violence on Black working class communities.

Now an upcoming referendum in November will decide if the public supports the building of Cop City. The movement for a decisive “No” vote on Cop City will need to clearly articulate an alternative with bold demands that speak to the needs of working-class Atlantans, particularly the Black working class. Average rent in Atlanta rose 31% in the past five years – the $90 million allocated to Cop City should go into building permanently-affordable housing to combat economic evictions, which are a primary driver of gentrification.

The struggle against Cop City has already demonstrated the strength of a unified movement against racist police violence and environmental destruction – a bold, multi-racial coalition of working-class people, the labor movement, and community activists around a positive program for the needs of all working people could be even more explosive. J

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SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

ISSUE #95 l JULY-AUGUST 2023

THE LABOR MOVEMENT NEEDS ITS OWN POLITICAL PARTY A Different Kind Of Party

GREYSON VAN ARSDALE, CHICAGO In 2022, Americans’ approval of labor unions reached 71%. For those keeping score at home, that’s higher than Joe Biden’s and Trump’s highest approval ratings in office (57% and 47%, respectively), higher than the percentage of students that go to college (61%), and about the same as the amount of Americans that consider themselves football fans (72%).

This support is not abstract, either. A recent poll found that the ongoing Writers’ Guild of America strike enjoys clear majority support among Americans, even among a majority of Trump supporters.

And why wouldn’t working people be supporting unions in record numbers? The chaotic last several years have laid bare how little concern our bosses have for our lives and well-being. Side hustles in the gig economy, scrimping and saving, shacking up with roommates – none of it can pave over the fact that our jobs don’t pay us enough, everything is getting more expensive, and the big bosses somehow continue to make record profits.

Despite this popularity among workingclass people, unions consistently get the shaft from Congress and the White House.

Labor unions spent $1.3 million on Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020, only for the Democratic Party to abandon the PRO Act, which would have drastically increased protections for workers unionizing and on strike.

This was act two for Biden, who had helped Obama send the Employee Free Choice Act to an identical death in 2009. At a campaign event with the AFL-CIO in June, Biden

boasted, “I’m the most pro-union President in American history” – which probably came as a surprise to the more than 100,000 rail workers who Biden and Congress barred from striking last winter.

Workers and our unions have the most leverage in the workplace where we have the power to shut down the flow of profits. But that doesn’t mean that organized labor can abstain from the political fight for working class reforms – like a higher federal minimum wage, Medicare for All, and taxes on the rich to fund housing and social programs.

To win those things, the labor movement can’t remain shackled to corporate political parties which eagerly take union members’ dues money while in reality doing everything they can to protect the bosses. The labor movement, and working-class people more broadly, needs its own party.

Labor Should Stop Wasting Time On Corporate Parties In June, the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the country, representing over 12 million workers, endorsed Joe Biden in the 2024 Presidential election, without consulting its membership. This is a grave and dangerous mistake. Biden is a strike breaker and has already shown that when workers and bosses go head-to-head, he’ll choose the bosses every time.

There is an alternative – a genuine leftwing, independent option that the unions are willfully ignoring: Cornel West. His campaign, while in its very early stages, represents a direct challenge to the bosses’ twoparty system and is based around a set of

working-class reforms like Medicare for All, an increased minimum wage, and expanded social security. For unions to endorse Biden in this context, without a democratic process among their members, amounts to a betrayal of their own members.

Neither party in our corporate two-party system represents the interests of workingclass people. Some union locals endorsed Donald Trump in 2020, and may again in the likely event that Trump is the Republican nominee for 2024.

Trump’s overtures to working-class people, though, are just as phony as Biden’s. As a billionaire, he’s made his fortune off of underpaying or downright cheating those who work for him, and will always support the efforts of the rest of his class to do the same. The Republican Party at large is responsible for anti-union legislation like Right to Work and other legal hurdles to organizing.

An independent labor party, though, has the potential to unify working-class people from all walks of life, whether they’re union members or not, under a program that speaks to our common interests as a class.

Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Presidential campaigns did exactly that: by running on a platform of Medicare for All, free public college and canceling student debt, and a $15 minimum wage, all paid for by taxing the wealthiest people in society who have made their millions off of our work, Sanders built a huge coalition of voters – not just from the traditional Democratic and Republican bases, but from people who normally never vote at all.

By working from the Sanders playbook, the labor movement could transform American politics and win victories on a much larger scale.

Being a “Republican” or “Democrat,” unless you’re party staff, actually doesn’t mean very much – it’s only a measure of who you tend to vote for. Neither party has any kind of internal democracy for regular working-class people who vote in elections.

Labor can, and should, form a different kind of party. A truly democratic union has regular membership meetings where votes are taken on key questions, it has elected leaders that are accountable to the membership, and it advocates for a set of workplace policies that workers themselves decide on.

Unions represent the largest democratic organizations through which working people can fight back. An independent workers party should run itself on the same principle.

Those who run for elected office in such a party should be held accountable to the party’s platform, decided on by its membership. They should also make only the average wage of the worker, to make them truly accountable to the working-class people they represent. (Socialist Alternative members who hold elected public or union positions do this, and donate the remainder of their salary to a solidarity fund used to build movements and win victories.)

By organizing on these principles, labor could mobilize literally millions of people who don’t vote because they’re completely disenfranchised by the false choice presented every election year. These millions could be brought not just to vote, but to join unions, build the labor movement, and into struggle for the interests of all working-class people. J